#you guys...it's better to read the whole arc yourself it's so good^^ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nereidprinc3ss · 10 months ago

Text

hourglass

in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.

18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k

It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.

About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)

About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.

You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.

“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.

“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”

A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.

“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.

If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.

The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)

“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.

“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”

“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”

“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.

You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.

“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.

“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”

“You want to kiss me?”

“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.

As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.

It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.

You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.

“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”

Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.

At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.

“Incentive for you to come home.”

Nearly three months since that night.

At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.

Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.

So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.

When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.

Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.

Realized it was not at all a joke.

In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.

Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.

Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.

He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.

“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.

I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.

All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?

The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.

That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.

Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.

He didn’t want to see you.

He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.

But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.

So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.

Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.

And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.

Surely you’re hallucinating.

Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.

He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him.

But it's him.

You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.

“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.

Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.

“I know.”

He knows?

You scoff.

“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”

The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.

It chills you.

Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.

He is so different.

Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.

Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.

He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.

He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.

“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”

A silent moment passes.

You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.

Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—

And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.

“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”

The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.

“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.

“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”

“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.

A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.

You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.

“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.

Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.

You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.

Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.

“Is this what you want?”

There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.

“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”

For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.

Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.

He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.

A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.

Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?

In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.

You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.

He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.

“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”

He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.

“We don’t have to do—”

“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”

It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.

“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened?

“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”

You sniffle and look back down.

“You can untie that for me.”

He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.

“Okay.”

A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.

Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.

You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.

“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.

“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”

But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.

You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.

Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?

You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.

“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”

Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.

“I can’t,” you admit.

“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”

You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.

Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.

Right. No shirt.

You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.

It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.

Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.

“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”

It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.

“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.

“You want me to show you what I mean?”

If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.

You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.

“That’s new.”

You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

He nods.

“A lot is new.”

It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.

“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”

Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.

“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”

Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”

This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.

“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”

But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.

You understand the feeling.

“I don’t need slow.”

You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.

“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”

“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”

Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.

“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”

Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.

The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.

“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”

You’re just as quiet, just as soft.

“Don’t, Spencer.”

He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.

“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”

But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.

Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.

“You don’t have to go that slow.”

A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.

“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.

Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.

More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.

“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.

“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”

It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.

But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.

His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.

Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.

The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.

He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.

You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.

“Is this okay?”

You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?

“You don’t have to...”

“But is it okay with you?”

Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.

For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.

These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.

His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.

The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.

“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.

Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.

“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”

“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”

He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.

“Yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.

Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?

You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.

His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”

Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.

He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.

They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.

He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.

“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”

He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.

“What?”

Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.

“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”

Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.

And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.

He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.

You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.

But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.

You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.

It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?

He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.

“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.

“You’re still pretty.”

He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.

“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

A moment goes by.

“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.

Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.

“Lie down.”

Oh. Right.

This.

You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.

Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.

“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.

“I...”

Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.

Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.

There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.

You swallow.

“I’m good.”

Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.

When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.

“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.

Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.

And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.

And you’re not even fucking yet.

“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.

Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.

Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.

“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”

Spencer. Your Spencer.

For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.

This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.

Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.

“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”

“Mhm.”

“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”

“’M ready.”

“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.

“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”

You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”

This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.

There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.

“Spencer.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.

“You don’t know?”

Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.

“Do you know how much I missed you?”

It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.

And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.

Spencer continues unprompted.

“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”

You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.

“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.

At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.

“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?

“You’re here.”

You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.

“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.

Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry!” you squeak.

“Do it again.”

“Wh—what?”

“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”

Honey.

You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.

When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.

Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”

Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.

“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.

“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.

“Mhm.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.

You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.

No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.

“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.

Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.

Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.

It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.

Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”

You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.

He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.

“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.

You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”

His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.

When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.

“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”

It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.

“Am I going to hate you?”

Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.

“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”

He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”

This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.

The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.

Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.

“What happened?”

You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.

But it doesn’t work.

“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”

He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.

“What? Did you—were you trying to—”

His eyes widen.

“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”

The bruises covering his abdomen.

You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”

Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.

“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.

“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.

“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.

“You’re just going to leave again.”

And you’re losing to the tears.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.

“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”

I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.

For now, maybe that has to be enough.

You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop.

Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes.

“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”

You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him.

“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”

Maybe it will never be like it was.

But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again.

You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again.

You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table.

The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world.

But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms.

You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now.

#spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fic #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds x you #criminal minds smut #criminal minds fic #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid angst

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bighominiglo · 1 month ago

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Episode 9 of handmaid's tale season 6 could not have been crazier and more hateful. The characters have become completely Flanderized.

Nick supposedly got all those Jezebel women killed and June can't forgive him. But behold Lawrence. A man who hated women so much he created women only concentration camps where they die slowly of radiation. You seriously have to be a next level misogynist to even think of such a system let alone implement it. This is actual Nazi behavior. AND YET. This man gets redeemed. I'm supposed to believe he's some wholesome chungus after this episode since he now randomly gives a shit about his psuedo daughter of 1 month and June? This man has more or less fucked June over at many turns due to his own callousness and disregard for her. What kind of message does that send to the fans?

Aunt Lydia and Serena are both abusers and haters of women. Serena literally raped June and tortured her and Aunt Lydia made a career of treating women like cattle, breaking their spirits, and mutilating them, just to send them off to get raped and have their children stolen. Serena tried to steal June's child many times and happily would have had her husband not gotten her pregnant. Yet both of these characters got redeemed, and again, what kind of message does that send to the fans?

June is more willing to stick her neck out to redeem even WHARTON than Nick, you know, the actual murderer of the Jezebel women. Her entire conversation with him reads like a scrapped Nick redemption arc. "Choose love" except you didn't, June! But ignoring that, she didn't try to kill him or escape when he lets her out, which she totally would have had he been any other Gilead man. She killed many people for far less in this series and yet she tries to redeem this guy??? And they don't even MENTION Nick? Wharton was such a stupid villain, the most convenient plot device that they pulled out of their asses just for season 6. Lawrence should've been the big bad, at least it would have some narrative backing.

Neither Serena nor Lawrence think of Nick or to contact him when June is in danger. Wharton doesn't mention Nick. Lawrence confirmed he hated Nick all along by just letting him die even though he could have said "June is outside, it's not too late".

And June confirmed his life meant nothing to her by saying nothing and letting him die after she did nothing but use him for personal gain since season 3. Unbelievable. This is not a love letter to fans, this is a hate letter!

Nick was so out of character, with absolutely insane lines that even season 5 Nick would never say. And he only had like 10 lines the whole episode. How in the actual fuck is that Max's "best work". His character traits have now been redistributed to all the evil characters and the character left by episode 9 formerly known as Nick Blaine is nothing more than a convenient NPC.

I honestly could tell something was off the second Nick smashed the Tuello communicator and was even remotely influenced by what Wharton said. The Nick we know would've dismissed Wharton as easily as Fred and never given up his best chance of being with June. In fact, he was a good guy who was against Gilead. AND NOT ONCE, writers, did June EVER ASK HIM TO LEAVE. That line was just pure gaslighting. June would have happily sent him to the gallows if it meant using him for her own gains or getting closer to Hannah. God I'm so upset, I don't think a show has done me this dirty since Lost and even that was somehow better.

For any Osblaine fans who haven't watched, just save yourself and move on as fast as you can!

#tht season 6 #tht spoilers #tht season 6 spoilers #tht s6 ep9 #episode 9 #some ramblings #is this the reaction you wanted Lizzie?? hmm???#osblaine

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shakespearean-dream · 1 year ago

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i would adore ur ted ideas he is so interesting 2 me!!!!!!

ask and you shall receive!!!!

ted. teddigan. theodoreigan my boy. i have so many mixed feelings about u💔

this drawing was a pain in the ASS to make for some reason?? my first go at him was way too close to canon for my liking so i threw myself out there n got to a place i liked thankfully, plus halfway through i forgot how to draw hands and almost cried (joking) cause i thought i had them down at this point!!!!— but trust me, even if you have 9 years of art experience (like me unfortunately. someone take me out i’ve had a good life) ur gonna forget the basics sometimes. warm yourself up and try again cause i did and i eventually remembered 😭😭😭

doing these character studies and drawings have seriously improved my way and process of drawing faces which is so nice 🥲 i think i just need to start looking at the bigger picture again so i don’t forget how to draw everything else. like hands. or full bodies. foreshadowing ;)

i wanted my ted to look just a wee bit unsettling because my general consensus of him is that he is totally fucked in the head, lmfao. born a nepotism baby who ended up scamming people more for fun than for actual cash, horribly sexist but dependent on women to validate him, paranoid as all get out, selfish and self centered as all get out, just his canon personality’s all in one and turned up a notch. 🥲

i don’t think he’s totally beyond redemption, especially because he’s been cooped up with ellen, who is a highly decorated in the engineering field black woman, benny who’s gay and gorr “FREEDOM FIGHTIN’ LIBERAL🇺🇸🦅🦅🔥🔥” ister for 109 years. in that time he’s definitely slipped up and they’ve definitely corrected him (along with nimdok too LOL). i think with some intensive therapy, a shower and a trip to the tolerance museum (south park reference) he’ll be a little better.

i’m a mild ted/AM shipper (as seen in the bottom right hand corner) but more in the “ooohehheh they’re flirting!!… oh no. oh this is not going to end well. this is definitely a toxic relationship” way and less the “awh cute maybe they can have mutual redemption arcs!!!” way because i love seeing gay men suffer romantically (don’t cancel me i am a bisexual man suffering romantically i swear😭)

i’m not too partial to any other ships honestly, ted/ellen makes me nauseous (just cause of the way ted talks about/treats her in the franchise, no hate to my tellen shippers i promise) and i can only see gorrister with his wife 🥲 with benny and nimdok i have no clue if either of them rlly have romantic interests but im not a fan of them with anybody so erm… i do love the whole groups found family vibes though :”””] they’re all cute together and the mutual suffering but all the while growth is comforting to me

i think that’s about all my thoughts!!! another thank you for the support on this blog recently i love yall sm. i’ll eventually post on my transformers blog but i am STILL SCARED because robots are hard to draw. stay tuned for it though. 💀

thank you for reading if you did!!! let me know which of the guys yall want me to do next; benny, AM and nimdok are left on the chopping block. ❤️

#ted ihnmaims #ihnmaims #IHNMAIMS fanart #technically these guys are in here so i’ll tag them too #gorrister ihnmaims #nimdok ihnmaims #benny ihnmaims #ellen ihnmaims #am ihnmaims #digital art

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yannaryartside · 1 year ago

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If Sydcarmy is not engame….

This is a rant. A sad rant but still. I know we have evidence, I would go to the supreme court with it, but hear me out.

If sydcarmy is not endgame:

It would make the show a disappointment for me. It will kinda ruin it to some extent. But not only as a shipper they had her expectations unsatisfied, but as a conscious viewer. I would like to explain why.

Part 1: the meaning of their connection

I was a shipper of this relationship the moment the characters met. She was cute, awkward and brilliant. He was cute, awkward and angsty. I normally go hard for shipping character where I find both of them interesting, and I like their dynamic. This is the ship that had consumed my head the most in all my years of consuming fiction. They both have real traumas and flaws. Even if the show wasn't so obvious with its intentions, I would have shipped them until they both got their respective soulmates. These two characters taught me how complex developing a romance could be, and how satisfactory if the pieces went together. Just the fact that they are so complex and I got to ship them is something I am grateful for. I will never write romance the same way.

Now, I don't know if is the time of the month fatalism hits, but I have been recently seriously considering the fact that it may not happen. That Claire was always supposed to be Carmy’s endgame.

Part 2: potential

The first reason why I would be disappointed if they are not engame is because the concept of two people building something together while supporting each others flaws is what got me into the show. It is such a beautiful concept for a couple, and I know it works on friends, but I once read that romance appears in your life when you have to open yourself to new potentials. In Carmy, Syd saw the potential for grow and movement, in Syd, Carmy saw the potential for peace and sincerity. Not to mention I rather ship two messed up characters than one messed up character and another that the show has called “perfeft” multiple times.

Part 3: Claire

Thinking Claire bear is endgame is to admit that she has to grow of the flaws we all saw, that Carmy could make her better (wich I don't think because Claire seemed to have a lot of lack of empathy to begin with) but ok. The thing that could never work for me is that we know Syd can make Carmy feel peace but Claire can't. It is the theme of the show that a woman should learn how to be like other woman in order to maker her man happy? We will define how much good she can do to Carmy on how much peace she could bring like Syd did. That doesn't sound right to me.

Part 4: Syd

I don't think the purpose of Syd in the whole story is to be Carmy’s endgame, but a lot of her screentime so far has been defined by her relationship with him. In the good things she does for him and his family. We know she has feeling for him. We know that she has had her heart broken before and then this could break it again. Again, that is the theme of your show? That a woman needs to get her heart broken in order to grow or get to her full potential? Who asked for this?

You made her fall for a guy that may never support her creative journey, that may have defined how she view herself as an artist? That she will have to deal with her broken heart and decide to find another spot to work? Are we supposed to believe that is something good for her? You wanna to contribute to a narrative of glorifying women's pain to justify growth? You are gonna use these amazing character just to have her heart broken 3 seasons out of 4. Is that supposed to be her big lesson? Her motivation even?

Not that is justification for Carmy and Syd getting together, but what a waste of time. If you had established and denied the attraction earlier or just never make her have feelings for Carm you could have her a interesting arc worthy of such an interesting character.

Not only that, but it seems all so cruel, to create a dynamic that in friendship can make her grow but because she developed feelings for him can hurt her immensely.

Idk, maybe I just made a story on my head that I thought made sense but the author insist on disagreeing. Maybe I am making storm out of nothing since they may have us a satisfactory thing. But yet…

#i swear this is a rant I just needed to organize my thoughts #is the tism #sydcarmy #sydney adamu #carmy berzatto #the bear #the bear meta #the bear fx #carmy the bear #carmen berzatto #sydney x carmy #carmy x sydney

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astronomical-bagel · 1 year ago

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I wanna hear you talk about chilchuck the most that sure is a guy ever

YAY I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY GUY THANK YOU BELOVED MUTUAL KYSOOT

(Warning for lots of spoilers from chapter 30 of the manga (right after the red dragon))

Anyways fun fact! The thing that made chilchuck my favorite character was actually when he was trying to convince senshi to lie to the Laios and Marcille in order to get them to turn back and give up on finding falin. I made a whole post about it too, i LOVE cowards. I was reading in my car waiting my twin to get off work and i was screaming my head off the whole time because it was such a good revelation about his character.

And it’s not that i love scared guys (i do, absolutely, but chilchuck doesnt apply here), and its not that i love disloyal people (i also do, but once again, not the point), its the whole character arc where it goes:

1. Once he reaches a limit for how much danger he is willing to be in he will break any moral code of his to keep himself safe. He will lie, he will abandon his friends, whatever, so long as he makes it out alive.

2. But THEN, he realizes that his want for safety isn’t just for himself, this time. He realizes that he wants his friends to survive as well. (and that he has gotten way more attached than what was in his job description)

(look how fond he is!!!! Look how fond he is!!!!!! Im banging my head on the wall AWUGHH!!!!)

So 3. He is forced to go against his own nature of secrecy and being reserved and has to tell the team outright that he doesn’t want them to die.there is just something sooo *vague waving of hands* about a guy who absolutely hates talking about his feelings being forced to do so auughhhh. And he did it to convince Laios to not be reckless and get himself killed!!!!

That entire chapter had such a good journey through chilchuck’s emotional state. From him beign 100% ready to trick them in order to turn around (even contemplating breaking marcille’s staff!), then reminiscing on the fun or brave moments that theyd just had, then remembering that he was mad at them for being idiots and doubling down on his decision. When talking to that orc woman (Leed), he was trying to convince himself that his actions were justified, not just her.

And I also quite like the moment when Leed realizes that Chilchuck isn’t angry at the others for putting him in danger, but for putting themselves in danger. Chilchuck didn’t realize this himself yet! Him saying that he wished the others would give up, even when he was removed from the equation, makes Leed realize that he is unselfishly wanting them to turn back so that they would be safe.

And when she points this out, Chilchuck is absolutely gobsmacked and barely even talks for the rest of the trip because he’s too busy thinking over this revelation. Love a guy who keeps to himself being forced to reconcile with the fact that he has actual friends he cares about now. Look at him!! Hes so shocked he doesn't even know what do to with himself !!! I love him!!!

And also, another part i really liked abt this chapter is when chilchuck is trying to convince Laios to go back and he’s like “LISTEN i know you are absolutely terrified for your sister but I have THREE PEOPLE TO WORRY ABOUT AND IM NOT USED TO THAT IM GOING TO VOMIT” its just so silly and endearing to me because he really isn’t used to caring about so many people at once – he’s a reserved guy who has been living alone for multiple years! – and its just so important to me because he’s been forced to acknowledge that he cares about his team so hes like “if you guys put yourself in mORE danger im going to scream and cry and throw up SO YOU BETTER TURN BACK NOW PLEEEAASEE”

Anyways, chapter 30 was so well done and was an absolutely fascinating insight into his character and I was instantly obsessed. There’s a lot of other reasons why I like Chilchuck, but this chapter is the definitive reason why he’s my favorite. (I also just like seeing a guy when he’s terrified, sue me.)

#chilchuck tims #dungeon meshi spoilers #dungeon meshi #chilchuck dungeon meshi #astro liveblogs #<- not really a liveblog but I don't have a tag for metas

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auberge13 · 17 days ago

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This one's gonna be pretty personal, but bear with me. I want to talk about what Jon's current arc means to me.

Last year I was asked to write a non-fiction piece for a creative writing class. The first lines of that piece are: "The summer that I started volunteering at the St. Irenaeus food pantry was the same summer that I started reading Superman comics. I'd be lying if I said those two things weren't related."

The piece was about a lot of things--anxiety, Catholic guilt--but more than anything, it was about a time where I let the rules stop me from helping someone who really needed it because I was scared. Reading through it now, a lot of the lines feel like they could've come straight out of my first Jon fic. Some of them feel like they could've come out of a piece I'd write about him now.

The summer I was talking about up there was the summer where I first started reading Jon's books. I've mentioned it before, but I started with supersons, wanted more of this little guy and heard that superman 2016 and 2018 were the next big stops, and then headed on to SOKE. And SOKE was special because, throughout all these books, I had found myself identifying with this guy. I honestly can't say what it was. It might have been the air of this whole thing I'm talking about, Jon's theming has been pretty consistent, after all, but I digress. SOKE was special because it showed me a character who I identified with seeking out ways to make the world a better place, finding his cause, and then following through despite having to break some rules to do it. It was inspiring to me. Jon and Jay became sort of role models. They showed me the importance of real courage, they helped me understand the bravery of real life activists and start paying real attention. Jon made me want to do better.

And isn't that what good fiction does? Sure, not all stories need to cause tumultuous introspection that spurs you into action, but they should help you see yourself and the world in a different way. That's what I think Nicole Maines is doing so excellently right now, she's making these characters flawed in ways that both make sense for their characters and are relatable and real, especially in the moment we're in now.

Jon's arc now is about his fear of doing that. It's about his fear that if he breaks the rules he might end up doing more harm than good. In fact, it's about his misplaced certainty that he will do harm, no matter what, if he breaks the rules, either the written ones or the ones he believes exist for Superman. Jon has been a follower since SOKE, something that's commented on in the most recent Secret Six issue, but now he's doubling down on it, and it's hurting his ability to do real good. SOKE Jon hit because he was aspirational in a very personal way, but he was also comfortable. I could see myself in him and he was doing good, so I'll get there someday. S6 Jon hits because he's real. I've been him. Sometimes I still am. Seeing him from the outside like this--able to see the harm he causes and recognize why it's harmful--forces me to reflect on myself, on the ways that I am like him and on the ways that I'm not. It makes me want to take some action because I can see how much it sucks not to.

Anyway, here's to hoping that Jon gets it together. Maybe we'll be able to give each other some tips.

#jon kent

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bforblitz · 2 months ago

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What's going on? I guess I missed what happened.

If there's a racist TES Fan I'd like to know so I can block them.

*sigh* yeah stuff happened.

I’m gonna omit names, you can find out who exactly they are yourself because I don’t want anyone on my ass about this. lowkey can dm if you’re super serious but I would really not like to

It boils down to this: it’s super fucking weird that people are okay with making elf genocide + farm tool jokes + justifying the colonization of bipoc coded races using actual racist and imperialist talking points because “it’s just fiction”.

tes is fundamentally extremely racist and pro-imperialist. The guys who wrote it are white, mostly cishet male Americans, and unfortunately literally all of sci-fi and high fantasy is like this to varying degrees. There are so so many obvious racist and orientalist tropes in the writing that it is digustingly and darkly funny to me that people are okay with uncritically consuming it.

I get that sometimes you don’t realize that the jokes can be harmful. I’m the first to admit that I used to say this shit, but I was a misanthropic asshole teenager. These people are adults, and I do not feel welcomed in this fandom as a poc (and I am an extremely privileged one).

To be more specific, two days ago there was a post circulating essentially complaining about people inserting politics into tes fan spaces. As in “no just because you like the Thalmor/Stormcloaks does not mean you are fascist irl”.

This is true but also not. It really depends on WHY you like them (although I have a whole fucking thesis in the works about why I think the Thalmor are fundamentally misunderstood by the fandom). Do you like the Stormcloaks because you think they’re an interesting concept, or do you like them because you think elves are naturally disposed to being violent oppressors? Do you like the Empire because there’s some characters associated with it you like, or do you like them because you think they’re carrying the white man’s burden? Do you like these fictional video game characters because of or in spite of their bigotry?

The OP of this post also made some very questionable takes on imperialism in tes like “the Altmer were better off being colonized because elves have proven to be unable to rule themselves on their own”. Which is a choice. There’s some vagueposting from other users which is a little funny, but otherwise not much.

Yesterday, there was a different post talking about Miraak and his morals/guilt. tbh I don’t care what you personally think about his character, but there was a response to this post that truly BAFFLED me because it’s like the evil reverse of “it’s just fiction”: someone comments that thinking Miraak was innocent or didn’t need a redemption arc to become a “good guy” makes you, and I fucking quote, “a slavery sympathizer”.

Yes, you read that correctly: thinking a fictional character has complex morals because he did like mind control or something to get out of a bad situation makes you pro-slavery (I don’t care that they said “sympathizer”, that’s literally the same thing).

To make things worse, the commenter has said some very off kilter things about indigenous-coded races like snow elves before. They have also said some insanely anti-indigenous, colonizer-defending rhetoric in the past. And they said something in the comments about like. Being a Miraak lore expert because they wrote a lot of fanfic???

I shit you not, the commenter doubles down. A popular tes blog who is friends with them likely holds very similar views because they have blocked people for saying a part of the U.S. is on stolen land. Their blog has been wiped clean of a lot of this.

That’s about it without going into the extremely personal details of people.

#b says shit #it’s so tiring #anyway always trust yourself #I blocked some of these people before for some Delphine takes #honestly very funny and very horrifying

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ketilsfarm · 4 months ago

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Maybe someone needs to be the first to say this straight out. This isn't just a bad decision by the anime staff. this is actually evil. It destroys the entire season. It retroactively destroys the first season too. If they were gonna write this, they should've just gone ahead and animated Thorfinn getting down on his knees and sucking Ketil's dick that's been raping his friend. That's about what this amounts to, and it would've been a whole lot braver. Instead they snuck this into a story designed to get everyone up out of their seats, talking about what a brilliant, moving philosophy this anime presents to the world. They used the beautiful bones of a story that avoids this exact type of rape apologia, and they created a story where the rapist was really pushed to it by trauma. And didn't he do a whole lot of good too? Does he really deserve to have his life ruined over a single mistake?

This is Thorfinn defending Ketil because he helped two men and that basically means the same as Arnheid's humanity and life. He's doing this within ten minutes of burying his friend, whom Ketil has been raping for years and just beat to death. What the fuck is wrong with him? He didn't get better from the prologue, he got much worse. He can't even respect his own raped and murdered friend? I wish Einar had finished strangling him.

"But what about those good things I did for you?" is the first line of defense for abusers. It always has been and always will. That's how they manipulate their victims. It's how they stay in power and get away with it. Abusers and rapists and slavers are kept in power by the people who support them and make excuses for them. Their victims are devalued and tossed aside like trash as long as the abuser is more useful and more liked. Always, always, always. That's who anime Thorfinn is now. He's the guy who says "but he never raped and murdered me!"

This isn't in the manga. This is isn't the story the manga wants to tell. The manga isn't perfect in every way, but as a rule it shows the honest, genuine and ugly results of cruelty and abuse and oppression. Maybe in some cases I'm just reading my own understanding of abuse into moments the author chooses to leave silent. But at least the silence is there.

Manga Thorfinn never says they owe anything to Ketil. Even though Arnheid's gone, she's brought back into the conversation when Einar brings her up. (The anime actually removes her name from Einar's line.) Thorfinn doesn't blab about how nice Ketil was to him. He talks about two people who helped him without enslaving or raping anyone else. He stopped Einar from killing Ketil for Einar's sake, and for the sake of stopping the same cycle he was trapped in for so long. His stance is about principle, not how Ketil's good side is more important than the bad side because it affected him. And he's right: they can't kill Ketil, because he's much worse than Ketil. He's been party to hundreds of rapes if not thousands. He's helped to sell thousands of people into slavery. If Einar forgives Thorfinn, he has no right to kill Ketil just because Ketil hurt one of his personal friends. Every one of the people Thorfinn hurt was just as important as Arnheid, and he can't forgive himself and let himself live on while punishing Ketil for what he did to a single person.

Let me point out something in the Japanese version: Thorfinn in the manga refers to Ketil as "the master", while Einar is just calling him "Ketil" because he no longer respects him. But in the Japanese version of the scene, Thorfinn is saying "danna" without the respectful honorific he used to use. At the beginning of this arc, he's calling Ketil "danna-sama". For Sverkel, he still uses the honorific, calling him "Oo-danna-sama". But he's dropped it for Ketil after Arnheid's death. There's a clear difference in how he thinks of Ketil now. The anime adds the honorific back in. Listen for yourself; he calls Ketil "danna-sama" in episode 21 of the anime. The line in the manga uses "danna". This is a very deliberate alteration of the story to paint Ketil as a victim who deserves gratitude and respect.

There's no stupid bullshit in the manga about Ketil's sad backstory, or goofy flashbacks to funny slave Thorfinn and how Ketil and his wife are so totally nice for tolerating him being a bad useless slave. There's no "you've gotta understand, Ketil helped me through a really tough time." We saw the good that Ketil did. It's right there in the manga. Most abusers do good things. Emphasizing it in a conversation that should be about their victims is a secondary attack on the victims, and it's abuse apologia, a method of silencing them. In the prologue, we see that Thorfinn has inner doubts and brief moments of rebellion against the justification he feeds himself while he murders people, and aids and abets murderous raping slavers. He hates them and thinks they're disgusting, but he tells himself "this is how the world works. This is what I need to do to get justice for my strong, righteous father who was wronged. These people I'm hurting should've been stronger if they wanted to be treated right. They're accessories to my story." Now he's gone through all this growth for what? So he can fully embrace the lies he used to struggle with?

The changes around Ketil's character destroyed the anime, plain and simple. Thorfinn didn't just experience growth while he was enslaved; his owner is now given direct credit for helping him to grow by purchasing him as an object. He's grateful for this. Arnheid is erased from dialogue so there's more time to praise her murderer. Ketil is explicitly placed on the same level as his father, who vocally opposes slavery, and Pater, who was dragged into Ketil's war and endangered by virtue of being his former slave. As I mentioned in a previous post, Arnheid's scene where she shows agency for once is turned into a scene about her rapist's sad backstory, and concludes with a man telling her to do something she decided for herself in the manga. This is no longer an anti-slavery story. It's apologia for the exact societal evils the manga is calling out. There are potential weak points in the manga's framing; in certain jokes or things that are brushed off or left unaddressed. The anime makes that potential explicit. It purposely erases Arnheid's voice, which is already silenced enough in the manga by virtue of her circumstances.

Again, the compassion Thorfinn shows in the manga to men like Ketil and Atli is a matter of principle. (And his argument for talking to Canute is more about saving the other people on the farm than Ketil himself.) He doesn't like them any more than he likes himself, but he shows them love because if he doesn't, then he can't ever forgive himself for being alive. In the anime, someone thought this had to be beefed up into a hype track for Ketil personally. And for the most selfish reason possible: he helped meeee, though. Remember, Einar? Remember how we're men and he helped us? What feeling human being could say this not 10 minutes after building a grave for his raped and murdered friend? How does Einar, who nearly killed Ketil earlier, not launch him across 50 meters of farmland upon hearing this?

What more is there to say? This is disgusting. This was a deliberate decision by the anime staff to make their audience cheer for rape apologia delivered by the main character as a sign of his enlightenment. There's nothing revolutionary here. You could get this same line from any rapist's drinking pal ever since humans climbed down out of the trees and started stringing coherent syllables together.

#txt

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romantic-ageru-yo · 5 months ago

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I had to go through and see which ones you hadn't answered yet, haha! 5, 7, 8, 24?

5 - Who is your favorite villain?

Frieza is always so enjoyable no matter what he's doing; you go decimate a whole world just to wish yourself slightly taller babe, I believe in you

Special mention to Future 17 & 18 who are just playing a huge game of GTA or something but IRL

7 - Which saga is your least favorite?

What a good question... I think even in the ones I haven't enjoyed as much, I've still found something to like...

I might go for the DBS Future Trunks arc (although you've told me the manga version is much better than the anime, and I still need to get around to reading that) Future Bulma deserved better, the Trunks/Mai stuff is kinda weird, Zamasu's hypocrisy annoyed me, and I didn't find the ending all that satisfying

8 - Do you have a favorite episode from the anime/chapter from the manga?

I do love all the silly ones where they just put the characters into an unfamiliar situation for a day - the driving school one, the baseball one, the family vacation one - give me more of these idiots just trying (and failing) to do everyday mundane things

24 - If you could write your own episode, what would it be about?

Again, probably something slice-of-life-y because those are always my favourites, give me an episode where we spend a day with Yamcha, or Tien & Chiaotzu, or Krillin & 18, or find out what Launch has been up to all these years, anything that gives some love and respect to these great underrated characters that don't get as much screentime anymore

ALTERNATIVELY have all the guys off fighting some big threat somewhere else, and suddenly something happens back on Earth and all the girls have to deal with it themselves, give me genius Bulma building and strategising, and Videl & Chi-Chi & 18 all kicking ass, let Marron & Pan & Bulla be just as competent in battle as Goten & Trunks, I would LOVE a girls-only episode where they get to slay

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linkspooky · 1 year ago

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Just got done with reading your "How To Do a Dark Deconstruction of your Shonen Hero" post, first off amazing work as always! As much as it pains me to hear (good faith, non-reactionary and well thought-out) criticism due to having gotten into MHA in middle school when I was impressionable and attached onto works quicker than I do, it was satisfying to hear someone as well-worded as yourself put into words a thought that I had. For a while I could only summarize it by thinking "Man MHA sure does feel toothless and inconsistent about what it delivers on, and what ideas or themes or messages or what have you are left in the fridge and forgotten about."

It was also fun to hear about Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, growing up YGO was only ever a game some of my friends played or "HEART OF THE CARDS" and Kaiba memes, so hearing that there was a lot more to the series was a welcome surprise, even if quite anecdotal on my part.

As for the question part of this ask, near the middle of it you brought up how despite being quite captivated with the idea and the final result, you weren't as impressed with how YGO got there, and vice versa with MHA in how it was paced better but so far(let me have a little bit of hope lol) ultimately hasn't made good on it's "storytelling promise" if you will.

With the preface that no story is "perfect" along with the fact that everyone has their own interests, biases, icks, etc., I wanted to ask if there was a story which in your opinion, that blends proper pacing and build-up, with proper follow-up and payoff? I had the idea of deconstructing the perfect shonen protag or similar character in mind, but I'm also curious to hear about other ideas as well if you have them.

PS Thanks again for writing and posting these. They're often the highlight of my day when I remember to get around to reading them. And apologies for this long-ass ask hehe.

If you want a shonen series with similiar themes of "saving the villains" as MHA and Season 3 of Yu-Gi-Oh GX! but better pacing, buildup, payoff and overall story structure then both manga then I strongly reccomend another Yu-Gi-Oh series, Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal.

To begin with as a disclaimer I think Yu-Gi-Oh, but especially the spinoffs post 5DS get a bad reputation. For several reasons, the dub, but also the Duel Monsters anime adaptation is kind of bad. A lot of people forget that Yu-Gi-Oh! started out as a very dark urban fantasy, or just the fact that it runs in the same magazine as MHA and JJK. Once you get over the fact that it revolves around card games, Yu-Gi-Oh is as much of a battle shonen as MHA or JJK.

If you give Zexal a chance, it has everything MHA promised us. A conflict where there's really no heroes and villains, a story about what it means to save people, and a protagonist who wants to save everyone.

Yu-Gi-Oh no Cristo!

If you want to take my word for it that Zexal is good, and avoid spoilers then don't read any further. However, I thought I'd demonstrate HOW Zexal tackles the same themes that My Hero Academia tried to tackle.

I'm going to limit this analysis to Zexal I, because while Zexal II is superior in every way I don't want to spoil the whole darn show. Zexal deconstructs the idea of what it means to save others, by having the central conflict in its first season focus on several different factions where no side is the clear good guy. it also tackles the theme of "revenge", and how no character's revenge is justified no matter how wounded they are.

Zexal has three main characters, Yuma, Kaito, and Shark. The latter two are deuteragonist, and tritagonist respectively, and vacillate between being rivals and outright antagonists. If you wanted a story where Shigaraki post My Villain Academy was basically given deuteragonist status alongside Deku then this is the story for you. From her on out I'm going to focus on the cycle of revenge and also the intertwining arcs of Yuma, Shark and Kite and how these characters develop the themes.

Before I get to the World Duel Carnival, I would be amiss to mention that Zexal has a faster start then any Yu-Gi-Oh anime barring 5DS. The introductory arc is episodic in nature, but it does two things really well, first establishing Yuma as a character and second laying the groundwork for both Shark and Kaito showing they are human beings with their own motivations even when they act as antagonists to Yuma. World Duel Carnival starts at 27, but in my opinion the real conflict starts in episode 33 with the introduction of the Tron Family.

In comparison My Hero finishes the Stain arc around episode 33, so I'd say they equally have as strong a start, and both works have introduced their main trio in that time.

With the Tron Family the secondary antagonists of the season we're finally introduced to the season's main confict of revenge. There are four factions and I'm going to take the time to explain each one's motivation before digging in deeper.

The conflict starts with the parents of the three main characters, Lord Byron Arclight (who will later return as Tron), Dr. Faker, and Kazuma Tsukumo. The three of them were studying alternate dimmensions together when Dr. Faker betrayed his two close friends. Kazuma and Lord Byron were dropped into an alternate dimmension as sacrifices to open the door between dimmensions. Kazumi did his best to try to save himself and Lord Byron, but he was unsuccesful and they both dropped out of the world.

Arclight wandered around between dimmensions, until he was eventually saved by the Barian world, a world of pure chaos kind of like the flipside of our world. However, his salvation came with a cost he was reverted from an adult man to a ten year old's body, and he also lost half of his face which is now a black hole (it's weird I'm not sure how that happened). The only thing that sustained Tron was the idea of getting revenge against Dr. Faker and now that he's returned he's determined to have it.

Tron had three sons, Michael, Thomas and Christopher. Which he renames III, IV, and V because he can't be bothered to remember their names I guess. Tron was once a very loving father and left his children behind on what was supposed to be a temporary research trip. However, their father apparently died, and Christopher the oldest was not old enough to take custody so III and IV were sent to different orphanages. At the same time Christopher was broken-hearted to learn that the man who killed his father, was the father of his student and close friend Kaito Tenjo, and ended that relationship for those reasons.

With the return of Tron the family was allowed to be back together with a now older Christopher taking custody of his brothers and now parenting his ten year old father (which is hilarious by the way). However, Tron distorted by the Barian world and his desire for revenge now uses his sons as tools in his revenge scheme against Dr. Faker. All three sons comply on the thin hope that if they complete their father's revenge, he will go back to being loving Byron Arclight. The Tron Family is a family united by revenge, but also defined by an intense family loyalty to each other, both as siblings, and to their father. While their father may not deserve it, all three sons love him deeply and would do anything to try to save him.

IV: You can't trust me that much. Just because I can't become an obedient servant to you like III and V. IV: But even so...I still also...for your sake. IV: Dad, you always smiled gently in the past. IV: But... after you returned from the parallel world it's like you had an entirely different personality. IV: Despite that we were still willing to follow you, Tron. Shark: Stop pretending to be a victim. Shark: Even if you were being used, I won't forgive you for what you did.

Which dovetails nicely into the conflict between Shark and IV. IV, obeying his father's orders challenged Shark's sister to a duel in a building that later blew up. He knew about the first part, but not the second, but still is somewhat responsible despite his ignorance. He did his best to save Shark's sister from the flames getting scarred in the process, but she was left comatose.

Soon after, IV engineered Shark's disgrace as a duelist, by purposefully letting his cards fall on the ground so Shark could see them during a tournament so he'd be disqualified for taking a peek.

All of these under his father's orders to turn Shark into yet another tool of revenge against Dr. Faker, as a wildcard to be pointed in Faker's direction. IV further antagonizes him by giving him a Numbers Card knowing that the darkness of the Numbers card will soon possess him in order to further his father's scheme. He also just wants to flat out defeat Shark so he can prove to his father he's more useful.

Shark looks like the clear victim in this situation, but his complete lack of sympathy for IV is total hypocrisy. Because, Shark is also only after revenge for what was done to him and his sister. Shark was hurt by IV's revenge, but Shark will also attack completely innocent people, including Yuma, just to get his revenge against IV. Shark is the aggrieved victim, but he fights only for revenge not to save someone and he just does not care for anyone other than his sister, himself and Yuma to an extent. Unlike IV, who has the added motivation of saving someone, and also is self-aware that he did something wrong that he can't take back.

Shark is very much a case of "well, my revenge is different from your revenge" somehow, and it makes him look like a hypocrite. Which is why Shark wavers between being an anti-hero and an anti-villain, because in spite of his mroe heroic qualities and his friendship with Yuma he pretty consistently is only motivated to duel for revenge and not for saving others like Yuma is and the show is clear on it's themes of "there is no such thing as a justified revenge."

Shark does not get his revenge, in fact the same way IV is manipulated to pointing his anger at Shark, Shark gets manipulated by Tron to pointing all of his anger at Yuma. Yuma basically has to act as the punching bag, in order to try to calm Shark down again and in Shark's own words even if you were being used, I won't forgive you for what you did.

Shark won't forgive IV, but he ends up committing the exact same unforgivable acts, and by his own logic manipulation is not an excuse.

Now that we've introduced Shark as the wildcard, the last faction is Dr. Faker's. Kaito and Dr. Faker both are fighting to save Haruto, Faker's second son and Kaito's little brother. Here is the twist with Dr. Faker's betrayal he's presented as a "I did everything for power" type of villain, but he's actually doing everything to save his son from dying and is willing to backstab his closest friends to do so, and turn his son Kaito into a pawn. There's an added layer of complication where Dr. Faker is legitimately using his son as a pawn, but much like the Tron Siblings, Kaito is also willing to comply because saving Haruto is just as important to him.

Kaito is a numbers hunter who rips out the souls of people in order to reclaim numbers cards from them, something which ages them and leaves them completely comatose. Kaito also blatantly says on several occasions, he doesn't care how many people he has to hurt to save his brother. So Kaito's motivations aren't revenge like Tron's, but he's also just as willing to get innocent people involved. He even attacks Shark once who didn't even have a number card, simply for GETTING IN THE WAY when he was trying to steal Yuma's key.

Kaito's not just an "I'll do anything to save my brother" type of character, he actively does not care about how many victims he creates along the way.

KAITO: You're wrong. Just one person matters to me. I only care about Hart.

And he sure does mean that. His own allies? Don't matter. His former friend Christopher? Doesn't care. Yuma who actively wants to save Hart too? Get out of the way bucko.

YUMA: Kaito, Droite fought desperately against Tron for your sake. YUMA: Droite liked y- KAITO: That's none of your concern.

Kite's obsession with saving his brother is all-consuming, and even ignores that Haruto does not want Kaito hurting himself for his sake, because it is just as much about Kaito as it is about Haruto.

Kaito also clashes with V from the Tron Family, and is deeply hurt by the fact that V will make punching bags out of both Kite and Haruto in order to get revenge against their father.

However, Kaito who has at this point put several people in comas in order to save his brother (the exact same motivation V has for his father and two younger brothers) is a complete hypocrite in this regard.

V: Friend you say? V: But that ideal was completely wrecked by Dr. Faker. V: Could you forgive that person's son? V: When I realized the truth, I... KAITO: Enough of this nonsense.

I'm sure none of the people Kaito put in comas had brothers, and they all kicked puppies when no one was looking. Even after Kaito realizes that Christopher was only trying to save his family the same way that he was, and promises to inherit his feelings, he forgets all about that when dueling Tron.

Kaito's one and only loss in the whole series comes from when he loses himself to revenge against Tron after he provoked him one too many times by tormenting Haruto. Once again, no matter what the reason revenge is never justified in Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal!

Tron: You're right I have no emotions. Droite and Shark... I was willing to even use my sons in order to create rage. Kaito: Say what? Tron: You did pretty well, too! You get angrier and angrier when it comes to Haruto. It's all thanks to you, have a look.

As much as Kaito would like to make a martyr of himself, he is just like the Tron siblings, just like Shark, an angry little kid lashing out against innocent people for the pain both him and his brother has suffered. Even kaito who has the most explicit desire to save someone, succumbs to revenge in the end when he's pushed.

The tragedy of season 1 is that basically every faction involved has a case of "my revenge is more important than your revenge, and my loved ones are more important than your loved ones". Even though both the Tron Family, and Kaito are fighting to save their families, neither of them ever backs down or considers the other side's motivations because THEIR PAIN is more important.

The last faction of the story is Yuma's, and as stated above Yuma is the only one who attempts to see his opponent's side. Yuma's central motto is "if we've dueled each other, then we're already friends." He also believes that duels should never be used as tools for hurting each other, something Shark, Kaito and the Tron Family all gleefully do in their conflict against one another.

Yuma is a deconstructoin of the "save everyone" because while he is involved in the conflict too because he lost his father to Dr. Faker, unlike the other three factions he has a support system. He still has his grandmother and sister, childhood friends, friends at school and Astral.

This fact is explicitly called out in his duel against III who by that point Yuma considers a friend. III spends a day with Yuma, bonding with him over their shared love of archaelogy, seeing his family and home life, only to turn against him.

Yuma tries to reach out to III the entire time through the duel and talk him down, and it doesn't work because Yuma with his support system, cannot truly understand where III is coming from and the desperation that drives him. Yuma's not caught in the same rock and hard place that III is, and all the sympathy and good intentions in the world cannot overcome the difference between that.

Yuma also in spite of his desire to solve things peacefully is basically forced to still fight, because if he loses a duel his close personal friend Astral will die, so it's actively a challenge for him to seek the third way to settle things without contributing to the cycle of revenge.

So Yuma represents the correct path, forgiveness and understanding the other's point of view, but it also shows that Yuma is able to do that because unlike everyone else he has a support system. Yuma is not internally more good than Shark, Kite, or the rest. He's just in a place where he can afford to look at the other people's perspectives because he's not desperately fighting for survival.

It's also a challenge for him to do so, because Yuma is someone very immature. As I said with III he does not understand the depths of what they are feeling even if he wants to make the pain go away. He tries to offer his unwavering support to people, but he fails just as often as he succeeds due to his immaturity.

In Yuma's case it's less being a perfect hero, but rather making an unrelenting effort to help others and offer a hand that matters. Yuma's character development in season 1 for me crystallizes in his final redemption of Tron, the character besides Faker who makes him the most angry because of his gleeful abuse of his sons for the sake of revenge. Not only does Yuma start to get through to Tron at points in the duel, because he tries so hard to make Tron understand how much he's hurt his sons, but at the end of the duel he mirrors his father's own action of trying to save both himself and Byron Arclight I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Yuma: I won't give up! Tron: But why? Why are you trying to save me? Yuma: It's obvious, isn't I? Everyone I duel are my friends. Yuma: I don't understand all that complicated stuff, but we create bonds through dueling. And since you dueled me you are my friend. Tron: I finally understand. Your dueling goes beyond my desire for revenge. Yuma I can't live the same way as you and Kazuma, but I can't let Dr. Faker go either. I'll release all the souls I captured.

Yuma does represent the themes of love, and understanding being the only way to heal revenge (because more revenge does not fix anything) but he's not just propped up as a saint by the narrative. He's a character who has to go through serious character development before he's finally able to back up his good intentions with actual concrete action.

Yuma isn't just good internally, but rather his constant efforts to find the third path, and befriend other people is what makes him the hero of the story. Yuma is Deku done right and I will stand by this.

I hope I've been able to demonstrate the themes of Zexal, and I would be amiss to mention this is just Zexal I. Zexal II the second season does all of this even better. The Barians are an even better version of the League of Villains because despite starting a war with the main characters, they are all sympathetic and their point of view is just as valid as Astral and Yuma's. I don't want to spoil Zexal II though, so if anything about Zexal I caught your eye I reccomend watching both series.

#yu gi oh zexal #ygo meta #shark #tron family #christopher arclight #thomas arclight #tron #yuma tsukumo #kaito tenjo #michael arclight #metasks

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lionheartedmusings · 2 years ago

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finally got around to putting this into words so here is my submission to the q!bad newsletter titled "q!bad is a good person but a bad human".

arcs like the one q!bad is on are naturally polarising and bring out a lot of strong emotions from views which is amazing, but i think a lot of people are missing the forest for the trees here -- more specifically, who we saw q!bad be for almost six months every day (who we still see him be now).

q!bad is a fundamentally good person by all accounts -- yes, he's a mischievous gremlin, but he's insurmountably generous, selfless in the way he gives without ever expecting anything in return, is dependable at every single turn. even in his lowest moments, he didn't turn his back on that dependability to his own detriment -- he prioritised everyone above himself, not just the eggs but also the other islanders.

q!bad is also... kind. not nice, i actually wouldn't call him nice per se, but he's kind, and loving, and gentle if you know how to read his actions -- just because his lovingness is at times odd to read, it doesn't mean it isn't there.

now, everything i've pointed out so far is not only factually true but also just a spot on indication of what makes a good person, right? well... yes, and no.

by human standards he's not a good person. he lies, cheats, is deceitful and cunning at every turn, is a gaslighter and a manipulator, and his moral compass ends when his emotional attachment does -- he won't hesitate to put his friends through tests and trials that he knows hurt them just to reach a goal, even if it's an ultimate "greater good" type goal.

luckily for q!bad, the man isn't fucking human and so the lense through which we see his character need to be adjusted not only to accommodate his life experience (as we would any character) but also the fact that he's just... not human, he can play pretend and he certainly has spent enough time around humans, but nature vs nurture only goes so far and he was a grown ass adult when he sunk atlantis.

it's honestly just painfully obvious that for better or for worse, q!bad doesn't function like humans do, and i think the best indicator of that is how he views interpersonal relationships, connections, love and trust.

for us, love and trust are intrinsically connected and ultimately need to be present for us to form attachments -- if we don't trust someone, we might get along with them at a superficial level but we won't engage further, right? q!bad sees those two as fundamentally separate parts of relationships -- you cannot argue he doesn't love his friends, or all the eggs, but does he trust everyone? no. because q!bad is very much capable of loving you without trusting you, because his default is distrust. while most of us start a connection with existing trust that can then be broken, he starts them with no trust that needs to be earned.

he doesn't see what's wrong about his friendship with q!foolish, he doesn't see the issue with having been sightseeing at the salem witch trials, pompeii is "the reason he doesn't do beach vacations" and not... yeno, a massive historical tragedy. for q!bad, all of these things are normal because he's a millennia old demon who fundamentally lacks the grasp on some pretty basic human concepts despite his time here (i.e. his whole conversation with q!baghera about lines and mortality).

my point being, q!bad is not a good human, he never claimed to be (on the contrary) and his recent actions show that very well...

... but he *is* a fundamentally good person, without question.

as long as you view the cubito through the lense of our own morality, you'll be depriving yourself of some pretty awesome insights into his character and also just not giving him a fair shake!

he's a terror! he's wiped out civilizations! he's eaten people! he is terrifying and bloody and dark! he's also just a little guy who makes care packages and watches kids and won't turn away anyone in need! all of this is him and for a fair analysis you need to consider the entirety of him for better and for worse!

#qsmp #q!badboyhalo #qsmp analysis #long post

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shxrpshootxr · 5 months ago

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Hello, I hope you are having a good day. I was just wondering how Nack/Fang would react if he heard/was given the same speech Pip Bernadotte got from his grandfather in Hellsing Ultimate?

I ask this because they are both mercenaries, but have very different views on the job. You can find it by searching "Hellsing Ultimate - Pip Bernadotte: The Essence of a Mercenary" on Youtube.

Apologies if these sorts of requests are not allowed, but either way, I hop you have fun with it and enjoy yourself! Take care!

I'm a few days late answering this, forgive me! I've not been around here much.

Before I answer, I'm going to preface this with a bit of honesty : writing Fang true to how I really want to doesn't line up with how modern fandom wants him to be. A lot of people in the Fang tag prefer a lighter, softer, easily redeemed and less messy character and found even his portrayal in recent official media to be too "mean" or "evil" for them to stomach.

No shade unto people who think like that, but it's a big part of why I packed up and left this fandom. The stuff I made up here for this blog, about his big ol' nasty mama and other elements, are being reworked into an OC of mine, so I'm answering based more on a canon portrayal of the character!

(Also - I LOVE Hellsing Ultimate, thank you so much for this ask! If you're still poking around this blog, lemme know what you think of this response, yeah? I'm not here often but I'll see it more likely than not!)

So, after giving it some thought, here's my answer:

Within canon, we know very little about Fang. He's selfish, arrogant and a bit of a coward, and we love him for it! But there's not a whole lot going on beyond that; SEGA changed his moniker from Fang the Sniper to Fang the Hunter, which is understandable. A lot of the rougher edges his characterization had came from outward sources like ye olden archie comics and the fleetway comics, each with their own vision of the character.

For the current portrayal we see in more recent media, however? I envision that Fang as not really being someone capable of murder. Not because murder isn't permitted within the Sonic media - several characters have been killed by others (and usually, but not only, come back some way or another) -- but because Fang is very clearly meant to be a much lighter, softer villain for the series.

I don't envision canon Fang as someone who actually can kill another person, at least not intentionally. Harm them? Sure! I can envision him, at the darkest, letting his anger get the better of him and things going too far and that someone dying wouldn't have been his intention -- and in that scenario, I imagine he'd be very uncomfortable and want to get away from the scene. Put as much distance between himself and his guilt as he imagines is possible but still being pretty shaken up, even if he tries to hide it behind a veneer of not caring, saying they had it coming, that it was their own fault, etc.

So Grandpa Bernadotte's speech would make him itchy and uncomfortable, but he's gonna do his best not to show it. I can definitely imagine him working with a villain who shares that character's mentality, then realizing waaay into the plot that the guy's dead serious about trying to kill Sonic & co and pulling a last minute jump to help the heroes get the upper hand. He would, still, in the end try to make this profitable for him in some way and either be stopped by the heroes, or would leave the story empty handed and huff that they'd better not get used to him helping out like this.

Fang is a fun character in canon because there's always been a bit of push and pull between him being a more serious threat, and comedic relief. My favorite versions of him strike a balance between the two - the closest to an ideal portrayal I ever got was his appearance in the post-reboot Archie Sonic arc called Champions! I suggest giving it a read if you haven't -- sure, he gets his ass handed to him, but until he got very suddenly interrupted, he did briefly have both Sonic and Knuckles lined up in one shot with his rifle.

Bit of rambling under the cut-

I hard disagree with people who soften Fang up and make him a softboi or sand down his few rough edges - at the end of the day, he's selfish, immature, impulsive and dismissive of others feelings. Those are delightful character flaws, and to pretend that his insufferable hubris and arrogance and lack of empathy aren't traits of his is to do the character a huge disservice.

Just the same, I don't really envision him on quite the same level of evil as Mimic the Octopus. Since Fang's debut in Triple Trouble, he's been characterized as a clumsy, greedy little worm and I love him being the pathetic bastard that he is.

He's a flawed, whiny brat who throws a fit and blames everyone but himself when things go wrong. He loves his bike perhaps a little too much. He's obsessed with himself and wants his ego stroked whenever possible, but does very little to earn the praise he thinks he deserves.

But at the same time, for the same reasons, I don't see him as a main, serious villain. He's an antagonist for sure - he sucks! He's mean and selfish and a bully and an asshole and he absolutely would leave the heroes to rot in perilous situations at the drop of a hat. He'd betray you and me for a dollar. The irony is that while he calls Bark and Bean "mooks", he himself is one - he's a bad guy, but he's never going to rise up beyond that goofy temp henchman status himself. He ain't in the big leagues, no matter how much he wants to believe it.

#fang the sniper #nack the weasel #fang the hunter

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tbatthis · 6 months ago

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for the benefit of no one except myself i’ve been keeping a media list all year, and i felt like being long-winded as shit so here is a jumbo post about all of them. these won’t be in chronological order at all and in fact is starting with the last game i finished this year because i thought grouping them into Blocks would be fun. for me. so yeah here we go

THE PS1 JRPG FREAK’S DELIGHTS:

FINAL FANTASY VIII- the quintessential sicko’s game. a game that has like five slow unskippable tutorials where they walk you step by step through exactly how their completely bizarre equipment system works and yet is still considered obtuse. not to me though i’m a genius and i understand exactly how to snap the game in two like a twig.

yes you have to memorize a lot of weird esoteric knowledge about deliberately avoiding levelling up by turning every enemy you see into a marketable trading card, because doing this thwarts the level scaling which does not account for your actual stats. yes you then have to understand that you can turn cards into items that can be turned into magic that can be turned into doing 2000 damage like three hours into the game. and yes, failure to do that results in going “uhh i junction. fire. to attack.” and wondering why every fight takes a million years.

those are all charm points. almost no other game leaves itself totally neutral to letting you annihilate its difficulty curve in the way ff8 does. it is built from the ground up to accomodate sickos of all stripes. it rules actually.

the story is really really good. also. don’t believe the liars, and the doubters. they were filtered by squall leonheart having a “character arc.” open your heart and your mind and you will learn that LOVE is REAL and also see like four of the funniest guys ever invented (laguna my beloved zell my beloved selphie my beloved irvine my beloved etc).

this one has like all the rawest limit breaks in the series that’s important. they made unique animations for when squall uses his on certain bosses it’s very cool.

i am stopping this segment here because ff8 is one of my favouritest games ever for my whole life and i am liable to talk Forever if left unchecked so. oops onto the entire rest of the list.

STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R- the thing about saying “almost no other game” lets you be as much of a weird weirdo about it as ff8 does is that you do indeed leave room for there to be… another.

this game rules. it really does the same thing ff8 does where it drops some way too elaborate sprawling system in front of you and if you’re an evil genius you can immediately cook up a brew most foul with it. i read through all the skills you can use and found all the shit about deliberately lowering your stats to gain more exp and just did the grinch smile and watched my guys get so juiced on bonus exp that their stat debuffs immediately stopped mattering. i cannot convey how much a game neutrally presenting you with the ability to be really stupid and letting you figure that out yourself Delights Me. it is so fun.

this is as good a time as any, in the ps1 freak game block, to say that we probably didn’t need to make games look any better than either of these. star ocean 2 looks craaaazy (yeah it has hd2d remake buffs but stillll its a 2d ps1 game at its core) and ff8 is like a 25 year old game about expressionless dolls and it still makes me go like Damn, This Is The Cutting Edge……. square you can stop making 1000 billion dollar hyperrealistic monster action games and make like. a turn-based game with fixed camera angles. it will look better. it will be cooler. trust. trust.

making your lead character a whiny incel voiced by spike spencer is hilarious btw. claude c kenny you are a deeply pathetic little man and i think they were very aware of that when they cast spike spencer. he isnt as pathetic as ashton though. my best friend ashton. go play this game to see ashton he’s sooo funny i love him.

FROMSOFT PERVERT BLOCK:

BLOODBORNE (LIKE TWICE IN A ROW)- i mean what am i gonna say it’s bloodborne. it’s like the sickest game ever. game precision engineered to let you do slow edgy rp walks that lead directly into parrying a nefarious beast, thus making you feel like an extremely raw deviantart drawing of shadow the hedgehog. the Perfect Game, some may well say, if they are me.

ELDEN RING AND ALSO ITS DLC- i definitely liked elden ring more this time around because i used a Large Stick to Squash Like Bug instead of trying to look cool and also because i shed my gamer pride and just used the damn summons. the base game bosses are still designed by a malevolent gestalt entity of every guy in the youtube comments saying using a greatsword in dark souls 1 is Cheating, and so i just summoned on almost all of them towards the end. i don’t fucking care. i’m not dignifying malenia with an honourable duel. she’s mean.

anyway the dlc was actually much much better. the bosses were almost always designed around the idea that maybe you are fighting them on your own and its like wow!!! fun!!! they even have a boss who is designed to have someone helping you out, but it doesn’t feel like you’re just turning the boss off by doing that!! crazy!!! i love fromsoft games actually!!!

let’s not talk about promised consort radahn.

SHE PRESS ON MY TURN TIL I SYSTEM:

PERSONA 3 RELOAD- aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis aigis i love aigis my best pal aigis my funny animal aigis sorry about your dead boyfriend but i think wistfully remembering him in soft focus is good for your character arc.

most of the Remakey elements of this game. are good. i like how it looks. the menus are sick. giving strega some extra scenes is nice. the new tartarus stuff is fun. etc etc

i could kiiinda do without some of the extra fake-social link scenes for sees because a lot of them kinda feel like nothing EXCEPT THE AIGIS ONES WHERE SHE LOOKS AT COOL BUGS THOSE ARE IMMACULATE all the other ones feel like they last ten million years and can be summarized as “akihiko would like to be strong” yes i knew this from his actual character arc thank you.

and also the new anime cutscenes fuckin blooooow ass they lost every ounce of sauce the original scenes had they RUINED makoto’s awakening scene and i’ll NEVER forgive them in my WHOLE LIFE. however the ending made me sob again so its ok

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI 3: NOCTURNE- now this is a sicko’s game. this is what it’s all about. can we get some damn dungeons with obnoxious gimmicks back in the damn jrpgs. and a random encounter system, too. to facilitate the feeling of being trapped in hell. can we throw the youth of the day into the labyrinth of amala, to build character. and can shoji meguro bring back his finest vocalist, text-to-speech albert.

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI V: VENGEANCE- look i like smt5 a lot. i liked it enough to get vengeance. i think vengeance is a lot better in a lot of ways. story’s way better, has my evil sexy wife agrat bat mahlat etc etc HOWEVER we have lost our way as a people. random encounters. dungeons with a REAL gimmick, none of your reversing gravity to walk two meters and then landing on one giant platform nonsense. TEXT to SPEECH ALBERT. return to the promised paradise of sickos. please.

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: STRANGE JOURNEY- now THIS is a SICKO’S GAME. trap me in the labyrinth with the hee-ho choir sir. make me solve the warp maze. maybe make the final boss like 10% less sicko though. i’m only so strongy.

I HAVE WATCHED ONE TELEVISION SHOW WITH REAL HUMAN BEINGS IN IT:

AND IT IS LIKE SIX SEASONS OF FRIENDS- look i was trapped on a plane for nine hours enroute to important oomfie activities and the only inflight thing i wanted to watch was the fifth and sixth seasons of friends. and then the hotel didnt have netflix, youtube, etc but it did have a channel showing nothing but friends all day. i have seen the episode about ross’ apothecary table five times this year due to this channel. anyway friends is like 50% funny and 50% a miserable exercise in seeing very insecure white people write jokes about how scared they are of the defiance of gender roles. joey/phoebe should have happened fuck you mike

I HAVE WATCHED NUMEROUS ANIME THOUGH:

MY HERO ACADEMIA- its fun okay. every tryhard who pretends they hate this show please stop being scared of some guy on twitter calling shows you like mickey mouse clubhouse and just like. enjoy things. if you actually hate it ok thats not very plus ultra of you but ok

JUJUTSU KAISEN- please copypaste the entire mha segment for this one. its good actually. every single popular shonen everyone starts pretending they hate it and its the worst show ever at like. some arbitrary point around 150 chapters in. whatever man. gojo is funny

FRIEREN- [sexually explicit fantasy regarding ubel has been deleted] really good show makes me very emo. cant wait for season 2. [further, even more sexually explicit fantasy regarding ubel deleted].

BOCCHI THE ROCK- more like bocchi the kino. more like bocchi the peak. more like bocchi the blorbo. insane show. never stops finding the damn gag of the century, right after having previously cracked the last gag of the century. you should watch bocchi NOW 🫵

KAGUYA-SAMA LOVE IS WAR- i guess either this or bocchi is my favourite anime. idk dont ask me. kaguya is funny i like it a lot. it has the advantage of also making me emo which. actually bocchi does that too. hm. whatever both are really good

DANDADAN- they took his balls. awesome. they ended the anime in maybe the most ill-advised way possible so i guess i have to read the manga

DRAGON BALL SUPER SUPER HERO YEAH THATS THE NAME- man i love piccolo

WAHOO YIPPEE ITSA ME:

MARIO SUNSHINE- evil video game made by and for the immoral. as such it has been a favourite of mine for years. some truly hideous stuff in here. they put mario in a pachinko machine. he’s pachinko mario. mario sunshine is in many ways a “gamer’s vampire” to me. i will love it forever even as it rips me apart.

MARIO ODYSSEY- wow a mario game that was made with joy and love in its heart instead of cruel malice. i guesssss its better than sunshine because of that but i have a perverse soul.

PAPER MARIO THE THOUSAND YEAR DOOR- wow they should make another one of these eh. wonder what ever happened to mario rpgs. wish they’d make one. ah well guess i’ll just play this one for all eternity.

WHAT IF CHESS MADE YOU HORNY?:

FIRE EMBLEM FATES CONQUEST- the last time i played fates it was on hard mode and i said i’d never do it again and then i played it one year later and did it on hard mode again. idk. i love the incest game. i’m a siscon gamer. i only ever marry felicia who is not related to you in any way but nevertheless. i’m here for dogshit story and maps that push me through a mesh sheet

UNICORN OVERLORD- vanillaware have truly provided the definitive answer to the question, of what if chess made you horny. and the answer is the game would be very good. it probably needed like more map variety because you do just have the same objective for 80 hours. however i understand this would cut into the ten billion yen budget assigned to animating an elf girl’s tits as if each one were a living breathing sentient being unto itself.

ENOUGH! MY SHIP SAILS IN THE MORNING. I WONDER WHAT’S FOR DINNER?:

ZELDA: MAJORA’S MASK- hey did you know that until xenoblade 2 this was my favourite game of all time. that it probably fundamentally warped my entire brain and shaped my tastes to forever be the guy whose favourite entry in any series is the Weird Freak that came out after the Iconic Most Beloved Game. a pattern that matches ocarina of time, final fantasy 7, xenoblade 1, mario 64, etc etc.

i mean i am a genius for it. majora’s mask is the best zelda. it is the coolest shit ever. it is so emo. it has deku link, named time magazine’s Man of the Year 2000. the only flaw….? heh…. that it set the bar too high for every subsequent zelda……

ZELDA: ECHOES OF WISDOM- okay but this was one pretty good. i’m glad we got another link’s awakening remake artstyle game. i very much enjoyed feeling like everything i was doing was some nefarious trick to circumvent the game when it is literally designed to be doing that. hey nintendo dont be scared of zelda being the protagonist. keep doing that. let her have a sword and also the power of summon bed. thanks for bringing back dekus btw i hope koroks rot in hell for a decade plus like dekus had to.

I THINK SHI-LONG LANG AND SHIH-NA SHOULD HAVE GRAPHIC ON-SCREEN SEX:

ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS- i think shi-long lang and shih-na should have graphic on-screen sex

ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS 2- i think shi-long lang and shih-na should have graphic on-screen sex

anyway these are the best ace attorney games. here’s hoping for a third game that features shi-long lang, and shih-na, well… oh, i shouldn’t say…..

THE “TBAT WAS TRICKED INTO PLAYING ROGUELIKES” BLOCK:

BALATRO- i love jonking out. i’m a jonkhead. what more can one say

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS- i only got it for the castlevania dlc and played that for a good bit and then had this dull realization that i was basically inhaling the video game equivalent of sawdust and went to play symphony of the night instead

I LOVE GOTHS I LOVE GOTHS I LOVE GOTHS I LOVE GOTHS:

CASTLEVANIA ARIA OF SORROW (LIKE THREE TIMES)- its da best castlevania, you know…. soma cruz…. what a raw design. what a raw concept. what a funny fucking goober. there is indeed a reason every single castlevania and also bloodstained just copied the soul absorbing shit from this game btw. lets all bow to the real king of the castle. vania.

CASTLEVANIA DAWN OF SORROW- but then again maybe this one’s the best one idk. its hard to tell. the soma sweep could well apply to two games. they really arent all that different. this one has cooler music i guess?? like it has bloody tears thats a big buff

CASTLEVANIA PORTRAIT OF RUIN- the panzeke castlevania (won’t elaborate on that). i think its pretty good but it does visibly run out of steam halfway through by pulling the ol devil may cry 4 where you just do the same areas again but backwards. only castlevania where you can say “i creampied richter belmont” and it is a legitimate boss strategy and not perverse lust for anime men

CASTLEVANIA ORDER OF ECCLESIA- they invented the coolest hottest goth to ever exist (OTHER THAN SHIH-NA) and then tormented me by making her the most boring bucket of paste ever written (UNLIKE SHIH-NA). and also her game is way too hard. i’m a sicko until a game is exactly 5% too hard and then i start crying. i will probably still play it again to see if i can unlock my gamer instinct and get good at it.

CASTLEVANIA SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT- bro they redubbed it. they took out the iconic oscar winning dracula voice acting. fucked UP. i definitely like symphony of the night but it has a lot of “i am inventing a genre please be nice” jank to it like bosses and rooms that seem to be designed around just spamming your Go Invincible For Like A Minute button. but it is raw. castlevania just is inherently raw.

BLOODSTAINED RITUAL OF THE NIGHT- it is genuinely so funny that this game features a legally distinct alucard, voiced by alucard’s original actor, but he isnt the guy you play as. no, iga just believed so hard in the concept of shanoa order of ecclesia that he went “my next game’s protagonist is Also a woman covered in ominous magic tattoos that let her absorb demon souls (not the game) and who has to kill her brother who went crazy from demon magic” but this time she has like. a personality.

i like bloodstained but the gulf in quality between the immaculate sprites of ds era castlevania and the buttttt uglyyyyy 3d models in this game really really debuffed it for me over time. bloodstained 2, when it releases in 2030, will be an unstoppable super game if it looks exactly like order of ecclesia or at least rises to the level of looking Acceptable in 3d

GAMES THAT DO NOT FIT INTO AN ARBITRARY VAGUELY HUMOUROUS BLOCK:

PIKMIN 2- one of the sicko greats….. i love jumping down an ominous hole and then as a little jape i am stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed with rusty knives and then there are falling rocks and perhaps even falling bombs. pikmin 4? a coward’s game. play pikmin 2 and learn a little something about the fragility of life.

LIKE A DRAGON: INFINITE WEALTH- i hope yakuza games never ever stop having evil white men voiced by a famous japanese actor who is hardcore struggling through the english lines. i hope yakuza games never ever stop

ASTRO BOT- god man look i knooow i knooow its good i know its the game of the yeaaar and yes i am not so heartless as to not go omg yaaay :) when i found the little aigis scrunko. but godddd the funko pop grease that astro bot is coated in. that cloying, ersatz whimsy. the reverence for the Playstation Brand as if i give a fuck about the ps5 as a box. begone, foul bot.

POKEMON SOULSILVER- “ohhh the dex selection” “ohhh the level curve” “ohhh kanto is still undercooked” i was having a comfy time with my little umbreon named shih-na and thats all that matters. also johto is the defacto region for my delusional pyrex pokemon au, so its good.

FINAL FANTASY X- we used to have it so good man. turn based rpgs used to be the king of the world. squaresoft would release three complete instant classics three years in a row and they would all be insanely good for wildly different reasons. we need to have some kinda technological dark age where everyone has to develop for At Best the ps2, and no further. that’ll sort this shit out

APPROXIMATELY 1000000 HOURS OF CERES FAUNA LIVESTREAMS- man i love fauna

THE GRADUATION ANNOUNCEMENT OF CERES FAUNA- i think this must have been how it felt to witness jfk’s assassination. i’ll never be happy again.

dont let me do this again or i will yap and yap and yap for all eternity

#media thread #long long long long post i’m not kidding #i love to yap

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