#and for two: I know that these crack ships will NOT become canon | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gloomwitchwrites · 2 months ago

Text

Tattoo Artist Simon "Ghost" Riley x Female Reader

Chapter Specific Warnings (per the warnings MDNI): canon-typical violence, swearing, angst

Word Count: 3.5k

A/N: Part Twenty-Five of Ink & Needle

Price reveals three possible locations. Task Force 141 infiltrates.

Chapter Twenty-Four // Chapter Twenty-Six

ao3 // main masterlist // ink & needle masterlist

Knuckles pop. Joints crack.

Simon is primed—nerves and muscles alive and firing.

Ready for action.

Ready for blood.

His old life is returning. Not as fragments but through muscle memory. The training never left. It still dwells within him, twisting around tendons and bone like vines strangling a trellis, awakening to revive the man that once was.

"Tell me what you see, Simon."

Captain Price's voice comes from behind, drifting around Simon like lingering cigarette smoke and dirty snow. Silently, Simon observes the spread of information before him.

"These are the possible targets?" asks Simon, his gaze moving from picture to picture.

A small burst of air before the balaclava becomes steam. The abandoned barn they’ve set up shop in is fucking cold even with the generator-backed heaters turned on. But the cold hardly bothers Simon. His bad knee might not like it but the ache is easy to ignore.

On the wall is a massive map of the world. There are pictures of people and places pinned in various locations. Some of the people are crossed out—marked dead. Others are untouched or painted over with a question mark.

"Yes," affirms Price. "Anything familiar?"

Simon shifts his attention away from the wall and to the table in front of him. There are more pictures here—more documents.

A muscle in his neck spasms. "No," growls Simon. "Walsh likely abandoned his old haunts."

Price shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not."

Two pictures of Walsh stare back at Simon. One is an old photograph from before. Walsh's skin is perfect here—free from burn scars or blemishes. The second photograph is newer but slightly blurry. Walsh wears a black jacket, hood up, face in profile. Even with the burn scars, his face is unmistakable.

"Walsh is prone to paranoia," says Simon, bringing the newest photograph closer. "He had places even I didn't know about."

"That's my point," replies Price. "Walsh trusted you. And yet he still didn't tell you everything."

We are gardens now.

The two of us.

It's easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

Simon's fingers twitch with the urge to crush the photograph. Shoving the compulsion down, Simon returns the picture of Walsh to the table. Focusing on the massive board before him, Simon observes each marked location, his mind flipping through the rolodex of information he obtained during his infiltration.

"What makes you think it's one of these three?" asks Simon.

He lightly taps the picture in front of him. It's an aerial photograph of a series of warehouses near the Port of Felixstowe. There are two other ports marked including those of London and Liverpool.

Unease slides like sludge in Simon’s stomach. “Not only are these major ports, two of the three are fucking tourist attractions.” Simon turns on Price, crossing his arms over his chest. “You can tour a naval vessel and then board a cruise ship in a single day at Liverpool. London is the fucking same. Walsh isn’t making moves there.” He points at the picture of Felixstowe. “This is the only plausible of the three. Privately owned. Recent docker worker strikes.” Simon drops his arm. “But I don’t fucking believe that for a bloody second.”

There are other ports marked across Europe and the United States. Walsh likes to move around, never staying in one place too long. Sometimes he’s moving drugs. Sometimes he’s moving weapons. Using the same place of entry is risky with dangerous cargo.

"We have surveillance," replies Captain Price.

Gaz hands Soap a laptop. Johnny takes a seat and taps away at the keyboard, bringing up several video feeds.

"This one is for Felixstowe." Johnny allows the feeds to run for a bit before clicking over to a new set. "Liverpool." He switches again. "And London."

Simon shakes his head, noticing nothing in the grainy footage. "It's too close to home. Too busy. Too regulated."

Price's face remains impassive. “Look closer." He glances at Soap. "Roll them again."

Simon steps up directly next to Johnny's shoulder. Placing one hand on the table, Simon leans in. Johnny pulls up the surveillance feed near Felixstowe first. As it plays, a tiny twist of anxiety curls in his stomach. Are his eyes going to shit?

"You see it now?" asks Price.

"No," says Simon sharply.

Johnny loops the feed and points. "Here, Lt."

Squinting helps but hardly makes things any clearer. "Zoom in."

Johnny pauses the feed and enlarges it enough to give a more focused picture but not enough to render the pixels worthless. From the back of an SUV emerges a man that looks like Walsh. With him is—a woman?

Like a punch to the solar plexus, the wind is knocked out of Simon.

Is that you?

"You see it, Lt?"

"I see it," growls Simon. "Show me the next one."

Johnny repeats each surveillance feed, pausing and zooming in. There is a woman emerging from an SUV in each one, that is unmistakable, but is it you? That part is unclear. The videos aren't distinct enough to show details.

"We think this is her," says Price.

"In three different places?" asks Simon, skeptical.

Hope is a fragile thing. He wants to cling to it, to imagine that this is you he's seeing in all three feeds, but he cannot allow himself to latch onto an idea that may not hold any reality.

The middle of Price's brow creases. "You need to look again, Simon."

Simon slowly straightens himself. All of this feels like a game—Walsh's game.

"The timestamps don't make sense," growls Simon. "They're not even hours apart!"

"Exactly," says Price, stepping closer. "All of them are the same. Except one." Price lightly squeezes Johnny's shoulder. He brings up the first video feed again, the one from Felixstowe. "This one is different," murmurs Price, his gaze focused on the computer screen.

The feed plays and Johnny pauses the image. A small light flicks on in the dark recesses of Simon's mind.

"You see it now, Simon?"

"I see it, Captain."

Of the three, the woman is always alone in the Liverpool and London feeds. In Felixstowe, she isn't. In Felixstowe, there's a man grabbing her upper arm. A man that looks very much like Simon's enemy.

"We don't have confirmation," continues Price, already seeming to know exactly what Simon is thinking.

It doesn't fucking matter if they have confirmation or not. This is a lead. This is something.

"We've already sent recon teams," adds Kyle, breaking his silence.

The pity isn't there anymore. There is only grim determination. They've seen Simon at his lowest, and yet that doesn't matter. They're doing this to take Walsh down but they're also doing it for him.

Gaz glances at the map but he addresses Simon. "Walsh wants us to focus on Felixstowe." He turns attention to Simon. "Which is why we sent recon."

"And recon said different," replies Simon.

Kyle winks. "Exactly."

"Felixstowe is staged." Price moves toward the map. "But Liverpool?" Price turns back to Simon, with a smirk. "Want to know who funded that little transfer for Walsh?"

Walsh has always moved behind the scenes. He always lurks in the dark. Pockets are lined and Walsh obtains what he wants. At its core, big business is greedy. They’ll happily look the other way if they can get what they want and get away with it.

Some of the earlier unease melts, adrenaline replacing the anxiety.

Simon’s question is immediate “Did you bag the fucker?”

“I have a tail on them as we speak.”

“Good,” growls Simon. “Walsh with them?”

“No.”

Even better. It means Simon can deal out his own justice.

Simon exhales, trying to find a sense of calm amongst all this new information. "All I want is Walsh.”

I just want her back.

Simon wants that fucking wanker alive. He wants Walsh to squirm. To suffer. To feed the man his own teeth before making him choke on them.

But even that won’t satiate what Simon truly desires.

You. Only you.

In his arms again. Warm and safe and all his. To know that you will never come to harm again.

Price’s smirk becomes a genuine smile. They’ve been after this man for fucking years, and now Walsh is truly in their grasp.

Nodding toward the map, Price gestures toward it. "Our best guess is this warehouse near the Port of Liverpool."

"Why?" asks Simon. “It’s a haven for tourist.”

“It caters to tourist and occasionally houses the Royal Navy just as much as it brings in and sends out goods.” Price exhales. “It’s busy, yes. But it’s unsuspecting.”

"It's also the only place we've seen Walsh arrive to and leave from," adds Kyle.

Simon shrugs. “Could be a distraction. Make it obvious so we aren’t looking at other possible targets.”

“Could be,” replies Price casually.

“We’ve got him, Lt. And not on surveillance footage.”

"The recon team did," continues Gaz. "Real subtle, too. Like he didn't want to be seen."

Diversion has always been Walsh's specialty. His most devoted followers will do whatever he asks from shooting up a corner store to acting as a body double. The man is a manipulator. A friendly face that says exactly what you want to hear to reinforce your own confirmation bias.

He does it all in the name of power and personal superiority.

Simon turns toward Price. "Are we going after that warehouse?"

Price nods. "Tomorrow."

Darkness is a friend.

A companion. A trained beast. A silent killer.

Simon looks into his scope, checking and rechecking the perimeter of the building. Soap has already disabled the surveillance camera on the western side of the building. To the person watching, they're seeing a continuous loop of nothing.

The building itself isn’t one of those boxy metal buildings you find all over the States. This warehouse is old, made from brick and stone, built when ships were still only made of wood. Marked as a historical location, and yet currently closed to the public.

How bloody fucking convenient.

While the night is cold, the port isn’t empty. There are no cargo ships unloading but there’s a docked Destroyer all lit up across the River Mersey. Tourists and locals move along pedestrian areas, and the nearby arena is awash with light as some musical artist performs.

Life moves. Uninterrupted.

As it should be.

And not one of those souls realize what lurks in the dark.

“Soap. We ready to breach?” comes Price’s voice over comms.

Johnny’s answer is laced with slight static. “You have five minutes until the loop ends.”

Price turns back to look at Simon and Kyle, silently pointing in the direction of the door they’re entering the building through. Johnny is on the roof with two members of the recon team sent earlier.

With rifles raised, the trio move silently across the concrete. Price forms the front while Gaz and Simon take the sides and back. They stay on a swivel, watching Price’s rear as he approached the door.

“Three minutes, Captain,” comes Johnny’s voice over comms.

Behind Simon, there’s a clink of metal meeting metal. Something rattles. Then a soft creak as the service door opens.

“We’re in,” replies Price.

Price eases the door open. He keeps his gaze forward, hand coming up to signal that everything is clear. Simon enters behind Price with Kyle on his heel.

“There are three down the hall,” crackles Johnny’s voice over comms.

Price, Gaz, and Simon move silently down the tight hallway. One side is solid brick, the other treated wood. They pass breakers and switches but no doors. There are a few wall hangings but they’re for the workers who would handle the upkeep.

At a tight turn, Price presses himself against the wall. Simon and Kyle crouch as Price eases a small handheld mirror around the corner. There are only a few feet of hallway remaining before it meets a door that says “EXIT.”

“Where are they, Soap?”

A pause. “Just outside the door. Left.”

Price turns the corner and stops at the door. They form a line, switching off night vision. The door opens, and Price is moving. Simon is right behind him, blood roaring in his ears as he follows his captain.

Simon’s finger hugs the trigger.

A muted pop leaves the chamber.

Dark red bursts in the dim light, painting the wall and nearby mounted lamp. The three men never had a chance. They don’t even make a sound as the lead penetrates their heads and explodes in their skulls.

Price’s voice greets Simon in his earpiece. “Clear.”

“Two near the entrance. Follow the lights.”

The building is utterly silent. It’s all exposed brick and pipes. Distantly, Simon hears water dripping, but it is otherwise quiet like a slumbering monster.

Walsh is here. He fucking has to be. Simon senses it in his gut.

Price takes the two out near the entrance, Simon following behind with an extra bullet for each just to make sure.

“We’re coming up on your right, Captain.”

Johnny appears with one member of the recon team. The other remains on the roof, keeping an eye for any incoming vehicles.

“The bunker is through here,” says Johnny, aiming his weapon at the floor.

“The door is in the bloody floor?” asks Kyle.

Johnny crouches, his gloved hand gently probing the wood. They all watch until his hand pauses, his fingers lightly pressing downward.

There’s a hiss, and then Johnny is lifting, revealing a ladder and a dimly lit hall that Simon cannot see the end of.

Price squeezes the shoulder of the soldier from recon. “Keep a lookout here. Radio if you hear or see anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

Price releases his shoulder and descends first. Johnny heads down next followed by Simon and then Kyle.

They’re going in blind. They do not have the plans or layout of this part of the building. The strangest thing is that it looks brand fucking new. It doesn’t make any sense.

Walsh doesn’t build. He utilizes what’s available and goes from there.

There’s only just enough light to see by and there are no doors except the one at the end of the short hall. They might find a maze. They might find a singular room. There could be walking into a trap or nothing at all.

Simon isn’t sure what worries him more.

But you have to be here. Somewhere.

Price counts down starting with three fingers. At one, he raises his rifle and kicks in the door, charging forward. Heartrate spiking, Simon heads in after him, finger tight on the trigger, ready to burst skulls and shatter bone.

The adrenaline peaks, swarming Simon’s senses.

And then it comes crashing down.

As if falling from a great height, Simon is presented with an entirely different outcome.

The firing end of the rifle drifts downward, his gaze focusing on the singular object in the entire room. It’s a box. A metal tackle box like you’d take on a fishing trip. Above it is a bulb hanging from the ceiling. The light it emits is warm and low like it’s been on for years and is just about ready to give out.

Price, Johnny, and Kyle all walk the perimeter of the room.

“It’s solid fucking concrete!” shouts Johnny, his steps increasing as he drags one gloved hand along the wall.

Price slowly spins. “What the fuck is this place?”

“It’s not a storage warehouse,” says Kyle. “There’s nothing here.”

“A hideout, then?” suggests Johnny. “A bunker?”

“Then where’s the bloody bed?” replies Kyle, voice rising slightly. “There isn’t even a table!”

Simon’s focus is narrowing to a pinpoint.

The tackle box is a deep forest green, the handle black, the latch gold.

He takes a step toward it.

“Don’t touch that, Simon.”

Simon ignores Price’s command. He moves closer.

“Simon!”

“Lt! Don’t touch it!”

It’s a game. This is all Walsh’s game.

Simon comes down to one knee beside the tackle box. It’s old—a little banged up. Somehow, he recognizes it.

His gloved thumb brushes over the metal latch.

“Simon!”

It’s Johnny, but Simon is already moving—already releasing the latch and lifting the lid.

Memory resurfaces, and cold dread twists Simon’s stomach. Scratched into the interior of the lid is a name.

It’s Simon’s father’s name.

The tackle box is his father’s, a relic from a time when there was no abuse and no alcohol. Simon remembers going on fishing trips as a young boy carrying this exact box even though he was far too small to hold it properly. He’d always walk leaning to one side due to the weight.

Then it collected dust in a closet as his father became a monster.

But the box isn’t empty.

There are no fishing hooks or plastic dividers. All of that is gone.

In its place is your hair.

Not much, just a cleanly cut portion no larger than Simon’s pinky. It’s neatly tied with red string. Beneath it is a filmy scrap of paper.

The words face him. Clear and obvious.

She’s not here. Try again, friend.

“Simon.”

A crater in the Earth opens up, swallowing Simon whole. He is descending, falling through an endless hell. Spiraling down, down.

“Simon.”

Johnny’s voice is a distant thing. It’s trying to penetrate, to worm inside and pull Simon out but his mind is flipping.

She’s not here.

Your lock of hair is delicately tied, a regretful solace that rings out into Simon’s subconscious.

Try again, friend.

“Simon!”

Following his name is a rattling of gunfire. It’s not distant. Just over his shoulder. In Simon’s earpiece, someone is rattling off a series of numbers and positions, but Simon isn’t paying attention.

You are not here.

You are—elsewhere.

Lost.

In a place where Simon cannot tread.

An instant passes. Then another. The darkness around him transforms, flipping end over end until everything that Simon knows about himself slips away.

You were supposed to be here. He’s supposed to find you. To bring you back.

But this is a task that Simon clearly cannot handle.

Fingers claw up his esophagus, creep over his tongue, and press against his teeth. It emerges, breaking joints, allowing the darkness Simon feels to burst forth and wrap around him, enshrining him in a bloodlust he hasn’t felt in years.

The rifle tip rises. Simon is running on autopilot, allowing Ghost to take over, to consume every ounce of sanity.

Price, Soap, and Gaz are holding down the door, firing at an enemy that Simon cannot yet see.

His feet are not his own. His hands belong to someone else.

Charging forward, the firing end of the rifle explodes. The enemy on the other side are surprised by his sudden appearance. They faulter for a second, their eyes widening slightly in fear. But it’s enough.

It’s enough.

They are cut down, reaching out, hands pressing against the holes in their bodies as blood pools on the floor.

Simon unloads until he’s empty. Reloads. Empties again.

“Simon!”

The rest of his team follow, but Simon is hungry. A blood beast.

When the lead isn’t enough, he uses his hands.

There are bodies all around him, a trail for Price, Gaz, and Soap to follow.

On he moves, devouring. Slicing and gutting until the blood of his enemies begins to soak into his clothes.

He doesn’t remember ascending. Doesn’t remember resurfacing only to dive right back into the void. With ears ringing and a hint of metal on his tongue, Simon destroys everything in his path.

He is aware of Price, Johnny, and Kyle. They move around him, guns high, picking off everyone they can. Simon moves from enemy to enemy, uncaring of how he kills them. He breaks bones. Breaks teeth. Breaks soul. He stabs and slices, relishing in every anguished sound they make.

It is only when so many have fallen that Simon digs in, wanting to draw out a final blow as if the man before him is Walsh and not a nameless crony. The man sobs, his eyes replaced with Simon’s burrowing thumbs.

“Where is she!” screams Simon. He doesn’t even recognize his own voice. “Where the fuck is she!”

The sob becomes a garbled cry. Bloody. Crimson pools and dribbles from the man’s open mouth.

“Tell me where she is!”

Unresponsive. Dead.

Simon slams the man’s head against the floor.

But it isn’t enough. It will never be enough.

A strangled scream is ripped from Simon as he repeatedly bashes the man’s head into the floor.

Hands are on him, grabbing at his arms, tearing him away. Simon swings, clipping Johnny in the chin.

“Enough!” Price wrestles Simon to his feet, pushing him hard against the wall. “They’re dead, Simon.”

His head pounds, the balaclava moving rapidly into and out of his mouth as he gasps for air.

You’re not here.

It’s all slipping away. Piercing and sharp and yet so dull that Simon begins to feel numb.

“Simon,” murmurs Price, the middle of his brow creasing.

Try again, friend.

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simpingforheros · 4 months ago

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Jason Todd Head canon 1#

I’m bored at work so I’m giving yall silly headcannons to make y’all smile. This is very crack! Headcanon vibes because I’m manic as well right now. But, I love my toxic zombie boy.

Redhood! Jason Todd X Batgirl! Reader

If they had became vigilante’s together, they would definitely reconnect after Jason starts to forgive the BatFam.

Would definitely always pair up with her just so they can cause some mischief during patrols.

Definitely play up the flirting in-front of civilians and would definitely encourage shipping just to annoy Bruce.

Would ditch galas to do riding around.

You two basically just resume your friendship until one night, you both got drunk after hanging out at Roy’s and yall wake up the next day with a broken bed and tattoos on y’all’s hips.

If You became batgirl after Jason’s death, God bless you

Jason would be hard on you with the intimidating and dickish act for a long ass time.

He wasn’t as bad as he was with the others because he understands that you weren’t involved with his death and you weren’t a replacement for him as much as you were Oracle’s.

When the moody stage finally passes and he realizes that you won’t put up with his tantrums, he will try a new approach.

Red hood becomes known as a menace to Batgirl in the media.

Whether it be he would somehow end up saving Batgirl while being a snarky ass hole or do behaviors that would cause her blushing face to be on the covers of tabloids.

At the manor, the pair bicker almost as much as they bonded over common interests.

Now the arguments revolve around those interests even if half of them started because of joke either one of them started.

“Bridgerton is just a horny girl’s excuse to not read Jane Austen” “Take that shit back right now!” “Make me.”

When the feelings actually start to develop, the bickering and the flirtation gets so bad that they become the most shipped ‘enemies to lovers’ ship among the tabloids and Gotham’s youth.

Finally, tension boils over when an incident happens where Batgirl was almost killed by a major villain.

Oh shit, Red Hood was not very happy to find out that Batgirl was currently in a hospital bed after a failed recon mission.

He went head hunting after that 🫢 Not that kind of head.

After that, Jason became unbearably protective of her. Volunteering to be on patrol with her, driving her to appointments, stalking her , breaking in coming over to her room/apartment to hang out.

It all boiled over after a heated and trauma dumping confrontation between the two where the neighbors/residents of the manor heard screaming, yelling, maybe a broken vase, and some creaming.

Red Hood! Jason Todd X Civilian! Reader

Ngl y’all, Jason dating a civilian would probably be a little toxic.

He’s either gonna date someone so fucking sweet that it fuels his need to be a protector and act as a balm to his failure complex.

Or he’s gonna date someone as fucked up as him so he feels some form of trauma bond with them.

He probably would spot eyes with them in a busy setting and because he’s very good at reading people, he would immediately start his stalking because he wanted to know if he can trust them before building a relationship with them.

Would probably never approach them as the Red Hood before meeting as Jason Todd unless it was a situation where he had to step in.

Secret lover boy with self sabotaging tendencies.

He would stage their first meeting as a form of meet-cute scenario. Most likely on the street or a bookstore.

Would play the long game of meeting by ‘chances’ and casual little conversations.

Has a weird prey/predator mentality where he wants them to give him their number first or ask him out first but he’s the one actually pursuing them.

If they started dating, he would treat things very slowly or very casually depending on which type they are.

If it’s the sweet one, he’ll play it slow and gentlemanly, like the romance movie lead.

He wouldn’t want intimacy or pressure anything like that even if he constantly thinks about it.

Maybe a little less toxic but more manipulative.

“Oh baby, there’s been a ton of robberies around that area. Let’s just go riding then we can go see that movie you been talking about.”

“Sweetheart, I love how precious you are, but I’m really busy right now. How about I swing by after work with some treats I already had picked out for you.”

His true nature would come out eventually. His vulnerability would show more, but by then his sweet little partner would be so loving and understanding.

They would comfort his nightmares and rub his aching muscles.

It would be 1.5 to 2 years into dating before he would reveal he’s Red Hood.

The fucked up one is getting toxic Jason.

This pairing probably met at a bar/party, and their relationship started out as a casual friends with benefits.

The two would become closer faster than he would with a sweet one, but oh my god, y’all fight for your lives.

Arguments are usually loud and heard throughout the apartment building before they would either screw iy out or have to separate.

Jason would eventually return with either dinner or a gift to apologize. He learnt that from his daddy Brucie.

Unless that man is down bad, in love, he ain’t telling y’all anything.

Anytime he gets asked about where he’s going to at night,

“It’s none of your business.”

“Work, don’t worry I’ll tell her you asked.”

“You know I’m busy.”

Don’t worry, the longer you two stay together, he sweeter he becomes.

Our toxic king will get better and less toxic.

It takes him to the moment he realizes that you really aren’t gonna leave him and that you love his fucked up ass, for him to tell you he’s the Red Hood.

+++++++++++

AN: That’s all I got for right now. Let me know if you want an Arkham Knight version or if I need to calm down with our Toxic King.

+++++++++++

#jason todd x reader #redhood x reader #jason todd x y/n #jason todd x you #dc comic fan fiction #jason todd #red hood #jason todd headcanon

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caramelarchive · 1 year ago

Note

could I request something like the reader deciding to give L a lil massage. It started out in their head as smth sweet/relaxing until it became high-key concerning cuz every press of their hands draws out a deafening crack

Let's Try a Massage ╾ L

BAHHAHAHAHHAA the fact that this is not somehow canon is a crime, I cannot. anyway, thanks for asking! let's go! I have moved to my main @lawlietscaramels please follow there for new content!

　★━━─・‥…━━━☆

"Boo," you say, coming up behind L to rest your hands on his shoulders and your head besides his. He gives a quick hum of acknowledgement and you peck his cheek.

"Hello, there." After a minute, he turns away from the computer's bright screen, rubbing his eyes and rolling his shoulders as he turns to look at you. L gives a yawn, one of the rare signs he trusts and loves you enough to let his stoic guard down, and blinks sleepily at you.

Your hands brush along his shoulders.

"Ready to take a break yet?" you tease gently, poking at his neck.

"I suppose so." L turns back towards his computer, one finger tapping against the j key and the other prodding at his lip. "I don't think I can do anything else at the moment," he decides, and turns the monitor off, scooping a forkful of cake into his mouth as he does so. "Did you want something?"

L spins his chair around to face you at this question, his head tilting up as he peers at you from the seat. One of his hands reaches up to rub at his shoulder and he gives a cross groan, not breaking eye contact.

"...Did you want something?" you ask, smiling and poking at his shoulders. L groans again and bats your hands away.

"I am simply a little sore."

You grin as a wonderful idea comes into your head: something sweet and cute, to help L relax after yet another long day of hard work.

"In that case, I can help!"

It's a difficult feat to pick L up, so you just roll his chair over to the couch and push him onto the cushions.

The detective turns his head to the side, so he is able to keep his eyes on you, but does not make any move to protest. L just shifts around a little, groaning unhappily, and waits for you to do... whatever it is you're going to do.

Pressing your hands together for a minute to warm them up, you eye your partner up and down.

...Definitely, a massage is required here.

You decide to plonk yourself down on his back for easy access, your hands reaching up to L's shoulders. Your fingers probe into the skin and L gives a small sigh of gratitude. A smile spreads across your face, as you're obviously able to remove some of the stress he has placed on his body by scrunching it into a ball all of the time.

And then a crunch.

You almost fall onto the floor, scared out of your wits. "L! The human body should not make that noise!"

"My apologies."

You sigh and stroke his hair for a moment. "I think this proves that you need some sort of assistance with your back, my love."

The gesture, which you thought to be sweet, becomes more and more concerning as you continued. Wherever you place your hands, there is a dramatic crunch, a crack, all very loud and very not normal.

"L, when was the last time you saw a doctor? Or an acupuncturist or a chiropractor or a physiotherapist?"

He just shakes his head.

You press your hands into his back and it cracks in protest. You take your hands off him and wring them in dismay.

"I just wanted to give you a massage, and now you sound like a whip-person..."

L gives a little chuckle. "Yes... Perhaps a different approach is in order, my dear Y/N." He shifts again, turning to look at you once more.

"I'll run you a bath."

　★━━─・‥…━━━☆

𝖎𝖋 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖙 ˏˋ⋆˖⁺˖⁀➷ 𝖕𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖘𝖊 𝖗𝖊𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖌 + 𝖋𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜

what if I wrote a little bath scene? nothing nsft as I have said but I mean,, rose petals in the water, bringing in a rubber ducky or a plastic ship... lemme know if you want that as a part two!!

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cryinhell · 20 days ago

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No one asked, but here's my updated top ten hellaverse ships (both canon and not)

10) Stella x Striker

What can I say? I love an evil couple. I think these two look pretty hot together, and it's interesting how Striker seems to respect Stella despite hating blue bloods. These two aren't canon, but I wouldn't mind if they were

9) RadioRose

Despite having mixed feelings on Alastor, I think these two are just so cute. Either as a couple or just queer platonic partners, I don't care. Rosie seems to be the only person to make Alastor genuinely smile, and she's the only one who can touch him. There's a special bond there I really like

8) Verosika Mayday x Wally Wackford

So this is the biggest crack ship on this list, but I think in theory, it's so cute. I really want Verosika to be happy, and Wally, despite being a bit of a scammer, is really sweet. I'm totally cool with Verosika ending up with Barbie as well, but I slightly prefer Wally. I wonder if they will have more interactions in future episodes.

7) Fizzmodeus

Is this controversial? Probably. I know Fizzarolli and Asmodeus are so loved in this fandom, so putting them at number 7 is awful...but they aren't my favorite. I do like them, and I think they're really cute! I just have ships I like more, but that doesn't take away how sweet these two can be. Sometimes obnoxiously sweet heh. So yeah, no disrespect to these two

6) M&M

So these two were at first kinda meh for me, but over time, I've grown to love them. They have a pretty healthy relationship, and I always hate when someone bothers Millie for marrying Moxxie or saying Moxxie isn't a good enough husband. These two clearly love and respect each other and clearly grow together with every episode.

5) Staticmoth

Like I said, I love an evil couple. Valentino is a monster, and Vox is deplorable. That doesn't stop me from loving them as a couple and thinking they are cute. I think they both should die, but also would be sad cause come on, they're cute together.

4) Cherrisnake

I love Sir Pentious, I love Cherri Bomb, so obviously, them together is a fun pair. I shipped these two before the show came out and was so excited to see Pen having a crush on Cherri. They kinda remind me of the early versions of M&M, but they need a lot more time. Cherri isn't ready to accept love, and Sir Pentious is well...in a different world. I can't wait to see these two develop and become an actual couple.

3) Adamsapple

So this and Lucilith could be here. Lucifer being happy is the main objective, and its Adamsapple is so fun. They clearly have a history, and there's a lot of feelings. If Adam comes back in season 2, I'd love to see this be fleshed out. I doubt they'd be a couple, but maybe friends? Who knows. I'm fine with this one not being canon, and just something fun in the fandom

2) Stolitz

Stoltiz is pretty important to me because it really got me involved in the fandom. I've been watching Helluva Boss since the beginning, but episode one of season two had me from casual watcher to actual fan. Blitzø is one of the characters I really relate to, and Stolas is just a really well written character. I love the development of these two and they are worth waiting for. I really gotta draw some fanart of them because they are everything

1) Huskerdust

Are you surprised? You must be new. These two are my everything and all time otp in the Hellaverse. I've talked so much about why I love them, and I will continue to do so until I can't any longer. Angel and Husk are not only my favorite characters individually, but their growing friendship and eventual relationship are just so ughhhh. I love these losers, and they will always be number one.

Thanks for reading my nonsense

Have a good one 💜💜

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throwawayasoiafaccount · 4 months ago

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Why do you think the tides have slightly turned from "Elia deserves better than Rhaegar" to shipping her and Rhaegar together? Like what is the psychology behind these people because I've seen some of them like/reblog anti Rhaegar posts while also shipping Rhaegar x Elia at the same time.

hey anon! my thoughts are a bit messy, but i’ve done my best to explain them coherently :)

so, rhaegar was the best man anyone could have when elia was alive, and most people want the best for their favs. he was considered the most handsome, didn’t have a bad personality, and he was crown prince—meaning elia was almost queen, which is often seen as the greatest role a woman can have. the narrative also treats rhaegar as a beautiful, tragic, haunting figure, and elia actually had this very aesthetically pleasing man all to herself at one point! she was married to him, had children with him, and her life was so close to perfect! but rhaegar just had to go and ruin it. 😠

for many elia stans, if rhaegar hadn’t fallen in love with another woman (they want him to have been a completely different character), then everything would’ve been perfect, and elia would’ve had the best, most desirable life. however, that’s not what happened—elia met a very tragic end, and as a result, these stans feel double the bitterness. because of this bitterness, they blame rhaegar for everything (even though it’s not logical to do so), but he’s just too ‘perfect’ to let go of. so, for years these stans have made rhaegar revolve around elia, filling his tag with posts about her out of bitterness. so, i do believe that this obsession with rhaegar x elia has always been there, but i think it’s become a more favorable stance on the elia stan side of the fandom because of a mix of reasons.

plus, rhaegar is one of the few canon relationships we know elia had, since she’s not much of a character. because of this, and the fact that most people don’t like to stray too far from canon, most elia stans are forced to focus on rhaegar, which has created an echo chamber. basically, if a sentiment about elia and rhaegar’s relationship becomes popular, then the whole elia stan side of the fandom will likely regurgitate the sentiment. (also, this desire to stick close to canon is likely why the elia x arthur ship was so popular. while it’s a total crack ship, it had good aesthetics, and since elia and arthur at least knew each other, it allowed the stans to create their perfect fanfiction whilst sticking it to rhaegar. but remember, elia was actually married to rhaegar and had children with him, so while arthur is cool, rhaegar was always ‘top dog,’ meaning arthur would never be able to match up to rhaegar to most elia stans. also, the arthur x elia crack ship is likely her second most popular ship, which just shows how little elia stans have to work with, so they’re always forced to eventually return back to rhaegar for a lot of things.)

however, even if the elia x rhaegar ship gains more popularity, these stans will never stop hating rhaegar because he wasn’t ‘perfect’—and he wasn’t perfect because he didn’t love elia. plus, rhaegar loving another woman and supposedly kidnapping her is what began the war that led to elia’s tragic death. that’s bitterness times 1000. and while i don’t actually blame rhaegar for the war, i do think that this is how an elia stan sees it. i also don’t view rhaegar’s complex relationship with elia as a bad thing—it’s actually a very realistic take on an arranged marriage between two decent people. but most elia stans will never be able to get over the fact that they almost had everything, which is why many have it out for lyanna, as they consider her a thief who ruined their ‘perfection.’

tbh, that might be why so many elia stans are so obsessed with the idea that rhaegar only got with lyanna because of the prophecy—they don’t want to believe that rhaegar actually loved a different woman and not their perfect self insert elia. that’s a bit mean of me… but i don’t know what else one would call the ‘elia’ elia stans have created.

now that i’ve laid all those thoughts out, i’ll try to explain why the tides seem to be turning… i think it may have something to do with the ‘targaryens are all evil and bad’ sentiment losing popularity. i think this shift has occurred due to a mix of factors, such as years of fandom fights and fandom cycles leading to the targs being more liked now than before. it helps that canon doesn’t actually condemn the targs/favors them quite a bit, and the influx of new targ fans from HOTD has also contributed. this combination of reasons seems to have shifted the way the mainstream fandom discusses all the targaryen characters, including rhaegar. so, with this shift, it’s only natural that some elia stans/elia x rhaegar shippers—who’ve always been there—are using this opportunity to push their agenda. while these stans still hate rhaegar and see him as the bad guy, they just can’t let go of him. and as the mainstream fandom moves away from the anti targaryen sentiment, these smaller corners of the fandom, which tend to be echo chambers, are also affected, which has therefore led to a rise in rhaegar x elia shippers and the ‘shifting tide’ that you’ve also noticed.

#‘if only rhaegar did this’ is a very common sentiment amongst elia stans #most stans have always had the ‘if only’ mindset #‘if only elia survived’ easily leads to ‘if only rhaegar didn’t run off with his whore’ as the targs become less hated #it’s kinda a pipeline? rhaegar anti plus elia stan leads to rhaegar x elia shipper who still hates rhaegar #another reason that a lot of this happens is because elia and the martells plus dorne are the good ‘others’ a person can like #while the targaryens are the ‘bad others’ one can safely hate as they’re white & have a bit of demon symbolism + come from an ‘evil’ empire #the targs also ruled over everyone so a lot of fans like pushing all the blame onto them for all the problems #however the targs are cool and they’re hot af and being royalty is the best! so they’re the ‘bad others’ one can safely hate #but people still want their aesthetic and want their favs to have what the targs had. all the cool magic + the aesthetic + danys monikers #so people can convince themselves that it’s okay and logical and right to hate the targs but most ppl will still connect their favs to them #of course… things have been shifting in the fandom which i’m very happy about #and all of these sentiments are combined and compressed when it comes to rhaegar and elias relationship #so any big shift on how the fandom views the targs will always affect the way rhaegar and elias relationship is viewed #it just so happens that the targs aren’t the evil dragon nazis anymore so it’s kinda okay for elia stans to ship him with her #i’m not gonna go through my tags and make sure they make sense so i’m simply hoping for the best #anyways… i hope i didn’t digress too much. i just found this shift so interesting so i couldn’t help myself #asoiaf fandom critical #anti elia stans #rhaegar targaryen #anti rhaegar x elia #house targaryen #valyrianscrolls #pro rhaelya #lyanna stark #rhaegar x lyanna #anon ask #thanks anon this was a fun topic to cover #i recently found a really old post about both elia and lyanna and boy… it was quite discusting to read #elia stans kinda cycle from ‘elia deserved better x crack ship with shallow aesthetic’ back to elia x rhaegar while shitting on rhaelya #just know that rhaegar is always the bad guy to them! the sentiment on lyanna will go from hot to cold but rhaelya is always bad as well!

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noicevibes · 1 year ago

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𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝

it is said that distance makes the heart grow fonder. instead, it only proves to make the water levels rise a few millimeters.

pairing -> neuvillette x gn!reader

warnings -> sfw, sad neuvi & reader, smooching

notes -> reader's position is a non-canon one

character mentions -> lady furina, fontaine npcs, non-canon melusine characters

wc -> 2.1k

It wasn’t so often that the paths of you and your lover could so seamlessly cross.

As one might assume, governing a nation is not a walk in the park, nor is it a part-time position. It is a twenty-four-seven, midnight-to-midnight, no-matter-how-small-the-crisis job that someone has to take responsibility for— with Monsieur Neuvillette, the Chief Justice, leading the charge of each court proceeding and Lady Furina as its grandest witness, and you, the Maison Ordalie's Directeur Général, helping them to uphold Fontaine’s values and protecting its honour from outside the marbled walls of the Opera Epiclese, Fontaine is a tightly-run ship that seldom allows for its men to enjoy much free time.

Though when it did, finally exiting the realm of your job responsibilities only then meant having to catch up on your neglected home responsibilities— tackling the towers of only partially rinsed dishes; taking out the trash you just knew would be stinking up your foyer since you’d put it there three days ago (which had been the last time you’d even been inside your home); rewashing the load of laundry you’d run out of time to hang up to dry and now was, most likely, moulding from being left in basket, still damp. Ah, and there’s probably so much more you’d been forgetting about.

This cyclic routine of yours had become nauseating a long time ago, only proving capable of transfiguring your already sour mood into something brazenly foul. Typically, there were very few things to exist that could improve it again, but the soft, muffled knocking on your front door by one of your sweet Melusine neighbours when she realized you’d finally returned home, fortunately, is one of those few things.

More often than not, she would bake once the weekend began, knowing you to be around at least long enough to be able to consume perhaps one of her newly learned confections. Somedays, you’d even been lucky enough to sit and enjoy them together whilst enjoying the views from under your shared garden’s gazebo. Being that you lived on the first floor of a three-floored pied-à-terre with three other Melusine living above you, who had also been found lucky to have much more manageable lifestyles, they often cared for the plants of the garden when you could not.

Even luckier for you, though, was having such kind neighbours that would go out of their way to take care of those aforementioned chores for you. Garden tended; garbage bags mysteriously vanished from the inside stoop; dishes sparkling clean and put away in their respective cupboards; laundry thought a lost cause having been hung up, dried, and folded, awaiting your return for them to be returned to their drawers— none of this had been you. Elsie, your second floor neighbour, had been the culprit, you learn, having rounded up her sisters Elie and Eloie two days prior to your return to surprise you.

“Have you seen Monsieur Neuvillette lately?” Elsie inquires, looking up to you from her place on your stoop. When you step aside to let her in, she shakes her head, lavender-coloured ears whipping about. “I won’t be staying. I only came to say hello and to give these to you.”

“Oh, I see,” you say, accepting the circular tin she raises toward you. Cracking it open a few inches, you smile at the soft treats. “Madeleines! Thank you, Elzie. And, to answer your question, no… I haven’t seen him lately… not even for work.”

“You’re quite welcome. Please find time to share them with the Monsieur today, then. Sedene mentioned he looked restless this morning.”

Without missing a beat, your heart skips one of its own, and your expression twists habitually guiltily. You know full well your absence from him, and vice versa, isn’t to be helped, and that the two of you have had this same conversation many times over. But it never proves to help whenever someone else points out either of your miseries.

You’d always thought the Palais Mermonia to be particularly cold, in company’s sense. It never mattered that it was always full of people, of employees, and even of Lady Furina’s raucous, nails-on-a-chalkboard cackle of a laugh, because you knew its Chief Justice much too well. In spite of his assurances that he would be alright, mind occupied by having to organize new cases and sort out the old ones, it wouldn’t be too long of a time later that you found the skies overcast, and yourself drenched by a sudden downpour.

You supposed, after saying your farewells to Elsie, locking your front door, and making your way to the other end of the Court of Fontaine, that today would be no different. Of course, you remembered to carry your parasol on you this time, accompanied by the tin of fresh-baked madeleines you promised Elsie to eat up. Today, the sky was shining blue, quite literally only minutes ago. So, either something sad or distressing has crossed his path, or, he’d been feeling sentimental again, because it’s raining again.

At the very least, you hope the cause for it to be the latter. This way, it can easily be remedied by you appearing before him, rather than him being consumed by the details of a case so heavily, and for an unspecified period of time. And there have been too many of these as of late that compared to last year’s weather, one might consider the possibility of that prophecy coming true just a little sooner.

Clutching the cookies tighter to you and keeping a firm grip on the handle of your parasol, you hasten across the bridge of the Court Region Waterway untoward the Palais Mermonia, greeting Bruneau and Liath and Plessia as you pass. The main doors are heavy, but even with your arms full, you manage to pry one of them open enough to enter the building.

You don’t both to carry your umbrella with you — it would just be yet another mess the building’s staff would have to trail after you for to clean — and instead shove it into the corner to let it drip there, telling the one guard that you would return for it, and them saluting you in acknowledgement.

Inside the Palais Mermonia has always been a plethora of people, staff and guards and visitors alike, but it is as you’d said— there’s a certain degree of emptiness to it that unsettles you whenever you visit here. Perhaps the grave amount of case files that sat in the archives surrounding Monsieur Neuvillette’s office cast such a dreary spell over the place; having been the one to compile many of them, yourself, for his records, you know firsthand just how dark some of their contents had been— to have to pass those off and share them with your lover had been your major grievance for your position. There’d been nothing you hated more than sitting in during his readings and seeing his expression change from the joy of having you appear to him, to the rage and sorrow of taking in the details of a new case. In those moments, you made sure to hold him a little tighter, a little closer, and speak just a little sweeter to him, a little softer.

The rain would, eventually, subside.

You push open the door to his office as gently as possible, and shut it just as carefully so as not to startle him. Without looking first to confirm, you know that he sits at his desk, pouring over the day’s files and records while it pours outside. His stoicism masked the obvious, though at least, this had been to you only— something was weighing heavily enough on his mind that it’d begun to affect the weather outside. Spending enough time with the man made this easy to tell.

“Neuvillette,” you softly call to him when he’d yet to look up. He jerks slightly in his seat, stiff shoulders losing their tension upon recognizing your voice, and the corner of his lips rise before his eyes can even meet yours.

“My love.”

If having you appear in a room filled with such disheartening unkindness is his relief, yours had always been the advent of a smile on Neuvillette’s face. A rare glimpse of the peace you often find yourself daydreaming over while away, the rush of pure joy you feel at the sight of your lover relishing your presence is nearly akin to the blessing of the gods— you only embrace him tightly enough and hope this feeling reaches him.

Nose pressed into the side of your head, hands and arms cradling you almost impossibly close to him, he breathes you in as deeply as physically possible— yes, his gesture promises.

You raise your chin from his chest and peer up at him, grin lazed and tired but pleased all the same.

“You were finally released from your duties?”

“If it were easy to delegate them to my juniors, it might’ve taken less time to escape,” you muse, hands sliding down his robes to claim his hands in yours— he squeezes them gently, grateful. “No one seems to know how to write a proper report anymore; I feel like I’m grading homework.” Neuvillette laments at the sudden shift in your expression, its complete opposite serving to dim the light in your eyes. By the way your grip tightens beneath his fingers, he supposes it must have little to do with your subordinates, after all.

“It’s… been raining for so long now,” you mumble into him, cookie tin forgotten atop his desk. “I tried to hurry to you, I-I…”

Neuvillette’s hand shifts along one of yours, quick to fit thin, nimble fingers in between your trembling ones. He lifts it, and presses your palm and fingertips into the smooth, porcelain coolness of his cheek— few words are found necessary, you’d both once agreed, as he’d always been a man of sterling gestures over forced sentimentality. In each glance, each touch, each curve of his lips upward, his vehemence never went unnoticed; it’d simply been his brand of love— demure and chaste, but abundant. There’d been no questioning his intention.

“I would sooner give up my position if it meant I could stay at your side at all times, if it meant you wouldn’t cry so much. If it meant you wouldn’t suffer alone.” Neuvillette sighs, a would-be defeated sound if not for remembering who he was standing with. “I… feel useless on days like these when I’m not with you.”

“Justice cannot relent so long as villainy works around the clock. It is our sworn duty to see such justice prevail, after all.” Neuvillette swipes a thumb over your lip, and subconsciously, you lean into his palm almost delightedly. “And you have done so beautifully, and without malice. Every word written in those reports from your juniors, while, written juvenilely, speak of your fairness. Your impartiality. Your ability to see both the truth and the good in all.” He turns his hand, pressing his lips into your palm. “It is admirable. It is my pride for you. It is why, as much as I wish you could stay at my side, as you said, I hope you can see the value and honour you bring in helping to protect Fontaine. I can’t imagine many else doing so well as you do.”

You raise your free hand back up to his chest, and push. A fraction of a single second is spent wide-eyed and confused until Neuvillette’s legs hit one of the many couches within the four walls of his office, and he is forced off-balanced into its plush. Your other hand gone unrelinquished, you fall with him, knees parted to either side of his and dipped deep into the cushion; Neuvillette’s breath hitches unnoticeably, yet at your sudden embolden proximity, his pale cheeks burn with vermillion.

“I’m supposed to be comforting you, you know,” your murmur.

A kiss to his temple, to the swell atop his cheek, to the button of his nose, and to the cleft of his lip— you lower yourself into his lap, parted lips dropping to slot between his and hands rising to thread into his strands of falling starlight, pulling him ever closer into you. It’s not enough, simply consuming him. You only wish to drown his sorrows, by whatever means necessary and however possible. If this means only having mere moments to appear before him, to deliver him sweets and treats of various kinds — not including yourself, of course — and holding him as tenderly as you do now for what seconds you must have left before having to leave again—

Tongue posed at his lower lip, your gaze is brought to the side and through the glass of the window. The rain. It stopped.

“And I can promise… you’re doing a fine job of it, my love.”

#favoniuslibrary #neuvillette x yn #neuvillette x y/n #neuvillette x reader #neuvillette fluff #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact fluff #crying bc i'm posting this at 445am and i have to be up for work in 2 hours but i wanted it DONE tho there was more i wanted to say in it..#hope neuvi liked the cookies tho #✦ nc vb.#neuvillette

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doodler16 · 23 days ago

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I remember some people talk and fear that viv may make lucifier x alastor canon judging by the hazbin leaks just because it's a popular Alastor ship and I wouldn't be surprised that she did with erasing aromantic part of Alastor just to make another ship of two twinks to become canon

Yeah, I am definitely one of those people who is worried about radioapple being canon but for different reasons. I won’t be surprised if it becomes canon though.

I remember when I was discussing radioapple with an online discord friend, I remember being so confident that it wasn’t going to be canon because of the reason that Alastor is on the asexual spectrum and that too much drama would happen.

But slowly, my confidence about that slowly cracked as I realized that Vivziepop is easily influenced by the fandom and people around her that within seconds she can make a well known popular ship canon in seconds without adding any buildup or decent chemistry.

Even though an employee wrote this, they still acknowledged radioapple with their ship name and I do not remember on Vivziepop’s channel specifically, them doing the same treatment for other ships like Charlie and Alastor for example.

There is also this short made by Prime Video that features Alastor and Lucifer calling them a “match made in Hell.” I know it’s the opposite of “match made in Heaven” but it still implies being partners. I don’t have a Twitter but I have heard Vivziepop likes fanart of radioapple as well (to be fair she probably likes other Helluvaverse ship fanart too besides them).

But who knows, Vivziepop can blow me away and surprise me and not make them canon. Only time will tell.

#vivziepop critical #vivziepop criticism #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel criticism #anonymous

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ultimateplaylistmaker · 19 days ago

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Rate all the popular dangitronpa ships out of 10

Komahina; really fun but also kinda overshadows other fun ships, along with the issue of characterization being a bit flanderized, but very fun in basically all forms 8/10

Oumasai; interesting fact the reason i call it oumasai instead of saiouma is because 1. Kokichi tops and I refuse to budge on this. and 2. to help keep it out of the much more popular tag when I'm complaining. Anyways 90% of it's terrible but that 10% can be pretty damn good though, please become less popular, constant bad characterization 3/10

Ishimondo; classic, maybe too much of a classic, way too hard to find other ships with these two, however ishimaru did in fact get mondo on his knees in that sauna so i can't exactly say they are wrong, alas i got into danganronpa at like 13-14 and i was too young to really appreciate this ship and has kinda made it not something i ever really reach for 7/10

Naegiri; also a classic, I love them, they are so cute, they love each other so much and the memes are great, genuinely amazing, plenty of room for fluff angst and crack. Adorable but also not something I tend to overly reach for over other ships however am more likely to casually see it and go "HELL YEAH" and read a 40k fic, 8/10

Kaimaki; long time fans know I am not the biggest Maki fan, she's grown on me over the year, but the more canon a ship gets the harder it is for it to keep my interest without some other detail, and Kaimaki, does not have that other detail, I don't mind reading it if it catches my fancy, though I think I prefer it unrequited on Kaito's end, is 'aight 6/10

Saimatsu; similar problem as kaimaki of thhe more canon the ship the harder to keep my attention HOWEVER saimatsu is also a fucking comedy because they both kinda bring out the unhinged in the other and also the angst does make me really sad, so its good even if its not what im reaching for. 8/10

Naegami; 14 year old me was fucking obsessed with this ship, I have since calmed down. Thank god. Honestly overexposure made it a bit stale to me I think, like it's FUN don't get me wrong, I love Togami being a fucking freak about this little peasant little guy, but it's a bit generic "soft with mean" shipping I feel, very much "baby's first rivalry ship" for me 6/10

Oumota; oh that's the good shit, that's the good shit, the angst, the drama, the competitiveness, the assisted suicide, the secrets taken to the grave, the totally for real kiss in the hangar, the, pun intended, amalgamation of them in the final trial. The fact their love hotels line up, the fact they balance each other out. The hilarity of Maki and Shuichi's faces if they found out these two are dating, Ohhh my god, ooooh my god 10/10

Fuyupeko; another classic that falls under "the more canon it is, the harder it is for me to get into it" also Peko just...isn't super interesting to me, like don't get me wrong she's still great, but she's definitely a character I don't think of as often. I love the art for it though, fanartist go HARD and i love it, it's just overall missing that friction or interesting twist I want with my ships, tends to lean too domestic. 6/10

Kamukoma; pretty fun! I kinda grew a bit out of this one as well but sometimes you want komaeda being the absolute fucking dramatic worst with his cringe loser emotionless emo boyfriend, and that's a lot of fun. Good for angst, especially more cracky angst at times. Very funny when Hajime after the fact is like "HEY W HAT" 7/10

#ndrv3 #goodbye despair #trigger happy havoc #anon chaos #ultra despair girls

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netherfeildren · 1 year ago

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The Cassandra Complex : Chapter XI : Lethe

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Din Djarin x F!Reader)

Content Warnings: Brief reference to sexual assault (none has or will occur); Hurt/Comfort; Extremely soft Din Djarin

A/N: I kinda just winged all of this, if there are any inaccuracies or any canon divergence, a great and many apologies!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 7.7K

Read on AO3

CHAPTER XI : LETHE

At what point does one say of a man that he has become unreal?

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

Between bouts of wakefulness, you tell him of the things they did to you in the dark. A blooming flower in the dead of winter, stunted and slow, and as if you’re pulling your own teeth in some moments, when other words come like vomit, rushed and hot and putrid but necessary, something not to be held back. And you don’t tell him the whole of it, he knows this, he can see, but you tell him the parts you can bear, and for now, it’s enough.

You sit in that bed of comfort he’s so meticulously arranged for you in the dim light of the Razor Crest, overheads shut off, only a single warm snake of glowing light falling over you from the cracked open fresher door, navcom set for the desert planet of Tatooine and the spaceport of Mos Eisley, and the thrum of hyperspace buzzes around the two of you. He sits on the opposite side of the hull, wrapped in his armor and his silence and his wanting, and he watches you ebb and flow out of sleep; soft, slow drooping of your eyes into wakefulness and then back into the depths of rest. You need so much of it, he can tell.

At first, you don’t let him near. No touching, please, you beg in whispers, and although it feels as though his bones are thrashing within the confines of his skin or like his teeth will fall out of his skull from the saccharine sweet flavor of want for you that sits sticky on his tongue, he obeys. So at a distance, with certainly no touching at all, the two of you talk. For hours, and then for days, and although his bones continue to shake, and his teeth continue to ache, he holds himself in temperance and restraint because he knows that to just look upon you is enough, he knows it’s everything.

The trip to Tatooine takes days, the Crest a little worse for wear than what she’d been when you’d previously been aboard. The hits she’d taken over the years, over his and Grogu’s journey had taken their toll, and her hyperdrive was no longer what it had once been. But she ramained faithful and sturdy, like any good mistress, and she’d get the two of you where you needed to be, to Tatooine and to Peli for some much needed maintenance after the long trip to the Core. And Din knew it wouldn’t only be the ship’s routine upkeep the two of you would find there, but some much needed rest in the sand port, as well, and most importantly, time. Buying himself time during the slow going trip, and then there, to figure out how it was he was going to get you to stay with him, force you if necessary.

He’d been telling the truth when he’d said you weren’t going anywhere. He would not be left again.

Din had been a stupid man before. He would not be making the same sorts of mistakes again.

Two days since he’d brought you aboard now, and you’re still not entirely well. Tired and sluggish, but he tells himself you just need rest and the closely monitored interval feedings he’s been coaxing on you. You’re sleeping again now after he’d gently cooed and shushed you into accepting some broth, and he watches the methodical up and down sway of the wing of your shoulder, hypnotizing, listening to the whistle of your open mouthed breathing that sings a song assuring him you’re alive and well. He’s been sitting at the opposite end of the hull from you, as far as he can get while still remaining in your direct vicinity, attempting to give you whatever measure of peace he can bear, silent and still, enshrouded in the dark for hours now. Counting the minutes between the sporadic opening of your eyes, the brief moments when you come to and grant him access to your gaze.

Those eyes of yours, they’d haunted him for two years. When he was trying to forget you, when he was trying to move on, stupid and horrible, insisting he could only take Omera from behind because he couldn’t bear the sight of a face that wasn’t yours. He had been wrong. He had done wrong. He had been bad. And he didn’t want to admit it, or acknowledge it, or look it directly in the face, but it was regret which lived in him. He couldn’t deny it.

He’s been scanning your heat signatures every thirty minutes, your core temperature holding normal, your vitals stable, and he’s full of sick paranoia, ravenous want, singing joy. Too many things churning within him to properly digest, and in a way, he’s grateful for this time you’re affording him to gather himself while you sleep and recover. He needs to be well collected, ready and strong and level headed to give you whatever it is you might need when you’re finally ready to leave your restful unconsciousness and come back to him.

You start to shift as he’s scanning your temperature once again. First the hitching of a knee and the nudge of your hips, and then your leg stretching long and lithe, and he watches the arch of your small foot peek out from beneath your blanket, tiny toes splaying wide, spasming and shivering with the stretch of your muscles. He swallows hard, forces the heat in his body that would like to swell to an inferno to remain cool and serene. All this, just from the sight of one small foot. He’s pathetic and ridiculous, and he doesn’t care because he loves you, and you finally know and really, what could matter after that? Nothing.

His eyes swing back up to your face, and he watches the scrunch of your spikey, dark lashes before you nuzzle your face into the cove of your shoulder, coming awake slowly, slowly, as if you’d not had any real, true and peaceful rest since the last time you’d been on his ship. He watches you with bated breath, the subtle inclination of his body towards you as if he were trying to absorb your presence, and when you finally turn back, eyes blinking open he feels his heart lurch in his chest at the first sight of them. Nothing in the galaxy compares, and he must surely know, he’s seen so much of it.

He says your name, voice low and graveled with disuse. “How do you feel?”

You stretch your arms out in front of you, wriggling beneath the covers and making the most delicious of little noises he forces himself not to fixate on. Oh, you sigh, eyes opening wide, long lashes fanning across high cheekbones, before you finally find him in the shadows he’s sitting in. Nothing but the still gleam of beskar in the dim light to give him away.

“You’re so extra shiny now,” little voice and even tinier nose scrunch, so adorable that something soft inside of him aches and snaps its teeth.

“Yes, well…” he sighs, “new armor.”

You sit up slowly, jaw shifting from side to side as you move with what looks like frightened care, like you’re expecting something to hurt, and then, yes, there it is, tiny and subtle, but a flinch. Infinitesimal scrunch of your brows, your left eye winking shut, the droop of your mouth, all of it happening so fast, but he’s watching so intently, learning forward as if he’d shoot across the space that separates the two of you to take you in hand, fix whatever it is that’s aching, that he catches it all before you can school your features into blankness.

“Your hair’s longer,” he whispers, and you freeze, arms bracing yourself up on locked elbows, they don’t tremble anymore like before, and he takes this as a good sign. You let your head fall forward to hang between your shoulders, long hair, a curtain concealing your face from him, and he wants to snap at you, for one unhinged moment, that you’re not allowed to keep your eyes from him anymore. He’s already gone too long without them, he can’t bear anymore of it. But he swallows his insanity, keeps his mouth shut.

You shake your head down at the blankets, before finally looking back up, sitting up all the way and turning to face him. Silent while you settle with your back against the wall so that now the two of you are face to face, separated by dust motes and memories and desire that snaps like lightning between the two of you. There is frision here, pressurized and boiling, and he has to behave. He won’t push you or ask anything of you you’re not ready to give or tell. You’d already shared bits and pieces with him, over your stunted bouts of consciousness over the past two days. A dark hole in the ground, a thieving Twi’lek, breaking of a kind he can’t bear to think of directly, and I hurt like I’m newly made, Din. And now, the first time you’ve been fully awake and lucid, he isn’t going to ruin this with his desperation.

“Fancy. Looks expensive,” you press about the armor.

“I did a big job.”

He doesn’t know how to handle the subject of him. He’d told you the most important fact you needed to know, that he isn’t his biological son, that he hadn’t betrayed you in that way. But the rest? The whole of it? There was so much to say, so many things, great and small to tell. Din couldn’t fathom where to start.

“Oh? What was it?” You’ve wrapped the blanket up high beneath your chin, hiding yourself away from him swathed as you are. Everything and anything you can do to keep yourself apart and protected.

“Are you hungry? You should eat,” he says instead.

You shake your head no. “What was it? Tell me.”

A sigh, and, “Stole the kid for some Imperial remnants.”

“You did what? Your kid?” You screech, surging forward all tangled up in the blankets as you are.

“Yes. Unknowingly,” he huffs. “I collected payment, and then I– I… I don’t know, changed my mind. I went back for him.” His words come to a stuttered halt, unsure and suddenly, unbearably shy, fucking with a small loose seam coming apart at the knee of his pants he’d been meaning to mend for days. There’s a part of him, irrational or untried or overprotective that doesn’t want to tell you about him, his ad’ika, and he can’t understand why when it’s you. The girl he loves, the girl he’s waited for. But it had been so difficult, so precarious, his journey with Grogu, always on the defensive, always looking over his shoulder, waitting for the worst. He’s unused to sharing him without fear or trepidation. And then his loss… for that’s what it feels like, and he’d never admit it aloud, knows he’s where he’s supposed to be, needs to be, now, but there still lives a small, sour seed within Din that whispers that that it’s wrong, that Grogu’s place had always been, and always will be, with him. And when he looks back up at your face, open and patient and lovely, it all spills out anyways. “He was a foundling, as I was. And he’s– he’s special. And after I went back for him, he was… put in my charge of sorts. We struggled so much, trying to evade the Empire, seeking out his people–”

“You found the Jedi?” You gasp.

Murky waters. “We did. He’s with them now. We traveled to Calodan on the forest planet of Corvus, we met a Jedi there by the name of Ahsoka Tano. I thought she’d take him then, help him. He needed to be with his people, and I knew that, I was prepared for that, but along the way… along the way he became– he became–” he clears his throat, for his voice has gone rough, almost choked. He shakes his head, unable to continue but you nod encouragingly, understanding without words all Grogu means to him. You’re sitting at the edge of the nest of blankets now, as if gravitating towards him, holding yourself back, marooned on an island of your own making.

“I’ve heard of her. A great legend, tragedy…”

“Yes, well… She sensed it in us, in Grogu.”

“That’s his name?” You ask softly. “Grogu?” And Din’s heart, it aches, at the sound of it coming from your mouth, all the gentleness and tenderness his ad’ika needs to be afforded. And unbidden, like flash fire, something he has to look away from immediately for his own self preservation, yours too probably, he thinks: oh, but you’d make the most wonderful mother, cyare.

“Yes,” he breathes, “Grogu.”

“And he– he’s a boy? Where does he come from? How old is he?”

“Not human. No one knows what species he is, but he was born on Coruscant, raised at the Jedi temple before the Great Purge, and then smuggled to safety and hidden away for years before I came to find him. He’s supposed to be about fifty years old.”

“But he’s–” your brow folds in confusion, “He’s a child? You called him–”

“Yes. He’s still young, still a baby. I don’t– I don’t know. He’s special. Green and– and wrinkled, with big eyes and even bigger ears.”

“He sounds… he sounds like someone my– my master spoke to me of, once. Of an unknown species, a great Jedi master. Perhaps the strongest in the galaxy, the strongest that's ever lived. Luke Skywalker was his apprentice.”

“That’s where the kid is now– with Skywalker.”

“You gave him to Luke Skywalker?” And your eyes shutter, your mask slipping briefly, showing your frayed edges.

“Yes.” He says carefully. “Ahsoka, she said she couldn’t take him, that we were too– too connected, that he needed someone more.”

“You seem to have a way with Force users,” you say suddenly, a little bashfully, a small smile spreading across your face in a half moon of laughter. “But it makes sense,” you continue, “That his connection, whatever loyalty to you he may have had,” and the use of the past tense feels like a gut punch, “would be difficult to work around when training someone so young and untried. But if he’s anything like his predecessor, then he has great potential in the Force. He’ll probably grow to unprecedented strength eventually. And from what I’ve heard, the species is very long lived, hundreds and hundreds of years.” Another sucker punch, this one even worse. Grogu would live to be old beyond Din’s years.

He clears his throat, yanks harder on the loose seam so that it splits at the side, revealing a patch of hairy knee. “We found those he belongs to, he’s with his people now. I lost him– or I– I returned him to where he should’ve always been. It’s better like this.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper from your perch at the edge of your self imposed island. “I’m sorry you lost him.”

“Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s all the way it’s supposed to be.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Only a few weeks. Like I said, he was taken by Imperial remnants led by a Moff Gideon. Skywalker saved us and took him. He has a temple where he plans to train young Jedi. He’ll be with other children like him now. It’s good for him. I know it is.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of it, he promises he’s not, or doesn’t mean for it to come out like that.

“I’ve heard of Gideon,” you muse, shifting to lean back, movements still slow, not as smooth as they usually are. The thick mantle of your hair shifts over your shoulder, and Din’s mouth goes dry, desperate to bury his face in all that lush splendor and take in the scent of it, feel the drag of it across his naked chest, over his cock and thighs.

“What do you know of him?”

“Only his name, and the great ambition tied to it. He took part in the siege on Mandalore… didn’t he?”

“He did. He’s in the custody of the New Republic now. Awaiting trial and judgment.”

“Tell me about the saber,” you say then.

“I won it from Gideon in battle.”

“It’s the Darksaber, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“It’s legend.” And you look at him strangely at that, mercurial look passing through your eyes, memories or something worse. “Many great and terrible hands have wielded that blade. Clan Vizsla, who forged it, the Sith lord Darth Maul, Sabine Wren.”

He’s shocked by the seemingly great well of knowledge you possess on the figures he’s spent the last two years dealing with. “I’m familiar with the Clan. Paz Vizsla. How do you know all this?” He asks.

“He–” You turn away, brows hitching high, and he watches a swallow pass through the delicate column of your throat. “My master, he was a lover of knowledge, information gathered everywhere, always. He made it his business to know things, and my purpose to collect it for him.”

He wishes you’d let him go to you at the mention of that scum. He wishes he could resurrect him from the dead just to send him back to the deepest pit existing, at the look on your face, small and frightened and childlike. Din’s stomach turns, and he changes the subject. “Wren– she… I think I’ve heard of her from my friend Bo, as well.

“Who?” That brings you back to attention, and he’s grateful for the concealment of the helmet for the small smile he can’t help at the look that comes across your face.

“She’s a Mandalorian. Bo-Katan Kryze.”

“Your friend…?”

“She helped me with the kid. When Moff Gideon captured him, her and her followers aided me in his rescue. It got complicated–”

“Between the two of you?” You cut him off with a little huffing scowl.

“Before Skywalker showed up to help us, little one.”

“Oh,” you huff again, turning your nose up at him haughtily. He can’t help the breath of air he lets out at that. Silly, gorgeous thing. He wants to kiss you so badly.

“The saber’s rightfully hers.”

“Oh,” again, and he laughs, again. “Oh, yes. Yes. The–” you frown, “The legend is that whoever wields it can rule all of Mandalore. I’ve heard that.”

“And that sure as fuck isn’t me. Her family ruled before the siege, it’s hers.” The entire business of it still scathes and prickles at him.

And you laugh at that, “No?” Head tipping back, that mantle of hair sliding again, provoking him again. “Why not? It could be–”

“No. Definitely not. Never. That isn’t something I’d ever be interested in. I would never suit such a role. And this– this thing…” he motions to the crate where the Darksaber sits discarded. He’d found he hated wearing it on himself for too long. “It doesn't suit me well. It’s difficult to wield, something– something leaden and sucking about it.”

“You wielded it just fine from what I saw.”

“You were doing something.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I could feel you, when you attacked me–”

“I didn’t attack you,” you scoff, affronted. Haughty nose back up in the air, and the soft thing inside Din snaps its teeth together once more.

“Don’t start,” he admonishes, voice deep and rumbling and speaking of all the things he’d like to do to you that he cannot even give thought to right now. You roll your eyes, and he can’t help but smile. Sass is good, sass means you’re feeling better, more yourself.

“I could feel you, almost as if you were feeding your energy into me.”

You turn to look at him sharply at that. Tiny frown marring the space between your fine brows he’d like to smooth away with a kiss. “What? I– I didn’t mean to, or– or I didn’t know I was doing that…” You look away again, pressing fingertips to your mouth in concentration. Everything about you, every movement, gesture, frown and sigh and inflection, mesmerizes him. Din didn’t think it possible he could have been worse off than he was before, but he comes to the sudden, startling realization, that he’d had absolutely no idea how much deeper he could fall. The admission that you love him in return, the sound of it, had done something to him, set something off or opened something within him. Some sort of yawning, hungry maw that would only be satisfied once it’d swallowed you whole.

He needs to bide his time and temper his actions. He won’t scare you off.

“I was out of control…” you continue in a small whisper. “I didn’t know. I didn’t–” And you look nervous, frightened suddenly. Din leans forward, immediately on alert, ready to rush over to you if you need him, just from the look on your face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” You’re all wide eyed fright and concern and an innocence about you, about the question, your worry that you’d hurt him. His heart thumps and thumps and thumps, the rush of blood through the mass of organ so hot it burns.

“Never, cyar’ika. You could never hurt me. I just feel you.” And it’s the truth, it had merely been an extension of yourself feeding him, strengthening him, emboldening him like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Something euphoric about the feeling he was not keen to experience again for the mere fact of how it’d left you, weak and fragile and exhausted, almost at a breaking point.

The two of you need to be careful, he realizes. There was a connection between the two of you, stronger and more easily traversed than either of you had previously realized, be it fate or love or the Force, but there was something that lived between the two of you and connected you and Din needs to be absolutely sure that whatever it is never becomes a detriment to you in any way.

You tilt your head sideways, some truth he knows he should fear churning behind your eyes. You bring your knees up to fold tightly against your chest, wrapping your arms around your shins, and lay your cheek against the small cap, hiding away from him again. “I want–” you say in a very small voice, “I want to tell you things, but I’m afraid of–” a swallow of breath.

“Afraid of what, cyare?”

At the tremble of your spine as you hitch with nerves, Din wants to go to you so badly. This is the most difficult thing he’s ever endured in his life. “Afraid you won’t see me the same again after I tell them.”

“Didn’t I already tell you there isn’t anything you could ever do that I wouldn’t forgive you for?” He presses forward just a millimeter.

You peer up at him at that, and there are no tears in your eyes which soothes him, in part, but worse, still splintered with so much sadness or hurt or the terror of time, and it’s like he’s bellyful of grief. There is something acutely unfair about the distance sitting between the two of you right now when you’re holding that look in your eyes.

“But what about respect?”

“You could never lose that from me either.” You shake your head, propping your chin on your bent knees and wrapping your hands around your feet to pull them up and rock back and then forward, thinking of what it is you're trying to say.

“Don’t you think there are certain things that a person shouldn’t be forgiven for?”

“Perhaps. But there are certain people the rules don’t apply to. That’s you for me.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“To who?”

“To you!” You say incredulously.

“Why not?”

“You–” And there are tears now, swimming in your eyes, his heart thump, thumping in agitation at the sight of them. He gives a growl of frustration that ends on a choke as you squeeze your eyes shut, a single tear sliding over the slope of your cheekbone. “Maker, Din. This is all wrong.” You sound as full of frustration as he feels, and he wants to say that he’s sure if you’d just let him come to you, you’d find the right way forward within each other. “You want to touch me.” He bites down on his tongue hard enough to taste blood.

“Are you looking in my head?”

You give a soft laugh. “Don’t need to.” He huffs, well, he isn’t going to deny it.

You turn away again, laying your cheek back atop your knee, and he can see the tension in your arms as you squeeze yourself tight, tighter. “I– I can’t– I can’t have sex with you,” you say in a smaller voice than he could’ve imagined possible.

He’s silent for a moment, trying to measure his breathing, and there’s violence thrumming within him at what he’s about to ask, but his voice is nothing but gentleness. “Did they– did they hurt you like that?”

You heave a long sigh, “No, but the feel of skin, I cant– I– I hurt everywhere, Din. Everywhere. Inside and– and–”

“It’s alright. It’s alright, cyar’ika.” He tries to push his voice out in gentle, measured notes. Something that’ll soothe you from afar. And the sight of you, all twisted and squeezed up into a tight little ball like you are– Maker– Din feels afraid, for a moment, of what might become of him, of the sort of violence he feels capable of in your name. “If it hurts, you don’t have to tell me anything now or at all.”

“I want to. Is it–” You look up, brow folding, squinty eyed as if you’re rifling through your head for the words. “How do I– how do I tell you that you deserve to know the full of it, but don’t deserve to carry the burden of it? That I wish I didn’t have to, but that I also want to tell you.”

“Just like that.” He presses another half a millimeter forward, feels like he’s hallucinating the scent of you from over here. “Tell me anything you need just like that. But don’t say it’d be a burden, you could never be anything even close to that to me.”

And still, with your eyes not on him, you say that which he’d already been expecting: “I let them keep me.”

He’d known.

“Are they dead?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't leave even one for me?” Your cheek rolls against the hill of your knee, eyes swinging up to spark at him, and Maker, as long as he’s still able to pull that look from you there’s hope. He can fix anything if only you continue to look at him like that.

The trip to Tatooine takes about ten days. Bouts of sleeping and eating and his gentle but insistent caring for you. He won’t let you pull away or into yourself; kept at a distance, but not pulling away, and the distinction might not be obvious, but he sees it. That’s enough.

Days later, when you wake again, a little stronger, but still sleepy and soft and beautiful, your hair is even longer. Seeming to grow a yard a day, incredibly. “It’s the Force; healing me, reconnecting with me. It works in strange ways,” you tell him as it pools around your waist. He says nothing, catalogs everything, and later, you come, moving slowly up the ladder into the cockpit to join him in the co-pilot's chair, bundled in a blanket. He’d left some of his socks for you warming on a pipe, just like before, and he sees the thick weave of them droopy over your toes, the part where his heel is supposed to go coming up to your ankle. He swallows and looks away and breathes and breathes and reminds himself he is strong and patient and entirely at your service in any way you might need. Din reminds himself that he must be good.

Your wounds heal slowly over the days, and he gripes and groans that all your energy is funneling into that damn hair and not the more important bits of you. He perches you on a crate, after having urged you into the fresher, pacing outside anxiously, hands on his hips, a huff and a sigh a minute while he listens for any bump or movement from within, making sure you don’t need him. He sticks a bowl of soup in your hands after, kneeling before you, gloves fitted over his hands so that you won’t have to feel his skin and shows you the bacta patches slowly, movements intentional and measured so that you’re not taken by surprise or touched in any way that you might not like. You eye him suspiciously, brow hitched, nose scrunched when you sniff delicately at the broth and then promptly discarding the bowl beside his medical kit, watching for what he plans to do with you next.

“That bit on your elbow isn’t healing.”

You give him a tiny frown, tucking the sore little wing tight into your side protectively. He presents his palms towards you, moves slowly. “It’s fine,” you pout.

“You know it’s not, little one. I’m going to put a single bacta patch over it. That’s it. No fuss, I promise.” Still moving slowly, watching the look in your eyes, opening the packet gently, he reaches for your arm, index finger and thumb taking hold of you first, a barely there cuff of his fingers just above your joint. He gives one slow stroke of his thumb, feeling you lock up, makes a low noise deep in his chest, something to soothe and coax you as he pulls your arm gently forward, untucking it from your side. “It’s alright, cyar’ika. Just a little bacta, nothing scary.” Your eyes go a little glazed, head tilting sideways to look down at him, mass of your hair shifting around you. That hair and those eyes and that face, Maker, but this is where he belongs, this is where he should always be, at his knees before you.

You give a soft sigh verging on a breathy little moan, your eyes fluttering shut as he smooths his thumb against the inner slope of your elbow, just there at the vulnerable dip, but when he slowly starts to lift your arm to get at the back side where the wound is, raw and red, a burned and angry looking thing, you wince, a little screech warbling in your throat, before jerking back trying to get away from him, quick and violent in your incoordination. That damned shoulder you haven’t let him look at yet, he knows it’s bad. You flail, little foot coming up to stub your toes against his stomach plate, bum scooting precariously over the edge of the stool. He reaches for you on instinct, his hand cupping the curve of your bottom to keep you seated, shit, hold on, stop, he grunts, but when you shove him away, loud slap of your palm against the curve of his helmet, he loses his balance, momentum taking the both of you toppling, unintentionally taking you with him. He falls splayed on his back, helmet dinging hollowly where his head knocks against the steel floor with a tangled mass of soft limbs and too long hair and lush tits sprawling over him. You wriggle and flail, an indignant squeak of his name, and then you go tense realizing all the places the two of you are suddenly pressed together. He feels a shudder of painful terror lock your limbs into shivers, the trembling hitch of your chest, and he holds frozen still, waiting for you to make the first move. But Maker, the feel of your weight on top of him. He widens the stance of his legs, slowly brings a knee up, trying to keep the heft of you away from his cock. He dips his chin to watch your face, eyes wide, frantically swinging across his chest, to his hands held up in surrender at your shoulders level, up to the face of his helmet.

You’re full of unsure fear and desire, yes, he can see it just there in the farthest glimmer of your eyes, the one like a scream, bright and hungry. Your brows fold together, confused, a frustrated noise slipping off your tongue before you give one more tense, strained jerk, and then seem to suddenly lose the fight and entirely melt into him. Your temple landing with a soft thump on his chest plate, arms wilting from their tensely held position over the outsides of his arms. Just a melted little thing of a girl, finally letting go of all that anxious strain you’ve held yourself in for two long years.

Din dares not move, not even breathe. He holds so still for so long he’s able to watch the change in the cadence of your breathing, the rickety little patter of nerves into slow and deep sighs, all relaxation and trust. And the bright light-like realization dawns on him while he lays beneath you, feels your chest press into his, the fire of your heart seeming to melt through beskar, the two of you know each other too well, too intimately. The two of you love each other, and he wants to live in it and experience it so badly. He wants to rush madly through the whole thing of it, live the rest of your lives together fast and in the blink of an eye first, and then be able to go back and do it all again slow and precise, taking each lived detail in his hand and learning the shape of it entirely before he’s able to move on to the next moment. He wants it all, the whole of a life with you.

So he doesn’t touch you, but the two of you lay like that, pressed against each other for hours, and the moment is enough.

Days later, he asks because he cannot help himself, because if you have to bear the truth of it all, he will too: “Why did you do it all?” And he doesn’t know precisely what the root of the question is.

Why did you leave me?

Why did you stay gone so long?

Why did you hurt yourself as you did?

You don’t answer immediately, and he wonders if he’s stepped where he shouldn’t have, pushed too far too soon, but then your face goes smooth and serene. Honest. “I didn’t think it would happen as it did. I thought I’d see you again, I thought it would all be sooner. I didn't think I’d be gone,” gone, “for so long. I thought I’d get a chance to make up for my mistakes with you.”

You sit in the co-pilot's chair, slightly behind him, and he doesn’t turn to look back at you, but he can see your reflection in the gleaming curve of the front of the cockpit, the rush of hyperspace zinging around the two of you, it’s quiet and thrumming and he can hear the soft cadence of your breathing. Your tunic is high necked, sitting just below the soft point of your little chin, every square inch of you wrapped away and sealed tightly in dark fabric, little pearlescent buttons that gleam blue crawl up to your throat and seem to strangle you. It’s as if you’d donned your own suit of armor, and he can’t understand how you still look so fucking good after everything. But as if he could peel away the stitching of you to peer beneath, he sees all that is wrong, all that is missing and all that is still echoing hollow. He thinks if he could only fill you with himself, all of everything would be set to rights.

You rest your head on the seat back, rolling it side to side slowly, thinking on what is is you’ll tell him next. “Because in ways, it felt good, better, than the alternative.”

“To be free?”

“Yes.” And the truth of that sits heavy and cloying between the two of you. An animal, hurt, will return to what it knows, no matter how badly it’s treated. It’s in its nature to seek out its familiar habitat. “Because I saw no other recourse, nothing better for me to do. Because I was stupid. Because I wanted to see how long I could last.”

He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, thick and metallic rolling over his tongue. “I don’t want to be selfish. I’ve been trying to– to not be that, to not make this about me.”

“It is about you.” Maker.

And he still doesn’t turn, says through his honest shame: “But I have to tell you that I don’t know how I can live with this, knowing this. I feel like– like I… I don’t know. I feel like if I go to sleep tonight knowing this, I won’t wake up tomorrow. Like it’ll crawl up my throat and strangle me in my sleep. And it shouldn’t– it shouldn’t be about me.”

“It’s not selfish, Din. It is about you,” you say again, and he wonders if your intention is to hurt him or yourself. More of that painful honesty like a blade through a lung.

He finally turns in his seat. “The way you live is the way I live. Do you understand me? The way you live is the way I live and your breath is mine and your hurt is mine.”

Your eyes are heavy lidded, watching him through the thick screen of your dark lashes, one eye seems to glow, the other to swallow him. “That’s why I know it’s about you too now. It started with nothing, with stupidity, and a wanton desire for– I don’t know, for destruction or something. But it ended with the realization that I’d have to tell you of all this one day. That it would be yours too eventually. And I regret it bitterly for that.”

“How am I supposed to move past this? What– what am I supposed to do with it?” He worries he sounds very like a child asking, but he has to anyway.

You shut your eyes, going so still, made of adamant and glass and smoke. He knows a thing like you could do nothing but survive, but at the same time, it seems a miracle you did. That you let yourself. He tracks the slope of your nose, the lush of your mouth, dry, you won’t drink enough water and it pisses him off, little chin and delicate throat, all that hair, the round of your breasts and the dip of your waist. Those little blue glowing pearl-for-buttons. He wants to steal them and swallow them away.

“Do you think,” you start, eyes still closed, face still calm. He leans forward, elbow braced against wide spread knees, and watches closely at the way your mouth forms the shapes of your words. “Do you think that– I don’t know how to say it, I think… but do you think it’s wrong to ask someone you love to just let a thing go? As much as it might’ve hurt them or bothered them or– or I don’t know… ruined everything. But to just ask them, for your sake, to let it go? Forget. Do you think that’s wrong?” Your eyes open. “Or selfish?”

“Is that what you want from me, cyar’ika?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t want to be selfish with you.”

“Neither do I. You said before that you don’t want me to forgive you. You don’t want forgiveness, you want forget.”

“Yes.”

He nods once. “And I have nothing to forgive you for, and asking me for the things you need is never selfish.”

And you say again, once more like before with your face still calm, “You want to touch me.”

If he were a beast made only of flesh and bone and not a man he would snap his teeth. “Yes.”

You stand slowly, hair a cloak around your shoulders, and step to him, between his wide spread thighs. He should beg, but he only stays frozen, and you bring your hand up to the face of his helmet, palm splaying along the side, he wishes you’d rip the thing off of him. He wishes he had never taken a Creed at all. Your palm on his face would fix everything, like him filling the hollow place within you. It would all be well if only the two of you could come together. Din knows it.

You lower yourself to perch primly on one thigh, slow like thaw, bringing your knees up to curl into his chest, little socked toes braced against beskar. One hand smoothing up his stomach and chest plate, other curled over the pauldron of his shoulder, you reach the lip of the helmet, close your eyes, and start to lift the weight of it from his face.

“I’m not going to open my eyes. I’m not going to look.”

The rush of hyperspace reflects off your skin in silvers and blues, makes you more dream than girl, and then his face is uncovered, and he listens to the symbol of who he is supposed to be, who he has been all his life, roll from your fingers discarded on the ground, the loud clang of history ringing in his ears, but all he cares about is, “You kept them.” He brushes a thumb, careful of your skin, against the glowing gem of your earring. The way it twinkles and sparks and exists as a monument to your shared history.

“Something shiny to remind me of my shiny.” A tear slides slow and clear down the slope of your cheek, coming to rest at the corner of your mouth, and he watches it quiver and shake there in anticipation, much like his heart does within his chest. You take his face between your hands, animal sound from his tongue, one hand at the curve of his jaw, cradling him like he’d be something precious and fragile if only the two of you let it be so. Not animal, not man, only loved.Your other hand spreads, glides and cups and soothes, his forehead, his brow, little fingertips pressed to the outside dip of his eye socket, running along the rim of bone beneath hot skin. He watches your face, the tear at the corner of your mouth, and you come towards him very slowly, the fold of your hips, stomach, breasts, and then your mouth on his.

And then your mouth on his.

He takes the tear into his mouth, holds it on the surface of his tongue. He could swallow it like he would the pearls. This is enough.

It’s soft as a whisper and then hard. Your nails digging suddenly, scratching and searching for a crack in his surface where you’d find purchase to pull him closer, burrow your way inside. You press your closed mouth hard against his, shoulders hitched high, and he grips the arms of his chair so hard his fingers ache. A sob in your throat that turns into a broken sort of moan, giving him permission to break too.

He circles your waist in his hands, takes hold of the shape of you, and it’s just like in his memories and dreams and nightmares. Hands sliding up the slope of your back through all of that glorious hair, still growing, right to the edge of your tunic covered nape.

“Din.” He swallows the tear. He touches your skin.

You moan for him, mouth shaky and wet, vibrating into him, the tip of your tongue tasting the edge of his lip, and then he’s swallowing you whole. Shifting you further onto himself, the soft round of your bottom over the thick of his lap, tits pressed against his chest, he needs to taste it all, your nails digging so hard into the skin of his face you’ll surely draw blood, and he will surely thank you for it. “Yes.” He says in return, finally, he draws onto your tongue. Full upper lip slotted between his, and it’s wet tongue and sharp teeth and a very dark place you should have never been, too much time wasted, a promise to forget because that’s what you need of him.

He hitches you higher, tighter, forces himself not to take it further, press you too hard. Groans rough and ragged when you whine soft and small. Sucking on your tongue, tugging at your lip. And your hands move to his hair, little fingers wrapped in his curls, dragging down the front of his face, over his eyes and nose, finding the seam of a scar there. “What’s this?” You follow the faultline of old hurt, and he grips your wrist, directs your hand to the other, thicker weave of scar tissue along the back curve of his skull, wanting to show you all the places he was broken that you were not there to mend. “Din,” on a frightened little gasp he soothes away with his tongue along the back of your teeth and the drag of his palm down the slope of your spine, stopping just shy of the curve of your ass.

“Explosion.”

Din, again, Din. You press your fingers along the rough knit flesh, and he feels your tears slide along his own cheek and perch at the corner of his own mouth now.

“It’s okay, little love. I’m here with you.” Tugs you back close and safe and tightly pressed, seam of him woven into the seam of you, mouth to mouth.

“And I understand.” He cups the back of your head, pulls you back, opens you and tastes and tastes and tastes. “I’ll promise to let it go. But you have to promise too.” Changes the angle, the flavor of you still the same, the sound of you still the same, the feel. “That you’ll never do it again.”

“I promise, Din.” It’s enough.

Chapter XII

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog!

#TCC fic #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din djarin fic #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin #the mandalorian angst #din djarin angst #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #vic fic

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saintsenara · 9 months ago

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More ships! Severus Snape/Charity Burbage, Severus Snape/Petunia Dursley, Narcissa Black/Lily Evans, Narcissa Black/Remus Lupin

thank you very much for the ask, anon! lots of delicious ships here to get into...

charity burbage/severus snape

i'm going to start this one by pointing out something which features a lot in discussions of snape's relationship with dear old chazza b, and which i have elected to find annoying even though it's spectacularly minor:

in the book [or - certainly - in the original edition, which is what i have] of deathly hallows, charity does not say that she and snape are friends while pleading for her life. this is an invention of the films, which are rather more heavy-handed at hinting that snape isn't really a loyal death eater with blood-supremacist views than the text is.

but, nonetheless, she does still beg him to spare her... and so she must retain some belief in snape's capacity for goodness even though she must be aware, as a hogwarts teacher, that he murdered dumbledore only days beforehand...

which is to say that i love the idea of a bit of snarity [snurbage? burbape?] in a story which didn't deviate from the canon timeline. it is just exquisitely nasty to imagine the two coming together during the goblet of fire to half-blood prince period, initially just for something casual - since snape knows he can't commit to anything given his role as a spy - which then turned into something deeper he was occasionally driven to allow himself to imagine might be able to become a real relationship after the war...

...and then him having to look a woman he's fallen in love with in the eyes and arrange his features into a malevolent smirk while this is happening:

Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowly revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds. “Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort. Snape raised his eyes to the upside-down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, “Severus! Help me!” “Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.

and then to have to pretend to be completely unruffled as voldemort kills her in front of him.

delicious.

petunia dursley/severus snape

this is one i really, really back.

i’m fond of petunia, who i think is one of the most interesting characters in the series because of how full of contradictions she is.

and who i think is also a victim in fandom spaces of how the adult cast was aged up for the films [in canon, she’s only in her early twenties when lily dies, and the implication is that vernon is a good deal older than her]. her inadequacies, such as her inability to truly care for either child in the household, seem much more nuanced in a woman of twenty-three, who has a toddler and whose entire family is dead, than they do if she’s pictured as a middle-aged woman with considerable life experience.

and like snape, petunia teeters on a knife edge between various chasms: she's a working-class girl from the midlands made good in middle-class surrey, he's a working-class half-blood boy who spends most of his life in pureblood circles; she ends up with her whole life wrapped up in a square little house when she’s barely out of her teens, he ends up with his whole life wrapped up in spying at the same age; she hates the wizarding world and yet covets it, he hates the muggle world and yet cannot escape it; she loves lily and she hates her and she loathes her for dying, he… well, you know the rest.

all of these similarities - especially when combined with the long history of resentment between snape and petunia [she thinks he stole lily from her! he thinks she was the first person to try and keep lily from him!] - makes snetunia just so compelling.

and if you're convinced and desperate to really get into the mess, you're in luck - because you can read the magnificent regretfully, yours by @maria-de-salinas, which takes snape and petunia's bitterness and awkwardness and grief and guilt and remorse and turns it into something really quite beautiful...

narcissa black/lily evans

ok, so i'm afraid to say that narlily is one of those marauders-era ships which i don't fully get the increasingly popularity of - and so, if you do ship it i would be thrilled to get your recs and manifestos as to why.

my objection doesn't actually have anything to do with narcissa being a blood-supremacist [although i don't think i'd vibe with a story which didn't address this at all - and i'm not compelled by a common version of fanon!narcissa which has her as not sincerely holding these beliefs: she is just as much of a bigot as lucius] - i think something quite interesting could be done with narlily [as in all death-eater-with-a-non-pureblood ships] as a vehicle for an examination of the hypocrisy of blood-supremacy; and with narlily as a femslash ship specifically as a vehicle for an examination of how sex with a non-pureblood which has no chance of resulting in pregnancy would be more acceptable in a culture which is so obsessed with heritage and lineage than sex which could.

why i don't really think it would slap for me, though, is that narcissa always comes across in canon as someone who is conformist and a bit staid - largely, as i've written about elsewhere, because she feels a desire to perform according to the gendered conventions expected of a woman of her class background as a way of deflecting the shame brought upon her family's standing in polite society by bellatrix and andromeda's behaviour. lily - on the other hand - is famously a bit bolshy - cheeky and adventurous and argumentative and stubborn.

and so i simply do not imagine their personalities either working well together in any meaningful way or clashing spicily [they'd clearly both regard the other as not worth their time popping off at].

please change my mind!

narcissa black/remus lupin

this, on the other hand... yes. hook it into my veins.

they both live behind masks - hers of gendered social convention, his of self-loathing - which have, at their core, the idea that a proper witch and wizard must be "civilised". and while they both seem to prefer to embrace these masks, there is the potential lurking beneath them for both of them to break free and be wild and raw in the realities of themselves.

plus... imagine if you've also got the post-1981 context of lupin trying desperately to understand how sirius could have become the death eater who would betray james to voldemort and narcissa and lucius trying to establish the fiction that he was under the imperius curse during the first war with the ministry, well before they feel comfortable becoming as complacent in their conviction that voldemort's not about to return as they are at the start of the canon narrative.

lovely misery.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #unhinged and deranged ships #including...#snetunia #petunia dursley #severus snape #narlily #narcissa malfoy #lily evans

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wileycap · 1 year ago

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[spoilers for ATLA]

I have this fanfic story idea for Avatar, and I want to write some of it out.

The basic premise is: What if Iroh had gone the other way after his son's death, becoming more warlike instead of more peaceful - but Ozai still executes his power grab, and they essentially end up ruling two opposing kingdoms?

After Lu Ten dies, Iroh subjugates Ba Sing Se in grief. He doesn't go full villain, no massacring the civilians on purpose or anything, but he does lay waste to the city, takes the young King Kuei hostage and, as a treat, kills Long Feng. (I really dislike Long Feng.)

Meanwhile, Ozai goes ahead with his plan. Azulon reacts much the same, but he does the ever-popular fic thing of giving Ozai's heirs to Iroh. "You must know the pain of losing a firstborn son!" And, furthermore, he manages to get a hawk out to Iroh, that both of Ozai's children have been written out of his lineage and into Iroh's.

Ozai conspires to kill Azulon by blackmailing Ursa. For her treason, Ursa is banished, as in canon, and Ozai takes the throne.

But the balance of power has shifted. The Earth Kingdom, bolstered by Iroh's legions, is now a contender for total world domination - and that's not exactly a disagreeable state of affairs for a lot of Earth Kingdom kings and generals, who pledge loyalty to Iroh.

Meanwhile, Ozai's Fire Nation controls the seas, but they are quickly losing ground in the Earth Kingdom. The newly crowned Ozai is facing immense amounts of domestic pressure, and responds by cracking down on the homeland, making the already totalitarian state even more totalitarian. The Fire Nation still holds the advantage in the war, but their edge is shrinking more and more by the moment, as many of their best legions were in the Earth Kingdom and are now loyal to Iroh.

To legitimize his rule, Ozai spreads the story that Ursa had been working with Iroh to murder Azulon, and that rather than being a conqueror and a ruler, Iroh is now a hostage for the Earth Kingdom - a puppet to exert influence over the Fire Nation. And furthermore, as she fled, the traitor Ursa had done the unthinkable - kidnapped a member of the royal family!

Meanwhile, Ursa does make it to the Earth Kingdom and to Iroh. And true to the story being spread in the Fire Nation, she does have one of her children with her...

Azula.

Who, upon seeing the Earth Kingdom subjugated under Iroh, isn't actually very upset about the whole thing. In fact, she's excited: with Zuko stuck in the homeland and her here at the side of the leader whom she now views as the stronger one, with Azulon's letter proving that she is meant to be Iroh's heir... her prospects of becoming the ruler of the entire world, not just the Fire Nation, are beginning to look pretty good. And all she has to do is make sure to kill dear old Dad and Zuzu at some point. And help Iroh win the war. And stay in Iroh's favour, because if Iroh is anything like her father (he isn't, but Azula doesn't know that), he's more than ready to cast her aside if she proves unsatisfactory. So, bring on the tea and Pai Sho: Azula is both patient and an excellent liar.

Iroh, however, is beginning to feel his character development. He would now be content with pushing the Fire Nation back and ruling the Earth Kingdom in the name of his lost son. But Ursa pleads with him: Zuko is still in the Fire Nation. He is in danger. They have to win the war, or at least rescue Zuko.

And what about Zuko? Zuko looks at the situation: his mother and sister disappear, his uncle and father are at war, his dad probably had his grandpa killed, the Fire Nation is slowly going to hell and now his dad is acting suspiciously nice to him. (Well, he is the only heir Ozai has left.) He thinks about it for a while, and decides to get going while the going is good, and just so happens to run into a recently disgraced Lieutenant named Jee, who thinks he might be able to get them a ship and a crew, and hey, the areas near the South Pole are supposed to be pretty far from the war, and what's that huge beam of light on the horizon?

Any thoughts?

#story ideas #atla #avatar the last airbender #iroh #atla ozai #fanfiction #fanfic #plot bunny #zuko #azula #atla ursa

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morrigan-sims · 5 days ago

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Top 24 Screenshots of 2024

I was tagged by @loony-moonsims Thank you!! (Sorry for being so late. I was on vacation and didn't have access to my laptop with all my screenshots.) I'm not going to tag anyone else to do this because it's way too late and I don't know who has or hasn't done it. But if you want to, feel free to say I tagged you!!! It is a lot of fun to do! I already did one favorite post from each month in my 2024 "Year In Review" post, but that was strictly one per month and didn't give me a chance to talk about it. So expect a lot of rambling under the cut.

tw for blood in several images and for spider imagery in Oct/Nov.

January

Starting on January 1st, I fell head-over-heels in love with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous -- now my favorite game of all time -- and with Areelu Vorlesh. I tried my hand at recreating characters from images, which I'd never done before, and it actually turned out pretty well. (And started a mini obsession.) My first version of Areelu was not my most accurate, but I do have a deep soft spot for it, for many reasons. And while Reda isn't perfect either, I do love how she turned out as a sim.

February

The month of goth/dark fantasy people, I guess. The Lady of Ravens was very fun to design, and I discovered that that pose looks perfect with the crow/raven accessory I have.

March

In March I got bored of sweet, cutesy flower sims, and decided it was about time someone played into the horror of being both a person and a plant. And thus this sim, who someone described as "sleeping beauty if she took control of the roses and became a villain" was born. She has thorny vines growing under and over her skin, and that rose has burst from her eye. I wanted her to have little thorns poking out from under her skin, but no such cc existed, unfortunately.

Also in March, I played the first of Rook's two Horrible, Very Bad, No-Good weekends. This render (lovingly dubbed "Mirror Punch" in my folders) was meant to represent the scene that the party saw upon rushing to see what the giant crash they all heard from the lower floor of the inn was about. Rook had just woken up from being asleep for over 12 hours after passing out from exhaustion and stress, only to be told that the "chihuahua" the party had rescued the day before just so happened to be the very same man who had sold Rook to Captain Wolf 3 years ago. Oh, and this was after dying once and then having a very emotionally tense conversation with his mentor once he woke up. Because my boy is an idiot who doesn't know how to handle emotional surprises, he decided to try and punch a mirror, because repeatedly killing an imaginary version of said chihuahua/man wasn't working.

I'm still incredibly proud of this render. Editing the mirror to be cracked took me over two hours, let alone drawing in all the blood.

April

In April I was deep in my pirate obsession, in part brought about by obsessively watching Black Sails for the first time. I made the first draft of my ship infirmary (now the canon appearance of the Tide Breaker's infirmary), and also made this sim, who despite my best attempts to NOT relate everything to Rook ended up becoming the canon appearance (in my head at least) for Kholl, the Tide Breaker's surgeon, and Jay's mentor.

May

May was a great month for renders. Actually this one specific week was great for renders, since these both got posted in less than a week. The Nine of Swords is still one of my favorite renders I've ever made. I just love the way the composition works, with the chains framing it, and the swords (all copies of Wolf's rapier from my edit of her as Justice) hanging over Rook's head. Of course, I can only take partial credit, since I was inspired by Sara Kipin's version of the card.

Morana's Death card was also a lot of fun to make. It was my first attempt at putting trees into blender (a pain in the ass, but worth it) and with using photo background (easier, and also worth it). I really enjoyed how the final product turned out, and it's just such a good representation of her. She's named after a Slavic goddess of death and winter, and she's a necromancer from a frozen place, so it works well. I also really like the added touch of the red coming from the skull's eye, which was suggested by someone I was on call with while making the render.

June

June was ALSO all about the dnd characters. Aside from spending way too much time furnishing Lockwood Manor and making its awful owner, making Val as a sim, and giving Zenara a zillion new outfits, I also made these two edits.

The Judgement card was my first big in-game edit in a very, very long time. It was an interesting challenge to get it to turn out how I wanted it to. While the editing for this one was very simple, getting everything else as I wanted it was difficult. There was a lot of TOOL involved, and gshade and Relight saved my ass when it came to getting the nighttime scene to look right. This card is a recreation of a moment from Avra's backstory, where she awoke in her own grave. On digging her way out, she found a raven messenger waiting for her. The Judgement card is just too fucking perfect for her, and it was a lot of fun to create my own version of it.

Aspen's Fool Card was an idea that had been floating in my mind for MONTHS before I finally got around to making it. I could not possibly be happier with how it turned out. This was my first experiment with sizing up sims in blender, and it worked perfectly!!! A giant version of Fin (the jester-like god of death and Aspen's warlock patron) looming over Aspen dancing on strings was exactly what I had in mind. It was also my first experiment with bringing in 3D meshes that weren't already made for the sims, which was interesting.

July

July was all about the Liars. I played through (most of) Rook's SECOND Horrible, Very Bad, No-Good Weekend, which kicked off with the traumatic reveal that Rook's beloved mentor, Sigmar, was actually a corpse being puppeted by the BBEG, Dr. Purity. And not only that, but the party wizard, Maka, had known since day 1. Given Rook's name, and the fact that the special moves Sigmar had been teaching him were all named after chess pieces, it was just too damn perfect to turn Rook into a chess piece for this render. To this day, it's one of my favorite renders I've ever made. Not only does it LOOK amazing, but the layers upon layers of symbolism and little details hidden in it, most of which mean nothing to anyone other than me and the DM of Rook's game. This was my 2nd experiment with giant sims in blender, and also with outside models, as well as my first horizontal/landscape render. Making the pose for this one was a TON of fun, and I got to play around with some editing methods I hadn't used in a LONG time.

Speaking of Dr. Purity, his Temperance card was my most detailed blender set to date!! The many objects were a lot of fun to import and set up. And the editing was SO much fun. Drawing all the shadows on his clothes was a ton of fun, as was fixing the clipping in his hair and figuring out how to make it look like there was liquid in the flask was also fun. This is maybe my least popular render, but I am proud of it and I do love it. We finally got a face reveal of the BBEG, of course I had to do something with that!!! (I definitely didn't only start caring this much about him after finding out he was Sigmar's true identity. Nope, not at all.)

August

In August, I was back in a furnishing mood, this time working on the pirate ships. (I was simultaneously working on making maps for all three of them for our VTT.) I really love how this shot of Zara's cabin turned out. And this coming weekend Rook gets to step into this room again, this time as Captain in his own right! I can't fucking wait.

The Weeping Angels gif was SO much fun to make. It wasn't my first time making a gif, but it was the first in a long time, and also by far the most complicated one I'd ever made. It ended up being well over 30 frames long, and I love the final result!!! (After I made it, I watched it so many times I started to get a headache, lmao.)

September

September Rook was still having a Bad Time, and I got obsessed with Carrion.

I love how the editing (although simple) turned out on this render of Rook. The accents on the chains, the veins I drew under his skin, it all looks great. My poor boy, he does NOT deserve this, lmao. Sorry buddy. This render is (somewhat understandably) one of my least popular, but I still love it a lot.

Theodore's render is also super simple, but looks really good to me. Once again, drawing in details on the armor/clothes was a fun experiment, and so was adding more definition and age to Theodore's face. This was also only my 2nd time sculpting clothing in blender (the first being the Nine of Swords) with his cape, and it looks quite nice.

October

In October, I was hard-core fixating on Zara's upcoming introduction, so she (FINALLY) got her own tarot card. I can't believe it took me as long as it did to realize the World was her card. Anyways, I like how this one turned out. The symbolism with the items and their placement was a lot of fun to add in, and the colors turned out great.

The other shot I really really loved was this preview picture for my spider legs accessory edit. Using TOOL to get the sim in position was a pain, but it turned out SO worth it. This sim in general was super fun to make and looks badass as hell, but her in this pose with the throne is even better.

November

In November I took a break from editing and rendering to get back in P:WotR mode, so I did some neat little recreations of character portraits from the game. I was on my evil run this time, and these two were my two new discovery favorites. I was quite happy with how well I was able to recreate these just with what I had in my game.

December

In December I was back on my rendering bullshit, this time with Carrion. I'd had this idea for MONTHS, since one of the other players in his campaign gave it to me, honestly the scenes were basically done. I barely had to do anything to them, and the editing was super basic. (Hilariously someone left tags saying they loved the editing, and my only thought was "thank you, but I basically didn't do anything". Which I guess is a compliment to my blender skills if it makes them look well-edited.)

I especially loved pulling the reversal of the werewolf, where the full moon is monstrous and the new moon is safe. Also just creating Carrion's monster form in general was a lot of fun to do. I made several pieces of cc just for Carrion (his normal armor, his monster arm spikes), and did some whacky things to get him to look how I wanted. (There's actually two copies of monster Carrion standing there. One of them is just the tips of his toes the other is the rest of his body, sans toes. I did this so I could give him the split feet, which are actually illithid feet from BG3, converted by Shandir.)

I also just straight up painted + clone-stamped in a portion of his arm in the monster image, because it was clipping with his leg. I'm proud to say I don't think you can tell. And adding small lights for his eyes in that form was also a very fun little touch. (Honestly, the lighting in general was an adventure in this one. I hated it at the time, but looking back it was an interesting challenge.) I also learned what HDRIs are and how to use them, so that was a fun learning experience for me!

Final Thoughts

I made SO much progress in rendering this year, and I'm very proud of myself. I would love to whittle down my unfinished renders / not started render concepts to zero in 2025, but knowing me that's never going to happen. (ADHD, baby!!!) But I had a TON of fun this year and I'm so happy with all the things I made, be they in CAS, in build mode, or in blender.

And I'm glad you all were along for the ride!!! Whether you've been following me for years, or you just followed me last week, I'm glad you're here. While I'd make these things for myself, it's a thousand times more fun to share them with others, and knowing other people like my work just makes me more motivated to make it.

#morrigan.txt #ts4 #the sims 4 #simblr #top 24 screenshots from 2024 #this is SO fucking long I'm so sorry.#when I said long rambling ahead I meant it #long post #if you're on mobile you might not wanna open this lmao. Sorry.

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