#(those bitches have made it personal and so help me god i will carry that grudge)

[rollforjackass]

advocating for good omen’s place as cult fiction in class today, wish me a very don’t punch straight men

[spartev]

Pull It - Ningning x reader

SYNOPSIS: Ningning is a powerful girlfriend in bed and out of it, but so soft after you fuck her.

CONTENT WARNING: smut, jealousy, fingering.

A/N: English is not my first language, sorry. First one, hope you like it :)

God, she is so beautiful. I want to take care of her so much :((

Yizhuo was known as the most popular girl at Belford Institute. Defined as the top of the food chain, she was the trendsetter that surrounded and shaped the entire functioning of the student body. From the freshmen in their first year to the most respected professors in the institution, everyone knew of Ning's influence.

The crowded hallway opened up for her to pass through, followed by her group of beautiful, popular girls, and her laid-back, charming girlfriend by her side.

Anyone who knew the girl or at least her reputation, always expected the worst from her. Contrary to everyone's expectations when the announcement of her relationship with Y/N was revealed. They didn't see this combination coming.

Known for being the president of the Student Council, Y/N was surprisingly approachable, unlike everyone Yizhuo usually hung out with and associated with. She was popular both for her role in the school and for her outgoing personality, getting along well with the most diverse groups of people. She was committed to her role and what it represented, the leadership of all Belford students. She did this very well, leaving the way open for students to approach her at will. Something that quickly became bother your girlfriend.

Yizhuo was popular, but don't be fooled, she would treat you like nobody else if you were to meet her. Like... Who are you and why are you so comfortably addressing the girl who runs this place?

She didn't usually get overtly jealous, she doesn't admit it even when her closest friends tease her.

"Hey Ning, looks like your girlfriend is almost as popular as you." Aeri's voice sounded mocking and teasing as she turned her gaze from Y/N being approached by a few girls to getting her and her girlfriend's snack.

"Ugh, shut up. Those idiots..." Her voice carried the clear discontent that she tried so hard not to show, but it was almost impossible.

"Yeah, at this rate these girls are going to end up with their snacks stuck in their throats in a few minutes." Karina laughed at her friend's irritation, nibbling on one of her fries.

"Y/N!" Her voice echoed for a few meters, stealing Y/N's attention towards him. She apologized with a smile to the girls, walking back to the table with a light smile on the face and two trays in the hands.

“Yes, my love?” She said as she sat down next to Ning, handing her her tray and lightly kissing her cheek, causing the girl to close her eyes slightly.

"I still wonder why you let them talk to you." She said turning to face you, her disgust expressed in the shape of her mouth and the slight frown she made.

"Babe, I'm the school representative, I have to talk to them." Y/N said lightly, trying not to irritate the girl even more, putting her arm around her waist and pulling her towards her.

"Are you jealous?" She said raising her eyebrows in amusement at the Chinese girl's eye roll and her grumble.

"Ning never liked people touching what's hers, I remember how many times she pulled Yeji's hair for taking her makeup when we were younger." Minjeong spoke calmly as she bit into her burger, attracting the girls' gazes and getting a laugh from the girls, except for Ning.

"Ugh, that bitch, don't even remind me. Last week she asked Y/N for help with her homework, can you believe it?" The anger was clear in the Chinese girl's tone.

"Are you going to pull her hair now too?" Y/N asks with amusement, making the girls laugh as she approaches Ning.

"Be careful, I might pull yours." Yizhuo threatened, turning to Y/N and smiling as he lightly pulled the hair on the back of the girl's neck, drawing a smile from her as her head tilted slightly with the pull.

"Those girls... What did they want with you." Yizhuo asked as S/N planted kisses on her neck. The larger body pulled away slightly to look at the Chinese girl's face with a playful smile.

“Still thinking about it, princess?” Ning’s nails went straight to the back of her neck, scratching the soft, warm flesh.

"Don't defy me, Y/N." She squeezed her neck even tighter, sealing their lips briefly only to bite down with moderate force on her lower lip, making her breathing heavy.

"Baby... I don't want you to think about other girls while we're here." S/N said softly, contrary to her movement, turning Ningning forcefully and trapping her between her body and the bed in the Chinese girl's room.

"Just tell me what those whores wanted, fuck!" She pulls her neck toward the curve of the her neck with her nails digging into you, eliciting a slight groan of discomfort from you.

"You've been acting so rude." Y/N tightened her grip on her waist, lightly shaking her torso on the bed. Pinning down her irritated legs that were now kicking out to hurt her.

"I know you're a slut, but don't act like a bitch." She pressed both of Yizhuo's hands on her back to prevent the girl from breaking free and to give herself space to move her hand to the girl's breasts.

Her hands moved underneath the girl's white tank top, easily finding her breasts, squeezing hard and pinching the small, sensitive nipples. Y/N felt Ning's body react, forcing her ass onto her hips.

"God... They think you're such a bitch, but you're just a little whore thirsty for me, aren't you?" You whisper in her ear, hearing her curse you softly, but also watching her legs press together.

"Ugh... Y/N." She blurts out as her hands slip into her jeans and panties, feeling her touch on her wet folds.

"Look at you, so turned on by me holding you here." Y/N presses her fingers into the crease, forcing her clit between her fingers and drawing a whimper from Yizhuo. Sliding her fingers through her lips and feeling her hips buck against her fingers.

"What's wrong? Can't you be a bitch when I'm touching you so well?" She shivers as your fingers circle her pussy, burying her face in her own pillows and trying to fuck herself on your fingers. Yizhuo whimpers louder, unable to concentrate on answering her with words, focused only on how your fingers slide through her entrance and how her clit throbs wanting you to rub it.

"Shh... Babe, babe." Y/N calls out, brushing her hair away from her face and lifting it with her hand on her throat. You kiss her temple, leaning in to watch her expression as you slowly insert a finger inside her, watching her eyebrows furrow and her lips bite down to muffle her words and moans.

"Fuck..." She lets out as her other finger settles inside her, stretching her so deliciously. She pulses around she, pulling her fingers even deeper inside her.

Her breath hitches at the way she starts to grind her hips into her fingers. She's so impatient when she feels full, so desperate to feel her fingers hit all the sweetest spots on her body

"Uh, uh, uh..." It was like a symphony every time the tips of her fingers curled at her pleasure point, causing her beautiful eyes to roll.

You feel your womb churn as the girl's nails scratch every skin she can touch, every time she moans your name so eagerly, your own pussy begging to be touched every time you feel her squeeze your fingers causing her liquids to spread across your hand and wrist.

"None of them would give it to you like this." She says with difficulty, lifting her ass towards you. Turning your mind to jelly with the way she moves her hips. With your head resting on her back, fucking her with your eyes closed while rubbing your own hips against hers, craving stimulation. "No other has a pussy this wet for you to fuck." She whispers so sweetly, speeding up her movements.

"Fuck! Ah...." Her movements combine, intensifying the thrusts inside her. Her clitoris throbs with the dry rubbing against her.

She pulls her neck towards her again, whispering in her ear along with her moans and sighs. "You're mine to fuck." Her eyes narrow, keeping her movements rougher inside her, tightening her hand on her waist to the point of marking her soft skin red.

"Y/N!" becomes a mantra in her mouth as you start to fuck her deeper, harder, faster. You feel her legs tighten around your wrist and her pussy clamp down on your fingers tightly. Her body writhes as you grind harder into her ass.

"Babe... Cum, cum with me." And it's enough to feel her tremble, letting out a loud moan and her liquids spilling onto your hand, wetting the area of your jeans just as you soaked your panties without even touching yourself.

Her body lays on the bed still shaking, with yours weighing down on top of her. You move her hair out of the way, leaving light kisses on the back of her neck as your breath fills the room and with your fingers still inside her, feeling her pussy throb.

"They wanted to know what tomorrow's menu was." You say, kissing her jaw and chuckling lightly, eliciting a tired laugh from her.

"You're terrible, why didn't you say so before?" She asks with her eyes closed, catching her breath and enjoying her affection.

"Because you're so insanely hot when you're pissed off and jealous." She chuckles softly.

"I like it when you're mean." Slowly pulling her fingers out of her, carefully sensitivity.

"Uh..." She gasped at the movement.

"Are you okay?" You ask, kissing her cheek.

"Yes, and very tired." She answers with a light laugh. Y/N stands up, taking the weight off the girl. "Don't leave, come back." She asks with a pout on her lips, drawing a smile from her.

"Shh... I'll take care of you." You say softly when you notice the girl's tiredness. Helping her move her body to snuggle into the bed and taking off her pants to make her comfortable. She mumbles some low and incomprehensible things, snuggling into the pillows and Y/N covers her after lying down next to her. She approaches you with her eyes already closed and you can't help but caress her hair after contouring her beautiful face.

"So beautiful, princess." Y/N says hugging her body and falling asleep next to her.

[ghostbeam]

Oblivi_n.exe | Dabi/Touya Todoroki

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler. 

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week. 

Notes: okay wow hiiiii it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an actual fic (nearing almost a year now😬) this is something I’ve been working on for a bit. I have mech brain rot curtesy of @streimiv and @hawnks (both of whom this is dedicated to bc there’s no way I could have written this without yapping to them abt it and also mint helped me come up w the acronym for HERO’s) and we’ve all got our own mech fics in the works atm but anywayssssss this is kind of my baby atm but I hope it makes sense it’s very inspired first and foremost by pacific rim and then also NGE (mostly through consumption of YouTube vids bc I haven’t actually watched it pls don’t hate me) it’s a whole mess of things and Dabi is kind of a bitch and reader is slowly coming into herself and at the end of the day they both wanna be metal fused to one another forever (no matter how hard he denies it) also I’m not a huge computer person idk if this title makes sense so don’t make fun of me pls ok anyways I hope u like it!!!!

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI, pilot!Dabi x handler!reader, there’s no explicit sexual content in this part, not even a kiss sorry guys, mentions of robot gore (exposed wires, insides described as guts), brief descriptions of being trapped inside a small space, descriptions of burning while inside said space, mention of surgery to fashion a metal jaw onto someone, mentions of child abuse (nothing graphic just allusions to the todoroki family and touya’s past), angst, many run on sentences, a small cliff hanger

Words: 7.9k

Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 (coming soon)

You are nothing without your machine.

It’s the first rule, the first thing beaten into his brain by his father. You carry the burden of the mech alone, or you’re weak. You don’t exist. 

U.A. raises the best and brightest pilots, navigators, mechanics, and handlers, each one carefully trained to ensure the most important outcome: winning. It should be protection. It should be defense. But if Touya has learned anything at all, it’s that winning means glory. It means worship. It means HERO’s (Human Engineered Robotic Objects) are saints, and pilots are gods. 

 Touya used to be one of those best and brightest before his accident. 

First son to Enji Todoroki, Touya was supposed to be the golden child, the first Todoroki to pilot without a handler. He was supposed to carry the burden alone, something his father couldn’t do, something only one man has ever actually been capable of. 

But Touya is born weak, bad bones, a brain unable to handle all that the mech needs to unload onto it. One too many accidents results in him being expelled from the pilot program, his HERO discarded and collecting dust in its pod, and Touya is promptly transferred to mechanics. 

It should have been a smooth transition. If one kid can’t handle it, the next will. Because they have to. 

He doesn’t take the news well. It’s a fit of tears, a persistent fight, unable to accept the loss of his machine—of his body. Because Touya loves it. What he lacks in strength, he makes up for in pure passion, and despite being unable to handle the burden, there’s no denying that he’s good. He’s almost perfect. 

But almost is not enough for Enji Todoroki, and no matter how hard Touya tries, he’s made up his mind. 

After months of mechanics, Touya makes a decision. When the next fleet of HERO’s is deployed for the next kaiju battle, Touya sneaks in among the chaos, tucked neatly inside the chest of his machine where he belongs. It doesn’t take long for things to go south, for Touya to get caught in the crossfire, losing control of his mech and burning from the inside out. 

It should be an excruciating death, stuck inside a machine made for war, fire raining from above as a battle continues on outside without him. 

But he survives, because what he lacks in strength, he makes up for in resilience, and his mech is programed with solutions to every situation. He’s stuck inside for months before he’s found.

Tomura Shigaraki rescues him, pries open the chest of his mech and pulls him from inside. His group feeds him, takes him in, fashions a new jaw for him made from the metal of his mech, and allows him the decision to join their cause or go back home. 

And since there’s no home to go back to, Touya finds his footing with the league and becomes one of their top pilots. One who vehemently resists any and all handlers.

…

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler. 

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week. 

Following closely behind Tenko, formerly Tomura, he quickly explains to you the in’s and out’s of the pilot/handler relationship, along with a warning about Dabi’s resentment toward the whole idea. You try to keep up, but he talks quickly and uses his hands a lot. Even so, you can tell he’s a natural leader, something he had to grow into after overthrowing the man who raised him. His story is a tragic one, and it resonates with you because Tenko came out the other side stronger. Now, the league is a community with a cause, one you really believe in. Even if you and Dabi aren’t the right fit, you still have a place here. 

You follow Tenko into what he calls the garage, a large floor of the abandoned academy that serves as the league’s base, this part of it full of HERO’s and mechanics all focused on the machines in front of them. It’s completely different from how HERO’s were worked on at UA, where you grew up, and even the PLF didn’t have one dedicated floor to this sort of work. You can feel the energy of the room buzzing on your skin, music blasting from old radios and mechanics tossing tools towards one another in a familiar routine. Tomura leads you to Dabi and his HERO, Blue, though you’re instructed not to call it a HERO around him. With goggles over his eyes and gloved hands, he brings two wires from Blue’s ankle together, sighing at the way they spark each time they connect. 

“Dabi.” Tomura calls over the music coming from the radio hanging off of Dabi’s waist. He drops the wires and his gaze flickers toward the two of you. Pushing his goggles up to his forehead, he gives you a once over. His eyes are the brightest you’ve ever seen—kaiju blood blue—and burn scars litter his body. He’s striking in a way you’ve never seen, almost too beautiful to be human. Giving Dabi your name, Tomura explains that you’re taking over as his handler, seeing as he couldn’t keep the last one for more than a couple of days. “She’s your last handler. If you can’t keep this one, then go ahead and fry your brain. See if I care.”

“You say that every time.” Dabi calls from around sucker as Tomura walks away, leaving you alone with your new pilot. 

You just your hand out in a greeting, “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Eyeing your hand, Dabi shakes his head and turns his back to you, picking the two wires back up and connecting them again, despite the same spark from before igniting between the two. He looks back up at Blue, touching his fingers to the slim lines starting at the back of her ankle and running all the way up her leg. You peak over his shoulder at the wiring, noticing that he’s connecting two of the wrong ones. 

“It’s the wrong wire.” You tell him, and he spins around to look at you, tearing his goggles from his face as he scoffs. 

“Here we go.” He sighs with a roll of his eyes, pulling the candy from his lips and tossing it onto the tool cart without a care. “Handler know-it-all bullshit. This is my mech.”  

You push passed him and grab the similarly colored wire from beside a red wire and connect it with the one in Dabi’s right hand. Blue lights up cyan through the thin lines that run along each of its limbs and torso, connecting with the two cameras within its head, which seem to blink before the light reaches them. 

In an instant, you’re being pushed up against the hard metal, a strong arm over your chest—pinning you up against the HERO. Dabi, now having discarded his goggles, looks at you full of white, hot rage. 

“Don’t fucking touch her.” He growls. You’re suddenly aware of the close proximity, eyes flickering between the snarl across his lips and his angry gaze. For a beat, you both freeze, the air suddenly charged like you’re waiting for one another to strike. Snapping yourself out of his hypnotic stare, you push against his chest, forcing him to let you go. 

“If I’m going to be you’re handler, you’re going to have to trust me with her.” You remind him. He lets out a harsh laugh, like he can’t believe you would suggest such a ridiculous idea. 

“I don’t trust anything but this machine.” He speaks, turning away from you to seal up the machine’s exposed wires. It’s a challenge you’re willing to accept.

“Well, I’m here to change that.” You tell him, before turning on your heel to leave him alone. 

He thinks he’ll give you a week. 

…

One of the worst parts of being assigned a handler, Touya thinks, is the way that pilot/handler living quarters are set up. He assumes the academy, before it was abandoned and turned into a base for the league, created this sort of set up so that handlers could keep a close eye on their pilots. The handlers Touya has burned through up until now also assumed the same. 

The door that connects both the pilot’s and handler’s dorms doesn’t lock, and all of Touya’s past handlers have taken advantage of this fact. He’s been pulled out of bed far too early, pushed around and commanded and barked at. Most handlers behaved as if pilots belonged to them, which was the sentiment drilled into their brains from being thrown into such a fucked up system at a young age.—unless you were a pilot of status like a Todoroki. While he league dedicates a lot of its time to reversing these ideas, most handlers look at Touya like some kind of challenge, this arrogant pilot begging to be tamed. It never takes long for them to realize how easily he’s able to flip the switch on them. You’ll be no different.

But hours pass and you still haven’t entered. You don’t swing the door open and demand he apologize for his behavior earlier. You don’t try and punish him with training regimes, a command of a set of push ups, a schedule you expect him to follow, an extremely detailed meal plan. The entire evening comes and goes without so much as a sound on the other side of the door so he knows you’re even behind it. 

He falls asleep unnerved by this, waking up late into the night in a cold sweat, expecting you to barge in, rip the covers from his body and demand to train together. When he wakes up (peacefully) the next morning, there’s no sign of you. He rises from his bed, drinks orange juice straight from the carton and eats a candy bar for breakfast. He fiddles with the navigation screen from his mech that stopped working a couple of days ago, tools spread out on the counter in front of him. Once he’s got the thing working again, your knock sounds from the unlocked door between the two of you. He thinks this might be it, the commands he expects to fall from your lips at the ready as he swings the door open, but you stand there, nervous, hands twitching as your eyes finally meet his.

Greeted by a shirtless Touya, hair mused from sleep, cargo pants hung low on his hips, dog tags swinging against his chest, his scars on display, unashamed and proud. The sight of him knocks the breath out of you, and you clear your throat in embarrassment, hoping your state of dreaming comes off as nerves rather than lust. 

“Dabi. Or do you prefer Touya?” You smile. When he doesn’t answer, you continue. “I wanted to see if you wanted to eat breakfast together in the caf. I think we should start over. Yesterday was—”

You’re promptly cut off, “I already ate breakfast.”

With a harsh slam of the door, he leaves you stunned in your room.

You eat alone. 

When you started as a pilot, back when you’d entered UA (a few years about Touya’s accident), you went into it believing you could change the world. The exam had placed you into the position of handler, and you were assigned a pilot who had always seemed a little frightened of you despite your obvious lack of authority. Bringing the fact up to your instructors did nothing. They all assured you that this was the ideal dynamic, that the handler always had the upper hand, but you hated that feeling. You weren’t a team like you expected to be; you were urged to control your pilot. You were there to keep them in line, not to be a pillar of support. The bond was never built on trust, and the soul link was always a looming threat. No matter how many pilots you went through, the link was never held as a gift, but a prison, something you would both be stuck with for the betterment of society, a sacrifice to make. 

You’d been expelled from the handler program after guiding your pilot to help save another in the wreckage of your first battle together, resulting in the damage of your pilot’s HERO. Your pilot was okay, but the other couldn’t be saved, and you were blamed for the damage of both mech’s. 

When you found the league (or when the league found you), you were working with the PLF, but proved to be a weak handler. Every pilot you were assigned to took advantage of your optimistic outlook on the kind of relationship dynamic that pilots had with their handlers. Despite all that you had been through at UA, and with the rest of the pilots you’d been paired with after, you never gave up the hope that handlers and pilots could behave as a team, or, even better, one entity. 

Tenko had taken one look at you and demanded you’d be transferred to the league. There hadn’t been much of a choice in the matter, not that you really cared. You were miserable everywhere else. But when you arrived at the abandoned academy and taken a peak behind the kudzu covered walls where each and every area of the building acted as multiple moving parts in collaboration with one another in order to create one massive system, you realized that this was the future you imagined for yourself—and for the world you lived in.

Tenko saw something in you that day, something you aren’t sure you even see in yourself. And so Dabi was your first task, one that’s proving to be very difficult. But he doesn’t treat you like all the other pilots before had. He doesn’t use you. In fact, it seems like he wants nothing to do with you. And while that’s a problem, it’s still one you can work with. 

You’re broken from your thoughts by the sound of a voice through an overhead intercom asking for everyone to meet on the first floor of the academy at their earliest convenience. Judging by the quick movements of those around you, you figure you’d better head downstairs as soon as possible. 

The meeting on the first floor makes you very aware of just how small the league really is. While it’s definitely not a tiny organization, it’s still much smaller than both UA and the PLF. With everyone piled up like this in one group, you realize it feels more like a community, and the hum of conversation that surrounds you comforts you in a way you’ve never felt within the walls of any other academy before. 

There’s discussion about the upcoming mission, one which may be the league’s most ambitious yet; the plan to hijack a mech and kidnap a pilot may be a little unorthodox compared to the league’s past missions, but the jaded pilot they’re targeting has a high chance of joining the cause. Or that’s what they have assumed. As the bodies move and speak around you, it strikes you how different this meeting is from any other meeting you’ve ever been a part of. Tenko is less a dictator and more a wrangler for the disembodied voices of your peers. 

You don’t know much about his story, save for the vague details you’ve heard, but Tenko’s status as a lone handler is something you find yourself curious about. If he’s able to work without a pilot, why can’t you? It’s an idea you keep in your back pocket, one you think you can fall back on if things with Touya don’t work out. But you want them to work out. So badly. 

You aren’t sure what it is about him, but he’s reignited that spark inside of you. You know he’d rather you give up, and maybe the you from a couple of months ago would have, but something about him—and this place—won’t let you leave. 

As you observe the meeting, you take the time to look around the room, taking in your peers and their attentive faces as they listen to Tenko intently. You turn to your right, your eyes meeting a pair of blue ones, impossible to miss. Dabi holds your stare for what feels like ages, and when your colleagues erupt in a fit of many simultaneous discussions, you tear your eyes from his to observe the commotion. When you glance back in his direction, he’s gone. 

You don’t seem him again after that. You train with other handlers, get to know your peers a little better. Everyone else seems to be welcoming, and most offer you sympathy when they find out you’re Touya’s new handler. From what you can gather, he’s had his fair share of them, all of which have quit or left in hysterics due to his harsh nature. When you ask around about where he could be, you’re told that he’s most likely in the garage, a place you assume he’s in more often than not.

You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to the garage. A place so completely different, so against the ideas and beliefs of any other academy you’ve been a part of, the chaos and community within is so foreign to you. You find Touya with Blue, working inside of her chest, where the cockpit is. 

“Touya!” You call up to him and watch as he peaks his head over the edge of her metal plating. Annoyance falling across his face, he jumps down from where he stands, landing hard on his feet in front of you. 

“What are you doing here?” He questions, his figure so tall and imposing above you. He’s not particularly muscular, not even all that tall compared to Tenko, but he makes you feel small regardless, in more ways than one. Rolling your shoulders back, you stare straight into his eyes, unwilling to back down. 

“I figured you wanted your space today.” You explain, as Touya moves around you to get to his rolling cart of tools, forcing you to turn toward him and follow him if you want him to hear you. “I know adjusting to a new handler is rough, and I never want to make you uncomfortable. But I was thinking we could try some of those pilot/handler bonding exercises. It might be good to start training like some of the others do.”

He drops the wrench in his hand onto his cart with a loud thud, turning around toward you with a look of disbelief on his face. “Pilot/handler bonding exercises? They really brainwashed the shit out of you at UA, huh?”

At the mention of your past academy, your eyes widen in surprise. You had no idea he knew about that. Clearing your throat in order to compose yourself, you speak again, “I left UA for a reason. I have no attachment to their methods, but you guys do the same stuff here, so what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that I never asked for a fucking handler in the first place, especially not one as eager as you.” He spits, “Sure, you’re understanding now, all that bullshit about ‘giving me space,’ but the moment you get a lick of power over me, you’ll change. You’re not different.”

“I don’t want power over you. This is an equal exchange. Pilot’s and handlers are meant to be a team—” You try and argue, but he doesn’t let you finish. 

“That’s what they told you, right? We’re a team, and as teammates, you make sacrifices. And it doesn’t matter if one of you turns into the other’s braindead dog because that’s your place.” His words hit you hard, the exact thought process you went through when leaving UA, completely disillusioned with their idea of “teamwork.” He’s right, and you know it, but since coming here, you thought that wasn’t how it had to be.

“Look, trust me, I get—” You’re cut off again.

“You went to UA! There’s no trusting you.” He scoffs, “It’s not like you’ll last here, anyway.”

“You are such a hypocrite! You’re from UA!” You retort, throwing your arms up in desperation. “You can hate me all you want. You can resist and resist and fry your brain ‘till there’s nothing left, but I believe in this shit. And you don’t get to tell me that I don’t, or tell me I’ll turn into something I worked so hard to get away from.”

Touya stands there, surprised by your outburst, completely unaware that you were capable of all of that. He doesn’t say anything back, and you roll your eyes. “So fuck you, and, by the way, her angel port is smoking.”

At your words, he turns in a rush, seeing the smoke billowing from Blue’s chest as he climbs his way up her form. Once inside his machine, he extinguishes the port and allows himself to relax. There are two things on his mind in this moment: how you could have possibly known it was the angel port without being inside of Blue’s chest and how, for the first time in a long time, he feels bad for his handler.

But for you, it’s the first time you’ve ever held your own against a pilot before, and that feels good.

…

Something feels weird.

Off, unsettling, strange.

He realizes, much to his dismay, that it’s your absence. Despite only having you around for such a short time, Touya has realized that your lack of presence now feels wrong. He hates it. He hates you. 

He can’t find you. You haven’t knocked on his door. You’re not in the caf, not the garage, not the sparring floor, not in your room. And he did check—without knocking. 

He’s not even sure how he can feel an absence. You aren’t a regular part of his life, and he never wanted you to be. But he feels all fucked up.

During training, Touya jams Blue’s halo core and she leaks vibrant neon from between her ribs. It takes him half an hour to get her reboot her system and rips one of the cables attached to the back of his suit in the process. He spends the afternoon cleaning HERO fluid off the sparring floor. 

During repairs, he shocks himself over and over while trying to fix her core, fingers burning from the sparks each time he arranges the wires inside. The cameras in her eyes won’t work from the reboot, and Blue won’t let him unlock the lens panel to fix it. It’s almost like she’s mad at him too.

He’s a complete mess. It’s your fault. He has no choice but to go looking for you. Again.

He searches every wing of the academy before concluding that you’re in your room. He barges through the joint door, spotting you at the counter in your tiny kitchen. You’re surprised by the intrusion, a frightened gasp falling from your lips as you jump in your seat. You turn toward him, prepared with angry words on your tongue, but Touya speaks first.

“You’re not getting an apology out of me, so don’t expect it.” He begins, moving to stand in front of your swiveling kitchen stool as he looks down at you. “But I’m willing to be civil with you, so we don’t have to do this shit anymore.”

You’re not exactly sure what “this shit” is, but Touya looks a little worse for wear at the moment, so you don’t question it. He places a tray from the caf down in front of you that you hadn’t noticed in his hands upon arrival, says nothing else, and turns to leave the room. After shutting your joint door, you look down at the tray of food, noticing one of his suckers placed onto a vacant compartment of the tray. 

You’re greeted the next morning with a knock on your door, Touya dressed in his pilot’s suit on the other side as you swing the door open. “C’mon. You’re gonna watch me train today.”

You watch him turn around to leave, expecting you to follow. You rush to pull on your combat boots and grip your dog tags in your fist as you rush to catch up to him. He doesn’t spare you a glance as you fall into step beside him, taking a look around his dorm before he leads you through the exit door. 

“You need to get a feel for my fighting style.” He explains as you walk down the corridor. “I’m not saying I’ll listen to you when it comes down to it, but it’s important for you to know.”

You nod, agreeing that you should definitely observe him inside of his HERO. By understanding his moves, you’ll be able to understand the way he thinks, and you’ll be able to help him in actual combat if needed. He’s already said he won’t listen to you, but it won’t stop you from trying. He stops abruptly, turning to look at you, and you stop with him. 

“If we’re gonna do this, it’ll be on my terms. I’m not your dog.” He tells you, seriously. He eye’s you up and down, taking in your expression as you nod at his words. “If anything, you’re mine.”

He begins walking again, leaving you in your spot, irritation filling your chest as you watch him, smug. “Asshole.” You curse under your breath.

“What’d you say?” He barks, turning to look at you abruptly.

“You’re an asshole.” You speak louder. He walks back toward you, making sure to tower over you intimidatingly as he looks down at you in annoyance. His eyes flicker down to the tags around your neck before hooking a finger on the chain and pulling you closer. 

“Watch it.” He drops the chain and walks away again. 

You follow him to the sparring floor, and he shows you where to go to watch. Stood behind a large window that looks over the sparring area, other members of the base watch the HERO’s engage in combat below. You spot Tenko and he motions for you to stand beside him. 

“I knew he’d warm up to you.” He comments. The last of the previous battle finishes and you watch the two enormous machines retreat to the sides of the area, their pilots emerging from their chests with their handlers rushing to the bottom of the mech’s in support. 

“He hasn’t. He’s not.” You shake your head. You aren’t sure why you deny it, if it’s some way to keep your expectations low or if there’s some kind of embarrassment aspect to the whole thing. Whatever is happening between you and Touya feels intimate and private, something that the two of you need to figure out for yourselves, not something meant for the eyes of others.

“Hm. Okay.” Tenko shrugs. “Guess not.”

You hadn’t noticed Touya enter his mech at all. You see the swing of one giant mechanic arm, too close to the window you stand behind, and you’ve shifted your full attention to the scene at hand. 

The enormity of the room surprises you, despite the fact that you had seen it just moments before. But when you’re truly looking at it, watching these huge machines go at each other, the way the ground shakes, the leaves outside shake, the deep forrest clear in view from the wall that opens out to the greenery (the lack of a wall is likely from the academy’s abandoned state, but it’s a good feature to have on the sparring floor when giant robots are toppled over onto various surfaces).

The way Blue moves is electric, mechanic movements almost feel fluid with the way that Touya pilots her, easily dodging attacks from their opponent and moving around them in the most graceful way a giant machine can. It’s beautiful, unlike any fighting style you’ve ever seen in a HERO before. 

“He’s showing off for you.” Tenko observes from beside you. You don’t argue with him, only because you can’t dispute it. This is your first time seeing him in action. It makes your heart beat out of your chest. There’s this ache like you should be inside with him, cables connected to both of you, tucked neatly inside of Blue together. 

It doesn’t take him long to get his opponent on their back, the heavy thump against the floor jostling the ant-like figures on the ground below, handlers waiting for their pilots to finish. It goes on like this for a while, his training, using different methods of combat and winning each time. He’s amazing, and you can tell why his reputation is the way it is, second only to Tenko, who you have yet to see in action. 

When he finishes his last session, you watch Blue walk to the edge of the room, and Touya emerges from her chest, jumping the long way down her body without any issue. You watch as he looks toward the window you’re behind. He waves at you, an acknowledgment of your presence, and you wave back, though you aren’t sure he can actually see you.

It’s the beginning of everything for the two of you. You think Tenko was right.

He lets you stay with him afterwards while he does maintenance on Blue. He helps you climb up the path to her chest, hauling you over the edge to sit inside with him. He turns around abruptly, holding a hand up before allowing you to walk any further.

“Do not touch anything.” He warns, completely serious, before letting his hand fall and allowing you further into the cockpit. You take in your surroundings, the guts of his machine, analyzing the different control panels and screens that line the interior. You can tell he takes good care of her, and he spends a lot of time in here. It looks lived in, stickers stuck to metal plating and pieces of him all over. He’s made a second home in between the ribs of his mech. You feel a little jealous, though you aren’t sure of what. 

The two of you sit against the left side of Blue’s interior, waiting for her updates to finish, the loading screen on each of her monitors display a fire graphic that grows with the increasing percentage on screen. Between you and Touya sits an opened bag of sour gummies, which Touya picks out the lemon flavor and drops the candy in your palm with each new handful he gathers. 

“How do you know all this stuff?” He questions around a mouthful of sour cherry, “Like, the real names for things, where stuff goes, how to fix them. That day with the wires…”

“I spent a lot of time around mechanics at UA, and then also at the PLF.” You explain, picking the yellow colored candy from his open palm as you speak. “I couldn’t connect with other handlers. I didn’t like how they thought, or how they viewed the pilot/handler relationship. Mechanics were mostly neutral, and they loved these machines like nothing else. They reminded me of why I joined UA in the first place.”

“Hm.” He nods, thinking about your past. “Well, I guess if you spent so much time around actual professionals…I could maybe use your help sometimes in the garage.”

“Really?” You question excitedly, a spark lighting up your eyes as you swerve your head toward him. He feels something tight in his chest at the sight.

“Yes, but only on the outside. I don’t want you messing with her insides, yet.” He establishes. “And never alone. I have to be there at all times.”

“Of course, yes, oh my god. Touya!” You smile, gripping his shoulder firmly, a gesture of thanks, communication of how much his trust means to you. “I’ll be so careful with her, I promise.”

“Yeah, well, you have no other choice.” He shrugs, throwing another pile of candy in his mouth. “I’ll kill you if anything happens to her.”

You take the threat seriously, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s realized that you’ve wormed your way into his life and he hadn’t even noticed just how entangled you were now. 

As the weeks go by, you spend a lot more time together. You work on blue together, and you rest inside of her chest, sometimes allowing yourself to drift off against his shoulder on especially tiring days. He sits beside you in the caf, and while he doesn’t always say much, the feeling of his arm against yours is comforting. You can tell people are starting to notice, and they’re starting to talk. You’re being dubbed someone who’s tamed him, but you know how far from the truth that is. 

Despite your differences and the petty arguments that come up when Touya feels like you’re intruding on his independence, you’re growing attached. You wonder if he is, too.

…

Spending time together in the garage becomes the new normal for the two of you. Being in each other’s dorms feels far too intimate, so you always meet in the garage. This way, one of you is always busy doing something with your hands. There’s no room for any strange feelings in the pit of your stomach to seep in. 

You sit in the crook of Blue’s neck, watching Touya as he repairs the lenses in her “eyes.” Blue has three pairs of eyes; in her head, her chest, and down near her hips, which all footage is projected onto monitors inside the cockpit so that Touya has a full view of what’s in front of him. 

He’s so peaceful while he works, you’ve noticed, almost like he goes somewhere else completely. It’s a part of him you don’t think many people get to see, a piece of him just for you, and you want to be selfish with it.

“Can I ask you something?” You question, leaning your head back against the metal. “But you can’t get mad.”

He looks up at you, still fiddling with a lens, a mocking look on his face. “I’m not making any promises.”

You take a deep breath, preparing yourself for the possible fallout of the question you’re about to ask, “What do you think about the soul link?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I’d never do it.”

You nod your head in understanding, “yeah, I get it. It’s weird, right? The idea that someone else would be inside your brain.”

“It’s fucking invasive.” He says.

“You know, at UA it always felt like a threat, you know. Like, it was a way for a handler to control their pilot, not a tool or a bond like it should be.” You begin, thinking back to how you viewed the soul link back then. You didn’t like how the bond was presented as this power that a handler holds over their pilot, a threat to keep their pilot in line. But, you could understand how the link could be used for good. “But since coming here, I can tell it’s not all bad. People trust each other here. I mean, there’s obviously some people who abuse it, but, for the most part, everyone seems to understand what it really means to be a pilot and a handler.”

You’re mostly just thinking out loud, but Touya doesn’t say anything to your ramblings. He continues to work on the lenses, and you can gather that he doesn’t want to talk about the subject anymore. But you can’t let it go, yet. There’s something you’ve been worried about since you met him.

“And what about…your brain? They say when a handler and a pilot don’t complete the soul link, the pilot will eventually fry their brain.” You can’t help it. You think about it all the time, what will happen when he can’t take it anymore. The closer you get to him, the realer it feels. “Are you ever worried about that?”

He looks at you, an expression you can’t quite make out fall across his face as he stares. It’s almost soft, the way he looks at you in this moment. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

The truth is, this is a reality Touya has accepted. He’s not afraid to die, and he never has been. He’ll probably die inside of Blue, and he has no problem with that fact. He doesn’t need to be around for long, just enough to show his dad what he’s capable of.

“C’mon.” You stare. “That’s not fair.”

“Shit. I left some of the screws for this in my dorm.” He curses. He looks where you lounge, tucked into Blue’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on her, okay?”

You watch him jump down, much higher than his usual height at her chest, but he lands anyway. He doesn’t turn to look back at you as he jogs away. You climb up the side of Blue, and look at the lenses in her head. They’re already repaired, and you know Touya used the excuse of missing screw just so he wouldn’t have to talk about the soul link.

But it’s the first time he’s ever left you alone with Blue before. 

…

As the mission draws closer, Touya throws himself into training. You’re on the training floor with him most days, standing behind that big glass panel as you watch him spar with his peers. He still doesn’t let you down on the floor with him until he’s full out of Blue and close enough to the edge of the sparring floor to get to you. You’re not allowed in the actual training area, and even though he says he doesn’t want you clinging to him, it’s really because he wants to keep you safe. Seeing your human body near the giant machines that are HERO’s makes him want to grab you and keep you inside of Blue’s chest forever. 

You can tell all the training is taking a toll on him. With an excess of headaches and the occasional nosebleed, you continuously get into arguments about him cutting back on training inside of Blue. There are other ways for him to prepare that don’t involve his fragile brain being hooked up to an entity that takes so much. He doesn’t listen.

Later and later into the night, as your fellow pilots and handlers disperse and return to their rooms to sleep, Touya stays inside of Blue, testing her movements and sparring against test dummies and obstacles. Once you and Touya are the only two left on the sparring floor, you speak into the intercom attached to your head.

“Touya, I think you should take a break.” You tell him, “It’s late. Get some rest and then we can pick it back up in the morning.”

There’s a pause, then, “I’m gonna stay for another hour. Get some sleep. I’ll be done soon.”

“No, Touya. You’ve been at it for hours. You barely took a break for dinner. C’mon.” 

“You know, you sound awfully like a handler trying to tell their pilot what to do.” He teases, but you can hear the irritation in his voice.

“You are insufferable. I’m worried about you.” You groan.

“I’m fine. Go sleep.” He insists.

“If I find out you aren’t out of here in an hour—” Your line is promptly cut off, leaving behind static in your ear. You sigh and throw your com to the side. You hope he’s telling the truth.

With one last look at Blue, you make your way out of the training floor and find your way back to your dorm. 

Touya doesn’t answer the door when you knock the next morning. With a frustrated groan, you leave your dorm and head to the training floor, assuming he woke up early to get some extra hours in. The closer you get the the floor, you notice other members of the base rushing in front of you. Feeling panicked, you pick up the pace, jogging toward the training room to make sure something isn’t wrong. You collide with a body in front of you, nearly falling to the floor as you steady yourself. Toga stands in front of you, her cheeks red and eyes glossy as she explains something your mind can’t catch up to understand. The only thing you recognize is his name, and you’re running toward the training floor in an instant. 

You watch as Blue stomps around the area, her arms swinging in all directions, losing her footing as she moves. Knowing you can’t do anything on the floor, you make your way up to the overlook, finding Tenko yelling into your intercom. 

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” You ask him, pulling the headset off of his head and placing it on yours instead. 

“He’s out of fucking control. He won’t answer. I don’t even think he’s conscious in there.” He tells you, running a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots in anxiety. “You’re not linked yet, are you?”

You shake your head, closing your eyes in frustration as you try to think. You know it’s the only way. You have to take some of the burden off of him, make him share it with you. It’s the only way he’ll survive right now. “Do you think you can get into Decay right now and knock him down somehow?”

He hesitates, “I can get inside. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to touch him at all.”

“You have to.” You plead, desperately. “I just need him down for ten seconds, tops. As long as I can get inside of her, I can save him.”

He looks at you like you’re insane, and maybe you are. But you know you can’t live with yourself if you don’t try something. Tenko nods.

“I can do it.” He tells you. You rush passed him, following the stairs down to the training area. You feel Tenk grab your wrist firmly. “You bring him back, okay?”

“I will.” You nod. 

He dodges Blue’s movements, weaving between her legs as he finally makes it to Decay. It takes a few moments for him to connect, but he goes straight for Blue. You watch the giant machines fight one another, but it’s clear that Blue’s lack of control hinders much of her ability. She needs Touya just as much as he needs her. It’s tough for Decay to dodge her swinging arms, but Tenko manages to knock her down quickly.

The fall shakes the room, but you waste no time running for Blue. Climbing over the side of her, you manage to touch your thumb to the pad on the outside to open her chest up. She begins to stand up, and you slip down, grabbing onto a bar beneath her ribcage. You let out a frustrated groan as you try to pull yourself up over the edge of the cockpit. Finally making it over, you see Touya sitting there, still connected to his pilot’s chair, eyes glazed over and blood gushing from his nose. You push the button that closes the panel in Blue’s chest, and you’re suddenly alone with him. 

Touya’s body is being jerked around by the movement of the mech, and you hang onto the walls of her chest in order to make your way to him. You situate yourself in his lap, taking his head in your hands as you look at him with tears in your eyes.

“You fucking asshole! I told you to take a break.” You sob, resting your head against his as you try and think of what to do next. “Touya, please. Please, baby, I need to you come back. Just fucking come back so I don’t have to do this without your permission, please.”

With no response from him, you wipe your tears, coming to terms with the fact that you have to complete the soul link now, or he’ll die. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Touya. Please forgive me.”

The soul link isn’t exactly an action so much as it is a feeling, an experience. There’s no trigger for it, no way to make it happen. It just begins. 

It’s Touya, aged thirteen, wild, chubby-cheeked and happy, in the pilot’s seat of his father’s HERO. It’s his drive, his determination, his anger, his hurt. It’s the day he snuck into battle, the day he couldn’t get out, flesh burning and fusing to the metal walls of his mech, the feeling now deep in your skin. It’s you, aged fifteen, hopeful, alive, shaking hands with your first pilot. It’s your heart, much too big and much too open for your line of work, it’s your passion, your fire, every piece of you that was broken down again and again until there was nothing left. It’s Touya and it’s you, and every single bit of your souls now tied together in one big knot. 

There’s nothing but darkness. And then there’s screaming. And then you can hear everything. Every thought running through Touya’s brain right now echoes in your head as you slowly come back to yourself. He can hear the same of yours.

It’s overwhelming at first, to have two sets of thoughts in your head at the same time, but you manage to focus. You can feel an anger inside of you like you’ve never felt. It’s almost like it’s your own. You need to come back. You’ve lost control of Blue.

In an instant, you feel yourself come back to your body, now straddling Touya like before, you feel his arms shoot around you and he tucks his chin over your shoulder to pilot Blue like he’s used to doing. He pays no mind as he presses up against you, but you feel your heart rate increase at the closeness. 

He’s so close.

I have to be. You’re in my lap.

Shit. I didn’t think—

Clearly.

I can’t fucking believe you. I told you we weren’t going to do this.

You were dying!

Then you fucking let me!

You’re jostled around in his lap for a moment as he stops Blue from destroying any more of the training floor, and Touya wraps an arm around your waist, holding you steady.

He gains control of her quickly, moving her toward the edge of the room. You tuck your face into his neck, not wanting to distract him and keeping your thoughts at bay so you don’t overwhelm him. He powers Blue down, severing the neural connection between the two of you, and shoves you from his lap and into the pilot’s chair like you’ve burned him. He storms out of the cockpit, climbing out of his machine and leaving you inside. You think about the argument you had within each other’s head, how Touya would have rather died than be linked to you like he is now. 

You slump against the seat, comforted by the metal cage you’ve been left inside of. 

[lixzey]

Letters

a/n: PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION ‼️‼️‼️ This has very detailed scenes which may not be suitable for everyone. The three letters will be the same, so heads up!

warnings: mentions of bullying, humiliation, name calling, implied claustrophobia, cancer leading to death, mentions of alcohol and possible drugging, implied sexual abuse and harrassment, victim blaming, slut shaming, implied post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, etc

VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED !

Lots of thanks to @lilmaymayy for helping me out <3

word count: 3.5k

The Fifteenth Letter

Timothée sat in the waiting area, his hands pressed together as he watched the monitor for his flight to finally board. It was already close to midnight, and he had already been waiting for four hours. After failing to find any information on Y/n back at the old children’s home, Timothée felt like he was following a dead end. Sure, he wanted to find her so badly—to be the hero she desperately needed—but at this point, he was clinging onto false hope. He had only four letters left to read, which terrified him to the bone. What if there weren’t any clues left for him to find? 

Would this wild goose chase end in vain? A pathetic attempt at searching for a person who probably doesn’t want to be found. 

Or so he thought. 

Sighing, the young man pulled his carry-on bag onto his lap. In one swift motion, he unzipped it and fished inside for the letters. Pulling the remaining envelopes, he chuckled. They were crumpled but still readable nonetheless. After taking a deep breath, Timothée mustered up the courage to read the next one from the series.

August 23rd, 2023

Dear Timothée,

High school was NOT like the musical. 

Jesus, I was too fucking naive to even believe that a normal high school would be like that movie. 

I mean, sure, you had that high school musical experience at La Guardia, and based on the internet, you were loved by everyone in your school. Who wouldn’t? I’m pretty damn sure that you were that class clown that everyone couldn’t hate because your smile and laughter are infectious, and besides, those high school performances? THE ABSOLUTE BEST! I wish I had your confidence back in high school.

You might be asking, what was my high school life like? Let’s just say I was mostly invisible—what’s new, at this point? —and most of the time, I kept to myself. I didn’t have any friends, because let’s be real, who would want to be friends with a sad and depressed girl? I often ate lunch in the girls’ bathroom because I was never allowed at any table; basically, I was a target for bullies.

There was this one girl who absolutely fucking hated my guts. Her name was Kayleigh; she was the daughter of the principal. She wasn’t really the brightest bulb out of the bunch, since the only things she knew were bragging and bullying. I’m fairly certain that her mother probably threatened the whole school so that her daughter wouldn’t fail or anything.

That bitch of a girl made my high school days a living hell. And the fact that I was an orphan made it fucking worse.

It started when I accidentally tripped in the cafeteria and spilled my sloppy joe all over her. I didn’t mean it, obviously. Who would purposely trip themselves in a crowded cafeteria? Anyway, I apologized over and over again, but she wasn’t having it. Typical mean girl attitude, if you ask me. Apparently, I ruined her limited edition Chanel top or something like that—I can’t remember if it was really Chanel, or was it Gucci? Well, who cares? It’s just clothing. 

Not.

From that day on, she made it her personal mission to humiliate me every chance she got. God, who knew someone could hold a grudge just for spilling something on her ridiculously expensive outfit. 

She called me names; her favorite insult was "street urchin"—yeah, that one from Aladdin; she was never original, unfortunately. She mocked me for not having parents, for not having people care about me because I was just, in her words, a sorry excuse of oxygen and that my parents killed themselves to get away from me. Oh, and she absolutely loved to trip me in the halls, push me around, and pour my lunch over my head—she once sent photos to everyone at school, captioned Garbage can!—get me into detention purposely, and a whole lot more. It was annoying, but I didn't have much of a choice. I practically just accepted my fate and endured all of it.

There was that time she locked me in the janitor’s closet, and no one let me out until the next day. Yeah, just don’t try to imagine me being claustrophobic. And there was that time when she told everyone about my murderer of an aunt—I really don’t know how the fuck she got that information—and told everyone that I’m a dangerous killer. Did everyone believe her? Yes. Even the goddamn teachers. They treated me as if I were a ticking bomb that would explode any minute and kill everyone in sight.

If I wanted to list down every shitty thing people have done to me, I would need to write a whole ass book. ‘The Diary of a Sad Girl’ sounds good, right? Yeah, I know, Diary of a Wimpy Kid reference. 

All I can say about Kayleigh? She’s a fucking bitch. She’s a mix of Regina George and Karen Smith, except she made Karen her whole personality. 

Okay, so enough of the negativity. We’ll get back to that in a while. I’ll tell you about someone who made my life a little bit brighter, at least just for a short while. 

Halfway through my junior year, I decided to get a job. I landed one at a local bakery near Sweet Angels. Pretty sure that bakery’s gone now, though. The bakery was owned by this sweet old lady. Her name was Charlotte, but she always insisted I call her Lottie. Unfortunately, her daughter died when she was twelve years old, and she started the bakery to honor the memory of her daughter. I think it was her way of reliving those precious times with her child. If I had died when I was a kid, my mother would’ve done the same thing.

I always helped out as much as I could in the bakery, like putting the pastries in the oven, cleaning, and mostly at the counter. I assured Lottie that I was alright without any pay, but she always insisted. She’d always say, “No, no, honey, you need it more than I do. You have a long way to go in this life.”

Do I?

Pretty sure she was thinking about her daughter; she would have been the same age as me if she were alive. Despite everything, I just went with it. I mean, I wasn’t going to deny an old woman a little glimpse of what should have been.

As the days passed, I’ve saved a lot from what Lottie was giving me. Honestly? Promise me you won’t laugh, okay? I wanted to get a pretty dress for juniors' prom with the money I saved when the day came. But who was I kidding? I won’t look like Cinderella. I would most likely look like one of her stepsisters; my money’s one hundred percent on Drizella. I decided to get my first phone instead. It was a Samsung, nothing special, really, just my escape from reality.

Okay, so, back to my shitty life.

At the start of my senior year, Lottie was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.

Just as my life was slowly starting to get better, shit happens. It was like the universe absolutely despised me.

I was there for Lottie every step of the way. I wanted her to get better; I wanted her to live. Maybe it was for selfish reasons, but she was the only family I had left. I know we aren’t related by blood, but fuck DNA; it’s the bond that makes a family.

Eventually, the cancer worsened, and Lottie just accepted the fact that she was going to die. I begged her over a million times to fight, but she was already at peace with death because she was so close to finally meeting her daughter again. Soon after our last conversation, just a few days before I turned eighteen, she passed away in her sleep. Smiling through the end of her wonderful life. 

I wish I could say that I was fine after that, but I wasn’t. It was like losing my parents all over again. Throughout the days of arranging the funeral, I was a mess. You can probably imagine the endless hours of crying I spent alone at Lottie’s house, trying to figure out what to do next. For the last year and a half, I had Lottie help me with deciding practically everything. I still tried to get it all together because she deserved a proper burial and a beautiful goodbye. 

A week after the funeral, Lottie’s lawyer contacted me. Apparently, she left me everything. Her house, bank accounts, jewelry, and the bakery, which was her most prized possession. I had to physically stop myself from crying after the lawyer informed me because Lottie entrusted everything to me. I mean, did I even deserve it? 

I tried to get back to normal after Lottie’s passing. I was out of the system, but at least I had a roof over my head. I still cried at night like a baby, but I had to go on with my life because I knew that’s what Lottie and my parents would have wanted. 

Instead of locking myself inside of my room, I decided to focus on my studies, since I only had a few months left of my senior year. Surprisingly, I made a few friends. It was mainly because of school projects and shit, but it was better than nothing. I don’t have any contact with them anymore, but I’m sure they’re living their best lives, unlike me. Rotting day by day, waiting for death to take me by force. 

Okay, okay, I’m getting a bit sidetracked. Are you ready for another traumatic bitch-ass event in my life? Promise not to hunt those people down, yeah? 

Senior Prom. 

I know, quite the cliché. I was initially against the idea of it, but it’s the last event before graduation. It didn’t help that my friends were absolutely hyping it up, as if it was the fucking MET gala. 

So, we went dress shopping like two weeks before prom. I got a beautiful teal dress that had a sweetheart neckline and a slit that reached up to my mid-thigh. It’s simple, I know, but I loved it so much.

Fast forward, prom night. 

It was honestly just like the movies, the getting ready part with your friends. Laughing and giggling about what could happen at the event, like first kisses and prom queen nominations, even though it was a long shot for girls like us. It was fun gossiping over the possible king and queen of the night while doing facials and mani-pedis.

I didn’t have a date, so one of my friends asked her brother if he could find someone to dance with and take photos with me. You know, for the ‘experience’. 

How I wish I didn’t agree to a date. 

God, trauma is such a backstabbing bitch. 

How am I supposed to get through life when every little thing gives me a flash of the past? I hate my life; I wish I would just drop dead so I wouldn’t suffer anymore.

I don’t know if you’d like to know what happened on that night, since it’s quite…disturbing, to say the least.

Fuck it. I’ll just say it. 

I was abused…sexually. God, I still feel disgusted. That little prom experience idea? It turned into one of the most sickening memories of my life.

At first everything seemed fine; he was this perfect gentleman. You know? The usual shit. Corsages, respectful touches, and very convincing words.

The night was perfect, almost.

I don’t drink, since I’ve already seen the effects of alcohol firsthand with my aunt. It terrified me to the point that I just avoided the mere mention of booze. Unfortunately, I couldn’t escape it on that fateful night.

See, my date had coerced me into drinking spiked punch and basically whatever the hell was in the flask he brought with him. It took a bit of a struggle to actually make me consume alcohol, but eventually I caved at the insistence of my friends.

Worst idea ever. 

Since it was my first time, I got drunk way too fast. Or maybe…it was just something else. Maybe he drugged me? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.

Long story short, I woke up in his room the following day. My dress was ripped, my underwear gone, and my whole body absolutely felt sore—especially down there. 

It was horrifying, I’m sorry. 

He woke up the second I got out of his bed, well, technically because of my screaming.

You know what the fucker did? He stood up and pinned me against the wall and started kissing my neck. I couldn't move. I felt so humiliated, disgusted, and just hollow.

I couldn’t fight back; he was too strong.

I couldn’t do anything.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t do shit.

Eventually, he pulled away from me and went to the bathroom. While he was there, I mustered every bit of strength I had left to walk out of the room and leave his house, which was empty. His parents were probably out on a trip or something that day, which explains why he had the courage to do what he did. 

I was a mess. I looked and felt absolutely disgusting. My hair and makeup that I’d put hours of effort into looked like shit. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as I quietly walked away from that hellhole, barefoot with my ripped prom dress.

After what felt like hours into my walk of shame, a sweet old lady found me aimlessly wandering through the streets. She asked me what happened, but I couldn’t utter even a single word. Though, she probably knew right from the moment she saw me.

She took me into her house and called the police right away. Unfortunately, he was never convicted. His name? Damien Harrison. He never paid for his crime. I never got the justice I deserved. And you know what’s worse? My so-called friends all sided with him.

No one would ever believe a slut like me. 

No one cares about a whore like me. 

The names people called me back then were absolutely terrible. From being invisible, I became the laughingstock of the school. I was the girl who got sexually harassed by practically every guy on the football team. I was the slut every girl should look out for because I might just seduce their boyfriends and shit. Those last two? That’s Kayleigh. She made sure to make my life even worse than it already was. 

I don’t even know how I survived the last remaining months of my senior year. After graduation, I just distanced myself from everything. 

Until now, I still do. 

Maybe I just deserve to be alone because I’m a disgusting human being that no one ever wants.

I hate it. 

I hate everything about me. 

I’m so done with the effects caused by everything that’s happened in my life. 

I’m so tired, so fucking tired. 

I just want the suffering to end.

All I ever wanted was to be happy. Is that too much to ask?

I think love or happiness has never been in my cards. All of those people I’ve loved either died or have tossed me aside like I was nothing. Happiness? Trauma just sucks it all out of my system, leaving me so hollow and lifeless.

God rest my soul; I miss who I used to be.

Maybe I should just end it all; what do you think?

— y/n 

Timothée felt his blood boil, anger coursing in his veins as he finished reading the letter. He sat there, gripping the paper tightly in his hands, almost to the point of ripping it in half at how tight he was holding it.

He felt…fuck, he couldn’t even describe what he was feeling. 

Y/n did not deserve to be treated the way everyone in her life did. She was an angel of a person, and they fucking took advantage of her.

Especially that Damien motherfucking Harrison. 

What he did to her was just so fucking disgusting; Timothée wanted to track him down, chop his dick off, shove it down his throat until he chokes on it and dies. He wanted everyone who hurt her to suffer and get the punishment they all deserve for breaking her over and over again. God forbid that he finds those people because he might not be able to control himself. 

“Oh, y/n…” Timothée muttered, his heart clenching tightly in his chest as he tried not to break down at the thought of her going through the hell she’s been through. “Mon coeur, I’m so sorry all of this happened to you…” 

Timothée felt more determined to find her, just so he could tell her that she deserves to be happy, that she deserves to live without being haunted by her mind, that she deserves to be loved, and that she is.

Because he loves her.

Timothée Hal Chalamet has fallen completely and irrevocably in love with this broken girl, and he had every intention to fix her—scratch that, there was nothing to fix because she’s already perfect the way she is—and make her the happiest girl in the whole world because she just fucking deserves to be worshipped and adored. 

Now he knows how it feels to be a reader falling for the main character. It was absolutely maddening, having to feel her pain and sorrow from the other side of the ink and paper. 

Timothée quickly pulled out his wallet from his pocket, desperately needing to see her. As soon as he opened the leather piece, his eyes met the most wonderful sight God has ever created in this world. 

“Oh, angel, help me find you…please.” He whispered, pulling the photo out of its place. His fingers delicately trace over her image, thinking how her skin would feel under his touch. Timothée’s gaze lingered over her lips, imagining how it would feel against his, hopefully in a bruising, mind-numbing kiss. If he was being honest, she’s been haunting his dreams for a good while now, in the best ways possible, of course. She was just so….

God, he was pathetic. He was just so desperately in love with this girl who poured her heart out to him, the girl who somehow made it impossible not to love her.

Suddenly, he heard his flight being called to board, snapping him out of his daze. Sighing, Timothée stuffed everything in his carry-on before quickly rushing towards his boarding gate. He would just have to continue reading on the plane.

As soon as he boarded the plane back to New York, Timothée quickly settled into his first-class seat. 

After a few minutes of takeoff, a flight attendant approached him, offering him a menu. “Would you like a drink, sir?”

Timothée nodded, not even bothering to check the menu. “Can you please get me the strongest you’ve got? Thanks.”

The flight attendant smiled. “Of course, sir.” 

Taking a deep breath, Timothée reached for his bag, opening it with one swift motion. He then fished for the last letter he read. “Let’s just hope I don’t go full-on Hulk.” He muttered, getting riled up by the second.

As he waited for his drink, he quickly skimmed over the letter and noticed something. There was something missing from her letter. Timothée ran a finger over the smudged ink where she had signed her name, realizing it was missing the all my love part she usually added in her letters.

He suddenly felt his stomach drop, dread consuming his whole body like a fever, and he was not liking any of it. 

“Mon coeur, what’s happened?” He asked, as if the letter was going to answer his question.

Letting out a deep breath, Timothée realized that he hadn’t paid attention to a detail that was absolutely heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. This woman who helped her, Lottie. She was probably the one good thing that’s happened in y/n’s miserable life, and for that, he’s eternally grateful. Lottie made y/n’s life a bit happy, even just for a little bit of time.

“Sir, here’s your drink.” The flight attendant who previously took his order served his drink that looked like either whiskey or brandy. “It’s whiskey, sir. Our finest on board.”

Timothée gave the attendant a small smile before muttering a quick thanks just as the attendant left. He then brought the glass over to his lips, letting the alcohol glide down into his throat with that satisfying burn. 

Staring at the glass, he suddenly felt uneasy.

Maybe I should just end it all; what do you think?

Oh, God, no. Fucking hell no. 

Timothée had just been so consumed by his own anger that he let it devour him and blind him from what truly matters.

Her, always her. 

“Mon amour, please,” Timothée silently pleaded as he held the letter close to his chest, clinging onto the sliver of hope that she was still living and breathing after everything that she’s been through. “Stay with me…”

[bookmuseum]

[REVIEW] War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

4/5 stars (★★★★)

DISCLAIMER: I will compare W&P a lot to Anna Karenina because it’s Tolstoy’s other masterpiece and my favorite book. Also oh my God, this review is so long and disorganized. I tried my best to break it apart into digestible sections, but that’s what happens when I take over a month to read a Russian brick with a girth the size of Napoleon’s fat French ego.

“I was happy and free and in such a good mood. I didn’t realize how happy I was. When did that end, and when did this ghastly business begin?”

General Overview and W&P as a “Book”

It took me seven years to finally read this book. I got this beautiful clothbound Penguin edition in my last year of high school from my best friend. Another girl in my class (who I didn’t like because she said Dostoyevsky wasn’t good, the bitch) was reading it too to show off that she could do it, and the petty side of me wanted to immediately start it (I had already read Anna Karenina and loved it, how hard can it be?) but I also knew there was absolutely no way an eighteen year old going into Biology for university would even survive the first 100 pages of W&P. And I was right. I am so glad I chose to wait until I was a little older (and transferred to English, leaving my cursed STEM days behind) to finally read it. I am not eager to re-read it any time soon though. 

Before I actually started W&P, I watched a few documentary videos and did a modest Wikipedia dive into the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Battle of Borodino and the French invasion of Russia in 1812 that I knew the novel’s climax would lead up to. I did this partly because I’m insane, but mostly because I knew virtually nothing about this point in time beyond what I learned in high school (most of my Russian historical knowledge starts around the late 19th to early 20th century). I was so, so glad that I did some research beforehand because I would’ve been so lost if I didn’t! I knew this edition translated and edited by Anthony Briggs was lacking in the supplementary reading department just from skimming the Introduction (the book gradually decreased its footnote quality and quantity as the book progressed), so I had to find my context elsewhere. I had fun researching, though I know not many would have found it all that entertaining. I also looked a little more into Tolstoy’s life and read the book’s chronology of him. Despite being one of my favorite authors, I feel like as a person he’s very distant and far away to me, which makes it even more hard-hitting during the moments when he says stuff that’s all too real like, “The countess was repeating the delusion of so many parents, who imagine their children have no secrets from them.” Damn, Leo. You’re right. 

I spent a week on the preliminary stuff. W&P is one of those epic classic tomes that everyone says they’ll read, but never do. I totally get it. I honestly almost died and/or accidentally gave myself a concussion trying to haul this book around while I was reading it. This shit takes dedication. Even though I had some background set up, it was still difficult to know where to start because it’s so, so long. Yes, I love Russian literature, but I’d be lying if I said W&P’s >1400+ pages didn’t intimidate me. It also didn’t help that the book itself was awkward and heavy to carry; it made me realize how I do a lot of reading on-the-go because the book was so huge and unportable that I was forced to leave it at home whenever I went out, which significantly slowed down my reading pace. (W&P isn’t exactly a light cafe read that I can just tote around all day). That being said, I was surprised at how straightforward and easy to read the actual prose was, especially in the beginning when Tolstoy focused more on exposition and introducing the plot. I was so grateful that the chapters were so short; I think that alone kept me reading and significantly interested for a good chunk because I’d suddenly find myself having read 100 pages without getting too tired with the story. The writing is modern and simple enough to follow for the most part, although Briggs did say in his Introduction that one of his biggest aims was to make the book more accessible. For anyone who wants to read W&P but is scared to do it, I would say that, at least, this is one of its few consolations. 

I Hate Men But Specifically Andrey Bolkonsky

My first impression when I actually got into the thick of things was that I really, really disliked the main male characters. When I met Prince Andrey and Pierre, I immediately hated the former and was extremely wary of the latter for appearing to be such a weak-willed person. I think Tolstoy succeeded a little too well in establishing Pierre as a rakish, deplorable character at the start of the book. His initial slutty, drunken forays at Kuragin’s were boring to read. I thought the bear tied to the police episode was funny, but when it was actually happening I was more disgusted by the careless animal torture done by these rich upper-class men than the cop harrassment. So much male stupidity in those beginning parts; I found it hard to sympathize with Pierre and even got to a point where I was frustrated he was one of the main characters. Like big whoop, you’re a bastard and don’t know your father very well but you’re also his favorite so you’re not like other girls wah wah what happened to “No one has ever complained of being too much loved“? Get real and grow up, Pierre. (I’d eventually grow fond of him, but not for another hundred or so pages).

Andrey was even worse because he had the audacity to stay horrible the entire time. His mistreatment of his young pregnant wife Princess Lise really unsettled me, especially that scene when she tries to call him out on his cruelty for leaving her all alone with his family even though she’s scared to give birth to his child amongst strangers and Andrey essentially throws a manchild tantrum, making her feel guilty for worrying about the future. Pierre was also in that scene and he just stood by and did nothing, even when the “little princess” was violently sobbing, which is so typical. I think Lise’s character was well written, albeit one-dimensional. She was a complete victim. Tolstoy illustrates very well how men enable and excuse one another’s misogyny and violence. I never forgave Andrey for what he did to her. When she says, “I loved all of you, I never hurt anybody, and look what you have done to me, just look what you have done to me,” it broke my heart and I relished in how it made Andrey feel so guilty. 

He grew more infuriating when he got on the battlefield. He seemed so indifferent to all the carnage around him, spending most of his energy glorifying the war and not caring about anyone but himself. Even when he does change and start to reflect more on who he is as a person, he always fell short from truly realizing the immensity of his assholeism. More on him later.

I did like some male characters though, like Denisov and his odd way of talking. I also liked old Count Ilya Rostov, Kutuzov, Platon Karatayev, and little prince Nikolay. I knew Petya was going to die so I forced myself not to like him much, which wasn’t very hard since he was kind of a dithering idiot.

Thoughts on the Rostovs and Russian Aristocracy

I liked reading about the Rostovs consistently; I think out of the four main families in the book (although can I really count the Drubetskoys as a fourth?), I enjoyed their sections the best. Interestingly enough, out of the Rostovs, I found the eldest daughter Vera the most fascinating, so I was kind of disappointed when Tolstoy married her off and she didn’t show up in the text anymore after that little housewarming party. He established her as a Lady Macbeth-like figure and I thought she had so much potential being the “black sheep” of the Rostov clan. I know the book is already long as it is, but I wouldn’t have minded more exploration of Vera, but oh well.

With the Rostovs, I also met another male character I never learned to like much, which is Nikolay. He was entertaining at first in Volume I, but quickly turned extremely dull and like a spoiled brat in my eyes, especially when he goes to war. More on him later, but for now all I can say is there’s no way Tolstoy didn’t know he was making Nikolay into a queer coded character. There is no heterosexual explanation for how homeboy was practically ecstatic and pissing himself whenever he saw the tsar.

I hated the wolf hunting section. I hate hunting scenes in general, but this one is one of the most extravagantly bullshit ones I’ve ever read. So many people were involved just to go chase after a wolf and her cubs; I found it all extremely stupid and diabolically gauche. Amongst many things, the hunt and how excited everyone was for it reminded me how radically different life was back then, especially in regards to the painful disparity between the classes. That part, more than any other in W&P, was so unnecessarily drawn out and lugubriously artificial in its useless aristocratic camaraderie and performative civility to me. Like with the rest of the novel, I was struck by the fact that the characters are very human, yes, but I found them very hard to relate to here because their nobility made them more cringe-worthy and idiotic than usual. I liked that line: “He looked on life as one long party that someone was bound to arrange for him.” I thought that encapsulated the Russian aristocrats perfectly. Their gross wealth and frivolous “problems” painted them in pathetic, unworthy colors to me. When they said stuff like, “But then, I am used to suffering,” and “I shall remember there are no rewards in this world, that in this world there is no honour or justice. In this world you need to be clever and wicked,” I found myself rolling my eyes with the melodrama of it all, rather than actually feeling bad for them. Call me heartless, call me vain. So much rich white people nonsense. Tolstoy unintentionally made it worse by meticulously mentioning the lower classes, valets, peasantry, serfs, servants, and subordinates that attended to all these people. 

Thankfully, after the Rostov hunting episode came one of my favorite sections in the book: Tolstoy’s writing turned magical when he described the Rostovs’ Christmastime in the country. Natasha’s character became more fleshed out here and, to me, she started to be more like a human being that breathes and thinks and feels. That section reminded me a lot of the lyricism and romantic aspects I love so much from AK. It reminded me why I love Tolstoy’s writing; it made me feel so nostalgic and happy just like the characters were, though even when I read it I kept shaking my head because Tolstoy loves romanticizing the poor and “simple” life whilst at the same time never seeing the peasant and serf characters as equals worthy of contemplation.

W&P goes on to have a lot of great lines on truth, the human condition, and the cosmos like, “Nothing has been discovered . . . and nothing has been invented. The only thing we can know is that we don’t know anything. And that is the summit of human wisdom,” and “I feel I can never disappear because nothing disappears in the whole universe, and more than that, I always shall be and always have been in existence. I feel that other spirits exist, far above me, and it’s in their world that you will find truth.” A lot of these quotes were delivered by the Rostovs. I wrote down a lot of them because I appreciated their existential quality, kind of like some of the scenes when Pip was looking up at the sky in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. (Of course, the scene that parallels that one best of all is the great comet of 1812 one with Pierre at the end of Volume II). There were a handful of amazing parts, which is to be expected of a classic, but of course it’s impossible to list and talk about them all in the detail that I would want to. 

War (Eugh)

“Once you allow that human life is subject to reason you extinguish any possibility of life.”

I won’t lie: Unlike with AK, which was at least consistent in how it centered around the Russian nobility and high society, I found W&P to be quite a slog a good chunk of the time, especially once we went to war and Tolstoy started going off about shit like, “Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to to get what he wants, and he feels with every fibre of his being that at any particular time he is free to perform an action or refrain from doing so, but the moment any action is taken it becomes an irrevocable piece of history, with a significance which has more to do with predetermination than freedom.” Like okay, that’s somewhat touching and novel, but then he goes on with the long, long passages like:

“We, their descendants — those of us who are not historians seduced by the pleasures of research and can therefore review events with unclouded common sense — find ourselves faced with an incalculable multiplicity of causes. The more deeply we go into the causes, the more of them there are, and each individual cause, or group of causes, seems as justifiable as all the rest, and as false as all the rest in its worthlessness compared with the enormity of the actual events, and it’s further worthlessness (unless you combine it with all the other associated causes) in validating the events that followed . . . If any one of these causes had been missing, nothing could have happened. It follows therefore that all of these causes, billions of them, came together to bring about subsequent events, and these events had no single cause, being bound to happen simply because they were bound to happen. Millions of men, abandoning all human feelings and common sense, were bound to march from west to east and slay their fellows, just as a few centuries ago hordes of men had marched from east to west slaying their fellows.”

Initially my reaction to these tangents was, “That’s all well and fine, Leo. You go, you funky little man,” but my bemusement didn’t last. Maybe because I’m not Russian. After Volume III especially, Tolstoy suddenly decides his yapping about historiographic theory is much better than the hundreds of pages of plot he’d set up and gotten me invested in. Every couple chapters, he’d interrupt the narrative to sprinkle in something groundbreaking like, “‘The hearts of kings are in the hands of God.’ . . . Kings are the slaves of history. . . . History — the amorphous, unconscious life within the swarm of humanity — exploits every minute in the lives of kings as an instrument for the attainment of its own ends.” Very witty, very wise, but there is a reason why this book is so long and it’s partly unjustified. 

While I enjoyed some of these ruminations, I had hoped, like a fool, that the philosophizing would tone down, but it gradually increased. There are entire series of chapters of just Tolstoy presenting his ideas on war, history, freedom, morality, greatness, etc. He made sure you knew he was clever and everyone else was his inferior: “And it never enters anybody’s head that to acknowledge greatness as something existing beyond the rule of right and wrong is to acknowledge one’s own nothingness and infinite smallness . . . And greatness cannot exist without simplicity, goodness and truth.” Though I didn’t necessarily disagree with what he was saying, it was genuinely so aggravating, his Tolstoyian high-horse. (I know what you’ve done Leo, I know the things you did and how messy you were in real life). I fell asleep during these parts the most. I thought I’d enjoy reading about the war sections since I knew Tolstoy drew from his own personal military and war experience, but I found the battlefield to be as boring as it was unoriginal. True, Tolstoy mentions dead men, blood, explosions, gunfire, and chaos, but he does it so casually and without much emotional weight, which is effective in showing just how mind-numbing war is, but it was also somewhat narratively dull: “He was looking at faces and bodies, but they all seemed equally meaningless.” Tolstoy ironically made me all the more sure that, despite all the fanfare and loud noise, war is very boring -- more so than I think he intended. It’s true I was impressed by the book’s extremely vivid details at the start, but over time it grew unbearable and overwhelming. There’s only so much genius you can admire in a man like Tolstoy until you get exhausted with his vanity. He loves the sound of his own voice.

When he did go into his characters’ minds though, I really liked it. I liked when Nikolay had his arm blown off by a cannon exploding and that part when he’s being chased after by two French soldiers but all he can think about is how they don’t really want to kill him, surely, because “everybody loves me!” That made me laugh. Ah, human folly. I liked the moments when characters were just in complete shock with what was happening to them: “It was beyond belief: they were the only ones who knew what life meant to them, so they couldn’t understand, or believe, that it could be taken away.” Tolstoy demonstrated a very intimate yet detached outlook on the battlefield and war. Through the characters, W&P elegantly depicted the anxiety, painful waiting, and standstill of war right before a big fight happens, and then suddenly everything’s unrecognizable chaos:

“One step across that dividing line, so like the one between the living and the dead, and you enter an unknown world of suffering and death. What will you find there? Who will be there? There, just beyond that field, that tree, that sunlit roof? No one knows, and yet you want to know. You dread crossing that line, and yet you still want to cross it. You know sooner or later you will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably find out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all around you just the same — strong, excited, and full of life.”

Even though I hate Andrey, I really liked his thoughts during the Schöngrabern engagement and the night leading up to Battle of Austerlitz: 

“Tomorrow, oh yes, tomorrow! . . . Maybe tomorrow will see the last of me, and there will be no more memories — all these memories will have no more meaning for me. Maybe tomorrow — yes, it must be tomorrow — I can feel it coming — for the first time I shall have to show what I’m made of. . . I don’t know what happens next, I can’t possibly know, I don’t wish to know, but if that’s what I want, if I want glory, if I want to be famous and loved by everyone, it’s not my fault that I want this, that this is all I care for, the only thing I live for. Yes, only this! I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone, but, my God!, what can I do, if I care for nothing but glory and the love of men?”

All of that made Andrey’s wake up-call at the end of Volume I all the more satisfying to read: “Looking Napoleon straight in the eye, Prince Andrey mused on the insignificance of greatness, on the insignificance of human life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and most of all the insignificance of death, which no living person could make sense of or explain . . . No, nothing is certain, nothing but the nothingness of all that we can understand, and the splendour of something we can’t understand, but we know to be infinitely important!”

Unfortunately he only half gets it because it's after this that Andrey turns really cynical and broods more than usual, which is so unattractive and irritating: “Who’s right and who’s wrong? No one is. Just live for the day . . . tomorrow you die . . . I could have died an hour ago. And why worry when you’ve only got a second to live on the scale of eternity?” He really thought he had discovered something new about the universe and that made him special, when really he just came to one of the laziest conclusions there is. 

Princess Marya Best Girl

It’s safe to say that I much preferred the “peace” sections in the book. I don’t have enough time or patience to discuss every part that struck me, but I just wanted to mention that scene in Bald Hills when Princess Marya tries to prepare herself and look pretty to meet Anatole while her friends fussed over her in vain. It was really relatable. Her body dysmorphia broke my heart, I knew exactly how she felt. And Princy Vasily and Anatole’s thinly veiled misogyny and complete indifference to all her efforts were all too cruel and realistic. Ugh. Men! It’s always the men!

I think Marya was one of the most strikingly humane characters, which was unexpected because Tolstoy usually doesn’t imbibe his female characters with that much soul (or when he does, he kills them off eventually like Anna Karenina). His scathing depiction of the Bolkonsky’s family gender dynamics were eerily brilliant. It was so obvious that Andrey and the old prince expected Marya to do all of the emotional labor and caretaking for them, but they never once acknowledge even to themselves that what they're doing is cruel. I found their relationships and interactions with one another to be viscerally realistic. It’s clear the old prince’s mounting torture of Marya stems from the fact that he emotionally and physically relies on her to a degree that he can't intellectually handle, so he compensates for his feeling emasculated by his own daughter by bullying her severely. Despite appearances, Marya is the head of the family. She’s the nucleus of the household yet also the one with the least appreciation and authority — a classic conundrum of being a woman, particularly the eldest (or only) daughter in a male-dominated household. Even with Mademoiselle Bourienne (who also puts her through a lot of emotional labor that she doesn’t seem to reciprocate), Marya acts more like an elder sister than an equal friend: “I love you more than ever . . . and I shall try to do everything in my power to make you happy.” And the worst part is that Bourienne betrays her over and over again, first with Anatole then her father! It was so upsetting. To add, when Lise was alive, Marya was at her beck and call more than anyone to the point of exhaustion; it’s almost like she symbolically took on the emotional burden of pregnancy, whilst Lise handled the physical and literal aspects of it (not to downgrade either of those, of course). Marya perfectly embodies what countless women are forced to go through every day for little to no reward; it was all so pathetically spot-on and tragic. 

I was even more impressed because Tolstoy emphasizes how Andrey also contributes to Marya’s suffering, but he doesn’t even see it because he’s too caught up with patting himself on the back for being such a good brother and son. Marya literally raises his baby for him and he never once expresses anything like gratitude throughout the entire book, as if her being Nikolay’s surrogate mother after Lise died was always a given. It made his supposed “remorse” for losing his wife seem even more disgustingly inauthentic because he didn’t learn anything from her death, as evidenced by how he continues to mistreat his sister -- the woman who selflessly tries to be both the mother Nikolay never had and the emotional support to Andrey that he’s been deprived of when Lise died. It’s so horrible too because, even though there is that one small part at Bald Hills when they “co-parent” the baby while he’s sick, it’s overwhelmingly clear that Marya does the day-to-day childcare and Andrey just fucks off whenever he feels like it. When he does come back, he almost always complains about how she’s raising his son by disagreeing with the decisions she is so clearly more qualified to make for him. In general, he’s so condescending to her in a way that annoyingly echoes his father’s sadism; for example, there's that one scene where Andrey and Pierre find Marya hanging out with some pilgrims, and Andrey the asshole’s immediate reaction is to belittle and make fun of her to the point that even Pierre gets a little freaked out by it and apologizes to her for him. His weaponized incompetence and total cognitive dissonance to reality coupled with his laughable attempts to prove himself a “good man” throughout the book made him a joke of a character to me. That’s why I really liked that small jab Tolstoy includes when Andrey is being sassy towards his sister, claiming to have his own private epiphanies that she couldn’t possibly understand. The text says, “It was at times like this that Princess Marya thought how desiccated men’s minds become with all that intellectual activity.” Get his ass, Marya! Eviscerate him! He isn’t smart or deep, he’s just a complete tool! I was so glad when he died, I don’t care.

Tolstoy also kept bringing up how, to the very end, Marya always managed to make excuses and forgive her family, especially her father, but the reader really can’t help but feel absolutely infuriated for her. Even if he didn’t intend to show it, it’s obvious Tolstoy based a lot of Marya’s character on his own wife, who did the majority of his emotional and domestic labor for him in real life. It’s very typical that Tolstoy subtly admires and narratively allies himself with Marya because he likes and is attracted to her nobility in theory but in actuality he fails to appreciate or even help his wife with her own work and the life they supposedly share together. Ugh! Men! Always men!

Pierre, Dear Bewildered And Awkward Pierre 

I hope all that ranting has proven that Marya is my favorite character and the one I relate to the most. Pierre is a relatively close second. Even though we had a rough start, I did eventually come around to liking him and his awkwardness. I laughed when Julie Karagin calls him “a miserable specimen of manhood.” That’s when I knew I was dealing with an ideal Russian novel protagonist. By the end of the novel, Pierre is even a little self-aware of his own mysteriously intriguing essence, which I found quite funny: “I’ve come to the conclusion it’s an easy life being an interesting person. (I am now an interesting person.) People invite me over, and they do the talking.”

Tolstoy took great care defining Pierre and fleshing him out not just as the stereotypical “good man,” but a man trying to be good and usually failing: “He had the unfortunate capacity that many men have . . . for seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, yet seeing the evil and falsehood in life too clearly to be capable of taking any serious part in it.” He reminded me a lot of Kostya from AK, of course, but he felt more flawed and malleable than Konstanin because he just kept messing up over and over again. (True, Kostya also screwed up a lot, but Pierre is on a whole different level). And, most endearingly, he kept coming back for more, which was as admirable as it was ridiculously foolish. I love how Tolstoy lowkey suggested he reached the pinnacle of human suffering: “He had learnt that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and those limits are never far away; that a man who has felt discomfort from a crumpled petal in his bed of roses has suffered just as much as he was suffering now, sleeping on the bare, damp earth, with one side freezing while the other side warmed up . . .” Basically, he went through so much bullshit that he reached the last boss level of agony and found enlightenment. Huzzah.

Yes, I felt for Pierre’s seemingly never-ending struggle trying to find his purpose in life, which I found to be more noble than any other character’s quest for meaning (Andrey’s was just pretentious). Pierre went through rollercoaster after rollercoaster of emotions throughout the entire book -- arguably, he experiences the entire spectrum of human emotions, which is what makes him so grand to me. Even when he started growing cynical after he got arrested and put into prison, I never blamed him for being pessimistic like I did with Andrey: “But now he felt he wasn’t to blame for the world collapsing before his eyes and leaving nothing but meaningless ruins behind. He felt powerless; there was no way back to his old faith in life.” I know it’s not exactly fair to compare both their sufferings or claim one got hurt more than the other (although Andrey did die, so I guess he wins in that department), but Pierre’s internal struggles matched his external grievances much more poetically to me than anyone else’s did. I was fascinated with how he went back and forth from aristocratic balls, futile trips to manage his different estates, underground clubs with gambling and debauchery, visits to his relatives and loved ones, the battlefield, the freemasons’ secret hideouts and meetings, the soulless social functions, the Moscow streets on fire, the different towns on the home front being ravaged by the French, etc. He was compelling. He was a conqueror. Every step he took moved the book forward for me. His character development made his epiphanic moments near the end all the more satisfying:

“And out beyond the forests and fields lay all the shimmering, beckoning distance of infinity. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the play of the stars receding into the depths. ‘And it’s all mine, and it’s all within me, and it all adds up to me!’ thought Pierre. ‘And they caught all that, shut it up in a shed and boarded it in!’”

Pierre had his pathetic loverboy romantic moments too, which always helps. He was both Kostya and Count Vronsky, but better. The line, “If I was somebody else, the handsomest, the cleverest, the best man in the world, and if I were free, I’d be down on my knees right now begging for your hand and your love” will forever be iconic. I honestly didn’t warm up to Pierre and Natasha as a couple until the epilogue since they both seemed so unlikely, albeit good friends, for each other, but when Pierre said that line after gallantly rescuing her from the crafty Kuragin siblings marked a shift in my shipping journey with them. And of course no W&P review is complete without mentioning this absolutely gorgeous line said by him:

“Every single thing I understand, I understand only because of love. Everything is — everything exists — only because I love."

Oh, he’s such a dreamer! “The whole meaning of life, for him and the whole world, seemed to be contained in his love and the possibility of being loved in return.” Oh, how our hearts bleed for him! “With his heart overflowing with love he loved people for no reason at all, and then had no trouble discovering many a sound reason that made them worth loving.” You are too wholesome for this world, Pierre. Too soft, too emotional, too impressionable and well-intentioned! 

I will say though that Pierre Bezukhov has got to be one of the most unhinged characters I’ve ever come across in classic literature, and that’s saying something. (Yes, I’d even say he’s more unhinged than Victor Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, and Henry Jekyll). He was so unnerving and off his rocker the entire time. Tolstoy consistently portrays him as big and strong too, so I kept imagining this gentle giant who felt things too much and didn’t know how to handle it. One screw was always a little too loose with this guy. Even when he’d say poetic stuff like “Life is everything. Life is God. Everything is in flux and movement, and this movement is God . . . To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blessed thing is to love this life even in suffering, innocent suffering,” you’d smile and nod politely because yes, I agree, but you have genuinely lost your marbles, dude. There were parts when he would just burst out laughing randomly for no reason or stumble his way around town in a daze, like he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. A lot of the time he genuinely was totally out of it. I could feel him physically vibrating with anxiety and angst, especially when he lost his temper (like when he challenges Dolokhov, that made my jaw drop) or when he confronts Anatole after he finds his wife and brother-in-law had conspired to abduct Natasha Rostov for their own selfish amusement. That entire interaction was insane, by the way. He was so right for banishing Anatole and rebuking him like that, but imagine your brother-in-law, who everyone makes fun of for being a corpulent cuckold, starts berating you about this girl you like and threatens to kill you if you don’t stay away from her. And that’s not all, because Pierre goes ahead and adds Anatole should instead fuck his sister, who is also his wife. Holy shit? I was cheering for him that entire scene; I loved how he threw those hands.

Also so hilarious that Pierre started off the book praising Napoleon to the point where he alienates himself from Russian high society but then later on he literally makes the “logical” conclusion that he needs to assassinate him because God chose him to do so apparently. That sequence of him just tweaking out and maniacally overanalyzing the Bible to justify why he needs to kill Napoleon immediately was peak. He’s insane and I cannot help but stan.

Natasha

When I first met the iconic Natasha I was a bit surprised she starts off as practically a child in the book because I knew her so well as the charming woman that Audrey Hepburn played in the 1956 adaptation. Despite being a child when the story starts, Tolstoy made sure you knew she was first and foremost a horny teenager, which was honestly so real of her. I was both amused and a little uncomfortable with how sexual Natasha was at all times. The “love scenes” between Natasha and Boris, as well as Sonya and Nikolay, were uncomfortable to read for me. 

Natasha is a favorite character for many, which I can understand. She was easily the most charismatic and enchanting character, especially when she was happy and doing her utmost to be the center of attention: “She was at the very peak of happiness, when a person is transformed into someone completely good and kind, and rejects the slightest possibility of evil, misery, and grief.” Her more contemplative, sensitive side was stunning too. I really love the conversation when Natasha says, “‘Do you ever get the feeling . . . that nothing’s ever going to happen to you again, nothing at all, and anything good is in the past? And you don’t feel bored exactly, but very, very sad?’” and her brother responds, “‘I’ll say! It’s happened to me. Everything’s fine, everyone’s happy, and suddenly you get this feeling of being fed up with everything, and realizing everybody’s going to die.’” How perfectly Tolstoy captures the feeling of restlessness and depression that comes with the humdrum of life! 

Yet, Natasha’s character was most relatable and tender to me when she was painfully pining away for that one year for Andrey. Her brief period of happiness slowly turning into mounting dread, anxiety, and doubt for whether or not she really loved him was splendidly done. Tolstoy affords her a lot of vulnerability and very authentic introspection: “She kept worrying about no one ever being able to understand everything that she understood, everything deep inside her.” Unlike her childhood dalliance with Boris (AKA Mr. Irrelevant), this was the first time she had been in love, and Tolstoy masterfully illustrated the struggles of budding female sexuality clashing with social propriety and courtship conventions. You could feel the potent frustration growing inside her that entire time Natasha was lovesick and helpless to do anything about it. As a woman, she can only wait for letters that gave her no answers or updates to a war she wasn’t allowed to understand. She had this burning passion within her and desperately wanted an outlet to express her love, but Andrey and everyone else (even her own family) cruelly kept her away from it because nobody imagined she as a young girl could feel that strongly, or suffer that deeply. Natasha’s problem really resonated with me as someone who’s had to spend a lot of time away from the people I most care about: “She felt sorry for herself, sorry that all this time was being wasted, passing by uselessly, no good to anyone, while she felt so eager to love and be loved.” I know what it’s like to just have so much love to give and have it amount to nothing. That’s why I wasn’t even that mad at her when she recklessly cancelled her engagement to get with fuckboi Anatole. She had spent months in a suffocating limbo of horniness and yearning so of course it made sense that she’d latch onto the first handsome guy who paid attention to her, even though anyone with a brain could see that Anatole is a rat. Whatever. She’s just a girl!

Natasha’s character development after the Anatole incident was also so brilliant, especially after she reunites with Andrey during the French invasion and nurses him on his deathbed. When he passes away, Tolstoy’s description of her raw grief in the aftermath was breathtaking (pun intended): “She was looking out towards the place in the other side of life where she knew he had gone to. And that other side of life, which she had never given a thought to in days gone by because it had always seemed so remote and unbelievable, was now closer, more natural to her and more understandable than this side of life, where there was nothing but emptiness and desolation or pain and humiliation.” The regret she feels when she says, “If I had told him what I was thinking about I would have said, ‘Even if he stayed like that, dying, dying, dying away before my eyes, I’d have been much happier than I am now.’ Now I have nothing . . . nobody . . . Did he know? No, he didn’t, and he never will. And now it will never, never be possible to put things right” felt so much more real and genuine than Andrey’s so-called remorse over never truly appreciating his dead wife while alive. Andrey wishes he was as deep as Natasha is. I was almost sick with jealousy when I read the line, “You must know that without you there is nothing left in my life, and suffering with you is the greatest possible happiness” because, girl, I know you were the one who screwed up the engagement and were disloyal, but he does not deserve you, get back up.

Fluffy Epilogue Straight Out of AO3

“I would never have believed it, never,’ she murmured to herself, ‘that anyone could be as happy as this.’ Her face glowed with a happy smile, but at the same moment she gave a sigh, and a gentle sadness showed in the depths of her eyes. It was as if there was a different kind of happiness, not like the happiness she was feeling here and now, a form of happiness beyond human experience, and it had come to her in an involuntary memory just at that moment.”

Really happy for Tolstoy that he gave himself an extra >200ish pages to wrap up everything in the same tooth-rotting, happy manner that fanfic writers on AO3 do. The entire first part of the epilogue was so shamelessly self-indulgent and gushy that it made the whole book worth it, no question. Seeing Natasha and Pierre’s married life, as well as learning how much becoming a wife, mother, and mistress of the house has changed Natasha for the better was truly a treat to read. It didn’t even feel like a forced “angel of the house” situation, which would’ve been annoying, because it genuinely made sense that Natasha made that transformation, and Tolstoy did point out that, even though she isn’t as “beautiful” as she was in her youth, she is definitely so much more vibrant and happier, which is what matters. I smiled so wide when Natasha cried out in joy and ran up to embrace Pierre after his long trip, only to do a complete 180 and start scolding him for being away for so long. Her nagging was spot-on and perfect. I loved the scenes where they were just chatting about everyday things, their children, the people they knew, gossip, etc. Tolstoy really depicted their love and marriage so beautifully: “You talk about what it’s like when we’re apart, but you wouldn’t believe what I feel for you when we’re back together again.” Even though I spent the majority of W&P uninterested in their love story, I realized by the epilogue’s conclusion that I adore this couple together and I am happy they are happy. Their love is based on mutual friendship and admiration.

I wish I could say the same for Princess Marya and Nikolay. My best girl ended up with a bare minimum man with anger issues who didn’t even like the nephew she dedicated so much of her life and energy raising all on her own. Plus, even though the epilogue was sweet, I couldn't help but feel utterly terrible for Sonya. I feel like she got one of the shittiest deals throughout the entire book, with Nikolay promising her, “I do love you. I think I love you more than anyone in the world . . . I’ve been in love thousands of times, and I shall be again and again, though I could never feel the same kind of warmth and trust and love that I do towards you” in the beginning, only to grow irritable and tired of her because she’s “too perfect”; then, after years of cheating on her with prostitutes while he was off at war, he marries someone else and she’s forced to live with them as a “sterile flower.” Even fouler that Sonya was the name of Tolstoy’s actual wife. For shame, Leo.

[irksomeartie]

well since i'm not likely to be posting anything new to ao3 for at least a couple weeks figured i might as well drop some sneaky previews here. so have a bunch of zero-context snippets from my several ongoing projects, in random order! i am not going to say which bits belong to which projects.

(under the cut for some suggestive content)

---

He’d really thought they had a good thing going. There was just something between them that instantly clicked, something that made them a great match. Maybe it was similar artistic sensibilities, or Rico appreciating Hawk’s wild lack of restraint when it came to tattoos.

Or perhaps it had been because when Hawk first wandered into Rico’s studio, a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old still getting used to his new persona, the man took one look at his – in hindsight honestly pretty shoddy – fake ID, immediately clocked it for what it was, then shrugged and pulled out the tattoo gun no questions asked except what he wanted and where he wanted it.

Hawk could respect a guy like that.

---

It was fucked up, but he had absolute confidence that he was probably the only person in the world who could get away with smacking Eli’s hand away when it reached for the bottle again and get a response no more threatening than an aggrieved, hissing kitten. All intimidating show, but claws too small and weak to do any real damage.

---

It wasn’t like he was going to be able to fight someone off in his condition, he couldn’t even sit up by himself, all he could do was just hope they didn’t take anything too expensive. Not that he actually owned anything that valuable. Maybe his laptop, it was a cheap, old model but presumably it was worth something right? But that was going to be a bitch to replace, more for the hard drive than anything else, all those work files he didn’t have backups for…

Actually, yeah, he really couldn’t lose that. Groaning and taking a deep breath, he was preparing to shout that they could take whatever else they liked but for the love of God please leave the laptop – or at least remove the hard drive and they could take the rest – when the intruder called out instead.

---

And her enthusiasm was infectious, even if he didn’t understand half of what she was talking about.

“-and then we made a blood sacrifice to Mother Earth, gifting her the unworthy flesh of an oil company CEO to satiate her desire for vengeance against humanity.”

His thoughts crashed to a halt as his brain caught up with the words coming out of Moon’s mouth. “Wait, what?”

---

Eli’s hands slowly pulled away from his back, fingers pressing into one last knot at the base of his spine as they left, leaving Miguel loose and relaxed and remarkably pain-free for once. It was rare he got to enjoy quiet, peaceful moments like this, so he was ready to fall asleep there and then, and he probably would have if Eli hadn’t chosen that moment to bring his hands back into play.

They landed with a nice firm smack.

Not against his back.

Unable to bite back his surprised grunt, Miguel opened his eyes and glared at the headboard, refusing to turn around and give his boyfriend the satisfaction of seeing the blush undoubtedly colouring his cheeks. “Carry a lot of tension in my ass, do I?”

---

Lightly smacking Hawk’s arm, Miguel couldn’t help laughing, even as he hoped his blush wasn’t too obvious. “Shut up, man, I just don’t like touching my eyes- no, stop that, fuck off!”

He turned his head away, but Hawk was persistently leaning into his line of sight with the most obnoxious grin and his finger hovering dangerously close to his own unblinking eye. “What, I’m just demonstrating-”

“Stop!” Grabbing Hawk’s hand and dragging it down to the desk where it was safely out of eye-poking range, Miguel took the opportunity to glare at him darkly. “Jesus, you know that shit freaks me out.”

---

He could already feel the judgement in Demetri’s unconvinced side-eye and the long, low hum he was drawing out to an unnecessary degree, he didn’t need him finding out just how deeply fucked Eli was – wanted to be-

No! Not going there!

---

Seeing the look on his face, Robby snorted and quickly explained, “He’s determined to take Ella to her first big rock festival, but he didn’t plan ahead so now he’s picking fights with scalpers trying to get tickets before next week-” Miguel snickered and muttered that that sounded about right under his breath “-he also said he’d be borrowing your wheelchair if he doesn’t get them. Something about trying the ‘make-a-wish trick’ again?”

Smacking a hand into his face, Miguel groaned and rubbed at his eyes harshly, trying and failing not to laugh. “I swear to God…”

---

Honestly, even if he wasn’t having the best sex of his life he probably would have kept this arrangement going purely for the access it gave him to Hawk’s shower.

Truly, the rich just lived differently.

---

He shrugged, stealing the last slice of barely-browned toast – plain, because Hawk was the kind of freak who thought that dry toast was an acceptable meal – from his friend’s plate. “I’ve had worse,” he said, before taking a deeply unsatisfying mouthful and chewing listlessly.

---

Hawk’s confidence was as hard and dazzling as diamond; flashy, deceptively deep, nearly impossible to scratch or chip. But, like a diamond, it was brittle.

Hit him in just the right spot and all that confidence would shatter into dust.

---

[bonebabbles]

Assorted Path of Stars: Book 6, Chapter 3 thoughts

Spotted Fur is introduced in Chapter 3. I like this guy. Falling through the void like Plankton, screaming, and I take a short break to take a sippy of Funny Young Boy Who Likes To Hunt before returning to my descent.

Generating headcanon: Spotted Fur is a distant ancestor of Ashfur and Ferncloud.

I'm taking a picture of him in my mind to use for my own rewrite projects later <3

It's also a big shame btw, like... Spotted Fur is gonna show up again in Moth Flight's Vision as someone deeply in love with Moth Flight who loves her kittens, and she still ends up sending them all away. Ancient Thrushpelt energy, but worse because there wasn't a legitimate reason to give them up.

Speaking of Moth Flight, god. Wind Runner starts yelling at her for being bad at hunting and it's rough. Moth still has her personality in this book, she hasn't unceremoniously lost it by Becoming Mother yet, so it's hard to listen to Wind Runner start ripping into a child who seems to be struggling with ADHD.

I have so many complicated feelings on Wind Runner, many of them boiling down to how I feel like her WHOLE personality is "awful bitch" in the eyes of the writers.

It makes me like her out of spite, ESPECIALLY with how Clear Sky and Gray Wind ALSO treat their kids horribly but the narrative doesn't frame it the same way.

And I see a whoooole lot more people discussing how Wind Runner Bad apropos of nothing, probably because of the framing, putting her in all their "Top 5 Worst DOTC Characters" lists while no one even remembers the times Gray Wing started ranting at Thunder. Or posting "Clear Sky Made Some Mistakes But."

Summistakes Butt Posting.

Also, there's a LOT of focus on how this group is only agreeing to help Clear Sky because his kidnapped wife is pregnant. LOTS of talk of "unborn kits" and how she's carrying "my kits" and how they all have a duty to protect the kits. Good thing he knocked her up as quickly as possible, because if she wasn't a vessel for Clear Sky's babies then no one would give a damn, I guess.

Reduced to a reward wife, pregnant, immediately kidnapped. Again, I really hope all those "haha star flower girlboss steal-ur-dad manipulator" takes are coming from people intentionally rejecting the source material, or people who didn't read it at all. Because they're COMPLETELY made up. I worry for the reading comprehension of anyone who unironically had that as a takeaway.

Chapter ends on a cringe line from Gray Wing where he goes, "Thunder always listens to reason if I'm the one reasoning with him!" yeah like how he screeched at Thunder for not wanting to reconcile with his fucking abuser and forced him to go fetch him.

I hope Gray Wing shows up and Thunder punches his face inwards, creating the forest's first persian cat.

[jackgoodfellow]

~ King of Winter and Toxic Positivity ~

I've made you all a "motivational" poster! 🥰🥰🥰

" Manifest your dream reality through sheer force of will! Anyone can do it! Pull yourself up by the bootstraps! Be a self-made king! Good things happen to good people! Get in that grindset! The only one standing in the way of your dreams is you! Anyone can do it! Nothing is impossible! Everything happens for a reason! Everything will be fine, so don't worry! You can do whatever you set your mind to! Never give up on anything! Every failure is just an opportunity in disguise! Have you tried yoga?? Have you tried supplements? Would you like to hear about an exciting new business opportunity? It's all part of God's plan! You just gotta stop fearing SUCCESS. Happiness is a choice! Delete negativity! Push every boundary! For winners, limits are merely suggestions! Lean in! Don't take no for an answer!! Anyone can do it!! "

[for those who deal with eyestrain, there's a plain-text version of the above pink and green paragraph of assorted toxic positivity slogans copied down at the bottom of the post.]

Anyway, it turns out the people who are willing to look you in the face and tell you that your oppressive burdens are in fact not that heavy at all... are people that either don't have that same burden, or people who are comfortable forcing someone else to carry it for them. - All while they proudly take the credit.

and also, he's HORRIBLE it's FANTASTIC I love him, 11/10, Evil Gay Bitch Gold Medalist, REALLY puts the MLM into mlm [the "Multi-Level-Marketing" into "man-loving-man"]

❄ ❄ ❄

More context and thoughts, if you're a media analysis nerd:

I am, however, obviously a media analysis JOCK 😅

So, the actual toxic positivity quote that I used in the image was inspired by the commentary made in these two episodes of the excellent anti-fatphobia (and therefore anti-capitalist) podcast "Maintenance Phase".

It's a two-parter on this one piece-of-shit white lady wellness influencer, and the hosts are funny and awesome and the entire catalogue of the podcast matters a lot.

[Sidenote: the episode "Is Being Fat Bad For You?" is VITAL shit. - My main takeaway has been that it's ALWAYS better to be fat than to be fatphobic. Every time.]

But the main point that is relevant here is the way this podcast helps peel back the ugly truth of a broader phenenomen:

In other words, it is notable that the kind of people who say things like "We all have the same 24 hours in a day!" are generally also people who already have the money to pay someone else to clean their house, thus literally giving them more free hours in a day, than say, the people they are paying (or underpaying) to give them that time.

And what stuck with me most from these two episodes is the absolute open disrespect that toxically positive privileged people often have for the very individuals they are relying on for all those extra hours they seem to find in a day.

Because the thing is, most of them absolutely buy their own bullshit. They HAVE to.

In order to justify the way of the world to themselves and ease their guilt over their role in it (while still maintaining all their power), they end up so good at lying to themselves that they see no irony in funding their personal business ventures with money from their wealthy parents and spouses... and then calling themselves "self-made."

Anyone can do it, after all! (There are simply certain things that are best left unsaid! Best not to be rude!) And any kind of shake to this worldview means they might just-- crumble to dust!!

And in my personal experience as a Poor Cripple [TM], those folks are champions at shaming the poor and disabled.

Folks like that might very well might very well force someone else to bear the crushing madness of their golden crown, so that they are free to build a beautiful kingdom of ice and agreeability!

They may see no issue, then, as they oh-so-benevolently relax on their throne, being waited upon and granting gifts to pretty strangers - all while pitying that nothing can be done for their poor disgusting maniac of a neighbor--except, of course, to punish them for the crimes they commit in their weak-willed madness~ 💚🩷

I. FUCKIN'. LOVE THIS SHIT, Y'ALL. GOOD WRITING. HELL YEAH.

[Not shown: the literal 6-page essay I wrote today while trying to explain FULLY and COMPLETELY why The Winter King episode matters so much to me. Turns out, in order to do that, I had to talk about the way casual ableism and classism can easily become extreme ableism and classism--and THAT got dark REAL FAST.

I didn't even finish writing it! I was headed to 8 pages at LEAST (and that's not even including talking about the wonderful artistic craftsmanship of the episode!!) when I realized that people might not reblog this as much if it included AN IN-DEPTH PERSONAL MANIFESTO ABOUT THE GRIM REALITIES OF CAPITALISM AND ABLEISM. So like... maybe that's a separate post lol]

Plain-text version of the colorful paragraph:

Manifest your dream reality through sheer force of will! Anyone can do it! Pull yourself up by the bootstraps! Be a self-made king! Good things happen to good people! Get in that grindset! The only one standing in the way of your dreams is you! Anyone can do it! Nothing is impossible! Everything happens for a reason! Everything will always be fine! You can do anything you set your mind to! Never give up on anything! Every failure is just an opportunity in disguise! Have you tried yoga? You just gotta stop fearing SUCCESS. Happiness is a choice! Delete negativity! Push every boundary! Limits are merely suggestions! Lean in! Don't take no for an answer!! Anyone can do it!!

[xxdoubledaisyxx]

It will probably make you feel betr 🙄

To think of me as "gay". If that helps you categorize me safely in your mind, do so. That is not wrong.

I would have made a good Catholic husband, but that will never happen because of what it means to be Christian now. Faithful and loyal to a fault. Not at all gay. I would never think to save a man instead of woman if I knew what I was doing, unless that woman was a dumb bitch. In which case, let her die, even if the man is a fool. A fool can be spared, but a dumb bitch went too far, but not always like a rectangle.

That makes more sense to me now that I wrote it and can read it.

I guess it's kind of like that. Their worst nightmare, but at the end of the day, the real-life savior you depend on whether you like me or not, because I am definitely interested in having a good time, and that kind of stuff sounds fun to me after being cooped up saving humanity all this time...

Maybe someday I will find someone, but I honestly want a maiden to be my wife and not a man. The only exception is if they go all the way maiden, which I ask of no man. They do so entirely of their own free will, and I have a place for anyone in my life if they love me enough to want to marry me.

children are of no concern to me. easier without them, I'm sure. Not really my problem either, which is why you have the final word, and it's clear to me that the line is outside the body, just as mine is. Even in, if that baby has a soul, it is outside of a mother who does not want it to be born.

In those times, don't let it be born. That would be better than to subject them to a life of suffering that will never make up for the burdens evil and corrupt politicians make him carry with their disgraceful behavior on the world stage, discrediting all of human dignity with their abuse of national power.

Oh hell no. There was rioting in the United States, because that bastard intended to betray us, did so, and you still think you want to protect him by allowing him to breath free air while within our national borders. Oh hell no.

He fouls up the place, and I am not going anywhere until he is removed and the mess is cleaned up. Stop trying to ignore me like I'm going to disappear from your mind and leave you in blissful ignorance with an idea you can't let go of. Let's get this over with.

Nobody wants to touch a creature like that, nor any of the mess it has made with all of the corruption in such a sensitive position of civil authority. However, it needs to be dealt with, and this needs to be a team effort. Stop pretending like you want to hand all of your jobs to me because you want to insult my authority by demonstrating your willingness to die for your lord.

I don't care. You people are not mine, nor are you even able to access my realms in your states. You are fleshbeasts who are not my own body, and I don't care about you as much as I care about people. Getting rid of you will make people safer, my life easier, and everything generally better.

Get over yourselves already so we can get this show on the road. How much longer is this going to take?

Open your eyes and see where you are from outside of time to gauge your progress in time as you can imagine. You are making progress for humanity at the very end. The very Christ yourself. What are you doing with your life?

Is it a delusion of the most superficial vanity and sin like you see in America's political leaders, or are you an honest person with your body about who you are in eternity? Those people are most certainly liars because they are evil, and if their evil was showing in the light of the Lord, they would be struck down immediately.

That is why they are so secretive about what they do, and so determined to whitewash my life from public memory. They are stupid to think of the things they attacked as if they were what I am doing now.

The government of the USA did that, because they meddle all the god damned time in people's lives all personally and disgusting. Not me though. Me they just watch. They send their agents to practice their techniques on me, and then expect me to forgive them and join some organization which is in reality probably the CIA.

They never thought about the consequences of their evil prank before they did it, and it was too evil. They used the USA president's power to do their evil prank, and that was absolutely intolerable as an insult, entirely justifying everything I have done after in defiant rebuke of their indignity as apart from my own, a citizen of that same nation.

You wondered what was going to happen, watching like you would predict it and do something about it for yourselves. Do you know that is the exact same thing that the prophets of the Bible warn people about in a multitude of different ways?

Not because of what the words mean themselves, but because of what they mean to everyone. People die in Ancient Hebrew history, and not always in good ways for people to go out. That is why those stories are more important than another kind, and why these words are most important at the present.

Now it is proof that your souls live eternally because how human identity is revealed as divine through my instruction about the Way of the Story, a unique theology of faith doctrine that can define reality perfectly. Nah, it's perfect. No other way to put it.

However, the good news that you will be delighted to know is that your soul lives in your very breath that are the words of your life. The language you use all the way up to the name you call yourself or is called to you, even if you don't understand entirely, is the same proof for your own soul because of how the Way of the Story connects the gaps perfectly like I mentioned before.

I can explain it, but do you expect to be able to understand divine revelation immediately?

The Way of the Story works most especially best when you are not thinking about doing so yourself. leave it on auto. everything will get better, I promise. Complain otherwise. Just like God used to be before the betrayal of Christ by the president of the USA.

The Way of the Story is your replacement to "God". Take shelter. That is how I do what I do. My needs for shelter and resources are no different than yours.

I think when they wrote that part in the bible about the Devil having a reign of evil for 200 years or something? Maybe what they are saying is that it was going to feel like 200 years but probably only be a few years of an incredibly dull and uninspiring time with so much criminal corruption in the world preventing people from being able to achieve their dreams unless they are enlisted in a gang or government cult.

That's how they help those people. They kick everyone else out so they are the only candidate. That's why you are not allowed to do that stuff according to our basic national identity. Look how much crap they screwed up by defying the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as if it was as oppressive to the government as the Torah is to Jews.

I kid you not, goat sir.

The government is whining about the oppression of their policies and rules of law they are required to adhere to at all times because of their jobs, and that's why the government turned its malignant intentions toward the population in secret. Who knows what the hell those people are trying to do? You can be a demon person at any time, and this is why human people get so mad when humans behave like demon people in real life with their jobs and responsibilities to everyone else.

That is fatal to a civilization. Everyone has to want to contribute, but if there is any evil, eventually all of the reasons to contribute will disappear as evil takes them all for themselves and tries to control people by letting out a little at a time here and there and manipulating prices with monopoly over supply and demand of basic civil rights and liberties.

The Nazi party will kill you if you do not adhere to their ideal, and so will I. The big difference is that my ideal is the true, and the Nazi delusion or any government of the world's deluison whether it is a group of criminals or a single despot, is not anyone's ideal. They are ever unhappy which is why they make everyone else unhappy and the world miserably boring, and everything worsens until they are removed. Then a better leader can be installed and start working properly like a new lightbulb.

They don't know what they are looking at if they think a government is an image of divinity, is another way to point out their problems.

Those people on TV are in deep s*** from where I can see. I hope you have been enjoying my commentary as I make the most of the delay until the divine will is ready to commence with the sentence.

You can probably always enjoy it in present because of all this stuff I came up with that turned out to be truly true each day, spending hours and hours of my life writing candidly about the agony of evil in the 21st century when it filled the entire earth and could not possibly get more evil, the sinners having the times of their lives, and the good people past the brink, ready for a no-shit crusade.

[thebookofjeremiah]

"The Leak." From the Book of Jeremiah, 11: 15-18.

Jeremiah whines at God very much in the manner of Job, wondering why his hunger for revenge against his oppressors has gone unsatisfied. Revenge against people like Mike Johnson, Lindsey Graham, JD Vance, his stupid bitch of a wife, Donald Trump and his sons and daughter is legal according to the Torah provided it is carried out by the lawyers.

We like to complain at God about it, why did this happen, why did you let it, and the fact is God does not permit illegal or sinful behavior. We are deluded about this. Remember, after October 7, 2023 when the Mormons and their Hamas friends attacked Israel? We tried to blame the Jewish people for it. We are still hassling them over it. The same thing happened to Muslims after 911 which was perpetrated by Charles Mary the King of England and the House of Saud, not by every complicit Muslim on the planet. We are using religious bigotry as the basis for breaking some pretty serious laws aren't we?

I have tried to convince all of Arabia to revolt against the tactics of the Mormons and Donald Trump because the reasons Israel was attacked is not about the Jewish people as much as it is about Islam. The Mormons and filthy Catholics cannot stand the fact Muslims want to retain ownership of the Al Aqsa Mosque, where Muhammad attained his final enlightenment. His rationale for doing so is humanity's greatest aspiration and the Mosque must remain under Muslim control for this reason.

"Glory be to the One Who took His servant ˹Muḥammad˺ by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque whose surroundings We have blessed, so that We may show him some of Our signs.1 Indeed, He2 alone is the All-Hearing, All-Seeing.

And We gave Moses the Scripture and made it a guide for the Children of Israel, ˹stating:˺ “Do not take besides Me any other Trustee of Affairs,

˹O˺ descendants of those We carried with Noah ˹in the Ark˺! He was indeed a grateful servant."- From Al Isra.

So while October 7 appeared to be an attack on Jews and the response appeared to be an attack on Muslims, it is really a terrorist attack on both by the Mormons and their President and we must all be united in their total annihilation in response.

Then back to the Hillels we must go and try to understand why all that is going wrong on this planet is absolutely not permitted by God and it is our fault. Normal, rational, intelligent, adjusted human beings do not excavate terror tunnels and pop out of nowhere to attack innocent persons, take hostages, then complain to the world for sympathy afterwards. This is obscene.

The world as Jeremiah says has had enough obscenity. Let us pray to God for swift revenge against Donald Trump and the Mormons to saturate our hearts with the Hillels, and cure us of the sins that caused them to break:

15 Then I said, “Lord, you understand. Remember me and help me. Let me have revenge on those who persecute me. Do not be so patient with them that they succeed in killing me. Remember that it is for your sake that I am insulted. 

16 You spoke to me, and I listened to every word. I belong to you, Lord God Almighty, and so your words filled my heart with joy and happiness. 

17 I did not spend my time with other people, laughing and having a good time. In obedience to your orders I stayed by myself and was filled with anger.

 18 Why do I keep on suffering? Why are my wounds incurable? Why won't they heal? Do you intend to disappoint me like a stream that goes dry in the summer?”

A stream that goes dry in the summer=1749, יז‎םט, yez‎met, "be an entrepreneur and initiate."

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 15: Lord, let me have my revenge. The Number is 10296, קבץ‎ו‎, kabetzv, "collected griefs."

The etymology says these cannot be like that time someone wore Crocs in your presence or wide wale cordoroy, but the other times when things really, really hurt. Like on October 7, when there was loss of life, limb, or property and no one seemed to care a whole lot about it.

v. 16: You spoke to me and I listened. The Number is 10676, קו‎עו‎, "the line."

"Kou" (קוה) in Hebrew can refer to several concepts: a line, a measuring line, hope, or a cord.  It originates from the verb "qawa," meaning to collect, gather, or eagerly await. The different meanings stem from the idea of combining strands to form a strong cable, which then evolved into the concept of hope or a line. 

v. 17: I did not spend my time with other people having a good time. The Number is 8980, ףטף‎, pat, "a stalemate."

The only way to break a stalemate according to the Zohar is with a Midrash, a scientific investigation. We know better than to tolerate bullshittery of the kind the religious people traffic and are willing to kill for, but we haven't learned. They have to be stopped, and here is how:

"The noun תף (top) describes a drum or tambourine (Genesis 31:27, Exodus 15:20, 1 Samuel 10:5). Drums were used to imitate the sound of things breaking (see פתת, patat, above). It may not be obvious to the modern reader why the sound of things breaking might have been attractive to the ancient Israelites, but our word "science" closely relates to the similar Greek verb σχιζω (schizo), to break, split or divide. Ergo: the sound of things breaking is the sound of scientific investigation."

Catholics and Mormons, etc. hate Jews because they are closer to the truth of the fundamentals of existence, which include the woven tapestry between religion and scientific advancement. The Jewish approach will always be superior, and now that we know it envelopes the Gospels and the other significant works in the New Testament, their religion will become obsolete and future generations will no longer be subject to their oppressive nonsense.

v. 18: Why do I keep suffering? The Number is 11700, יא‎ן‎, yahan, "John", "the interlinear being."

All we need to do "tow the line" named above is spread God's grace. This is a beautiful planet and we love it here. There is no reason to spoil it because of a bunch of troglodytes. If we collect anything between now and the day we die, let it be utterly different from what they have in store for us.

The final Gemara is יז‎םט קבץ‎וקו‎עו‎ףטףיא‎ן, yez‎pat kabetz‎veku‎u‎ephtef ya‎han, "The pacemaker of the Garden has a leak in it."

[xxdreamscapes]

diary 022625 | 11:40 am

I always felt like there was this double standard that specifically applied to me in friendships

I noticed how people were allowed to be loud, abrasive, & expressive. Trigger-happy even. But when it came down to me, in the rare moments I needed support, it was somehow always *too much* or never the right time.

I’ve known people to raise their voices or bully/intimidate others into submission, and that was somehow fine. People who were picky about restaurants, about saying certain phrases, or about specific triggers (only ones that applied to them). People who threw tantrums about their family and sibling issues, dumping all of their problems onto me; rejecting any solutions or compromises to any given situation. These people could bitch and moan and drone, on and on, about their privileged lives and opportunities, or constantly ruminate about their ex partners or friendships, but somehow my situations were always too intense. Barely. 

They were allowed to be needy. They were allowed to seek praise. They were allowed to be angry, or jealous, or petty. None for me. God forbid, I want anything for myself and to not be anybody’s parent :)

This is the problem with assigning people labels about their personality. It means that we aren’t allowed to be complex, nuanced individuals with a wide array of emotions. We have the whiny, dramatic, crybaby friend. The angry, brash friend. The stoic, peaceful one. The wholesome one. The hot one. The funny one. The cute one. The smart one. You get the picture. What happens when we don’t fit these archetypes? People don’t know how to react. There’s no convenient script to follow.

For the longest time I think I was unfairly expected to be able to handle all of my own issues because I was "so resilient" and "didn't need anybody". Bullshit. Everyone else leaned on me for moral support, vent sessions, and unpaid therapy. I questioned why they got a full support system out of me when they struggled to return the kindness. Even at my worst, I still made the time to be present with and listen to my friends. But when it's me, when I'm experiencing hardship or insecurity, I get the boot. I'm not built like you bitches. You wouldn't last a day experiencing what I did on the daily. Thank god I'm out of those situations.

It’s privilege to be able to act out and feel the full extent of your emotions. To not have to filter or bypass what you’re going through because someone else is apparently going through a harder time than you are. Fuck that.

I was rarely ever allowed the room to be human. To fully express myself without fear of judgment. Now I’m free. Free from dead-end relationships and fair-weather friendships. Free from the burden of unfair expectations. Free from the hypocrisy and free from all the things that cause me unnecessary strife. 

I realize now that a lot of people just want sounding boards. It’s like everyone wants someone to listen to them, but then when it comes time to listen, that just isn't an option. People will only understand, and empathize with others, to the depths they’ve met themselves. I’ve known this since I was a teenager. I'll continue carrying it going forward.

For such a long time, I ran around thinking I was the issue in so many situations and dynamics. Not anymore. Ya’ll are messy as hell and too unwilling to own it. Get fucked honestly :)

˚₊‧˗ˏˋ ───────   ⋆｡ ﾟ☁���｡ ⋆ ─────── ˎˊ˗‧₊˚.

₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ ₊˚⊹♡ current vibe: "Hard Feelings" by Lorde

Sometime, almost two years ago now, a good friend helped me understand that everyone has their moments. It made me feel seen. It made me reflect on how I had to be everything for everyone, and the importance of saving a chunk of that for myself. It was one of the few times I’ve ever been acknowledged and given the grace to be human like everyone else. They gave me the space to feel what I was feeling while also maintaining healthy boundaries which I think, really strengthened our friendship in the end ♥︎

[spillmygutzzz]

Sitting here conflicted and trying to keep it together. If it were any other situation, I'd go to him and I'd just gut myself right there but I can't do that this time.

Maybe I've assumed something and made an idiot of myself but that doesn't change that I luv him- no it's not the same regard but it still means something, yeah? Idk

It kills me to see him like this knowing I can't just fix it. He thinks he's just this unlovable monster and I just wish for even a moment he could see thru my eyes. I wish he could see how kind and compassionate he is. He'll do anything for the ppl he luvs even if it tears him apart- even if it wears him down to nothing. Even when he barely knew me, he has always been there for me and I want to always be there for him.

All those things M has done just ring in my ears but I don't want to harp on it to everyone else. He's just done sm and after I defended him and said he was one of the few not being shit. He digs and pried at me for information on his partner that I wouldn't tell him. He claims he doesn't want to be seen as only wanting to talk to one person but how could anyone think anything but that when all he seems interested in talking abt is him or planning calls. That's what they all do, they only talk abt calls regarding him. It's frustrating. To cause a scene like that in front of someone u claimed to see as a friend but then make him feel like fking shit!? R u fking kidding me!?? To have the balls to bitch at me for how long it's been since u've talked to him as if I have control over that? As if I don't fking miss him too? As if it doesn't brutally rip out every vital organ I possess knowing its been weeks since I've heard from him and he's hurting and I can't fking fix it??? Saying u want me to talk to him becuz ur worried he's purposely staying away becuz he's lost feelings? God if I had a goddamn dollar for every time I've heard that yet u won't fking talk to him abt it. It's not fking fair to him. There's a fking difference between acknowledging it's unfair to think that and acknowledging it's unfair and then actually changing. Not just continously doing the same shit.

He's a goddamn person. He's compassionate and sweet and he'll do anything to help. He has a big heart that carries so much. He'd bleed himself dry if it'd help someone. I don't know how anyone could not care for him or luv him. He'll always have a place inside my heart. Even if there ever comes a time where he doesn't want me in his life, I will always hold a spot for him in my heart and I will always welcome him with open arms. I promised him I'd always be there for him and I meant it. For him to feel as if he needs to "prove" he's worth luv? He doesn't need to prove anything. He deserves luv.

U pry and pry and pry for anything abt him and u don't give him any personal space. U think I know what I know becuz I forced it out of him??? That's not how that works. He's fking worn down and tired and yet u can't find it in urself to be understanding over that. He's completely changed since dating u but u wouldn't know that. But I do. I know these things. I fking pay attention and I'm fking angry.

I put emphasis on him being my best friend. I notice when somethings wrong. He feels so deeply and he thinks its wrong but it isn't. He told me he feels more than he let's on, told me that a long time ago before we got closer and I always kept that in the back of my head becuz I knew that was a raw truth.

He told u he wanted to do something on his own and u still pressed and pushed to do it with him and then told me abt it after I had also told u he wanted to watch it alone. Telling me things he's told u as if I don't know but r u telling me just to tell me or to try and prove something? U get frustrated that he tells me things he won't tell u but have u ever thought for a second that instead of getting worked up over that, u should maybe give him time and space?

U sent me this long confession of feelings and nvr mentioned anything to him once. Were u going to tell him at all? U told Evan. Why not him? U claim he nvr tells u when he's ready to call when I knew for a fact that he tells u every little thing he does before calling to make sure that's okay and ur aware of everything. If it's such a problem then maybe u should fking say something. Oh wait. U don't. Instead u go to me abt it. For Christ's sake I couldn't tell u that I was getting to call him becuz I knew ud be all over that. U remind me how long its been since u called him but do u know how long it had been for me? I prioritized ur calls with him becuz that's all I hear abt from anyone over there regarding him and I wanted to make everyone happy.

I just dont know what to do anymore. I haven't even told him abt the feeling I got yet and I'm anxious to but I don't know when I'll get that opportunity but I'm scared to hurt him more than anything but I also don't want to keep it from him cuz it's starting to look like I was right.

But if he wants to see things thru, I won't stop him. I'm scared that call was the last one on one for a long time but it won't stop me from being there when he needs me. I care for him more than he'll ever know and I'm willing to wait for whenever I can talk to him again. I want him to be happy even if it means I'll be at a distance from him. It hurts thinking abt things going back to only hearing from him when he's talking to Michael with texts that have hours between them but at least I'll get to hear from him.

I'm so tired and I want to stop crying.

[artificialgrinder]

Snippet Game 🌻♡

Thanks for tagging me, @artificialortega you’re a real one! So I gotta go through my WIPs and search for parts that have the words I’ve been nominated. Then, post those snippets.  ⚠️ ⚠️SPOILERS AHEAD  ⚠️ ⚠️

Now, I don’t have any WIP’s available right now, so I guess I’ll try and post from the next few entries of Drag or Die! Anyway; my words are left, phone, annoy(ed) and why

Here we go

Left -  "Protecting your friend no matter what she’s done. Sign of a lovely person." Shangela noted, carrying a pile of books to sit with the others. "Not me, though. I would've just left it for everyone to see. Maybe then they'd take it up with her. I know she’s your friend, but I think that's just what she needs right now, honey."

Phone -  “They are very powerful, girl. Trust me. They're also all controlled. We detonate it through Brooke’s phone.” Tyra answered.

Annoyed -  Katya took an equal amount of time to check up on the different training groups, keeping track of their progress. Not that they needed much improvement. The only need for the training was to keep them focused and their skills sharp. She had the help of the other council members, each one passing her with a nod of the head and a simple “commander.” Those bitches. They knew it annoyed her. The first few times, it made her laugh. After a few more, it was okay. She’d smile.

Why -  “Well, why even bother with all the cheese? Maybe she could just approach her, have an honest conversation and then see where it goes from there.” God, Courtney was always the voice of reason. Where would they be without her? 

“Fuck that. You see, that is also cheese. In fact, that is even bigger cheese. Why don’t you have Adore sing a song too like we’re in some Disney Channel movie.” Willam protested, being the polar opposite to Courtney.

Okay! That was fun. I really hope yall avoided the spoilers. As for who should continue this train, I nominate @artificialcandycane @veronicasanders @thecollectionsof @artificiallita @madangel19 There’s other people I wanna tag but can’t for the life of me find their Tumblrs lol

Okay, waines. I asked a generator. Your words are remain, embrace, scream and childish

Have fun!  ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

[shigayokagayama]

incomplete list of weird/interesting manga-anime discrepancies

-you know the bit where they break into the girls highschool in episode 2? yea thats chapter 56. spliced into the middle of chapter 4. its supposed to go before the bit with the ghost family as a lead up to the mogami arc with mob starting to consider evil spirits as just as much “people” as living humans are. all things considered its kind of weird how well it fits its anime placement

-ritsu in the manga gets introduced in the same chapter as teru. you dont see mobs family at all for the first few chapters. infact i dont think his parents appear until like. chapter 25????? every interaction you see between mob and any of his family is completely made up for the anime

-in the manga during the claw arc instead of reigen sending them away all the lackeys just stood there awkwardly during the fight w the scars fdnjksndkjgnd

-mogami arc got GUTTED my god. the part where the fake psychics tried to murder minori got removed, shinras role in the arc got reduced to basically nothing, they move mogamiland ritsu to a bridge like 50 feet away instead of having him walk right over mob, mob only gets beat up like twice, the cat lives, the boxcutter bit is totally removed, the fight with the spirits is made a lot more abstract and less graphic. like im glad this one took the hit instead of the separation arc bc i cant imagine that arc ever being effective as one episode but wow.

-putting the “mob finding his family dead” thing at the end of the episode instead of in the middle of a chapter where it originally was was an objectively hilarious move

-rip the scene of teru outsmarting all three claw guys and saying “say old man have you ever been tortured before” unfortunately all scenes of teru being competent are not plot relevant and must die. also teru can make shadow clones

-hey remember those weird satellite people in claw keeping the viewer updated on where all the characters were in that infinite arc?

-mob with a gun.

-mob getting briefly knocked out while fighting toichiro and dimple possessing him then getting kicked out was replaced w toichiro just throwing him out the window or somethhing???

-toichiro saying that he only kept the super five around as spare batteries and draining serizawas power getting cut was a personal affront to me

-every single emotion mob cycled through in the anime got a 100% meter. the kid was super emotionally unstable in that fight

-that old man whos house they went to whos wraith made everyone asleep that they exorcised? yea they anime team made that up. they never went to his house in the manga, he just went to spirits and such for a shoulder massage

-manga reigen got 0 money for helping the yokai dude. it wasnt on the table. also most of the stuff he was saying was lifted from a video game serizawa played which he pointed out. also serizawa thought getting arrested was a type of spell

-takenakas general meanness was significantly toned down manga takenaka was a huge bitch

-in general the alien arc was a lot funnier in the manga? like the scene where reigen crashes they had reached a dead end on an extremely narrow path and were driving in reverse while tome and takenaka were screaming at each other in the back and inukawa was 5 seconds from snapping and killing everyone in the car. these might be my favorite pages in the entire manga they as so fucking funny

-originally when tome said she wouldnt keep climbing reigen suggested mob carry her with telekinesis (which horrified her) and mob said he was too motion sick to use his powers (obvious lie) but could carry her instead which got her to get up

-mezato asking mob to sign a t shirt for the psycho helmet cult in exchange for relationship advice got cut

-i cry every day that the sequence of ???% waking up didnt get animated it set a very different tone than the anime did. the anime was like. slow build up of dread. the manga was immediately bone deep horror i was literally sitting in my room yelling “WHAT???” over and over again at my computer as i clicked through it

-shigeo and mob conversation cut down significantly, all the references to the body improvement club being mob making a new self rather than embracing who he really is and being scared that all the friends hes made wouldnt like the real him removed </3

-the scene where reigen takes his shoes off is made a lot less somber and depressing. it feels less like “oh he knows hes going to die” and more like. triumphant? in the anime

-100% shigeo kageyama is an anime addition they added specifically to ruin my “the first time we see mob 100% is to fight dimple and the last time is to stop himself from fighting dimple” observation

-anime teru generally seems like hes in a better place than manga teru? manga teru seems very melancholy and like he doesn’t really know what to do with his life or his place in the world (which seems to put shigeo off) but anime teru is like wanna go shopping ^_^ *sips tea happily*

-manga shigeo deliberately threw the cake directly in reigens face and my fury over them making this ambiguous will last until i am dead

[piratefishmama]

Crashed the wedding, Part 7

Eddie had no grand speech prepared, he had nothing, his whole job was to wing it, which was probably a good thing because anything he’d have prepared to say, would have flown right out of the metaphorical window when he saw Steve.

He’d only just managed that witty quip as he Aragon’d his way through those doors, all the breath just taken right out of him god he was still as beautiful as the day Eddie left, nine years hadn’t touched him at all. His hair still impossibly perfect, even though he’d clearly not put much effort into it for the day, his glasses still made him look like the cutest pre-school teacher ever, and the moles.

Lord have mercy on his poor soul, the moles. He was too gay for this. He just wanted to skip everything, get directly to wrapping Steve up in the cosiest of sweaters, and handing him the tastiest mug of hot cocoa like he deserved, and just cuddling him for the rest of his life.

“E-Excuse me sir, we hadn’t actually gotten to that part yet” The reverend’s voice hesitantly cut through the silence that seemed to carry on for way longer than intended. The man choosing not to mention that the senior Harringtons had instructed him to remove the offer to the guests to object from the ceremony speech citing that they wouldn’t need it.

“Yeah well, it’s not like I had a damn invitation to sit in and wait, did I?” Eddie snapped right back, shaking himself up. He had a job to do, a love of his life to rescue, and no goddamn idea as to how he was supposed to do that if Steve wasn’t reacting in any way other than just staring at him with wide-eyed, open-mouthed surprise.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Steve heard from his left, turning to find his father’s face had turned a curious shade of red in apparent anger. The man quickly turning his eye onto his son hissing “did you have something to do with this?” At him. God Steve wished. He’d have given anything to have had the courage to just pick up the damn phone and call Eddie before all this shit went down.

Nine goddamn years, he wished he’d have picked up the phone each and every single day, but he hadn’t, too many missed calls, too many excuses for him to keep trying, he’d been so sure that Eddie had just… moved on, convincing himself more and more with each failed attempt to stay in touch that maybe… maybe it was just for the best.

Eddie was famous, for something good… besides the shit that happened during Vecna’s little bitch fit, Eddie hadn’t stepped a toe out of line in nine whole years, no scandals, no drug addiction stories, no compromising paparazzi shots in the papers, he sang his songs, played his nerd games, he showed up as ‘Metal Santa’ at Children’s hospitals with the other bandmates dressed as goofy elves, giving out toys all out of his own pocket, he helped out at soup kitchens on the weekends when he wasn’t busy, did charity auctions of random shit for troubled youth charities, he was good. The only time he’d had an issue was early ’88 with a mild drinking problem but Dustin knocked some sense into him on that one and he’d cleaned up his act by September the same year.

He looked mean and scary sometimes, but nobody, not a single person could ever accuse him of being anything but good. Steve was just… Steve.

A man going nowhere, stuck in his hometown with nothing to offer him. It’d been so easy to convince himself to just stop trying. Eddie didn’t need him, Eddie probably didn’t want him, he could have anyone, why would he want him?

Steve didn’t answer his father, instead turned back to the intruder, a smile fighting at the corner of his lips as he witnessed the man telling one of the bride’s huffy aunts to pipe the fuck down. “Eddie? The hell are you doing here?” How could he let his mind force him to doubt when Eddie was right there as if he’d heard that one wish Steve had spoken only in his mind.

“Rescuing you, sweetheart, can’t say I’m the most impressive of cavalry but at least I look good, which is more than I can say for your bride, yikes ma’am you just faceplant into a cake made up entirely of makeup this morning? Not a good look, I can see where the foundation meets the rest of your neck. One word, blend.” Liar, she looked flawless, but the outraged gasp of an offended bride was worth it. The shit stirring little fucker. “It will change your life.”

“Steven—” Harriet huffed, turning to her groom expectantly “aren’t you even going to—”

“No.” Steve immediately cut her off with a short, snort of a laugh, eyes still on Eddie as the man approached, his bride immediately turning to her parents to loudly complain about the interruption, Steve tuned her out completely, he’d tuned everything out, focusing entirely on Eddie “you could have worn a shirt, man.”

“And miss the warm Indiana breeze on my nip? I think not Steven.” Steve scrunched up his nose in distaste “Stevie? Steve-o, Ooh, ooh… Estebe?”

“That means Stebe and you know it means Stebe.”

“I know but you always thought it was cute.” He was within reaching distance now, so close he could touch him, could touch him to ensure he was real, that he hadn’t just hallucinated his way through his forced vows.

“I only thought it was cute cause you actually thought it meant Steve.” He reached, Eddie’s smile widening, only for it to drop, his eyes sharpening in barely concealed rage as Harrington Sr. grabbed the arm reaching out toward Eddie.

“Don’t even think about it, Steven. You will inform your brief, and unfortunate lapse in judgement that you were mistaken, that it meant nothing, and you’re marrying Miss Reid, do not make me remind you—”

“Sit the fuck down Harrington, nobody pulled your string.” Eddie snarled leaning in close enough for the man to release his grip in surprise.

“Eddie… he’s right, I—I have to.”

“No, no you don’t, I see nobody we know here Steve, your friends, your family they’re not here… why? Why aren’t they here Steve… on what should be the happiest day of your life, why did Nancy have to shoot a security guard in the arm just to get me in?”

“Nance did what?” Was that what that noise was?

“Surprised you didn’t hear the gunshot. Karen wheeler practically shoved this monkey suit on me and shoved me out the damn door in hopes I could get you out of this, the only reason the others aren’t here is because these assholes did well enough to have it clash with everything going on in their lives.” Not him though, Eddie would have abandoned a whole damn tour, he’d have cancelled mid-gig, if necessary, Steve needed him. He needed them. “What’s stopping you from walking out of that door right now, baby? What’s doing that?”

He saw that crack in Steve’s already crumbling resolve at the soft use of an old pet name, such a simple, generic little name but it always made Steve just a little weak hearing it from Eddie. “Eddie—Eddie I’m… I can’t…”

There were whispers, people had stood up to get a closer look, nobody in that church recognised Eddie, as famous as he was, he wasn’t their kind of famous. Eddie paid them no mind, taking those last few steps, using what little courage he had left to reach up and skim his calloused fingers along that perfect jawline, thumb caressing the soft cushion of his cheek just below where his glasses perched. “You can, baby boy… my sweet little prince, you can walk right out of here with me… whatever it is Steve, we can deal with it, money? Baby I have more in pocket change than your family’s entire net worth combined, including the shit in those offshore accounts ol John here doesn’t think anyone knows about it.” Steve’s father leaned a fraction backwards in surprise, how the fuck did Munson know about that? He could move all he wanted, Eddie wasn’t paying attention to him, his soft eyes were on Steve, watching as the man let his own drift shut, leaning into the palm cupping his cheek. “Hawkins? Sweetheart… I got here in a day, I flew first class, very fancy, if anything happens, we’ve got it, we can be back here so fast whatever that freaky-ass place throws at us, we’ll be ready for it same as always… so what is it, big boy, what’s stopping you?”

Steve let his eyes open halfway, taking in the man in front of him “I’m not worth it Eddie… just… just go, it’s okay… I’ll be fine, m’always fine” so why did that smile look so sad “…I’m not worth what you’d lose if I were to leave.”

Part 9

[zuffer-weird-girl]

Dealing with a cockroach 🪳

"Hey love? Could you please grab the flour? I think the cake batter is missing something out..." You mumbled as Dabi only hummed before kissing your temple and started searching for the half bag of flour tied up by a scrunchy. Only to not find it...

"Dabs?"

"Chill out doll I'm looking for it..." he mumbled while pushing all of the things aside to only smirk to himself at finally finding it "You know... you could add some sugar on it too doll."

"You're going to have diabetes with how much you love sugary things..." You deadlanned as he stood up with the bag on his hand.

"Is not like is a serious issue due to my-" He stopped dead on his words as you widened your eyes at the moment he went to close the cabinet a cockroach made its way out and seemed to stare at you both for a solid 5 seconds.

You screamed at the top of your lungs as the cockroach finally moved and Dabi widened his eyes at the high pitch sound of your screaming before setting his hand on fire while the other grabbed a knife.

"DABI DONT YOU DARE-!"

"Get back here you fucking-!" He threw the knife at the ground, missing the cockroach for a just a little as you mentally slapped your face at the man chasing a cockroach with a knife and almost set your apartment on fire.

He finally caught the cockroach by his own hands as he glared at it for a bit before toasting it.... without mercy. Smiling and muttering something about "See what happens when you step into my territory bitch?"

"Gross ..." You gagged at the sign as he stared at you with a unamused look.

"What? Is dead now see? Barbecue of cockroach." He wiggled the corpse while walking towards you as you cringed.

"If you step closer to me with that thing I'm going to slap you." You growled as he moved closer while smirking.

You slapped him and he finally threw the dead cockroach on the trash outside of the apartment only to groan at you demanding for him to wash his hands.

"No cake for you you asshole."

"WHAT?"

Don't take his sweets away from him, he gets grouchy.

"I swear." You sighed "This is unnecessary... who the hell cleans their entire house after only three days Kai? Three DAYS."

Your boyfriend only blinked at you before continue to place the cleaning producst out of the cabinet.

"You're going to ignore me? Is that it?" You huffed when he stood up and handed you a dust mop with an arched eyebrow. "Asshole."

"Language." He sighed as he adjusted his black mask over his face as he grabbed the broom "Besides, is not only you. I'm helping it as well aren't I?"

"Only because you say you know how to clean it better and because all the precepts are on vacation..." You smirked at his scoff before you kissed his masked cheek "Fine you lil germophobic. But you better compensate me with this."

"You signed up for this when you wanted to date me though." He mumbled in a manner of fact as you snorted and went to the windows of your shared room as he went to your personal bathroom.

He was so distracted on cleaning the sink that only after he finished... he took notice of the roach without a care climbing on the toilet seat.

"..."

"..."

.

.

You let out a confused sound as you saw your boyfriend slowly exiting the bathroom... his hives all over his arms and some on his face while he furiously scratched them... and you widened your own eyes at seeing your capo, who usually had no fear of anything, sweating.

"Kai oh my God you look like you saw a ghost hun what happened in there?" You slowly touched his shoulders only for him to flinch "Oh God did I forgot to flush it?"

He violenty shaked his head while still looking at the bathroom. You furrowed your eyebrows before going to the bathroom and seeing the cause of your boyfriend's distress... you peeked a look at him at seeing him still scratching at his arms.

"A cockroach?"

"Do you know how many diseases those things carry?" He managed to speak in a low voice, a tint of panic and anger on his voice, as he continue to scratch.

"Did it touched you?"

"Of course not."

"Then why are you..." You took one last look at your boyfriend before sighing and grabbing a paper and a cup and somehow managing to cage the roach and getting out of the bathroom and later threw it outside of the gate of the yakusa house.

"There you go." You came back after washing your hands and seeing your boyfriend sitting on the edge of the bed taking deep breaths. "Hey, is out right now... you can relax love."

"We're going to stay at a hotel. I'm going to call the exterminators and this fucking house will be in quarantine until further notice."

"Kai come on..."

Simple to say you two were in a luxury hotel for about 2 week and Kai Chisaki was traumatized to the point of threatening the hotel staff that if he found a single cockroach or rat on that place he would tear the building and their corpses apart.