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mrsriddlenott · 2 months ago

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~Teach Me, Please~

Bsf!JJ Maybank x Innocent!Reader

Warnings: oral(m&f receiving), bit of a handjob, praise kink, spit kink, innocent reader but she’s lowkey in control, reader kinda gets bullied in the beginning but not directly. Not proofread.

{masterlist}

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“She’s like their little sister,” you heard the kook girl you didn’t recognize laugh as she spoke about you, “She follows them around like a groupie, JJ most of all. It’s like she doesn’t know what to do with what she has, I would be flirting non-stop if I was with him as much as she is. JJ is absolutely delicious.”

“I think they’ll always be just friends,” her equally annoying friend giggles, the pair clearly not noticing you behind them or simply not caring, “I mean look at how innocent she is, I doubt she would know how to please him if she had the chance. She has literally never had a boyfriend, she probably has never given head in her life and JJ gets around a lot he has plenty of better options. Hell he probably doesn’t pay enough attention to even notice her raging crush on him anyway. You should definitely go for it tonight, I’ve heard he’s good.”

You huffed, stomping off back towards the couch you had left JJ on. What annoyed you the most wasn’t the shit talking, you knew people talked, especially kooks who somehow had nothing better to do. What hurt was the accuracy. Despite being the same age as your fellow pogues, and knowing JJ and JB since the third grade, you were still very much innocent. Especially when compared to your ragtag group of friends.

You knew they didn’t mind, they all loved you no matter what. Kie helped you as much as she could but it was pointless, you just didn’t know how to be as laid back as them. You had fun and loved to party as much as they did, but you still preferred a nice night in with a movie. And while part of you used to worry you held them back, they made sure you knew you could always come to them. So when you saw JJ wave you back over with a questioning look in his eyes you knew you could ask him to help you with anything.

And your crush on him had totally and absolutely nothing to do with that decision.

“Will you teach me how to give a blowjob?” You blurt out, dropping onto the couch infront of JJ’s outstretched arm as though everything was normal. He gagged on the gulp of beer he’d just taken before looking to you with wide eyes, trying to decipher if he heard you properly.

“What’d you jus’ say?” His voice was breathless as he wiped his face of spilt beer, your eyes tracing the droplets that escaped down his neck.

“I want you to teach me how to give good head.” You stated, stretching the words to make your intentions clear. You watched JJ’s eyes bounce between your eyes and lips, the gears in his brain working overtime to decide if you were joking or not.

“Like- uh.” JJ starts, his voice strained while he needlessly wipes his mouth again, spreading his legs on the coach and making room for himself and letting his knee touch yours, “Like on what though.” He arches his eyebrow to look at you, not wanting to be presumptuous but wanting nothing more than to help you directly.

JJ would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about you like that a million times. He wanted you, he just never admitted it out loud because he thought you deserved better. He messed around and acted out while you and John B cleaned up after him but over the years he started to notice a distinct difference in his feelings for Jonh B compared to those he had for you. However, he decided long ago he wouldn’t act on any of them unless you did first, he couldn’t risk ruining you because you were just so good.

“On you Jay, come on don’t make me feel weird about it.” The whining tone of your voice makes JJ bite his lip, unsure if this was ethical. JB would surely frown upon this and Kie would probably kill him for corrupting you. But he was having a hard time fighting the urge now as you looked up to him with pleading eyes.

“Well I don’t wanna take advantage of you or anything, y’know?” He stutters over his words slightly as he fumbles to find anything to say, making you giggle in that way he loves so much. You had never once seen JJ flustered or worried about a girl asking to suck him off and you honestly couldn’t believe it was you who got that honor.

“But I asked you to show me JJ, I want you to teach me.” You beg him, turning your body on the couch to face him fully, placing a hand on his exposed bicep.

And his resolve snapped.

He tossed his half full beer can aside as he stood, not caring where it landed. His hand took your own hand, gently but assertively pulling you up with him. He held onto you tightly, not wanting to lose you while weaving through the crowd in the Chateau making the way to the bedroom he made his. You caught sight of the first kook girl in passing, noticing the way she tried to catch JJ’s eyes only to be ignored. Her face contorted in surprise and disgust while you laughed softly before JJ was yanking you into his room and locking the door behind you both.

“C’mere,” JJ instructed, waving two fingers towards him. When you turn to him he’s facing away from you, grabbing a pillow from the top of his bed and tossing it on the floor at his feet. The bed creeks from his weight flopping onto it, manspreading while watching your slightly shocked and confused face, unable to hide his smile. “Come on, y’wanna learn or not.”

Your legs carry you to him, anxiously messing with the hem of your dress now that you can make out the bulge in his shorts. “Are you sure you want to do this?” His voice draws your gaze back to his and you can see the excitement whirling behind his blue eyes dropping you to your knees carefully, leaning into the comfort of his pillow.

“Thanks for the pillow,” You whisper, locking eyes with him from between his legs, “I didn’t know guys did that, I’ve never seen it in the porn I watch.”

“You watch porn?! Oh my god this keeps gettin’ better.” JJ groans with a smile, knocking his head back and letting you watch his adam’s apple bob, “I’ve never done it before, I just didn’t want you to bruise your knees.”

“Good to know I’m special.” You laugh awkwardly, wiggling with excited and nervous energy where you leant before him. He released an airy laugh above you, looking down at you again, his pupils dilated.

“You have no idea,” JJ’s voice was breathless and his words caught in his throat slightly, “Do you wanna get started on our lesson Princess?” JJ asked teasingly, running his fingers down your warm cheek, stopping to lift your head up by your chin. You nodded, shell shocked as you stare up at him unable to force your mouth to form words.

“I need you to tell me,” He whispered, leaning forward slowly until his lips ghost against yours, “If I’m going to finally corrupt you I need you to ask Cupcake.” Your eyes fluttered shut, taking in his scent as your heart rapped against your ribcage.

“I want you Jay….T-to teach me, please.” Your eyes flick open just in time to catch a wicked grin spread across his face before your cheeks were cupped in his warm palms, tugging your lips into his in a heated kiss. Your sighs mingle together, finally exploring what you both silently desired for so long. His tongue danced across your bottom lip asking for entrance as you gasped letting his tongue fight yours, forcing a moan from you that vibrated against his lips. He pulled away slowly, spit connecting you for a second before you’re licking your lips subconsciously. JJ observes your furrowed eyebrows and the redness flooding over your skin as your eyes stay closed in obvious pleasure.

“Still with me Gorgeous?” JJ asks, tapping your cheeks lightly, smiling excitedly as he watches you look up at him. His painfully hard erection rubbed against the zipper of his shorts as he adjusts his hips. Leaning back and resting his weight on his forearms, his crotch looming in front of you, your wide eyes telling him you have no clue how to start this. “Put your hands on my knees,” He instructs, shivering under your touch when you listen immediately, your cool hands resting against his steadily warming skin, “Good girl, now I want you to slowly move them up, like you’re not sure you want to take my pants off yet, tease me y’know?”

Your breath hitches at his praise, and he notices. You whimper as you try and follow his instructions drifting your hands across his broad thighs and letting your fingers tease under the fabric of his shorts, “You like being my good girl don’t you?” He asks, his voice teasing only slightly, his breathy voice making your thighs clench, rubbing them together desperate for friction.

“Yes, I do,” His eyes immediately catch onto the movement of your thighs, biting his lip while he watches you wiggle in front of him. He twitches in his shorts at the thought of you getting off to his pleasure, moaning loudly when he takes your hand in his pressing your palm directly into his bulge. Using his larger hand to move yours to perfectly cup around him and uses your palm moving it against his shaft as he swallows, desperately trying to collect himself.

“K-keep doing that until you’re ready,” He sighs, letting you continue at your own pace, moving his hand up to your hair to fix it, not wanting it to fall into your face as he watched your features for signs of distress, “When you want to unbuckle my belt and-“ He gasps cutting off his sentence when your fingers immediately jump to hastily undo his belt. Your shaking hands struggle for a few awkward seconds before you’re tugging his shorts down his thighs exposing his black boxers. JJ lifts his hips to let you discard his shorts fully, tossing them aside as you stare into his eyes triumphantly, “Good girl.”

Your wide smile as your hands tease their way back up his naked thighs just as he taught you has him reeling, practically shaking with excitement. “You like being praised, don’t you Mama?” He asks, tugging his lip between his teeth when your fingers find his cock again. He tugs your hand upward, moaning when he presses your hand into his tip, stopping your movements entirely until you respond.

“Yes Jay.” You whine, your tone impatient as you wiggle your hand under his, making him release a breathy moan laced with a laugh as he releases your hand, letting it continue it’s excited exploration of him. Your free hand started to sneak it’s way up his body, making him jolt forward as your cold hand found it’s way into his shirt.

“Who do you wanna learn this for?” JJ blurts out, not entirely wanting to hear the answer as he tugs his shirt over his head impatiently. Closing his eyes as your nails dig their way back down his chest, part of him wondering how you knew he’d like that.

“Myself.” JJ feels the smile grow back on his face, relief flooding his body as he opens his eyes, locking onto your wide gaze looking up to him expectantly. You want his instructions, and he wants to draw this out.

“So there’s no one in that precious mind of yours right now?” He asks, letting his eyes fall down your face, gazing at your wet lips before eyeing your cleavage and wiggling hips. Trying to suppress that part of him that wants you to stay here like this forever.

“Well,” You giggle, palming him through his boxers just over his tip, loving the way his head falls back with a moan when you apply more pressure, “Right now I have you on my mind Jay.”

“Fuck, you have no idea what that does to me,” He smiles towards the ceiling, imagining all the times he came in his hand to this exact scenario, “I thought you were too good for me, why’d ya ask me?”

“Some girls at the party were talking about me, calling me your groupie and saying I wouldn’t know what to do with you if you ever gave me the chance, and I really wanted a chance.” You sigh, drifting your hand down his toned abs to tease the elastic of his underwear, letting it snap against his skin as your excited eyes find his again.

“Oh Princess,” he cooed caressing your cheek, “You have always had the chance. You were the first girl I ever imagined doing this for me.” His eyes went wide when he realized what he had said, almost backtracking before you interrupted him to speak.

“Good, because I can’t imagine anyone else teaching me, I trust you, I want it to be you.” You state simply, locking your eyes in his gaze and taking not of the hitch in his breath. In a spurt of confidence you’re tugging his boxers down his thighs, eyeing his thick, throbbing cock as it bounces free, eyes meeting his again in a beg, “Tell me what to do Jay.”

“First give the tip a kiss Baby,” You do as your told, touching your lips against his hot, red tip as it leaks precum onto your lips, “Mmm, fuck now get your tongue nice and wet and lick up the middle, when it feels right slide my tip against your tongue n’suck on it like those Cherry suckers you’re always begin’ me for.”

You laugh, suddenly feeling more and more confident as you watch him come undone above you. “Is that what you want Jay? Or are you goin’ easy on me?”

“If you think you can take me in one go do it Princess, but don’t think I’m pressuring you,” He sighed, watching your tongue wet the side of his pulsing cock, “I want you to go at the pace you’re comfortable with.”

You smile up at him as you separate from him, letting spit coat your tongue before moving to lick up the prominent vein popping out of the other side of his cock. He groans above you, subconsciously moving his hips closer to your mouth in uncontrollable excitement. As your lips caress against his red, leaking tip you slowly let spit drip from your lips onto him, watching as it drips down him and pools in the bit of trimmed hair at his base. His eyes pop from his head when you bring your hand up to spread your saliva over him, pumping your hand slowly and twisting it like you’d seen in videos. You watched his furrowed eyebrows, buying yourself time to work up enough spit in your mouth to take him fully. His lips tug into his teeth as his hips stutter upward into your hand.

“Where did you learn to do that?” JJ gasps, stuttering and twitching in your wet hand.

“Porn.” Your sickly sweet voice has him moaning and tugging at your hair, forcing you’re eyes up to his.

“You’re so fucking perfect.” He states before slamming his lips into yours, moving you back by your hair wrapped around his fist. You gape up at him wide mouthed, your hand speeding up when his eyes bounce between your open, drooling mouth and your blown out eyes as though asking for permission. You nod your head to him, not sure what he wanted to do but okay with it nonetheless. His free hand jumped to your chin, tugging your mouth open wider before leaning down and spitting directly onto your tongue. Rolling your eyes into the back of your head as you moan you shiver in front of him at the feeling of his spit mixing with yours, unknowingly helping you in your previous goal.

JJ chuckles at your reaction, moaning slightly when your hand speeds up again. You savior the feeling of his spit in your mouth for a second, your eyes latching onto his as you smile wickedly. JJ only takes a second’s pause before his eyed widen watching your mouth dip lower, his fingers subconsciously tightening in your hair, moving his other to grip the bed and ground himself. Breath fills your lungs from your nose, prepping yourself before teasing his tip with your tongue for only a second before you slowly slide him into your mouth. His hips jolt forward subconsciously, shuddering breathlessly when your eyes meet his over your lashes again. JJ curses under his breath, watching you take almost every inch of him in one go, sliding your head down his shaft, resting your hand at his base when you can’t fit anymore.

JJ moans loudly when you swallow around him, jerking his hips into you desperately trying to control himself, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you cut him off quickly, shoving your head as far down as you can go, feeling his tip twitching in the back of your throat as you gag around him. You pop your head up, dragging your tongue against the underside of his shaft, moaning at his taste and sending vibrations through him. You suckle on his tip, preparing yourself as you gasp for breath around him. You start to bob your head up and down him, swirling your tongue as you go dropping low enough to feel his pubes tickle your cheeks, his hands moving to the back of your head to tug your hair into his fingers.

“You’re a natural,” JJ sighs, “Feel like imma cum already Gorgeous, fuck.” Gazing up at him you watch his eyes try and stay open, try to maintain eye contact until they flutter shut when the tip of your tongue grazes his ballsack unintentionally. JJ subconsciously pushes your head down, pulling a moan from you as he groans into his bitten lip, hooded eyes watching you intently now as he tugs you off of him with a pop. His hand stays in your hair, his eyes watching the way your spit dribbles down your chin, mixing with your lipstick and contrasting the black mascara running down you cheeks.

“I want you to try something, but only if you’re comfortable okay?” You nod to him desperately, ignoring the fact that your hair’s probably a mess in his hand, “Flatten out your tongue f’me,” His voice was demanding but soft still, a side of him you had never seen before beginning to come forward, “Yea, good girl just like that,” He says as he watches you stick your tongue out for him, spit dripping down the middle and directly onto is erect cock, “Now lean down and suck on my balls Sweetheart.” Your eyes went wide watching how he bobbed infront of your face. “If you don’t want to that-“

A shiver runs down his spine and directly into his rock hard cock when your warm tongue drags against his heavy sack before you suck one into your mouth, his hand tugs into your hair harder instinctively as he shudders. His shaft twitches against your face, your tongue swirlly against his salty flesh, tugging off him with a pop. You look up to him, makeup dyed spit dripping off your chin and down your chest, “Like that?”

“Yes yes just like that,” He gasps, desperation laced in his tone, immediately making you drop your head back. Sucking his other tight ball into your mouth, swirling your tongue while he shakes you slowly move your hand that was supporting your weight on his knee under your dress, circling your clothed clit with two fingers. Moaning around him as your eyes flutter shut feeling the wet patch seeping through your underwear.

“Open your eyes and look at me,” JJ growls when he catches your hands movement, his hand caress your face gently contrasting his hard tone. Despite wanting to listen your eyes stay shut as you speed up your fingers movement, “Thought you said you liked being a good girl, now listen to me.”

Letting your eyes flicker open you feel your cheeks heating up even more when you catch his gaze. His blue eyes only egg you on further, your fingers speeding up subconsciously while he stares at you with a smile. Breathing through your nose you continue your mouths exploration of him, popping your mouth off of his flesh only to immediately suck his tip into your mouth again. JJ’s hand tugs your hair into a ponytail as you bob your mouth on him, his tip hitting your throat each time making you gag and moan on him. The vibrations of your noises make his hips jolt uncontrollably, his body and dick twitching together as your spit pools on his groin and slips down his thighs.

He releases a loud needy groan when you force your mouth off him, his hand falling from your hair and clutching the blanket below him, mumbling incoherently while trying to ask why you stopped. He whines loudly gasping and gripping the bed so hard his knuckles turn white when you drag your wet tongue from the middle of his ballsack directly to his tip. Moaning when he twitched against your face, sucking him into your mouth while you eye his adam’s apple bobbing. Sensing he was close you stop your fingers with a whine around him, moving in order to move your hands to support yourself on his knees as you suck your cheeks in. You drag your mouth down his shaft and JJ whimpers, shoving his hand into your hair and tugging as he cums down your throat, filling your mouth as you moan.

“Fuck I’m so sorry, I didn’t have time to warn you, do you need’ta spit?” He asks, trying to ignore the tingle running down his spine at the sight of his cum dribbling past your lips.

“It’s okay,” You state simply licking your lips clean, the sweet tone in your voice not changing despite the more than inappropriate circumstances, “Your cum tastes so good Jay, look I swallowed it already.” You stick your tongue out to him, showing what little residue remains as he groans above you again.

“If you need anymore lessons, you can always, and i mean always, come to Papa Jay.” His breathless voice makes you laugh as you hop up to sit next to him on the bed.

“Do you wanna take my virginity too.” The burst of confidence making him cum gave you almost wears off at the look of shock that grows onto JJ’s face.

“Damn Mama, you are so fucking bold tonight, you have no clue how many times I have imagined you asking me that.” He smiles at you, his large ring clad hand gripping your thigh as it sits beside him, “Wanna tell me how long you have been fantasizing about your best friend poppin’ your cherry?”

“Forever.”

“Mmmhmm, that’s what I wanted to hear.” JJ groans, pulling your thighs apart and shoving you backwards letting your dress ride up. He rolls over you, settling over you where you lay on his bed, framing your face with his arms. “I think it’s your turn right now though don’t you?” Shivers run down your spine at his tone, subconsciously trying to rub your thighs together earning a teasing laugh from JJ. You brace yourself on his waste, tugging him closer to you as his lips crash into yours, tongues immediately starting to fight for dominance only for him to win with a groan.

“We should save your first time until there’s not a dozen people right outside the door.” Lowering his voice to a whisper as he lightly digs his hips into you, “And I think we need to have a conversation before we….move forward.” Letting his lips graze your neck as he keeps going he smiles at your gasps of appreciation, “But don’t think I don’t really, really want to right now.”

JJ’s teeth tug at the spaghetti strap string of your dress as he crawls lower down your body, letting it snap back against your skin with a sigh, “You’re so fucking gorgeous, so perfect I can’t even look at you sometimes.” The warm feeling of his tongue against your collar bone has you bucking against him desperately, hissing when his teeth nip at the exposed flesh of your breast.

“I love when you wear this dress,” JJ moans against your skin, his head falling low enough to push his face into your chest for a few seconds, wiggling it around dramatically, making you laugh before be continues his decent, “I don’t wanna take it off.” He groans, biting at your flesh through the fabric.

“Then don’t.” You say breathlessly, smiling down to him as you tangle your fingers into his hair. He smiles back to you, quickly pushing himself down the bed the rest of the way so he was face to face with your exposed thighs. With a quick flick of his wrists he flips the hem of your dress up, exposing your damp matching underwear.

“You matched your underwear to your outfit? That’s so cute.” JJ groans, dipping his head to bite at the flesh of your thigh as his hands slowly work their way up your thighs. He pulls back, watching intently as he slips his fingers past the lace hem of your underwear, tugging them down as you lift your hips to help. You watch him as he tosses your underwear behind him, his eyes meeting yours for a second seeking consent as he shoves your thighs further apart, putting you completely on display for him. JJ licks his lips as he eyes you, moving his hands slowly under and around your thighs resting them on his shoulders before shoving your hips down with his large palms. He groans loudly as he bites into the flesh of your thigh beside him, slowly licking his way to your center and leaving a wet trail behind.

His hands hold your hips down hard as they jolt upward with your moan and laughs into you happily. Eyeing the way your head falls back, your chest rising and fallen he quickly speeds up his tongues pursuit of your clit. Watching you as one hand hangs above your head and the other plays with his hair, JJ can’t think of anything that looks better.

“Oh my god,” You yell, the feeling of his tongue flattening against you, slowly licking back and forth over your clit before quickly sucking it into his mouth. You scream a moan at the sensation, tugging at JJ’s hair aggressively not caring if anyone outside the door can hear your pleasure. “Do that again Jay.” JJ’s lips pop off of you into a smile, his lips glistening with your release before he drops his head back into you. Flicking his tongue aggressively against you as he licks up your slit, groaning at the feeling of your nails against his scalp when he sucks your clit into his mouth again. JJ can feel himself growing hard against the blanket at your taste, your shaking legs egging him on as your release quickly approaches.

The feeling of JJ’s tongue prodding at your entrance as you clench on nothing has the tightening feeling in your abdomen worsening, making you whine and wiggle your hips subconsciously. The grip of JJ’s hands on your hip tightens, his nails digging into your flesh as he grinds himself into the mattress at your excitement. He plunges his tongue into you, collecting your juices on his tongue with a desperate groan, his eyes flickering shut as he moves to flick his tongue against your puffy clit again. JJ pulls back quickly making you whine and tug at his hair, trying to shove him back into you and forcing a wicked laugh from him as he spits directly onto you and dives back in. You shudder when he starts to lap against you wildly, your hips jolting and your back arching, your hands tugs on his hair harder as you cum, the almost painful band in your abdomen breaking in a euphoric release. Moaning so loudly you know for sure anyone close enough to the door could hear but you didn’t care as you came undone on your best friend’s tongue, breath shaking as your body twitches.

JJ’s tongue slows, pushing himself up to get a better look at your post orgasm face, your eyes unfocused and your mouth open in gasping breaths. He slowly crawls up your body, smiling in your face and you smile back at him the best your can, he groans at the sight of your sweaty cheeks, your hair sticking to your forehead as he smash his lips into you. The taste of yourself lingers on his tongue as you both moan into each other.

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I might wanna do a part 2 of this for their first time, would anyone be interested in that?

Another Lesson? (Coming Soon)

#jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank fluff #jj maybank one shot #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank smut #jj maybank x y/n #smut #obx #outer banks smut #jj maybank #fluff #jj maybank imagine #outer banks fluff #outer banks fanfiction #jj outer banks #outer banks #obx one shot #obx smut

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maxwell-grant · 2 months ago

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The Penguin: Episode 8 "Great or Little Thing" Series Finale Breakdown

So first and foremost I need to give a shout-out to everyone who's been following this with me and helped me week after week process and articulate this show, this brilliant Penguin Braintrust without which I would be incredibly lost on how to even begin breaking this thing down this way: @davidmann95, @wil4x, @book--wyrm and my friend Lucas who is not on Tumblr.

And so we're here at last, in the end of the show. This took forever. I need a goddamn break. This isn't enough and will never be enough but it'll have to do. So let's get to the episode that has had the world joining hands in the unanimous urge to see the absolute shit kicked out of Oswald, and has made the character at last earn this:

(Episode 1) (Episode 2) (Episode 3) (Episode 4) (Episode 5) (Episode 6) (Episode 7)

So who would have guessed that cartoon dirtbag Rex Calabrese was still gonna turn out to be less of a cartoon dirtbag than Oz the moment we stop seeing him through Oz's eyes. Still a terrible person by every metric, but terrible in the same way a lot of Sopranos characters are terrible: this is, at the end of the day, a job, and you can talk to them, you can sit at a table to get down to business with them, and you probably know people in your life like them, and maybe you can even count of them to get real and even help you when the chips are down, even if it doesn't mitigate everything else that they are or do. At the very end, he was neither the benevolent god-king that Oz saw him as, nor was he the absurd dirtbag gangster we had him pegged as - there was never anything exceptional about Rex Calabrese, he's just a real criminal. Maybe the realest in the show.

I said in the last post that Francis burned with hate at everyone in the world except the person who most ruined her life and haha WOW was I wrong, because it turns she's known the entire goddamn time, and quite possibly no one has ever hated him more than Francis.

Most people in the show who hate Oz do so because he's a destructive bastard who craps on their lives directly, or because he's a lying sneaky fuck who does nothing while their lives are ruined, and Francis has had to deal with both longer than anyone else. I can't possibly count every single way this wildly recontextualizes every single interaction, every moment, everything that Francis has shown us and done since the first episode, because I'd have to recap EVERY scene and line of dialogue she has and we still have so much else to get through.

Why was Francis was so effectively able to withhold affection and hold his feet to the fire and give him that bottomless pit of yearning in his stomach that's driven him to move mountains in pursuit of it? Because Francis wouldn't have loved him even if he gave her the entire world at age 12. She never had any affection or love left for him. Oz was always chasing nothing.

And all along it was Rex who shaped the entire course of Oswald's life, as well as prefiguring his dynamic with Victor, with a single conversation. Oswald spend his childhood wanting for Rex Calabrese to notice and like him and be his friend, and he has no idea how much Rex actually affected his life.

That fateful night at Monroe's was never the feel-good story about his Ma summoning the willpower to live by dancing away the grief, and it was never even just the night of the eternal promise that Oz thinks back to, it was a fucking trap to kill Oz. Nothing he has in his life is real, nothing he says is true, he has never not lived in complete total delusion.

The sheer disgust in Deirdre O'Connell's face at the "I do too". How much of her personality we completely understand was born from this absolute resentment she's nursed for decades towards Oz.

And this rotten little turd comes at her with a perfect speech that hits her every insecurity and bitterness and spite and situation and convinces her to give him another chance. The nature versus nurture thing again - Oswald was shaped by hardship, by decades of hard work and neglect, by the total absence of his mother's love while in turn being forced to live in stunted childhood dedicating himself to always taking care of her, and maybe what we're seeing here is heavily distorted by Francis's POV - or maybe he was always a little monster, because this guy talking to her is The Penguin, the same guy doing the same things in the same way, either way it doesn't matter. Again, born fucking ready.

So now we see our three major supporting characters - Sofia, Victor and Francis - all of them have shown that they had a chance to walk away from Oz, to not let him ruin their lives further. All of them could have left Oswald behind, and all of them should have left Oswald behind, but they had to come back and justify the choice to do so, they had to get satisfaction, it couldn't have been for nothing. Victor had his car and a girlfriend in a bus waiting for him, Sofia had a jet to take her to Italy, and Francis had Rex Calabrese ready and waiting to put him down without a word. All of them had a chance to get out of the show and never look back, but like Oz, they had to rectify and overcorrect for an insult.

Sofia can't walk away from Gotham without punishing Oz for turning her in, for killing Alberto and further lying to her, she can't accept that this man, this embodiment of Carmine's legacy and hold over her, is still out there unpunished getting away with what he's done. Victor can't walk away from Gotham knowing that his parents did everything right and still died for nothing, that every hurtful thing Oz said was right, he can't let "They don't give out awards for dying in the projects" be the last word in his and their lives. And Francis can't walk away from Oz, who killed her two sons and keeps lying about it, who ruined her life and now keeps promising he will take care of her and acting like everything will be fine, she can't let this pass even if she can't kill him either, and so she'll make him give her the world and die trying.

The tragedy of what happened is what hurt/broke them - the added insult of what Oz said or did is what they just can't live with. It can't be for nothing.

Goddamnit it, it was really just too telegraphed for it to not happen the way it did.

I fucking knew it the moment the episode started and we got the grungy boss orchestral take on the funny Penguin chords that we were in for some calamitous shit.

We see at first that, in spite of seemingly failing, Vic has graduated to the point he can give his own speeches, gain his own allies, run his own cons - he's not just Oz's proxy, but will manage to convince the others to become such as well, and he's coming at this from a place of complete sincere belief in everything that Oz says, all of the man of the people rhetoric he will so thoroughly pervert and then sell to the people actually responsible for everything he told Victor he was fighting against.

Zeke walks up to him nearly crying about how Sofia blew it all up and Vic instantly asks back where's Oz - not because he doesn't care about Crown Point, but he's already processed it and has already learned with Oz how to just barrel forward regardless, now it's time to get to work. Victor who so readily throws himself into rescuing Oz again and again. Victor who's lost everything - he doesn't have his family, he doesn't have Graciela, he doesn't have the other mobs backing him up, and right now he doesn't even have Crown Point anymore, all he has is Oz.

The man in red who reads the Law Gave him three weeks of life, Three little weeks in which to heal His soul of his soul's strife, And cleanse from every blot of blood The hand that held the knife - The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Sofia dressed in two thematically appropriate outfits - the red scarf echoing both the first outfit we see her in, back to covering her neck but in control of her own collar, and the outfit we see her the farthest back in time with at the start of Episode 4, and with her final crimson fur coat outfit accompanying her final greatest triumph and ultimate defeat in the show. Not only that, but in this episode she also gets to perform characteristically appropriate stylized torture - holding a family intervention and therapy session with mafioso torture tactics to try and wrench the truth out of her victimizer, enacting calculated sadistic yet righteous justice via psychological breakdown, and ultimately allowing the woman he victimized and wronged to take her killshot at him.

See, it's not just that Sofia Gigante is a Batman Villain, or that she's well passed the threshold of supervillain. Cristin Milioti doesn't play Sofia like she's a new character, which she basically is, and she isn't just playing a tortured gangster lady protagonist dipping into camp villain territory, which she also is - she plays Sofia Gigante like she's been a Batman Rogues headliner for decades now stepping into the spotlight once again, like she's the dark modern revamp of someone Adam West would have thought and she's just always been around showing up in stuff along with The Penguin, like she's only not fighting or teaming up with Two-Face in this because he's not here yet. It is crucially important that Sofia passes every standard of Batman Villain imaginable with flying colors, in part because it helps to reinforce that The Penguin is a monster all his own.

Even here, with as much power as she's ever possibly held over him, reduced him to a whimpering begging mess to be killed off in a second, she is so shocked at the sheer brazen selfishness and delusion and level of bullshit on display, that even now he won't break character and think about his actions and admit to what he's done not even to save his own mother from mutilation, that she just loses the script entirely. Her entire show of power collapses and she physically recoils from sheer disgust at just how low Oswald is, at just how much he lacks the ability to even suffer for what he's done. Realizing that there is simply not enough of a soul in this filthy beast to even torture, and that however much she hates Oswald for ruining her life, someone had a prior claim all along.

Eve - Sofia - Francis in the end united in, however much they may dislike each other, however different their circumstances may be, there is nothing they could possibly do to each other that would be worse than what Oswald has done to all of them, joined in silent agreement that their rage ultimately belongs in a bullet fired at Oz's head and that they deserve their kill shot at this man.

"I had enough to give, Oswald".

This really is gonna be the high point of Francis's life from this point on.

Aw man, I liked Sofia's scruffy dirtbag detective, I wanted him to stick around as one of the reocurring characters like the movie cops

Oh Victor, sweet kind Victor, you couldn't possibly ask for anything worse in the entire world.

Oz feebly already beginning to lie and spin his new version of the events, that Sofia stabbed him and fucked up with Ma, and here comes Victor with the reversal of their dynamic, seeing this guy who's been brought low by the oppressive force looming over his life that he must defeat (because all that Victor knows about Sofia at this point is that she used to be Oz's boss and is now out to kill them, that she is scary as hell, and regardless of whether or not she was the Hangman, she just bombed his fucking neighborhood) and reaching out to him with a speech about solidarity and dignity and self-worth and picking yourself up by your fucking bootstraps to save the day. And Oz responds by coaching him on how to be a better bullshitter. Because to Oz, he knows the playbook by heart, but Victor meant it all.

Victor rebuilds Oz from basically nothing by providing him with the validation that he so desperately always craved and never got, saying all the things he always wanted to hear, poised so they can finish this together, poised to give him not only the army he asked for, but a full-blown revolution, and he never once asks for anything in return. Just, goddamnit this isn't hurting any less.

"She, sh-she'll never look at me again, all right?....unless I get this done. Got a promise to keep." Maybe the one and only time his mask ever fully cracks. For a second. He rebuilds it right back up and gets to work, but it cracked. He knows what he's doing, up until the moment he doesn't. It's that simple.

A lot of what drives Oz is acceptance, and a lot of what drives him is his desire to be accepted in worlds that have been declared, by how they run themselves and by the people that inhabit these worlds, as worlds that he was never going to be included in. And one of those worlds is the hierarchy and the hoi polloi of the political realm and the power within the political realm because he understands that all politics are corrupt essentially, and the damage that he could do then in being part of a political infrastructure of Gotham interests him. I thought it would be nice if, in that time jump, he had been invited to maybe a gala or two, you know what I mean? It'd be awkward. He'd be slurping out of the fucking teacup, there'd be stains on the table, he wouldn't really fit in, but he’d fucking love being there. - Colin Farrell

Mirroring the scene in Episode 01 where he adjusts himself next to the car, scuffing himself up to look like the sleazy funnyman the Falcones keep around for kicks, now he's dressing up as much as he can and asking Victor for input, because he truly values what the kid thinks and, goddamnit.

"C'mahn, I don't bite", pfft yeah, not in this movie universe anyway. And to the same guy you did the nose-gushing-blood bit to, even.

Minutes inside of City Hall and he already parks his ass right on Bella Real's seat - not as any kind of intentional slight against her, it's just naturally where he goes to, even before the scene ends and we see his new plans start to come to fruition.

Guy who takes offense at Viti calling Sofia a psycho and then goes up to Councilman Hady talking about the unhinged loony bin broad who went "full psycho" that he's handing to him on a platter, pointedly calling her Falcone.

At first I thought it was funny that Sal Maroni was getting blamed here for Bliss and the underground lab, but then I remembered that he was actually the one who introduced Drops to Gotham and the whole epidemic that became, so if anything it is an extremely easy part of the story to sell, even without his body being down there and all.

"You're gonna have some trouble, Oz" - pointedly smiling and calling him Oz instead of Oswald as he had up to this point, because by that point he's already a crony and already willing to work with this guy handing him all these miracles.

"You wanna be welcome? You gotta look, clean" Yes Father Pal, I Shall Become A Capitalist Caricature

You can see in the walk around, in his look at Bella Real and the mayor's office high up above and the steps, how little Ozzie's gears turn once again and rebuild his life after losing the streets and everything that happened with Ma - This is the next nest, this is the next throne, this is next schmuck I gotta cozy up to, this is the next boss looking down on me that I gotta destroy, there's the reward waiting for me if I do. This is the one that matters, I did everything in the shit and now I'm gonna get me sum goddamn respeck, Feh Ma of course.

And before all of this we see Sofia's next move, showing the ways in which she is good at this, the ways in which she truly is something outside of the worldview of what these gangsters are used to, and why she is going to lose. "Because I can". She is good at commanding a room and promising rewards beyond the wildest dreams of these street crimelords because she can offer everything they want and lose nothing she cares about for it, she will hand them everything and dip because she can, and she is going to lose because she can lose. Because she still thinks there is an end in sight for her, she thinks she will get to walk away from this universe and go meet a happy ending at a cafe in Florence.

It's not just that Sofia was born into privilege and never really lived in Gotham and could just hop onto a plane out of here anytime, it's also that she has room in her life for introspection, self-awareness, consideration towards others, and all those things that come easier when you're "born full", and not when you're the starving hustler for whom leaving the city was never an option even if he had all the money in the world, the hungry animal who wants this, wants everything, harder than anyone has ever wanted anything. The guy who has no room for anything else in his brain other than a perpetual bullshit generator set to a 24/7 chorus of "I GOTTA WIIIIIIN"

Another element to her that I really love is, she's good at this. She knows she's good at this, she was supposed to take over the family. She may not know the ins and outs of the game as it currently stands, but she is good at this. Some of it is, I think that's the only world she knows, and some of it is there's something in there, that's always been there, and she believes it is rightfully hers. There's an element of, "I need to have made it worth it for something", and if that means power, then okay. - Cristin Milioti

There’s a level for both of them that they enjoy each other’s suffering, and that sort of leads to Sofia’s downfall. If she didn’t need to see Oz suffer she might have been free. And she really gets in her own way in that regard and largely because Oz is this crutch that she just cannot let go of. - Lauren LeFranc

And here we get to the end of season 1 of HBO's The Sofia Show, the bittersweet in hindsight but extremely cathartic torching of the set as a last hard-earned spiritual victory by our hard-done-by lady protagonist. All of her family is dead, the city is out for her blood, she gathered all the remaining criminals for One Last Job with everything on the line, and she is having a very fun time with her montage destroying her home and family name beyond recovery. She is going to finish her character arc, get to finally kill her former comedy sidekick turned mortal nemesis, and hop on a plane to The White Lotus resort straight away into greener (if only marginally less fucked up) genre territory away from this ugly nightmare city. Alas, this is not The Sofia Show, and it's time for her theme suite to catch up to her once again and tell us of how very badly this is all going to go for her.

And she can't even be that shocked, when the high of burning it all down goes away, when she sees that old Ozzie Cobb wriggled his way out of this jam regardless and is now coming at her with a speech, she can't even react to it. Deep down she knows how the rest of the night is going to go. She may not have expected Arkham outright, but she was braced for a loathsome fate.

It rules so much they give him a big fat fight the power speech with a bloody revolution montage, and we can only sit there aghast with Sofia at the sheer audacity of him to act like this, like a man of the people, thinking he truly has the right to be talking like this and to her of all people.

And now we see how Oz won the gang war, and the next domino to fall on the downfall of Gotham City, and the first effect of his own rise to power: like The Riddler, he has toppled the order of things and he has turned people into extensions of himself, Victor being the first and the one who gave him this revolution, of all the little mini Penguins out there devouring the social structure of Gotham crime forever. You kill the boss, you become the boss now. Everyone can bleed and everyone can be killed and everyone must be killed in the quest to the top, no handrails or codes, they wouldn't invite him and so he crashed. After he unified the criminal underdogs, Victor rallied the underdogs beneath the underdogs, and now the streets are a jungle where there will never be an end to the wars over who gets to be atop the food chain, because they are all fighting to see who gets to be the next Penguin.

For decades people have written Oswald Cobblepot as a creep and a sleaze and an incel who hurts/kills women for rejecting him, or who is chronically insecure about them and I can very confidently say nobody ever did anything half as horrible and half as truthful and half as meaningful as LeFranc did here. We see the other reason why it was so imperative to her that Oswald not be a misogynist, and it has nothing to do with just making him more likeable or sympathetic or honorable. We get in this episode the pay off to the thoughtline: okay, he's actually a gangster who respects women, he does not act like every other prestige drama gangster who ever lived, we are going to center women in this show and he will treat them with respect - now let's watch how he HORRIBLY screws them over in the name of this respectful gentleman persona he lives by, let's watch how he betrays them in the ways that matter most, how he even makes them wish they were dead without personally ever lifting a finger to harm them, let's do some grown-up feminist commentary in Batman for a change and highlight the ways in which men profit from belittling and oppressing and destroying women even when they're pointedly not misogynistic and even self-professed genuine allies to them.

And so it is that the only Falcone mobster who isn't misogynistic towards Sofia is the one who screws her the most horribly. He will murder every man he comes across, he will murder every man he could have been and every man who is even marginally better than him in any way, he will push all of his brothers out of the nest and not tolerate any other big shot in town bigger than him and not even the only man, the only person, in town who loves him will be spared. But he is a gentleman, so he leaves the women alive (well, except for Nadia Maroni, but she was a rival big shot and worse, his boss for a day or two, so she obviously had to go eventually).

I thought about his greatest fear, and it made a lot of sense to me that his greatest fear would be that love is transactional. That if he does not achieve a level of power and give Francis certain types of things that he’s promised her she might not love him. And that informs every relationship he has on the show It was always important to me, and this was always part of my initial pitch, that if Oz was to achieve a level of power—and that is something that was not up for discussion, that was my job that I was tasked with for the season—that he has to lose something emotionally. It can’t come without a cost. - Lauren LeFranc

"the crooked politics that have allowed wealthy elites like Sofia Falcone to wreak havoc". Oz has weaponized the status quo against her so throughly that she is going away under the exact same image that she did it the first time, as a privileged serial killer and Falcone. She doesn't even get to have her new name anymore, and the rest of Gotham does not see her as the new and strange and horrific new threat that she embodied in Oz's life - she is going away as just another upper-class monster like her dad.

The triumph that Oswald has fought his entire life for, the Big One that he's scraped and fought and hoped his entire life would happen and he'd get to show his Ma at the end, the thing that he's going to throw a party for at this moment, is just a politician on tv saying things that Oswald claims he told him to say.

All of our 3 major supporting characters will thus reach the high point of their lives, on the moment before it is ripped away and they are destroyed forever. Francis gets to finally spit all of her hatred back to Oz and take her revenge on him, and her babies appear before her alive and unharmed. Sofia gets to burn down her father and his legacy once and for all, and is on her way to kill her nemesis and finally be free of it all. Victor succeeds in helping Oz win, they have revolutionized the gangs and defeated the big bad Falcone and he's done right by his new family what he couldn't do with his old one.

And of course, Oswald finally wins - he is the last man standing, he's defeated his greatest enemy, he is the big shot of Gotham and his victory is, so he claims, right there on the tv for his Ma to see, he can finally get what he's always wanted now - and then he doesn't, and then his soul crumbles, before he finishes the job by murdering his heart.

Oz didn’t need to do that, like it wasn’t actually necessary. In that moment, Victor did not betray him. He did nothing wrong. In fact, the thing that he did “wrong” in Oz’s eyes is that he loves him and that he cares about him and Oz actually cares about Victor. I think by the end Oz sees that as a really big problem because he loves his mother so deeply and Sofia took advantage of that love, and then it became sort of a weakness in his eyes. Victor saw him at his most vulnerable and for Oz to achieve the power that he thinks he needs, he can’t have that level of humanity. He can’t have that heart with him anymore. So he stifles his own heart. He kills it. - Lauren LeFranc

When he said to Vic in the sewer, “They'll tell stories about us one day, kid,” he meant it. At that stage, he actually saw that he could rise and Vic could come with him. It's only when the vulnerability and the shock of his mother being taken from him, and the place of vulnerability and danger that puts him in, that he realizes there's no more love, there's no more affection, there's no one else I'm going to have in my life that can lead me to such vulnerability as my mother has led me to or as this kid could potentially lead me to. - Colin Farrell

He's not relishing being horrible. When he realizes, "Oh God, Victor makes me vulnerable. I can't have that shit anymore." The way that Lauren wrote it, and the way Colin played, there's such sadness under the horror. You're like, oh my God, how fucked up do you have to be that the one person who you feel you have any connection with now, you have to snuff out because it makes you weak. What happened to you? - Matt Reeves

"You think she forgives me?" Once again, the mask cracks. Only around Victor. Only because of Victor. And he can't have that again.

And thus we get to the final parallel between our 3 side characters - that in the end, all they did was serve Oz's own rise to power, and hand him the world in exchange for their lives. All they were to him were additional steps in the ladder that began with his brothers. Francis gave him his life, his drive, his motivation and eternal justification, the insatiable pit in his gut driving him to do this forever. Sofia got him his promotion to Falcone lackey, and then she got him another promotion by handing him the tools with which he could become an underground boss and rally them, and then she got him another promotion by handing him the keys to his political career on a silver platter. And Victor saved his life, more than once. He helped him, provided the justification he has craved for a lifetime, rebuilt him, gave him his revolution, gave him the streets, and showed him the last thing he needed to kill to make it to the top.

Wow man let me tell my good friend, The Family Butcherer, who butchers every family he gets his hands on whether a crime family or a literal one, how much I think of him as family.

"They don't give out awards for dying in the projects"

Just like with Squid, Vic's emotional intelligence dooms him. He sees this man whom is like family to him brought to his lowest point, crushed beyond measure, in what he assumes was just a phenomenally terrible stroke of fate and not something he had any blame whatsoever for, and reaches out to pat him in the back, emotionally reassure him that it wasn't all for nothing, that his family would surely be proud of him, and that there's things to look forward to.

Vic threw away his chance to walk away into the sunset with Graciela and he just had to come back to save Oz (AND Sofia, the one who'd bomb his neighborhood) from the Maronis, the least of all possible evils in his life and his city and who never even noticed him. Victor only narrowly missed out in 2 situations that Oz would have absolutely left him to die in, so there just had to be a third where he'd die in the absolute worst way possible. Not with Sofia's gunshot to the head, not bombed to rubble along with his neighborhood, no, Mr. Carmine 2 had to make it as painful and intimate as possible.

Vic the only Number Two in town who couldn't kill his boss and in fact never even considered doing so, and so he dies - there is just no room for him anymore, not in Oz's life, nor in the new Gotham that the two built together.

LEFRANC: "You see Oz become this next level monster, I remember the take too. Jennifer and I look at each other, Colin transforms his face in this really remarkable way, that I don't think any of us fully anticipated could be achieved in that way." - The Penguin Podcast Episode 8

I knew that the general sentiment was that, by the end, they kind of wanted to, in a way, kill the Oz that we met in the film. I felt that there was a sense of creative responsibility that leaned towards, “We cannot have this man as a likable character,” which is hard I think they wanted that in the earth by the end of the eight hours. They wanted that RIP. That's gone. I hated that scene. I really did. I was fucking so pissed off. It felt in performing it as — guess what? — you would like it to feel in viewing it. It felt gross, it felt cruel, it felt absolutely insane, and it felt like Oz was reaching a point of no return. - Colin Farrell

So the day after I watched this episode, my friend Lucas messaged me in the afternoon sending me audio messages, "Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! He stole his identity, he didn't even die with his fucking name! They'll never find him! Fuck, goddamnit!" "ELE MORREU COMO INDIGENTE, PORRA" and, yeah. Yeah. That gets to the heart of it.

If Vic was just a guy taking his money, if Vic was purely transactional, if he was just another Link, he'd have made it. Oz wouldn't have given a shit about him, Oz would have died on the sidewalk when the Maronis hit at minimum. All this piece of shit wants is love, and when he gets it, when it's finally non-transactional, from the ONLY person in the entire show who loved him, he has to kill it, he doesn't know how to deal with it, he has to smother his heart.

He has to become Carmine Falcone 2, strangling the poor and vulnerable of Gotham while pinning all of his crimes on Sofia.

Vic just wanted his family back, man. He just wanted a family again, to at least show his family that they didn't die for nothing. The thing that Oz spits in his face as he dies. It wasn't for nothin.

This show has so many dozen little variations of Penguin getting his heart broken and retaliating cruelly, but this one hurts the most partially because it has no basis whatsoever on any pre-existing insult or cruelty, there was nothing that warranted this, and you still get why Oz felt that he had to do it. The lowest, weakest moment of his life, and he can never permit anything like it ever again.

Victor was his heart, and The Penguin remembered that his heart only exists to be broken.

Victor punctures the illusion, and he cannot have that. Everything about The Penguin hinges on that singular fact of his life: he cannot and will not break character. He cannot break character, otherwise he dies, otherwise Gotham City will eat him alive, otherwise he has done it all for nothing. That is the ultimate threat Sofia posed to him, and why his ultimate victory comes only from creating a perfect delusion and spinning everything that happened in service of it. Because all those things said at Monroe's? They weren't true - his Ma, y'know, it was just her disease acting up, that psycho did something to her, she wasn't thinkin straight, and it was really Sofia that stabbed him and did all that fucked up shit, and his Ma is really happy that she got the penthouse in the end and that he didn't put her down, look, she's crying tears of joy even, I gotta keep doing everything for her.

Everything and everyone in his life, he can spin in service of the delusion, they can all play dress-up with him forever, except Victor. Victor may not have the slightest clue as to what Oz actually did, but he's seen too much, he knows he has vulnerabilities, he knows the thing that Oz needs to bury far, far more than all the horrible things he's done. Killing Victor is maybe the one thing that he absolutely cannot in the slightest spin a decent delusion out of, that he did it for him or did it for noble reasons or anything other than out of disgusting self-serving weakness.

But who's Victor? Some kid who died in the projects and didn't even have a name? Someone with nobody left to mourn him, not even a street to get back to, nothing but a guy who's already forgot him?

That Victor Aguilar? Never heard of him

“I will never think my mother doesn't love me. She was having a bad day when she stuck that bottle in me. She was under a lot of pressure. She nearly lost her finger. She stuck a bottle in my belly. It was a bad day. She didn't get a good night's sleep the night before.” It's that kind of thing. He'll make up fucking whatever. He's already lying when he goes, and he's stitching up his belly, and Vic says, “What happened?” And he says, “Sofia, she stuck me with a bottle.” He's already beginning to bury the truth. - Colin Farrell

He needed your love, and then you didn't give it to him, and you didn't obey, and you didn't do those things that he needed, and then you mentally aren't there for him in the way that he needs, but he's got to physically keep you around because he's too weak to not do that. He can't give you the gift that he promised you in Episode Six, he's too weak of a man to do that. And so he needs to hold onto you, but under his terms. - Lauren LeFranc

There's a thing that happened on that last day that made my blood run cold, which was I felt Oz not love me anymore. I felt his coldness, and I think that Francis felt it too, and she always had so much of his attention and so much of his love. I don't even think she realized how much she had until he withdrew it. And when he withdrew it, it was utter and… slightly terrified. I was just lying in that bed, I just felt the love leave the room. It's a real thing, and it's gone, yeah, and I think Francis feels it, too. - Deirdre O'Connell

He's this man who is clawing his way to the top, and I knew he wanted power, but what what does that mean for him? That's where I started to conceive of like, he wants his mother's love, and he wants people's affection. He wants to be revered. That was like the main thrust for me of what defines power for Oz, and then by the end you realize that, when he doesn't get those things, he doesn't get his mother's acceptance, he still gets it. He makes sure he gets it. - Lauren LeFranc

So bowled over and miserable I was that I didn't even notice until later that he was wearing a version of the classic Bronze Age/Triumphant get-up.

If the pattern of his life is unjustifiably cruel retribution for slights and insults, perceived or not, by the end Francis had done it to him as well. That she never loved him and in fact always hated him more than anything and anyone else is the biggest insult of all, and so he punishes her the most cruelly, knowingly or not.

"You are who you are, and you couldn't change if you tried."

He will never stop telling Rex Calabrese stories, he will never stop bringing up his brothers and mom as a sympathy ploy, and even if he will never truly love her again, he will never stop ruining the world in her name, he will never stop, he will never stop, he will never stop.

You had to sit through 8 hours chipping away at all of his fun and charm and wacko comedy antics and motivations and all the scruples and principles that he turns out to have less and less of, until he butchers them all in the very end along with the heart of the show. Penguin burning through all of his lovable quirks and charm, everything that we loved about him in the movie, until he comes through as a black-hearted bastard of unlimited malice who will never stop growing and getting worse and putting more lives in danger. Not only as much of a lowlife backstabber as we initially assumed him to be in the movie, but far worse than what we could have imagined.

I said as much that the first episode marks the transition from The Batman to The Penguin with the titlecard, and this brings it back around. The show dies with Victor, we get Sofia's post-credits Nick Fury Tease with Selina's letter and with Selina's theme playing and a final grace note of hope for Sofia, and thus the only character in the show to end with anything resembling positive, and then we get the first scene of The Batman Part 2. showing us the horrible thing in this world that Batman will have to defeat for us.

RIP Bella Real, we all know this asshole is gonna become mayor, and he's not waiting for the next election.

Credit to @book--wyrm for pointing out one more horrible fucking thing, that at the final dance, his hands are covered in scratches, much like the hands of Carmine Falcone when he comforted Sofia.

“One of the very early things that Lauren pitched was that ending with Eve where she looks like Francis,” said Reeves. “He can’t get what he needed from his mother because she’s no longer in that state because of the dark events and what he’s done, so he recreates it in this other way with Eve, and it’s very disturbing,” said Reeves. “That was something we thought was a great idea and was so emblematic of this guy’s internal state. It’s like, even as he now seems to have gotten that first major step toward being the kingpin, you know that some part of him will never be filled. - Matt Reeves

When I read that, I was like, “Oh my god, we're going full Bates Motel here.” But again, it speaks to what has become a pathological inability to accept the world that he has played such a heavy hand in creating. As far as he's concerned, he's just doing what he needs to do to live the life of a good son. And look, his mother can't talk anymore, so he needs a surrogate. I mean, it would be kept out of the sexual realm — it wasn't about that. It was about the intimacy and the tenderness and the pride that Oz always so deeply needed to feel his mother had for him, and pride in him, that he never really got from her. The one time when he finally can say to her, can go to her bedside and say, “It's done. Everything you said that I was capable of, everything you said that I should aspire to, it's done. I am now the boss. I took it from everyone else.” And he gets nothing back. His mother's already gone. That's just too horrific for him, so he needs a surrogate. He would say to Eve, “Look, I'm grieving. I'm finding it hard to deal with the fact that my mother's alive, but she's not here. She's gone, but she's fully present at the same time, physically, but she's nowhere there. She doesn't recognize me. I don't recognize the woman she's become. Do me a favor. We used to dance together and talk at the end of the night. Would you put on her dress and just let me pretend?” But it was twisted. It was twisted, but I dug it. He needs it from his mom so much. And again, his imagination is so potent that he just cast her as that figure, that most prominent and most powerful figurehead in his life, which has always been his mother. She's got to stay alive. He's got to hear that he did well from her. He's got to hear that she's proud. Look, by the end, he's bananas, as they say in the film. Good cop, batshit cop. At the end, he's batshit. - Colin Farrell

Remember when this show had fun Dolly Parton end credits, remember when this almost looked like it was gonna be fun and light-hearted compared to the movie and The Riddler: Year One

So turns out all along they actually had something real twisted planned with the name Karlo, and the Clayface concept that evokes. Asking his prostitute girlfriend to shapeshift into his crying comatose mom in the room upstairs so he can finally get the dance with her atop the world that he craved his entire life and have her tell him how proud she is that he ruined everything forever.

It is not a good ending, but it is his happy ending. He achieved everything he wanted in the smallest possible amount and at the highest cost imaginable, and thus he burns more than ever to take more and more in the name of a satisfaction he will never, ever have. He ended his arch-nemesis, and he didn't have to kill her, that's not what a gentleman does. He got the streets, and he's poised to take political power, and there is nobody left to care about, nobody except the only person who's ever mattered. He can still keep taking care of Ma as a justification for all the shit he will do now and forever, but he doesn't actually have to take care of her anymore, he doesn't even have to love her or grovel her for validation anymore: He has a Ma who will tell him everything he wants to hear, forever.

Of course, he may not have his three dance partners anymore - his Ma is in a vegetative state, Sofia has been locked away once again, and that kid, what was his name again, ain't around. But then, he will simply move on to new ones: He didn't actually lose his first dance partner, his Ma is fine, look at her telling him how proud she is of him and everything he's done and how unstoppable he is now. And he has a new partner in City Hall who is all too eager to play along to everything he says and does, who will receive and spit back his rhetoric just as Vic did to the streets of Gotham. And if he's defeated his nemesis and dance partner, well, not for long. There's a new one waiting for him. He never wins without losing. He will never again live without his next dance partner there to hound and foil him at every turn. There will always be something in the way.

It was exciting to me, the idea that we’re going to meet Oz as a mobster, and to play him as just a man. There’s nothing fantastical about him. There’s so many people like Oz in our world who hold a lot of power, who also connect with people because they speak, on some level, the truth. They can be charming and engaging, but also really terrifying and calculated, and not necessarily doing what they say that they will do or caring for people in the way that they say that they will. It felt so timely and so important to really engage with a guy like Oz and not turn away from him, but actually turn towards him so we can start to unpack, in our own society, what makes a man like Oz so appealing, and what makes him equally appalling. - Lauren LeFranc

I think Oz has always been someone who believes that everything he’s saying in the moment is true, and he creates worlds and illusions for himself to merit his actions. He does it sometimes very briefly in impulsive moments, and then sometimes more methodically, and in the end the fact that he didn’t get from his mother what he’s always desired isn’t good enough for him. So he has to create this strange fantasy live in this delusion of his own making, and pay Eve to dress as his mother and force her to tell him he she’s proud of him. So mentally, emotionally, Oz is embracing his own delusion. I think, for the audience, I hope they more deeply understand him psychologically and realize that there is a deeply broken man inside. He is violent and problematic and and very emotional. And that’s really the man that will carry into the next film. - Lauren LeFranc

And it has to end in a total reversal of the movie ending - The Batman ends with showing there is a light in the darkness, that this tortured broken man can fix his mistakes and lead us into something better. The Penguin ends by grabbing your face and desperately yelling at you SOMEBODY FUCKING SAVE US, HE WILL ONLY GET WORSE. The Batman ends with telling us Batman can save us all, and The Penguin ends with telling us Penguin will kill every last one of us in real life if he hasn't already, if nobody stops him.

And so I'll leave these last partings words to the Penguin Braintrust as we close off this series - see you all in therapy and in theaters when The Batman: Part 2 drives us all completely insane once more.

@wil4x

I don't think this Penguin is someone Batman can tolerate, I don't think Bruce can ever save Gotham's soul with a force of corruption as big as Penguin taking root in the seats of power. No amount of informant work can justify letting a monster like Penguin stay "King of Gotham". I think there's an argument to be made that Oz is a bigger threat to Batman's overall long-term mission than guys like Joker or Riddler. Those are huge immediate threats, but Penguin does a lot more long-term damage to the very soul of Gotham and its people. As long as The Penguin is on top, there's no hope, Gotham will never not be the most corrupt and nightmarish place on earth with him in charge

@book--wyrm

He will truly climb anything no loss so great it can't be flipped into an asseet A nuke Francis armed out of pain and grief and desperation and despair And poor vic Only wanting to do good And instead he saves gotham’s own typhoid mary of misery

@davidmann95

so the thing is Oz kills hope for Gotham forever in this

he's replacing the mayor who stands for hope at the end of The Batman with a corrupt comics rando built on a lie so he can install himself as the power behind the power forever Batman can't be alluded to in the slightest until the very end because it can't be until there's no lingering 'aw, I don't want my boy to get Batman'ed' it can't be until we understand truly and completely why this man proves the necessity of someone out there to stop him

The other stabs at this with Oswald, from what I’ve seen, are trying to make him low-down and dirty and vile enough to be a ‘proper’ Batman villain. But this already made him low-down and dirty and vile. And made us love him for it. This isn’t about ‘fixing him’, this is about taking him all the way to the top He’d accept no less

This is about making him operatically nightmarish enough to be a guy Batman is going to fight forever

Lucas

VENGEANCE, GET OUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

#dc comics #the penguin #the penguin hbo #hbo max #max #oswald cobb #oswald cobblepot #sofia falcone #sofia gigante #victor aguilar #francis cobb #colin farrell #cristin milioti #rhenzy feliz #deirdre o'connell #matt reeves #lauren lefranc

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softtdaisy · 1 year ago

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🌲 save us for later l pierre gasly

summary. Christmas could have been great. if pierre didn't forget to tell his parents you broke. and you didn't have to pretend you were still together.

words count. 2,434

a/n. ok I'm totally obsessed with this one and I really hope you will love it as much as I do🫶

a very angsty Christmas l masterlist

“I can’t believe you did that.”

You heard Pierre sigh by your side, like he was already tired of this situation.

Like it wasn’t his fault if you were there today. What a joke.

“You don’t even try to understand.” he added, still focused on the road to not look at you. You noticed he was gripping the wheel so hard his joints were white. Or how he was biting his lips so badly, a habit you helped him to cease doing but apparently he didn’t stop, it was almost bleeding.

But you couldn’t care less. Because this was so typical of Pierre: putting the blame on you by saying you didn’t want to hear his explanation.

“Oh.” you laughed nervously, turning to look at him. “Maybe you’re right.” you took a break long enough for him to frown, wondering if you really agreed with him. He knew for sure that during your past arguments, none of you would flinch this easily.

“I really can’t fucking understand how you could lie to your parents and pretend we are still together, Pierre.”

“What was I supposed to do?

“Tell the fucking truth.” you replied, slamming your hand on the dashboard.

This was absolutely not how you planned your Christmas’ eve.

Well, to be honest, you didn’t plan much. Your parents were away for the holiday and you were just going to eat some homemade food in front of a christmas movie. Nothing much but a well appreciated evening.

For sure, you didn’t plan on spending it with your ex-boyfriend and his family.

Pierre suddenly drove on the sideway and stopped there, getting some horns from annoyed drivers. You looked at him with confusion, he wasn’t the reckless driver type. Obviously. It was his habit to scare you when you shared the car.

He stopped the car and turned to you. “I fucked up, ok? I know that. On so many levels.” you rolled your eyes at this and held back any bad comments. “But everything went fast after our breakup. I haven't seen them since this summer and I couldn’t announce that we broke off our engagement through the phone. When my mom said they were waiting for us tonight, I didn’t have the heart to ruin their christmas. You can blame me for lying. But don’t fucking blame me for protecting my parents for god sake!”

Pierre was right. You knew it.

It was something you’ve always kinda admired about him: how his family would always go first. You couldn’t count the number of hours you waited for him in the hotel room, ready to go out and celebrate, while he was on the phone with his parents or his brothers. For sure, you would be a liar to blame him for something you’ve always encouraged him to do.

Especially considering that you accepted to play pretend tonight for the sake of protecting them, too.

When Pierre called you tonight, you didn’t answer. When he texted you, you barely read the message.

When he knocked on your door, you didn’t have any other choice than to open.

And when he told you, you needed to come with him at his parents’ place to act like a couple even though you’ve been apart for three months now because he still hasn't told them about you…well you laughed. Nervously. And argued a lot.

Then you realised you didn’t want to be the bad person in this narrative. What was one night in a whole life?

You sighed, still looking at Pierre. He still hasn’t moved, waiting for an answer from you. You got lost in each other’s eyes.

And that was the thing that convinced you to come. The fact that he was ready to bring you back home if you really didn’t want to accompany him.

“Fine.” you sat back normally. “You could have told them I wasn’t available.”

You heard Pierre laugh softly. “You still want to have the last word I see.”

Most of the ride went quietly after that. Pierre put on some music and you answered most of your texts. You only started to talk again ten minutes before you arrived to make sure you had the same ideas in mind. No break up, you were still planning your wedding and happy as before. And the reason you didn’t see his family in so long was simply a lack of time from both of you.

“And…” Pierre started once he was parked in front of his family house. You frowned, wondering what you could have potentially forgotten. You memorised everything and it wouldn’t be that hard to pretend after a three year relationship.

But then it hit you when he took the box out of his pocket. “I almost forgot it at home but it’s here.”

You remember when Pierre proposed to you.

You went to Greece during the summer break, last year. One night, while you were walking around the city, you found a place that was recreating Mamma Mia and invited everyone to sing and have fun. And so you went there, singing Abba the whole night. At some point during the night, after a kiss that lasted longer than it should in public, Pierre looked at you with a big smile and said “I want to marry you.” You laughed, thinking he was joking. But he wasn’t. “I meant it. Would you marry me?” and this time you started to cry, nodding so hard you had a neckache.

You later learnt that Pierre had imagined a whole different scenario for the proposal. But it spoke with his heart and did it when it felt perfectly right.

And tonight, you were putting back the ring you worshipped with your whole heart. “It feels weird.” you whispered.

Pierre didn’t answer and simply left the car. It was hard for him too. Acting like he didn’t lose the woman of his life over stupid decisions.

“Vous voilà! Je suis tellement contente de vous voir.” (oh there you are! I’m so happy to see you)

Before you even got the chance to prepare yourself in front of the door, Pierre’s mom opened it and took you both in her arms. You couldn’t lie, it felt good to see her and feel just as appreciated as before. Like nothing changed. And it was the truth, somehow. For his mom, nothing has changed. You were still her son’s fiancé, the one she almost saw as a daughter.

You looked at them, the way she kept touching his face to see any changes. And, what she told you one day, if he had any scars from races he tried to hide from her. You had this weird feeling of being home. Like you were right where you belong. For a second, you were back a year ago, when everything was perfectly fine.

But then it hit you when Pierre took your hand to bring you inside to see everyone. It always felt natural when you were holding hands. In one of your birthday cards, you told him he must be your soulmate simply because your hands seemed to be held by the other.

Tonight, it didn’t feel natural. It was hesitant. Pierre wasn’t confident about closing his fingers on yours and you could feel it.

Everybody seemed so happy to see. They all see you as an official member of their family. And it would be lying to say you weren’t happy to be by their side too.

It helped that you didn’t see much of them for months. You spend the first two hours of the night talking with everyone but Pierre. Asking about their life, their own family, their friends… you had many things to learn. And you avoided some questions. That was one of the rules you established with Pierre. Pretend that the wedding was a big secret you couldn’t tell a thing about. For the rest, you just made the truth prettier.

Sure, you started a new job. But you didn’t admit it was a full time one because you didn’t go to the races anymore.

Yes, your pet was doing so fine. You just had to find the right pictures that would show your new apartment.

No, you still haven’t decided where you would spend the winter break with Pierre. Because you weren’t going on any holiday anymore. At least, not together.

The dinner was a little harder to live. Because you sat next to Pierre, like it was planned. Like it has always been. And this time, compared to the whole drive, you felt more trapped. Because you couldn’t roll your eyes at what he was saying, or avoid his hand when he tried to touch you. Everyone would notice that and understand that something was wrong. You had to be careful.

So careful that, at some point during the evening, you even forgot why you were acting like that. You got lost in his stories about races you went to and especially those you miss after your breakup. You laughed at his joke, sympathised with his bad moments and cheered at the podium you missed.

You remember that day, or night actually for you. You didn’t watch the end of the season after your separation but you still had the notifications from the official account. So you knew the results. And when you learnt that Pierre had secured a second place on the podium, you almost called him. It was still a natural reflex: this desire of celebrating with your loved one.

But you didn’t. You didn’t even send him a text. And for one good reason: the last text you got from him was simply “Je suis désolé” (i am sorry) and you couldn’t handle the pain of going through the pain again.

There had been hard times these past months where you almost forgive Pierre for breaking your engagement. There had been many times where you still wanted to call him and insult him for breaking up just because he woke up one day and realised this was maybe not what he wanted for his future.

What was this? This has been the question you’ve asked yourself many, many times. Was it your couple, your wedding or just you? You had no idea. Pierre couldn’t even explain it himself. He just knew that it wouldn’t be fair to keep pretending he was happy in a life he learnt to despise.

And it was now, sitting by his side, that you realised you had overcome all these mixed feelings. You felt alright. Not good, because the wound was still wide open. But you had accepted it. You would never marry Pierre. And you didn’t want to anymore.

After he finished telling the story of the last race of the season and the battle of champagne he had with Charles, while everyone was talking together, Pierre turned to you. You both got lost in each other's eyes. And you were convinced his little smile was a soft thank you. For being here, for lying, for…being happy.

Because it hadn’t been easy months for Pierre either. Many times he woke up, thinking he had made the worst decision of his life. And some morning, he still wonders if he didn’t lose you for nothing. And those questions weren’t created by some insecurities about his happiness because he knew that he felt happier without this weight on his shoulder. But because he was scared he had ruined you. He would have accepted to be miserable for the rest of his life over this stupid. But he couldn’t accept hurting you forever.

But tonight, you both realised that maybe, things were going better for the both of you. And maybe, that night, was the one you both needed to start healing.

This helps the rest of the night go smoothly. You played games together, laughed together without thinking about the lie you were telling everyone. Even the drive back home felt natural, you talked about his family a lot. He even asked about yours. It was a whole different from the outward journey earlier.

Pierre insisted on walking to your door with you. “It wasn’t that bad, right?” you couldn’t help but smile at him. He had this kind of unserious almost flirty tone like he needed to prove to himself and to you that he was right, in the end. It wasn’t such a terrible thing to do.

You crossed your arms on your chest, a way to protect your heart from opening itself again. “No it wasn’t. You’re right.” he shrugged like it wasn’t such a surprise and you immediately hit him in the chest. You both laughed and oh how it felt good to be this lighthearted again for a few minutes.

It meant more than you imagined that you were standing in front of your door, with your ex-fiancé in front of you. When you could already be in the bed but rather got lost in his eyes. Because you knew exactly what this moment was. And deep down, you weren’t ready to let it go.

You could hear Pierre talk before he even opened his mouth. “We were good together, huh?” you tried to not focus on his glossy eyes or the way he was playing with his fingers.

“Yeah, we were.” you smiled, containing your own tears from falling. “It was good while it lasted.”

Pierre crossed the few steps between you. You closed your eyes when you felt his lips on your forehead. Such a kind and sweet attention you remember he had when you started dating. When, for the first time maybe in his life, he wanted to take things slow to make them last. But this time, there were no other moments to share. And you had to watch him leave your place.

For the last time.

You finally put the key in the door, taking your time to not close this chapter of your life too fast. “Eh!” you jumped, turning around immediately and saw Pierre holding the elevator’s door open. “You know I'll still love you, right?”

“I do.” you tried to ignore this weird feeling in your stomach, not waiting to think about the fact you ended up saying the two words you would never say to him. “Me too.”

There lies the truth. You loved each other. Still.

But you couldn’t be together anymore.

And so when you finally opened the front door and got inside. When Pierre finally let the elevator closed on him and brought him back to his car. You both knew what it meant.

#pierre gasly #pierre gasly x reader #pierre gasly imagine #pierre gasly x y/n #pierre gasly x you #pierre gasly story #pierre gasly fanfic #pierre gasly fin #f1 #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #formula 1 #my writing

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thetriumphantpanda · 2 years ago

Note

Totally enjoying these fics you’re releasing! I hope you don’t feel pressured at all writing these wonderful stories and just enjoy em as much as we are.

For my request, jealous Joel Miller ❛ i’m going to ruin you. ❜ ❛ take off your clothes. ❜

Take care, love! 🩷

Hey Anon! Thank you so much, I'm glad you're enjoying them! I have to admit I am loving them as well! They're so much fun to put together as a distraction from the plot of my other stories - so I absolutely am enjoying them and there's no pressure at all! Thank you so much for your request, I hope you're happy with it! 🧡

If you'd like a prompt written, check this post here and pop a prompt into my ask with one of the follow Pedro boys - Javi P, Javi G, Joel Miller, Frankie Morales, Dieter Bravo or Oberyn Martell.

Pairing | Joel Miller x Female Reader

Word Count | 1.4K

Warnings | Porn with very little plot below the cut, rough sex, rough!Joel, breath play, unprotected PIV sex, oral sex (F receiving) and some dirty talk but nothing else.

“I’m going to ruin you.” Joel growled into your ear, hand resting almost threateningly at the base of your throat, “Thinkin’ you can sidle up to any man at the bar and flirt with him when I’m there.”

You should have been scared, Joel had you backed up against the wall of his home and the look in his eyes told you that he meant every word about ruining you. Along with his hand at the base of your throat, his leg was between yours, his thigh pressed right up against your clothed center. As his words left his mouth you subconsciously grinded yourself down on his leg, trying to relieve the ache at your core.

He looked down at what you were doing and tightened his hand around your throat, pushing you further against the wall, “Stop it,” He commanded, “You don’t get to choose when you feel good tonight, not after that performance.”

He moved his hand from the base of your neck down your arm, it would have been quite romantic if he wasn’t currently looking at you like he wanted to kill you. He twisted you around, with your arm being held resting on the small of your back as he pushed you towards the stairs, “Get up the stairs.”

You didn’t need telling twice, almost sprinting up the steps two at a time until you were in Joel’s room with the door slammed behind you. You were stood at the side of his bed, Joel’s eyes trained on you, moving from foot to foot awkwardly, waiting for your next instruction.

“Take off your clothes.”

Your hands immediately shoved your jacket off your shoulders, discarding it to the floor as you toed off your boots and kicked them away. A smirk appeared on Joel’s face as he watched you pull your t-shirt off, revealing your bra. It was well worn and not particularly sexy, but he was just a man. As you started on the button and zipper on your jeans you heard movement. Snapping your head up you watched as Joel was palming his cock though his jeans whilst he watched you undress, his length already bulging behind his clothes.

He looked at you as if you say, “What’s taking you so long?” so you went right back to shucking your jeans off until you were stood in the room in just your underwear.

“I said take them off, why have you stopped?” Joel spoke lowly, “Go on, finish up and get on the bed on your back.”

You did exactly that, stepping out of your panties once you’d pulled them down your legs you sat down on the bed, shuffling back before lying down, spreading your legs for him. This had happened before, and you knew exactly what you were in for. Joel would pin you down and have his way with you, ignoring your pleads for his hands on your clit or for him to hit inside of you at a certain angle to make you cum. He would fuck you rough, sometimes spilling himself inside you, but mostly painting whatever part of your body he could get to the quickest with his cum, then he’d insist you slept, frustrated and unspent, until he woke the next morning to put his mouth between your legs and make up for everything.

You let out an unexpected shriek when Joel’s hand wrapped around your ankles and pulled you to the edge of the bed so your ass was precariously sitting on the edge, the only thing keeping you from landing on the floor was that your legs were now slung over his shoulders.

Oh my God, was he going to? Was all you could get through in your mind when his tongue licked a slow stripe up your pussy from your weeping hole to your clit, flicking the tip of his tongue over it slowly before looking up at you.

“Maybe I’m not lookin’ after you well enough, darlin’,” He spoke, teasing your clit with his tongue for a second, “That why you needed to flirt with him, think he can do better than me?”

“Joel, no..” You spoke, “I wasn’t… fuck… I wasn’t flirting.” You forced from your mouth as he continued his assault on your clit.

“Not flirting?” He murmured, slipping two of his fingers into your aching pussy, “You didn’t lean up against the bar and flutter your pretty little eyelashes at him?”

“Oh my god,” You groaned, grinding your hips down onto his fingers, “I was just being nice.” “Just being nice when you put your hand on his arm when he offered you a drink?” His tongue was back on your clit, adding an extra sensation to his fingers curling inside you.

You couldn’t answer, the feeling of both his fingers and his tongue were too much, all you could manage were moans and breaths.

“Gone awful quiet now, darlin’.” He stated, pulling his mouth away from you and stilling his fingers, “Answer me.”

“I’m sorry,” You pleaded, desperate tears forming at the corners of your eyes at the loss of friction, “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“Good girl.” He said, finally moving his fingers again, pressing chaste kisses to the inside of your thighs as he brought you back to teetering on the edge.

It was almost like he could sense you were close – he wrapped his lips over your clit and sucked at it, stopping only to switch between that and flicking his tongue over it. Your orgasm threw you over the edge suddenly, you were calling out his name into the dark of the room, hands tangling in his hair as his fingers and mouth worked you through the aftershocks of your orgasm.

He let your legs fall from his shoulders as he stood up, looking down at you with his dark eyes as he shed his own clothes, “On your hands and knees darlin’.” He spoke once he was naked, jerking his cock as you spread yourself out like he enjoyed.

He gave you little time to ready yourself for him, burying his thick cock into your pussy immediately. A filthy moan fell from your lips as he began thrusting, not giving you the usual time to adjust to his size within you.

“Oh god Joel…” You moaned, “You’re so fucking good inside me.”

“You like that?” He asked, punctuating it with a particularly brutal thrust into your pussy, “No-one else is ever going to make you feel like this, you understand?”

“Yes Joel…” Another moan, and another brutal thrust into you, “Only you, only ever want you.”

He leaned forward, snaking a hand around your hips as he was fucking you, his fingers landing straight on your clit to rub tight circles around it, his front laid across your back as he did so. A kiss was placed at the top of your spine, an intimate feeling against how rough he was being, “All mine, aren’t you darlin’?” He asked while you could feel the tightening in your tummy that you were close.

“All yours Joel,” You moaned, “Oh my god, please let me cum.”

“I ain’t stoppin’ you darlin’,” He chuckled, face close to your ear, “Cum for me any time you like.”

His fingers finally tipped you over the edge, another shriek of his name falling from your mouth as your pussy clenched around his cock, still thrusting deep into you. His fingers left your clit as he pushed himself back, grabbing onto your hips with a bruising intensity as he fucked into your pussy, searching for his own release which you soon felt.

He stilled inside of you, filling your pussy with his seed as his name groaned from his lips. As he pulled out you could feel him trickle down your thigh. Joel used his flannel shirt to clean you as best he could before throwing it into the basket full of washing he needed to do at some point in the near future.

He gathered you up and settled you both under the sheets of his bed, placing a soft kiss to your forehead as you breathed in his scent, “Shall I tell you a secret?” You murmured against his skin.

“Always, darlin’.” “I flirted with him on purpose.” You let out a giggle, Joel’s hand flying to your ass to give you a squeeze.

“Give me a minute to recover and I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

#Joel Miller #Pedro Pascal #the last of us #the last of us HBO #Joel miller smut #Joel miller fan fic #Joel miller fic #joel miller fanfiction #Joel miller x you #Joel miller x reader #Joel miller x female reader #Joel miller x f!reader #Joel miller Pedro pascal #JM drabbles #joel the last of us

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bibibbon · 1 year ago

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UA teachers suck and UA sucks as a school

UA literally just sucks. Honestly this school has failed so many people especially izuku in particular.

Maybe it wouldn't of actually earned this title if we got more academia arcs but from the canon stuff we have so far it sucks!

No bullying policy?

So you see a student outright bullying another student and you decide to do nothing?!?!?! The student then doesn't even get any concequences for his actions?!!!!?!?!

Exposing students to the whole world after a villain attack?

So right after usj you have the sports festival and you don't even decide to delay it because UA's security measures have to look like their on top and apparently that's the logic behind it. Also, reminder that the UA sports festival is MORE POPULAR THAN THE OLYMPICS. So watching 15-18 year olds use their quirks to harm eachother is alright???! Like aren't you basically using minors for other people's entertainment?!?!

I mean realistically speaking you could of tried to delay the festival or just make the first years not do it that year. Just have them do tournaments with only heros present so you actually protect students safety and don't have people and villains watching/witnessing their weakness

Lying to the public about students being psychologically fine?

We never saw the phycological evaluation that the students did after the training camp incident and saying all students were psychologically fine was such A big lie considering you had a GROUP of students go and try and rescue another student because they couldn't trust the teachers enough to handle the situation which idk about you but that says A LOT.

Chaining up bakugo?

Look I hate bakugo I really really do but muzzling a whole student and making him a whole public disgrace has to be illegal? ...Right. like if bakugo wasn't going to cooperate then just disqualify him and make todoroki the winner and save yourself from attracting villains to kidnapping the kid.

Acknowledging that your entrance exams are badly done but then not changing them?

Seriously, we get aizawa talking and talking about how useless and illogical the entrance exams are but then nedzu does nothing... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT. aizawa had a point about the exams favouring people with offensive quirks but can he really talk about that when all he does to teach his class is just play sick and twisted logical ruses on them? Also shouldn't the exams focus on different aspects of heroism instead of defeating villains?

Aizawa and his teachings being accepted?

I don't know about you but aizawa being a teacher is wild to me. Like this is the guy who actively does NOTHING to help his students but trains a student that's not even in his OWN CLASS!! He then goes on to not even read his students files which contain some very important information that could explain some or majority of his students behaviours that he isn't bothered to understand!!!! Also the amount of expulsions he has even if they are on paper they are literally a death sentence to students as it permanently destroys their records and ruins their chances in finding any normal job let alone becoming heros. He also only points out the problems with his students and then does nothing to help LITERALLY NOTHING!!

Is therapy a thing in UA?

No like this is actually a serious question because if you're telling me that hound dog is a therapist then I might as well leave because how is he a therapist when he offers nothing and is cannonically seen as threatening by all the students?!?!? Also were 1A or 1B even offered therapy after what they went through?!?! Like some of 1A literally showed some clear trauma responses and UA does nothing about it. Oh and this isn't even mentioning what hound dog done to izuku ( izuku is a gag and so is his pain) oh and what about mirio did he get any support after nighteyes death

Midnight in the anime?

We all have our own problems with midnight but her in the anime is totally different then the midnight in the manga. In the anime she continually flirts with students and you get it she does stuff she isn't supposed to. In the manga its a bit different but there are some scenes like the final exam arc where it's a bit weird

#mha critical #bnha critical #hori is a bad writer #horikoshi critical #mha #ua critical

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talas-first-lady · 6 months ago

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Can we discuss how Evil Gideon was lying, though?

I was thinking today about how completely unrealistic the Astra runs for President prediction was and the more I think about it, a lot of the other predictions don't add up. I'm going to go through in the order they were in the episode.

(She may not have been purposefully lying but she definitely just showed them whatever Chat GPT popped out.)

Zari: Seems plausible on the surface, but I have some concerns.

Her award show dress is UGLY. The red color is pretty but the orangey overlay ruins it. The ruching is in the worst possible place and makes her look larger than she is right through the middle. The bottom is kind of wrinkled. And then she has really small, understated jewelry and her hair up, so there's nothing interesting at all going on in the shoulder/neck region. Zari dresses better than that.

She makes billions with her cosmetics company. Despite the fact that we have repeatedly been told throughout the show that she is terrible at selling cosmetics. Her lip kits don't even sell. Everybody has lips! Her perfume destroys people's sense of smell.

Audible lipstick. Not a thing anyone wants. Not a thing that makes any sense. Evil Gideon is making this stuff up. And yes, it's the future, but nothing we've seen of the 2040s on Legends really looks all that much more technologically advanced than what we have now.

EG fails to consider that Zari has grown as a person since whatever info she has in her files, which is the whole reason Zari is upset about the prediction. It's plausible that she would go back to her career as it was, but she cares about people now. She would absolutely be doing some sort of philanthropy.

She's so pretty. But also, I'm not 100% convinced that that even is a dress because it looks like they may have just shoved a piece of fabric at her and said "here, hold this under your arms."

Behrad:

Totally plausible that he could become famous, either for his talent or via his connections, but he has never wanted to be famous. You expect me to believe that the man who hid in bed to avoid imaginary TV cameras is going to purposefully go into a career of being on camera?

He can't account for his whereabouts for several years of his adult life. He is not passing a background check to become a children's performer.

His record is called "Grey Hound to the Moon." Which is great, except that both the bus company and the dog spell it Greyhound. One word.

Avalance:

Knowing what we know now about Sara's biology, this is plausible.

But I feel like they might run into some issues trying to sign their kid up for school when one of them is legally dead and the other was never legally born.

Do kids get to do video calls from camp these days? I don't know. I am old. I had to bring quarters to the designated calling home payphones at a predetermined time to talk to my parents.

Gwyn:

He knows too much. They can't send him back to the 1920s. All of the Legends are aberrations waiting to happen, but sending anyone to the past is a no-no.

If they are going to send him back, wouldn't it make more sense to send him back to New York? Since that's where he last was?

Nate:

He has to somehow convince someone to publish a book about how time travel is real. Nate Heywood. Who you may recall from that controversial fake documentary about time travel a few years back. He seems like a reliable source.

You don't grow a hideous beard over the Heywood jawline. You just don't.

His TV interview is totally bogus. Nate knows how to schmooze. He's not going to be all "I can't answer your simple question about what time travel feels like because you must first read all 500 pages of my book."

"I never said that out loud before but that is the title I picked out." Gideon can literally monitor your dreams, dude. I know that she's never personally kidnapped you and put you into a time loop, but she knows things.

Astra:

Remember how she couldn't find a job in season 6? Because she's legally dead and legally still a child? She also has no education, no work experience, and a grand total of like 6 people who can vouch for her existence. She is a mess. No idea if she's legally eligible to run.

And she definitely wouldn't win, given that all of the above would definitely come out. She also doesn't look her legal age (which barely makes her old enough to qualify), she's terrible at keeping her temper, and she's literally a witch.

Also, she runs in 2040. We know for a fact that Dwayne Johnson is the President in 2045. So at best, she gets 1 term.

That wig is preposterous.

Spooner:

Again, she definitely knows too much to go back to the 1920s.

Everyone is already suspicious of Gloria Cruz. You don't think they're going to have questions when her daughter goes missing and then some 20-something shows up out of nowhere?

They are not running an apothecary. They are getting burned at the stake.

#legends of tomorrow #lot 7x12 #too legit to quit #evil gideon #gideon #zari tarazi #behrad tarazi #ava sharpe #sara lance #avalance #nate heywood #gwyn davies #astra logue #spooner cruz

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masterchef901 · 1 year ago

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Some rampant Freckle theorizing (Idk how confirmed this is but we roll it (lackadaisy spoilers))

I was thinking about Freckle and the theory/general idea that he killed or hurt his dad and Rocky took the blame for it, and the more I think about it the more it explains a ton of Freckle's character.

Like, we'd have the obvious and immediate: he follows Rocky and does whatever he asks without question, because Freckle feels like he owes him a debt, one worth killing for. Not to mention, we have some more rationale behind Freckle's habit of trying to fix things when stressed, and his original intentions of becoming a cop, both of which may represent a sort of penance in his mind. Try to make things better to make up for how he made them worse. Get dangerous criminals off the street, to make up for the fact that he feels he is one.

But then we get a bit more in the details of things:

"Remember to always lie" lands a lot heavier in this paradigm, doesn't it?

But the way the other letters are framed right there with him make me think they're a part of the trauma too. That make me think that every single one of these weighs on him, makes him think: "Rocky's struggling out there because of me"

"He's suffering because I lied"

"I'm doing this to him"

"I ruined his life too"

and yet, at the same time,

"If I tell anyone then Rocky suffered for nothing"

And that would absolutely eat at someone. Eat at them enough that a particularly inflammatory letter would leave them curled up and broken in their room marinating amongst years of other accumulated pain.

And bearing this view of his past in mind, I speculate a bit on his defining trait in the present:

The oft-accepted explanation is that he's just a "natural killer", or that these acts of violence are in some way a release of other, possibly unrelated pent-up stress and anxiety. But bear with me a moment, and consider another angle:

You're a murderer. You've spent years lying about it. You threw your cousin under the bus. You lied to your mother. You're a murderer and you can never forget it. You always lie. You have to remember to always lie about being a murderer.

And then you kill someone again.

And this time it's in front of plenty of witnesses, it's to protect someone and most importantly: it isn't a secret to these people.

I posit that in this moment, Calvin "Freckle" McMurray is feeling honest with himself for the first time in years. He has internalized the feeling that he's a murderer, and now he gets to wear that, and be "himself", for what he feels that is, and he doesn't have to hide. He doesn't have to hide that he's a murderer anymore. In the most fucked-up possible way, Freckle is owning who he is. Maybe it's a stretch, but I think what we're seeing is the euphoria of relief, from a particularly twisted confession.

The next time we see him actually shooting again...

There's still some of that derangement, but it also seems to me that Rocky's doing most of the laughing. And maybe it's the involuntary mud-bath he takes after this panel, but...

That mania sure faded quick this time. Even though he's digging for it, trying to find it, the euphoria just isn't coming the way it did just a couple canonical days ago, and I think it's because there's nothing more to get from it.

The killing confession's been given, and there's no more relief to be found in trying to let himself be a killer. Now it's just... more bloodshed.

At this point, we've caught up pretty much completely to our protagonists in the story. From here, we move from the 'bear with me but' kind of speculation to just totally rampant guesswork. But what could this mean for our adorable gunman's future?

Well for starters, I think we'll see his work quality start to take a dip once he realizes he doesn't actually love it.

And for seconds, it means that he's probably not done riding the guilt train either. If anything, he might start working out his confusion, realizing just how fucked everything in his life is. Might even begin to resent Rocky for it.

And perhaps most interestingly in my mind is how this poor kid's emotional state is going to interact with his relationship with Ivy. After all, I feel like the very nature of the relationship is still settling, and we don't really have a clear view of how invested its members are in it. Maybe Ivy's just in it for some fun and Freckle's along for the ride and eventually the ride'll end and that'll be that. But, uh, something about the laws that govern narrative existence makes me think that this will perhaps not be the case.

Because suppose that Freckle starts feeling it more deeply. He might easily see his first true confidant in Ivy - someone who he owes no debt, who he's under no obligation to lie to, and who seems both aware of and okay with his homicidal tendencies. He could really come to lean on her a lot as he develops and navigates his trauma. And this leads to some outcomes:

If Ivy's willing to reciprocate that trust and vulnerability, we get treated to some absolutely delectable hurt-comfort.

If she isn't, she might back off, even sever things entirely as she's not used to dealing with this kind of baggage in a partner. Depending on how in-love Freckle's feeling at this point in this timeline, the sudden pain and isolation on top of his freshly re-opened trauma might be enough to send him into a complete mental break in the worst case.

And either way, and no matter which way anything goes, we get some absolutely killer drama.

#lackadaisy spoilers #theory #lackadaisy #the cats #i cannot stop thinking about the cats #lackadaisy theory #lackadaisy freckle #freckle #character analysis #but that analysis is all predicated on a theory that is unconfirmed #spoilers

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katsaturnwhatever · 1 year ago

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Finally returning to Tumblr after a long vacation because I’ve got the brainrots all over again.

So I’ve gotta say it. Ed didn’t really mean it.

Ed didn't really feel that sleeping with Stede was a mistake. He may have wished that things had unfolded differently, but he absolutely does not regret the act itself. But also, there was nothing shocking or out of character about Ed's decision to leave.

1) While the wall-slam definitely caught him offguard - he came to Stede's room likely just expecting to offer comfort and lighten the man's spirits after a traumatic event - he absolutely consented to what ended up happening. I love that they gave us that tiny, nearly-imperceptible-but-definitely-there moment when Stede waits to see how Ed will react, and Ed looks into Stede's eyes and nods.

2) Ed seemed 1000% happy and satisfied the morning after. There's no sense of regret in their conversation in bed. But, in typical Ed fashion, he goes "all in" wayyy too quickly, seemingly incapable of stopping himself. We saw it back in S1 with the "I'm folding socks and that's okay" conversation. One taste of life with Stede and he's ready to chuck his entire identity overboard... AGAIN.

3) After the emotional rollercoaster of the previous 24 hours, my man is a total mess. If you think that we, the fandom, are experiencing some seriously painful whiplash, just think of how it must feel for Ed - he had to watch the love of his life being tortured, then watch him make an enormous mistake (killing Ned), immediately followed by finally experiencing the loving intimacy and desire he's craved all his life. So he decides in the morning to leave everything behind, his whole persona, and make a clean break because that's the only thing he knows how to do. But he has no regrets about doing so, telling Izzy it feels "fantastic".

4) At first, Ed doesn't seem to mind that Stede is enjoying the spotlight, even giving him pointers of how to deal with fame. At this point he's still hoping that Stede will be able to have his moment and walk away, not realizing quite how much Stede has wanted to be "known" (remember "you've heard of me"?) and respected his whole life.

5) As all of this unfolds, he has a series of incredibly harsh realizations - and he knows how this will end. Piracy only ends one way: violence and death. If they stay together, it is very likely that he would have to watch Stede die a horrible death. He can't deal with that idea at ALL. It's the same reaction he had in S1 when Stede is about to die by firing squad. Ed would give anything to save Stede's life, but he comes to understand that Stede is on a self-imposed trajectory that ends in death (much as Ed himself was in the beginning of S2 - these boys are SO much alike, which is why it's so painful that they never quite seem to get on the same page). He doesn't try to talk Stede out of this trajectory because he already tried that tactic the night before - telling Stede not to kill Ned - and Stede ignored him and did it anyway, which really had to sting.

6) He's feeling a lot of the same things that Stede felt at the end of S1 - that he's ruined the man he loves, that he's been nothing but a bad influence, and the only way to set things right is to remove himself from the situation entirely. So Ed does the only thing he knows how to do - make a clean break, reducing the damage as much as possible by saying something that makes it feel final: "I think last night was a mistake." But he's lying. We all know he's lying. I think even Stede knows it, since he calls Ed out for panicking - which is absolutely the truth, but that doesn't stop everything that's been set in motion.

Bonus: It's interesting to me that you end up with a similar situation as in the end of Good Omens 2 - you have these two people who obviously love each other more than anything, and desperately want to be together, but in the end, they each end up feeling betrayed - feeling that their partner is choosing a different life over them.

Bonus 2: The episode's title is Man on Fire - on the surface it's a reference to the dude who gets literally set on fire, but thematically the Man on Fire here is undeniably Stede. He's "on fire", having finally made it big as a pirate. But Ed craves the cool relief of the water. He's drawn to the life of a fisherman, and he imagines Stede as a merman. But water will kill you just as quickly as fire, if you thrown yourself into the deep end. Both of them are drawn to extremes, when what they really need is to meet each other in the middle (Izzy even says that they balance each other out - the most astute and accurate way to sum up their whole deal).

This went on wayyyyy too long and I’m sorry. I can’t think about anything else today. 😂

#our flag means death s2 #ed x stede #our flag means death spoilers #our flag means death season 2 #ofmd #ofmd analysis #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd season 2 #ofmd 2

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iznsfw · 2 years ago

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People say that everyone is connected by a red string of fate. The people we are destined to be with could be close by while some cases the string stretches out.

You have the ability to see other people's red string as well as your own, but in your case you haven't found the person at the end of the string. Time passes and you see that the color red started to fade away, which you didn't mind.

One day while you're working the late night shift at the convenience store when a girl suddenly entered the convenience store. When she reaches the counter she places two bottles of soju and a couple cans of beer. You catch a glimpse of her face, even in that small period of time you saw how beautiful she is. She then hands you her card, and right then and there the two ends of the string meet.

"Sorry, but can I ask what's your name?"

"Kwon Eunbi."

Now, how would you tell Eunbi that both of you are bound to fall in love at the cost of one of your lives?

i'm looking right at the other half of me

[ IZ*ONE's Eunbi x Male Reader Fluff & Angst ]

4540 words

masterlist

This took so long... and finally it's out! Thank you @brokennightmares01 for such a great idea, and I'm sorry I took so long to reply </3 This was difficult emotionally to write. I guess I'm just too attached to Eunbi lmfao

"The fuck are you looking at, cunt?"

Ah, welcome to South Korea, one of the many places in this miserable world where you can just be an adult fresh out of teen years trying to make a living, yet still be bothered by people like this one. You never should have agreed to this ridiculous night shift. There were less of these freaks in the daylight.

You look away from the musty man and give no response. It's how you deal with ninety-eight percent of these situations. It's the safest way to go around it, but also the most dangerous. You never know when you looked or said nothing the wrong way.

11 PM on the clock. Just five more hours to go and you're good, you reassure yourself. Remember, the pay will be much bigger if you go through this shift.

"That'll be a total of 17000 won, sir," you inform the man, looking nowhere but down. Down as you collect the change and the receipt. Down as you pass the money to his hands blackened from dirt and grease.

When he leaves, you feel the relief come back to you. Oh, you're thankful just to live another night. You may hate this world and all the miserable little fuckers in it, but it's no good lying and saying you thought death was the best escape route. No, death would do nothing at best. You have no family, you have little friends. Being dead changes absolutely nothing. Because of that, you just have to hang on the best you can.

It can be pretty hard sometimes.

You hope that there won't be any more customers. You don't have the mood to deal with more rude individuals who don't see you as an individual. You're just a servant to them. Although that's kind of your job, it hurts to see how differently people look at you if you had a different job, looked a little differently.

The bells to the 7-11 ring. A woman enters.

Strange how you knew it was her from the moment she entered. From the moment you caught an eyeful of her pretty face, her pretty smile, you know now that you've finally met her.

It's ruining you. She's ruining you. It should have been a moment of evangelization, finally meeting the supposed love of your life. But what good is there in having one when you know just by looking at the red string, that you could die at the climax of your meeting? That she could die? It's like an indie film with a poor plot twist.

When you ask her her name, she's blunt. Straight to the point; no poorly composed giggle or attempt at conversation. She looks tired—her eyes are swollen with red, from what you guess isn't sourced from just lack of sleep. What was she doing, you wonder, during all the time she hasn't found you? How was she doing?

"Well?" she prompts, rather impatiently.

You realize you've been staring at the red thinning thread between the two of you for too long. The more you gaze at it, the more fear you feel for the two of you. But there comes the love, too; she's like living deja vu. You've seen her before, you're sure. You just can't place where. But she reminds you of a good memory nested in a photo album, a sweet puppy love crush in middle school years. Eunbi is nostalgia, sweetness, affectionateness—all rolled into one pretty girl you meet by chance, who also happens to be your lover.

(Not yet, anyway, but soon.

Soon? You can't love her! If you fall in love with her, she could die. You could die. If you went ahead with this, one of you could just drop dead during a normal date. One of you would be left alone, heartbroken for life. This is a world where there would be no other one for you. No, the crush you had in middle school for whom you tried desperately to match your string with isn't your destiny. Neither was that one-night stand. There's only one for you, molded by whatever came before the world, and she just told you her name. You can't just move on to a rebound.

But you can't just... stop this from happening, can you? It's fate; there's no easy way around it. You're made to fall in love no matter what happens, no matter how short the time you have left is.

So, what should you do?)

"It's on the house," you tell her.

"Don't test me, please," she says tiredly. She's supporting herself by one arm perched on the counter, gazing at you with unamused pupils. "I've had a long night. I just need the beer and you can go your merry little way out of this underpaying convenience store."

Ouch. "Are you usually this straightforward, Kwon Eunbi?"

"Are you usually this desperate for a good fuck?" she counters smartly.

"Y-you're pretty and all," you admit. You have to admit you were not exactly just admiring her gorgeous face, but also her gorgeous body. But you have your morals, and she has hers. You have no intention that strays from wanting to settle this out. "But I don't want to fuck you. I promise."

"Huh." Eunbi smiles, crossing her arms on top of her green sweatshirt. "That's a first."

You push back her credit card, sliding it above the smooth cashier counter-table. "Do guys not, like, do stuff for you without wanting a 'favor' in return?" you ask.

Eunbi shrugs. "I guess. They just think I'm a pretty face with a pair of tits. Nothing more." She slides back her card. Her forced, sarcastic smile warns you to not play this losing game with her—you're tired, she's tired, you both want an easy way out.

"Well then let me be the first."

"And why would you do that for me," Eunbi leans over the counter, looking up at you with a sweetly challenging smile, "mister Nice Guy?"

She's right. What proper answer can you give her without sounding like a creep? What were you supposed to do, anyway? Tell her you're the love of your life who needs to spend all hours of the day with you now before it's too late?

"I guess we'll have to find out," you say steadily.

It's definitely not an answer she expected, but hey, she's smiling. It must mean something.

"You left your shift just like that?" Eunbi asks, looking back at the 7-11. It's a dark, pitch-black night, and the forest surrounding the area doesn't look too safe. You've ventured in scarier places before, though, so they can give as good as they can, and you'd be unbothered. Working in retail gives you that immunity.

You answer, "Yeah." Unscrew the cork from the soju while Eunbi pops open a can of sizzling beer. The smell mixes in with the natural scent of leaves and ground. Your 7-11 is set in a rather rural part of the city, as ironic and contradicting as it sounds, so the smell of gasoline and smoke is much more distant than one would think.

"Wish I could say that for myself," Eunbi says, shaking her head with a smile. God, she's pretty. She has the cutest, most mischievous-looking smile in the world. And yes, you're pushing through Korea and setting that record for her. Her smile is contained and small, not as wide as your friend Jiwoo's or as timid as Hyewon's, but her eyes slant upwards, adding to the cuteness factor. "Should have ditched that exam the second I saw Professor Bae was in the class."

"You're still in school?"

You can't remember the last time you stepped foot into a college. There's a reason you've been working at 7-11 ever since the first semester: you couldn't pay for it. You saved every penny and dime you could find, yet never got to the needed amount. This girl's lucky to even be attending classes.

Beer drapes Eunbi's plump lower lip as she takes it all in, bottoms up. You can tell she's been drinking for most of her life—she barely struggles for air while she downs the intoxicating liquid.

The can goes down, and her head remains tilted downwards from the back as well. Her eyes are a different story, though. They're hidden far back her eyelids. " Fuck, that always feels so good," sighs Eunbi.

"Careful," you add helpfully.

"Fuck you. Why do you care?"

Because I already love you. Okay, let's settle for "like," just in case you want to take things slow. But I know I love you because I've been searching for you my whole life. Because that's how it's supposed to happen. Because you're so pretty but so fucking lonely that it makes me want to protect you. Because I don't want to leave you when we both need each other, when you probably need more help than I do. Because—

"I don't know," you say. Shrug. "It feels right. Don't you think?"

Eunbi giggles a little. "Yeah, you're right. It sure does."

Suppose since Eunbi's drinking straight from the can, you can drink straight from the bottle. It's been a minute or more since you had soju. And it's... good. Weird, but still good. Drinks like these are on your neither-good-or-bad side. They're just something to fill your stomach when food becomes scarce, or when strength is so scarce you can't eat food around the house.

You would offer some to Eunbi so she can finish it instead of you, but she doesn't look like the type of girl to be able to stomach down a mix of liquids, no matter how "similar" they are. So you hold yourself back.

The forest has streetlights, so you safely go through there. It's not a typical wilderness kind of forest, but one you just like to call as one for the mass of trees. There aren't any animals—just you, Eunbi, and the pregnant moon.

Minutes pass filled with nothing but silence (except for twigs snapping), and finally Eunbi speaks up. "Yeah, I'm in school," she answers. It's probably just to fill the awkward silence, but it's already a step.

"Uni?"

"How'd you know?"

Lucky guess? Lover's instinct? You-or-me-can-die-at-any-given-second-if-we-fall-in-love instinct?

You force a grin. "Just do. Is the drinking because of the exam thing?"

Eunbi's shoulders slump. "Yeah," she says. "But I've been drinking even before that, so don't you worry. I'm an experienced alcoholic."

"Gotcha. I wasn't planning to, though."

Wrong words. Wrong delivery. You picture the frown that would darken her features, but once you look into the bigger picture, all you can see on her face is an entertained smile.

She bumps you, driving you sideways of the road. Shocked, you do the same. But she's stronger than you thought. If she put all her might into it, she can knock you down and send you rolling down the hill. And she almost, almost does, if it weren't for your grab at her arm. From there, you maneuver the force she exerts into nothing but air, pulling her to you. It ends up with her back against your front and her small face right below your chin.

And now, you're staring each other down. Great. Way to go for the first meeting. You got drunk and bumped into each other on purpose then you wrestled her to stay calm. To finish it off, there's this staring contest.

Her long dark hair rounds her face, which displays a challenge: keep your front strong. But it's not easy to when you literally have the prettiest girl you've ever seen pinned to your chest, with her back and bum pressed firmly to your front, and her pretty face looking arrogant and smug in the moonlight.

Stare her down. She looks deeply into your eyes.

One. Two. Three? Four. Then, five—

Eunbi's blink signals defeat. Still looking up at you, with her head tilted backwards, she smiles. "I like you, mister Nice Guy," she says.

"You're not so bad yourself, Kwon Eunbi."

"Hm," she chuckles. She pulls away. "What's next?"

"Mall?" you offer.

To your surprise, she laughs. "The mall? At this hour?" she asks you, just to make sure you aren't kidding or anything.

"Why not? We're both depressed kids trying to survive. Can't we call this a cheat day?"

Eunbi considers this. "As long as I ride shotgun."

"Wait," you say, holding up your hands, "how'd you know I drive a—"

Cold metal meets your palm. Eunbi's holding your ring of keys in place with your hand. Your fingers are curled around each other. Your breath feels nonexistent.

Eunbi bumps the signal button with the heel of her wrist and looks deep into the woods expectantly. Your car then beeps to life, sending a red signal to the darkness and blaring its lights. Your mouth is sore from it being wide open the entire time.

"Lucky guess" is all Eunbi is able to offer as an answer.

Okay, so the love of your life pickpocketed your car keys and you didn't know until she chose to tell you herself. Wifey material? Probably.

You're on the road, veering through a clear path on the way to your local mall. It's known for having a twenty-four-hour open time, so it's sure to have a majority of its stores open, even at this hour. You can probably spend a lot of time there doing fun stuff.

Eunbi's beside you in the passenger seat. The wind whips her black hair back. She's smiling; that gives you a bit of fulfilment. But then she says:

"You're a terrible driver."

"Oh yeah? I bet you can't drive for shit either!" You have to yell over the gusts of wind entering your rolled-down windows.

Grasslands and trees say hello and goodbye to your side point of view. When you were younger, you tried to say hi to them and goodbye as quickly as you could, knowing the speed of the car your father drove would make it impossible for you to have a proper time with the view. Your dad drank and drove like a maniac, hence your driving.

But you aim not to become the person your father once was.

"Okay, dad!"

Great timing. "I'm not your daddy, Eunbi!" you shoot back. "I'm just saying—"

"Nobody said you were! I said you were my dad! "

"What?"

"Nothing!" Eunbi tosses the empty can outside the window. The world is already polluted as it is. There won't be any harm in littering. "I said you were a shit driver!"

"No, I heard you!" Take a left. The soju bottles almost crash. " Dad and daddy are completely different things, Eunbi!"

"For your porn-addicted self, maybe!"

"I'm... I'm not addicted to porn!" you say indignantly. You've watched some before, but it never grew to an addiction. It's just an occasional source of dopamine on lonely nights. "Just... watch your wording, is all!"

Eunbi scoffs, smirking in disbelief. "Daddy issues?"

The car slows down, but you aren't even near the mall yet. Your shoulders tense. The mention of your father, or anything related to that, makes you feel ill.

Every day that passes, you try to convince yourself that your father only wanted the best for you. That was why he was like that. But you can't come up with a fitting justification, which probably should have made clear to you your father's heart wasn't pure at all.

What's left of it lies in a small urn back at your apartment. You didn't know why you bothered taking home an urn containing the memories of the man who hurt you, who did not look at you as if you were his own flesh and blood.

"Yeah, I think so," you mutter. You start up the car's pace again. No use trying to cover it up; the red is already fading.

Eunbi smiles tightly. "Same here. More on mommy issues, but dad... he was something else."

Laugh a little. "Tell me about it, huh?"

In a fucked up way, you and Eunbi are meant to be. Both of you are tired, both of you have (or had) horrible parents. They say that opposites attract, but love and fate can easily shoot that misconception down, because when you look at Eunbi, you can see your reflection, your self, looking back at you. The swollen eyes, tired face... they all scream you. You wonder if she knows that the two of you are bound to be together. And if she has no idea, how would you tell her?

You get off the car at the local mall. It's a lonely Friday night. Nobody is out here except the store owners and the like. Nothing and no one else.

You walk in, still in your 7-11 uniform: a white polo shirt and a green vest, complete with your name on a golden tag, and Eunbi in her green 1987 sweatshirt.

"Baskin Robbins?" you offer, spotting an ice cream stand just as you enter the building.

"I'd rather get some Sprite," says Eunbi. "But go ahead."

You purchase a birthday cake ice cream in a cup, pay the owner, and sit with Eunbi at one of the tables in front of it. She had bought her Sprite already. She's downing it like water, just like she did to the beer. The owner looks on with obvious concern.

"Are you a sodaholic or what?" you chuckle. You've never seen someone buy so many soda cans.

"It's better than continuing being a miserable drunkard," Eunbi explains. There's a cut on her lip from the sharp metal rim of the can, but if it bothers her, she doesn't show it.

Eunbi leans forward and licks her lower lip. "So."

That can't be a good sign. She looks suspicious. But you pretend that you're not anxious yourself about what would follow this conversation.

"What?"

"What's your deal?" she asks.

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't just buy me drinks on the house without a motive. What's going on here?"

She's smart, you'll give her that. But you have no doubt about her intelligence, although you've only met her an hour ago. There's the folks' tale going around that you know how and who your soulmate is, even if you've never met them before. Maybe the grandmas and grandpas were right.

But the death of the soulmate if they haven't met earlier was not just a mere myth. You've read cases about it. Lost a friend's friend's sister's friend to it. The string isn't exactly strong enough to hold for eternity.

But how can you tell her that? She might not even notice; her end of the string looks strong still, but the rest that connects you to her is already fatally weak. If you're apart for more time, it wouldn't be able to handle it.

"Because you look like you needed it," you say. That's the half of it anyway. "Everyone needs a helping hand sometimes."

Eunbi quirks a brow. "Nothing else?"

Bite your tongue and shake your head.

Eunbi juts out a bottom lip thoughtfully. "Huh." It hasn't occurred to her that it's possible for men to be like that with her. They go feral for her in the classrooms. It's nice to have someone who didn't want to do a nice gesture for her without her body playing a role in that for a change.

"You wanna know something, mister Nice Guy?" asks Eunbi.

"Enlighten me."

"That's the first time I ever felt safe with a guy at night. And yeah, I know about all that BS: 'not all men are the same.' But it's..." She squints emphatically. "Relieving, you know? You don't look like a pervert, you don't look like a fed. You don't look like you'd stuff my body down an acid pond. I feel safe with you."

"That's really flattering, Kwon Eunbi. Thank you."

"No problem," she says kindly. Her smile is a genuine bright lamp that fills the nighttime mall. She gestures to your cup of birthday cake ice cream. "Can I have some?"

And that's where it all began: a 7-11, a broken-down car, and a talk over ice cream and soda. That's how you made Kwon Eunbi yours.

Fast forward to a two years and five months. You're still working at a 7-11, a thing you wished would have changed. You still meet up with Eunbi, but this time, it's about something more.

The door bells jingle. She comes leaping in with dance in her skips. "Hey, hotshot," Eunbi greets you in the most unorthodox boyfriend-girlfriend manner.

Chuckle. The strings meet again. But this time, you don't worry about it. You have been with Eunbi for this long. Nothing can take her away from you. The string may be thinning by the day, but the two of you and wake up in the same bed everyday, and it seems like you've beaten all the odds. You're okay. She's fine. All is well.

Eunbi's kiss makes your cheek flush, as if the red on her lips infected the area. "Hi there yourself, Eun," you say. Yep, you're on a nickname-basis with each other. It grew after months and months of playful loving.

"I was thinking we go to the Han River tonight?" asks Eunbi hopefully. Her hands push down on the hard counter while she raises a lower leg to the back cutely. "Just you and me?"

"Why not?" You brush a kiss on her forehead. "After I finish this hour, we can go."

Eunbi smiles. "You know I love you, right?"

"Of course. I love you, too."

Looking back, you should have said that more. You really should have if you knew how the world loved to toy with you. It has to at least be expected, but you trust that everything would go well. It's been a long time since the string of red bothered you; why would you stress over it now?

Because of this:

One day, you'll die. You'll die alone. Whether from the fate of the string or natural cause, the only sure thing that will happen to you is death. One day, you'll have to leave her alone. If it's not you, then she will have to leave you.

But you forgot all about that. Right now, you've brought your mic and laptop to the side of the river, and you're both singing your hearts out.

Well, she is. Eunbi is an amazing singer. You found out about that when she volunteered to sing at the bar. She sang a self-composed song she sold to Woollim Entertainment, one of the leading mid-sized companies in Korea: Amigo.

"You seriously don't know how this song goes?" asks an offended Eunbi, glaring at you when you blank out halfway through the tune. "I thought you loved me!"

"Shut up and do the rap part!"

"I'm not Babysoul, you little shit!" Eunbi says, panickedly looking at the upcoming lyrics of the rap break. Rapping is not her forte.

"But you are my baby," you point out. "Now go do it, baby. Rap for me."

Eunbi cringes. However, she's laughing. "You're so ridiculo—"

Her words never find their way out.

Eunbi starts to choke. You immediately go over to her, trying to keep her steady. But she's already fallen to the ground, unable to get up. Her eyes look straight to the empty, dark blue sky, but never at your face floating above hers.

"B-baby—" she chokes out. Coughs and gags squeeze their way out from her chest. "I can't, I can't, I can't—"

"Did you swallow something, hon?" You're stuck. You don't know what to do. "Look at me, look at me, Eunbi. Please."

You hold her face in your hands and lift it up. But then you see the string that once connected the red thread from you to her. Your lifeline. It's snapped; blunt yarn-like strands disconnect your thread from hers. It can never be tied up again.

No.

Eunbi hasn't choked on anything. She's simply dying, just like how the fate of the string has foretold. It's her time to leave. You were let go, while she's taken in your place.

Somehow, she knows that, too. "I want to live," Eunbi confesses. Her eyes are two dark oceans of sadness. "Please, baby, I can't die yet. I want you here with me. Please."

You shake your head. "You're not going to die, Eunbi," you lie through your teeth. You lift up her black hair to your thigh so she can breathe properly. "I'll call the doctors, you want that? Just hold on for me, please."

"No, don't go!" sobs Eunbi, grabbing your thigh. She's crying loudly. She climbs onto your lap and hugs you with her shaking frame. She suddenly feels worryingly thin and light. "Don't leave me, don't leave me, please don't leave me."

"You're going to make me cry, pretty girl," you sob. "I can't call for help if you don't let me go."

"Please, please stay with me. I don't want to die. But everything..." Eunbi blinks twice. "Everything is so dark. I'm so alone."

That strikes a chord in you. Eunbi has talked and joked about death plenty of times, but now that she's on the brink of it, she doesn't want to give in. She can't give in.

You pull her closer and hug her hard. You begin to rock her like a doll as she grows more limp in your arms. "You're not alone. You have me, remember? I'm here. I'm going to take care of you. Remember when we first met, baby? You do? We went to that mall, right, and ate ice cream? You want to do that again?"

"Oh... oh yes, please," whispers Eunbi, nodding. But she's still not looking at you. Aside from that, her voice is incredibly weak. Her shoulders indicate the effort it takes for her to speak.

"Then you have to fight for me, Eunbi. You have to stay strong. You have to let me go so I can call someone who can help and we can do that."

She starts whimpering. "Why is this happening?" she sobs. "I just want to be okay. Why is it... why is it..."

Why is it like this?

Why does it have to be like this?

You don't tell her. Not at her last moment. On her last seconds left, you cradle and kiss her. You tell her of all the things she does and is that make you smile, of the funny moments the two of you shared in this lifetime. You tell her that if there is a next life, you'll be there with her. It wouldn't matter if you were a worm and she was the bird; you'll find a way to make it work. And oh, Eunbi, I love you so, you tell her, from the moment I first saw you. From the moment you sassed and insulted me, I knew we were meant to be. You're forever mine.

But you're wrong. The breath leaves her lips. Her soul has left. She's in another world now, where she's no longer yours.

It's over.

#ask #brokennightmares01 #kwon eunbi #eunbi #kwon eunbi angst #eunbi angst #kwon eunbi fluff #eunbi fluff #izone fluff #izone #izone fanfiction #izone eunbi fluff #izone eunbi angst #prompt

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withthewerewolves · 1 year ago

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GoldenHeart Fix-it AU

Ok, so I know that everything between Ballister and Ambrosius needed to happen for themes, and parallels, and narrative foils, and all that freestyle jazz. I realize that changing this sort of ruins Ambrosius’s character, and makes Nimona a sidekick in her own story, and such. But consider this-

It made me Sad.

So what if an AU where Ambrosius is messed up by being the direct descendant of Gloreth in a slightly different way, and is a little less hinged as a result.

The beginning goes down exactly as it does in the movie. The sword pommel lights up, the queen dies, Ambrosius swings his own sword. There’s a moment where it all freezes, Ballister still on his knees, gripping the place where his shoulder ends, big brown horrified puppy eyes locked with Ambrosius’s, begging for something (forgiveness? understanding? his arm back?) that Ambrosius can’t pull his scattered thoughts together long enough to give him. And then the jumbotron crashes between them, and when the dust clears, Ballister is gone.

I don’t know exactly how long it is between the Night of Knights and when Nimona finds Ballister. It has to be long enough for him to:

a) find the hideout and equip it with what he needs

b) design and build a prosthetic arm (using his nondominant hand)

and c) heal enough to install said arm.

It also can’t be too long, because:

a) the knights haven’t managed to track him down yet (perhaps this is giving them too much credit)

and b) the story is still all over the news.

I’m thinking this means less than a month, but not very much less.

In the movie, Ambrosius spends this time doing…something unimportant. Crying in his room? Punching training targets until he can’t stand up? Researching survival rates for unintentional arm amputation? Doesn’t matter. In this AU, he spends it spiraling. He starts with one absolute: Ballister wouldn’t do anything bad. He saw the sword kill the queen with his own eyes, from much closer range than his nightmares would prefer. Alright. So why, then, WOULD Ballister do such a thing?

He’s already struggled enough with the pressure to live up to Gloreth’s memory. We see that this sits heavy on his golden shoulders, and that both the Institute and the people put him on a pedestal. He’s seen the way the other trainee knights treat Ballister. We see that it bothers him, that Ballister instinctively holds him back from fighting Todd, as if this has happened before. We know that he knows that Ballister has worked harder than anyone, that he’s the best in their year, and that his lack of noble blood may (will) still ruin things for him. We know that he cares about protecting people, that he considers that to be a knight’s job. We see him choose to protect civilians, clearing the streets, when all the other knights rush to fight the monster. He can't be totally satisfied with the Institute’s training and ideology.

He doesn’t eat (he can still smell the burning flesh as his sword cauterizes Ballister’s arm, even as he cuts through it). He doesn’t sleep (his dreams are nothing but green light and Ballister’s pleading eyes). He reads a lot of anti-monarchy blogs. Maybe he finds some futuristic-fantasy Karl Marx. Maybe there are some activists protesting systemic inequality and they have a website with a list of useful terminology and their definitions. He absolutely does not research mortality rates for unintentional arm amputation. He stops telling himself that has no clue where Ballister might have gone (maybe it's time to give up lying to himself altogether).

He leaves the Institute. He maybe says some imprudent things as he’s leaving ("Bal was right! Any system that allows you (Todd) to be a knight deserves to be brought down! Tyranny never wins for long!”). He sort of wants to leave his sword and armor behind, possibly with some amusing graffiti scratched into them, but he doesn’t know what Bal might be planning, if he might need it, and surely it’s symbolic, to attack the Institute using the tools of its oppression? On that thought, he does make one tiny detour on the way out.

He finds Bal. There was only one place for him to be, once Ambrosius set aside the need to arrest him and let himself remember. I think it has to be before Nimona finds him, because Ballister puts on the new arm right before, and I want him not to be wearing it when he cautiously opens the door to his crumbling hideout to find Ambrosius framed in a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight, hair limp, eyebrow twitching like it used to before big exams, eyes maybe the tiniest bit wild.

“Ambrosius?” Ballister is pretty sure he isn’t hallucinating. Yeah, the initial wound was rough, and the shock got to him, and he definitely had a fever for awhile there. But he’s been lamentably rooted in reality for weeks now, and he thought he was over that little mental hitch every time he heard a noise in the next room and realized anew that Ambrosius wasn’t the one making it.

“Thank Gloreth,” Ambrosius says, because he may not have researched unintentional arm amputation but he does have an overactive imagination, and here Ballister is, upright and maggot-free and wielding a broken mead bottle.

He has a speech planned. He’d recited different parts of it over and over on his way here. There were some good bits in there.

Instead, he sees the gap where Ballister’s arm should be and loses the structural integrity of his skeletal system. “Darkness Beyond, I chopped off your arm.” His voice is mostly air pretending to be sound.

“Uh,” Ballister says. “Yeah.”

“I need to sit down.”

Ambrosius maybe clanks a little as he sits (it’s not a fall if you state your intention before you hit the ground), but it’s ok because Bal is wearing his armor too (except for the right vambrace - nope he can’t think about that or he’ll vomit) and he clanks too when he crouches in front of Ambrosius, filling his entire visual field (the edges will come back eventually, he can still see the important part).

“I CHOPPED off your ARM.”

“Are you here to -”

“I chopped OFF your ARM.”

“You were disarming a weapon -”

“Who even does that? Who chops off people’s arms?”

“You were just following our training -”

“Arm chopping is NOT a LOVE LANGUAGE.”

“Forget the arm!” This catches enough of Ambrosius’ attention to drag him back into himself, because Ballister doesn’t actually get upset that often. He can’t afford to, not where the other knights or their trainers might see. He especially can’t afford to, when it’s just the two of them and Bal has to shove all the anger back down himself.

“I don’t think I will ever forget the arm,” he says, but he smells Ballister’s sweat, like after they used to run miles in heavy armor, instead of roasting meat. He sees confusion and concern in Ballister’s eyes, instead of that horrible entreaty he never managed to answer.

Ballister clunks to the ground beside him, back to the stone wall, missing arm shielded by his body. “No. I don’t know that I will, either.”

Ambrosius doesn’t know what thoughts Ballister is caught in, but he can’t help drinking in his silhouette, familiar and beloved and so much more fragile than he’d ever imagined.

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asks, even though he told himself he wouldn’t.

Ballister turns toward him enough that Ambrosius can see the bitter quirk of his lips. “For the arm? Or for thinking I would kill Queen Valerin?”

The last minutes have been the closest Ambrosius’s mind has been to still since that series of frozen seconds after Ballister’s sword flashed, followed by his own, but now it screeches to a halt. “You….didn’t?”

Ballister’s head swivels slowly to look at him, like in one of those scary movies Bal likes so much.

“Why not?” Ambrosius asks. It isn’t the question he means to ask.

“WHY NOT?!”

“I mean - because the monarchy is an outdated system that prioritizes bloodlines over ability - and the whole idea of nobility is classist - and the other trainees were awful to you just because you grew up on the streets - and why do we even HAVE kids growing up on the streets, do you know how much the Institute’s operating budget is? We could fund a million orphanages! Or -”

“You think I would kill the Queen because some assholes were mean to me?” Bal is not tamping his anger down now. Ambrosius reminds himself sternly that Bal doesn’t like being angry, so it’s rude to think about how hot it makes him look.

“No! I knew you’d have other reasons!”

“The Queen is the one who LET me train to be a knight, even though I’m common born!”

“She shouldn’t have had to let you, you more than earned it -”

“So you thought I would KILL someone?!”

Ambrosius doesn’t have anything to say to that. He’s busy trying to re-sort all the stuff he JUST re-sorted to make room for Ballister killing the Queen, to make room for him NOT to have killed her. Does that mean he should put it all back where it was? How can he, now that he’s seen? He isn’t sure he wants to. He slumps back against the wall. After a moment so does Bal.

“So what…did happen?”

Bal swallows hard, his nervous tell. He doesn’t look at Ambrosius. “I don’t know.”

Ambrosius is running on fumes, and he’s had to reorder his worldview twice in a short period of time, but he does still have a brain under the fabulous hair. “Someone framed you.”

Bal glances at him through the corner of his eye. He’s somehow both more open and more closed off than Ambrosius has ever seen him. “Yeah.”

“Were you the target? Or the Queen?” Yeah, he’s been reading the anti-monarchy blogs, but no one seems to have any specific issues with Queen Valerin. She’s fine, as far as queens go. No one has mentioned assassinating her. Actually none of them seem to have any plans whatsoever. But the activists have plenty of plans, and they didn’t talk about assassinating her either. Isn’t there supposed to be a different internet, just for criminals? Maybe they talked about it there?

“Gotta be the Queen,” Bal says. “Which means the real killer is still out there.”

"Hm," Ambrosius says, because he's thinking about all the stuff people have been saying about Ballister, both online (where he can scroll past it) and in the Institute mess hall (where he cannot). He's wondering if Todd, who is unfortunately not as stupid as he looks, could have pulled off something like this, when he feels a light touch against the outside of his thigh, where his chainmail doesn't cover.

It's the first time Bal has touched him since before the ceremony. It's just the barest brush of the side of his hand, and could've been accidental except for how it's carefully placed so he can feel Bal's body heat through the cloth of his trousers, and how he knows that Ballister doesn't touch people by accident.

Ambrosius can't tear his eyes away from Bal's hand. He's not wearing his gloves (glove). The skin on the back is cracked like it gets in the cold season, unless Ambrosius sits on Bal and applies the moisturizing cream himself. The nails are ragged and bitten close to the quick, and something dark is trapped under them, possibly the same something that's streaked along the base of his thumb.

How's he supposed to clean under his fingernails with one hand? How is he supposed to WASH his hands, for that matter? Ambrosius quickly stops thinking about it. He’s here now. He'll clean them himself.

"Do you believe me?" Ballister asks, and Ambrosius darts his gaze up to Bal's face. It's turned away, as if he can't stand to see the answer to that question.

Bal's chin is scratchy where he hasn't been maintaining his facial hair, but Ambrosius revels in how warm and alive he feels under his fingertips as he tilts Bal's face toward him. "Bal," he says. "Of course I believe you."

Something in Bal's eyes breaks, or heals, or cleaves like a sword through bone. He slumps, suddenly looking like a teenager playing dress up in the huge armor he'd worked so hard for. Ambrosius wishes he wasn't wearing his own, because Bal tips so that his head is buried in Ambrosius’s chest, and that would be so much more satisfying for both of them without a chestplate.

Ambrosius buries his face in Bal’s hair (lank and unwashed, but smelling so much like BAL that he wants to roll around in it) and maybe cries a little. Bal maybe cries a little too. Ambrosius makes a mental note to get them both out of their armor as soon as possible because he needs to hold Bal properly, feel the warm living weight of him, maybe lay down and pull Bal over him like a blanket, revel in the soft puffs of Bal’s breathing, the chill of his toes, the flutter of his eyelashes against Ambrosius’s skin, the physical realness of him. All the little details his imagination could never get right.

Probably he does get to do this. Probably he gets them bathed and wearing fresh clothes (he probably packed a duffel bag from their shared dorm room), and maybe feeds them both some canned beans he finds in Bal’s mostly empty cupboards. Probably Bal shows him the prosthetic arm, which is nearly finished, and lets him marvel over the genius of it. Probably he says that once they’ve got Bal’s name cleared he should become an engineer, what was he doing wasting a mind like that on being a knight?

Probably they get to take a nap, pressed together on the couch. Probably Ambrosius is horrified anyone has been sleeping on that biohazard, let alone someone with a healing wound. Probably he’s too tired to come up with anything better.

If we’re kind, we could maybe give them just this one sleep without any nightmares. They need to be firing on all cylinders, because they’re going to be woken by a loud banging at the tower door.

I personally think it would be very funny if Ambrosius is completely on board with all of Nimona’s plans. He probably pushes for non-violence if possible, and then when that fails, for at least leaving innocent civilians out of it. Nimona isn’t convinced the civilians ARE innocent, but Ambrosius has some ideas for breaking stuff that intrigue her. Bal is horrified by the entire conversation, and has to be talked out of just going to the Institute and explaining himself. It works this time though, because Ambrosius knows exactly how unreceptive the Director is going to be.

Todd is the one leading the search this time, so he probably leads them in completely the wrong direction while our heroes talk to the squire. But if they do have a confrontation, it’s worse. There’s no intention to arrest them unharmed. There’s no chance to explain. No relationship talk over locked swords. He’s got the knights shooting to kill.

I’m not sure how Nimona reveals her shapeshifting. Probably Ambrosius is just as upset as Bal is, but he and Nimona are anarchy buddies. He makes himself take a step back and examine his initial reaction, possibly while narrating his thought process. If he didn’t condemn her for skewering guards on her rhino horn, he can’t condemn her for HAVING a rhino horn, can he?

Maybe the happy ending for them is this AU is different from the happy ending in canon. Maybe after they release the video of the Director, they do set out together to explore the world beyond the Wall, all three of them. But it isn’t because they’re afraid of the kingdom or the people in it. It’s because they aren’t tied to the kingdom anymore. They’ve all moved past the boxes the kingdom would try to put them in. They don’t NEED the kingdom anymore. None of them are going to be alone.

And adventure awaits.

#nimona #ballister x ambrosius #please talk to me guys #I wanna DISCUSS #my writing #not!fic

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yakumtsaki · 2 years ago

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Tragically, I have returned. I’d like to begin this update by thanking @lurking-lilibeth for solving the mystery of how tf Sugar died: apparently the ‘struck by lighting’ memory is glitched and sometimes won’t show up, so the conclusion is Sugar got hit by lighting, his needs went to shit, and he crawled to the bathroom to die. A death most befitting Sugar, if I say so myself! How cute are the zombs??

-They sure are, I wanna be struck by lighting, become a zombie, and go on a date with Sandy too!

Sophito istg, first you roll Jojo’s werewolf bs, now this, GET YOUR OWN THING

-Forget about my faildad and look at me being all pretty and wholesome and non-conspiracy-to-murderous!

YOU. Seriously, it’s been like 2 months since the last update and I still haven’t recovered from the reveal of Felina’s ‘real self’. Admiring herself in the mirror while her uncle died, there hasn’t been such a stone cold bitch around here since VICTORIA.

-I’m a stone cold bitch! Aren’t I, Servilia, you lil’ cutiepie baby booboo?

I mean you’re definitely formidable, Soph, especially when babytalking to the dogs, but you must admit you have mellowed out a lot in your old age.

-WHAT?! ME??? I’M SOPHIE THE TERROR FUCKING MIGUEL, I FEEL NOTHING. NOTHING-

-SERVILIA NO!!!! TAKE ME INSTEAD, I HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, NOTHING

-Gee thanks, grandma.

-GET OUT OF HERE YOU NON-DEATH-REACTIVE FREAKSHOW

Ya team Sophie on this one. Rest in piece Servilia, you were sweet, cuddly, batshit insane and gave us a dog heir that looks like a deer. I’ll miss you baby❤️

Felina can you have one shred of dignity and wait till Bartholomew’s birthday so this can be an even fight?

-Did HE have a shred of dignity when he RUINED MY PARTY???

Well no but I reprimanded him for it too!

-NO YOU DIDN’T

I didn’t? Probably too busy laughing, either way knock it off!

-I can take care of myself, GET REKT, FAILINA

-HE BIT MY FINGER OFF, YOU LITTLE SHIT, ONCE YOU’RE A TEEN I’M GOING TO MURDER YOU

-I’LL MURDER YOU FIRST. I’LL MURDER YOU TONIGHT IN YOUR SLEEP

SOPHITO FATHER OF THE YEAR DO YOU MIND INTERVENING AT SOME POINT

-Is Klaus getting a little fat, Remington?

-I think so, you should put him on a diet.

FFS, MOVING ON

I’m happy to see Cyneswith come out of mourning, and I’ll continue to hide my shock that she was in mourning in the first place.

-Does you metal back feel a little less tense now, iVan, huhu?🌸 -𝙸𝚃 𝚂𝚄𝚁𝙴 𝙳𝙾𝙴𝚂. 𝙸𝙽 𝙲𝙰𝚂𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝙲𝙰𝙽'𝚃 𝚃𝙴𝙻𝙻, 𝙸 𝙷𝙰𝚅𝙴 𝙳𝙴𝚅𝙴𝙻𝙾𝙿𝙴𝙳 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙰𝙱𝙸𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚈 𝚃𝙾 𝙻𝙸𝙴.

That’s great, iVan, are you ever gonna develop the ability to do something around here that isn’t fighting zombies and banging the elderly?

-𝚈𝙴𝚂😉

How did you even wink??

Cyn is such a good ‘grandma’, bro I cannot. WHERE WAS THIS SHIT WHEN SUGAR WAS A KID

-I was young and hot back then!💗

You know what, enough is enough, I’m breaking this cycle of bad parenting!

Liz stop vibing with Shajar and get your ass downstairs.

-But I love Shaj! -And I love you, Liz, you’re the child I never had!

Ok is it me or is it really becoming clear that both Shaj and Cyn wanted daughters?? Whatever, LIZ GO DOWNSTAIRS AND TALK TO YOUR DUMB EVIL KIDS

-FINE

-Little detour hehehe! -Oh Soph, let’s get a pool table in here and relive our youth!

GO TALK TO YOUR KIDS I WILL KILL YOU BOTH

-We totally totally will, just give us 2 hours- -3 hours- -Yes, 3 hours, to ‘get ready’- -Hehe! -Huhu!

I HATE YOU

-Alright kids, we are here for you. -We absolutely are. For 10 minutes, then we have to go upstairs again. -Exactly. So let me just start the clock here, aaand we have 10 minutes, alright, GO. -So kids, fighting is bad. -Yes. And we are family and we love each other. -Right. So no more fighting, ok? -Yes, good talk! Let’s go, darling.

-If I might address the elephant in the room- -Oh he’s gonna talk too? Ok. -9 minutes 28 seconds. -I have done my best to hide it as to not disrupt the family BUT FELINA IS BULLYING ME. -WHAT?! THAT’S IT, I WILL DROWN YOU IN THE TOILET -Felina!

-HE’S LYING, HE’S BULLYING ME, HE’S THE WORST BROTHER IN THE UNIVERSE AND HE RUINED MY PARTY, YOU WERE THERE YOU REMEMBER -We were?! -I have no fucking idea. -WILL YOU STOP WHISPERING, WE CAN HEAR YOU -Ya you’re not even trying to whisper, you’re just talking in normal volume italics. -STOP AGREEING WITH ME -EAT SHIT

-ALRIGHT. This has gotten out of hand and we need to leave in 7 minutes and 17 seconds, so here it is. Bartholomew, you are the worst brother in the universe. -HA.

-Felina, you are a psychopathic robot. You are both terrible, terrible kids. But.. that’s just how Union kids are! -Exactly, by our standards you are normal and that’s why everyone hates our family! -So when you go out in the world, you’ll have to rely on each other because everyone else will despise you! -They will?? -Honey, everyone hated me and your father, and we had way more going for us than you two.

-So.. no more fighting?? -No more fighting. -And being a Union is a bad thing?? -It’s not bad, it’s just that there is a preconceived notion around town that we are.. umm.. -Trash! -Trash, thank you, babe.

-So, now that we’ve cleared this up, we’re gonna go! -You kids get along from now on, cause you only have each other! -And don’t bother us anymore!

Well, that’s all better now. What’s up, Vic?

-THE FUCK WAS THIS SHIT~

A heartfelt family discussion, clearly!

-THE KIDS ARE FIGHTING AND THAT WAS THE BEST THESE LOSERS COULD DO?!~

Um, do I need to remind you of your parenting?

-I RAISED JOJO!~

Is that supposed to be a flex?

-I’LL HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THIS LIKE I DO EVERYTHING ELSE!~

Oh, goodie!

-FELINA UNION~ -AAAAAAAAAA WHAT THE HELL -I AM YOU GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER!~ -Ya I KNOW, I worship you! -GOOD. THEN YOU MUST HEED THE ADVICE YOUR DUMBASS PARENTS GAVE YOU AND MAKE UP WITH YOUR BROTHER! UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL!~ -But I hate him and I wanna win the heirship so I can damnatio memoriae him! -FELINA, I SENSE A DARKNESS IN YOU~ -Well you better, I didn’t rebrand for nothing! -REMEMBER, THE HEIRSHIP ISN’T A FIGHT TO THE DEATH!~ -FINE, I’ll remember it! Will you go away now? -I WILL.. BUT IF SOMETHING THREATENED THE FAMILY I’D HAVE TO COME BACK.. SO DON’T MAKE ME COME BACK!~ -Crazy dead bitch! -I’M STILL HERE!~

It’s a new day and this lot is FUCKED, we’re def gonna have to gtfo. The fire that started the night Sugar died IS STILL GOING but is not acknowledged by anyone, we just have a permanent glitched fire burning in the background. SYMBOLIC

-Mmmm.. Now I know what I want for my birthday.. Failina barbecue!

Try again!

-How about a kitty?

‘Grew up badly’ memory avoided at the last second! Ugh I’m such a pro gamer.

Welcome to the fam, Wendy! Wendy is really cute and mean and is gonna have kittens with Shinok! Alright Barth, time to blow the candles..

-Can I blow my parents’ brains out instead?

Ya can’t blame you on this one, WILL YOU TWO KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS FOR 2 MINS

Alright, here we go, I’m not even gonna ask what you’re wishing for because we all know.

Glitched yard background fire: 🔥🔥🔥

-WOOOO IM HOT

Not so fast, the Ti-Ning nose takes no prisoners!

-Failina has it too!!! >:(

Well it looks better on girls, what can I tell ya! Whatever, let’s roll for your aspiration, don’t even THINK of rolling family too..

-Oh don’t worry, I sure won’t!

UGH. At least we have a normal chem panel for once as Barth likes fancy bespectacled non-blondes. Boy do I have someone in mind for you!

NOP NEVERMIND IT’S CYN ROUND 2. FML

Ok Barth, here is your interim makeover until I download some stuff for you, how do you like it?

-I don’t know, I feel there’s something missing!

That’s just your soul, don’t worry about it!

-No no, it’s something else..

Alright I see where this is going..

-Now that’s better!

Oh ya, you look.. there are no words.

-HOW DARE YOU STEAL MY CROWN IDEA YOU FUCKING UNMOPPED VOMIT CHUNK -AT LAST THE CROWN RESTS ON THE HEAD OF SOMEONE WHO DESERVES IT -IT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE WITH YOUR OUTFIT

She’s got us there, Barth, you look ridic.

-YOU, SHUT UP, AND YOU, FAILINA, BRING YOUR HAND CLOSER SO I CAN BITE THE ENTIRE THING OFF

-YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME, BARFOLOMEW. STYLING IS OFF LIMITS, IT’S THE HOLY RULE OF THE FAMILY, YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT!!!! -I DON’T CARE AND I WILL GET AWAY WITH IT!!!!

AM I THE ONLY ONE CONCERNED ABOUT THE ETERNAL BACKGROUND FALL-OF-THE-HOUSE-OF-USHER FIRE. GO TO SCHOOL, BRATS

-HEHE, here I go, first day of high school wearing a crown! Now everyone will know who’s boss!

Wow yea, that will def make people think you’re awesome and cool!

-WOAH NICE CROWN -WHO IS THE NEW KID

WTF

-I’M BACK, LOSERS, AND I GOT AN A+ ON MY FIRST DAY THANKS TO MY BEAUTIFUL CROWN

-A̸N̵D̴ I G̸O̵T D̶E̸M̷O̴T̵E̵D A̶N̷D B̴R̷O̴U̶G̴H̶T M̴Y E̷X W̸I̷F̸E H̸O̸M̴E W̶I̴T̶H M̶E🧟

Seems like an amazing day for everyone! Where’s Felina?

OH THERE SHE IS. FELINA WHAT ARE YOU DOING

-I CURSE THIS BLOODLINE

HOE DON’T DO IT

-I CURSE IT TO DAMNATION

OH MY GOD

#gen 4 #ts2 #long post

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rosehippiefield · 1 year ago

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I saw somebody has done Yttd cast in Undertale before but I want to share some ideas about which Yttd character could act as which Undertale character. Of course, there's too many monsters so this is mainly about bosses and minibosses. Also this is long and yttd characters are sometimes repeated as they can serve several roles.

Sara is great for the role of Frisk simply because she has capacity both for sparing and killing. Goddess of Victory or Angel of Death, who will she choose to be? And without a doubt Sara is DETERMINED (Or there's another variant, Kanna, a kind child that will find approach to everybody. However, I don't see anybody trying to kill her there, as well as her even having a thought about killing.)

Kai can be Toriel for several reasons: he is housemaker, he is tied to Sara, so in this AU he can become her guardian for some time. Moreover, Kai has notable bond with Q-Taro and Gashu, both of which could fit Asgore. Imagine him betraying Asunaro and making sure humans survive. Or arguing with Q-Taro about morals.

Depending on the story Shin could match Napstablook when he's being his meek shy self. Just listening to music, not feeling up to anything, creating akward situations and lying on the floor. I can picture him doing it. Additionally, Ranmaru has similar vibe. Not the type to communicate with many, true introvert with deep insecurities... Why not?

Keiji is definitely Sans and I can't see it otherwise (well there could be other options but still I love Keiji as Sans). He is constantly tired, a bit lazy, has a fair share of mysteries, same ambience I would say. Keiji loves pushing responsibility onto Sara due to his trauma and consequent self-hate, Sans does nothing in genocide until the very end wheт majority is dead. Plus who is better to judge our protagonist than a policeman?

Joe is Papyrus, I don't make the rules... Well, Gin could act as Papurus as well, but let's at first talk about Joe. He is nice and funny, he befriends Sara easily, he literally can't kill her. He can have a brotherly relationship with Keiji considering "Mr. Policeman is Joe's dad" theory. The only downside is Papyrus can be killed and I don't see Sara killing her bestie in any way, even for survival. Maybe he is a doll and no longer a human?..

As to Gin, he is better as Monster kid in my mind. Curious, energetic teenager that admires strong, reliable and absolutely cool Reko (who's Undyne). Gin really trusts Sara, he is naїve to the point of believing her even in genocide route. Or maybe an annoing dog is also appliable, as Gin's stims include barking (and his desing, his Meow chan that is allegedly a dog) and the dogsong is perfect theme for Gin.

So, Reko as Undyne. Strong in every sense, fighting for her people's sake, brave, plays piano... Not to mention her relationship with Nao-the-Alphys. The thing is, would Reko kill a human for her people? Maybe not, she is quite kind. Especially if said human is Sara. Unless there is some misunderstanding... (I actually would argue Sara is a better fit for Undyne as she is samurai woman fighter type and she can be colder).

I haven't mention dummies before, but I totally picture Anzu as Temmie. Cute, sweet, funny, just good old Temmie.

I nerly forgot about Mad Dummy! In my book Ranger fits the bill here: an artifitial being that is really jealous of humans and hates them for it. He's sarcastic, extremelly rude, ready to kill. Also imagine that in the Ruins we encounter Dummy of Sei that Kai is keeping due to grief and memories, but now it ends up here as Ranger with consciousness but no soul.

Then we move to Hotland. Nao is a good Alphys in my book: a bit dependent, insecure, still striving to become better. Plus I want to give Mishima a Gaster role, so they share connection. (On the second thought, Safalin would make a compelling Alphys as well: she is actually a scientist, she has far more self-deprication as crying doll, she has many sceletons in the closet with questionable experiments).

There's little info on Gaster as well as on Mishima. Royal scientist whose genuis was unparalleled and that fell in lava (burning again?). Though Meister, whose role is still unclear, may look more like Gaster and have the same air of mystery.

For Muffet there are two worthy candidates: Mai and Maple. Both are acquainted with cuisine, both are extra sweet with their words, I think both can be persuasive about the product (it's Mai's profession, and you can't refuse to drink tea in disscussion room so Maple's capable of it as well). And of course you should never underestimate either of girls.

Mettaton... the star of the show, daring, flashy, attractive... Alice was in the band, his desing (in usual sprites just hair) is quite colorful, not to mention his physique, so why not? That would mean interesting relationship with Reko, who's his neighbor. Plus he could be a doll as Mettaton is an artifitially created robot. Maybe Nao/Safalin/whoever's Alphys created him to help Reko, they reconciled and Alice found his own path.

We are nearing the end. Asgore is morally gray character who killed children, regrets it but ready to repeat the deed for the sake of his country. As was mentioned previosly, either Q-Taro or Gashu could fit his role: Q-Taro because of appearance, kindhearted nature but ability to commit not the most ethical actions. I can also insert joke about killing kids (no matter how you interpret Q-Taro's words in the first main game, part of fandom will bring it up). Gashu had done even more morally reprehensible things for his "community" Asunaro. Plus, Gashu literally had a foster child that died (Sei, Ranger's inspiration).

I didn't mention Flowey because his story blossoms only in the end and depending on the person I replace him with the story becomes drastically different. The first one is Shin because firstly, I am biased toward him, secondly, Asriel essentially is bound to return to his flower form (kind of 0% to be truly happy), thirdly, they were both inicially kinder and due to horrible circumstances became worse. But yet they can become better. Moreover, roses. Maybe Kanna here was killed, and from sheer grief Shin turned into a rose? Alternatively, Ranger matches as well: he can't feel positive emotions just as Flowey doesn't feel them (I don't remember specifics but something along these lines). Plus, Sei was killed being a small kid just like Asriel and he has familial connections to Kai-the-Toriel and Gashu-the-Asgore (this sounds extra weird, nobody here is shipped of course. Just in case).

What about the souls and remaining dead people? I think some of the dead could be these souls: Kurumada as Bravery (he is boxer and this soul has gloves), Megumi or Mr. Policeman as Justice (police is supposed to make sure justice prevails), Hayasaka as Perseverance (he looks a bit nerdy and has glasses), Hinako as... Patience? (the real one), Kanna if dead can definitely be Kindness, Kugie as Integrity? Honestly, we know little about these guys so the arrangement can vary a lot.

Finaly, Chara. Maybe I'll do their character an injustice, but imagine them as Midori. When Frisk Sara is in the end of genocide, she sees Midori, a demon that is resurrected by her cruelty. He enjoyed every bit of it. Plus, then dynamic Chara Midori and Asriel Shin becomes quite intriguing (and messed up). Or maybe Kanna could be Chara as well, a kid that met a friend (or foster brother. Oh even a real one) in the underground and then died.

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deadinsidedressage · 2 months ago

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The absolute worst and ironically best turn of events happened to me in 2022 when my abuser started cheating on me. After investing a decade into molding me into the ideal victim who would never speak against him, he got bored with it. I didn't fight back anymore. I absorbed daily verbal attacks. The random violence he would perpetrate didn't spark a reaction. I would just accept it. I was numb. I was walled off. I had internalized the abuse so much and my depression fed into it.

He wanted to get caught. He didn't hide it at all and he let my paranoia over not being good enough (which he practically had told me daily for years) build and build until I was questioning him. He would reassure me he wasn't cheating and I think the way I was constantly anxious was fun for him. Then he essentially left hard evidence out so I'd find it. He wanted to break me and he did.

My multiple, rapid fire suicide attempts after finding out were largely due to the state of psychosis I was in. My 10 day stay in a psych facility did nothing to assist with my psychosis. It then persisted with varying amounts of lucidity for the next month, month and half that my abuser maintained contact with me after I was released into the care of my parents.

In a lot of ways, psychosis is a lot easier to live with than high reactivity PTSD. My path to mental health management post spousal abandonment in a psych facility has had greater volatility than the crypto market. Compulsive hypersexuality as a near impossible to control symptom of my PTSD was actively tearing my life apart at points. What I didn't expect as much was the transference of reactivity onto hobbies, places, and even people that were a major part of my life pre-psychosis.

I dated someone, who retrospectively a totally sane me would've only been friends with, for about a year and he introduced me to psilocybin. Which is something I have gained a tremendous amount of healing from. I dated someone, who retrospectively I just should've been fuck buddies with, for about 6 months who inadvertently helped me break my codependence. I met another abusive narcissist who love-bombed me and then dropped me when he decided to find another girl to cheat on his fiancée with. Which definitely launched me into a short period of psychosis and a longer period of out of control hypersexual compulsions, but which I didn't take lying down and did in fact do my best to ruin his life by contacting the "ex-girlfriend I'm roommates with" aka, fiancée.

You find out who you have real long-term compatibility with in quite a jarring way when you are at times going completely off the rails as a former abuse victim trying to restart their life. Some friendships go by the wayside as you unlearn personality mirroring and people discover they don't have as much in common with you. Others go down in flames mired by an inability to reconcile with the way severe trauma does not create a healthy person. New friendships emerge as you discover there exist people who resonate with those parts of your personality you thought were unlikeable, unlovable.

This time last year, I was about to experience a relapse of sorts. I got wrapped up with another abuser and the way that would end was far too familiar. I felt like I was reliving the night I was taken to the psych facility when I learned the truth of who that person was. I became suicidal and in trying to prevent myself from acting on that and take care of myself, I lost my job. A job I'd held for about a year and had really enjoyed.

At full speed, I went crashing into compulsive behaviors I knew would destroy me. I was sexually assaulted. I was cultivating a full "social calendar" and using sex to numb myself. I felt like it was all I had to offer anyway.

My low point was also miraculously how I met my other half. I was laying in the bed, well floor mattress, of a two strike violent felon. In the unfinished basement of his NA sponsor's house while he was on the phone with his drunk alcoholic ex-girlfriend. I opened Tinder and started swiping.

I had no idea the sad looking Navy boy I matched with would make me feel like I had reunited with the missing part of my soul. We married within 10 days of meeting, but kept that a secret for about a month after he'd left for his homeport.

For the first 18 year of my life, the thing that kept me alive was horses. During the decade I suffered physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse it was my involvement with horses that kept me sane. Realizing I had to give up that part of who I was in order to start my new life has been incredibly painful. I don't know who I am without horses. I don't know how to keep my mental health in check without horses. I feel such immense guilt over failing to hold on to my dream horse and give her the life I imagined I could. I breakdown and I cry over the loss of Mia, the struggles but ultimately joy I found in Chevy, and just the compounding list of reasons Mitzy and I weren't ever meant to be.

The thing is, I would and will sacrifice anything for that sad looking Navy boy who turned out to be the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me. The sweet southern gentleman who risked pneumonia while I drug him through every inch of my local zoo and had the courage to tell me about all the worst parts of himself without knowing if I'd accept them. The man I describe to our friends as "me but with a penis" who in turn reminds everyone I'm just "him with a vagina".

I know I haven't permanently closed the chapter of my life as an equestrian. I know because my husband reminds me when I'm breaking down in the shower about how lost I feel without horses that being without them is temporary. It's painful to be without something that I've felt has so defined me and that has been so instrumental in how I've managed my mental health.

Learning to navigate life as a military spouse, living so far from my family and my best friends (who so graciously kept my marriage a secret until I was ready to announce it), figuring out how to survive underways and an eventual deployment sucks so much ass now.

This period of feeling lost will pass.

One day I will again be popping over logs, hacking bareback, bemoaning the parts of a dressage test I'm struggling with, going foxhunting, midfielding in polocrosse, riding aside, and considering 3ft to be a big jump with a non-conventionally bred horse I love for its willingness to try anything with me.

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spacemonkeysalsa · 8 months ago

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God of Ambivalence

A tiefling Artificer splits a large stone on a beach to discover a one handed-wizard inside.

Pairing - OC/Gale & Shadowheart/Lae'zel but there will be more as it goes on.

Read Chapter One on Ao3

Read Chapter Two on Ao3

Read Chapter Three on Ao3

Read Chapter Four on Ao3

Read Chapter Five on Ao3

Read Chapter Six on Ao3

Read Chapter Seven on Ao3

Read Chapter Eight on Ao3

Read Chapter Nine on Ao3

Read Chapter Ten on Ao3

Read Chapter Eleven on Ao3

Read Chapter Twelve on Ao3

Read Chapter Thirteen on Ao3

Or read Chapter Thirteen below

For the first few moments of waking, and finding himself lying prone on a rather loud cot in the corner of the sanctum, everything else was still and quiet, and Gale felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes before he ever knew why. He tried to breathe in that calmness, and savor the feeling of not remembering everything that was very wrong for a few moments. Then his mind caught up with the flickering light of the candelabra being lit for the day and he remembered it all:

The orb, more a risk than ever.

His life, lost to him.

Everyone he knew and loved, dead.

His home and possessions, he didn’t even know the state of: someone else’s property now? A ruin? Compared to all the rest it was such a small thing, but he ached from having absolutely nothing. A feeling of decay lingered around him.

Still a disgrace.

Another sad story of a wizard who reached for too much and lost it all.

He glanced down his bare torso, where his stumped hand lay over his stomach.

The blanket barely covered him, but was still overwarm. As was typical in the early morning, lingering arousal held him, but satisfying that need wouldn’t be wise as long as his condition and that of the orb were so unstable. He’d just have to wait until it passed. It could take some time.

He didn’t need to use the facilities either, which alarmed him. It had been several hours. Did that mean he was still dehydrated?

Not an ideal day to be setting out on a journey, in any case.

But he couldn’t stay here.

“Awake?”

Gale didn’t look up from the cot right away, but bent his knees on reflex, and drew the blanket a little higher over his chest and ruined arm. A quick glance around the room showed him that Elion hadn’t entered yet, but lingered her the curtain over the archway, his horned silhouette stretching as the fabric swayed.

“It would seem so,” Gale groaned and sat up with a little effort, feeling a lopsided strain from only being able to use one arm, while the other tensed and curled into his empty stomach.

Elion lingered as an outline on the curtain and Gale realized he was waiting for permission.

“Oh, come in.”

Still, the tiefling hesitated a moment before parting the curtain and stepping inside. He held something.

As Gale came to understand what it was he wasn’t totally sure what to feel. Elion cupped the piece, a hand made of articulated metal. It had to be the purpose of this arrival, but he seemed oddly shy about it. Gale realized he was watching him, trying to discern a reaction, and Gale couldn't provide one, not intentionally, anyway. A prosthetic was practical. He should recognize that. A custom one was a gift. He should be grateful. But the loss of his hand was still so new as even just an idea. He should allow himself a moment to grieve the need for it. This was where he settled and he hoped Elion wouldn’t be offended by the small sad smile that he felt curling his lips and filling his eyes. Gods above, he needed to just get on with it. Patience for himself could come later. They had a task ahead of them and he needed to not be an emotional mess for it.

“It’s not just a prosthetic. It should act as a conduit. Probably more effective for your cantrips than anything.” Elion cleared his throat and managed to speak about the gift like that wasn’t what it was. “Do you… want to try it on?”

Gale managed a nod. He knew he’d have to say thank you eventually, but couldn’t quite bring himself to speak yet. A rare occurrence.

Elion took a seat beside him on the cot and showed him how the cuff could be fixed tight over his stump with just the pull of a strap. He wouldn’t need help with it as long as he still had his other hand.

It didn’t exactly feel comfortable, but Gale didn’t notice any pain right away either. That would probably change if he wore it constantly. The bone, barely guarded by a thin layer of skin, would chaff against the inside of the cuff. He’d need to change out interior padding, at the least, but it was already better than he’d expected, and tightening the strap to keep it in place didn’t cause any additional discomfort. Impressive.

“How’s the weight? The material I was working with was very dense, but I think I managed to refine it.”

The weight was so similar to the hand that he’d lost that for a moment Gale was able to close his eyes and fool himself. But it only lasted until he tried to move the dark articulated fingers and couldn’t. There was something to the metal that felt strange. “What did you use?”

Elion seemed reluctant to answer, “Infernal metal,” he sighed, “I know that’s a little…” he didn’t try and find the words for what it was. “It’s the best quality material available and easier to manipulate, especially if you want to incorporate any magical use with it.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Gale softly, observing the dark, still prosthetic where it lay on his thigh before he brought it up to his face. Basic cantrips had been inscribed in soft, faintly luminous chips of red and orange. The hand itself looked like it had been shaped by an artist, in that it was a leaner, smoother interpretation of a hand, rather than a true rendering.

“There’s a small release mechanism here. You can make it grip and then use that to let go. Should be useful.”

“When you say it’s a conduit, do you mean it facilitates enhancement?”

“It can, but it’s a little more delicate, actually. Should help you be more… measured?”

Thinking he understood, Gale decided to test it. Mounted on the wall above his cot was an unlit candle. “Ignis,” it sparked to life. “Glacia.” He put the candle out again with a ray of frost small enough that the droplets of water evaporated before they could drip onto their head.

“You make it all look so easy,” Elion chuckled, “Did it help at all?”

“Oh yes,” Gale confirmed, throat a little tight. “Sorry. I am grateful. Thank you, sincerely,” he turned the hand over, feeling it with his remaining fingers. “Being quite so intentional with magic actually hasn’t come naturally to me. I eventually got to the point where I could weave spells around targets, or even keep things milder where it was more appropriate. When I was young, the difference between firebolt and fireball somewhat eluded me. That is to say, bigger and more intense has always been my inclination. Measured is good. It’s what I need.”

“Well. It will accommodate bigger and more intense, should that need arise,” Elion promised, somewhat mysteriously.

“What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere, Elion? You’re clearly an artificer of no small talent. Seems they would have use for you anywhere you wanted to be. Why do you want to be here?” He mostly started talking as a way to distract from thinking about himself for the moment. But as he spoke, he found his interest was genuine. All things considered, he really had yet to know anything at all about the person who had rescued him from that stone.

“That’s kind of you to say,” but Elion’s smile was pained, he wrinkled his nose, “but not accurate at all I’m afraid. They’ve no use for me anywhere.”

“Absolutely can’t let you get away with saying that.” Gale held up his new prosthetic, for a moment he was worried that he’d moved too quickly and it would come loose, but it stayed fast. “This is far beyond useful, Elion.”

“Then I guess I’m exactly where I should be.” Elion didn’t exactly sound thrilled, but there was a more smile fighting its way through a vale of rugged stubble. His eyes took in the room around them, and he said “Need help packing?”

Gale actually laughed, “I have no possessions. Everything I own, I stole from this sanctum.”

“We should steal more. On our way out.” Elion slid off the cot and motioned to a discarded backpack from the ground beside the cot. Gale hadn’t put it there, but perhaps Elion had, with the intention of letting Gale use it. His tail parted the curtain as he turned around to give Gale another look before he left him in privacy to prepare. “We’ll be out front. There’s no rush.”

There was a bit of a rush though, wasn’t there? Gale wasn’t welcome here.

He looked at the well-crafted prosthetic again, a little more closely. Something tightened through his arm, almost as though he felt the sinews reaching out to it, pulling from the near constant ache in his chest that encircled the orb. He needed to feed it again. The prosthetic itself would make for a feast, but Gale hoped he’d never come to be that desperate. The hand was far too useful. As he stared at it, he thought he saw a glint of purple light glancing off the rune-carved palm and fingertips. Trick of the light, surely.

And perhaps it was his imagination, but as she stood up and began to gather what few personal effects he had, he thought he felt the hunger ebb.

A conduit? He wondered as he walked into the cavernous main chamber of the empty sanctum, if it was drawing from his will and his ability to channel the weave through his body, could it draw from the orb itself?

Gale pushed the thought aside with a mental snap. It was far too dangerous. No good could come from it. He shouldn't even entertain the thought.

Besides, it probably wasn't possible. He had never been able to exercise a modicum of control over the damn thing. Why would this new apparatus—as useful as it might be—change the fundamental chaotic and ravenous nature of the orb?

He wouldn't think on it again.

Given the overbright state of the courtyard, it seemed he'd been permitted to sleep quite late. Everyone else had the air of having been up for hours. To his relief, none of them seemed particularly restless. It was meant to be a rather easy journey, after all. Though, it was Erakis who described it as such, and Gale had to acknowledge that due to the man’s singular physique, he might have a different understanding of what was physically easy, that greatly differed from the average person.

The cleric walked right up to him, wordlessly checking him over with a sweep of her subtly mismatched eyes. She nodded, satisfied, if not pleased. “You're looking quite well.”

“Thanks to you.” He'd probably never see her again. “Truly. I can't possibly repay you, but do let me try, if you think of something.”

“A favor to Rolan is a favor to me and mine. I'm sure he'll have something he needs in return, assuming he can help you with your…” Shadowheart squinted, gestured to him. Sufficient.

Gale only nodded. He didn't have the slightest idea how Rolan might help, on his own merits. He didn't want to consider it again, but he had already spent a few exhausted hours on his cot the night before, walking through the most likely scenario. It was bleak. It would be painful, and humiliating. But, it might just save him.

Lae’zel’s farewell was limited to a sharp nod, but he was fairly certain that was actually quite a good get from her. Arabella was nowhere to be seen, and he'd barely spoken with the stone mason, so he said his farewell to a couple of cats while Xan had a longer conversation with his mothers, and Elion with his master.

Erakis lingered near the bridge, so Gale went to meet him. He traveled as light as Gale, with a small pack and a simple spear that could double as a walking stick. He said nothing as Gale came near, but held himself in a stiff, markedly unfriendly manner that Gale tried not to take personally. They would probably only be traveling together for a single day, afterall, and the man might simply have a preference for silence in a little adventuring party like theirs.

But, there was also something to be said for breaking the ice, and Gale found that he finally felt something like hope, with the road in front of him, and imminent death left in the past. He'd moped enough. The orb was quiet for now, his brain blissfully parasite-free, and he had a new prosthetic to get to know. It was time for a little normal conversation.

“Ever been to Waterdeep?”

“No.” Erakis answered quickly. So quickly that Gale didn't have a follow up question quite prepared enough to avoid the pregnant silence that followed.

“I remember it as the city of splendor indeed. But, I suppose a lot can change in a hundred years?”

Erakis shifted, seemingly very interested in the drop from the bridge into the ravine below. “I think, a hundred years ago it was a good place to find wealthy pricks, and it's still that, as far as I can tell.”

He wasn't wrong. “A little reductive, don't you think? And hardly unique.”

Erakis made a noise of assent. Still pointedly preoccupied with something inside his head or invisible.

“Where are you from then?”

“Baldur's Gate.”

Gale wasn't the best at reading when someone was lying. In his experience, it was best to just keep the possibility in mind, always, treat the person as though you took them at face value, and then plan a contingency, when necessary. It wasn't necessary here. If Erakis didn't want to be honest about his background, Gale couldn't yet see how that would affect him. More than likely the man just valued privacy and wanted to avoid any confrontation. But the fact that Gale, who was quite hopeless at picking up on deception, immediately picked up on it told him something rather interesting about Erakis: he was a bad liar.

“Baldur’s Gate? So, you're headed home! must be a relief to get back after weary travels.”

He couldn't fake enthusiasm, but Erakis nodded stiffly. In addition to this being their first conversation, this was also the first time Gale got a decent look at him. If they hadn't been two totally different races, he might've read more into the man’s similarities to Elion and assumed them to be kin. The both had strong facial features, though Elion’s were made a little sharper from the vestigial demonic touches of the hells. The irises of Erakis’ eyes were black, to the point that he couldn't discern the pupil. There was something pallid and sunless about his skintone, which seemed unusual for someone who was outdoors a lot, and had naturally darker skin in the first place. He'd done something different with his hair. When he'd seen him the day before it was long, lank and a bit wild, but he'd taken a sharp blade to it, it seemed. Gale felt a twinge of guilt as he considered that this new look may have been enabled by the fact that he had to wait around quite a while for his companions and didn't have anything else to do. He'd shaved down the sides of his skull and cut into some of the length, tying up the remaining mane on top of his head to keep it off his neck, though it still shaded his brow heavily. The new look made it easier to see the steel studs impaled through his ears, matching the heavy ring in his nose.

“How did you get like this, exactly?” Erakis indicated Gale’s entire body with the flick of one finger.

Gale had not yet had too many opportunities to try and explain himself, especially not to a total stranger. But, with the stranger in question also being a cagey liar who seemed reluctant to engage in much conversation, he thought that perhaps a flippant sliver of the truth would be enough to put the matter to rest. “Would you believe it was a grand romantic gesture gone horribly awry?”

“Yes,” said Erakis without hesitation. “Fucking wizards,” he added in a sigh.

It was the kind of thing that usually would have irked Gale, but wearily, he had to acknowledge that there was some merit to the sentiment. “Indeed.”

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