#I want to see both succeed in their own way and if a story has a FiM in it then I'm all the more happy to see MC and a villain get along

[yanderedrabbles]

Imagine being a lady out in the Wild West, mayor's daughter, preacher's niece, something good and proper. All tight laced and demure on Sundays, sweet and pretty all week 'round.

You got plenty of admirers. Cowpokes drifting through your small town who promise themselves that the second they've got more than dirt to their name, they're coming back to marry you. Traders and tradesman who see you in your Sunday best and think how sweet it would be to have you waiting at home for them. And others too. Men with too sharp eyes and hats kept low. They think about you too, but always at night. Always with one hand slick.

You've got plenty of folk with eyes on you, but no real suitors. Whoever your guardian is, they've got high standards. Maybe your father is hoping for a good political match, or your uncle is looking for a God fearing man. Either way, you're untouchable. Untouched.

Well, until you ain't.

Maybe the man who takes you is one of those hard eyed drifters, with a mean mustang and an even meaner right hook. A crook in everything but name. Maybe he doesn't work alone, and it's a whole pack of them who grab you straight out of your backyard, hands pressed against your mouth so hard they leave bruises on your cheeks.

Either way, they've got just about one thing on their mind. And they don't want to be interrupted.

They take you out to the desert, or out into the deep woods, or far into the canyons. Somewhere lonesome. Somewhere they can take their time with you.

Maybe they succeed. Get to keep you all to themselves. A prize too sweet for men like them, a little missy who would always be out of reach if they didn't take matters into their own hands. Their hands are rough with labour - wrangling and gunslinging and digging graves for folk that wouldn't otherwise need them. And rough with you, too. Skimming up your thighs, prying them apart...

That's what folk would call a bad ending. Would shake their heads over and secretly pray that it never happens to one of their girls.

Maybe they succeed. Or maybe, just maybe... they don't.

See, the sheriff of your town is a hard man. White hat always clean, badge always shiny, but his gun is nicked with use, his spurs dull with hard riding. And when he hears what happened, it ain't long before he's on your trail. Pushing his stallion until it's frothing under the saddle. Hoping to get to you before night time. Before the sun goes down and the lust comes out.

He finds you easy enough, but it's just him against a gang and that ain't no easy win. He watches them from a distance, from up on the canyon maybe, or from between the thick trees. Sees you sitting at their campfire, hands and feet tied, pretty white dress stained with mud.

He sees that and thinks how he'd rather eat lead than see them stain the rest of you so dirty.

It ain't easy. It takes planning, skill. He lures them out one at a time and picks them off. Knife between the ribs, arrow straight through the neck, a wire pulled taught and tight around their throat. Until it's just him and the leader left - the man who chose to take you, the one who'd have gotten the prime cuts when it came to butchering your innocence.

It could go either way at this point. The sheriff ain't no slouch but the gunslinger is younger, hungrier. Folk would say the good guy should win, that justice ought to come out on top, and that you deserve your happy ending. But the truth is that they're both rotten to the core.

'Cause it ain't duty that made the sheriff ride his horse lame trying to get to you. No. It's love, of the kind just as perverse as the outlaw's. Only difference is that the sheriff has a whole society of rules and laws and expectations to keep him in check. And out here? Well, they just don't apply.

If the outlaw wins, the story ends pretty simple. He keeps you, has his way with you. Ruins you. Tucks you away in his hideout for only him to enjoy.

But I don't think that's what happens. The sheriff might not have the other man's speed, but he's got experience, age, years of watching cocksure young men giving themselves away when they go for their guns too early. He puts a bullet right in the other man's heart and steps over his body to get to you.

You're shaking, crying so hard that your gag is soaked through. Looking up at him so thankful that he wants to fuck you right then and there.

He cuts through your ropes and you hug him, not caring one bit that it ain't something a proper lady would do. He kneels on one leg and let's you cry into his shirt, voice all weak and sweet as you thank him.

"They was gonna do such awful things sheriff. Kept tellin' me how good it would be for me, but they kept touching me. Sheriff, I was so scared."

If he could, he'd kill them all over again. Instead he just holds you. Ignores the age gap between you, ignores how it ain't the proper thing to do.

"I'm here darlin'. And ain't no one gonna lay a finger on you again, you hear?"

You nuzzle into his neck, hiccuping. And God, it feels good to hold you. He's too old for you - hair going grey at the temples despite him still being lean with muscle. He's too jaded and mean for you - how can he be a good match for such an innocent thing when his hands are soaked in blood? He knows, but he just doesn't care.

Just scoops you up in his arms and carries you to his horse.

If there's one thing you ain't realised, it's that the sheriff is about as sly as he is mean. When he takes you home, he'll probably take your guardian aside for a quiet word. Lie straight through his teeth and tell them he was too late, that you were ruined before he got there.

He'll watch them go pale, watch the cogs turning. Who will want you now? And when he sees that awful realisation on their face, that's when he goes in for the kill.

Puts his hat over his heart and says he's so ashamed that he wasn't faster. That he couldn't save your innocence and your life both. That if your pa would give his blessing, he'd be more than happy to take you as his wife.

It's not the match they wanted for you. He's not a great political ally and he sure as hell ain't a God fearing man. But who else will have you once the rumours start flying?

And when they tell you, you're too shaken to object. Too indebted to the law man to wonder what he said to make them suddenly so amenable.

It's a nasty trick to pull. A theft almost as bad as your kidnapper's. You're too good for a dog like him, but he'll be damned 'fore he let's you get away. Rabid dogs sink their teeth in and never let go, didn't nobody ever tell you that sweetheart?

And on your wedding night, when he claims his reward from between your thighs, you slowly start to realise that honour isn't as easily found as you once thought, that a badge doesn't make a man good. He'll probably look up at you from between your legs, his lips and stubble shiny with your wetness. Smirking like a wolf who got locked in the pen with the whole helpless flock.

In the end, you only have yourself to blame. I tried to tell you he was rotten.

[quietstormxr]

Forgotten

Pure, unadulterated angst.

Reader x ?

Poll Results: Reader x Xaden Riorson

A/N: Fourth Wing Spoilers, Mentions of depression

Word Count: 1.7k

Trying something different and asking for y'alls input. There will be a poll at the bottom for you to participate in the story if you're interested.

Tomorrow, Always Tomorrow - Home

You watch as they rally around her. The way they are now busy watching her every move. Training her at every opportunity. They even made her a damn saddle for her dragon. They constantly train her on the mat, design daggers for her hands and strength. 

Staring at the blazing fire in the common room, you slowly watch your surroundings and the comings and goings. But no one knows you’re there. 

You’re invisible.

Not only to those who you thought cared about you, but also thanks to your signet. You huff a laugh as you mask yourself in the alcove that you’ve come to claim as your own. 

All you must do is survive for a few more days before you’re free from them all. Free from any eyes looking for you, free from expectations, from them.

You always knew that you weren’t a priority. You always faded to the back of conversations, the back of the room. Left to your own devices, you let the resentment fester, the feeling of not being worthwhile. 

No one ever described what a bond breaking between a dragon and a human felt like, but you could feel the way your dragon’s voice seemed to start feeling like it was underwater. The communication line between the two of you seeming to be drowning, the same way you felt yourself breaking apart at the seams. 

As you arrived in formation when the alarms went off, you kept to yourself and your eyes straight ahead. Nothing in your mind registered anymore. The only thing behind your eyes was the festering of relentless anger.

As you go to leave formation and gather your things, you feel a tug on your arm. You look back to see Imogen tapping your shoulder. 

“Xaden wants you for the headquarters squad.” You raise your eyes to hers and give a tight nod, nothing showing in your eyes.

While packing your things, you can’t help but wonder if you could just walk away from it all. If they think you’re dead, it wouldn’t matter at this point. With a plan forming in your mind, you pack everything that you deem important and leave the rest of your things behind. You close the door, not leaving a note or anything to find. You’ll either succeed in your plan or you’ll face a punishment you won’t return from.

You head to the flight field. Your dragon waits behind all the others. You huff a laugh at the fact that even your dragon knows how much you just want to fade into the background of it all. 

You may not want to listen or watch the comradery of those you used to consider friends or even a lover, but you make sure to keep your eyes sharp. You watch as everything unfolds in front of you, until you watch as Xaden and Garrick stride towards you.

“I assume Imogen told you that you’re coming with us.” Xaden says, no pretense of niceties in sight. 

“Yes.” Succinct. Final. There’s nothing more to say. 

Both look at you seeming to take in the stone of your appearance, most likely confused by your lack of warmth they were so used to seeing. They exchange a look, but Xaden nods to you and strides away. You watch as they both stride towards Liam and Bodhi, all of them collectively looking back towards you. Even though you are eager to lash out at them, yell, scream, and cry, you just look back with a look of impassivity. 

“Headquarters squad, let’s go.” Xaden calls as he mounts Sgaeyl. 

You fly at the back of the riot, which your dragon does willingly. There’s no need for you to voice your feelings towards those in front of you when your dragon is already well aware. 

The way you lag behind the others has you touching down at the lake about ten minutes after everyone else. As soon as you do, you’re met with a scene that causes you to snort in derision. 

Of course Sorrengail wasn’t going to react well to things that were kept from her. You knew that from just watching the way the girl had treated her friends. Everyone is so preoccupied with the scene in front of them, they don’t realize you’ve landed. 

Forgotten again.

The pattern is now almost comical. You watch, still mounted as Xaden tries to reason with Sorrengail, Liam trying to prove his friendship, Bodhi and Garrick waiting hesitantly.

Soon enough, it seems Xaden has calmed the little scribe down and everyone is mounting again. No one even realizes that you weren’t even aware of the gryphons either. No one tries to reassure you; you just must reassure yourself.

Once at Athbyne, you search the empty barracks on your own and honestly can’t believe your luck. The plan you have may just be easier to pull off than you ever thought. 

While you’re exploring the rooms of the outpost, it seems the group has come to a decision to fight. As you make your way up to the wall where everyone is standing, you listen as Sorrengail goes into details on the venin you’re about to face. 

Without caring to hear more, you turn and head back to your dragon. You’ll still execute your plan, but there’s no way that you’re going to leave innocent people out there to die. If you do, then you’re no better than anyone back at Basgiath. 

As you sweep the perimeter of town, you’re met with a sight that breaks your own heart. A child has been left behind in the mess of confusion and fleeing. A little girl crying, curled up in a ball, wailing somone’s name to save her. 

You can’t help the tears that swim in your eyes feeling like you’re watching yourself break into a million pieces. 

You command your dragon to land and immediately pick up the girl. You begin running towards the mine where the rest of the townspeople are but stop in your tracks. Eyes flaring wide, you watch the venin completely drain Soleil and her dragon. 

You turn again and sprint as fast as you can with the girl in your arms back to your dragon. You mount and command your dragon to bring you to where the rest of the townspeople are being gathered. 

Once there, you bring the little girl to a woman who has her arms out and seems to be shouting the little girl’s name. Watching as she is now cradled and being comforted, you turn your back on the scene and take a deep breath. All you want is someone to comfort you like that. No, not just someone. One specific person. 

You shake your head at the thought that causes your heart to crack open.

When you bring your head up, you’re met with red eyes and a shock of tattered purple robes.

“Such pain for such a young person.” The male voice hisses in a raspy voice that sounds like a distorted rumble.

You can’t hide the flash of recognition at the words that settle in your mind. 

“Why don’t you take all of that pain and channel with me?” He says while beginning to circle around you.

Looking around, you realize that you’re alone. There aren’t any other riders or fliers in this area.

“You can show them what real power looks like and show them you aren’t one to be forgotten.” The words he’s spitting begin to swirl in your mind. The thought of being able to be powerful and not just a shell that’s been rejected hitting you square in the chest.

You shake your head trying to escape the hold that the venin’s words have seemed to settle in your mind. 

“I won’t be controlled. By you or any power.” You spit through clenched teeth, trying to bite back from the hold that you can’t seem to shake from your mind.

“Your spirit is fierce. It would be so pleasant to break you.” The venin continues. 

You find yourself reaching for the sheath that was given to you months ago with instructions not to use unless absolutely necessary. You suppose this situation would render it’s use necessary. 

You double over with the sheer amount of power that the venin seems to be plying towards you. Without overthinking, you grab the hilt of the dagger and fling it. Your aim is the one thing you’ve never questioned about yourself and as you expect, it finds it home in the chest of the venin. 

The creature’s eyes seem to blaze with the fury that you were able to best him. You find yourself crawling backwards trying to get as far away as possible.

Suddenly the din of the battle still going on around you crashes back into your mind. You look up to see dragons locked in battle, to your left and right civilians are still running for cover. Realizing that your own dragon’s focus is taken helping Deigh eviscerate a wyvern, you know this is when you have to make your decision. 

You take a steadying deep breath, trying to calm yourself from the interaction with the venin. As soon as you feel your heartbeat return to something a little more normal, you’re off. You swing your pack on your back as you run. With one look back, you feel like your entire being is breaking, but you just can’t imagine staying anymore. 

A slight panic tries to break through your thoughts, it must be your dragon knowing what you’re about to do. However, as you continue running, you feel your dragon’s connection growing thinner and thinner. There’s no reason to devote much thought to it as you keep going, if you die away from your dragon, so be it. No matter what, from now on it will be on your terms. 

You steal into a thick cover of forest and throw your bag down. You slide down the trunk of a tree and collapse into a tired heap. At this point, the sun has crested on the horizon and night is beginning to set. Your mind can’t help but wonder if anyone has even realized that you’re gone. The last thought you have before sleep finds you is that your dragon can find a new and worthy rider.

[jasethegooberton]

Could you tell/show us more about up!Sonadow breakup and what the circumstances were and how that affects their relationship as doctor and patient now?

Okay, so I wanted to try writing a different kind of dynamic first and foremost. Shadow, in canon, is a character who does care for others but just has a hard time showing it or expressing it through words. But, that kinda stems from the positive influences he had in his life.

So, I just thought one day "What if he never got to really be friends with Maria and was only surrounded by scientists who had only their own interests in mind?"

The Shadow in this au would be very cynical because of his upbringing and has a hard time comprehending the value of basic empathy. Sonic initially just befriends Shadow because he wanted to show him that life shouldn't be viewed in such a grim way. Long story short, he didn't really succeed. They did attempt to be a couple for a while, but Sonic understood just how stuck Shadow was in his mindset, so he left.

After their breakup, Shadow starts to learn to be more emotionally competent, but it’s more of a learned behavior than an organic change. Shadow becomes skilled at reading patients' emotions and responding in a way that is expected of him (calm and caring, yk the usual stuff) but it’s all surface-level. He doesn't necessarily feel empathy or sympathy, he's just developed a clinical, performative approach that makes him appear emotionally in tune.

Sonic, on the other hand, starts to become isolated (maybe his friends all go off to do their own thing and now he's the one who's stuck?). He's able to understand what Shadow was going through and he himself starts to fall into an unhealthy mindset, probably losing his usual spark and sense of self. That starts to affect his physical health as well, forcing him to visit Shadow more often for care.

Maybe there's some tension initially, but Shadow manages to convince Sonic he's changed and gotten better. When they start showing interest in each other again, I'm still not too sure but it wouldn't be immediate because I love a good slow burn. And whether it will remain one sided, I haven't made up my mind but yeah, Shadow is gonna take full advantage of the fact that Sonic is more like him now. He might help Sonic enough so that the blue boy is functional, but not enough to let him leave for good, you know? Maybe Sonic purposefully let's his health decline so he has an excuse to keep seeing a familiar face? Hmmmmmm

Basically, they're both bad for each other and I can't wait to watch them fall apart again >:)

~~~

That was a long ass rant but I just want to give you all a very clear idea of what I'm going for with this, since it's just a side au lol

[reflectionsofacreator]

[takes a long drink from my Arizona iced tea] so like one of the central themes for FFXV is like, growing up, sure. You know that, I know that, whatever. Coming of age, coming into your own, taking the mantle of king, whatever you wanna call it. Cool, awesome, we love a good coming of age story!

But I find the sub theme of that one to be probably the most fascinating? By and large, all the chocobros have to deal with the fallout of being lied to by the adult figures in their lives, and it's the most prevalent with Noctis and Gladio. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of it in Ignis and Prompto too, but the particularly insidious way that Noctis and especially Gladio were lied to sometimes gets me.

See I don't even really think it was actually all that intentional. Not really a conscious act by Regis and Clarus, or the society around them? More like... I dunno, the lies that you get told by your parents as a little kid and you grow up to realize that the world is a lot different than you thought.

That being said, Noctis was absolutely lied to by his father; both about the nature of the King of Light and the idea that he'd succeed Regis as reigning monarch. Regis did it out of love, knowing that Noctis would die young, and reasoned that Noctis should get to have a relatively normal life, but it was still a lie. Gladio, likewise, was lied to by his father and Regis, told that he would be the next monarch's Shield, that he would fulfill a role that's got a pretty set expectation in their society.

See, Gladio expects Noctis to act a certain way, to act as King, and he gets increasingly frustrated when Noctis doesn't, or can't live up to that. He's not precisely wrong to expect it either, given their roles and their statues, and knowing that they're taking the throne during a full blown war. The problem is that Noctis was never taught how to be the thing that Gladio was told Noctis was going to be? And that's what causes friction with them all the time. It's fascinating, watching it play out and realizing the underlying issues with their relationships actually have very little to do with them as people and instead because of what they were told to expect from each other.

Gladio is also his own kettle of fish that I don't think the narrative is quite self aware enough to articulate properly, or even get into. Gladio falls into the trap of toxic masculinity very often -- struggling to articulate his feelings, expressing most of his feelings as anger, picking fights rather than talking about what's going on, using his strength as both a character aspect and bonus, etc. The list goes on. There's also the fact that he's sort of portrayed as a bit of a womanizer and the masculine ideal; tall, rugged, strong, etc which plays into all of that. XV plays him very straight (and straight) with these concepts, and just sort of ... expects it to be fine? Which is at odds with how the other three bros interact and are more emotionally available towards each other, leaving Gladio as one of the weaker bros in canon.

It kind of sucks too, because like, there's so much to unpack with him? His DLC is about wanting to have the strength to protect Noctis on the surface, but really when you look at it... you could also argue that the DLC is about Gladio's fears that he'll end up as dead as his dad did (ha, try that for alliteration) and the crushing weight of failure. Gladio has every right to fear his mortality, fear the fact that he is, nominally, the first in line on the battlefield and the the last defense for Noctis. If Noctis is to die, they will go through him first, and that's! Scary! But the game doesn't really get into that, hardly at all, and it makes picking up the pieces for Gladio kind of frustrating. Out of all the bros, he's the one I have to dig the most to find any kind of depth despite being prime real estate for it.

Anyways Gladio and Noctis' dynamic is fascinating if you actually start to unpack it, especially because it's built on the lies that their fathers fed them as children (that they themselves also bought into). I'd go so far to argue that between the two pairs, Noct/Gladio is in much more of a dire need to sit down and actually hash out what they are to each other, outside of their king/shield dynamic. Noct/Iggy certainly has shades of that, but Ignis has decided that they are friends and that he will defy fate if he must, let the world burn if he must, to save Noct's life. That has some depth beyond king/retainer that they're presented as. Noct/Gladio are sort of just... falling into the king/shield dynamic because they're expected to, and it sort of hampers their relationship and their communication.

I'm gonna scramble them both like eggs, probably into an omelette. They make me Think you know

[samwinchesterism]

in re: “cas knows dean better than sam”

“cas sees dean as a whole person and sam just sees dean’s façade as his big brother slash parent” but like how and where. outside of your fanfiction. season and episode. scene and line. if it’s so obvious and apparent you should have at least 3-5 concrete examples right? “sam doesn’t know dean carried him out of the burning house” yeah but did cas? outside of a footnote in the angelic manila folder they gave him between seasons 3 and 4 so he could better manipulate him and sam into doing heaven’s bidding? like if you’re going to say “cas knows dean better than sam” than you need to show how cas succeeds where you perceive sam to be failing at the very least. but even your perceptions of how sam doesn’t measure up are so warped, blinkered, and moronic that it wouldn’t even be worth much if you could provide the textual evidence, but at least you’d have a semblance of a point. like say anything without going “as an eldest daughter…” “well my relationship with my sibling isn’t…” please say anything without fucking projecting your own self-pitying crybaby bullshit onto your little woobie dean and using the actual canon text of the show. I’m literally begging you.

like the thing of it all is and always has been that you’re so hell-bent on twisting the sam and dean relationship to fit into this narrow and almost entirely inaccurate mold which is the basis upon which you build the entire Destiel Mythos that you literally lose all sense of media literacy. you don’t even miss the forest for the trees, you miss the trees for like, the pretend invisible things you’re seeing in between the trees, the forest is a whole long way away from your current level of perception. because the Destiel Mythos is based entirely on the fact that dean is Not Seen and Not Appreciated and Not Loved and Cannot Be Himself until cas comes along, and that Family (read: sam) Is Only A Burden on Him That He Must Be Freed From In Order to Flourish, so you keep trying to warp the sam relationship into something that is only one dimension of it – and keep ignoring the ways in which dean is seen, loved and understood within it, because you need to keep lying to yourselves that there is a narrative need to emancipate dean from something that he has never wanted emancipation from because it is ultimately a net good for dean in the particular circumstances of their lives. it’s also profoundly unhealthy, codependent, evil and toxic etc. (a lot more dean’s fault than sam’s but I will nawt be getting into all that right now) but that doesn’t change the fact that sam and dean both know and understand and feel deeply that they are each other’s person – that they know the best and love the most in the world. but that – which IS true canon fact – is incompatible with the Destiel Mythos so it must be ignored and all good sense must be thrown out the window in order to do it.

anyway i digress there are two main categories of Bad Thinking that i will be addressing below

childhood/ “parent/child” / blah blah blah

every single thing people are saying in favour of the deeply stupid thesis in the title of this post is proof positive of the very silly form of ‘analysis’ I just described. a few things:

“wah sam didn’t know that dean carried him out of the burning house :( this means that dean withholds things from sam to protect him because he is a PARENT and sam can only know things about him in the context of him being a PARENT to him” – what the fuck are you on about genuinely. first of all reducing the sam/dean relationship exclusively to parent/child is in itself foolishness for so many reasons that I don’t have time for right now. but also, it’s clear that this is just something that happened when sam was a baby that just never came up. in the scene (1.09) where this is brought up, dean is mildly surprised that he or john never mentioned that detail and then states that sam knows the rest of the story (i.e. the actual traumatic stuff) just as well as dean does – which is true, demonstrably whenever they talk about it.

obviously there are some things that happened to dean in their childhood that sam doesn’t know about (or didn’t know about, until told in whatever episode they come up in). equally, there are things dean doesn’t know about sam’s childhood, e.g. the fact that he was so lonely he needed a zanna (11.08). or how dean didn’t remember that sam was friends with barry cook until he mentions it when they go back to their old school (4.13). or about the nature of sam’s relationship with amy pond (7.03). these don’t mean that ‘sam withheld these things to protect dean out of parental love’ lol, it’s just that there are details and events in each of their lives that the other happens to not have been told about.

similarly “sam didn’t even know dean wanted to be a firefighter L” girl did dean know sam wanted to be a lawyer? in 1.01 he’s pretty surprised that sam has a law school interview. the point here isn’t “neither sam nor dean know each other well,” these are minutiae that aren’t relevant to how well you know someone as a whole, and very poorly demonstrate the bad and inaccurate point that dean withholds things from sam the way a parent does a child (on a constant or regular basis). obviously the way they were raised, sam was deemed too young to know about certain things until he got older and dean had to keep that secret, but as shown in 3.08 flashbacks, most if not all of this is eventually revealed throughout their childhood when sam is still fairly young.

or possibly the dumbest one is that “wah sam doesn’t even know that dean reads books L” whenever that was he was also obviously joking because in more serious moments (e.g. 8.14) he admits that dean is smart/a better researcher than he is, literally remembers dean reading to him as a kid (8.21) so like. clam down  

one of the extra annoying variants of this type of ‘proof’ covers things that are very clearly novel pieces of information about dean that dean, sam, and the audience are learning about dean in real time. like if you’re actually watching the show to comprehend it as it was intended to be comprehended, instead of funnelling everything through the Destiel Machine until it’s unrecognizable slop that fits neatly into your pre-ordained molds that Make Destiel Necessary In the Narrative (when it actually isn’t, at all) it’s abundantly clear. the top two worst offenders:

“sam didn’t even know that dean is good with kids :( he doesn’t even realize that dean raised him :(” first of all you people need to understand that parentification does not literally create a parent-child dynamic between siblings but I digress – this doesn’t make any sense bro. in 1.03 dean admits he doesn’t know any kids as an adult. dean being good with his own kid brother when they were both kids is to any reasonable person not necessarily linked with him being good with other random kids when he’s an adult. in 1.03 it’s clear that dean himself is a bit surprised that he’s able to connect w/ lucas so well because he’s clearly not dealt with a lot of kids since sam grew up. the whole point of this is that dean, sam, and the audience are all sort of seeing a new side of dean. who again is just 26. after this very early episode, there’s no question from sam that dean is able to connect w kids. sam being a bit surprised by this also has absolutely zero connection with him not understanding or realizing that dean looked out for him when they were both kids – sam is standing there at 22 years of age talking about adult dean and children – of fucking course he doesn’t mean himself are you stupid.

from the very first season, sam is very clearly aware of everything dean ~did for him~ when they were kids, see e.g. 1.21: “Dean...ah...I wanna thank you. […] For everything. You've always had my back you know? Even when I couldn't count on anyone I could always count on you. And I don't know, I just wanted to let you know, just in case.”

and 1.06: DEAN: Well, I’m a freak, too. I’m right there with ya, all the way. (SAM laughs.) SAM: Yeah, I know you are.

and then possibly even more stupidly, the one where it’s like “wah sam doesn’t even know dean can cook :( he doesn’t even know that DEAN was the one making him food as a babe in arms :(” – when sam is surprised that dean made something fairly gourmet and from scratch literally the first time they have ever had a permanent living space with a functional kitchen. in this VERY scene (8.14), dean himself points out that they haven’t had a kitchen before and when sam remarks on the irregularity of him doing serious cooking, he says “I’m nesting”, clearly showing that this is a novel development because they now have a kitchen, and that it’s irregular relative to past behaviour – both of them acknowledge this. because real proper in-depth cooking and making box mac and cheese for sam until he was like 11 and old enough to be left alone are two different things, which sam understands because he’s smart, unlike whoever chooses to make this point. dean never showed significant signs of liking to cook before this, which is what the exchange is about, but he did have to prepare food for them both when sam was too young – of course sam knows he had to, there are childhood memories referred to (e.g. 14.11) where sam is mentioned to literally help dean do the cooking as kids lol (and yes, genius, sam says ‘I didn’t know you knew what a kitchen was’ or something to that effect, but if you think he’s being 100% literal there I have an oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you)

again, obviously there are pieces that sam doesn’t know about dean, e.g. when he’s talking about his response to mary dying in 1.03. but again, Sam is 22, dean is 26, the last time they were in regular contact was when sam was 18-20, these are things that happen when people grow up, they’re able to reflect and share on childhood experiences if they’re close with their siblings as adults. it’s clearly not something that 26 y/o dean wanted to hide from 22 y/o sam. yes sam didn’t know everything about how dean felt when they were young, but that’s equally true in the other direction, and it’s such an irrelevant point in this discussion when, crucially, sam does learn these things about dean mostly fairly early on in the series (i.e. when they’re really not that deep into adulthood yet). cas was also not magically blessed w/ knowledge about dean, he also had to learn whatever it is that he knows, but somehow sam has to know everything about dean from age 7 or it doesn’t count when it’s sam lol.

“sam doesn’t know the One True Dean / doesn’t see through his facades”

the next branch of defending this flawed thesis is invariably that sam has little idea of the fronts and facades that dean puts up and is content to just believe them, whereas cas digs deep and sees the One True Dean that stupid sam always misses. there is nothing in the text that demonstrates this is true. multiple times, we see sam being very knowing of the fact that dean puts up fronts and facades. sam is also knowledgeable of the way dean perceives himself, and – demonstrated in multiple episodes before such sam lines were very poorly recycled and regurgitated into cas’s dialogue in 15.18, but keep acting like that was the first time anyone ever showed that they knew the One True Dean.

Obviously there are times where sam teases dean when he’s being more touchy-feely than usual, but 9.99 times out of 10 (as a conservative estimate in case there's something i'm forgetting otherwise i would say every time) that’s very clearly coming from a place of knowing the real dean vs. the façade he puts up because that’s the whole joke. and it’s allowed to be a joke because they’re siblings and that’s what siblings do lol. esp since sam and dean have touchy feely moments at the end of like every episode.

examples of all of the above off the top of my head (there are more than these, but these are the ones I can think of):

2.02 (about John’s death)

Sam: “I mean this ‘strong silent’ thing of yours, it's crap. […] I'm over it. This isn't just anyone we're talking about, this is Dad. I know how you felt about the man.”

Dean: “You know what, back off, all right? Just because I'm not caring and sharing like you want me to.”

Sam: “No, no, no, that's not what this is about, Dean. I don't care how you deal with this. But you have to deal with it, man. Listen, I'm your brother, all right? I just want to make sure you're okay.”

2.03 (Sam to Dean, also about John’s death): “You know, you slap on this big fake smile but I can see right through it. Because I know how you feel, Dean. Dad's dead. And he left a hole, and it hurts so bad you can't take it, but you can't just fill up that hole with whoever you want to. It's an insult to his memory.”

Note that Dean essentially admits that Sam is right in these two instances in 2.04 bc I know yall have stupid shit to say about john too that has nothing to do with how anyone actually felt about him in canon

3.07 (about Dean’s demon deal – also proven true in later episodes)

SAM: Dude, drop the attitude, Dean. Quit turning everything into a punch line. And you know something else? Stop trying to act like you're not afraid.

DEAN: I'm not!

SAM: You're lying. And you may as well drop it 'cause I can see right through you.

DEAN: You got no idea what you're talking about.

SAM: Yeah, I do. You're scared, Dean. You're scared because your year is running out, and you're still going to Hell, and you're freaked.

DEAN: And how do you know that?

SAM: Because I know you! […] Yeah, I've been following you around my entire life! I mean, I've been looking up to you since I was four, Dean. Studying you, trying to be just like my big brother. So yeah, I know you. Better than anyone else in the entire world. And this is exactly how you act when you're terrified. And, I mean, I can't blame you. It's just […] I wish you would drop the show and be my brother again. 'Cause... (can't find words; tears in his eyes) just 'cause.

5.18 [Sam figures out what Dean is doing re: his plan to let Michael possess him, tracks him down, and eventually is the catalyst for Dean ‘making the right call’, which he predicts] – e.g.:

SAM: No, you won’t. When push shoves, you’ll make the right call

DEAN: You know, if tables were turned…I’d let you rot in here. Hell, I have let you rot in here.

SAM: Yeah, well…I guess I’m not that smart.

DEAN: I—I don’t get it. Sam, why are you doing this?

SAM: Because… you’re still my big brother.

8.14 (basically the o.g. version of whatever went on in 15.18 + sam intrinsically understanding the trials are a death wish for dean): “I'm closing the gates. It's a suicide mission for you. I want to slam hell shut, too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live, and so should you. You have friends up here, family. I mean, hell, you even got your own room now. You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't – I am. But it's there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it. […] I AM smart, and so are you. You're not a grunt, Dean. You're a genius – when it comes to lore, to – you're the best damn hunter I have ever seen – better than me, better than dad. I believe in you, Dean. So, please – please believe in me, too.”

10.22 (understanding how much dean has ~done for him~)

SAM: I'm saving my brother.

CASTIEL: You told Dean—

SAM: —I know what I told Dean. Cas, look. I've been the one out there, messed up and scared. And alone. And Dean—

CASTIEL: He did whatever he could to save you.

SAM: Yes. I mean, it's become his thing. I owe him this. I owe him everything.

10.23 (basically the o.g. version of whatever went on in 15.18, x2 – from Sam to Dean): “You were also willing to summon death to make sure you could never do any more harm. You summoned me because you knew I would do anything to protect you. That's not evil, Dean. That's not an evil man. That is a good man crying to be heard, searching for... some other way. […] You will never, ever hear me say that you -- the real you -- is anything but good.”

11.13 (Sam understanding exactly how Dean feels about Amara being his ‘deepest desire’, and confirming that it doesn’t make him a bad person)

Dean: Why? Because if she is that means that I’m…

Sam: Means you’re what? Complicit? Weak? Evil?

Dean: For starters, yeah.

Sam: Dean. Do you honestly think you ever had a choice in the matter? She’s the sister of God, and for some reason she picked you and that sucks, but if you think I’m gonna blame you or judge you…I’m not.

Dean: You know that I want her ass dead.

Sam: Yes. Of course. And I know you’ve also probably beaten yourself up a hundred times over it, but where has that gotten us? (Long silence) Just how bad is it?

13.02 (Sam perfectly explaining Dean’s psyche to Jack)

JACK: Is that why Dean hates me?

SAM: Dean doesn’t hate you. It… Look, sometimes the wires in Dean’s head get crossed and—and he gets frustrated, and then he mixes frustration with anger, and—and fear.

JACK: Why would he be afraid?

SAM: Because Dean feels like it’s his job to protect everyone. And right now, we need to protect you. But we may also need to protect people from you.

14.03 [Sam assesses Dean’s psychological/emotional response to the Michael possession; end of episode, Dean confirms that Sam’s assessment was fully accurate]

14.10 [Sam is the only one able to snap Dean out of his weird Michael mind loop by using their code word]

14.11 [Sam figuring out that something is troubling Dean just based on the fact that Dean hugs him]

15.17 (self explanatory at this point)

DEAN: Chuck has to die. He has to! Otherwise he'll keep us tap dancing forever, and I can't live like that, man! I can't live like that! I won't!

SAM: I know you feel like that right now, okay. I know you do. But you gotta trust me. My entire life, you've protected me— from Dad, from Lucifer, from everything. I didn't always like it, you know, but... it's the one thing in the whole world that I could always count on. It's the only thing I've ever known that was true. So please... put the gun away. Just put it away, and we'll figure it out, Dean, we'll find another way, you and me. We always do.

like maybe there are some cas moments w dean along these lines too. i don't know, i don't remember what the guy says or does anymore it's been too many years and he is not memorable. but the point is where and in what capacity and based on what metric other than the amount of bad fanfic you've read does cas exceed sam in these respects.

so basically just. genuinely, what are you people literally ever talking about. go watch the show instead of saying stupid wrong stuff about sam on the hellsites all day. or watch another show (please for the love of god watch any other show this one is absolutely lost on you and it’s such a stupid one too i'm embarrassed for you)

[leroiestmortvivelareine]

Strap in if you dare, I’m going to talk about Riko.

Yes, he is a Bad Person. Nothing I’m about to say counters that. However… evil isn’t always so obvious as to dress in black and torture everyone you love. Evil is insidious and nuanced - it can creep in when you aren’t expecting it and have no defences. We’ve been given this incredibly complex and interesting example of it, and we’ve been given it for a reason. Riko is a character worth trying to understand.

Could Riko ever have been saved, and if so what would it have taken? What if he’d been able to follow the Fox path to redemption instead of the Ravens to perdition?

Except both Foxes AND Ravens were traumatised… the thing that ruined Riko was power. Lincoln said it: “nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Who was Riko without power? It’s hard to see.

So I’m fascinated by a different question - how did Riko see Riko?

We know how the Foxes saw him: a low-functioning sociopath with zero coping skills and the personality of a cat trapped in a wall cavity. Presumably that’s not how he saw himself. What kind of headcanon did he construct for himself, what was his own personal mythology?

We know he wanted his father’s approval, he wanted to be number one. We know how badly he dealt with those desires being thwarted.

I know how it feels to be an abandoned child. You feel like the outer edges of a person, with this gaping hole in the centre. It’s not just that you lost a loved one, it’s - how can I say it - it’s like the clasp that lets you hold on to people has been torn out too. Everyone will leave now, and you know it.

(I didn’t cope by turning my bedroom into Abu Ghraib, though.)

It’s the worst of both worlds. His father is far enough away to cause that gaping wound, yet not sufficiently gone for it to ever close over and heal.

But… despite his impossible situation, Riko wasn’t withdrawing into himself. Resentment ate away at him and he liked doing side-projects of revenge, but it was hope driving him on. I see Riko as someone with a very hot flame in them, someone determined to succeed (like Neil). He was driven, even if the goal he chased so eagerly was an illusion. I think he saw his situation as a challenge, an opportunity to prove himself and eventually take his rightful place at his father’s side (surely that’s what Kengo really meant, surely this was a test, a test he can pass if he just wins one more time...)

Imagine something like… the second son of a Roman emperor, sent to some far-off outpost to get him out of the way subdue rebel tribes. A chance to make a name for himself, an opportunity to create an elite unit where violence and skill are everything, where winning is everything. A challenge he accepts with savage excitement.

And the world views them with the kind of awe once reserved for ancient Sparta. Unsurpassed warriors, impossibly focussed. Yes, they endure conditions no one else could even consider but they always win, and everyone loves winners. They are the legends of legends. Surely his father will see.

Kevin was his Lancelot, his shining sword, his right hand. Kevin added to Riko’s status, assured him he must be a hero if he had such a splendid champion at his side.

But Kevin is beautiful, so perhaps Riko’s feelings were more complicated than that, perhaps they were feelings he couldn’t admit he had. He could still work those feelings into the overall picture though… it’s all part of Kevin being his beloved champion.

Until the champion started edging him out of his own story and had to be sacrificed. A necessary sacrifice, but losing Kevin struck a huge blow to the mythology Riko built up about himself. He could no longer look in the mirror, side by side, and see Kevin’s glory (and, yes, Kevin’s dad) reflected back as though it belonged to him too.

Despite this Riko finds a way to keep winning, even without his champion. Surely that is even more impressive? Can his father see that?

Still no response. In the story Riko constructs for himself his father does no wrong, so this towering rage he feels has to crash down on someone else. He tells himself he is punishing his troops for daring to be unworthy.

Then there is Jean, someone from a caste so low as to be unclean, even subnormal, someone it would hurt Riko’s prestige to treat with any kind of respect. But Jean is also beautiful, and those feelings can’t be worked into the myth. Their outlet is the darkness behind closed doors, along with all the other feelings that don’t fit the story of the hero.

Harming his people, his intimate possessions, was Riko’s coping mechanism for rejection and humiliation the way self-harm in many forms is to many others. (Are you hearing me if I say hurting yourself is hurting your own Perfect Court, and there is collateral damage even if you think it’s just you, because people love you and suffer because of it? Are you hearing me if I say stop being Riko to yourself?)

And maybe his enjoyment of that cruelty was, deep down, a form of denial that the cruelty arose from anguish. ‘No I’m not upset, I’m not a loser, I’m in control, I’m doing this because I like it…’ Maybe even to the point where rendition becomes sexual.

But it’s starting to unravel. He’s lost his only friend and can no longer unleash his mounting frustrations on Jean the way he wants to; he’s running out of pieces for his board.

Then he finds the fugitive his family were chasing for so long. This is his big chance. He’ll have a brand new champion for his stable or a valuable offering to please his father, he wins either way.

He captures this feral child who tells him there is no empty throne waiting by the side of the emperor, Kengo never mentions his son’s name, Riko is nothing more than a joke in that far-off capital. So much scorn in those words that the carefully constructed mythology withers before it.

First the would-be rook took the queen, then the wild-card knight escapes again, and now the whipping boy / concubine / bishop is taken by a girl with a cross around her neck. The king has lost all his men… because that’s your REAL story, isn’t it: everyone leaves you.

And then… Kengo dies.

Yes, Riko is a Bad Person. No, I do not like him. But Nora gave us two boys who met their brother for the first time, two boys who cried out their brother’s name only to see their hopes shattered. And in that moment they were one, so I cannot dismiss this monstrous, horrible abomination no matter how hard I try.

I can however dismiss anyone who says Nora is not a goddess of writing.

[galactic-magick]

Life Changes: Viktor x Reader

Part 3 of my Viktor story, find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Summary: Viktor confides in you about his meeting with Jayce, and he contemplates his future with you a lot more seriously.

Words: 1.2k

Author's Notes: This part was a little harder to write for some reason now that the story is directly coinciding with the canon, but hope y'all still enjoy. This AU means a lot to me and I appreciate every single one of my readers :)

-

“It’s intriguing, isn’t it?” Viktor asks, eyes bright from discussing the events of the day with you. “I mean, what if it really is possible?”

Viktor got reacquainted with a fellow Academy student today, a man named Jayce Talis who was caught doing illegal research. Viktor has spent the last hour explaining the whole situation to you—how Jayce was attempting to create magic with science—but the equipment was so dangerous it blew up the lab. Jayce’s trial with the council resulted in him being expelled and banished from Academy grounds, and Heimerdinger believes it best to destroy everything.

Viktor was able to snag Jayce’s notes and journals, furiously reading through them and sharing his findings with you. You’re certainly not as science-brained as he is, but you’ve been with him long enough that you can somewhat follow his train of thought.

“I wish I…” he trails off, flipping back and forth on a particular page.

“What?” you ask, scooching closer to him to see what he’s reading.

“I wish I could help him.”

You shrug, “Who says you can’t?”

“He’s banished from the Academy, remember?”

“So? You’re Heimerdinger’s assistant. If anyone can sneak him in, it’s you. Don’t you have access to everything?”

“I do—but darling—I could lose my job if I’m caught. I can’t afford that, especially not if we want to-”

“Viktor,” you cut him off, knowing exactly what he’s going to say. He’s made it very clear he wants a future with you, saying he wants to marry you and move in together as soon as you’re both more stable in your careers. You’ve told him time and time again you don’t mind waiting, and you wouldn’t mind just a simple wedding, but his ambition often gets the best of him. He’s always insisted on giving you the best, never satisfied with what his current position can provide you. He’s been the Dean’s assistant for a few years now, and you can see how it frustrates him at times that he hasn’t been able to work on his own studies and aspirations. Viktor is a scientist, a brilliant one at that, and his life is lived entirely in someone else’s shadow. He respects Heimerdinger greatly, just as everyone does in this city, but the Professor is set deep in his ways and rarely takes risks. The amount of times Viktor’s had to hold his tongue around him is insurmountable, and their conflicting opinions on Jayce’s Hextech seems to be the last straw.

You take his hand, “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it, okay?”

He nods, “You’re right.”

You kiss his cheek and smile, “Now go find him.”

-

You don’t see or hear from Viktor the next couple days. You desperately hope he hasn’t gotten caught, and he’s able to get what Jayce needs without much trouble.

Both your hopes and worries are confirmed when you see glowing blue light coming from the Academy building, and a commotion of enforcers chasing towards it. You loosely follow them, managing to sneak in.

You wonder if it was the wrong decision, to encourage him to pursue this. What if he got arrested? What if he got banished as well? You know how much his dreams mean to him, how hard he worked to get where he is now. You couldn’t live with yourself if he lost all his opportunities to be a real scientist.

The worst part is—you know Viktor would never blame you or resent you for anything. He would move on and keep going out of stubbornness, as he always does. He’s too strong willed to truly let anyone ruin him completely. He would continue to believe in himself, finding the next best thing for him to succeed in. But you would know. You would forever live with the idea of what could’ve been.

You need this to work out for him.

The ruckus finally stops, and you peek out of your hiding spot down the hall. You see several council members come out of the lab, closely followed by Jayce and Viktor.

“We stabilized it!” Viktor exclaims, seeing you waiting for him. He stumbles over to you, his cane broken in his grip. He drops it to the ground and grabs your face, kissing you in excitement, hardly able to contain himself.

You run your hands down his body, terrified you’ll find any wounds, “Are you okay? I thought there was another explosion-”

“I’m fine, we’re all fine,” he assures you. “The council is going to reconsider their decision. Jayce wants me to be his partner in the Hextech company if it gets approved. My life is about to change, our lives are about to change…”

“Viktor, this is amazing.” you share in his joy. “I can’t wait to see what you do.”

Jayce approaches the two of you, placing a hand on Viktor’s shoulder.

“You must be Y/N. I’ve heard quite a bit about you the past couple days,” he moves his hand out in front of him. “I’m Jayce.”

You shake it with a smile, “I’ve heard a lot about you too. Try not to kill my boyfriend with all this Hextech stuff, yeah?”

Jayce laughs, “Don’t worry, the first thing we’re going to work on is safety. I’ll meet up with you tomorrow, alright, Vik?”

Viktor nods in response, watching as Jayce walks away. He then turns his attention back to you, his eyes softening.

“Are you ready for this, darling?” he asks.

“I...don’t know,” you say, truthfully. “A lot of things are going to change, but it’ll be good change, right?”

He breaks your gaze, his mind firing at a million miles a minute. The adrenaline rush is finally clearing enough for the reality of it all to set in, and honestly he should be asking the same question to himself. He has grown used to his simple life as the Dean’s assistant, slowly building a relationship with you and focusing his aspirations on a future with you more than his career. He would’ve been happy to just have you, but now he can have both.

All he knows for sure right now is that he wants you by his side no matter what. He’s tired of waiting to make you his—tired of not coming home to you and waking up next to you every day. If his life is really going to flip upside down, he needs you there with him.

“Vik?” you turn his face back to you and giggle. “Zoning out on me?”

He kisses your palm, eyes locked back on yours, “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“You,” he says. “And how badly I want to marry you right now.”

“Right now?” you chuckle, unsure how literal he meant that.

“Mmm mm,” he shakes his head, brushing a hair out of your face. “Tomorrow. I at least want time to make everything special for you. But I can’t wait any longer than that. I refuse to move on to this next phase of my life without being married to you.”

You lips quiver into a smile, joyful tears filing your eyes.

“Oh, Viktor…”

He kisses you desperately, cradling your head in his lanky hands, “Please say yes, sweetheart.”

“Of course the answer’s yes, silly.”

-

More Author's Notes: Next part will be the wedding and some sloppy freshly married smut heehee

[scribe-of-hael]

Why Starscream?

I talk alot about the ever fumbling of Starscream's character alot here. Hasbro is no stranger to the mishandling of this character or having been tossed around form one set of writers to another inna desperate attempt to change him only to retcon him.

But what I haven't talked about it the positives in what they have done with Starscream's character or the potential his character had glimpses to be.

I think Starscream being a fan favorite is not new to anyone for the 40 years he has been aorund. Some ppl love him, love to hate him. Or love to hate him. Either way, Starscream manages to make you think about him depaite what light he is in.

For me, I was introduced to the character in 2008 when Transformers animated aired in Cartoon Network. So yes Tom Kenny was my first Starscream and I adore him 💖

But what drew me to Starscream, besides his large build, magenta color, and cliche silly bad guy destined to fail. Was his insufferable personality being clever and cunning, but fumbling at every turn. He was menacing was also silly and kind dumb in ways. He was a treat every time he was in screen. I knew whatever was going to happen would be filled with choactic schemes and banter.

Depsite knowing he was a bad guy. There was also a part of me that really wanted to see Starscream succeed, or at the very least have some sort of win and live to fight another day at that chance. I felt with all the trouble he had gone through he deserved at least SOMTHING for it all.

Yes it was never going to happen, he was written to fail. But also it seemed that was suposse to be a reoccurring antagonist for the s4 that never came around.

But you can imagine my devastated 9 year old self at seeing two of my favorite characters loosong their lives in one episode. I was so upset and angery , esspcially when I begged for him to run away so he could get away.

I think there is an aspect of Starscream, that is shared in alot of his iterations is the fact Starscream is an underdog. He bullied, undermined, never taken seriously, degraded and fumbles almost every single opportunity. Even in some stories characters pointing out that even if Starscream some how gets the upper hand, he will eventually fail.

You can't help but want Starscream to get some sort of win even though you know it could end up bad for everyone eles. But its a big thing that Starscream is his own worst enemy. With an ego and insecurity to make it worse than what it already is.

If Starscream ever truly locked in and ignored all those down playing him and put his ego aside i do think he would be a unstoppable force. But because of these flaws he is left to go from ine failed scheme to the next. There is not to say Starscream isn't capable , skilled or knowledgeable. He is , but he gets in his own way of success. Which I feel is relatable to alot of ppl.

That and what i find to be Starscream's most incredible trait. His persistence and determination.

It doesn't matter WHAT it is, a goal, a means to an end, revenge or pure fucking spite. Starscream is the most persistent mother fucker I have ever seen in media. He just never ever give up for any reason even if that some how is a horrible idea. Once he sets his mind on somthing he is going to go through with it.

Coupled with some iterations of being immortal, Starscream being someone who will endlessly scheme, chase and blow anything in his way is both terrifying as it is and incredible trait of his.

I always admired in TFA how Starscream (despite him taking a while to maybe rethink his tactics) just endlessly went afterMegatron, over and over and over again depaite failing. He tried a diffenrt method. He still stuck to his goal . Yes he fumbled like he always does but it fueled that want for him to get a win ! I felt like he earned it.

I think at Starscream's core he is a driven character, ambitious, determined fueled by spite, which is a dangerous combo with ego. But I admire that dwpaite the odds always being aginst him whether in plot or in the writers room.

Starscream will find a way to live rent free in ppls minds and make his presence know to all. I don't see this Star fading soon, I think he shines even brighter depsite it all.

[fanon-elio]

By your side.

Part 1

Summary: You are the CEO of a big company and hired Lycaon as your personal attendant, however it seems that your wolfish butler has developed a crush on you. So while you and him were on a business trip, both of you were forced to confront your growing feelings for eachother.

Tag: Green Letter (Sfw)

Pairing: Von Lycaon x fem!reader (afab)

Disclaimer: This story is completely fictional and is not canon. You are responsible for the content you consume, so if the following warnings trigger you, you may read at your own risk.

Warnings: Fluff, Slow burn'ish, long fic, mutual pining, reader is smaller than lycaon, lycaon is down bad horrendous, friends to lovers type stuff, slight suggestive themes at the end.

Angst, Sexism (Not by Lycaon), slight racism (Not by Lycaon), jealousy, reader is lowkey burned out.

Other warnings: lowkey my first fanfiction, pls go easy on me. (T^T)

Yes, this fanfiction WILL contain Nsfw in the future.

I added some throw-away characters to the story as plot devices, no they're not oc's and they hold no importance to the story other than providing character development.

This fic contains a lot of scenarios written in Lycaons pov cuz i eat this shit up for breakfast.

I did not intent for this fic to become so long, that i had to split it into different parts. But i'm lowkey kinda happy how it turned out. Sorry for any possible mistakes. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. also, don't mind me adding a drawing i made just for vibes. Enjoy!

Lycaon has been your personal attendant for over a year now, attending to your every wish and request dutifully while you were busy handling your business.

At first Lycaon thought this was just going to be a job like any other, only to be proven wrong rather quickly. To say that both of you hit it off right away would be a slight understatement, it was shocking how good you two got along and understood eachother.

You impressed him with your steadfastness and professionalism when it came to your business. Something that seemed to resonate with him, and not only because your company specializes in custom-made prosthetics for humans and thirens alike. Even though this was what originally caught his attention, since his own mechanical legs were quite difficult to overlook.

Said mechanical legs were also the reason what made him so invested to support you where he could. A wish to see you succeed because your work greatly benefited other people - people just like him.

When you one day asked him if he could accompany you for a business trip to meet potential new investors, he accepted immediately without a second thought.

So with your ever so attentive right hand always by your side, you got in your car and were on your way.

---~---

Lycaon wanted to make your trip as enjoyable and comfortable for you as he possibly could, this is what you hired Victoria housekeeping for after all. Making sure your every desire was satisfied, and your every wish fulfilled was his duty to you...

So now imagine his sheer discontent at the current situation as he was forced to watch you awkwardly eat, or at least tried to eat the food you had on your plate without it coming back up.

"Caviar, what a pretentious meal" he had thought, clearly he would have made something better for you instead of whatever your plate was currently punishing you with. But the awful food wasn't the only thing what made this meal so infuriating, but rather the person on the other side of the table. A rich business man who had invited you to dinner a day prior to the planned gala which was the main reason of your trip.

If it were him, he would have declined the invitation. However, you hoped to draw a benefit out of the invitation - wanting to win this new investor for your cause.

Yesterday he had respected, if not even praised you for your decision. But right now he hoped you would throw your plate at said investor's face, good manners be damned. The short man, who barely didn't reach to Lycaon's chest, was ranting on and on about his achievements, trying oh so desperately to impress you on a more private level instead of the professional setting his earlier sent, very formal invitation was supposed to set up. And what was even more painful was not this poor excuse of a meal, or the way that man's voice hurt in Lycaon's ears, it was the way how he treated you.

He has interrupted you at least 5 times now, shooting down any of your advances to steer the conversation into what you were originally here for, and he grew more frustrated by the second.

"Of course I'm aware of the common folk's suffering, I myself invested a pretty penny in the research of joint and hip replacements, even going as far as to pay for a dozen surgeries for people who couldn't afford it, out of my own pocket i might add" He bragged, clearly nothing more than empty words in an attempt to woe you.

"That's wonderful, I'm glad you see the importance of our cause, I'm thankful that you want to support us as an investor-" you once again tried to redirect the conversation... "naturally I couldn't say no to such a stunning young Lady such as yourself" ...but once again failed.

Lycaons ear flicked in annoyance as your host continued to shamelessly flirt with you, while he was forced to listen.

Even though it is shameful and rather scandalous for Lycaon to admit, he has indeed developed feelings for you.

Feelings that go far beyond that of those an attendant should have for their employer but he couldn't help himself but be in awe of you. Of how you're able to be so strong and yet so kind, so strict and yet so graceful, so serious and yet so playful, the later a side only he gets to see when you allow him to indulge in the trust and friendship you have built with him.

And yet, both of you were once again forced to listen to another audition of your host's self-indulgent rambling.

"I was honestly surprised when you showed up earlier" he said suddenly, "how so?" You replied, politely putting down your fork as you reached for your drink hoping to wash the awful taste off your tongue it seems "In all honesty, I would have expected a man to show up instead of a woman" the man across from you spoke, and you grimaced clearly not only because of your drinks taste that was ordered for you by your host, insisting you drink some expensive wine with him, but also because of the sheer rudeness of the others answer. "Is that so?" You put down your glass and Lycaon had to supress a growl that threatened to escape his throat.

"Don't take this the wrong way sweetheart, it's just surprising nowadays to see a woman running a succesful business that doesn't include fashion or make-up" you briefly closed your eyes and took in a silent breath while Lycaon clenched his fist behind his back. "Times have definitely changed, Mr. Goldman" you replied, trying to stay polite despite the sexism thrown your way.

Lycaon on the other hand, tried to come up with any sort of excuse to get you out of this awful situation, clenching his jaw so painfully hard he was surprised his teeth didn't crack under the pressure. Clearly this man didn't see eye to eye with you, treating you like a trophy he's trying to win, completely disregarding and undermining your achievements and reducing you to nothing more than a pretty face.

How disgusting he thought.

"Please allow me to invite you to a party tonight, a pretty little thing like you would fit in just right" he shot a wink your way and Lycaon swore he saw you shudder for a moment. "But you can't bring him" Mr. Goldman said, using his fork to point at Lycaon. "Why does it bother you so?" You asked, now having completely abandoned the polite smile you wore just a few seconds ago. "It's a party of class of course, my apologies miss, but he doesn't fit in with the rest" Lycaon shot him a quick glare "he'd have to stay outside with the other pets" he felt his blood boiling, he's just about had it with this pretentious, condescending and sexist piece of shit.

However, he straightened his posture, remaining polite and professional. He gave you a quick glance as a silent way of asking for permission to make a break for the exit with you, maybe kicking that wimp across the room on his way out.

But his swirling thoughts were interrupted by you gently pushing your chair back and standing up.

"My apologies but I'm afraid I won't be able to attend then..." you spoke firm but still polite "...Lycaon is to remain by my side" you spoke and Lycaons heart skipped a beat. "Surely you can find someone else to accompany you for tonight miss y/n" your host argued, "I'm afraid not Mr. Goldman" you spoke, giving Lycaon a quick glance and the permission he needed.

With a small flash of satisfaction thrumming through his veins, he swiftly moved towards the door, opening it for you, "this way please." He said, bowing politely.

You grabbed your purse and made your way towards the door, making sure to give your was-host another glare on your way out. "Furthermore, Lycaon is not a pet" you said, not even trying to hide your discontent at the other's comment towards your companion.

"We'll see each other tomorrow at the gala, have a pleasant day Mr. Goldman" you replied as the door fell shut behind you and Lycaon.

---~---

The ride back to the vacation home you were currently residing in was quiet. Lycaon noticed that you seemed to be absorbed in your thoughts, possibly reflecting on anything that had happened.

He wanted to say something to ease your nerves, but couldn't find the right words. So instead, he opted to let you have the time you needed to wrap your head around the situation and how to act from here, since Mr. Goldman definitely didn't seem like a reliable support for your company or any other situation for that matter.

You came to a stop at a red light, and he couldn't help but glance at you again, at the way the sun cast a gentle glow on the features of your face and the way it almost seemed to make your hair shine in response to it's gentle rays of light. He once again finds himself greatly impressed by you, with the way you stood firmly to your standards and morals, how you remained patient and professional even though that filth didn't deserve an ounce of your kindness. However, more so than anything, it is the words you spoke at that moment that still vividly swirl in his mind,

"Lycaon is to remain by my side."

He loved the way you said it, perfectly capturing his own desire.

It is quite apparent to him that he no longer views his current situation as a job, he enjoys it way too much for that, and yet a small piece of his consciousness still berated him for acting like a love drunk puppy for so openly and unabashedly admiring you. You seemed to notice his gaze lingering on you and turned your head to look at him - but he had looked away just at that moment so you wouldn't notice how starstruck he appeared, at least he hoped you didn't. And yet, a small smile still found a way onto his lips.

He pulled into the driveway of your current abode, he felt glad to be back so early, despite the given turn of events at your "dinner."

While he got out, walking over to your side of the car to open the door for you, he already thought about what he could do to get your mind off that incident to at least make your day end on a positive Note.

Both of you entered the spacious place you and him called home for the time being. You sighed in relieve as you kicked off your high heels, whining at your terribly sore feet. You were glad this day was finally over, even though you felt all the more anxious about tomorrow's gala.

With your meteoric rise to fame also came a lot of pressure. The demand for your services and products rose daily. So much so that you had to expand your production efforts, almost doubling your expenses in the process. Dispite that, your manufacturing department was still slowly starting to get overwhelmed. However, the need for new employees couldn't be met without the necessary funding.

You made your way towards the kitchen, watching Lycaon as he was already preparing a proper dinner for you both. "Do you need help by any chance" you asked, even though you already knew the answer "I appreciate your offer master, but there is no need" yup, thought so "why don't you sit down in the livingroom and relax master, you had a straining day, and deserve a break." He said, shifting his attention back to cooking, "I shall inform you once dinner is ready"

Lycaon has always been that way, ever since he'd started working for you. But the more time you two spend together, the closer you two became, forming quite the strong friendship with eachother. Even though you hoped it would be more than that.

If you're being fully honest, you had developed a crush on the wolfish gentleman for quite some time now.

Okay, it might be more than just a little crush with the way he makes your heart race when he looks at you, or your head all dizzy with euphoria when he speaks with you while his deep voice still sends pleasant shivers down your spine.

He was easy to talk to and always had an open ear. Even though you did feel guilty by the way he was constantly spoiling you, wanting absolutely nothing more in return than your smile. In return, you started to praise him where you could, swooning over the way his ears tend to flick or the way his tail would wag a little, subtly portraying his feelings to you dispite his efforts to stay professional. You enjoyed when he was happy, so much so that you would always have to fight the urge to ask him if he would allow you to pet him.

"Dinner is served master"

---~---

After dinner, you found yourself sitting at the small bar of your kitchen. A glass martini Lycaon prepared for you in your hand as you engaged in riveting conversation with him, gossiping about your shared experience with Mr. Goldman as he did the dishes.

"And that awful vest of his? Olive green with orange? I don't think" you laughed and Lycaon secretly preened at the sound. "I was terribly tempted to throw my drink at him let me tell you, a shot of red would have been nothing short of a favor" you replied, and he nodded fully agreeing "unfortunately it wouldn't have made his face any more tolerable" he responded "much less his nasty attitude." Lycaon was still very sour of the other man's behaviour towards you. However, he felt his heart soaring when he remembered how you had stood up for him. "Well, to be fair, it sure would have distracted from it at least." You said before chugging the rest of your drink "even if it would have enraged him?" He asked, putting a clean plate to the side as he grabbed the next. You chuckled, "And even so, I can always count on you to protect me, can I not?" His tail began to wag a little at your words, and you were satisfied with yourself at his reaction, "Absolutely, master."

"Still, I applaud you for staying as calm as you did" Lycaon admitted, and you let out a sigh, his ears immediately perking up at the sound. "My apologies if I'm prying master" he turned his head to look at you, your own resting in your hand, "are you nervous about tomorrow's gala?" He asked, slight concern shining through his oh so polished demeanor.

"A little bit, not gonna lie" you admitted, "I just hope there won't be more people like him at the gala tomorrow" you said. A silence coming over you, rage still bubbling in your gut when you remembered how Mr. Goldman had compared Lycaon to a pet. "Eh, and even so, I hope they have better food at least" you said "I mean, caviar? Really? That's way too cliché" he smiled, concerned at you spacing out but still glad to know you shared the same opinion as him.

He was aware of your worries.

Your financial situation being the topic at every meeting, and he worried greatly for your health as he watched you plunge yourself into your work, day after day without a break. He remembered the days when he had to force you to take a break, sleep or even eat something. He desperately wanted to save you from the burnout that slowly creeped up on you.

"I think I'll be hitting the hay" you said through a yawn, getting up from where you'd been sitting. Lycaon looked at you as he pondered how he could ease your worries, even if just for a little.

He dried off his hands and walked around the kitchen counter, "could you spare one more moment for me, master?" He asked, and you turned around, seeing him approaching. "Of course, what's up?" He didn't speak, instead he moved and gently pulled you into an embrace.

It wasn't restraining nor unpleasant, it was comforting and warm as you felt his arms wrap around you. "Don't worry master, I'm sure your hard work will pay off at tomorrow's gala" he spoke, low and gentle. You hugged him back, hearing faint rustling which you suspected to be his wagging tail.

Both of you pulled back, as this tender moment you and Lycaon shared slowly came to an end, even tho neither of you wanted it to. Both of you decided to retire for the night, tomorrow would be a straining day for the both of you after all.

Sleep would come quickly for you thanks to that bit of alcohol in your system, while Lycaon would lay awake for just a little longer, thinking about you as he tried to memorize the way you felt in his arms, letting this one certain sentence replay in his mind once again as he drifted off to sleep.

Lycaon is to remain by my side.

---~---

Everything was still dead silent as your eyes cracked open. You blinked a few times, wondering what time it was as you reached for your phone on the bedside table. Glancing at the display, as the discomfort from the sudden brightness slowly faded.

You sighed heavily as you looked at the daunting digits, solidifying your suspicion.

3:27 am

You tossed and turned, but couldn't find the comforting sleep you yearned for. Your stomache growled and you pondered going for a midnight snack.

With a sigh, you sat up and stretched, cringing at the cracking sound of your joints. Rubbing your eyes, you swung your legs out of bed and made your way towards the kitchen to make yourself a much-needed midnight snack.

You cussed out the sandman for once again having ghosted you as you rounded the corner, a flash of white catching your eye, and you stopped. Even though you knew that Lycaon was definitely an early bird type of person, you still didn't expected to find him standing in the kitchen at the same ungodly hour. The soft light of the opened refrigerator filling the room as you peaked around the corner, taking in his appearance.

It was surprising to see your wolfish butler, who was normally so professional and serious about how he presented himself to others, stumble shirtless and rather sleep dazed through the kitchen. His mechanical feet clacking on the ground and his tail swishing behind him as he moved around.

Never in the entire time he has worked for you have you ever seen him out of uniform, and the more you took in his disheveled appearance and his strong and muscular body, the less you seemed to care to admit that he was painfully handsome.

Ah hell, smocking hot would be a better fit. Naturally you assumed he was working out, but you had no idea your personal attendant was this ripped. You felt a bit embarrassed as you continued gawk at your friend and buttler's biceps and abs. You caught a glimpse of his teeth as he yawned, further noticing how different he looked without his muzzle and eye patch.

You let your gaze wander down to his prosthetics, slowly seeming to sober up, as you wondered what had happened to him that left him in such a state. From missing arms to missing legs, you had encountered your fair share of injuries since starting your business, but never had you asked what had happened before. Neither your clients and especially not Lycaon not wanting to pry into his past. Too afraid of accidentally offending him by reopening past wounds, and yet you couldn't help but wonder how he must feel. loosing one leg must be traumatizing enough, but both?

He closed the refrigerator and the sound of it ripped you out of your trance. You watched him as he scratched the back of his neck seemingly making his way back to bed, and you hoped that sleep still had enough of a grasp on him that he wouldn't notice your presence.

You decided to carefully make your way back to your bedroom as well, as not to embarrass him with a sudden entrance while he was so scarcely dressed. You hoped to actually find sleep again because you couldn't help the feeling that tomorrow would be an awfully difficult day.

---~---

Part 2 ->

Listen,

When i tell you that I absolutely did not mean to make this fanfiction this long.

At first it was supposed to be a oneshot, but as it so happens, i got absolutely carried away. And after +2k words i realized that i might wanna split this fanfiction up, cuz ain't nobody on tumblr wanna read an entire essay. Also, it's the way how anxious i am uploading this help. Let's hope it's gonna be a positive experience, otherwise i might admit myself to psychiatric care asap.

Anyways,

thank your for reading, i hope it was to your liking.

Part 2 will probably drop next Friday cuz i need time to make a new drawing.

Btw. Here is a quick doodle just for shitt's and giggles.

Aight bye~

-Elio

[levshany]

how do I put this. Even those who actually track our blogs and are interested in our Aus can get a little confused about what's going on here. but I'll try to explain anyway

we already mentioned the crossover between Anarchists and Tandem and even DRAWED them once, back when Tandem was in development (and by the way, this crossover is canonical for both AUs). Now this story has been continued >:D

Here's some context: It so happened that the Colibri wanted to see what alternative timelines looked like and ran into the king and the jester. Phil was delighted with Colibri and wanted to flirt with them. Jester Collie was categorically against it. so he immediately possessed Phill and tried to fight Tandem. he didn’t succeed because his fusion with Phil is extremely unstable. and here we are

Initially, @angstyhikka and I just drew these three pages, but then @lasymit supported the idea and made a drabble which she allowed me to add to the post :3

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

"Let go, bitch! I'm not done with you yet!"

The savage creature desperately squirmed in Philip’s hands. It grabbed onto him, trying to either break free or, on the contrary, rush closer, glaring furiously and baring its shark teeth.

He held the clumsy, collapsing fusion at arm's length and looked at it with slight disgust. His tandem with the Collector was a strange but harmonious union. And what was writhing in front of them right now was the direct antipode of the word harmony.

“Well, I am,” he said distantly.

And with his other hand he grabbed the one sitting inside the demon’s body. Under the flesh soaked in titan blood, he felt a soft essence, like rubber or hot wax. The Collector from this universe felt completely different to the touch.

He stretched them, pulling them away from each other, disentangling them from each other. Paradoxically, bodies that should repel each other by the nature of their forces, like unipolar magnets, clung to each other very stubbornly. But Philip was still stronger with the power of the Collector in his hands, power which he clearly used better than the local... king of demons...

“Ouuuuch ouuuuch,” a boy in the robes of a jester, painted in red and black, shrank on the ground, wrapping his arms around his own chest.

He was not at all like his Collector. Philip had never seen his friend's material body before. But he knew he looked different. For some reason he knew this for sure.

"Who pulls a guy out like that!? Fuck!!", the now-green demon yelled nearby. And he clutched his head painfully.

What Idiots. They vomited three times while chasing him. Philip did them a favor by stopping this outrage.

Now these two were lying helplessly at his feet, groaning and gasping, trying to catch their breath and come to their senses. Now they are separated.

"What were you trying to achieve?" His question was almost rhetorical.

"It wasn’t me, it was all him!" like a child, pointing a sharp, protruding finger towards the Collector, the demon yelled. "I didn’t want to fight at all!"—here he gazed up at Philip with some strange look and batted his eyelashes expressively—"I wanted something else– something more interesting."

"Ohh fuck off, Maggie! You traitor!" came the shout from the red Collector. Philip silently decided to call him the Jester and the demon, by analogy, the King. Philip had already guessed his name. But he couldn’t bring himself to call this savage by that name. Not even in his mind. 

He ignored the King's vague attempts to take a tempting pose while still lying on the ground and grinding his teeth from the headache. He turned to the Jester.

"So you're in charge?"

Judging by King's behavior, it would indeed be reckless to put him in charge. But, having always been the decision-maker when paired with the Collector, by right of being the adult, Philip is accustomed to his friend almost never taking the leading role unless circumstances require it. Like a couple of years ago...

“Nuh-uh,” the Jester raised himself up on his elbow and rubbed his chest, inhaling deeply, greedily. "We're bros! Equal rights and stuff."

And he twirled his funny yellow gloved hand in the air.

Something in the Jester’s words pricked Philip. He didn't fully understand what exactly.. Until the King said, in a dramatic whisper:

"I no longer have a brother. You’re dead to me!"

And Philip stood there, trying to remember that the air was not hard, dense lumps, that it did not clog in the throat and did not press in the chest with a dull phantom pain. Meanwhile these two idiots, after a couple moments of aggressive looks, laughed out loud.

“Yes, I would strangle such a brother,” the King squeezed out, wheezing and squinting through laughter, “with my own-"

And he bent over, swallowing the end of the sentence with a cough as the toe of a boot hit him in the stomach.

"Philip! Philip... They've had enough... He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Philip's cheek twitched.

"Ouch... bro, save me!" the King squeaked hoarsely.

And this completely infuriated Philip. He swung his foot again, this time at the face. But he was met by an elastic wall. And the ground under Colibri’s feet, along with all the space, suddenly curved.

If it weren't for years with the Collector in his head, he wouldn't have realized what happened. But now he clearly saw how a couple of dimensions were distorted, folding space into a loop. He suddenly found himself not between the King and the Jester, but at a considerable distance. And these two were already close together. The boy helped his “brother” get up from the ground; King was now leaning on Jester’s shoulders, clutching his stomach. Perhaps Philip miscalculated his strength a little. This happens sometimes... Especially when it comes to emotions.

“Hey! Hitting people who are down is against the rules,” the Jester frowned. "Give us a timeout!"

Philip felt his jaw tighten. How the nodules rolled across his face. But the flaring rage, as it often happened to him, went away as easily as it filled the air in his chest, leaving reddish streaks before his eyes and pulsating power in his fingertips.

“Get out of the way,” he let his hands glow slightly.

"Ohhhh, what about a last kiss, star boy?" the King whined, clinging to the Jester and trying to straighten up next to him, as if hoping to reach Philip from a distance of ten steps and still get the coveted—

A kiss? Seriously, what the hell? Philip directed a confused, irritated look that bore all these unspoken questions at the Jester. He awkwardly shrugged his sharp shoulders, caught in the King’s grip.

"Don’t be mad... Philip, right? Don't be mad at him, Philip. His Majesty has a reason to be an idiot. And he didn’t mean it out of malice about the ��brother’ thing.”

Philip looked at the Jester more carefully. The collector in his head was silent. But Philip sensed something from him. Philip also noticed the King’s uncomprehending expression.

“What’s wrong with ‘brother’?” The King sounded surprised.

And then Philip understood. And his face froze.

Yes... yes, what need is there to remember such things? He himself tried to forget for a long time... If he succeeded, would he be the same now as the king in front of him?

Looking at this wretched shell of a “King” who’d forgotten everything important about himself and the loyal “Jester” still standing steadily at his side, the Collector in Philip’s head began to sob. They both, it seems, had the same thought. It’s scary to look at the reflection of a future that never happened.

The jester smiled at him guiltily- at both of them. And then he confidently and widely showed about fifty teeth to his King.

"People don’t like such familiarity, you fool! You can’t just kiss someone the first time you meet."

"But it's okay to fight them when you first meet?" Philip was indignant...

Yes, it's Philip. He cannot refuse to call this man by his own name. Philip himself could one day become such a “king.”

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

also @kenku97 helped us with translation and added this comment, I gotta show it to you ;v;

"I thought “The collector in his head sobbed” needed more context for people who aren’t as tightly wrapped up in these AUs as we all are. To understand why Collie’s crying, you need to point out how Tandem Collie sees himself in the Jester. They’re both caring for a Philip who is forgetting himself and the people closest to him. Jester is living out Tandem Collie’s worst fear: what will happen when Philip can’t remember anything anymore? What will become of their friendship? And it’s bittersweet because the King and the Jester are still friends, even though the Jester basically had to start over from the beginning. Jester Collie is quietly carrying all of those memories inside his heart of a friend who has basically disappeared while still learning about and loving the brand new person his friend has become. It’s so sweet and so sad.😭"

that's pretty much all for now It’s hard to return to drawing after the holidays. and this is not even a new art you see, but last year’s. therefore this comic cannot be considered the first work of this year sadly

[protagaster]

Hi, I don’t know if someone has asked this already but I just wanted to know how everything started in you au?

Why is Penelope the one fighting in war while her husband is at home?

I know is a warrior!penelope au but i would like to know how that works in your story?

I also really like your take in the au it’s so cool!

Hello my friend! Thank you so much for taking the time to ask about the details regarding the AU :)! It makes me very happy to see you interested!

It's recounted with a bit more detail in the prequel (titled 'A King with no Queen') but here is the main gist of it.

Buckle up, it's gonna be quite a ride:

First things first, everything starts off exactly the same as it does in the Iliad. Paris chooses Aphrodite as the most beautiful of the Goddess', leading to Aphrodite taking Helen away from her home and husband (Menelaus) and forcing the mortal woman to be with Paris. From there, just as it goes in Homer's tale, Menelaus and Agamemnon force all of Helen's past suitors to fight with them in the war against Troy; this is because of an oath Odysseus himself proposed in order to keep the peace regardless of who Helen chose to be her husband, quote: "all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with him".

Everything progresses as it does, with all of our favorite Greek heroes, including Odysseus, fighting in the war. This is where things begin to swerve for the AU.

That first year of war the men actually succeed in sneaking Helen out of Troy's palace thanks to their cunning and spies. They place her on a tiny ship that would sail her back to Sparta as quickly as possible and spend the night celebrating in their hidden camps without a care in the world. Unfortunately, the Trojans were quick to notice Helen's disappearance. While they were unable to keep her from leaving Troy, they decided to settle their seething anger with the next best thing. That night, while the Greek armies were full and drunk with merriment, the Trojans sneak into their camps thanks to the information provided by their [the Trojans] own spies. Right then and there the Trojans attacks.

This leads to the Greek men getting horribly injured, to the point where almost all of them are no longer fit for war. In exchange for Helen, the Trojan armies kidnap most of the Greek heroes (Menelaus, Agamemnon, Diomedes, just to name a few) and keep them alive as a warning and form of ransom against Greece and the Gods who support them. Odysseus, who was speared horribly in his shoulder, was spared from capture only thanks to the relentlessness of his Ithacan men.

Only a small handful of men are both spared from injury and allowed to continue to fight (Achilles and Patroclus to name a couple, that detail is just for you @somereaderinblue). The rest, by order of the Gods themselves, are forced to return home as they are no longer of use for combat.

Odysseus, Eurylochus, and the rest of the Ithacan army that was drafted return to Ithaca. Despite the damage they have received, things look hopeful and the future appears to be bright.

However, Greece still needs an army.

This is a timeline where, by Hera's orders, the Gods slowly work to give the women of Greece more autonomy by allowing them to partake in activities one thought to be only for men. Two of the Gods working hardest to meet this goal are Ares and Artemis, who have collaborated to teach women the art of combat and bearing arms.

Ares, who has never been in his parent's good graces, is in extra trouble now due to agreeing to support the Greeks on Hera's request but then turning around and supporting the Trojans upon Aphrodite's say. Hera declares that the only way to make it up to her is by drafting his eligible female warriors (those of age and with enough skill and experience to survive) to fight in the men's stead.

This includes Penelope, who had passed his trial back when she was still a young Spartan Princess and in turn became Ares' personal pupil (look at Warrior of the Heart if you would like more details). With a combination of Ares' order and Helen's plea, who feels the war is all her fault and wants to learn to fight in order to save her husband, Penelope is forced to leave behind Ody and Tele (a girl in mine and Blue's AU) in order to fulfill her duty.

That's how our version of the Warrior Penelope AU came to be! I'm sure you all know what happens from there ;)

P.S - Here are a few fun facts, not at all relevant to the AU, but still I wanna share em:

Hermione, Helen and Menelaus' daughter, actually snuck herself onto her mother's warship in order to join them in saving her father

The only reason Clytemnestra agrees to save Agamemnon is to kill him herself once they return home, since he still sacrificed their daughter before he and his men headed off for war

Patroclus was surprised when he saw Penelope for the first time. After how much Ody spoke of her, Patroclus had assumed for a time that she was a mere fiction of his imagination, a coping mechanism to keep himself sane (thank Blue for this one!)

On #3's note, Patroclus, Helen, Clytemnestra, and the rest of the Greek army immediately saw the similarities between Penny and Ody when Penny refused to shut up about how amazing her husband is and how much she longed to see him again

[bunbitti]

Hello! Could I request a Sunday x halovian reader who has clipped wings? (Can be platonic or romantic)

Clipped.

:))

romantic-ish?

~800 words

tw: do clipped wings on a halovian count as mutilation? Also, Sunday being Sunday the control freak he is and pulling some strings behind your back

You were one of few Halovians that had more than just a halo. There were the Oak siblings, of course, who had both head wings and back wings, but not many others. 

Your wings were clipped. Not that a Halovian could fly (beyond the wings that would need to be massive to carry a person’s weight, the rest of their bodies were similar to a normal human’s, and therefore unfit for aerial movement), but every time you looked down at your wings, you felt a bit trapped. Regardless of whether it was done for ‘medical’ reasons or for anything else, it didn’t change the connotations. 

You weren’t meant to fly on your own, let alone succeed. Always working long hours doing the same thing, no change to your schedule, let alone improvement. Barely any time for yourself after chores, meals, and sleep. 

Your wings were always clipped whenever they molted. Again, again, again. You could never escape from it. You just wanted to give up at this point.

Your wings didn’t look right when in their resting position around your torso. Didn’t feel right, either. Feeling the flat, unnatural edge made you cringe. Even flapping them in the air felt viscerally wrong. You often held your hands near your waist as though to cover them up and pull the attention away from them, even if nobody was actually paying attention. 

That was when you met Sunday. Ever the charismatic Oak Family head, he was sometimes walking around to make sure things in the Land of the Dreams were working properly. 

He’d found you at your job in the Moment of Daybreak, weaving products that would be sold to the wealthiest of customers, all for the support of the Harmonious system that ran Penacony. He’d been passing by, making small-talk and greeting people to see how their jobs were going and if he should make any managerial changes to make their lives easier, but you looked down and noticed his raven-blue back wings neatly wrapped around his torso under his blazer. 

They were clipped. Instinctively, you wrapped your own back wings tighter around yourself, but it only drew his attention. 

His eyes followed your gaze to his own wings, then moved over to yours, which were far more harshly clipped than his own. At least at first glance, his looked relatively normal. Most outsiders didn’t know enough Halovians that had their wings out of their clothes to notice, and either way, his wings looked like a vest on top of his usual turtleneck. 

You missed the flicker of shock and pity in his eyes when he saw your clipped wings. 

In fact, he acted like nothing happened at all, and so you brushed it off. Maybe he hadn’t seen it. But you’d already gotten attached to the man countless levels in the Family hierarchy above you, making up wild stories in your head about how maybe he was also trapped in some way. 

However, you found yourself bumping into him gradually more often, almost so gradually that you hadn’t noticed. Not until you told some friends (were they friends? Or just acquaintances?) for the fifth time in a week that you met Sunday again, and they told you that nobody runs into the Oak Family head that often. 

Huh. 

Oh, well. Maybe he just likes you a bit. 

He invited you to private meals once in a while, under some excuse of wanting to reward members of the Family so they would be motivated to continue supporting the Harmony. Even he knew that a monotonous, exhausting life would eventually wear people out beyond what any motivation could provide. You didn’t need to know that you were the only Family member being ‘rewarded’. 

It was at those times that his wings were out instead of folded tightly around his waist. When he greeted you at the door and guided you inside, one wing would be lightly pressed against your back to usher you in, just as his hand rested on your upper back. 

His wings brushed against yours more times than you could count. Eventually, you were comfortable enough to let your own wings unfold, and returned the gesture. To touch wings, for Halovians, was something reserved only for the closest and dearest to a person. 

It was a while before you noticed you hadn’t been pressured to have your wings clipped, never realizing that it was because of Sunday’s influence. By the next molt, which tended to be very slow for Halovians, your wings were back to their full glory. 

The next time you shared a dinner with Sunday, you decided to be bold and put your wings behind his back to pull him close and press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“—!”

— — — — — — — 

You awoke abruptly from a sweet dream that was supposed to last forever. 

There were supposed to be 7 rest days in a week.

The Dreampool is wet. 

You look down at your wings. 

Clipped.

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

Matching Marks

The Badminton story-arc finally catches up with Stede in 109 and he is forced to sign the Act of Grace. Ed is caught up also, and chooses to sign the Act partly to save Stede’s life. We know it’s a pseudo marriage contract, making their individual marks of commitment for ten-years, a lifetime then. Ed does so willingly; but later, Stede feels the guilt of Ed’s perceived sacrifice.

As a mirror to 109, the Ned Low story-arc finally catches up with Ed in 206. This time, Stede is caught up in Ed’s mess. We see matching marks again, this time by way of torture-branding. It’s a subversion of the face-slashing during matelotage. A more painful and dangerous mirroring of 109. This time Ed feels the guilt; but we know Stede would remain by Ed’s side here even given a choice, just as Ed remained committed to Stede in Act of Grace.

Both blame themselves for the other’s sacrifice and the subsequent fallout. They have marked or blemished their loved one with their faults.

The ‘ruined’ one interestingly is the catalyst for moving the relationship forward each time. It’s as if the development in their character allows them to be braver, truer to who they are and what they want.

The ‘ruinee’ is the one to run subsequently; partly because of the belief they’ve destroyed their loved one, but also because the change causes them to run smack into their own unresolved trauma. They appropriate the other’s personal journey as a commentary on their own perceived flaws:

I am soft, and have therefore made him soft

I am violent, and he is violent now because of me

None of this is true. Ed was attracted to softness before he met Stede. Stede was drawn to aspects of violence before he met Ed. And neither of them is wholly soft or particularly violent, nor are they responsible for the other’s moving towards one aspect or the other.

They realise finally the influences they have on each other is, for the most part, positive. They’re good for each other. They don’t need to be whole or fully-healed to be together. Healing takes a lifetime, and they can do so alongside their developing relationship. They need also to recognise the other has agency over their own character growth, and to learn to not talk past each other. It won’t always be an easy straight road, but they love each other enough to succeed.

They’re both soft, gentle men who will commit violence to protect those they love. And it’s meeting the other which has allowed them to go on a journey of self-discovery; not through imposed changes, but by giving each the room to grow. The only lasting mark, the only mark that is true, is the mark of love they’ve left on the other. A mark that gives them space to breathe and grow, mess up and try again. That’s the real mark. That’s the permanent ink.

[edward-cabrini]

How To Write Characters With PTSD

This is your warning that potentially triggering topics will be discussed in this post.

First things first, this is a sensitive topic. Not all experiences of PTSD are the same, some people have very overt struggles others have something more internalized.

Writing characters with PTSD is pretty common. The struggle against personal trauma is very compelling after all. It can also be very cathartic for an author to write such characters. That's not to say characters should always succeed in overcoming their PTSD, not everyone does.

So how exactly does one write such a character? In this post we'll focus on 3 of my characters in my Dark Fantasy series. Lorcan, Maura, Ernin. As we do so I'll break down what their individual symptoms of their PTSD are. I don't think a simple how to guide could cover writing characters with PTSD. Simply googling what is PTSD and how does it present could get you those answers. Whether you agree or disagree with my representation of PTSD I hope you will agree that it is not the the totality of a character, merely one facet that can have a large impact upon them. There is no one size fits all guide for PTSD. It's a varied beast with many heads. Let your characters be vulnerable to it. Have them fight against it. Let them lose.

I will now cover each character and my depiction of their PTSD as it is presented in "The Curse of Want".

Ernin's Story Ernin plays the role of advisor and confidant to Lorcan. Some of that happens off page. What we see on page is someone who through no fault of their own had their family ripped away from them by people she was powerless to stop. Ultimately she had a good and happy childhood until her father was executed. As a fugitive she relied on her brute strength and skills to get by until she joins Fiachra's fian (warband). For an unspecified amount of time she serves in the vanguard of the fian at no point does she mention her traumatic event. Keeping silent on the topic until Lorcan joins the fian. Believing he might have had a similar experience as her. She joins him for training, tests and probes to confirm that he might understand. Only then does she reveal why she wanted to talk to him. This kind of avoidant behaviour is one of many PTSD symptoms. During a game of dice Ernin has more than a few angry outbursts and while that is also a symptom that is not part of her PTSD.

What is, is the gambling addiction. When I write scenes where she is playing dice she is always losing and always ready for another throw often explicitly stating that it's not luck that there is some skill to throwing dice. Ernin survived her ordeal though no small amount of luck. She was lucky to escape the church, she was lucky to run into Fiachra, she was lucky to have found a new home. She can't internalize that it both wasn't her fault and her escape was down to good luck. Otherwise it would mean she was entirely powerless as to her own fate. That feeling is not one easily rectified.

Maura's Story So what about Maura? Like Ernin she had a life outside of the war having grown up on a farm with her family as they they each steadily got drafted until there were too few of them to run the farm and money got tight. Maura exerts a lot of control over environment. She drills her men, she keeps the camp in order, she is Fiachra's right hand in the fian and was amongst his first recruits. What made her this way was her brother kidnapping her and then selling her to the highest bidder. Obviously all control was taken from her in violent fashion from someone she deeply trusted.

Throughout "The Curse of Want" we see her get increasingly irate with Lorcan as he disobeys orders and generally does what he wants without any care. This all stems from her phobia of losing control of any given situation. Unlike Ernin's self destructive nature, Muara's tendencies are a symptom of her PTSD. She actively puts herself in dangerous situations to try and keep some desperate grasp of control. Unfortunately for Maura she relives her experience when she finds a grooming gang. She could have called for guards, she could have called for help from the public, she could have done anything. However, the war she's fought through from childhood to adulthood has ended. Everyone is supposed to be safe. Her, Fiachra, and the fian made it so. As a result of her actions she does rescue the victims but she is now a mess, feelings of shame, guilt, terror, sickness. In an instant, Maura withdraws from everything and everyone believing she has ruined, not just her life, but the lives of her friends. Though she is entirely unharmed physically her mental state is not good, to put it mildly. What I want to point out here is that the breakdown wasn't borne of some spontaneous flashback. Maura has repeatedly exerted control and admonished Lorcan for his wanton murder and reckless behaviour; yet when confronted by her trauma head on she did exactly what he would have.

Lorcan's Story Last but not least we have Lorcan. Ernin and Maura have very internalized PTSD, it's most present in certain situations as they have had the time to try and adjust. Lorcan however is very much so. not in that same boat. He has is own personal post battle rituals to bring himself back to his baseline self. He is very action oriented and violent. He's distrustful and cynical. He makes no attempts to let anyone get close or to be closer to other people.

Lorcan has been through serval ordeals as a child. He grew up with his mother being regularly abused by his adoptive father then she was raped and murdered when illness took over. He himself was beaten by his father and raped by a member of his father's warband. After murdering his father and running away from the warband he roams the frontlines as a mercenary waiting for the next job that may or may not kill him. I don't feel great having to summarize it so succinctly but there is no gentle way to approach Lorcan's trauma. It's front and centre in a lot of his actions and needs stating clearly.

We've already discussed how PTSD can make you more reserved or reckless. There is however another side entirely that is worth considering. Maura faced her trauma in a very direct one to one situation. Lorcan however finds a lone child trying to survive winter by stealing from a wealthy family. It's his job to police the town with the rest of the fian that winter and though he doesn't want to, he must arrest the child. However, he then takes a series or risky actions in order to try and get some money to the boy in order to help. A great deal of Lorcan's trauma stems from his failure to protect his mother and the abuse his adoptive father put him through. Lorcan regularly displays a compulsion to rescue those in need and to murder those who seem to align with his abusers. PTSD doesn't make people good or bad, it just informs their decisions. Lorcan is very good at solving problems with his sword, it's all he's ever known. Unlike Maura and Ernin he was born directly into the war and had no life outside of it's confines.

[famemonsterrr]

Astrology observations part 7 🪽

- I have said Leo are selfish but I have to mention how awfully selfish is 1st house sun or Aries rising are.

- Cancer sun with Taurus Venus is something I don’t see often but they are beautiful and caring individuals that give the best presents ever. (Ex: Ariana grande)

I have also noticed that cancer with earth placements tend to like softer aesthetics and colours. Like white and pastels ✨

- cancer with Leo Venus/mars makes someone really need for word affirmations. " you are amazing" "you are so talented".

- between the fire signs Leo and Aries would come from each others throats. Sagittarius is planning a trip or joining in new cult.

- Aquarius moon might have issue with bossy mothers.

- Pisces mothers either will be amazing and sooo caring or they will be emotionally needy and put pressure on their kids.

- mutable signs or air dominant people have learning difficulties (my dad and mom are Gemini and both have dyslexia. I got it as well💅🏻 ofc it’s genetics but It’s not coincidence I’m Pisces and I’m air dominant)

- Leo placements watch theirs own stories or whatever they upload like they are in love with themselves. Their own stalkers 💀

- north node in Gemini will always be students in life…(yayyyyyyy that’s what we want)

- Aquarius with Leo placements….nooooooooo just nooooo. God complex is real and it is Aquarius with Leo placements and vice versa. Cool people but u always right no matter what because you are better that anyone else 🙂

- if your lover has Venus or mars in the 8th house be prepared to have a good spicy time. The difference is that Venus is so passionate naturally and loves spicy time. However on mars to have a good bed time u kinda have to be a little bit toxic and turn them on. Make them jealous is an easy solution. Usually 8th house attracts a lot of toxicity or "passionate" energy.

- 2nd house Venus…OHHHH sooo sexyyyyyyyy. Candles,dinners and flowers. If you see a man having Venus on that house. KEEP HIMMMM

- Pisces suns just don’t get along with other Pisces sun. PERIOD

- Pisces sun with Aries mercury are baddies now Aries sun with Pisces mercury is a softie.

- water placements seem to love winter more than anything.

- if u have fire placements u would had gone or u are still are in ur ginger/red hair era.

- to all my Capricorn stelliums…are okay my loves? Maybe relax a bit. You are doing amazing 🥰

- to all my beautiful Chiron in cancer pliz go and heal in ur own space and the ways u only know. Maybe spend time with ur family and friends.

- Mc in Taurus means u will succeed no matter what in any field ur in. Maybe a little lazy but u need money and stability so when u feel u don’t have it u will work. Probably in business field or singing. People with placements have beautiful voices naturally as well

- Leo, libra, Virgo and Taurus are the type of people who will use ur own personal style as an insult and it’s sooo funny but I can’t go that far because I’m broke.

Thats all 🪽

This was so short lol but I need to remember you again that personal observations aren’t facts and because you can’t relate that doesn’t mean I ain’t accurate or u aren’t. Everyone has different experiences and life. So yeah astrology isn’t a fact at all. Anyway stay healthy and hydrated girly pops 💅🏻

[straycalamities]

here's my marble hornets theory: i know like tim, for instance, fully believes its his medicine that keeps the operator and its influence away. and lots of people bring it up and/or meme on it but what if that's just like just his guess but its not actually true. like what if thats like a red herring i guess what if the true way to fight off the operator's influence is the power of friendship and im being so serious

because marble hornets is very much a story that is heavy on the themes of loneliness and isolation and you see the characters only truly succeed on anything against the operator when they've teamed up and are fully on the same page

anytime you see someone being targeted by the operator they're usually alone. and thus you see them suffering from the effects and even losing themselves to it

the times you see it go against 2 or more people it doesn't usually end with one or more of them succumbing to it UNLESS they're not fulling simpatico with each other. yes it can give them a debuff regardless, but you can see like when tim and jay actually team up with each other and are becoming closer, that's when tim is able to stand up to the operator and come out relatively okay

and then you have jay waking up from whatever out-of-it state the operator put him in being relatively okay than the seven months it took from him before

i think the whole shtick of the operator is of course: paranoia and isolation. that's the way it gets what it wants. its a slow operator (ha) and works bit by bit isolating you from your loved ones and acquaintances until it can fully take you and either consume you or manipulate you to work for it to either spread its influence or claim victims for it

and that's where you see namely Jay and Alex fall. they both end up so sick and stuck in the mistrust and isolation. Alex ends up believing he's on a crusade where the ends justify the means for the greater good. jay believes he's uncovering some great mystery that actually benefits other people to know. but the unfortunate truth is they were both fully just fulfilling the operator's intent the entire time

i think for Jay this comes from the fact he's hinted multiple times that his life before marble hornets was boring, uneventful, unremarkable. i think he was used to always being the invisible guy in the room, the second or even third choice, the guy who's just there but has nothing really going for him. this was finally something bigger that he was apart of. that he was the voice of, even. he was the guy unraveling this big supernatural mystery and slowly putting all the pieces together. i don't think he had ANY idea where it was going to lead, but he couldn't pull himself away from it. he was always destined (doomed) to see it through

he was trapped because he was looking at this as his purpose in life. he calls alex a friend and mentions another off-screen friend i think? but otherwise he doesn't really talk about anyone else from his life. i don't think he had very strong bonds with anyone even his own family. (my headcanon is he's the middle child of a bunch of siblings that "outperformed" him, so he was always just there. either that or the only child of parent/s that had a lot of their own shit going on so he was mostly fending for himself for emotional connection)

you can see it even in the way jay interacts with them during marble hornets shooting. he's kinda awkward and out of place OR tries to impose his presence "i've been supervising that. because i'm the script supervisor." and of course alex seems to be the one he's closest to but also?? especially knowing how close troy and joseph were at the time, jay himself doesn't seem to be that close to alex. especially because he seems oblivious to a lot of things going on with him and the ways they interact

then you have alex who i still need to marinate on, but my take right now is he's always been a guy of big ideas and big ambitions. especially as writer and director of marble hornets himself. i think him and jay are similar in that regard in that their being, their soul, is hungry for something greater than they are. it's just alex is more about finding it and taking it vs jay who seems to need to find it accidentally or have it given to him.

alex's strength is being a leader and making decisions, even the tough ones people dont want to make. i think that's probably always been a part of him it just didn't become so...dire until the operator influence. i think alex might've even seen himself as always a little better than his peers in some way. maybe that he was better at figuring things out or coming to those conclusions that helped him make his decisions and lead the crew. and so he too saw himself or just yearned for being someone special and more than he is. cinematic parallels lol

(i also love the headcanon alex has religious trauma that leads into some sort of messiah complex tbqh)

and so that's exactly what the operator's influence fed on in the both of them. like targeted their yearning/insecurities and that's how it was able to wrap them up

and see compare this to tim, who also has his own insecurities and yearning and weak points, but i think tim's ultimate strength in this is his determination. he has a special kind of stubborn resilience to him that you can even see in just his interactions with other characters. he knows what he's about and what he does and doesn't want to happen in the moment. he can be chill and easygoing, but once you hit that limit he won't budge.

it also helps him that he's been dealing with the operator since childhood, he's kinda built up defenses (masky) and a sort of diminishing returns from the operator's impact. i largely think his initial main strength is masky, though. but masky does only as much as not letting his entire self be consumed by the operator. i think where tim finds his strength to not only resist but even slightly overcome the operator, is finding a person to really bond with. (which i think extends to masky as well. which i'll get to in a sec)

tim himself tells us as much as as he's never had a real friend until brian. and then we end up seeing through their dynamic, brian is like that classic extrovert who adopted an introvert kinda friend. (except i dont think brian is an extrovert, he's extrovert-passing, but that's beside the point. you get what i mean.)

and you could say the fact tim is clearly struggling with the operator during marble hornets filming when we know he's still close with brian goes against my point but! i also said they have to be working towards the same goal. and this is why i said that.

(i heavily headcanon that tim is the reason why brian is a psychology major. i think, while tim wasn't fully open with everything (and/or just couldn't remember) he did tell brian some of the struggles of being a very mentally ill kid in the 90s trying to get help. and i think brian was the kind of guy who'd take the shirt off his back for a friend and so of course he wants to help tim and even wants to give a better experience to others like him)

anyways that's relevant because while brian knew tim was struggling and i believe he even helped him through some of those struggles (i love the headcanon that brian knew masky even before shit hit the fan) he didn't fully understand the entirety of what was going on or even fathomed it could extend beyond just tim. which...makes sense. its not like you expect some time/space-warping monster to suddenly be real.

but i also think that alex and tim being in close proximity to each other is why things went as bad as they did. we don't know if alex struggled with the same stuff tim did before college. but it's clear that alex was marked when he was a child regardless. and tim clearly was too. and i think the two meeting each other was like kindling and a lighter to the entire thing and why it went further than just the both of them despite no hint prior that this happened to either one of them before now (as in it spreading to other ppl)

but yeah i still think, despite maybe not being as strong as later, brian's influence on tim kept him whole enough where he COULD become a major player towards the partial success of their group

i think the main thing that pokes holes in my theory is how tim was "doing better" before jay involved him again but at the same time...who can truly say. clearly tim's had breaks before since he was able to make it through school and get into a college. i doubt he'd be able to do that if he was still as bad off as he was

maybe he wasn't really doing better he was just...back to the same as ever. the baseline. which wasn't good but for tim? it was good. comparatively.

i also think it wasn't solely jay being in tim's life again that reverted it to the horrors, it was also alex. because like i said before i believe that they're like...two big beacons of operator energy/influence and when they get close its like a bomb going off of glitchy time/space warpy bullshit

it just happened that alex and jay were linked together at this point. tied up in their destiny you could say. so if you got jay, you got alex. even if they weren't directly around each other

and yeah, i think that if jay hadn't succumbed to the darkness dusting up all the things he was insecure and even afraid of to the point it turned him against tim, i think they coulda done more than just defeated alex. and i think that's exactly what the operator didnt want. that's why it behaves as it does. that's the reason for its modus operandi

further section to return back to masky. and hoody. hoody's impact ALSO to me proves my theory. because while he keeps his distance from the others, what he does is for the same end goals: stop alex and stop the operator. (or at least die trying) and we find out that even if he does it in a mocking and kinda anti-hero passive-aggressive kinda way. he IS on their side. he doesn't ever do anything against them. even when he lashes out like with the pipe or a punch, its just so he can get away. its defensive rather than aggressive

i do NOT buy into the fanon/headcanon that hoody is some nefarious secret mastermind pulling all the strings and everythings orchestrated in the exact way he envisioned it. nor that he hates tim near the end of the season. or that he hates anyone, really. other than alex. (also thank you issue 3.5 for making me feel correct and sexy because i had this theory even before i read it)

my big headcanon is, obviously the operator fucks with your brain, its his whole thing. so its scrambling everyone up constantly. and i think when alex hit brian in the head, it did damage even beyond that. i think hoody has a really warped way of thinking/processing things. like he can't just do it clearly. it cant be a-to-b anymore. so i think him being cryptic isnt even entirely a conscious choice all the time, but i also think he figured that for jay and tim to be at their strongest, they had to find all this stuff out on their own and not have it given to them as far as just tell them outright what hoody's figured out while he's been living in ppl's walls

i think hoody only went so far as to lay out the pieces and leave it to jay (and tim) to put them together. and we clearly see sometimes he misjudges jay or tim's reactions and they do things that don't seem to be the way he planned. this is harder to explain without me going all...grabbing clips and directly comparing them and this is already more time than i thought i was gonna put into this post but yea. JUST TRUST ME. hoody didnt know every move they were gonna make before they did, he was doing the equivalent of just throwing darts at a board and seeing what stuck

i also have the headcanon that it wasnt hoody that led masky. it was the other way around. masky might be a more impulsive, throw yourself bodily at the problem (literally) but masky's been here in this shit a lot longer than hoody. i think totheark was largely masky's design before hoody took over. hoody just gave it a vision (because remember he had a film minor :P)

brian kept tim/masky safe from alex (and if you buy into my headcanon, masky was already fond of him from prior episodes) so masky kinda takes hoody under his wing per se. and that's why they end up so similar in how they act and even the whole obscured face thing idk its part of being in the club

they literally react in sync. they work around each other with no signals or words. they're a package deal, a well-oiled machine, and when tim starts to get "better" then obviously masky disappears

i think the masky/hoody duo reinstates my theory because they've both been already damaged prior, but they don't get worse while they're together. they've been doing this for years id assume. and you only see hoody get visibly affected by the operator when he's become a one-man band. he's become isolated. and i think he understands that that's why. and i think that's why (amongst loneliness in general, missing his partner) he pressures tim into reverting to masky even to the point of selfish cruelty and watching tim struggle with it

because it's not ONLY selfish (but i won't say that's not a big part of it) it's also for the good of the mission overall. masky knows what to do. masky has plans. masky knows how hoody works and thinks and can just pick it up and work with him no problem

vs the whole...conundrum it'd be for hoody to try and explain everything to tim and jay directly. which i don't believe he can. i believe there's a reason he's mute and only leaves very simple sentences/messages. (not simple as in i'm ignoring they're in fkn code as in...the sentences themselves aren't that complex and are largely just a few words.) (back to my headcanon: its literally neurological)

anyways i think the reason jay and tim get as far as they do is having hoody's help, but even hoody realizes it comes down to jay and tim working together which is why he pushes that. (i think hoody continues taking tims pills at first because he believes it too, but i think they end up actually helping with his own symptoms (not the staving away operator sickness just like. his own seizures and stuff from his head injury) and so he keeps it up. either that or he's just like...taking advantage of the placebo-effect)

and it works out well...until it doesn't

jay fails because he falls to the influence unfortunately. he turns on tim. stops working with him. and tim has enough resilience to carry on and succeed in at least one way: stop alex, but i think that's why nothing more happens with or against the operator itself: he literally can't on his own

and i think the comics are gonna either straight up prove my theory right or at least give me more fuel to believe that i'm right

and if you read this whole thing bless your damn heart it was an accident it got this long. i just have a lot of thoughts. i have even more than this but it's all not super related and i wanted to at least stay MOSTLY on point lol