#It's Almost Like That's A Rational And Mature Thing To Do! Instead Of Going Into OTHER PEOPLE'S POSTS And Leaving Snide Comments! 🙄🙄🙄

[xaykwolf]

It baffles me that people really take "I prefer Yas.ha to be buff/have black streaks in her hair" to mean "Ashley DOESN'T know her character and her interpretation is NOT valid" like... y'all... BREATHE. Literally no one is saying that. Many of us have good reasons not to like specific choices in Yas.ha's new character art, but we all recognize that we are both not in control of Ashley's decisions nor the final arbiter of what Yas.ha looks like.

To the people who think the black streaks are indicative of her trauma, and that's why it's GOOD that they're gone, I ask you to think for a moment why you believe markers of trauma do/should go away completely. I'm not even arguing at this point that that's what Ashley was intending, but that seems to be a common sentiment in the fandom. That Yas.ha's hair is an indicator of healing. (Whereas I'd always figured her smiling, talking, and asserting herself more often were already good enough indicators. But what do I know, with decades of my own trauma and years of psychological training? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Also...I feel it needs to be said aloud: biology would suggest that, in a more stable, safe, and nutrient-consistent environment with access to bodybuilding equipment, Yas.ha's muscles would GROW from what they were when she was on the run, swordfighting to survive and without a consistent source a nutrient-rich foods (with the exception of her life with the Nein after Obann, with Caddy to make meals). Again, the art is what the art is. Most of us who like her buff...well I think it's kinda obvious why that is. Any dissatisfaction I've seen has also only been expressed with personal posts, none of which were designed to get back to Ashley or the character art artist. So like...let us be thirsty and move on.

[monzabee]

pon de replay - cl16 (+18)

masterlist ||

Summary: The one where Charles decide to prove to everyone that it is him that you belong to, and only him.

Pairing: charles leclerc x reader 

Word Count: 4.8k

Warnings: smuttt, nothing but pure filth, one might even say it is pwp, unprotected sex (cover your willy don’t be silly), oral (f receiving), kinda exhibitionism?, public sex, jealous charles, possessive charles, carlos being a little shit because he’s bored, poor lando, not even sure if i fulfilled the request or not, minors dni!! 

Request: “HELLOOOO! i have an idea and you don’t have to write it but it’s been rattling around in my brain and im never gonna write it (i constantly have way too many ideas to write them fr) myself so i figured i’d send it to you cause you’ve kinda restored my F1 phase with your work. basically, reader being very goofy, funny, and maybe a little bit too loud at times. just like a very silly and bubbly personality and she hangs out with some of the f1 boys (maybe because she’s famous in her own right like a dancer or something) so naturally EVERYONE ships her with lando. like hardcore, almost as bad as one direction fans ships (iykyk), and it sorta makes sense cause when they’re together it’s pure and utter chaos and they both express themselves with physical touch B U T ! she’s actually with charles. to her it makes total sense to be with charles instead of lando cause while lando is definitely attractive he’s too much like her and it’d be like dating herself whereas charles brings out a new calm side to her and she can bring out a goofier side to him. opposites attract type shit😭. maybe a little angst cause charles hates seeing all the edits and also feels a little insecure cause lando and reader DO make sense together in his mind so why’d you pick him instead? then like soft fluff/smut reassurance that charles is literally the man of her dreams, a literal fucking prince, and the best person she’s ever been with. ANYWAYS, im rambling! again, you don’t have to write this if you don’t connect with it or don’t have time i just needed an outlet SOMEWHERE for all the F1 brain rot.”

Author’s Note: hi, hey, hello!! i first of all want to start by saying that i’m very sorry that this isn’t exactly like the request, like at all, but it took me a criminal amount of time to actually get this finished so we’re not going to focus on that. okay? okay, great!! in all and all it was actually quite fun to work on this at the beginning, it was just kinda hard for some reason to work on the actual smut part, but i hope you guys enjoy! good morning, noon or night wherever you are, xoxobee

Please also note that all of my works are protected under copyright, and not available for reposting on other platforms. 

Charles wouldn’t call himself a possessive person, not a chance. He might be ambitious, and competitive, but possessive? That, he is not. He’s never been the type of get jealous of his partner’s friends, whether male or female, because he likes to think that he is mature enough to understand that people have friends. It’s that simple. And he is most definitely not the type of person to comment on what you wear when you’re going out, he is just not that guy. He’s fairly certain that his mother would materialise out of thin air and give him a good beating if he were to do that. So when you asked him about the dress you have on earlier before you left his apartment, the one that clings to your body so tightly that he can practically make out the outline of your tits from across the room? He just smiled and told you to have fun tonight – because he’s there to make sure you’re not put off by anyone staring at you in it.

So yeah. He’s not usually the type to let the jealousy take over his ability to think things out rationally, but when his girlfriend is dancing her heart away in the middle of the dance floor while every red-blooded men watch her with the same look in their eyes? Yeah, it’s not easy to keep his emotions in check at the moment given the circumstances. And it’s not that he even intends to pout like a petulant child at the bar, making sure to keep an eye on you, it’s just that he is an expressive person and his face reflects what he’s feeling that well. Totally because of that. It’s scary how utterly focused he is on you, watching your every move to make sure no one is bothering you, though you don’t seem to be in need of his help as he watches you dance with one of the girls you met when you first arrived to the club – and with Lando, though he tries not to focus on that part too much.

It's fine, though, he tries to make himself believe, it’s fine as long as you’re having fun. Though that doesn’t necessarily stop him from throwing daggers into Lando’s direction as covertly as he can. The way he has a friendly arm around you is driving him crazy, and he is not above stomping over there to pull you under his arm, drag you to the nearest bathroom and– Well, maybe he shouldn’t get too far ahead of himself just yet.

“They look good together, no?” He hears someone ask him from the side. He realises it is his teammate when he turns to give the person a glare.

“Who?” He asks, deciding to play dumb, but he can’t help himself as he makes a face while focusing his gaze back on you.

“You know who I’m talking about, cabrón!” Carlos exclaims, laughing as he pats him on the back and points to the two of you with a tilt of his head, “I’m glad he’s finally doing something about it rather than sulking around like a geriatric toddler.”

If he would have turned around any faster, Charles is sure his neck would actually, possibly, break. “What?” he spits out as he turns around, “Do you mean her and Lando?”

Carlos gives his teammate a confused look, “Yes,” he drawls out, “you didn’t know he had a crush on her? I thought the entire paddock knew!” Charles feels a surge of disbelief and a tinge of anger bubbling within him.

He wouldn't call it possessiveness, more like a primal instinct to protect what's his. But this revelation catches him off guard, shattering his carefully constructed facade of nonchalance. With doing his best to keep calm under the situation, he asks, “Are you sure you’re not making things up? I feel like you’re misreading the situation here.”

That receives another confused look from his teammate, and though Charles is quite the perceptive person, he misses Carlos starting to put the pieces together – thanks to his overreaction. “I guess so,” Carlos mumbles, loud enough for Charles to hear him in the loud club, “he’s always talking about her, though. The way she smiles, her hair, her dresses; did you know he even went to see one of her performances in Vegas?” Carlos feels bad, really, but there is also something so fulfilling in confirming his theories as he watches his teammate’s eyes bulge out at the mention of one of your dance shows in Vegas. Because Charles knows what those entail.

“I-in Vegas?” He stutters out, eyes moving to focus on your dancing figure again. And at that moment, he absolutely hates Lando. He hates him for having his arms around you, he hates him for dancing with you to the beat in a rhythm he never seems to be able to keep up with, he hates him for the way everybody seems to think the two of you seem to make a handsome couple, and he absolutely hates him for the way he makes you smile.

Charles Leclerc is not a possessive guy – until it comes to you, that is.

“Charles?” He hears Carlos call out his name, but he’s out of his seat long before he can hear the end of his sentence. He doesn’t mean to stomp across the dance floor to get to you. He really doesn’t. He also doesn’t mean to grab you by your arm and put a pause on your fun. And the smile you give him and the way you wrap your arms around his neck while you call him ‘Charlie’? Makes his heart stutter in a way that makes him forget why he ever came over in this first place. Because this should be normal – you, having male friends and spending time with them should not make him insecure. He should be fine with you and Lando spending time together because you both love the hustle and bustle of a club. But at that moment, he doesn’t care about what should be normal, no. He cares about the fact that someone other than him has managed to make you smile, and that he needs to remind you that he’s the only one who should be on the receiving end of all your smiles.

So when he drags you away from the dancefloor (and Lando, for that matter), he doesn’t listen to your objections. He doesn’t care about the way Carlos is watching from his place from the bar, putting all the pieces together as he shares a look with Lando. And he most definitely doesn’t care about the fact that he’s about to fuck you in the club’s bathroom. Well, maybe he does care about that last part. “Charlie,” you whine, your voice clearly scratched from shouting along the lyrics of the songs playing throughout the night, and he doesn’t miss the way you slur his name ever so slightly – which tells him that you had at least two drinks. Cosmopolitans, if he had to guess. “Pleaaase,” you drag out the word, pulling on his shirt to get his attention, “they are playing my song!”

His first mistake is to look at you, because the way your lips form a pout and the way you’re giving him puppy dog eyes is usually strong enough for him to give in. Though this is no usual situation. So instead of moving the two of you back to the dancefloor, he grabs you by your cheeks and presses his lips against you. In the middle of the club, where everybody can see him doing it. The way his lips move against yours is aggressive, and you’re definitely out of breath when he does move away. Cosmopolitans, he realises after tasting you. You've had cosmopolitans. Then, he just gives you a look, threads his fingers through yours and raises an eyebrow. Then he asks, “Are you going to be a good girl and come with me now, or should I do this the hard way and just carry you on my shoulder?”

If this was any other situation, you would totally say something bratty back. Hell, you might have actually said something rude if it meant him being rough with you, maybe spanking you a few times just enough times for you to learn your lesson. But you understand that this is no ordinary situation from his voice and the expression on his face. Charles is like that, you suppose. He’s an open book – meaning that it is very easy to understand what kind of a mood he’s in just by looking at his face, or listening to the undertone of his voice. And right now? Right now you know he’s pissed. You don’t necessarily know what you did, nor do you care. Mainly because all you want to do is make him feel better simply because of the reason that he is one of those people who’s just meant to smile at all times, not frown.

And so you nod gingerly, squeaking out a thimble, “Yes.” You finally meet his eyes as you wrap yourself around his arm, pushing yourself closer to him in the crowded club. “I’ll be good.”

This thumb does that thing where he caresses your knuckle, and he starts moving you through the crowd again. This time, however, you try to stick to him by matching the speed of his steps rather than trying to stay back. You told him you’d be good, you intend to keep your promise. He’s quiet all the way to the bathroom, and he’s quiet when he motions you to get inside, and he’s quiet when he closes to door and promptly locks it behind your back. You think for a moment you’re just there for a chat, maybe about that something you might’ve done, but Charles takes you by surprise as he grabs your waist and pushes you against the door, causing your eyes to widen with realisation of what you’re about to do in that bathroom.

“Charles, what’s wrong?” You try to ask, but he shuts you up with another kiss. And if you thought the previous kiss was aggressive, this one absolutely consumes you. He doesn’t even give you a fighting chance as his tongue quickly dominates yours, and he is relentless as he nips at your lower lip. You can’t help the mortifying moan that leaves your lips, and you push him away to inhale deeply. “What has gotten into you?” You ask, eyes wide due to the adrenaline coursing through your veins, “What happened?”

“You, happened.” He growls. And by that, you mean that he actually growls. His voice is a few octaves deeper than his usual voice, and you can see that he’s snappy. There is this dark look in his eyes that would otherwise scare you if you didn’t know him, but you do. Because he’s your Charles.

And you know this because the quickly leans into your touch when you bring one of your hands up to cup his cheek, giving him a confused look. “Did I do something?” You ask, voice soft amidst the humid bathroom. “Oh my god, is it my dress? Is it too short?” Your eyebrows draw closer as you start properly spiralling. “I knew I should’ve worn the shorts, why didn’t you say something?”

Your mini monologue about your party attire must have struck a chord because Charles suddenly exhales heavily, his forehead resting against yours as he closes his eyes. “No, non, it's not about the fucking dress,” he lashes out, his voice strained, and lace with something else that you can’t quite catch. “I don’t care what you wear, though I do appreciate the easy access.”

“Easy access?” You repeat, testing out the words as you come to a realisation. “What?” You exclaim, quickly taking your hand away from his face to lightly slap at his chest. “No! We are definitely not doing that here, are you out of your mind? You pulled me away because you can’t keep it in your pants until we’re home?”

“And why not?” He asks, and this time, you can see the unbridled rage behind his look. “Would you rather go back to Lando out there? You looked quite happy in his arms after all.”

And the realisation dawns on you right then and there. That this isn’t about your choice of dress for the evening, no. It is about Lando. Though you don’t get that part, since he’s both of your friend, so why is Charles being like this? And you would ask him, of course. But the look he gives you indicates that he doesn’t want to be tested in that exact moment.

So instead, you attempt to calm him down, by dragging your hand gently down his chest and wrapping your arms around his middle. He is like that, your Charles, sometimes he just wants to be held to see reason. “Charlie,” you call out, voice soft as you give him a pleading look, “why don’t you tell me what this is about, hm?”

You think he’s going to finally give in for a moment, but then he just gives you a blank stare. “I don’t want to talk,” he grunts, pulling you flush against him by the hands he has on your waist. His lips are on your neck faster than you can say anything, working his way towards your collarbones. The faint whimpers that come out of your lips bring a small smile to his lips knowing that he’s the one causing them, not Lando or any other guy.

“Charles,” you gasp, your fingers tangling in his hair as his lips trail along your skin. Despite the confusion and frustration swirling within you, you can't deny the way his touch ignites a fire deep within you, consuming your thoughts and leaving you breathless with desire. But as much as you crave his touch, you know that there are unresolved issues between you, issues that need to be addressed before you can fully give yourself to him in this moment. “Charlie,” you repeat, your voice barely above a whisper as you gently push against his chest, urging him to stop. “Stop, we need to talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” He asks, all breathy and with a wild look in his eyes. You can see that he’s trying to hold himself back, but at the same time his hands keep moving on your body in a way that makes you want to let him lose control and perhaps even join him. He successfully ignores your attempts at pushing him away, sliding his hands down on your body to grab the hem of your dress, clenching the material in his hand while dragging it upwards on your thighs until he reaches the soft skin of your stomach. “I have a thing in mind which might help me feel better.” Unable to take your eyes off of him, you take a stuttered breath as you watch him slowly get down on his knees, his lips pressing kisses starting form your sternum continuing down your body over your dress until you feel his lips on the exposed skin of your stomach. His kisses stop once he’s met with the top lining of your underwear, looking at you with a mischevious glint in his eyes as he nips at the nimble lace adorning the top. You call out his name in a weak whimper – though it is not clear to you, nor him, whether you’re asking him to stop or go on. Charles decides to go with the latter. “You know what to say if you want me to stop.”

You don’t really need his reminder, you realise, but it is a welcome one. Your cheeks blush even further when you feel his gaze on you as he lowers his face towards your core, leaving a sweet kiss onto your clit through the fabric of your thong. Suddenly, you want nothing more than to just rip to whole thing apart so there is nothing separating you from him, but you know the game, and you especially know that the ending is sweeter than what you could ever imagine at that moment. And so you wait – you wait until he eventually makes his move and gives your slit a generous lick through the fabric. Watching you is equal parts thrilling and painful, mainly because he wants to drag out his teasing as long as possible just to see you falling apart for him. It’s second nature to you, the way your hand threads through his hair to move him the way you want to, but it is of course not an option because it’s Charles who is in charge.

He makes this known by the way he pulls away, ignoring the way your hands scramble to guide him back to where you want him to be. He nips at the skin of your thigh in a warning manner, pulling a whine from your lips as he fixes you with a look, “You’re not in control tonight, mon bijou, I’ll stop if you try to take over. You got that?” It’s sobering to see him take control in such a way, you sweet little Charles. Usually, he has no problem just laying back and letting you take all the control, or even just making you believe you do. But now? With the way he’s looking at you with such hunger? You know you’d be soaking through your underwear if you weren’t so wet for him already. All you can do is offer him a meek nod, with your lips hanging open in shock, but he is not satisfied with your answer. No, he needs to hear you say the words. So, being the initiative person that he his, he tips at your skin again, this time earning himself a whimper along a grumble about how he’s being unreasonable. He isn’t, but that’s a topic to discuss another time, he decides. “I said, you got that?”

“Yes! Fine, yes!” You whine, grabbing your dress even tighter with your fist that isn’t buried in his hair, “Please just make me come.”

“See?” He asks, flashing you a sweet smile as he lowers his face back onto where you need him the most, “It wasn’t that hard now, is it?” The grumble about how he’s about to be the hard one, makes him chuckle to himself, the rumbling from it making you moan his name as he finally gives you what you want. His tongue works fast as he laps on the wetness through your underwear, soaking the material even more without a care in the world. If you weren’t wet before, you’re sure you’re definitely wet as he drags his tongue through your slit and back onto your clit to suck it through the fabric, causing you to let out a string of moans, each getting considerably louder as he works on your cunt.

The breath is knocked out of your lungs as the moments pass, as you become closer and closer to your impending release. You don’t even notice the fact that you’ve started to move your hips to match the rythym of his tongue, seeking something more to make you tip over the edge. You’re also very aware of the fact that Charles is letting you what you want to do, and though you’re scared out of you midn that he’ll stop like he threatened to do before, the little nod he gives you when you give him a pleading look assures you that he also wants you to come undone on his face.

Or so you’ve thought.

Because he knows your body so well that jus as you’re about to come he pulls back, leaving you high and dry, and even has the nerve to chuckle when he hears his name coming out of your mouth in a high pitched whine. You’re so lost in the moment that you almost miss the way he gently grabs your hands and removes them from his hair, pinning them above you and pushing you against the wall. “Why?” You whine, lips pushed out in a pout as your voice gets gradually whinier, “I was so close, Charles.”

“Oh, baby,” he cooes, “I know you were, I could feel it too.” He starts peppering your feverish skin with kisses, as if to say sorry for leaving you on the brink of an orgasm, and you find yourself arching your neck to expose more of your skin to his skillfull lips. You should stop him, some part of you screams to you in your head, because with the way he’s disguising the fact that he’s marking you with hickeys, but you don’t care at that moment. Your every breath and moan seem to motivate him to work faster, and harder, and when he eventually pulls back to leave a bruising kiss on your lips. A smirk finds its way onto his lips as he gives you an eyeing down, taking in how breathless you look. “Don’t worry, mon bijou, I’ll fuck you now, okay?”

You don’t even realise the nod you give him, too lost in his eyes to put words together to form a proper sentence. He’s gentle with you as he lets go of your hands and positions you the way he wants. With one of your legs wrapped around his hip he has better access to your soaked underwear, his fingers working quickly to pulling it aside. You don’t know when he managed to get himself free from his pants and underwear, but that doesn’t stop you from letting out a loud moan when you feel the tip of his cock circling your clit. “Please, please, please,” your voice cracks as you frantically beg him to do something more. You’d love nothing more than to scold him for the way he shushes you condescendingly, but any complaint you had evaporates when you feel him nudge your entrance. “Please,” you breathe out again, giving him pleading looks as you try to pull him closer somehow, “You promised me you’d fuck me.”

That manages to pull out a beathy chuckle for him, and as if he’s trying to console you, you feel his fingers gently caressing the skin of your hip. “Why don’t you do it yourself, hm?” A grin widens on his lips when you give him a look of confusion, and he leads one of your hands between your bodies for you to wrap it around his cock. “You want me inside you, right?” He rewards your tentative nod with a series of kisses down the column of your throat, “Come on then,” he mumbles into your skin, “put it in, pretty girl.” Exhaling a shaky breath, you keep your eyes on him as you guide him through your entrance. A gasp is torn from your lips when you feel his tip entering you, the initial stretch being more overwhelming because of the fact that you’re standing up. But Charles is quick to soothe you with his kisses down your neck, letting you control the rhythym and how further he can move inside you at first. With your hand making its way down to his hip, pressing him close to you, he quickly gets the message that you’re ready for him. “You’re ready?” He double-checks, raising his head to fix his eyes to yours.

“I swear to god if you don’t fuck me right now–” Your words are interrupted when you feel him move his hips back, just enough to have his tip inside you, and then he snaps his hips forward to thrust back in, making your breath hitch at the back of your throat. It doesn’t take very long for you to become a moaning mess, in fact, you’re more than ready to fall apart for him then and there, but you know he won’t let you until he gets his point across.   

“Look at you, mon bijou,” Charles darkly chuckles, hips matching the rhythym of the song playing outside at the dance floor, “what would people think if they saw you being such a mess for me in a club’s bathroom?” And the whine you let out in response to his question nothing if pathethic, but you can’t find it in you to care because of how good he’s making you feel. “Yes?” He prompts you, mocking the whiny ‘Yes’, that leaves your mouth before you start begging him to let you come. But he doesn’t, because he knows you can hold it until he’s ready for you too, and he tells you just that.

“So good, Charlie, so good,” you can’t help the broken moans you let out as he fucks you to the brink of an orgasm. But that is not enough for him, no. He needs everyone to know the two of you are together now, needs to get out all of his pent up frustrations out.

So when the opportunity presents itself with Lando knocking on the door asking if you are okay? A knowing smirk find its way onto his lips, and you try to silently plead with him with your eyes. “You want to cum?” He whispers in your ear, his thrusts becoming faster. “Say my name if you want to come, baby.”

“Please–” You gasp, hands grabbing the shirt he’s wearing. It’s no avail even if you try to keep your voice down. Because when Charles finds a way to slither his hand down between your legs and starts rubbing your clit in firm circles? You know there is no way you can stay quiet through your orgasm. “Why?” You manage to get out, “God, Charles please.”

“Tell me who’s making you feel so good, pretty girl.” He encourages you, his rhythym now almost brutal as he tries his best to make you come for him. “Come on, tell me who you belong to.” He chuckles darkly when he sees you shaking your head. “It’s not Lando, it’s me. You hear that?” Uh-huh, is the only answer he receives in return, but he is of course not satisfied with it. So, he gently pinches the inside of your thigh. “Tell me who’s going to make you come, or I’ll stop.”

“N-no!” You exclaim, too overwhelmed to see that his threat is an empty one, because he would never actually do something like that to you. “Please, please don’t stop.”

“Come on,” he cooes, the sweet words he whispers into your skin making you more and more malleable to his request. “Say my name baby, let me hear you.”

“Charles,” your loud moan cuts the heavy air in the bathroom. Cheeks flushed, breath unorganised and with that wild look in your eyes? There’s nothing Charles wouldn’t do for you. With every move of his hips, you moan his name louder, eventually tipping over the edge as he feels you squeezing his cock so tight that he almost loses himself then and there.

That’s not to say he doesn’t, of course. Because just as you’re about done with your orgasm, you feel him come inside you, chanting your name alongside mine, mine mine. It takes a long time for the both of you to get back to your senses, but he’s extremely gentle with you as he helps you down and fixes your underwear. You find yourself snuggling up to him when he eventually takes you into his arms after fixing his own clothing, nuzzling your nose to his neck. “You know, I think I like the jealous side of you.” You mumble, leaving a few kisses across his jaw.

“Yeah?” He asks, a breathy chuckle leaving him as he cradles your face with both of his hands, his thumbs caressing the apples of your cheeks.

“Yeah.” You nod, giving him a small smile, “But I need you to take me home, please, I can feel your cum dripping down my leg.”

“Oh baby,” he coos, tutting as he slides his hands down your body to grab you by the waist, “we’re not going home, it would be rude to leave our friends by themselves. Don’t you think so?” The flabbergasted look that you give him makes another chuckle come from his lips as he slowly turns you towards the door. His lips find the junction between your neck and shoulder again as he announces, “We’re going to go back out there, and we’re going to dance. We wouldn’t want you to miss your song now, would we?”

And when he opens the bathroom door and you hear the first words to a Rihanna song you love? You know it’s going to be a long night ahead of you.

[krypticcafe]

Can please get fic where young reader almost gets r-word.. like! What happened to ellie on 'the last of us' like make it into that situation, reader kills the rapist and flees away and runs into the 141 team, and their like in this state of like panic, but they calm them down and they explain what happened they are beyond livid so they just reck hell on the people who was with the man who tried to r-word reader.

(this a platonic relationship between reader and the team)

Me and the Devil

rating: mature

pairing(s): platonic 141 x gn!reader

warning(s): no use of y/n, dead dove do not eat, non-explicit attempted r*pe, emotional and physical trauma, sexual physical and mental violence, canon-typical graphic violence, comfort

wordcount: ~3.8k

a/n: i'm not exactly sure what anon meant by young, but for context, reader is probably 20-22, I'm just not comfortable writing this kinda stuff for teen or child reader, I hope you don't mind. also, huge, HUGE emphasis on the warnings. though nothing is explicit and there are no sexual graphic terms, the descriptions and actions alone are still very disturbing and uncomfortable! and the violence is a little uncomfy for those not used to it, too. title is from 'Me and the Devil' - Soap&Skin

synopsis: You can see it. The devil. It laughs, and laughs, and laughs, mocks you for your childish stupidity and naivete. To think the angels would come marching in, that you'd make it out with any semblance of sanity. You can't fight it, you can't even hide from it. All you can do is lie in your grave.

Just hours ago, you were alongside the 141, cleaning up and wiping out an enemy base, a typical Tuesday on a summer afternoon. You should've known things would go downhill with how smoothly it was all going. Even Price commented on it with an air of wariness and suspicion. After all, it was a saying that if the fight starts getting too easy, then it's an ambush. And an ambush it was. You want to tell yourself that it was nothing, easy as pie compared to what you've been through. You wanted to say that it was a success and you turned the tables on your enemies. You wanted to say that it ended within a matter of minutes and that you were on your way back to base with your boys, ready for a night of banter at the pub. You'd join Ghost in watching Soap and Gaz try their hand at poker, taking a shot each time Soap's dogshit luck lost him another couple of euros while Price would pry Roach from having another cocktail and piss himself ('it was one time!' he slurs).

But instead, you're here. Locked in a room, bag over your head, tied to a chair, a stereotypical hostage situation but that didn't make it any less tolerable. Though having a potato sack over your head was nowhere near as embarrassing as the reason why you were captured. You tried your best to hold onto the jeep, honestly, you did. Until some ankle-biter decided to latch onto you and sink his teeth into your flesh, causing your grip to loosen and send you tumbling into the dirt. Your bodies slammed into the ground, kicking up dust and your opponent taking most of the fall damage for you. How thoughtful.

Seething at the audacity he had to chomp on your leg like some feral mutt, you gave him a piece of your mind and made sure he'd never bite another ankle again. His friends caught up the moment you were done. They dragged you back down to the coarse dirt and sand of the earth, making you taste and choke on dust. You looked at the lifeless figure in the sand, briefly wondering if you'd be wishing you were him before a bag was slipped over your head and tied like a collar. It didn't help that the sand on the roof of your mouth combined with your ineffective attempts to ration your breathing made for a burn worse than any hard liquor down your throat. Thrashing and shouting like a madman, you cursed them like some teenager who discovered swearing as they tossed you into the back of a truck, rolling you forth with the heels of their boots. Not your finest moment.

Once you were loaded and the rest of them climbed on, the truck shot forward without slowing down for a second, taking you to your own personal hell for the next few days. Knowing the 141, they were probably at the safehouse, planning their next move to retrieve you. In the time between interrogations and routine attempts to break you, you could imagine Soap and Roach pacing around the room, Ghost brandishing a knife with a dark look in his eyes, and Price looming over a map and pulling up contacts with Gaz at his side. While you hated to burden them with your own mistakes, thinking about them all gnawing their teeth in comical anger at your expense brought you momentary comfort, eliciting a small chuckle.

"Something funny?" Much to your ire, all your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of several people shuffling into the room. You could only expect so much privacy in a place like this. The man who spoke up seemed to carry himself like a leader, considering how he spoke above all others and you could hear him carrying out demands every now and then, checking up on you as if he actually gave a shit. And currently, he was on the top of your "to kill" list, along with every other cunt in this prison.

"What'll it be today, more screaming or more silence? You know, you can only stay quiet for so long." He sighed. Judging by the sound of metal screeching on concrete, he pulled up a front-row seat. With a single yank, you were again temporarily freed of the confines of the bag on your face, glaring at the man with a look of ferocity that seemed as if it were etched on your face permanently. His clothes were disturbingly clean-cut and polished despite the blood he spilled for the past few days. Your blood he spilled. "Come now... you know you'll only make things more difficult. Face it, kid, they're not coming, it's been days."

When you felt gloved fingers touch your jaw you snapped, pulling away like an animal restrained by a leash. Your captor let out a taunting "Oooh", and your skin crawled at how he heckled and laughed like some adolescent boy poking a rabid animal with a stick through its cage. "So it bites."

"Fuck you." You rasped.

"And it talks." The humiliation of their nonchalant attitudes made you seethe, you knew it was a tactic to get under your skin and you just wouldn't have it, turning your head away from the men.

"Uh-uh, eyes on me. How is such a fresh thing like you out fighting wars with men like them?" He hummed, gripping your jaw with a strength that took you by surprise and had you wincing. Even though his hands were gloved, it felt as if he were trying to dig into your skin. With no other choice, you were forced to look into his eyes, the pyres of unimaginable anger burning in yours.

However, it was then that you felt it. Something was off. Something was horribly off about him. The several times he'd come in here to either coax you with gentle words or have his men beat you within an inch of your life, he either had some faux kindness or gleeful malice painted across his face. But this time, his eyes were alight with slimy delight. You hated it, Hated how it made you feel small, cornered, pulling on your leash so that you couldn't be yanked from the one place that made you feel safe. You hated how it didn't feel like he was trying to get under your skin, or sink into your bones but instead your mind as if to violate it. You hated how it seemed like he had something more in mind, something that you couldn't predict like a kick to the ribs or a carefully worded reassurance that you'd be in "good hands". It was the one thing you felt like you had control over, knowing what was next, and now you didn't.

With a wave of his hand, his men all filed out of the room, leaving just him and you alone. One came back with a bowl in their hands and you felt yourself doubt your worries. Were you already beginning to lose it in here? "Hungry?" He smiled, taking the bowl and dismissing the soldier. It looked and smelled like a stew, potatoes, and beef, not scraps of stale bread or lukewarm, half-empty beer cans.

"I asked them to make something special today for you, isn't that nice? I suppose even someone like you has a taste for the finer things in life and wouldn't say yes to leftovers." No answer came but it was to be expected as he mixed the stew with a spoon. Your eyes were trained on his face instead, expecting some kind of strings attached. He entertained that expectation by—to your disgust—spitting into the stew, mixing it more, and bringing up a spoonful to your face. "Consider that the cost of being so picky. Open wide, soldier. Surely you won't make a fuss again, now will you?"

There was a pause, you leaned forward, lips ghosting the tip of the spoon before you roughly shoved his chair away from you with your boot. The bowl fell from his hands onto the ground, pooling between the two of you. He could go to hell with his stupid fucking soup.

He let out a scowl of disapproval, his self-satisfied smirk replaced with disgust and irritation like a parent to their troublemaking child. Fine with you, you didn't need that asshole's approval. He stood, grabbing a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiping his hands and the small splatters on his uniform. "Should've known better that the government's pets would act like such animals. I gave you a chance, I tried to make this easy for you." He snarled, tossing his handkerchief aside and grabbing you by the collar, "But no, you just had to be a fucking brat, huh? Fine, be one. I can work with that. Either way, you'll be put in your place soon enough."

Before you could comprehend what he was implying, he slashed the ropes that binded you to your chair with a combat knife and shoved you to the floor, your head throbbing as it hit concrete, along with the rest of your aching muscles. Vision blurred, you sat up and tried to make out what he was doing, falling back when he roughly grabbed your hair and shoved your head back down into the ground. Like an alarm, every single flight or fight response went off in your body and yet you couldn't figure out what he was trying, you just knew that this was something worse and that you were a fool to let your guard down for a single second.

A twisted smile broke across his lips, "You know, you have a very lovely voice. You sing the loveliest songs."

Your brows furrowed, confusion flashing across your face until you let out a yelp of pain when he pressed into your stomach, already bruised from previous matters. He let out a sigh that made you shudder and you felt bile creep up your throat, moving your face to the side in fear that you'd choke on it.

"Eyes. On. Me." He snapped, his voice sounding so much louder than it actually was, his hand twisting your jaw back to look up at him while his fingers proceeded to dig themselves into whatever spots got you hissing and squirming away. That's all it took for your resolve to break, the blaze in your eyes fizzling out and replace with genuine fear and utter shock as you watched him straddle you and stare with a piercing gaze that trapped you. It forced your attention to stay on him, daring you to look anywhere else but him when that was all you could focus on. Him.

You couldn't even scream, paralyzed when you heard the sound of metal clinking against metal and the brushing of fabric, raw horror setting itself alight in your bones at how he loomed over you. At that moment, you swore you could see the devil itself laughing, cackling, mocking you in his eyes.

It was like you were seven again.

Scared, cornered in your room because you swore, you swore and sobbed and cried that you saw it, a monster in your closet. A dark, shadowy figure that'd taunt you merely with its existence and prayed on your downfall, drinking the fat tears you spilled and listening to your high-pitched cries as if they were music, eyes that you couldn't see but they could see you.

Others tried to convince you that it wasn't real, opened the doors, and closed them again, showing that there was nothing but cleanly folded clothes and hung-up jackets lined neatly along a rack. Every time, you'd feel a little more silly about your fears but anxious that they'd come back for more.

At some point, you nearly forgot about the monster altogether. It ceased to exist in your closet, but never your mind.

"Damn it, what now?!"

Pulled back into the present, you heard muffled speech with loud, obtrusive noises and more screaming and cursing from the man above you. He was faced with the still-closed door, talking to a soldier behind it. Instead of trying to catch up with what happened, your mind raced to its defensive instincts. Finding the spoon dropped from earlier, you reached for it with a strained grunt which caught his attention. Yet with a swift grab and thrust of your hand, you jammed the blunt handle of the spoon into his throat and screamed at him, your vocal cords ripping in deliriously satisfying pain.

Barely giving him a second to let out a final gasp for air, you flipped him over underneath you and yanked the spoon out, blood erupting out of the gash. Fire ignited in your veins and you balled your fists, giving him a taste of the rage of a caged beast with nothing left to lose, just the desperation to survive for more. It was a symphony of grotesque crunches of bone and ligament, and you yelled, screamed, and cursed with each impact at him, at the entire organization, at a godless world for making you live through hell. A pitiful yet gruesomely satisfying attempt to reclaim what sanity and control you lost in that room.

Blood and flesh coated your fingers like warm syrup, and you were sure your knuckles were split. Crimson red was a good look on a sterile uniform, you thought to yourself. The sight of your work made you realize it wasn't the devil in his eyes was laughing at you, but rather its reflection from over your shoulder, still gleefully singing and squealing with delight as it watched you indulge in pure, unadulterated wrath. Its tail wrapped around your neck, strangling you with delirium and bloodthirst, guiding you in your ear as you beat an already dead man to a pulp.

Taking a stand, its whispers remained in your ear, praising you and yet you felt sick looking at what was left of what you had done, of what was left of the man's face. His blood pooled around his shoulders, mixing with the stew into an unholy concoction, evidence that was a testimony to your suffering and to your sin. Using his combat knife, you cut through the ropes around your wrists, skin scratched raw and bleeding. Without a second glance, you took his gun and left the room.

To this day, you tell yourself that you crawled out of hell that day.

"Any signs of the hostage?" Gaz shouted over comms, holding off a room of enemies alongside Price.

The moment they had all seen your fingers slip from the jeep and saw you tumble away that afternoon was the moment they knew they wouldn't be coming back to base for a long time. Roach had watched in despair as he was so damn close to grabbing your hand, swearing that had he'd been a little quicker, you wouldn't be here. Soap had yelled for Price to go back but Gaz and Ghost both knew his hand wasn't going to turn that wheel anytime soon. All of them knew. They couldn't turn back, and you wouldn't have wanted them to either, not unless the entire team and mission were to be jeopardized. However, that didn't stop them from doing whatever it takes to get you back safe again.

"Negative." Ghost answered over the line, standing with Soap in a hallway painted with the blood of the opposition, bodies scattered like lifeless bags of flesh with no greater purpose than to rot.

"I have eyes on them, they escaped from captivity. Currently pursuing them!" Roach responded. He'd seen your figure run down a hall at an alarming speed, and when he followed you, he had a glimpse of the room and the spectacle you left behind, "The leader is terminated, too. Jesus, can someone get over here?! They're gunning it for the west exit and I can barely keep up!"

You were in fact, bolting for the exits, panicking the more you got lost and running so fast that you probably could've broken a record on base. Distant gunfire and blasts snapped at your heels like a pack of dogs, reminding you that if you didn't keep running, you'd be dead, you'd be torn apart and beaten just like their leader and fed to the wolves. Boots trampled the ground behind you like drums of death, the yelling of men ringing in your ears, a requiem to the inevitable. Run, just run, it's all you could do in this frenzied state. If you didn't you'd be helpless, you'd be put down like a rabid fucking animal. Run, even if your bones shook from the pain, even if flames licked at your torn muscles, even if it meant dying of exhaustion because anything was better than dying at the hands of those animals.

At last, you found the light of an exit, finally an escape from this asylum. Your heart felt lighter when sunlight kissed your skin only to be weighed down by getting slammed into, grabbed into a relentless hold. You screeched, shrieked, snapped, and sneered while the voices seemed relieved, almost happy at your capture.

"Don't fucking touch me-!" You screamed with animosity, practically frothing at the mouth, "Don't fucking touch me I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking—"

"Friendly, friendly!"

Still growling under your breath, confusion flickered over your eyes. Why did it sound like... like...

"Captain?"

"You're safe kid," Price panted, as if he'd been running to chase you. He was chasing you. In all your hysteria, you hadn't realized that the group had been running after you for past minute or so, trying to call for you, get you to slow down. The only thing that worked was to just grab to and hopefully knock some sense into you or knock you out. "It's just us, see?"

Your gaze softened, taking in the features of the man before you. Despite the crossfire and fighting, somehow he still had such a kind look on him, puppy eyes that pitied you and kept you grounded. Turning your head, you saw the rest of the men watching you in concern, all tired but overjoyed nonetheless that you were finally back.

You were safe.

It was like a weight finally lifted off your chest, a pile of restrained misery and relief washing over you, and you wept without a thought to pride. Price whispered your name in a way that felt so comfortingly familiar, tucking your head into his shoulder and letting you muffle your sobs into his uniform. It was painful to hear your wails, the relief and the instability shaking off of you in waves. A part of you expected to be scolded, to be teased for messing up so badly with a simple mistake as letting go of the jeep but they didn't.

"You're in good hands,"

"We've got them covered,"

"They can't hurt you anymore, love."

"Do you have any major injuries?" Gaz asked, but you couldn't say a thing, clinging onto Price's jacket and crying like you were four years old and found by your parents after getting lost. Slowly and gently, Price pulled you from him to examine you, and that's when he saw it. It didn't take long for the others to notice as well. Your clothes were torn and belt undone. While no physical harm was visible, knowing what happened was enough to make Price tick.

"Roach, get them to the car and give them some spares ASAP. Everyone else with me, we're cleaning out the place." Everyone else had the same dark look in their eyes, one that sent shivers down your spine but encouraged you once more you were secure now. While Roach escorted you away, you peeked back to see them disappear back into the building. After you changed in the car, you could hear the distant gunfire and screams, shutting your eyes closed tight, making an effort to drown out the thoughts.

"You okay?" Roach frowned. he had apologized to you a dozen times over on your way to the car and explained all that happened after you were taken, which you appreciated him for and insisted it wasn't his fault. But he was sweet and stubborn, bandaging your wounds and telling you he'd make it up by giving you his dessert for the next month, a gesture that made you smile for once in a while.

"Yeah, yeah just... hope they're safe." You breathed, sinking into your seat with the rest of your thoughts. Though you cried once more, quietly this time and on Roach's shoulder. He was cautious not to initiate too much physical contact, holding your hand only when you asked for it.

The building was silent, not a single soul left to be reaped by the 141. They all regrouped around a body that was beaten beyond belief, to the point where the face was unrecognizable. Regardless, they knew who it was.

Gaz broke the silence, "You think they did this?" They all looked at each other, not wanting to imagine what happened to lead to this point.

Ghost nodded, a confirmation of something they already knew but wanted to mutually agree on. "No one else could've made this much of a bloody mess. HQ's going to have a field day with this. Can't say that he didn't have it coming for him, though."

"And well deserved, too." Soap spat. Price continued to look down on the figure on the floor without any thought to it. Not anger, disappointment, or spite, just disregard. Headquarters would be interested to hear what happened, but he could care less about the report. All that mattered was that loose ends were tied.

Minutes later, the men all piled up in the car again, setting for the road back. You woke from your half-asleep state, rubbing your eyes. You were met with a soft smile from Soap, who ruffled your hair. "You alright there, sleepin' beauty?"

Humming in acknowledgment, you nodded and glanced out the window to see the road whizzing by, the building growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Some dingy warehouse. So that was the hellhole you were stuck in for a near week.

"Dinnae think 'bout it too much," He followed your gaze and nudged your boot with his, "When we said they can't hurt ye anymore, we meant it."

"Yeah," You quietly mumbled, leaning back on Roach, who had fallen asleep and leaned on Gaz for support. "Can smell it on you guys."

That got a rumbling laugh out of Soap and even a little headshake from Ghost who sat in the passenger seat. Looking at the rearview mirror, Price was looking right back at you, eyes flickering to the road occasionally, "Get some rest. It'll be a long ride home."

You nodded like a little kid with a mumbled "yessir" and drifted off once more. For the first time in forever, you feel like you can breathe and ground yourself, no punishment, no torture, nothing to haunt in this rare bit of calm. You didn't feel the pain of your sore muscles, you didn't feel that your body was filthy, you didn't feel small and scared, not anymore. Just surrounded by nothing but a familiar feeling of safety and lulled to sleep by the sound of the engine that took you home.

a/n pt.2: had a tough time writing this one but hey, I think I managed! to be honest, though, I'm not super confident about the ending and proofread this while half-asleep, but I'd love to hear some thoughts about it. shoutout to the people who noticed any reoccurring themes.

[harocat]

Xiao Lanhua is my favorite kind of character because she seems timid (or at least normal) on the surface, but she's actually so balls to the wall insanely brave that it's probably detrimental to her own health.

Our first episode meeting her, she's too scared to stand up to her bullies, but she decides to go directly against fate (despite being the apprentice of the literal arbiter of fate) and basically take on a suicide mission to save the guy she has a crush on.

What's fun is that she never becomes less this person as the series goes on, but her perspective grows and matures, so instead of risking it all for a crush on a man she doesn't even know (that she knows of at least), she uses her courage to protect those she loves and to stand up for herself and for the beliefs she's acquired. She uses them to prove her mettle in situations where, in a fair world, she wouldn't have to.

And she also becomes more rational. She might be doing these crazy things, but she's doing them with a levelheaded, thought-out approach. She's not being impulsive in the way we may have seen more of early on. Sure she might (or will) still die, but she’s going into it so certain of her decision.

Her emotional strength is absolutely next level. I waver on how hard it was for her to maintain her Xiyun persona and hide her true self from Dongfang Qingcang. A part of me thinks it must have been agony at all times, because he was right there, and because yes, she is naturally a very outwardly emotional person. But the other part wonders if the desire to protect and save him (and the world) was so, so powerful in her heart that she really was able to almost shut it down. Did she cry in her room every night? Or did she really manage to hold it together until that scene on the bridge?

ANYWAY, Dongfang Qingcang calls her 'timid', and he ALSO calls her 'the bravest woman in the three realms' (in a speech in front of his entire kingdom, mind), and like... he's right!! She's both. I LOVE that juxtaposition in a character. It's one of my favorite tropes. I love her.

[stevie-petey]

what about a fun silly little mindless blurb w steve robin and bug at scoops before ch 1? like what was the first time bug stopped in to visit steve like ? did robin instantly take to her ? i need to see my precious babies bond

we technically already see bugs first time meeting robin in chapter 9 of season 2, buuuuut i love em and will extend the scene a bit <3

enjoy !

"slow down! youre running so fast and i just biked here!" you try your best to keep with robin as she drags you through the newly built mall.

"keep up, slowpoke!" robin only tugs at your hand and all you can do is follow.

youve known the girl for all of five minutes and already shes become your new favorite person.

robin drags you to an area close to the entrance where theres a fancy fountain. seemingly content with where shes dragged you to, she finally drops your hand and sits against the fountains ledge. scrunching her face, she looks disapprovingly at the statue. "how come hawkins had enough money for this crap but not for new uniforms for the band kids?"

"youre in band?" you ask the girl as you sit next to her.

"yup," robin nods at you, curious to see what your reaction will be. shes heard a lot about you, everyone in hawkins has. youre the towns sweetheart, and robin knows at least three people in her band group that you helped one way or another throughout the years.

you gasp. "dude, i wouldve done band, but jonathan wanted to do choir instead."

"why didnt you just do what you wanted?" robin asks you, though she knows the answer already.

"band wouldnt have been fun without him, and i do like to sing." you shrug, not really regretful over the decision.

robin stares at you, a slight frown on her face. she seems to almost study you. "youre fascinating, you know that?"

"what do you mean?" you wrap your arms around yourself, suddenly feeling very small.

seeing this, robin is quick to correct herself. shes always been horrible talking to other people; shes the worst at making new friends, and she really, really wants to be your friend. "no! i didnt, uh, mean it in a bad way! i just-well, i mean. shit."

robins panic only makes you forget your anxiety and you nudge your shoulder against hers. "hey, breathe. im not going to like, dunk you into the fountain water."

"thank god," robin exhales, relieved that you dont seem too angry with her. taking a deep breath, she tries again to explain herself. "what i meant was: you took choir for jonathan byers, and yet youre here now with steve harrington. the douchebag."

you frown at robins words. you forget sometimes that so few people see steve how you do. hes far from the boy he used to be, but you know that sometimes its harder to heal wounds from cruel words said during your youth. "i know you dont believe me, but steve isnt so bad."

"hes a dick."

"he used to be, but now he isnt."

robin huffs. "and im just expected to believe you?"

"no," you shrug. "while i understand that steve has changed since you last saw him, i also understand that this change isnt mine to force you to accept."

your words leave robin speechless. its almost annoying how rational youre being about this. how you can balance both steves feelings and hers without making either of them feel lesser for it.

youre a goddamn saint and robin truly has no idea how jonathan or steve have managed to snag you for themselves.

its unfair.

"i..." robin tries to think of something to retaliate with, but she cant. youre right and she hates it. "thats a very frustratingly mature way to look at things."

you shrug again. "it sucks being so mature, i'll admit."

then steve runs up to the two of you and hes panting with exhaustion. "christ," he wheezes out, clutching at his knees as he bends down to try an catch his breath. "you two are fast."

"youre an athlete, harrington." you tug at steves hair and cause him to topple onto the ground, which robin cant help but giggle at. "keep up."

"why do i always end up on the ground when youre around?" steve doesnt even bother to get up.

"because im clearly bigger and stronger than you."

robin pokes your cheek, mollified by your conversation from earlier and by the fact that you just knocked steve harrington to the ground for fun. "dont forget more mature, y/n."

"oh, so much more mature." you agree, smiling at her.

steve sighs from the ground. "this is gonna be a long summer."

"get used to it, dingus," robin nudges the boy with her sneaker and he flinches away, displeased, but this only makes you and robin giggle even more together.

[aprillikesthings]

I was eating lunch at work today when it occurred to me:

Yeah, Catra's so lean in the show in part because of the whole "feline" thing. But how often do you think Shadow Weaver just straight-up made Catra go without eating, as a punishment for something, or to remind her of her place in the scheme of things? How often did other kids in the Horde steal her food?

Adora almost certainly was given enough to eat, even if it was boring ration bars.

But Catra? How often did she just fucking not get enough to eat???

Anyway, have a snippet of fic, from some point post-canon, about Catra finally getting enough to eat and gaining a little weight (which is portrayed positively)

(there's a little catradora at the end, and I'd rate it "mature" but only barely, tbh)

Catra’s never had access to this much food, whenever she wanted, of almost any kind she can think of. Meals in Bright Moon are not hurried rations consumed only by necessity, but are often occasions to socialize and linger. She’s never forced to skip a meal, either as punishment or from lack of time–people outside of the Horde, it turns out, usually stop what they’re doing specifically to eat. 

Both Adora and Catra force themselves to eat more politely at dinner, but usually take breakfast in their room, where nobody can see them eat with their hands while sitting on the floor and talking with their mouths full. 

The first time Catra slips out of bed and sneaks into the kitchen at midnight, she finds Glimmer in the dimly-lit room already, leaning on a counter and nibbling cake with her fingers off a small plate. 

Glimmer looks up, startled at first, and smiles. “Are you here for more of the cake? The kitchen really outdid themselves this time, huh.” 

She just nods. Of course Catra isn’t going to be punished for eating more. She knows this. It’s still surreal to have Glimmer (in an oversized t-shirt and shorts and fuzzy socks) wipe her hands off on a napkin, get out the cake, and put a slice of the cake on a plate for her and hand it to her with a smile, before going back to her own piece. 

It still feels conspiratorial. Like they're getting away with something.

“Did you want a fork?”

“Nah.” She does still have to actively resist the urge to shove the whole piece in her mouth, instead picking bits off the way Glimmer does. 

It’s so good. There’s some kind of sweetened fruit spread between two slabs of soft chocolate cake, and the whole thing is frosted and dotted with more of the fruit. 

The two of them wordlessly stand in the kitchen enjoying the treat. It’s a weirdly comfortable silence in the still of the night. Catra closes her eyes with each bite, savoring it.

She looks up to see Glimmer putting her plate in the nearby sink and washing off her hands. 

“G’night, Catra.” 

“G’night, Sparkles.” 

Glimmer rolls her eyes but she’s smiling as she leaves the kitchen. 

Catra waits just until Glimmer’s gone, then gives in to the urge to lick the plate clean before adding it to the sink. 

She looks in a mirror one day and sees a small curve to her belly. She turns a little–her backside and hips are slightly bigger, too. Even her face looks different, less gaunt. It’s not just that she looks happier. It’s that she looks less hungry. She never realized how hungry she always was, before.

A memory jumps to mind: her as a child, stomach aching, trying to steal food, and then Shadow Weaver looming behind her–Catra takes a deep breath and pushes it away, looking at her own face in the mirror. She never has to feel that way again. Ever. 

Catra’s clothes have always been on the stretchy side, but things are still getting noticeably tighter, she realizes, as her and Adora get ready for bed one night.

“Adora?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh. I think I need new clothes.” 

Adora looks over and smiles. “I thought you might’ve gained some weight! Good.” 

They get in bed and Adora kisses her tummy. “You’re a little softer now. It’s nice.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. And your tits–” Adora pushes them together and rubs her face in them. “Mmmm!”

She laughs. “What, you didn’t like them before?”

“Of course I did! But there’s. Y’know. More of them now.” 

“Yeah, they’re almost big as yours!” 

“Oh, shut up!” But Adora’s laughing and kissing her face.

As they fall asleep a bit later, Adora is spooned up behind her, soft breath on Catra’s neck. And Adora’s hand is slack on Catra’s tummy, warm and comforting.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

This is the follow-up to my research call. I really appreciate all the asks you've sent, it was eye-opening. I understand that sometimes it gets difficult to talk about things that show perhaps a more pettier/uglier side of ourselves, but we're human and as much as we try and act as if we have the right opinions all the time, that's mostly not the case.

Before I go on and talk about these asks, I want you to read them first. Please click on each screeshot because some of them are quite long. Tumblr only allows me to post 10 images, so if you don't see your ask here, it means I will add it in the next batch. I also want to mention that you can still send your asks, I decided to post all of them because I think this is an important topic.

I've noticed that a lot of us (including me, because I allowed myself to be anon for this little experiment too), are dealing with a lot of internal conflict between how we are supposed to think and what we actually believe.

Despite this being a way to share our feelings, a lot of people couldn't help but explain the rationalization behind it. Almost as an excuse for our behavior. We judge ourselves so much and there is this awful pressure of being the right type of fan, the right type of person, etc. We know we shouldn't judge the women in the rumors, but we still do. We are aware that our own personal issues are at the roots of why we react the way we do when we see these rumors, but we still feel miserable despite having self awareness.

Someone mentioned something about how it can be taboo to have a real talk about why are drawn so much to these relationships, real or not. I want to expand on that and say that it's also taboo to really express our feelings. Because it can make us look like crazy fangirls and not the mature fans that we are. It's expected to say "I'm happy for my bias either way and from now on I will not ship him romantically with his bandmate". When in fact, it has proven from your own stories, that people would also want to say "I feel weird and hurt because my beliefs don't match with the rumors".

There is no magic switch that will turn someone from shipping two bandmates to suddenly change their mind over night and that to not have an effect on that person and the way they think of their biases and of themselves too. It is about that idol dating rumor, but it is also about the stories we tell ourselves, about what we have come to believe for so long.

And then there are those who are firm in their belief and are displaying this assurance in their own logic and the way they interpret what they see.

There is also shame in judging our bias for their choices in potential partners. I find that absolutely normal. Sometimes we judge our best friend for their shitty choice of partner, why wouldn't we treat that idol the same way?

I'm not here to offer solutions in better dealing with it. I believe we are all aware of how being involved in kpop shipping and having a bias is affecting us on a personal level. Perhaps there's too much self awareness and we should instead have more fun 😅. No, my point was to offer more of a platform and a way to perhaps realize that we struggle with similar things and each can take away from this what they want.

[dumfanting]

Going Back, ch 4

Chapter 3

AO3 Link

Rating: M, mature

Warnings: hallucinations, starvation, dehydration, needles, nondescript nudity | second person pov, g/n reader, present tense

I’ve been working on this one for over a month and decided to just go ahead and post the damn thing instead of stressing over it being the ‘right length’.

2214 words

G/N reader/ Crosshair

He’s almost impressed by how vivid this particular hallucination is, then he passes out.

————

After the shouting match Hunter had gotten into with you, it takes him a long time to calm back down. So long, in fact, that when he returns to the rooftop, he can tell by the sun that it’s late in the afternoon. The door screeches open as he steps out, and his brothers heads whip in his direction. He walks over and finds Omega curled up into Wrecker’s side and staring vacantly into space. Nobody says anything, until Omega breaks the silence with a hiccup. 

“I’m sorry Hunter. This is all my fault,” she says, tears spilling over, and Hunter flinches like he’d been slapped. 

“What makes ya think that?” Wrecker asks, surprisingly quiet. 

“When I was talking with them last night, I- I asked why they didn’t just go back to Kamino alone, and they said they wanted to, bu- but they couldn’t because they didn’t know how to mask the ship’s signal,” Omega says, hiccuping again. 

“I was telling them how to do it over the comm until you caught me. They never would h-have left if I didn’t, and now they’re stuck in hyperspace and can’t get out and it’s all m-my fault!” she says, her tone growing frantic as she continues before bursting into tears. 

Hunter softly says her name and hunkers down across from her; she throws herself into his chest, nearly knocking him over as she sobs out "I'm sorry” over and over. 

“That is true,” Tech says. The others shoot him a dirty look and he raises his hands before continuing. 

“They couldn’t have left without that information from you, yes, but this is not your fault Omega,” he says, and she turns to look at him, confused. 

“B-but you just said-,” she says, sniffling. 

“You simply gave them information. You bear no responsibility for what they do with it. They could have stopped and turned back, but chose not to. That decision, and its consequences, are entirely upon their shoulders, not yours. None of this is your fault,” he says. Omega sits back and rubs at her eyes. 

“I still shouldn’t have told them,” she says, though her cries are tapering down to an occasional hiccup. 

“There’s no point in dwelling on that now,” Echo says. “We can’t change what’s already happened. But we can change what happens next.”

“Well, I guess we can try,” Omega says, calming down. She turns and looks to Hunter, as do the others. “But how?” she asks him. 

“There’s not a lot we can do from here,” Hunter admits. “But if they open the comm channels, we can at least tell them what’s wrong,” he says. 

“And how to fix it?” Omega asks, sounding hopeful as she looks back at Tech. 

“There are one or two things that we can try, depending upon the damage to the drive. There is no guarantee it will work, but there’s no guarantee it will fail either,” he says. 

“We just hafta keep calling ‘em,” Wrecker says, his comm unit back in his hand. 

—

Meanwhile, in hyperspace aboard the Marauder, you’re in the cargo bay. You’ve spent the last hour trying desperately to find anything edible. You finally spot a small box of ration bars tucked away into a corner, seemingly forgotten, and snatch it up. The box feels nearly empty, and when you open it up there are only three bars left inside. You take them out, and you notice that they’ve been expired for several weeks. You drop-kick the box across the space and curse at yourself forgetting such a basic and important thing. 

You then pause for a moment and take a deep breath. You’ll both be able to eat when you return to Ord Mantell, and you aren’t concerned with yourself anyway. You just hope that Crosshair can survive for another day or so on these bars. Expired is better than nothing, you think, and tuck them into a pocket before moving back to the bridge. 

Once there, a quick check of the navigational system tells you that you’re less than three hours away from Kamino. You nod to yourself and head into the bunks. You set the ration bars aside, then crawl into your bunk, hoping for some rest. Over an hour passes, and all you’ve done is stare up at the bottom of Tech’s bunk, your hands trembling and your heart racing. You try to distract yourself from your growing anxiety by getting up and looking around for anything you’ll need, not if, but when Crosshair comes back with you. 

You have all the medical necessities; being prepared for anything is the one thing you never budge on, and there’s a decently sized tank of drinking water with them in the cargo hold. You again realize that he’s going to be filthy, and after you check, you find the water reservoir is full enough for one shower, maybe two. On the heels of this, it occurs to you that he’s going to need something clean to wear, so you return to the bunks, searching everyone’s compartments. You dig up a set of leggings from Tech’s clutter of stuff, but the only other thing you can find is one of Wrecker’s shirts. That would be huge on its own, but it’ll be even more so with the dramatic weight loss you’re expecting. You again start thinking about what state Crosshair will be in when you get there, and you pray to the Maker that he’s alive. 

The navigation system chirps at you, and you return to the pilot's seat, shaking badly. You flip a few switches, preparing to leave hyperspace, and when you shut the hyperdrive off, the ship lurches forward with a loud screech as it slows back down. The lurch is normal, but that sound definitely is not. Before you can worry about it, Kamino comes into view, and you immediately focus on your mission. 

—

It started raining only hours after Crosshair watched everyone he’s ever cared about fly off without him. About three rotations after that, the rain was seemingly replaced by needles, with each drop that fell on his skin feeling like a sharp sting. The wind roars around him as he’s curled tightly into himself on the center of the platform. Aside from the constant noise of wind, rain, and his own chattering teeth, Crosshair can still faintly hear the steady, low beeping of his tracking beacon. 

Someone has to know he’s here, or at least have noticed that he’s been missing for so long. A small voice in his head laughs at him and says “You’re just another clone. They destroyed this place with you in it. The Empire doesn’t care about you,” and he forces the thought away, having lost count of how many times he’s already done so. He does matter, he has to. They’d given him command, that can’t have been for nothing. 

A bright flash of light catches his eye. He never really noticed that lightning can look like searchlights until he got stuck here. Having been tricked by his mind before, he ignores it. The wind picks up and imitates the sound of an engine, just like it had all the days and nights before. Although he thinks this sound is familiar, he still doesn’t look for it. No point in falling for another hallucination. 

The platform shakes as something large touches down on it, and the engine-like noise of the wind stutters to a halt. He knows it’s not the wind now; He’d recognize the sound of the Marauder anywhere. He feels the platform vibrate underneath him as a single set of footsteps rush towards him, and just before they come to a stop, he shivers so hard that he falls to one side and just lies there, too weak to even sit back up. 

Now there’s a voice, and it sounds exactly like yours, but he knows better. A pair of warm arms wrap around him, so he gives in and looks at who they're attached to. It’s you, holding him close as tears and rain mix on your cheeks. He’s almost impressed by how vivid this particular hallucination is, then he passes out. 

—

Crosshair, who had been floating in the hypnagogic state between awareness and unconsciousness, suddenly feels his entire body lurch forward. This, in combination with a shrill screeching sound, is enough to wake him completely. He sits up, and it takes so much effort that once he’s upright, he’s panting for breath. Breath that has no humid or salty taste. Confused, he turns his head and finds himself in a bunk, under a pile of blankets, sheets, and even a few tarps. 

He bends an arm and hisses loudly at a sharp stabbing sensation in the crook of his elbow. Someone’s placed an intravenous line into him. His eyes follow the line up to a saline bag, hanging from his rifle as a clearly improvised drip stand. The bag is already halfway emptied, and the drip is fast. He takes a breath, intending to raise his voice and demand to know where he is, but instead falls into a sudden coughing fit. 

He hears hurried footsteps and looks toward the sound to find that it’s you. He tries to speak, but can’t. You hold up a finger in the universal ‘hang on a second’ gesture and dash out of the room before coming back with a small flimsi cup of water. He tries to lift his arm and take it from you, but the IV jabs him and he hisses again as he drops his arm back down. 

You wedge yourself into the bunk next to him and hold the back of his head while you bring the cup to his chapped lips. The indignity he feels evaporates the moment the liquid passes down his throat. He relaxes into your touch, allowing you to gently tilt his head back as he sips at the water. Once the cup is emptied you crush it and carelessly toss it aside, then use your free hand to softly hold the side of his face and maneuver him to look at you. 

“Wh- where-?” Crosshair says, his voice barely audible. 

“You’re in my bunk, on the ship. You’re safe now, I’ve got you,” you say, keeping your voice soft but speaking clearly. Tears sparkle in your eyes. You shift a hand down to his bare chest and hold your warm palm against his heart, and this is when he realizes that he’s completely undressed. When he says your name, his voice is slightly clearer. 

“Why am I naked?” he says, confused, and you can’t help a soft laugh as you shake your head. 

“You’re hypothermic, your blacks were soaked through,” you say, then gently guide him onto his back again as you stand. You swiftly replace the emptied saline bag with a new, full one and slow the drip. Once you’re satisfied with that, you strip yourself completely, and Crosshair makes an odd noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a cough. 

“Not wasting any time, huh?” he says with a faint smirk. You roll your eyes but smile at him. 

“You’ll take in body heat faster if it’s skin on skin,” you say and he makes a ‘yeah right’ sound at you. 

Minding his IV, you have him sit up enough for you to settle in behind him. He leans back into you and gasps before instinctively curling himself around you as tightly as he can. You allow this and, ignoring how cold he is, entwine your legs with his while also wrapping your arms tightly around his upper back and shoulders, keeping his chest pressed close to yours. You reach over and adjust the pile of covers to surround him, taking care to tuck it all in closely. He rests his head in the hollow of your shoulder and takes a long, deep breath before yawning. You plant a soft kiss to his temple and you feel his breath across your throat as he quietly says “You’re so warm…” before quickly falling asleep again.

Drowsiness threatens to overtake you too after about ten minutes, but you keep yourself awake by periodically checking his pulse and monitoring the IV drip. The second saline bag is nearly empty already. Without waking him, you manage to wiggle out from behind Crosshair and get to your feet. You redress yourself and quickly switch out saline bags, slowing the drip for a third time. You expected dehydration, but not to this degree, and worry about how much you have left. You tell yourself that it’s fine since you’ll both be planetside soon. 

You adjust the pile of covers over Crosshair again, taking another look at the scarred side of his head, and something important suddenly occurs to you. You slip out of the bunks and start searching around Tech’s workbench. You find what you're looking for tucked away behind a box in a nearby compartment, and breathe a tentative sigh of relief when the chip reader powers up. You return to Crosshair's side and gingerly move his head just enough to scan it. The device beeps and the screen lights up almost immediately. 

You look at the readout and have no idea how to feel; His chip is still there. 

Taglist: @kaminocasey @madameminor @jennamelinda12 @arctrooper69 @the-cantina @jedi-hawkins @griffedeloup

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[aroaceconfessions]

I'm not sure if what I want to confess is more about a-spectrum or neurodivergent maybe but it's about feeling things in a different way than the rest of your surroundings - so maybe some other Aro and Aces would relate?

My memories of reacting "different than normal" begin early:

- as a preschool kid when I was told that I "look pretty" - my reaction was: cry. Maybe I was just a bashfull child not knowing how to deal with a compliment but my mom always thought it was unusual.

- in my primaly school whenever I've been called "brave" after having a shot, vaccine or blood sample taken - my reaction was: feeling confused and kind of humiliated. It got to be clear: the feeling was not caused by having injection itself - but by those words that were meant to be a compliment. Why? At that time I was one of the very few children never crying of fear before vaccination but I thought that everyone else was reacting stupidly (what was the point of crying? they could not avoid the vaccine anyway!). But in my head it was them who were weird, I was normal, obviously: a mature and reasonable little person among those unrationally behaving kids. And now adults talking down to me and making a fuss over my "bravery" when I was just being normal - felt like rejecting my rationality and maturity! By them I was assumed to be just another unreasonable child who only exceptionally behaved the right way. Also if I was told "it won't hurt at all" before injection - it felt wrong as well: I took really a lot of shots (treating my otitis as 3 yo) and I've been perfectly aware of that it DOES hurt but in bearable way - so why must you lie to me?! Just do what you have to and let me go, don't treat me like an idiot!

- years later, in my early 20's - when I noticed my peers getting excited about hot stuff and sex topic I felt the same as with injections: I am that rare reasonable, grown up and seriously behaving person surrounded by overreacting immature youth. I got interested in sexual stuff myself too,  but unlike others - I felt like it's nothing to joke at and like nothing I ever wanted to talk about with anyone. My interest in sex gradually became some kind of passion - but it was strictly theoretical and never attached to any particular person around me. Now I already studied scientific stuff about it as well as movies and pictures for years - and whenever I hear anyone using a word "virgin" or insinuations that someone who never had sex therefore is naive and unexperienced - I get that feeling of being humilated: like rejecting my knowledge and maturity all over again! Just because I never done it myself doesn't mean others know more about it than me!

- I know I'm aro-ace cause I never enjoyed anyone touching me in the sexual way or using too much diminutives when talking to me. Just thinking about it makes me feel confused again - as if I was mistaken for somebody else. Sorry, I am independent adult person, not to be used as a sex toy nor be treated like a child - talk to me, treat my body serious, don't underestimate me!

- I feel less uncomfortable thinking about pain. Like when I use electric depilator to remove my legs hairs - it feels satisfying and almost pleasurous. When I went to the spa once with my friend - I could not force myself to take a massage (I hate being tickled so much I might reflexively hit someone in defence). Yet I enjoyed having a body peeling very much. I guess I'd rather like to be scratched than caressed. I sometimes wonder if maybe I would potentially enjoy BDSM instead of sex?

Is anyone else of you Aro and Ace people feeling so confused about others misinterpreting your attitude? Like about diminishing your actions as exeptional and not treating you, your words and your knowledge seriously enough?

Submitted May 3, 2023

[ultraericthered]

When some fool interjects onto one of my posts (responding to someone else) about Disney's Wish discourse:

Okay. Just for clarification. I am an English major and I am only a semester away from having an associates. Breaking down movies and books is a hobby and a past time. So here are my thoughts.

Oh, so immediately this "clarification" doesn't sound very humble.

Without a doubt whether or not you consider this to be good or bad is opinion. It's debatable. I personally fall on the side of not liking it. I see why people can like it and I'm not gonna dox people for liking it. It's definitely one of those movies where you could "theoretically" like and enjoy despite it's multitude of flaws.

Wow, this is a mature, civil, level-headed and reasonable tone to take, and for a rational statement! You almost never see that on social media! I'll give this good sir or miss props for that. Will it last?

The plot was overall basic and uninspired.

Unfortunately yes, it absolutely was. Not one of the film's stronger qualities, I'm afraid, and with such a solid, captivating premise too!

What I mean by this is this... The plot was a carbon copy of other ideas and thoughts previously done from their other works. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, for this movie it brings it down BECAUSE it relies too heavily on them.

✓Sweet dreamy eye protagonist who is so sweet that everybody loves her

✓ talking animal side kick who provides comedic relief

✓wishing on a star

✓ female leading crying on an inanimate object because something didn't go her way

✓evil villain

✓magic saving the day

Nice checklist. Again, nothing too disagreeable so far....

These are all not necessarily bad. In fact these are good ideas to have. We have seen them before. AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM

Oh no. Is this Doug Walker argument really rearing its ugly head? A work of art or entertainment is allowed to derive from earlier made works of art or entertainment as sources of inspiration and creative intake but are not permitted to straight up repeat ideas, scenarios, plot beats and character archetypes "we have all seen before" in other works, at least not without "adding anything new of its own"?

Call me crazy, but I think Disney was heavily considering not only children born in the late 2010s, but also the current 2020s-born generation when putting this picture together. A bunch of youngsters who might've not once seen anything like what's featured in this movie before in their early years, which would make this their first big exposure to Disney animated fairy tales just as the animated fairy tales of old were the first exposure to children of those films' eras. Because every time a type of story is retold and ideas are recycled into that story could be someone's first time. That is a fact of life.

I understand that uniquemess and originality are hard to come by nowadays. I'm a writer and original ideas are the hardest to find. What you have to do is take those old ideas and make them new. What Disney did was not make these old tired tropes their own, they rehashed them and expected us to go, "Oh! That's just like this movie!"

It makes the movie lose its own voice. This movie is too wrapped up in references and tropes they've used before to try and capture nostalgia, that wonder they used to have. What made those movies so special was the heart and care that went into them. This is Disney's 100 anniversary, but instead it feels like Disney's catch 100 references to when we were a better and a more creative studio.

This would be speaking to the side of the movie that was NOT geared towards the kids, however. The side of the movie that, because it's a celebratory centennial milestone event, caters to longtime hardcore Disney fans who will immediately get all the references, recognize the homages and callbacks, spot all the little Easter Eggs thrown all over the film. I've said before that I do not believe Disney should've put so much attention and effort into this side of the movie compared to the original story, especially when they made Once Upon A Studio to better serve the centennial celeberation purposes, and that they did so was a huge mistake, being easily the movie's biggest handicap.

Why is this bad? Well don't I have the answer for you!

Alrighty then, thanks again for the honesty!

They HAD a beautiful story!! The idea and premise for this movie is probably my favorite thing but the execution from a professional and eye is awful! You cannot look at this movie and tell me that it is the Mona Lisa when it is nothing but a carbon Copy of what once was.

No disagreement there. I pray this fellow's not seen the concept art and all the information floating around about what we might've had.

It was done in a manner that was so half hearted and so clearly a cash grab they practically insult themselves. The plot was predictable and falls flat.

I love how the second sentence reads like a non sequitur to the first. I've heard the "half-hearted, cynical and desperate cash grab" accusations and I don't quite think they're accurate. I think this was a production that began with a lot of heart and care put into what everyone was designing and realizing in order to make a worthy new original Disney fairy tale for the 100th year mark, but ended with micro-managing corporate stooges "doctoring" the scripting, the scoring, the pacing (via editing), and the overall presentation of the work to turn out something safe and crowd-pleasing that hits off as much Disney quota as possible. Again, for the 100th year mark. And so what we ended up with was what I've called a "beautiful mess."

The villain was interesting at first! He was giving me a similar two sidedness as Frollo and then the back track his character by throwing in an evil maguffin to make him evil because it is clear to anyone who knows basic plot structure that it was rushed and they didn't know what else to do to progress the story. WE COULD HAVE HAD ANOTHER FROLLO WITH HIM, BUT WE GOT A HALF HEARTED GASTON!

This is starting to ramble, but I'll try to make sense of it. For one thing, I do not think Magnifico was ever at any point of the film's development set to be like "another Frollo". His core influences clearly come from Queen Grimhilde, Maleficent, Gaston, and Jafar. And the evil maguffin was not "thrown in to make him evil" - the tome of forbidden dark magic was set up as a Chekov's Gun earlier in the picture because it was what would be A: what would make Magnifico such a formidable threat to everyone, and B: what would serve as the catalyst for Magnifico to break his bonds of well-meaning rationale and discard the mask of mental and moral soundness. The prompt for him to turn to it was very rushed, yes, and his backstory and motivations behind his possessiveness, paranoia, and iron-fisted tendencies needed to be better set up and conveyed prior to this turn. I will not dispute that. But Magnifico, both in his own character arc and in how his spiral into villainy progresses the story, is so much more than "half hearted Gaston", and it really ain't nothing to do with "knowing basic plot structure" or whatever pretentious rhetoric is being used as criticism here.

Speaking of Gaston: You mentioned that The king being shoehorned in as a villain was like saying Gaston was shoehorned. I have an explanation for this. The reason why...

Yeah? What's the reason why?

Now I hope I don't loose you here. This will get a little difficult...

WHAT'S THE REASON WHY? GET ON WITH IT!

In order to PROPERLY set up a character, this goes for Asha too (more on her later), you have to set up their character and what they are about in the first 5-10 minutes they are on screen. In the movie what we are told is that the king is noble and loves his people. There was no shadow of a doubt if this. And then as the movie progresses, specifically at the 30 minute mark it is revealed that oh hoho he is a narcissist and is obsessed with himself. The way they did this was out of the blue and off putting. It came out of nowhere. There was no build up. It was a sweet song about the wishes and then BAM I'm a narcissist who cares about no one but myself. That 180 came so fast they did not even prep themselves for it. It felt like this was a last minute idea.

Well, King Magnifico was noble in regards to his ideology and his aspiration to see his kingdom continue to prosper while also being the one to safeguard the most precious wishes of the hearts of his subjects. And he loved his people...so long as they loved him, gave him constant appraisal and attention and undying devotion, and remained the good little dreamless drones he wanted them to be. Noble intentions can give way to indulgence in one's darker qualities and impulses if "the ends will justify the means" is subscribed to, and not all love is unconditional love. I have heard the complaints that Magnifico's unveiling plays out like a Twist Villain and that he was likely not intended to be really evil but they changed him last minute to pander to the "bring back traditional Disney Villains!" fan crowd. And I personally find it bollocks when the simpler answer is that King Magnifico is a corrupt, narcissistic manipulator with a God Complex whose benevolence is illusionary and whose wish-keeping system is an oppressive, dishonest, self-benefitting sham. Was the execution of the idea notably off in terms of the pace it moved at? Absolutely. This does not make Magnifico any lesser a villain, at least not to me.

Don't get me wrong, I love Asha.

This is a lie. There doesn't seem to be any "love" for anything in this movie coming from you.

She is sweet and funny, but she is poorly written.

Not only have I not argued that, I have actually stated as much!

We are not shown why she is sweet or why she is caring. We are told.

So we're just told that she's sweet rather than seeing her being so get shown, yet you like her for being sweet and funny? Which is it?

With her fatal flaw, caring too much, she is told this is her fatal flaw. The movie doesn't trust us enough for us to figure out her fatal flaw. And it doesn't even really show us that she cares too much to begin with.

Uh, yes it does. Her interactions with her mother and how far she's willing to go for her grandfather Sabino and how quickly she gets to being protective and cherishing of Star show us this. Like, if Sabino really is 100 years old and gave Magnifico his wish when he came of age years ago, that is years and years and years of life that Asha was not around to witness, as she hadn't been born yet. So you'd forgive her if she didn't invest all that much in getting Sabino's wish granted at last because she doesn't know her grandfather all that well as the gap between how long he's been alive and how long she's been alive is so huge, yet her heart cares so much about him and the idea of his wish being granted to him before he passes away that it becomes a fixation to her. She'd been spared lots of trouble and heartache had she cared less.

There are so many unexplained why's, to her it makes my head spin. Why does she care? Why does she want to be an Apprentice?

She wants to be an Apprentice so that she can be close to the king and the wishes he keeps, learn the inner workings of the system, and ensure that the king grants wishes to those she feels ought to have their hearts desires granted and their dreams realized. And this brings us to another flaw of hers that I wish the movie itself took time to notice and actually address as being such - well meaning or not, Asha was hoping that being in Magnifico's favor would get Magnifico to allow her to push for nepotism in regards to Sabino. It ended up backfiring and unveiling the king's darker nature, but it also unvelied something about Asha that the movie then sadly paid no mind to.

Why is she sweet? Why is she the way she is? Is it cause she is naturally that way like snow white? Was she raised to be that way? Or did she have a rough upbringing that made her this way? We don't know. That's the bottom line.

This movie has so many analytical flaws that I physically do not have the time nor the words to accurately explain to you why this movie is technically bad. But I doubt you care to even consider my points and come up with a half baked response.

Aaaand there's the condescending attitude you were holding back! Aaah, color me so disappointed! The "I cannot accurately convey in words how technically bad this movie is" is a cop-out, but one I'll let slide as it gets you off my back. But that other part? I DID consider your points and have in fact agreed with a few of them, and even ones I disagreed with I can see why you'd think that way about those matters. Yet you pre-emptively say "half baked response?" Sheesh!

I bid you a due. I'm gonna go watch an actually good movie.

"An actually good movie". There's another tacky, needless potshot.

Also, you fool. You absolute buffoon. It's "adieu", not "a due!"

[halcyon-writings]

— back again with the herald!verse, but this time with special guests

nav.

!! major c3 spoilers !!

(also implied poly wooooo)

you enjoy the cool breeze that always seems to linger about whitestone. although perhaps that was due, in part, to your preference for longer sleeves and sweaters. but hey, after everything you’ve done and been through, you deserved to splurge on comfy sweaters.

an idyllic life was not one you had believed were in the cards for you. (a far more grim part of your mind thought you’d perhaps die a puppet like delilah briarwood, and by extent, vecna had intended.) but alas, now here you were, occasionally working at the slayer’s cake with some old friends and enjoying a simple thing like lounging around with a book in one hand and a warm cup of tea in another.

only when you sense a person, persons, that is, outside of your home, you know that something will change. you don’t like the way the comforting breeze settles into an ominous chill.

taking a simple cloak hanging off of the rack near the door, as whitestone itself was a bit colder than everywhere else, you brace yourself for whatever awaits you outside.

well, it wasn’t a random assortment of adventurers that you were expecting. in front of them, percy, without his cane and instead a long rifle slung over his back. immediately you’re concerned.

you step out, door shutting behind you as you raise a hand and place a simple charm to lock it.

“percival, what happened?”

he swallows deeply and begins to explain.

you considered yourself a rational person. especially now that you matured and seen and experienced many things. nothing could break that reason you believed you had.

except when they mention delilah briarwood, your palms feel clammy, your hands tremble. ringing begins in your ears.

you hear your name being called. sounds muddled as you step forward.

"you brought her here? of all places?" your voice sounds like your own, but also doesn't. familiar red wisps curl around your fingers, your breathing quickens.

there's a woman with lilac colored hair, her expression desperate, "we had no other choice, she's-"

with a flick of your wrist, she's bound by the red wisps that had been curled around your fingers, your nostrils flared as you all but stomp in her direction. the other members of her party had their weapons raised.

"there is always a choice," you snap, your glare stops her midsentence, "you should've left her as she was. and let the scourge of delilah briarwood die with her."

a fireball is launched in your direction, and your features turn confused for a moment as you hear some animal screech, your other hand keeping the woman in place while the other redirects the fireball.

the momentary confusion gives you clarity, and the holding spell is dropped, your heartbeat rings in your ears. a hand on your shoulder almost makes you jump.

you turn to percival, and he almost flinches, before remembering the company of strangers, when his expression schools itself into the usual collectedness. your own expression is wounded.

the group before you senses the need for privacy at least, and you readily ignore their hard stares, a green haired woman assisting the one you captured.

vex'ahlia takes your shaking hands, giving them a soft squeeze, which you return in an almost instant. (damn, when had she arrived?, you think)

your breathing begins to slow.

"i know this might be too much to ask of you, especially considering the risks" he begins, "but if possible..." trailing off when you inhale sharply.

"they will not be receiving any of my help," you cross your arms in front of your chest, your shoulders squared, "but if she makes a reappearance because of what they are going to do, i will do all in my power to destroy her."

percival and vex'ahlia share a look, before the lord and lady of whitestone accept your answer.

you bite your lip, "after everything that delilah briarwood did to you, to me, everything, you would risk such a thing and for what? what of the children?" your silent question follows 'what if they were next?'

percival stiffens, "I know."

with a wave of your hand, your plain clothing changes to familiar armors and leathers, your eyes trained on the group some feet away knowing that they were attempting to listen.

"then you know why in good conscious that I cannot help," you adjust the gloves on your hands, "but I will protect whitestone."

percival reaches for your hand, which you allow, placing a kiss to your knuckles before brushing his thumb against them, "and I will forever be indebted to you for it."

[starrystevie]

bee… if you have the time, please indulge me in your aries eddie and cancer steve astrology headcanons because i’m so on board for eddie but i’m real curious what you have to say about our boy steve 👀

i finally have time to give this the thought it deserves and still ended up rambling instead of having formulated thoughts, thank you alice for your patience <3

i know there are real astrology girlies out there who know full charts and all that, but i am absolutely not one of them so this is all just for fun and vibes so pls don't destroy me for my take on astrology.

eddie, to me, is so so obvious. he’s a little all over the place, a little wild, a lot loud and a lot of energy. he’s passionate and uses that to judge how he does things. he’s like a star burning bright right before it explodes. he can’t see how anyone would want to postpone hellfire cause he would never do that, especially over something he doesn’t care about. he’s clumsy because his mind is going too fast to care about depth perception and what’s going on around him. 

aries are the baby of the zodiac and he is just such a messy toddler to me that of course he’d be the baby of the zodiac. they’re loveable and fun and so fucking cute but they throw tantrums and don’t understand things outside of their own bubble. they cry and scream for attention but also laugh at the little things and that’s eddie. his fucking object permanence is not there, in the sense of he’ll lose something in his hand but also in the sense that things will roll off him as he moves on to the next bigger and better thing. 

now steve. i base steve off 2 of my favorite cancer suns: myself and sailor moon. cancer suns i think are commonly referred to as cry babies, sensitive and reserved but i know based on myself that it's only half true. yes, we're cry babies and sensitive, but we're ruled by the moon. we're ruled by emotion and show it. yes, we have shells like our crab brethren but we're not always guarded and closed off. we just know when to show our underbelly, when to show our vulnerability. emotional doesn’t always mean letting your guard down. 

and that's steve harrington, baby. i'm not gonna get into his moon sign and rising sign and all that (because as an aries moon, i know that that makes me way different than like a cancer sun with a pisces moon) but cancer sun just fits. steve is emotional, i think we can all agree on that, but he’s pretty emotionally mature and seems almost rational with it. like he pinpoints what he’s feeling and figures out how and why it’s impacting something. he bases his actions on what he’s feeling, whether that be anger or fear or sadness or joy. 

take season 3, when he confesses to robin and gets turned down. he wanted her to know that he liked her cause he was feeling big big feelings and needed to get them out. he perceived her as someone he could let his guard down around (which is correct, platonic soulmates and all) so he told her how he felt. but once he got turned down, he processed his emotions, thought about it, and responded in the way that felt right for what robin was feeling. he took emotion and used it as logic, which i think is something cancers tend to do. we think with emotion. 

which leads me into the most obvious steve as a cancer fact that he is such a parental figure. we cancers yearn to take care of things in the obvious way of keeping snacks around and doling out advice, but also by being in the background as the protector, watching out for others, making sure they feel okay. steve met an asshole who was bullying literal children (one being his own fucking step-sister) and took matters into his own hands because someone had to. he took dustin under his wing because someone had to. he went back into the byers house in season 1 because someone had to. he dove into lovers lake because he knows someone had to. he wants to be the shield that protects them all (which don’t let me get into my sad steve harrington who thinks he’s just a body headcanon) because he needs to look out for others. 

he’s not afraid to be hard, to be this strong outer shell that seems impenetrable, if it means that no one gets hurt. he’s not afraid to come across as closed off if it means that he can protect himself. he’s smart because he knows who and how to trust. 

there’s this idea that cancers are too sensitive, which we are, but it’s not bad to be sensitive. it means we keep an eye open to things that can hurt and we make sure it doesn’t get to us or the people we love. i think my favorite way to explain steve as a cancer is season 2. he knows something is wrong with nancy (and i mean it might not have taken an empath to see that but steve is definitely empathetic) but he isn’t ready to show how it’s affecting him yet. in the bathroom at the party though (where he spends a good bit of time watching over her and making sure she’s okay in the exact same way i do with my loved ones) he drops the facade. he lets his guard down, he gets hurt, and he processes the whole thing with nancy through a lense of emotion. and he may not fully get it (”i’m sorry? what the hell am i sorry for?”) but he knows nancy’s sad which makes him sad.

i think some of this is obviously reaching. i’m aware of that and i’m also aware that this probably isn’t how other people view steve which is a okay! i also love libra steve! but something about cancer steve, this guy who feels things so much and wants to make sure his family is safe, hits me so hard. steve, who is the first one they go to for comfort. steve, who we know would open his house to whoever needed it. steve, who takes on more so that the people he loves doesn’t have to. steve, who lets his guard down when he knows he’s safe enough to be vulnerable. 

idk, cancer steve is something special to me. 

[gobbinhalfglass]

Been in a weird space for a handful of months now.

Suddenly moved out of a house I’d lived in for almost a decade. It was an extremely shit house with what felt like no insulation, drafts from every direction at once somehow, deathtrap stairs, etc. To be frank I was lucky to have a place to live with only my disability income to pay the rent.

Suddenly found a job within weeks of moving in to the new place. It’s in a shit part of town, but the work itself is fine. It’s in my desired field and everything.

Within a few months of that, another much better job still within my ideal field catches my attention. In person applications only, which is rare as fuck these days. Did some research and the place is legitimate, just old fashioned. Real down to earth, seemed like. Walked there. Did some paperwork. Got a phone call to schedule the interview a few hours later while eating lunch. Aced the fuck out of that interview yesterday.

And now here I am, my two weeks notice in and scheduling my orientation with this company. And it’s only just sinking in that this might be the first time in 27 years I’m the only driving force behind change in my life. Making something of my career and future with my own two hands instead of just… Catching up with life or clawing my way forward out of spite for my circumstances.

Fuck, man. It’s surreal. So much of this world is built to keep folks down, it feels like. And here I am stepping into the job I actually want, with a company and position that’ll open every possible career path within that field for me down the line. Work I can be proud of, too.

The thing I feel thinking back on my life so far is how everything kinda feels like you should already have everything figured out and lined up for your life. As a kid it always feels like you should already be mature, as a teen you’re treated like you should already be ready for the world (you are most definitely NOT) and the early through mid 20s felt like you should always have your next 40 years already planned financially with a stable career by 19. But looking back? All that feels like bullshit. Society moving the goalposts at every milestone, refusing to acknowledge anything.

My life’s just beginning at 27. This is the point where I’m ready to take the wheel, and feeling like I should’ve already had a solid grip on this crazy world before now is lunacy. We don’t live in a sane world with rational people. Donald fucking Trump was voted into office for God’s sake. Anyone who tries to lump that expectation on you is asking you to do the impossible.

If you’re reading this and you’re young, here’s what I want you to take away from my rant here:

Life’s gonna seem crazy. The news and politics are gonna make it seem like the world is spiraling into oblivion. Shit’s gonna change a lot faster than you can keep up. But you don’t have to have it all figured out right now. Take a deep breath, you’re doing okay right now. Just gotta keep your head above water and learn from everything new you do and see. Some day it’ll start to come together for you, pieces will fall into place. Just keep an eye out for opportunities as you go and focus on self improvement until then. It’ll be okay, that I promise.

[wreakinghavocnv]

My First Entry....

For my very first installment of content I'd like to use something I actually had to write as a punishment the last time I lived in a transitional housing environment. I have a chronically messy room problem no matter where I live. Back around 2018 where that was is a staple in the Reno Transitional Housing scene, CrossRoads. The following is a short essay I was asked to write as a sanction for my messiness. To this day this is one of my favorite things Iv written, essentially, I guess, because in a way it was what I do best, a chance to talk my way out of trouble. The gentleman who assigned me this task took notice to my knack for written word right away upon entering CrossRoads. And in essence I think enjoyed assigning me these little tasks as "punishments" because he knew it was A) good for me, and B) I would actually take it seriously and not hand him anything short of what I felt was my best work. I hope its as enjoyable to read as it was to write:

The Importance of Room Cleanliness In Sobriety

       In life the way we keep up our surroundings and living space is a reflection upon the way we are thinking and feeling. When I arrived at the ‘Roads I was invited to look at my life, my surroundings, my living space, and the way I react with rational authority in a different light. I was encouraged to embrace change efforts on behalf of my once polluted mind and turn problem thinking into productive and mature actions. I was afforded the opportunity to seek gainful employment while the rest of my circumstances remained stabile. Consequent to finding that employment and simultaneously becoming a senior member of the Crossroads “family” I became complacent in regard to up keep of my dwelling and arrogant in my attitude towards the resident rational authorities. It is imperative to not become complacent nor too comfortable at the ‘Roads for you will be swiftly reminded you are graciously being granted an alternative to imprisonment.

                The luxury and comforts that come with living in C house are not a privilege of tenure in the program but a privilege of a willingness to continue to accept rational authority, and a continuance of identifying and correcting problem thinking while building upon other aspects of your life. It is believed by some that a messy room is a direct correlation to the vulnerability of ones sobriety. It is unacceptable to let the little things like laundry and making your bed go by the wayside when the time arrives to invest your efforts into employment. A wise old man with a mustache once told me that “Anyone can stay sober” but its what you do and the new habits you must form once you become sober to cement the longevity of the absence of substance.

                As addicts we are almost always a very rebellious and anti-authoritative people. We thrive and prosper in anarchy and mayhem. BUT it is the direct and main objective of the powers that be to keep order and structure because that’s just the way the world works. Acceptance and compliance with order and succumbing to conformity may not always be fun but it is required to engage in any sort of normality. It does not matter if you disagree with authority, or claim to see blatant double standards, or even witness certain people being drunk with power instead alcohol. Part of radical acceptance is understanding that I do not run Crossroads and I need to keep a “yes right away attitude” whether I agree or not because my residency depends on it.

                I admit that I became haughtily rebellious and un-deservingly entitled and complacent in salutation to my room cleanliness. I have diagnosed the problem thinking, and have actively been working towards rectifying my actions and showing more respect to my roommate and the rational authorities of Crossroads. I believe I should be allowed to continue my residence in C building as I view this as a minor slip-up and believe I have been fulfilling my other duties in maintaining a sober and productive lifestyle. As well I have agreed with myself and others to not let my attitude fall short in further proceedings here at the ‘Roads. 

[faithfromanewperspective]

urban designer muses, 2023

See, in my head there was a golden era of human connection in almost every culture, thrust upon us by the proximity to each other (and our occupation/work) by the very need for safety. safety in numbers, in shared causes of survival of the tribe, a sense of belonging and purpose. It wasn’t so ideal, I know, people died, anyone who didn’t fit in never got to find people who were more like them. I don’t really want that. 

And maybe I’m blessed in modern culture that we have travel and we have technology and we have ways I could find people who think like me, that I’m not stuck with my visionary ideas ricocheting through my head for connection and better greater belonging and purpose that no one asks about meaning the pressure builds up so high that I lose my grip on reality among those ideas I have no way of anything close to implementing all on my own. Maybe I’m blessed I can blog them online and travel to or attend virtually conferences of people who are putting together similar plans. Read books by them. There are 8 billion of us here after all. 

But if you know me you also know I’m terribly skeptical and cynical of all things colonialism, all things industrial revolution, all things Rational Economic Man, all things stoicism that seem to come exclusively from those who like to lord power over others and strip the humanity of all of us until we’re polished shells of people, starting with themselves. None of that connection beyond the superficial, and if that doesn’t meet your needs there’s something wrong with you. I think it’s what leaves us longing, rightly, for something more, spiritual, supernatural, divine. You can see why when this very culture is reflected in faith spaces it’s so much worse than outside: this place that claims to be for people like me who claim to believe in what I do, expects me to be just the same as the culture and the air we breathe. Doesn’t know how to handle me when I’m not. Doesn’t know how to handle any of the people who’ve come through our doors who aren’t actually, I’ve watched so many of them leave, a little piece of me dying every time. And those of us here—we just want connection don’t we? Connection with God and each other. We want that empathetic witness to what we go through in life because we know it isn’t that happy facade at all times. Good. But my theory is this culture has been around so long that we’re all so empty and drained because of it; none of us have the resources to be the first ones to set a culture of vulnerability, when we can’t without having someone to carry our hurts, and there’s no one there who can be that—the natural cycles are out of whack, a lot like the carbon and nutrient cycles of our planet. None of us have the capacity in us to sit there patient and try again and again to slowly help our loved ones feel more comfortable to open up even as we see them stuck in their own heads and shame and the fact that for so much of our weeks, our time, our nervous systems don’t feel that kind of safety and the moments that they do, the hurt just spills out and can’t be communicated maturely in a way that builds strong and vulnerable community. There’s a greater need for support than anyone can give. 

I think in a culture that values individual success and achievement and having space from others when they annoy you instead of working around your needs and threshold and creating healthy boundaries so you can coexist, we don’t think that the average person needs it. We are none of us trained to give that, properly, we’ve not had people be that for us, well, except for God. And when we have that, we don’t see it, because no one has modelled it to us and we don’t think we need it. We don’t realise our community relies on it, little bit by little bit, giving and taking it in a way that creates balance, creates equality in the banks of social capital and tanks of capacity to give, as we invite more people in rather than turn them away. 

Of course to get there we need a lot of emotional maturity and ability to give, through things like therapy and I might also say education. But most of all we need the time and space to dedicate to this in a sustainable manner. I’ve done so in an unsustainable manner before, not realising what I was coming to to fill me up and then pouring out from, had me pouring more and being filled up less until all that was left for me to do was step back and analyse that need. One I saw all around me and everything we did drained us more and the math didn’t add up. We were feeding each other the gospel without ever applying it to address this pressing need that was obvious to me but apparently not everyone else, something that might have us functioning better, reaching out better in love and community and bringing people in, showing the gospel with our lives: we are liberated to connect. We are equipped to show radical love. 

I am now when I pace myself, but something about this community drains me more than it equips me and if it’s a choice between being able to give something sometimes or participate and vaguely give to the community but go away feeling drained and unable to give anywhere else—including the job that I support myself with—I know which one I’m going to choose. For so long I didn’t. 

And somehow I think I’m not the only one. I’m unique in that I’m southeast asian and naturally tend towards more community-centred interaction and collectivist responsibility. I’m unique in that I grew up in western sydney and had that loyal hard work and resourceful problem-solving attitude that doesn’t see community and relationships as transient but rather something to work on building from a very young age. I don’t understand how people cut and run. I don’t understand how they think about what they can get unless their bodies force them to. Part of that is related to my faith too. Maybe it contributes to my curiosity and constant stream of ideas on how we show the gospel to more people and throw off whatever in our culture is unhelpful. Ideas I feel desperate to at least talk about because of all the need around me. That I felt the structures of ministry actually holding me back from meeting. The community I thought I was in exhausting me, no one there to listen when I wanted to fix it, work on it, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone. People who, bless them, felt nothing was wrong and it is such a privilege to feel that from the status quo, not have to invest all your emotional energy into living with the feeling of injustice everywhere. 

I guess we’ve lived in this normalised superficial connection, living in what most of history would consider mansions one for each nuclear family, nucleated, requiring a car and a concrete plan in order to have a deep conversation with someone, actually connect, with anyone who isn’t your parents, children, siblings, or spouse if you’re married. The ecosystem is simply too small to meet our needs and I think we just forgot we have them? No wonder youth love camps so much. It’s a different community setup, something that meets the needs we have that the setup of our settlements have taken away from us. Would it be that we could congregate at the church after work and it only be a minute’s walk home after. Would it be that connecting with this community didn’t take up our entire Sunday, so that we could have some time to do our chores and connect with our family, as well as get our in the community and connect there too. Outreach. But the design of our city functions to keep us as far away from each other as possible. 

Let me unpack that. Basically, we’re designed around cars, which keep us from interacting in transit with those close in proximity to us except in road rage. Our jobs are transient and we don’t live near them, resulting in long and lonely commutes that extend our work days by hours. We’re left with little interaction in our schedules except with those we live with and share facilities with, or those we work with, or do hobbies with if we have time and money for them. Which you have to drive to, like church. Our schedules are organised around work, sleep, whatever we put in them—little incidental interaction and a lot of striving towards what we do for work, doing better at our hobbies, being a better, kinder person to those we live with. And when we do interact outside it’s a show, for the Pinterest house or the Instagram story about our gatherings—not always, but when you’re invited in first, you have to get through these and spend the required money and do the required tidying in hope that someone lets you in deeper as you keep extending the invitation. 

As young adults, we have work and study and hobbies and we long for the connection of camps whether we live with our parents—or we live out of home and struggle to pull together rent so that we can work a bit closer to that. But the locations we can find housing in impact this, impact our access to our loved ones who we are properly close with, we end up shuffled around for work, we can’t live close to the church or other base for community in order that it might have the least barriers (many of us are disabled, neurodivergent, many of us are struggling in different ways and society often doesn’t help us meet our needs) and barriers are just too many. We learn to live without that biblical connection we long for. 

We learn to study and get jobs and maybe afford therapy, but we only live one day at a time. Maybe we get cynical, maybe we struggle more and more socially, maybe we never end up being able to reach out to the new person and maybe we lose the ability to reach out beyond our faith. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it go on and spiral further and I’ve seen many give up on creating a community in which we can heal and let down our guards and actually grow. I’ve seen the way we as a church, people of all ages, hide behind our serving roles—I know this doesn’t work for me. I know I long for more, to do more, to prayerfully sustain myself in community as I do—and I need community who can support me in that, I can’t do it alone. 

So I don’t know what to do except create a vision of a better way to settle and dwell as humans who care for the world—a way that facilitates our caring, a way that optimises our emotional energy and creates the most social capital, academically this is the thing that keeps community organisations and churches going and functioning, even if they also require money donated and we also believe in a supernatural provision—this provision comes in the form of financial yes but mostly social capital. I’ve exhausted myself because I know when I’m fed in community I do have that. But when my needs aren’t met I have to look after myself. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to turn around this freight train of our culture and now I’m doing the smart thing: getting qualified to lay the tracks. 

This is why I can’t at the moment serve in any other way. But I can analyse demographic patterns of poverty and how that flows on in areas of little access to resources and I can analyse the impact of growing up middle class and suddenly being an adult, perhaps a burnt out gifted kid, who suddenly has to work for the most basic things. I can analyse how these areas, the areas many of us might move to and be surprised, have higher rates of domestic violence mental illness and greater need for the gospel and its implicit empathetic witness to our pain and captivity, but less resources to pour this out. I can analyse how people who don’t interact with those experiencing these things and learn their stories tend to blame them or not believe their needs. I can weave these strings together as I come up with ideas, it’s what I do best. 

But as I zoom into a group of young people who don’t know how to have the leadership and emotional maturity to create a spiritually mature group—a demographic in social poverty who have grown up, the first generation outside a few selective schools academically, pressured to perform and view any kind of productivity and performance over connection—not to invest in social capital, not to invest in each other when our pressures on our time of study and work are too much. Both men and women now, it used to only be men. I don’t know what anyone else has been ordained to do, but for me I can rebel against the world by using my productivity to build relationships. Build community. And maybe that’s the thing we all need to be convicted of. Rooted in the convictions we have, but actually making a difference in the choices that we make: a practical theology, not just a belief

[soulcheri]

Not only had the car come to a complete top but, so had everything else. Thank God Brooke was wearing a seatbelt or she would’ve went flying. Nevertheless, her body jerked forward and she had to steady herself by holding her hands out against the dashboard.

She knew (or hoped) Tyler wouldn’t be happy about Seth showing up and cornering her. If he cared, he wouldn’t be. And while his reaction pacified her a little bit, it still seemed a bit off? He wasn’t as angry or jealous as she would’ve hoped. Which made her question whether his feelings for her were still real. “I wasn’t going to keep it from you.” She knows it might’ve seemed that way however, eventually she would’ve told him the truth. Which sure, could’ve been considered ‘keeping it from him’ but in her mind she was just trying to assess the situation and figure out when was the right time to bring it up. She figured maybe once they got back to her dorm and he was relaxed, she would ease him into the subject.

But now it didn’t seem like that plan was even going to happen. Because who knows where their mood would be by the time they reach her dorm.

What he says next, although diplomatic, surprises her but only because she’s expecting (and again hoping) for him to fly off the handle. Instead, he’s rationalizing. Which, she understands is something he does to cope. Unlike Jake, he doesn’t immediately jump to conclusions and accuse her of the worst — which would be cheating on him. It’s one of the things Brooke always loves most about him. He listens, he assesses, and he’s often mature about the way he handles things between them. Most of the time, anyway.

“No!” She interjects almost immediately after his questions have been asked. She doesn’t need time to think about it or scramble for explanations. A part of her is even a little hurt he feels the need to ask her that. Hence why she unbuckles her seatbelt and is preparing to get out of the car. “The whole time I was wondering why he was saying these things to me now when he could have said them to me then. I was wondering why guys only want me after they finally lose me. And I was wondering how his fiancé would feel if she knew he was still going around behind her back.” With Brooke’s hand on the door handle and her heart clenching painfully in her chest, she turns to Tyler with tears brimming her eyes. “I told him I was with you and I was happy and all I wanted was for him to be happy too. With someone else.”

Clearly, she wasn’t happy though. Because now she was wondering whether Tyler even loved or cared about her still at all. He didn’t seem that upset or bothered by what she’d told him. And that was alarming. Just as much as it was concerning. The old Brooke would’ve gotten out of the car by now and walked home. But this Brooke stayed. She let the hurt fester until she cracked and delivered him the full transparency he requested. “I just told you Seth cornered me at party we were both at together and wanted me to have sex with him in his car behind your back. And all you care about is whether the thought ever crossed my mind. As if I would ever do that to you.”

Maybe he didn’t realize that, he was her one exception. That she may have cheated on Jake with him and cheated on Romeo with Seth, too but she would never cheat on him. “I have never cheated on you, Tyler. Nor would I. Not even in my own head. I wouldn’t do that. The fact you even have to question that, really hurts.” So much so, she’s crying now and her face is becoming beet red as she angles it away from him. “Take me home.” To imply she means business, Brooke straps herself back in before she presses her body so far up against the passenger side door that it’s as far away from him as it can be. “NOW, Tyler.”

Tyler tells himself Brooke is just upset and doesn't mean what she says. Because if she can't trust him then what are they doing? Why would she be in a relationship with him if she doesn't trust him? A part of him wonders if she ever really forgave him for everything that happened in high school. What if she didn't? What if their relationship was just unfinished business and now she's over it? She got everything she wanted and now she's bored.

Nothing happened. So even after opening up and being honest she wasn't going to do the same? They're the kind of couple who keeps secrets? Tyler already had that kind of relationship with Nina and he didn't want another one. All they did was lie and hurt each other. Tyler thought things were different between him and Brooke. He left Lo because he thought no one could ever love him as much as she does. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe love is just a fleeting emotion and there's no profound reason to chase after it because you'll never catch it. You'll always end up heartbrokenly disappointed and alone.

No. You know what? I ran into Seth. The last thing Tyler was expecting was to hear Seth's name. For a moment, he convinced himself he crashed the car because his mind went white when his heart shattered into a bajillion pieces. To be safe, he hits the brake and his Chevelle screeches to a complete stop on the side of the road.

"And you were going to keep this from me? Why?" Tyler's heart was hit with so much adrenaline he feared having a heart attack. He has to remind himself to breath in through his nose and out his mouth. Was Brooke considering it? Running away with her former teacher? He knew there was something between them more than taboo sex and roleplay games. Did she love him? Did he love her?

"I need you to be honest with me or else this isn't going to work." With a shuddering breath, Tyler removes his seatbelt and turns to face her. If she hesitates or lies, he hopes he'll catch it. Because this will probably be one of their most important conversations. "When he cornered you and offered to fuck you in his car, was there any part of you that wanted that? Did you think about it? Are you still thinking about it?"