#and fuck my mother in law for trying to side with her knowing my history with her

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

My Mother is fucking something else. I had just had a goddamn breakdown a decade ago and lost fucking everything. Then she cut me out of every family event, after I spent a fucking year in treatment to get better -- not therapy every couple weeks treatment, I'm talking psych wards, PHPs, residential facilities. For a goddamn year straight I did everything the doctors and therapists said (except go to Al-Anon, it makes me wanna throw chairs at dumb selfish bitches), took every pill without complaint, dealt with fucking judgment from shitty program people, went over the same sht so much I could teach it -- did teach in the psych ward during my stays in fact, I taught yoga as part of movement therapy.

Every time I was in anybof them it was because *I* put myself there -- because at my worst, I recognized when I was a danger from depression or manic delusions or insomnia for 5 days or too many flashbacks or dissociation episodes... not once did anyone have to force me or even convince me. I took my ass to the ER said, I'm a danger to myself I'd like to sign in.

Got done, learned to drive, got an apartment myself, maintained my med schedule religiously, kept it reasonably clean, maintained my regular check ins with my shrink.

I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to.

And then my mom cut me out of every family event -- I'd hear about it from my sister in law later.

When I confronted her about it being fucking hurtful to be left out of family Christmas, which had been my brother and me and our families from the time I moved out, she had the nerve to get passed at me and yell "I wanted to be able to enjoy one holiday without your fucking drama." (BTW, my suicidal ideation started at 7 and I begged for therapy and the bitch called me a drama queen. It took a suicide attempt that I flatlined during and a court order to keep me in weekly therapy until 18 to get it, and a threat to go straight to the cops with all 3 siblings willing to back me to stop the abuse).

Except it wasn't ONE holiday. She has seen me ONCE since 2014, and I was only invited then bc my oldest sister was in town and she insisted it was us both or neither.

A few years ago I gave her her goddamn wish. She didn't want to be burdened with my drama? Wish fucking granted, she was told I was blocking her and if she ever tried to contact me again, I'd file a restraining order, citing the many medical records documenting her abuse and her enabling of abuse.

She tried calling B and screamed at him for shit none of her business, so I unblocked to say if she ever spoke to my husband that way again, I'd make sure not only I got a restraining order but that everyone in her podunk town she was so concerned about their opinions knew every fucking sordid detail of my entire life under her roof -- I'd pull a goddamn Reynolds Pamphlet of my own.

She's now whining to my mother in law that I'm keeping the kids from her -- I never said fucking boo to them about whether they should talk to her, and they're fucking adults, I couldn't stop them if I wanted to. Hell, no one has ever able to stop my second from what he really wanted in his whole life -- not that my mother would know. They chose not to.

My mother in law keeps saying how she hopes we work it out. I'm like there's nothing to work out. She asked to not deal with my drama as she calls the mental illnesses she caused, so I granted her request and she'll never have to again.

[classicschronicles]

Hi lovelies,

I feel like I’ve just returned from ‘buying the milk’. I’m sorry I disappeared for *checks notes* 11 months, but it’s been a hectic year. I feel like if I get into it I’ll sound like an AO3 author, so here are some very quick highlights- I have just finished my first year studying Classics at university, I qualified as a fitness instructor (which is a side quest nobody asked for), I’ve become a theatre kid again, and I finally watched Game of Thrones. Studying Classics at uni is basically telling everyone that you study Classics at uni and then getting one of two reactions- “What is that? What kind of job are you going to et with that?”. To which I have no response, because honestly I’m not sure. Or the ever famous- “Oh like The Secret History?”. To which I cry inside because it is nothing like The Secret History. It is actually reading so much Thucydides that he becomes your sleep paralysis demon, and having to translate so much Caesar and Cicero that your daydreams become wishing you were in the Theatre of Pompey on March 15th 44 BC… for no particular reason. And also crying at 3am whilst you try to delude yourself into thinking that this is so dark academia core (spoiler- it’s not). All that being said- this has actually been one of the best years of my life and I am so happy I get to study what I love.

Anyways, I feel like we’re missing the most important part- and that is of course Game of Thrones. Guys. I have a crush on Jaime Lannister. HEAR ME OUT! I can fix him! I promise. I just need one chance. But also, I would fight him because why did he do my girl Brienne like that. Anyone who makes her cry can fight me fr. You know what made me cry though- Shireen Baratheon. What the fuck was that. And Ser Davaos’ finding out and his whole “I loved that girl like she was my own”. BAWLED. Anyways, it might surprise you to know that her death was actually based on a very famous greek myth- the myth of Iphigenia. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Iphigenia’s story finds its beginnings in another myth entirely- the myth of Agamemnon and the Deer. Quick fun fact- the movie ‘Killing of A Sacred Deer’ is actually based loosely on this. The story goes that Agamemnon, out hunting one day, killed a deer belonging to the Goddess Artemis. This angered Artemis, not least because the deer was pregnant and Agamemnon’s little hunting accident killed both the mother and the baby.

Fast forward to some time later, Agamemnon launches a thousand ships to save his sister-in-law Helen from the Trojans at the behest of his brother Menelaus, and also the whole blood oath situation. The Spartans and the Mycenaeans make camp at the island of Aulis whilst they wait for the rest of the fleet to arrive, only to find that when they are ready to set sail once more, they cannot leave the island. There is not wind to push their ships, the air hot and heavy and remarkably still. This goes on for quite some time. Eventually Agamemnon consults the priest Calchas who tells him that the Gods (Artemis) are angry with him and demand a sacrifice. More specifically, the sacrifice of a virgin. This is also where some accounts differ- some claim that it could be any female virgin, some say that it had to be Agamemnon’s eldest daughter. In all honesty, I think the latter is probably more accurate because of the level of hesitation he shows before he makes his final decision. If he could sacrifice any virgin I don’t really think he would care.

Anyways, he obviously cant just write to his wife and say “hey babe can you please ship our eldest daughter over, I want to sacrifice her xoxo”. So he instead he comes out with an altogether more devious plan, and that is to tell his wife that the Prince Achilles wishes to marry Iphigenia before they sail for Troy. Both Iphigenia and Clytemnestra are of course overjoyed that she should marry ‘the best of the Greeks’ and she comes to Aulis where the army wait for her.

This is where it starts to break my heart a bit. On the morning of Iphigenia’s wedding day, Clytemnestra dresses her daughter and prepares her. She, of course, does not know that she is preparing her child for death. Her fathers men come to her tent and escort her and her mother to the alter. However, she never gets to say her vows because as soon as she steps onto the platform, they cut her throat and spill her blood as an offering to Artemis. Her mother is of course beside herself with shock and grief, but her husband does little to comfort her, telling her only that Artemis is appeased, and with the return of the wind he is leaving for Troy.

Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, differs from this account and tells the story that on the morning of her supposed wedding, Iphigenia was aware of her fathers plan to sacrifice her and accepts with stoicism and all the bravery of a child put in an impossible position. He writes the following, heartbreaking, lines:

Iphigenia- “If only I could sing like Orpheus, father! Orpheus, who could charm even the heartless rocks into following him! If I could use such a voice and have everyone charmed, have them convinced to agree with me and follow me, then I would use that voice. But I have no such skill. The only voice I have, father, my only skill, is in my tears and, here, father, I’m giving them to you! I’m giving you my tears! I’m giving you all I have! She leans before him and embraces his knees Here, father, here is the body of a suppliant! Here is the body that your wife has given birth to. I wrap its limbs around your knees and beg you: Please father, do not cut off my life short. Let me enjoy the sweet light of day and do not force me to enter the world beneath the earth. I’m your first one, father! The first one to call you father, the first one you called daughter. Me, father! I was the first to play on your knees, the first one of your children to enjoy your love and the first one to give you a child’s love. Remember, father? You used to ask me, “I wonder, my darling, will I get to see you married one day, married and settled happily in your husband’s home, your life ever blossoming, making me proud of you?” And I’d touch your chin, my father, hang from your beard, father, like I’m doing now and say, “and what about you, father, will I get to see you, father, an old man, visiting me at my house, ready for me to repay you for your hard work in raising me?” No, you don’t remember these words, father. I do but you don’t! You’ve forgotten them and so, now, you want to kill me. Please, father! Please, in the name of Pelops and of Atreus who is your father, I beg you! Please don’t do it! And I beg you also for my mother’s sake, the woman who laboured to bring me to life, the woman who is being tortured even now. I beg you, father! What does my life have to do with the marriage of Paris and Helen father? Why has their marriage brought about my death, father? Agamemnon turns away. She continues despondently. Come, then, father, turn to me and give me a final kiss. A kiss to remember you by in the underworld, since my words have not convinced you. Agamemnon does not move. She goes over to her mother and takes baby Orestes in her arms. She swings him, sadly, gently back and forth and leans over him as she speaks to him What a weak little helper you are, my tiny brother! Won’t you cry with me, Orestes? Come on, won’t you beg your father not to kill your big sister? Come on, Orestes, even babies know when there’s trouble around! Ha! See, father? Orestes is begging you, too! Begging you by his silence. Do you not care about me any more? Spare my young life, father. Spare me! Here! Look here, father! Here are the two of us, one’s a baby, the other a grown up girl, a brother and a sister, both your children, begging you, by your beard, pleading with you… She turns and looks sadly around her, then up at the sun. That! Up there is my final argument. That light, this light all around us, will cut all other arguments to pieces. This light is the sweetest thing that can fill the eyes! The world beneath the earth is a world of nothing. Only fools would pray to go down there. I’d rather live a life full of misery than die a hero’s death!

If that doesn’t make you cry I don’t know what will. And then to top it off he follows it up 200 lines later this this tear jerker:

“C- What report shall I give to your sisters?

I-Do not dress them either in black garments.

C-Is there any word of love from you I should give the girls?

I-Bid them farewell; and make sure you bring up Orestes as a man!

C-You look at him for the last time- hold him tight!

I-(holding Orestes close): Darling boy, you helped you dear sister as much as you could!

…

I-Who will come to take me there before they drag me by the hair?

C-I will be at your side…

I-No, not you- that would not be right!

C-…holding on to your clothes!

I-Mother, oblige me in this: stay here! This is the nobler course for me and for you. Let one of my father’s attendants here escort to Artemis’ meadow where I shall be sacrificed.

(Iphigenia begins to move away from a crying Clytemnestra)

C-O my child, are you going?

I-Yes, and never shall I come back.

C-You will leave your mother?

I-Yes, as you see, we do not deserve this.

C-Wait- don’t abandon me!

I-I forbid you to shed tears. (C sinks to the ground)”.

In every version you read, however, sacrificing his daughter is not a choice that Agamemnon takes lightly. He is torn between sacrificing his daughter and angering his wife- but winning glory for the Greeks, or saving his daughter, but abandoning his men. As a father, he made the wrong choice, but as a king some would argue that he did what was expected of him.

I do like, however, in Euripides’ version the character of Achilles. He is adamant that he will not be privy to the murder of Iphigenia. He tries so very hard to save her and to offer comfort to Clytemnestra and genuinely I think that this might be one of the loveliest most favourable depictions of him.

This myth then gives way to part of the Oresteia trilogy and many many retellings of her Iphigenia’s story- every single one of which always make me want to cry. I can’t explain what it is- I know that the whole point of tragedy is that build up and release of emotion but no tragedy has every made me actually sad other than Iphigenia at Aulis.

Anyways, you can imagine my absolute horror when I watched S5 EP9 and saw Shireen tied to the alter, literally gave myself whiplash with how quickly I tried to look away from the screen.

I would say I hope you enjoyed reading about Iphigenia, but if you did you’re an absolute psycho! The two translations I used are from PoetryInTranlsation and Penguin’s 2005 edition “The Bacchae and Other Plays”. Hopefully, now that I’ve posted again I’ll try and be more regular with it and I hope you all have a lovely lovely week <33

~Z

[emilykaldwen]

Shop talk!! Where did the inspiration for Abby as a character come from? Are there any characters or people who have inspired what makes her ✨her✨? And how do she and Aegon compliment each other?

(apologies, this came in after I went to bed and then I spent the last five hours driving across three states)

Oooh! I haven't gotten an ask like this in so long and I forget there are new people who might be interested!!!

(@selfproclaimedunicorn did the first Abby fanart! and @murmel-malt did this one for xmas!)

So in Fire & Blood, it's stated that Lyonel Strong became Master of Laws when Viserys took the throne, brought his sons Harwin and Larys and two maiden daughters to serve as Rhaenyra's ladies. So Abby was originally a friend of Rhaenyra and Alicent, and stayed by Alicent's side when she became queen because show-wise, Alicent is so fucking isolated. Like it HURTS to see how isolated she is, and I wanted her to have a friend, and someone who would try to be peacemaker between the two.

Right from the start, Abby was always meant to be kind. She's what I call proto-Sansa Stark: just embodying a lot of the traditional ladylike qualities I would always see Sansa getting lambasted for. I really wanted to create a character who could be kind and strong and that be just as valid as someone scheming or good with a sword. I wanted to write a girly-girl to embrace that femininity that I rejected as a teenager cause yay internalized misogyny!

But man, lemme tell you, I was struggling with her. I had this framework, but I didn't have a story for her. Frankly, for awhile, I thought that Alicent might encourage her to marry Otto for protection or something. I just didn't know what was going to happen to her.

So I decided to try roleplay her in some roleplay groups and toss her against other characters and see what I could come up with. It's something I've always done with original characters and I wasn't committed to writing a fic yet. and then my friend Ramses goes 'what if we did an AU and you throw her at Aegon?' (so age down Abby so her and Aegon are the same age vs her being his mother's age) because the type of character she was, she might be good with Aegon.

And then... the rest is history. Putting Abby against Aegon basically unlocked that third eye and suddenly Abby's story and her place in the world of Westeros clicked: She's someone the Team Green kids needed.

With Abby, Helaena could have a friend her age who accepted her for who she was, Aemond had a nerdy friend who enjoyed books, and Aegon? Aegon had a friend who always supported him, who he got to play conquering hero to her damsel in the games they'd play as children. a young!Abby took one look at the wet eyed cat boy and immediately went I'll love you and I'll show you how wonderful I think you are.

Aegon and Abby are definitely foils for each other. Abby thinks of others first, Aegon doesn't. He goes in on himself in his melancholy, she goes outside of herself. They are both desperate to please in their own ways, they are incredibly hungry for love. They are both outsiders in their worlds, and alone except for each other. Abby has the patience that Aegon needs, and Aegon has the ego to push Abby to be more 'selfish' and look out for herself more. In Abby, Aegon can take care of someone, he can look outside of himself and be there for someone. In Aegon, Abby can let herself be cared for. There's patience and there's drive, there's possessiveness and feralness from both of them. Both of these kids are unwell, Abby just... masks it better? It's not as obvious? (she's named for an Asshai blood priestess and is heiress to the haunted castle of your nightmares my happy sunshine baby is not well)

As for characters that inspired her and make her HER, the number one is very much Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket. Fruba is one of my favorite stories of all time, and it's a story about the cycle of abuse and generational trauma, and Tohru is the sunshine bubbly light girl... who is hiding her own grief and guilt at the loss of her mother. The fear that finding happiness again meaning she'd forgotten/lost her mother. And she takes on everyone's pain but does not share her own. And that always really resonated with me. It's very real. And it's a story that resonated to me along with Sansa's that I could appreciate as I was older.

I'm so sorry there's SO MUCH RAMBLING and I have no idea if this makes any sense. I don't know if I talk about Abby enough - I'm not used to getting questions about her LOL so thank you for this!

[imhereforscm]

The SCM gods as family members

Disclaimer: Everything below is made purely for fun. I don't mean to insult anyone or assume any person from your family OR ANY FAMILY is a bad person. I also love all of the gods and I'm not trying to drag anyone.

Leon:

• He's the rich aunt.

• He will treat everyone like peasants and will walk around like she's walking on the filthiest floor.

• Glares at any baby at the table for being "classless" and "impure", while her Pomeranian is literally shitting beneath the table as we speak.

• Is so rich, yet she will get you the cheapest hand lotion she can find and will also use it on the way to your house.

Scorpio:

• Emo son that's going through puberty.

• All he wants is to listen to metal and sad songs alone in his room, but NOOOOOO he gotta SOCIALIZE!!

• Will sit at the table with everyone, but will be scrolling on his phone the entire time, because his hormones are already going through enough drama and he doesn't need more.

Teorus:

• The extraverted daughter of the family.

• Has every single social media known to man.

• Will try to take a selfie with the Rich Aunt's Pomeranian and will get a smack.

• Talks loudly on the phone with every one of her friends and trust me...... There are a lot.....

• Will probably run away from the family dinner, because a bestie of hers just broke up with her redder-than-period flag boyfriend and she needs to comfort her.

• Crushing on frat boys.

Dui:

• The sweet grandma every kid loves to visit.

• Has an adorable cottagecore house with a golden retriever, want more?

• Will give the kids all the candies their parents said they can't have and by the end of their visit, she'll send them off with diabetes and a kiss on the forehead, coupled with a pinch on the cheek.

• Doesn't like when the family members fight, so she has a technique.✨

• "My heart... I got upset again..."

• Scares everyone shitless, because everyone loves her, so they comply and for her well being shuts the fuck up.

• She knows of the effect she has on everyone and uses it for peace and greater good.

Huedhaut:

• The academic cousin.

• Was most likely dragged to the family dinner and just trying to be polite with everyone's bullshit, even though what he'd really want is to pull a couple strands so hard, he'd be able to make a wig out of them.

• At some point in your life, your mom asked him to tutor you and now you're sitting there with an aching head, trying to learn one godforsaken history lesson.

• You're not worthy enough to P E E if you don't know what happened on 76 of February at 69:69 am! >:CCC

• The lesson was already confusing enough and he just keeps making it worse.

Ichthys:

• The uncle that was released from jail only a month ago and has probably been or WORKED at a strip club.

• He has met every cop, every inmate and has reviews of all the cells he's INHABITED and jail food he's tasted.

�� His mere presence is enough to freak the Emo Son out, but he's the Extraverted Daughter's role model.

• This uncle ACTUALLY causes the Grandma to nearly cancel her subscription to life.

Karno:

• The mom, oh, the poor mom.

• Has to run around and prepare everything, because "GUESTS ARE COMING OVER!!!!!!!! THE HOUSE IS A MESS!!!!!!!!"

• The first person at the table to point out—or more accurately scream: "GRANDMA!"

• Downing that entire bottle of alcohol seems just about wonderful by the end of the day for her.

Zyglavis:

• Like wise ol' Krioff once said: He's the nagging mother in law.

• Will walk into the house and the first thing she'll do is run her finger over a random surface and then inspect her fingertip for any dust and being suspicious in the lack of it.

• The grandma kids are not excited to see.

• If you don't fully sanitise yourself, before stepping into her house, it doesn't matter how old you are. She doesn't give a shit if you're 14, 30 or 2. She can and she WILL shove a hand sanitizer up your ass, while wearing plastic gloves.

• Exclusively listens to classical music and *BOMBASTIC SIDE EYES™* any teenager that listens to any other genre.

• Is probably mother of 3 or more children, but for some reason is still really disgusted in the mere idea of changing her grandchild's diapers.

• You ask if there's candy and she gives you a hard af dark chocolate that has a bunch of white spots on it. And it's not white chocolate.......

• "Back in MY days-"

Aigonorus:

• The grandpa that never moves.

• He just lays there, sleeping.

• The most active anyone's ever seen him, is when the kids accidentally kicked a ball in his face and his head turned forcibly 90 perfect degrees.

• And then his head didn't turn around again and everyone present believed he died on the spot.

• Also had hearing problems and Alzheimer, so he constantly forgets his own age and when you calculate it and try to remind him, he can't hear you and when he finally hears you, he doesn't remember what he asked and everything just goes in a loop.

Krioff:

• The uncle that can fix everything except his eating habits.

• If he has an engineering degree? What kinda question is that???.............. Of course he doesn't.

• He learnt everything out of experience.

• If he tries to play with you, he'll probably just leave you hanging from a tree and tell you to play "surviving in the jungle".

• Definitely the family member who survives the zombie apocalypse.

• Breathes exclusively to be of Sweet Grandma's service.

• He'll help everyone, really, but you're still not GRANDMA.

Tauxolouve:

• The uncle that brings a new girlfriend in every family dinner and the Extraverted Daughter has all of their Instagrams.

• If you need flirting advice, he's there. ;)

• You once asked your mom which side of the family he's from. Your mom's or your dad's. And your mother couldn't remember, so she started asking everyone.

• Turns out no one remembers how you're related to him or if he just accidentally adapted into the family, but he's a cool guy, so everyone just lets him stay.

Partheno:

• The coolest godmother.

• Gets the best gifts.

• Will also give you flirting advice.

• Will basically kidnap you from your parents to take you on vacation and if you ask, she already has over ten suitors for you.

• Or she just manipulates your parents into allowing you to go with her.

• Has HIGH AF alcohol tolerance.

• Shamelessly talks about the most unhinged things and they're all sexual somehow.

• The person that looks like she could own a strip club, but oddly enough and much to everyone's surprise, she doesn't.

[humm-bird]

So! I'm taking it upon myself to summarize everything that happened to me before Watts showed up.

There's likely a lot of history that I am missing, likely with Gavamont, Ratazom, and Evilwizard, but this is just what I know. Forgive me if I mess up any details.

Before I joined the Council

When I first showed up, I got into a ruckus with the Council. Basically, they were (and still are) enforcing their laws and shit on a place where the gods had repeatedly told them to fuck off. That place is my home dimension.

This incident was specifically about taxes. I got into an—honestly very unfair, given that it took place in my home dimension and practically everyone there wanted the Council to fuck off—court case against the Council's only tax wizard at the time, @greywizard-reporter-jim.

The Council lost, and the god of justice (who really should take it's job more seriously, but I digress) teleported an adult thermonuclear moth into the City of Towers.

Unfortunately, I was stupid and told the Council that the moth was close to detonation and they promptly handled it.

I got Jim fired (sorry bout that) and started hanging out with him. Pretty cool guy, not gonna lie.

We did various things to fuck with the Council, including causing havoc at the... uhhh... I think it's called the Vault of Relics? Something like that. Anyways, all you need to know is that it's where the Council keeps their super powerful magic items. Side note, that was my first test of my Mithril Hydra!

Anyhow, while the bureaucratic fucks were distracted, Jim stole a bunch of documents from their archive.

We kept trying to fuck them over until I realized that I couldn't just defeat them. That's when I made my deal to join them to try to make change via policy rather than force.

Also, pretty soon after Jim started doing crime, his ex, @battlemageserioth, came after him. The story of how they got together is long and complicated, but basically Jim seduced Serioth to get a position on the Council. They were actually kind of in love but they were both complete messes at the time so it didn't really work out.

Working for the Council

I quickly became better acquainted with Serioth, and had a... friendly rivalry, I guess, with him. Basically, he was very devoted to the Council and didn't understand that it was pretty shitty.

He was tracking down Jim, but Jim learned how to combine tax magic an necromancy. Those skeleton mafia debt collectors are quite formidable.

Around this time, @djitch wanted to be a cook for the Council. I put in a good word with her, and she's currently working at a restaurant in the City of Towers that I cannot remember the name of.

Next big event!

The age of gretchen (aka everyone panics about a monster that ended up as a friendly eldrich horror)

Okay. So. @gr3tchn. You might know her from fucking with M.M. recently. She is basically the concept of hunger given physical form.

When she first appeared, I was one of the first people to respond. Uh, actually, before that, some context.

On Raazaa, attacks by monsters are very common. The big ones are by far the most dangerous. Well, except for the mermites. Those things will fuck you up. Anyhow, as a consequence of the preferred method of deterring giant monsters, my first response to seeing one is generally "hit it until it goes away."

I blasted a giant hole in Gretchen (sorry bout that) and she just turned into another mouth. By the by, she could barely talk at the time. The blast also sent a bunch of chunks flying everywhere.

Let's make this quick. Various pieces of Gretchen messed up a lot of stuff and met a lotta people. For example, @effervescent-and-frothy used to be a wizard but is currently Gretchen's... daughter?

@feyosha figured out that Gretchen changes based on context. For example, the bit that mothered Effer became very motherly, the one that visited @wizard-council-librarian became very studious, you get the gist.

By this point, Gretchen was fully sentient and I was just being stupid and rude by trying to fight her.

FeyOSHA "defeated" her by having sex with the giant eldritch horror. Not my kind of thing, but I don't judge.

...

Let's see... the next big event was...

Oh. That motherfucker.

Werill.

Serioth started having weird memory lapses. Nobody knew what was up until he wrote down that it was some sort of bug. He also was suspecting something up with Werill and a certain spot in the Board's chambers.

First, some background on Werill. He's a power-hungry shithead who was on the Board of Archmages, proposed a bunch of greedy bullshit, you get the gist.

Serioth went down a secret passage in the Board's chambers and found a massive underground... cathedral? I don't know. Anyways, Werill was in there, along with a LOT of memetovores. For those who don't know, a memetovore is a weird bug that eats memories.

Werill monolouged for a while before he sicced the little fuckers on Serioth and my guy barely escaped.

I heard all the commotion and went down to investigate. Werill was kinda kicking my ass too but I summoned my mithril hydra and that pretty effectively squashed the memory-eating bastards.

I managed to capture Werill, but I couldn't hope to kill all of the bugs and they had access to the underground portal room so they quickly fucked off to a buncha parts of this multiverse.

Now, cut to Serioth real quick. He and Jim are (I think, I could be wrong) still yearning for each other and Serioth's nearly memoryless subconscious lead him to Jim's old tower.

Something you need to understand is that Serioth was a revenant, clinging onto life via his duty to the Council. Now that the Council has betrayed him, he's fading away.

Anyhow, Jim turned him into a lich so that Serioth could live.

As for Werill, he's got a fucking false hydra in the ruins of the Council portal room, and we need to deal with soon.

[eluvixnsarchived]

no one asked for it but since i am trapped beneath a cat who is biting me every time i try to end this cuddle session here is some haylin lore

- comes from a pirate hyur mother and an elezen gridanian father

- has an older brother that got smoked with their father during the calamity when he was fighting on the frontlines

- has no contact with ma bc ma abandoned them

- came to gridania hoping to find some sort of life and home but instead found ghosts and ruin

- would never have gone down the path of adventurer if she wasnt so in need of a few bucks

- only went with yda and paps and to the waking sands bc she needed that cash money your girl was BROKE

- stayed with the scions bc of minf and her understanding of the echo

- got super attached to alphie bc she missed the sibling feeling and only continued to stay for him

- and bc she thought thancred was tasty

- and bc where else would she fucking go at this point

- DEFINITELY had a few choice words for lahabrea when the big reveal happened and definitely told alphie if he strayed too far from her side she would drag him around by his ankles

- definitely wanted g'raha during the crystal tower quests and definitely cried a bit when they were over

- canonly bothers urianger when she's bored and he knows this but humours her anyway bc he eventually peaks her curiosity and he knows this dumb bitch cant resist acting on it so now he can infodump all he wants and shes just chin in hands the whole time bc shes basically learning history tea

- definitely has not recovered from the vault and the crippling guilt

- definitely cornered hancock when he first showed up and told him if he fucks with tataru shes gonna serve his balls on a kebab skewer seasoned and fried to him

- the scions have definitely come to her room to go out on jobs and she's definitely opened the door butt ass naked. now they just call over link pearl ( and when she doesnt answer they send y'shtola )

- has thought about how she'd kick the asses of every scion except y'shtola bc even she knows better

- tried to be a white mage like dad and it didnt fit. tried to be a dragoon like brother but it didnt fit. tried to be a warrior to try and connect with her mother but it didnt fit. became a dark knight when the anger she held after the vault kicked in. became a reaper when she figured out being a real warrior of darkness has more appeal than being the golden child of a god who was never there

- the only reason she isnt a mercenary for hire for the highest bidder is bc she loves the scions too much and alphie is her north star

- that being said if she ever lost him or g'raha or thancred or estinien she'd probably kill the source herself bc whats the point in living in it if they're not there any more?

- is v adventurous though like DO NOT ENTER signs are like moth to flame for her shes just too curious she HAS to know

- flirting with nero so he gets uncomfortable and weirded out is her favourite hobby

- she does the same to estinien and this is my reasoning as to why he took so long to join the scions it it wasnt the commitment issues it was fucking haylin lurking in the shadows ready to tell him he holds his rod well

- is alisaie's number one fan she would kill for this kid she would fight anyone

- insists g'raha goes with her everywhere they're joined at the hip she wants him bad

- her crush on thancred turned into 'this is my partner in crime my best friend my brother in arms'

- urianger is her person though

- worships the ground y'shtola walks on like her word is law

- scar across her nose is from wandering too far into the forests alone as a kid and getting smacked by the beasties in there before her brother came to the rescue

- has a multitude of scars from various things and her story for each one is never the truth ( it's easier and better that way )

- you can bet ur ass she tried to see where things would go with aymeric but stopped when she realised he really is that kind and noble and she didnt want to ruin that bc she is utterly convinced she's not worth a damn thing

- which is probably why she throws herself into harms way so willingly. not just for the scions, or the people, or the weak. but bc she thinks she deserves whatever pain is coming

- and because she KNOWS she can take it. she can withstand it

- she's just too stubborn to not stand up again after it

[kaesaaurelia]

Thinking about the temple I went to briefly in college where a minyan was "any ten willing adults who made it here despite the weather -- sometimes we only get eight, though" because it was Central Illinois and they were mostly interfaith families, vs the shittiness of my mom's childhood rabbi who said he'd marry my parents without requiring my father to convert, then like three months before the wedding said, "Oh, actually I don't do interfaith couples." Thinking about the girl who deadass got up in front of my French class and argued passionately that every country in the world should follow rabbinical law (which version? idk, her version) and try boys old enough to be bar mitzvah'd as adults so they would be subject to the death penalty. Thinking about how exposure to that one single Central Illinois temple's idea of a minyan would've killed her stone dead.

Thinking about the neighbors that lectured my parents about "not raising me right" because we had a Christmas tree so I was clearly not being raised Jewish, and the next year, thinking about how my parents got the most obnoxious neon blinky star and put the tree in the window that faced their house. Thinking about my dad's family that kept giving me Jesus-themed presents for Christmas until we stopped talking to them, who could never acknowledge that my mother had a law degree. (Thinking about how my great-grandmother on my mother's side got her doctorate in French literature after her first husband died and she married her second husband, who was a rabbi. Exposure to my mother's mother's family would've killed my dad's family stone dead too, maybe.)

Thinking about how I grew up being made fun of for not "looking Jewish" even though that's not how anything fucking works, but my mom was adopted and didn't convert, so to lots of people she's not really Jewish and neither am I. Thinking about how in middle school my best friend (also Jewish, no adoption history) and I used to be mistaken for twins (so I do look Jewish, even though that's not how anything works), and about how now she and one of her other best friends (white Latina, like my mom's biological mom) are mistaken for sisters. Thinking about how both of us signed my friend's ketubah when she got married even though her other look-alike friend is goyisch, because the sweet old lady from her temple who was going to sign it got lost on the way to the lodge and, it being an interfaith wedding in rural Illinois, all the other Jews who got there that early were related to her. The rabbi said she considered it valid as long as the signers were unrelated adults, and as a female rabbi I assume she also has faced her share of accusations of Not Good Enough.

Thinking about how recently I had to explain to my doctor how I, a white woman, could have sickle cell trait. My doctor seemed shocked and appalled that an interracial union could produce pale-skinned descendants. Thinking about how my whole life has been an exercise in arguing about how little biological ancestry matters until suddenly it does -- suddenly it's a medical issue you're facing, a mystery kidney condition where they can't diagnose it and you maybe get a kidney removed for no reason and continue to suffer on and off (what happened to my biological grandmother), or, if you're lucky, you have a heads up that the doctor isn't very good and can convince him to hold off on the operation long enough for the Afro-Caribbean intern who knows his shit and has seen this before, to diagnose you properly (what happened to my mom), or you're me, thankfully you just have chronic anemia, mention the sickle cell trait, are disbelieved at first, and then are lectured by your doctor about the primary danger of sickle cell trait: if you have children (presumably with a white man) you are going to have to explain this VERY CLEARLY to him beforehand so he knows you didn't cheat on him, because why would he trust you?

(Thinking about the nurse who told my mom I might "come out black" because she had sickle cell trait, and how my mom had to be prepared to defend her fidelity to my dad.)

Kidney issues? Anemia? Well. I guess angry husbands are a greater health risk to women, after all.

(Thinking about all the times my mom has had to fight for barely adequate medical care; about how many times she has argued with the doctors, half-conscious, about one of her various life-threatening conditions, and forced them to listen for once to the sick fat woman who thinks she knows things; about how many times I could have never been born if she hadn't argued. And thinking about how hard it was to be raised by someone who still to this day can never acknowledge she might be wrong, and I'm not saying this justifies what she did to me, but goddamn, if I'd been fighting for consciousness that many times to yell about insulin or whatever, I'd be hard-pressed to back down, too. I'm not planning to have kids, by the way; the kidney issues are way more likely. Not that he asked.)

Thinking about my great-grandfather the rabbi and his ham bone seder, there being no other bones available for the seder plate in that town in rural North Carolina, and then I feel I have to clarify, no, he was my step-great-grandfather, and my mom was adopted, I'm not really related enough to him to claim him as an ancestor. But then again, what kind of rabbi would look at a ham bone on a seder plate and say it was good, and then look at me and say we're not family? I might not look like him, I'll never know, but I know my mother takes after him because we had a dog toy on the seder plate once and if that's not likeness I don't know what is. I don't think he ever doubted his own Jewishness; some of his family fled the Spanish Inquisition. But I think he'd think I was Jewish enough.

I don't know Hebrew and I didn't grow up going to temple, because that one rabbi sucked and all the other temples in town -- and we were arguably spoiled for choice -- were much more rigid in their interpretations of the rules. I never got bat mitzvah'd or even confirmed. Most damningly, I hate arguing. But I can, and I will, and I come from a long line of people who had to argue to survive, and also one guy who got caught in the middle of hog farm country and had to put together an unplanned Seder. And so, I think, if the ham bone was good enough, and any ten adults who made it to temple in a blizzard can be enough, probably so am I.

(Thinking about the time when I was four or so and learning to set the table, and I asked my father -- who is not Jewish -- why it was important that the forks be straight, and he said, "It's so they know we're Jewish." That one isn't a deep thought, my dad is just a troll. But I was probably eight or nine before I was like "hang on, that doesn't seem right..." and when I got older and tried to read the whole Torah for myself, I kept a sharp eye out for mentions of silverware.)

[jellimac-sims-stories]

Gasshpon Vacation

---

Is it really the holiday season without family drama

It's almost Christmas time in Mt Komorebi and the long-estranged son of the Shin family has returned with his family in tow.

Yuri, the eldest of the grandchildren, watches as the tension between her uncle Yejun and grandfather unfolds.

---

I had been wrapping up a special holiday edition of “How to Spice Up Your School Uniform” try-on haul Livestream when I heard the doorbell ring and saw the unread message on my phone. 

[Seohyun] Lookout. Dad and I are inbound. See you in 10! 

“Shibal (씨발/Fuck),” I swore under my breath, quickly ended the stream and threw on something reasonable. To make a three-generational story short, my Uncle Yejun is the blackest of black sheep in our very traditional Korean family. Granted there are a few (I'm not the snowest white there is and my cousin Youngsol the snowboard model is no angel either) but my Uncle Yejun really pissed off my halmi and halbi (grandma and grandpa for you westerners).

My family is the founder of WestEnd Co; one of the leading export businesses in all of Japan. Yep, that WestEnd Co. The one that you order all of your books, electronics, and upgrade parts from online. Who do you think sends out all the free Hitz Earbuds? Anyway, WestEnd Co has been a family-run business for almost 75 years. Each time the CEO of the company retires, the eldest son of the next generation takes over. It's been like that for the whole of WestEnd Co’s history. Even the branch office in Seoul is headed by my halbi’s youngest brother and his sons. Next in line would have been my Uncle Yejun but he didn’t return home after attending university in America. 

Home is Mt Komorebi; specifically the Wakaba district. My family has lived in this area for the past ten generations. Most have moved back to South Korea or elsewhere on the globe but some still live here. Two of my cousins' on my father’s side of the family live down the road, another cousin lives in Senbamachi, and Youngsol’s family had moved to Osaka after he graduated.

It's not as if it's odd that my Uncle went to university outside of the country. My halmi and halbi had three kids; my mother the eldest, Uncle Yejun, and Aunt Minso the youngest. All three of them went to university out of the country. My mother went to Cambridge in England where she met my father. My uncle and my aunt both went to university in Britechester (that’s somewhere in the states); Uncle Yejun went to Foxbury double majoring in business and technology, and Aunt Minso went to the University of Britechester for law. 

The big difference between my mother and her siblings is that she came back. After my father proposed (with my halbi’s permission of course), Mom came back home to get married and to start a family, i.e. to have cute little baby me. My aunt seems like she plans to come back home when she’s done interning but my uncle continually refuses to come back. I think this is the first time he’s been back home since he left when he was still a teenager.

Uncle Yejun was expected to be groomed to take over from my halbi after he finished school. From what I know, he’s totally uninterested in running the family business. Right now my mother is the Vice President while my halbi is still the CEO. Almost every day I overhear my mother arguing with my halbi asking him when he is going to retire. He usually responds with some sort of grunting sound, basically meaning that he doesn't want to talk about it and he goes off to play the piano. The whole conversation makes my inner feminist rage rise. It’s not like my mother doesn't have an MBA from one of the best universities ever! I know my family is well soaked in traditions but it’s not like my mother is gonna have a “wild female mood swing” and sell the company. Like, okay boomer.

I lowkey understand why my uncle doesn't want to run the company, truly. If and that's a big if I have any sons I'd have no desire to have my children more or less chain ganged into joining the "family business" like their last name was Winchester. Honestly, it seems as if my uncle is doing better now that my halbi cut him off. Oh yeah, my halbi cut him off when it became clear that he wasn't coming back. To make this whole thing worse for my uncle he started a family with a "nyeon (년/whore) that he is still not married to”. Not my words. I’m just quoting my halbi. Let’s also not forget Uncle Yejun covered in tattoos that my halbi also disapproves of. 

Basically, my halbi has disowned my Uncle more or less for living the life he wants for himself and has refused to talk to him for nearly my whole life. The only reason why I even met my cousin Seohyun was from a Christmas visit to my aunt's apartment when I was a kid. Aunt Minseo is G.O.A.T. She’s always snatched, so stylish, so smart, and a really great lawyer. The last time I visited we both got our hair dyed ginger (she kept her hair darker and short while I got mine ombre). My mom blew a gasket when I got home but at least my school didn’t make me change it back. 

Aunt Minseo's also my favorite more or less down to the fact that I didn't know I had any other option until I met the rest of my family that Christmas. Both Seohyun and my Uncle came over for Christmas dinner. It had been my first time out of Japan to anywhere besides Korea. I had been hooked up on Christmas joy and barely paid any attention to the extra people opening presents. I'm never gonna forget how shocked I was meeting a little blonde-haired, white girl that speaks Korean and learning that I had more family in America!

As I raced down the stairs, I could hear the piano from the study. Good, that would mean my halbi was in the study playing the piano. The study was just off of the living room but behind doors so he wouldn’t see Uncle Yejun and Seohyun right away but he’d hear them eventually. I found my father talking to Uncle Yejun and Seohyun in the foyer. My father, the typical professor he is, was just commenting on Seohyun’s Korean when I walked up to join them, “Your Korean is very good but I think it hasn’t been that helpful on your first trip to Japan.”

Everyone laughed andEveryone laughed and Yejun simply said, “Didn't think about that one. Maybe the little one will learn Japanese. I'm sure Hoesung, our second eldest, will learn Japanese in a weekend. He's so smart. Smarter than me I think. Not that you aren't, sweetheart," he chuckled and then continued, "I probably could have been clearer on the 'where I grew up’ location when I told the kids where we were going on vacation.”

"They raised us speaking English and Korean at home and the first place they take us is Japan," Seohyun teased, making everyone laugh again and she came over to hug me. Our fathers busied themselves catching up with each other (Like what? They know each other?) so I pulled Seohyun to the side and asked her what was going on.

"Um, has your dad forgotten that our halbi mostly hates him?" I quietly asked in English. Both of our dads speak English but I exactly wasn't trying to keep our conversation from them. 

"My parents brought us here for a pre-Christmas vacation. We've been here four days and my dad hasn't relaxed once. You should have seen him. The first day we were here he took us on a hike to an echoing cave. It was supposed to be a relaxing meditative walk but he was as jittery as if he had a Denkimushi in his shirt," she whispered back. "Yesterday night after dinner, I heard my mom say that my siblings and I at least deserve to know our grandmother so here we are."

"Why didn’t she come then? Halbi is going to lose his mind once he realizes…" I started to say but just then I realized that the piano had stopped playing. Seohyun had turned her attention to someone standing behind me and was beginning to bow as she introduced herself in Korean...

Read the rest on my AO3

[hanzi83]

Just Going Off Vibes

Blog 

I normally jot shit down that I will talk on the podcast, but I did want to write another pretentious blog where I am probably gonna repeat the same shit I have probably already said, I am going to try and incorporate big words to make me sound smarter but once you get to seeing the shitty grammar and structure to this shit, you are gonna write me off because I haven’t read too many books in my life and I am just going off vibes, which can sometimes help or be detrimental to how I come across. But once you are catching up with shit and taking in the social media discourse of the day because I can’t remove myself from the online shit since I know that everything that trends is manufactured by different factions and cults to change and dominate the  narratives, and it becomes fascinating to see how it plays out because I can already feel where the end goal is, every day you see why attempts at comedy has gone through the shitter and has just been watered down, when you see the most uncreative shit from people like “Mike Obama” trending because right wing shit heads are regressive and self hating toward themselves because most likely their search history for porn has all trans related shit to it but even if the joke was funny how does everyone repeating it and getting boosted by other billionaire funded think tanks make it even funnier, you couldn’t have come up with a better name? Like where is the creative output? It is one of those things where people have to hype up other people’s shitty jokes so in turn their shitty jokes get boosted up because by their logic, if it gets retweets it suddenly fucking means it is top shelf comedy, if that was the case, then someone like Brooklyn Dad on twitter would be considered the funniest person on the fucking planet. They think because they dominate the algorithm, that it is gonna cure their mental illness and having to cope with the fact that you ride for people who literally want to marry children and put them to work with loosened child labor laws, like most of you mother fuckers don’t even think human lives are worth it because it means you will have your shitty guns, you suffer from this online shit where you think because it is going back to 90’s regression on HGH supplied by Vince McMahon, that you think because you repeat shitty comedy that it suddenly makes it more funny because other compromised sex offenders being forced to be an online troll are the ones slapping their knee and having celebratory high fives in emoji form in their shitty fucking group chats. I am not even defending the Obamas as far as the elitism goes in being in that political world, but even if Michelle Obama was trans, so the fuck what, she is still attractive. I don’t care one way or the other, listen I am not saying she is but why is that the own on someone, like even though I don’t like Hilary Clinton and her track record, and I thought you should call her out for her resume of shit she has done, the funded sports entertainment personalities and social climbers hype up other horrible regressive shit, like even if we agreed she sucks, why would I want to be on the side of someone who is doing it because it is rooted in their misogyny they have for most women, just like if I don’t like the neoliberal shit the Obamas are involved with, the fact that people who claim to be “left” will share a laugh with some shitty right wing trolls even if their shit is rooted in racism, misogyny and transphobia. People will shit on you for voting for a democrat because there is no lesser of 2 evils to them, but then they will align with funded ideology under the guise of “Well I hate the Obamas so I am gonna agree with their anti trans rhetoric”. We are living in an era where people who have a different past then the one they presented is gonna be “exposed” because there will be documentaries, books, and television shows etc about it since everything on this fucking planet has to be exploited. I have predicted, we will get a whole series of different people who we will find out that they didn’t die and they are still alive, and we are gonna wonder how it was done and orchestrated. We have already exhausted all the fucking horrible scandals that would’ve been a bigger deal like 10-15 years ago. The reason why I wanted to mention this first is because since CNN now has a legit right wing owner, which is why the alt right targeted CNN specifically as the “fake news” because they didn’t want to actually get truth, they wanted one of their own there so it now makes it seem like it is being fair to the right wing when it has always been centrist to the right for majority of the time it has been on air, so now that anything that is said on there and other MSM outlets, it is designed for the social climbers and funded thought leaders to then dunk on it so now for a bunch of people on the right wing who hate anything LGBTQ related, you are literally doing the gayest thing ever when you are Stanning for different first ladies to begin with, you might as well be looking at US Weekly’s “Who wore it best” for different celebrity get ups to even give a shit of who Don Lemon thinks is more beautiful, like it is cool if you are into it but it is kind of gay and that is not a negative thing but the fact that so many anti LGBTQ people are obsessed with this kind of shit always makes me laugh, but you are sitting there discussing this shit while your legs are flailing in the air as you pick out your asshole hair, while trying to hide that you have trans related shit in your porn search history, you hate black people but you probably secretly hire a black male sex worker to fuck your wife while you jerk off in the corner, and then you project all that shit onto other fucking people, especially talking heads and celebs, who literally hate themselves for who they are but they then take their self hatred and direct it at a general community and influence an audience who are going to grow into the shittiest bigots on the planet and repeat your shitty humor because they are too unorginal to have their own personality. But that shit Don Lemon did was by design because he knows the right wing hates him, or is it symbolism that on the surface Don Lemon is the last kayfabed democrat there, and if he says anything nice about the wife of an ex democratic president, that the right wing leader will get the funded accounts to dunk on Don Lemon and come up with the most unclever trans joke about Michelle Obama. This is the comedy that the left is supposedly scared of because the right wing are getting too fucking good at it. This is the shit that clearly is not agenda driven and very organic unlike all that “LIBTARD WOKENESS IN OUR BEER” while all of you are basically doing product placement so you get free beer most likely. I know I am not mentally right in the head, and I have spent my life being such a caricature, but it is so alarming how much of our lives are a complete parody at this point. People perpetuating that the internet is some underground chat room that no one is looking to so their opinion seems more organic and real are the biggest sociopaths on the planet, they spend their time online organizing how to make more chaos in the discourse, then other mentally ill social climbers say fucked up shit and the ones who are perpetuating it get to have a cult to pretend they are more normal than everyone else, when they spend time destroying any art that doesn’t have their cosign or their efforts, you have to accept most online “critics” will most likely praise something if they have some involvement with it or if it goes with their political agenda, while their only saving grace is dunking on the villain of the day in an America’s dumbest criminal aesthetic, and act like they are not aligning with problematic people in the system. They know that no one interacts with my twitter or social media because I am a red flag account for group chat people who play by a script, to avoid, and they will secretly monitor what I say or write and then get angry about it that they flood your entire timeline by boosting up the worst narratives and double down on it, they will then cooperate with the hired online mercenaries, who have probably taken from my private journal to inform people if I write about them, and they will try to put me through mental torment over an opinion.

I do feel bad for specific talent who are cogs in the system who have to go through shit their billionaire bosses make them do but god am I really getting sick a lot of you in the entertainment business who help perpetuate to the toxic online shit and play innocent because you will have a sociopathic cult that will constantly fucking defend your every fucking move. All of this shit for entertainment that no one is supposed to take seriously but if you don’t like the ideas conjured up for this modern work shoot shit, people who “never take anything seriously” will have a whole fucking shrine to this shit while calling out others for lack of morals and integrity when most of you are into products that are “outside of WWE” that are still connected to WWE under the table most likely. You will give people shit for attending a shitty WWE media conference while you’re all doing Perry Mason level of investigating for this CM Punk and Elite shit, maybe the 13 year old Hanzi would’ve been into this shit but this has been completely watered down and I have never cared less about one of these, the reason why I do because they sabotaged their product for more rebooted worked shoot shit that was already exhausting itself in the 2000’s and 2010’s shit,  the pro Punk contingent who would get on anyone for having critiques of the company prior to Brawl out, suddenly have all these fucking complaints while they organized harassment campaigns against talent that spoke out but now that is their favorite messiah who got kayfabed victimized, suddenly their job was to tear down the product, undercut talent by implying their narrative of “It wasn’t supposed to happen because Bucks and FTR were supposed to face but they didn’t” and then shake down people to be pro Punk and don’t get me started on all the Elite cult members. Now we are making Alvarez and Meltzer workers in this scenario too because you know eventually CM Punk is gonna slap the fuck out of him at a press conference when it becomes official that CM Punk was getting fucked over and phased out of the company and all of this booking and sabotaging of talent just so we can cater to CM Punk’s Super Cena status. And when he comes back, they probably won’t even wrestle each other because the other part of the work is that the Elite might leave, because they need to have a “shoot” angle then as months pass by, everyone kind of gets on the same page of it being a work, and then when the match doesn’t happen, then it is “OH I THOUGHT IT WAS A WORK HUH??” like works can’t make money in other ways. But I am sick of the “smart fans” who think they are smarter than everyone else dumb down narratives and they can get away with it because the owner of these companies and some of the talent give them social permission to be allowed to get boosted up while they pretend they are against the system, but the more the days pass, their mask comes off and they are the phoniest people on the planet, they have never been on the right side of history when it comes to pro wrestling and all the shit they let slide while someone who goes off on a rant because their mental illness was triggered by racist behavior, will get shafted and isolated but an owner who has had a history of some of the most horrendous shit will get a million passes and people still defending him to this day. The only reason why people are invested so much into this is because a lot of people have helped organize this work. If it makes money it makes money, but this has really exposed how mentally depraved a lot of people are, I am not even talking about the over the top accounts that go too far, basically they are designed to get dunked on, those people are still allowed to function online to play that role, but the people who have sophisticated their propaganda and their sociopathic tendencies, and maybe I take it seriously because people like this in society will not get better and will get worse with the more power they accumulate. If they are willing to lie this much for entertainment, I am afraid to see what they would do to manipulate people into their fundamentalist beliefs that they will disguise as something else completely. 

I feel the more I write about this shit to get off my chest, I feel less and less interested in entertainment as a whole, and wrestling was the last entertainment I constantly watch but now I rarely care for anything in the product and even the online discourse feels like retreads of previous generation discourse because everyone has this attitude era fetish and all the same problematic shit from that era is gonna repeat itself and people’s mental health will get worse and there will be more tragedies etc, and people who are aligned known this so they will pretend to feign concern but then advocate for the most dangerous shit to happen because aesthetically it isn’t the WWE and that would’ve meant something 10 years ago but all these promotions are probably aligned with the head honcho company anyways, and then they present this new company like the anti WWE company but then gimmick a way for stuff WWE would do to to be implemented in this new company because it is getting out of control, like that isn’t being done by design, you really think these talents are really not supposed to be on social media saying problematic shit? Pretending these people live by regular rules is tiresome because you can’t apply the same fucking rules you do to a mom and pop shop. The discourse has just made people a lot more dumb. You can boast about how many books you read to counter me to show how smart you are, but how come people who boast about all the books they have read never have any interesting personalities, they act sitcom smart. I am not shitting on people who read books, there are plenty of them that do that aren’t assholes about it. It is like the same people who pretend they are outside but they literally go outside and are still online most of the time to get off their cookie cutter heel persona because that is all they are gonna have when they sell out and will feel more miserable that people can be a little bit more free with their opinions. When someone like me goes outside, then they hate that too because that was one of their key talking points. I know the word gas light has lost all of its meaning, especially since the wrestling world got a hold of it and prepare for that shit to be in everyone’s promos, but literally these accounts try to gaslight people because that is their only form of freedom they have, they have to be muses for other industry people to use and when they are done with them, then they will get cast aside for someone new. I say this as someone that was used as a muse for Artie Lange and I was supposed to be super happy that a celeb I grew up watching was talking to me on the phone at late hours of the night, and then he would change up one and do the same shit he claimed he didn’t about Howard doing that to me. Since then I will be happy to meet a celeb here and there but I am never going to make the mistake being a fucking “Stan” for one again even if it means I am not gonna have much social relevancy, in fact I hope I am not here longer for the eventual fascist takeover they keep normalizing anyways, and realizing a lot of your entertainment is tied to fundamentalism to the right side, it has helped me kind of not wanting to give a shit, I think if I write and bitch more, I can finally blog through it and eventually stop watching, but chances are I will wake up and I will consume more and act like George Costanza, like I didn’t just talk a gang of shit. I just wish I stepped away from this fandom shit a long time ago, especially when you know there is political motivation in the art forms you consume, some can be for good but a lot for the bad. 

Even the leaker shit in the Pentagon, even that has to be gimmicked, because every person that has been a “whistle blower” or “leaker” has always been a narrative to get information established while they make characters of the people who play those roles, and they really have to get locked up even if it means there is more than meets the eye, so the left differentiating why this leaker is bad and why that one is good won’t work either because these things, to me at least, are done by design and especially in this era where it is basically an episode of the Boys playing out where new variants are becoming public figures for the right wing causes while we keep pretending it is just some normal situation, like the creative is so fucking shitty for this “WELL HE WANTED TO LEAK IT TO IMPRESS HIS ONLINE BUDDIES” because it’s easier to accept than, it was supposed to leak so all the right wing grifters can use this to further cement their point that the establishment hates this guy and the leftists are agreeing with the establishment when “back in their day” you applauded people leaking the corruption going on. I don’t even know what was specifically in that leak, but all I feel is that it was designed to happen so now we will have debates talking ourselves into a circle of which kind of leaks are acceptable and which are not, and most of the establishment people will come off as pro US imperialists and the ones defending this guy are doing it and pretending to be anti war but more aligned with pro Russian imperialism that is gonna have  meet up at a mutual spot with the neocons in the US but you wouldn’t think that because we have to continuously sports entertain our ways into fascism. Even the manipulation of you having to sell your audience on this fake in fighting between Trump and DeSantis is dumb, because you will say you are not for either of them but you are giving your audience the impression any of them is better than one another like they aren’t going the same route. This is why the political analysis has become shittier sports entertainment with a bunch of shitty sports entertainers who think they have to present everything in a comedic lens while the world is going to implode and nothing is going to stop it. But sure, let’s talk about DeSantis’s pudding fingers or some shitty product placement with the culture war framing. This is just my opinion, just like everything written. It is gonna be another incident where it will have a bunch of elitists who will rally against video games, Gen Z, and the people who will defend this guy are gonna prop up his religious beliefs, his racism, then you got a mixture of conspiracies that he was spewing since they want to align any conspiratorial person with right wing aesthetics, then the worst post left personalities like Greenwald will pretend this guy is a hero and that means if this “leftist” is being agreed with from Tucker Carlson, that suddenly you have clowns like Jimmy Dore go on a media blitz about how Tucker is the only one who is out lefting the the Squad or whatever repeated bullshit he will spew. But the basic point is, the world is heading for very dark times, even more so than the last couple of years and we still have to present this shit in a theatrical way and dumb down our villains and gimmick up how this shit is being presented, like leaking something on discord or twitter is just as MSM as the MSM and I feel even people on the left fall for that shit, because if you were to get a little conspiratorial, maybe you could outdo the right, but it feels like some people limit it because they have plans on crossing over to the right at some point. But then again, don’t believe what I say. My aesthetic and situation in life would check all the boxes of what people consider the most discredited and people who control narratives have put me in that situation, you still hate me at your core even more so because I didn’t cross over to the right wing side. You tried so many gimmicked ways to get me there since I was the cookie cutter conspiratorial person in the 2010’s plus I have severe mental illness, you have gotten your online mercenaries to photoshop me beating up people to have my name searched and the result of “Hanzi beat up a gay couple” to dominate, in fact it is all negative shit about me when you search me and that was purposefully done and it makes you even more upset that you didn’t manifest that into a reality. You know how many times they tried to hammer home that people in my life have helped keep me in this place that I am in, and then perpetuate that I will beat up my parents, there are layers of how they can play with your mind. One of the biggest examples is when I stopped doing my journal shit and watched them double down on harassment and instilling paranoia so they could push me to suicide and having to put up with a bunch of fake “Howard Sterns” who think they could produce chaos and harassment for their own social value. And you better believe those same people who advertised my name to a bunch of patriot groups are waiting for the perfect time to go full throttle, it is just right now I technically don’t have an audience, and I am probably at my most irrelevant but dangerous people are the ones who still pay attention to me, anytime I express myself in any way it becomes a threat to their egos, it doesn’t take money off their table, because I am at my most irrelevant but they still don’t like someone writing about the possibilities of how this could be operating so they will surely have the paid trolls to smear me much more or maybe at the next limited gathering I am brought to, I will have to put up with more elitist horse shit while everyone practices their sports entertainment character like the last fucking 10 years I have been on this fucking planet. Who knows how they will extract their revenge, but people are never fucking happy whenever I publish one of these fucking blogs, mostly because it is all over the fucking place but the worst kinds of people have been given permission to be the biggest assholes, and then they get shocked that their influence and the mental illness involved with the entertainment shit, doesn’t bring in a bunch of assholes, if there are this many assholes involved in becoming these “online characters” maybe analyze the industry leaders and how they have helped this shit while a bunch of you then pretend “Oh my god why are people reading into my subtle tweets in the midst of a heavy news day where everyone is is mouthing off in all kinds of ways” you people are the one who are supposed to be respectable members of society, you go to all these gatherings and you have all the sex in the world yet most of you act like a fucking whack packer, I think I could get more sense of the world if I talked to BeetleJuice from Howard Stern over a lot of the people in the entertainment or political world. Anyways I don’t know what the point of this was. 

[searidings]

In your opinion, what were Kara and Lena's individual gayest moments? 🤔🌈

oh bestie how long have you got? ok ok let's go lesbians let's go

lena:

filling kara's office with flowers. the bitch really said if my verbal language can't tell this woman how much i want to be railed by her maybe the language of flowers will do it for me

granting kara unrestricted office access on like their 3rd meeting

buying catco for kara. need i say more

whatever the fuck she was doing in every single s2 couch scene. bedroom eyes ass motherfucker

saving supergirl's life over her boyfriend's

apparently spending all her free time building lifesaving super tech without being asked even while she and supergirl were fighting

repeatedly risking her own life to save kara’s back when she still believed she was human

the inherent homoeroticism of continuing to pretend she didn’t know kara’s identity because it allowed her to remain close to her

“she broke my heart” yeah because that’s a normal thing platonic friends do

every time she’s ever gayzed at kara aka every time she’s ever looked at kara

the defining cultural moment that was “i killed my brother for you for our friends don’t you understand what you’ve done” aka the ultimate declaration of love: murder

her entire angsty s5 breakup spiral

programming the fortress’ lena lesbian luthor protocol aka no one touches my fucking WIFE

being quite happy to let the population of nc get turned into phantoms because she couldn’t put anything above her imperative of bringing kara home

“do you really not believe in magic?” “i believe in you”

the bickering spouses energy of their 6b interactions and lena’s overwhelming “ok i tried but you’re gonna make your own mistakes, i love you honey i’ll see you at home” energy

the worried wife vibes of her healing kara in the med bay

"hey, you” / “hey, hey, it’s okay”

kara:

how she absolutely peacocked around as supergirl in front of lena for the entirety of s2 l-corp gala im looking at you

biting the head off her boyfriend's mother when she thought lena was in danger because of her

crashing lena's date just to third wheel it with more manic jealous energy than any one person should contain

agreeing to come back to catco because lena batted her eyelashes

being prepared to save lena's life at the cost of poisoning the entire city's water

risking her civilian identity to save lena's life when she was poisoned

gazing tearfully at pictures of her and lena every time they have a lover's spat

every conversation she's had directly with lena's chest s3 gala im looking at you

“i’ll beat [james] up for you” aka kara choosing lena’s side over her best friend and first love

her whole "sure i can excuse murder if you're the one committing it babe" schtick throughout s3&4 aka nice grey gay morality

"i'm trying to catch lex FOR YOU that's why i'm doing this" never mind the fact that the man is kara's blood enemy noooo she's doing it for her gf

red daughter’s existence, period. honorary shoutout to her gay journal entries

flying around the world to bring lena her favourite things

“if i could be kara, just kara, then i could keep you as a friend” / “i was selfish and scared and i didn’t wanna lose you” aka kara canonically admitting that the idea of losing lena scared her more even than the potential fallout of her lies

volunteering to break the law for lena

volunteering to change all of history to get lena back

post-pz reunion hug. leaning in to kiss your bestie in front of god and everyone is something that can actually be so homosexual

every 6b interaction ie leaning into lena, mirroring her, finishing her sentences, “pot sticker me” etc

having lena be the one to ultimately inspire her to make some of the biggest decisions of her life ie becoming a reporter, revealing herself as kara zor-el

staring right at lena’s lips during her last most emotional scene of the series

[keiarchived]

Can I request Hawks with a very shy darling that is always shying away from him because she’s nervous to talk to him because he’s a stranger, and maybe it’s about how he slowly gains her trust and coaxes her out to his loving arms 🥺

@yanbaere: I’m in love with you blog 🥺 yandere Hawks makes me really soft and I love him,,, can I request some yandere hawks with a shy and insecure s/o? 🥺 he would be so protective and sweet with them and would definitely harm anyone that tries to hurt them or makes them feel bad,,he just hits different when he’s a yandere 👉🏻👈🏻 I adore your blog and your writing! It’s amazing 💕💕

anon: how about a one shot of yandere! Hawks x virgin/! reader ? 👀 I imagine he would be so freaking happy he got to be his s/o’s first time but of course he probably already knew that; he’s a little rough and haz a breeding kink but nothing you can’t handle, right? >;)

Yan Hawks with a shy birdie 🥺 this low-key adorable but also flirty af so like prepare yourself ♥️ Also thank you for the support guys! ♥️

Sorry it took so long 🥺

Yandere!Hawks x Shy!F!Reader

warnings: Yandere, manipulation, possessive, obsessive, breeding kink

words: 1.4k

The moment Keigo laid his eyes on you, he knew you were different. This pure and glowing aura radiating off you is unreal, it’s not often the number two hero let other catch him by the wings. Even rarer for him to be so interested in someone but you... you’re a breath of fresh air.

It was during a Christmas party when he met you, trying to make yourself as small as possible behind your mother. Being the child of a single mother hero meant attention often find its way towards the two of you, with men and women alike wondering how she do it. Raise a kid as well as dedicate herself to being a hero, there honestly are no secrets. Your mother and you function like any other family, sure there will be times where she would come home late and you have to help out a lot more than usual. But you don’t mind, your mother have been working hard for the two of you after all.

Plus it’s not like you’re a child, you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. Just a little shy and nervous around the edge, nothing Keigo couldn’t help you through. “Hey, glad you could make it.” The winged hero said in his usually layback tone as he greeted your mother, they had worked together on the same mission before and needless to say she is more than impressed by Hawks’ skills. The perfect son in law wouldn’t you say?

As per usual, you hide before your mother as the two heroes continued with their conversation. Catching up with each other whilst chuckles and laughs were heard but of course, Keigo’s eyes were set on you -- like how it had been in the last couple of minutes whilst talking to your mother whilst wondering how he could get you alone. It’s you he wants to talk to after all, as if lady luck is on Keigo’s side today, some other hero waved at your mother and has kindly asked her to come over, perfect. “Honey, why don’t you stay here with Hawks for a moment? I’ll be right back. You wouldn’t mind would you?” 

Oh if only she knew the danger that lurks behind his artificial smile, how this man have already laid his trap to lure you in. “Sure, of course. I don’t mind.” Keigo smiles with teeth rooting sweetness behind those word, before you could even protest, your safety shield has wander off.

There was a moment of awkward silence when you watched your mother’s figure blends into the crowd, greeting her fellow heroes but before you dig deeper into those mindless thoughts Keigo managed to snapped you out of it with a simple chuckle. Was it if ill will or kindness, you don’t know. The only thing you know is how handsome his face is upon a closer look, sandy blonde locks with a few strays among those well swoop back ones and a pair of dangerous looking golden hues to pair with. “What’s your name dove?”

“Y/N...” You were hesitant to give Keigo your name, felt as though you had just signed a contract with the devil himself and rest was history.

It took a while for you to truly open up to the winged hero but surprisingly or unsurprisingly, he was patient. Taking those small but necessary steps in order to make you comfortable, as much as he is obsessed with you, Keigo still put your comfort first above everything. Bring you small gifts that reminds you that he’s there whenever you need him, despite the hours of a day. If it’s for you, he will make it work. Date nights often resulted in spending inside and Keigo is fine with it, movie nights, game nights as long as he get to spend the time with you he is more than happy. Needless to say, your mother is supportive of the relationship with Keigo, how could she not when the perfect son in law present himself as your boyfriend?

He would never hurt you unlike all those other corrupted men, you know that right? As long as you are under his wings, nothing could harm you.

Keigo have been patient, he really have. Only doing whatever you’re comfortable with, soft kisses, caressing those cute flustered cheeks of yours, a hand tracing shapes on your thighs but it was all becoming too much. He wants you.

The thought of you crying out his name in pleasure, body quivering in needs as lewd wet sounds bounces off walls surrounding the two of you is enough to have his own cock grow hard. “Keigo...” Oh, if only you could see the expression you said his name with. So cute but yet alluring, “Princess... if you keep saying my name like that, you’re in trouble.” But you already know that don’t you? The way Keigo have been eyeing you ever since he have you cages beneath him on these soft sheets, golden shimmers with minimal lights, soft kisses soon became desperate and needy.

Your breath soon became unevening as Keigo trails those kisses further and further away from your lips, nibbling and biting hard enough to leave beautiful marks. “Wa-wait! Keigo please...” It wasn’t as if you didn’t want him to take you, in fact is the complete opposite. Everytime the winged hero left you breathless, a shameless patch of dampness gathers between your thighs. “Hm? What is it baby? I’m sorry I-“

“I’m a virgin.” Keigo’s eyes widen slightly, pretending as if he was completely clueless about the news. Sweetheart, Keigo knows every details about you and he is well informed. But the way you said it, cheeks red as his own wings and a slight pout on your lips — the less he could do is give you a reaction you wanted. “We’ll take it slow princess...”

Well at least the beginning he was.

When Keigo finally inches his cock into those throbbing tightnsss, it was surreal. The mere feeling had him tossing his head back in bliss whilst he tries to hold himself back, gritting his teeth until he was balls deep. Peppering you with kisses in order to help you ease up, adjust to the size of his cock stretching your untouched cunt open. “Fuck... you’re doing so good baby...” Keigo would coos, tugging those loose strands of hair behind your ears and away from your forehead before he finally started rutting into you. Those soft moans and whimpers only egged him on, feeling the way your nails dug at the sides and under his wings. God, it was like you wanted him to go wild, to go feral and eventually he did.

Hips snapping against your mound with long deep strokes, hard enough to leave them red even in the morning after as Keigo have you folded into a mating press. Hands gripping firmly on either sides of your ankles, drinking ever last bits of those delicious twists of pleasure from you. “Hm.. you like that?” A lazy grin stretched across his lips, “Like being breed like a bitch in heat even though I just took your virginity?” The mere thought of him being your first and last man, the one to corrupt you is enough to drive Keigo’s little edge further, drilling even deeper into your cunt to leave your body arching in bliss.

“Ke-Keigo no more-!” You have already lost count of the number of orgasm he managed to rip out of you in the last two hours, but you’re damn well sure if Keigo edges you to another, those pretty eyes of yours just might roll back and stay close. “Just one more baby, you can do it for me can’t you? You’ve been doing so well so far princess.” Keigo coos, with the same sweet smile as he pressed a soft kiss to your ankle. Just a little more until he soils you, nothing you can’t handle right?

“Gonna fill you nice and good~” The winged hero promised and he always keep his promises, at least with you. With the last deep thrust meeting your pelvis, Keigo grunts before ropes of cum painted your once virgin walls white. Panting as he collapsed atop of you slowly, letting out a blissful hum.

After a while, Keigo withdraw from you as he watched the way his own seed seeps out of you only to push those back where they belong. “Good girl, you did an amazing job baby.” He coos softly, peppering you with kisses all over.

As Keigo expected, you’re different and he’s glad to call you his own.

[kojinnie]

With The Exception of You

I dislike everyone in the room.

Pairing/Character: Reiner x Reader (she/her), Porco Galliard

Tags: SFW, fluff, college!au, Reiner Braun is a jock who is tired of his own friends, secret relationship

WC: 3.2K

Summary: Reiner had agreed to be in a discreet relationship with you, but after six months and with the arrival of Porco Galliard around you, he couldn’t help but to mark his territory.

Reiner couldn’t seem to fathom the butterflies wreaking havoc in his stomach. It came out of nowhere, as it often happened to be. Once in a while, he could feel his guts twisting as his chest filled with overflown emotions at odd times. Reiner hated it when it happened, because as much as he wanted to convince himself that he wasn’t self-aware of his image, those feelings could potentially strip himself off of his cool guy status.

Reiner had come to realize that such strange feeling often occurred caused by the sight of you.

It could be anything. Things so mundane, so simple. Like the way you twisted the pen in your fingers, the way you squinted your eyes at the blackboard during a lecture, and how you hastily scribbled things on your leather-bound notebook.

Or maybe it’s the way you sighed deliberately loud when someone uttered a dumb, sexist remark in class with no trace of shame, after they tried to debate your sound, well-researched opinion, and how you’d resolved it with a sarcasm that could disintegrate a man’s ego. Reiner sat on the corner of the classroom, disguising his chuckle by clearing his throat, finally coming to experience what they had called butterflies-in-your-stomach all along. 

At that point he had found himself painfully and helplessly in love with you.

He was well-aware of how different the two of you were. Reiner was the athlete, admitted to the uni through football scholarship, and you were the hard-working academician that mostly kept to yourself – hard to approach, hard to tame. Reiner hated how stereotypical he was – tall, buff, blonde, jock, with cheerleader exes and a DM full of thirst trap from his assembly of admirers. Reiner once wished he was anything but a cookie-cutter of everything you had been appalled of.

Reiner could feel every ounce of confidence he had ever had shriveled around your presence. It’s the way the two of you almost collided to each other at the campus hallway, and the way you threw an acknowledging, formal smile at him before striding away that made his heart ached. He wished you’d run to him and shriek his name with affection, but Reiner realized you were not one of his cheerleader exes, and not that he wanted you to be one. You were an anomaly he had yet to understand. A misplaced figure sticking out of his history of penchant for conformity.

“I really like you.” one day he finally said. Never had he been weak on the knees for a confession to any girl before, but this one occurrence? He did.

He didn’t know how he mustered the courage, but after hours, days and weeks he had spent trying to know you – learning your favorite song, accompanying you for book hunting, baking your favorite muffins, texting you good morning and good night – he finally got you alone, in the campus library, only five minutes before closing time.

You laughed at first, because the confession sounded ridiculous to you. The last thing you needed was a horde of girls sending you anonymous hate comments on Insta because you took the campus’ most eligible hunk off of the market. But he didn’t laugh along, and that was when realization hit you.

“So, is that why you’ve been following me around?”

Reiner furrowed his thin, almost non-existent brow, “What do you think?”

“I thought you were just bored with your jock friends,” you scoffed, “because you know, I’d be bored out of my ears too if all I ever heard all day is insecure men constantly praising themselves.” you glanced at Reiner, trying to discover even the slightest amusement on his hardened face to no avail.

“Reiner, are you serious?”

He sighed, couldn’t believe his ears. The first time ever Reiner caught you being stupid beyond recognition, “For the millionth times, yes.”

“You’ve only said it once, though.”

“For fuck’s sake,” the jock grunted, but there was a slight smile arose from his face, “I like you, really much. Times eight hundred ninety-eight thousand.”

“And?”

“So would you be my girlfriend?”

And you said yes, after three minutes of hesitation, you said yes. With a laughter. Because the absurdity of you being with someone like Reiner was lurid. Yet still, you were in no capacity to lie when his good morning text had been the most unsubstantiated text you looked forward to every day.

You wondered why? It’s just text. But maybe, you tried to convince yourself, it’s because of the effort he put, of trying to wake earlier before you every morning although he was hardly a morning person. Or it’s the way he listened to your kind of music although he was practically tone deaf, and returned to you the next week with his analysis on why your favorite band’s first album was their masterpiece and that sadly they never outdid it with any of their following albums.

And maybe, it’s the sight of the topless Reiner in the football field, after a home match. The way he was quick to run to the side of the field with his Captain instinct, lurching himself towards the start of a brawl between the two teams’ players, heated by animosity over the match result. Reiner was strong enough to break at least ten muscular jocks apart from throwing punches at each other, and with his deep, stern, authoritative voice, he commanded them to “Stop it. Fuck off.” You remembered immediately leaving the bleachers and found the nearest toilet because you needed to breathe and that you felt things simmering in your nether area. You never felt like that before to any of your exes.

Reiner knew the mutual pining between the two of you was evident, and so he was left puzzled when you said, “But please don’t tell anyone yet.” He asked why, but you only shrugged your shoulder with an answer that gave very little explanation, “I just don’t feel like having people talk about us.”

Reiner trusted you, because at first, he thought it was for modesty, you were not a fan of the limelight, evidently. Or it’s for practical reason, you don’t want to be burdened by society’s expectation on how two adults in relationship should be. Reiner could make 1,000 excuses for you that would justify your terms and conditions, so he went with what you wanted, because he was so hopelessly into you.

Nonetheless, still he enjoyed holding your hand in the dark alley of the campus – away from all the prying eyes, or the girls that’d giggle walking past the beautiful giant. Still he liked to have you sleeping naked in his embrace, making lazy circles with his calloused digits on your small back, at the emptiness of his dorm room when his roommate was home early for Christmas. Still he enjoyed teasing you at unassuming place, at the quiet library, studying together in silence for the upcoming exams, he’d be sitting next to you, leaning to his chair and slithered his right hand underneath your sweatshirt, to playfully and quickly unclasped your bra, only for you to smack his stomach in annoyance. He liked you, and he liked how you scurried to the restroom to fix your bra. He liked to be with you, no matter in silence or in noise.

However, after six months, questions started to throb incessantly inside Reiner’s mind. Even after all the time you had spent together, why must still he go alone to the football team soiree? Why would you let his team mate thought that Reiner was single, and promised him chances with girls, left and right? Why were you unfazed to see the girls sliding into his DMs? And when you put on that tight, backless black dress on New Year’s Eve, why would you put it for your friends’ party, and not for his eyes only? Why would you color your lips with the blood red Chanel lipstick Reiner gave you, and smile at other people that’s not him?

Reiner could not make sense of you. He pondered, he wondered and he became jealous. He’d look at you intently and see whether there was any trace of other man on you that he had not recognized? He’d become quiet and his friends thought he had gotten sensitive over nothing. The captain had become agitated, irritable and his head was hardly in the game – all with seemingly no reason.

Reiner began to think that he knew the reason why. He thought it’s the boy you’d met at the Academic Writing class, with stupid name and equally stupid undercut. Porco Galliard, you said his name was. In an instance his name had become a staple in your conversation. When Reiner asked you out for a dinner, it’d be like, “Ah sorry babe, I got this assignment with Porco.” A trip to the zoo? “You know, Porco have this funny experience with apes.” A night out in his dorm? By the point Reiner had a half-boner forming already seeing you in your lounge shorts, you’d be giggling and stayed busy with your phone. Reiner asked, “What’s so funny, babe?”

“What’s so funny, babe?” he asked again, because you didn’t seem to hear the first time he asked you. Distracted, you showed a stupid meme on your phone, “Porco sent me this.”

Porco here, Porco there. Reiner was sick of hearing that dumb name.

He had tried to look up for his background, and he hated to find that all that ever came up about him were amicable. His friends knew him, said he was chill, said he was smart as fuck, said he had a cool family, said he turned down a track and field scholarship for law school. Porco Galliard is a cool dude, they all said.

At certain point Reiner had grown to be furious, and the more your text messages became sparse or the more you spent your Saturday nights without him, the more he set his mind to do something about the two of you. He had become so sick of hiding and he wanted the whole world to know that you were his. Especially that guy with a name that sounded like her mother hated giving birth to him.

So came that day. You hadn’t been replying to his texts since morning, and only did so after chains of messages he left.

[you | 11.35] oh my god reiner!!! I’M SO SORRY, i left my phone uncharged all morning. i’m heading to cafeteria rn, it’s muffin tuesday 😵👅

[reiner | 06.37] good morning baby

[reiner | 07.49] you awake now?

[reiner | 08.15] sleepyhead 😪💤 see you today pretty

[reiner | 10.23] i got practice today until late. see you tonight? my room?

[reiner | 10.55] are you in class rn?

[reiner | 11.36] wanna go together?

[you | 11.45] haha noo a lot of people there

[reiner | 11.45] who r u going with?

[you | 11.55] with pockooo haha we got class together after lunch

Pocko. Is that an endearing term you came up with for the jizzhead? Reiner thought, pissed off beyond compare. He paced restlessly in his room, trying to figure out what did Porco have that he didn’t have? Thinking of how his undercut made his head looked way bigger for his neck, just like sperm; and it made Reiner mad angry. “Fuck you, Jizzhead”, he hissed, kicking the pile of dirty laundry on his dorm room.

The cafeteria was bustling busy when you arrived with Porco. The two of you immediately joined the line for lunch and the muffin. The man was busy babbling about yet another stupid thing that he had done back in high school, but your mind was darted on the muffins that were sold off fast. You looked around and almost everyone you disliked were present – mostly Reiner’s jock friends and their girlfriends. The prospect of one day going public with Reiner and having to spare days in your life to socialize with these loud people made you squirm. Not that you were completely against it, you were just… enormously reluctant to do so. Also, what would they say about you? You barely existed for them, evident by how they just greeted Porco with huge affection, yet pretended like you were invisible despite the fact that you were talking and standing close to him.

Your mind was elsewhere, between eyeing the muffin and managing your detest towards the it crowd, you weren’t even listening to the small talk that Porco was having with some of the jocks, until the mention of your name spilled out of Porco’s mouth, “Hey, have you guys known ___ before?”

You blinked with surprise, and they looked at you unenthusiastically, “Ummm, no?” one of them said.

Porco stared at them in disbelief, as if not knowing you was a big sin, “Get to know then! She’s cool, she’s really into—” but even before Porco could finish his words, they averted their attention elsewhere, pulling out their phone like it was the most important thing in the world, and talked amongst themselves. How fitting, because the first thing they talked about as an excuse for ignoring you was to talk about Reiner, “The captain’s been grumpy. Haha. That man. What’s up with him?” You cringed, because you knew there was no weight in talking about Reiner that must be done at that time, that moment. They just wanted a reason not to be roped into talking to you, obviously because you didn’t think you were cool enough or some other shit excuse only them and their bobbleheads understand. So, conveniently throwing out Reiner’s name was an effective way to basically say ‘haha look at us talking about the coolest guy in the campus so you know we’re in this cool clique unlike you’. You read them too well. You couldn’t even be amused anymore.

Porco looked embarrassed, he smiled at you awkwardly and stayed silent, until one of the girls threw their attention back to the man dirty blond undercut, “Anyway, Porco, do you know Reiner?”

“Ah, I haven’t had the chance to.”

The girl frowned rather dramatically, “Oh my god, we all should totally hang out together with Reiner, right? He’s like—super cool.” her question was obviously in exclusion of you. You rolled your eyes and turned away to see new text from Reiner appearing.

[reiner | 12.15] im going there

[you | 12.16] convenient. right in time. your cool friends are all here and you can sit with them and be cool with them or whatever I guess haha

You immediately pulled your phone to your chest; you could feel your heart thumping. Is this it? Is this it? The question became menacing in your head, because you were not sure on what Reiner was planning to do. The line to the muffin was still far away, and it would be stupid to run away.

[reiner | 12.17] idgaf about em

[reiner | 12.19] i want u

You could hear the girls were still talking about Reiner. Reiner this, Reiner that. You were nowhere to lie that you could feel your chest heat up with annoyance. The way their squeaking voice praised Reiner’s body, Reiner’s personality, Reiner’s wit. For the first time, you knew you were experiencing jealousy, vibrant and up-close.

“You know what? One time, Reiner thought that the way I did my hair was so cute that he wanted—”

Just in time, one of the boys raised his voice, “Oi Reiner!” and in unison the jocks erupted, welcoming his arrival like they were in some goddamn party.

You could see Reiner walking towards the line you were in, his face was hardened and his walk was swift. You immediately turned away to look at the opposite direction, not wanting to see him.

“Yooo Reiner! Where have you been? We’ve missed you dude,” one of them said. You cringed at how they all tried so hard to sound cool, “have you met Porco, by the way? And his friend—”

“—hey, what’s her name again?” one of the girls chimed in, asking Porco instead of asking you directly, as if you were not there. At that point, Reiner was standing not too far behind you, and you pretended like you were too busy with your phone, hoping the floor would engulf you instead.

“Is she like, deaf or something?” the girl whispered to Porco with a jeer, before getting back to Reiner, “So, Rei, I’ve got this party—”

“—yo Capt, do you know that—”

“—have you heard about the news, dude? Like—”

The way all these people tried to suck up to Reiner was so pathetic and incessant, they all chirped like hungry birds all in a matter of couple of seconds. You hated them and you hated the situation.

“—come on, Capt, that would be awesome—”

“—oh my gosh, Rei—”

“—you must try it, Rei—"

“Shut the fuck up,” Reiner said. Rather abruptly. His voice was cold and deep, like he couldn’t give a damn in this world about any of them. Surprised, they all dropped quiet in an instance. You looked over your back at him. Reiner was staring at you, and at you alone, not even at the Jizzhead he had grown to hate so much, “you all talk too fucking much.”

You snorted, suppressing a laughter to escape from your mouth. Clearly, it was too audible, that the girls were now looking at you with complete disdain.

“Babe,” Reiner said, staring at you, while you were still facing the opposite direction, “babe, what are you doing with this Jizzhead here? I can bake you muffins remember? If you want it so much.”

Your surrounding fell deep in silence. Everyone was either confused or surprised. Murmur started to sweep over the crowd, most audible was: ‘Who is Jizzhead?’

You scoffed, finally turning your back, although still closing your mouth trying to prevent the laughter and the embarrassment to display itself.

“What the hell?” one of the girls asked in dismay, obviously she was one of the girls sliding into Reiner’s DM and sending him bikini photos by the pretense of ‘Rei, you should join us for summer holiday!’ when all she wanted to do was to show her tits.

“Shut up,” Reiner said to her, baffling the girl to complete silence, “and stop sending me your beach photos. They’re ugly.”

An uproar of restraint laughter was heard throughout the cafeteria.

“Babe,” Reiner said again, this time extending his arms toward you, gesturing for you to come closer, “now you know why I need you, right? My friends are fucking whack.”

Few laughter was starting to break. Yet Reiner was unfazed.

“Reiner, what—”

“—yo dude, what the hell?

“—who is she?”

“—are they dating?”

“And listen here, you hag,” Reiner now turned his attention to the girl who called you deaf, “she’s got a name. Her name is ___, and she’s my fucking girlfriend.”

Embarrassed yet amused, you finally let out a small chuckle, “Reiner, please you’re humiliating me.”

“Whatever,” he shrugged off. Reiner now turned his attention to Porco, “and listen here you, Jizzhead. You can be nice to her but keep in your fucking mind, she’s mine.”

Without hesitation, Reiner pulled your hand and yanked you closer to him. You stared at him for a second, eyes broadened and heart thumping, “Reiner, what are you gonna do—”

“—shut up.” he said, cupping your face with his gigantic hands, and pulled your face roughly to him, before landing his dry, chapped lips to yours. He had gone sick of pretending, and doing things in secret. So there Reiner Braun was, hungrily, longingly, sloppily devouring your lips with his mouth, so deep, so thirsty of your taste. He finally showed the world who the true owner of his heart was. You.

[darkacademicfrom2021]

Away. So, so far away.

"There wasn’t a single moment where he could forget how fragile you were. How different your life span was compared to his —he wanted to give you all of his enormity, all of the years that wore too big on his bland and heavy life.

He couldn’t keep you by his side forever".

Pairing/s: Loki x reader, Bucky x reader

There's 2 alternative endings, a "choose your own adventure" kind of thing.

<<Previous part Masterlist Next part>>

Warnings: angst. God, believe me, this is so fucking sad. Sorry about that. Some fluff, implied smut, Odin and Frigga's A+ parenting (/s). Thor being a little bitch. Reader not wanting kids.

Total word count: 16,3K (this was supposed to be an oneshot???)

Chapter word count: 4,6K

1

If you had to choose the best outcome from working with the Avengers (or, more specifically, under the economic decisions of Tony Stark), it had to be the hotels he chose for the team on the missions.

The rooms were always a bliss —you would’ve never gone to such fancy places if it were up to you. You didn’t think it was worth the money at all, and you didn’t fit into the overpriced lifestyle of those who loved the five-stars everything.

But your work was something you had to do, and, let’s say the comfortable beds, big bathrooms and incredibly talented chefs making your breakfast wasn’t something you had to work hard for you to enjoy.

And now, as your sore muscles ached and your fogged head went everywhere and anywhere, you thanked greatly to be able to be there that night. Peaceful. Tranquility washing over your back in the form of drops of water.

The mirror was covered with steam and a curtain blocked your way, but you still noticed the tall figure of Loki peeping in. You heard his clothes being dropped on the floor and you kept on putting soap over your shoulders, as if he wasn’t there. You were so, so tired, you didn’t even realize that the shower was a little bit too hot for your lover. It even was too hot for you, too.

“Damn”, he gasped as he flinched away from the water. You woke up from your daydreaming and immediately turned the cold water on. The mixture of them formed a perfectly tepid temperature you both could tolerate. You learnt the hard way Loki showered on such cold water your lips would turn blue. “You alright, dear?”, he asked from behind you.

“Yeah, a little tired, not more”.

“You need some rest, take the day off tomorrow, would you?”, he purred on your ear with his hands on your shoulders, giving you a soft massage. His hands moved up to your hair, and he soon began cleaning it himself. He loved to do that for you, and you loved to feel his long fingers caress your scalp, the soap running down your body, the shampoo smell staining his own skin and leaving the shower smelling the same.

“I have to finish this mission up”, you mumbled. “But once we’re back to the compound you bet we’re taking a day off together. You must be tired too”.

“Not that much, but I can’t deny a day off with you”, you felt him smile, even though you weren’t facing him. You knew how and when he smiled; you memorized the curve of his lips and every situation it would curve. His smile did things to you. “You know I don’t get tired off of these things”.

“Yeah, it’s almost like you’re a God or something”.

You both laughed softly. He gently pulled your head back and cleaned off the shampoo. He kissed your temples, all the way down to the nape of your neck, and kept kissing each protuberance of the spine, bone by bone, as if missing one would make it feel left out. As if every inch of you, every single bit of you, deserved the same praise and the same love —it did. He made sure you knew that.

“It’ll be all over soon”, he promised in a whisper. You sighed.

“Don’t worry, my love. It will pay off”, you assured him. You turned around to face his furrowed brows. Standing in your tiptoes, you reached his forehead and planted a kiss where his frown disappeared as if by magic. “Now it’s my turn to wash your hair”. He smiled and kneeled before you, so you could reach his head.

You shampooed and conditioned his hair slowly and silently. He closed his eyes, not letting you know he was overthinking about everything he was making you do, and how much he appreciated you doing it.

“You know…”, he murmured, his deep voice almost getting mistaken by a groan if it weren’t for the clearly spoken words, “we could stop all of this, if you see it… surpassing your limitations”.

He opened his eyes and raised his head to meet yours. Those puppy eyes of his. You scoffed.

“Limitations?”, you cocked an eyebrow and smirked teasingly.

He laughed and rolled his eyes.

“You know you’re a weakie”, he said jokingly, emphasizing on how bad that word described you at his gaze. “Now, seriously. I’m aware it’s a lot. A lot, lot”.

“Love, you don’t have to keep worrying about it. I accepted because I love you so, so much. Some even could say too much”, you caressed the back of his head and sank your fingers in between the curled strands. “I may not agree with it ideologically, but I can make a little sacrifice if that means being with you for the rest of my life. And, for the record, it’s not as much as you think”.

He didn’t say anything else to that. He simply smiled again, pressed lips in the tiniest curve, as if repressing it would make it last longer, and let you wash the conditioner off him.

You could do very well with a day off, though. Between the missions that seemed to never stop and only get worse week by week, and the infinite amount of trials you had to go through by the Asgardian royals, you thought you may pass out any time soon.

The trials… ah, the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to do in your life. And that was not little to say, for you had fought freaking aliens and helped supersoldier’s wounds to heal in a matter of seconds with Stark’s subdermic nanotech.

Loki had a possibility, a chance to have everything he ever wanted to have, and he could’ve taken it. They said ‘you can have the throne now’, as if it had always been that easy, and he didn’t take it right away, as if it hadn’t been the thing he most wanted.

“The thing I most want, little darling, is you”, he told you when he explained what had happened.

And you swore he was about to propose —he almost took off a damn ring off his pocket. But he didn’t, and instead, he related carefully and detailedly what had to happen before he could marry you, if he were to get the throne. You had to show your in-laws you were a good companion for the King.

And that sucked. Why did it matter so much? You loved him and he loved you, and he was going to be a great King. That was all that mattered for both of you. But the conditions were very clear, and had no room for argument. And you wouldn’t let Loki give up his unfulfilled wish to rule the realms, nor would he give it up now that he had the chance.

So there you were, balancing between the missions and the trials. Which were very sexist, in fact. Who would’ve thought royals and Gods would be so conservative? You laughed. They varied between many housekeeping duties, archery, Asgard’s history, a lot of politics, the cooking and baking of different Asgardian treats, and a lot of those idiotic kind of trainings of putting books over your head and walking in heels. They said they had to transform an avenger into royalty, and you almost laughed in their face. Loki did.

It was impossible you'd ever actually become who they wanted you to change into. A submissive and silent companion, not possessing any other ability than smiling politely and attending your husband's needs? You were so incredibly far from even being like that, that not even Strange could see a reality in where you'd do it.

But you could pretend. You passed the first dozen trials, and passed them well. Odin had started growing a certain liking to your attitude, much unlike Frigga, who was increasingly repulsed by it. She was trying her best in transforming you, a lost cause in her eyes, into whatever she found fitting to accompany her younger son.

"Your mother's idea of a 'good' partner is very different from mine", you said over a glass of wine, waiting for dinner to finish cooking. Loki was sitting over the counter reading a book. He closed it over his lap and marked the page with a wooden spoon that was on handy.

"Mine too", he sighed. "She doesn't see that you already are perfect".

"I don't think she'd see me with your eyes".

"You must remember she was raised to be the princess that would someday marry Odin. She has no other view of marriage than… changing the true self. Much as she taught me shapeshifting, we have all learnt different ways to hide underneath a veil of lies and deceiving".

You took in his sincere words and went back to silence for a while. He didn't go back to his book, instead, he looked at you. He wanted to know what you were thinking about, but asking felt like an intrusion of some sort. You looked back at him, an invitation to ask. He then asked,

"How do you feel about it?".

You nodded with no reason to nod. Pressed your lips in a line, a smile that wouldn't form just yet. Not for this.

"I sincerely don't know", you finally said. He hummed. "I love you, that's all I know. My perception of marriage doesn't mean giving everything and everyone up. But again, in my perception of marriage I never thought I would actually marry a prince. I know this is how it is. I know this is what has to be done".

"It doesn't", he jumped off the counter and surrounded your waist with his arms, resting his head on your shoulder. "Love, this can be solved. I don't want you to resign everything and everyone. This is not how it has to go if you don't like it. Say the word. Say the word and…", he sighed.

"And you'll resign your everything and everyone?", you chuckled.

"You're my everything and everyone, I wouldn't be resigning anything I don't already have".

"Liar. You want this", you said almost in a whisper. Turning around to face him, you cupped his face and kissed his chin. "You can have it. I'm sorry, I don't want you to feel guilty".

"I have reasons to feel that way".

"I'm just being dramatic".

"You're not".

"I really am", you assured him. Love sometimes was protecting him from your thoughts. Love sometimes was waking up from a nightmare where he died and not telling him about it. Love sometimes was not worrying him and lying. Or was it? Were you protecting him or were you creating a demon? "This is your big chance. Do I have a big chance here? I don't. My big chance so far has been being by your side. You make me blindly happy. I don't care if I have to change some things to please your parents, we both know I wouldn't actually change. We can see underneath the acting. You know me".

"I know you enough…", he started saying, with no need to finish it. I know you enough to know you don't want this.

"Let's have dinner", you smiled, and he kissed your forehead.

Love sometimes was accepting, he thought. Accepting you didn't want to talk about it that much. Love sometimes was sharing time. Sharing that glass of wine while sharing moments in the kitchen. Sharing the dinner you cooked together. Sharing time. Sharing. And this… Loki knew he wasn't sharing. He was taking his chance and making you go through it without you wanting it. But you shared —your life, your motivations, your fears, most of your thoughts. And you shared your thoughts about it, yet he could sense that wasn't all. You were keeping some worries to yourself, and that was what preoccupied him the most.

In the training room, you avoided Thor’s blasts and threw your daggers, trying to practice over the little things the Queen had taught you. Loki observed from afar, not wanting to distract you. He stared proudly, knowing who he was going to marry. It was not bad at all.

You had started liking that part of the training. You catched interest for Asgard’s history, politics, and the trainings of archery and dagger-fighting. You grew fonder of the idea of living in his Palace, and, to him, nothing sounded better than you calling him my King in front of everyone. But, whatever would come for the future, would come brightly.

You weren’t closer with Thor than with any other Avenger. And you weren’t exactly friends with anyone. You got along pretty well. Tony Stark liked your fierce personality, and laughed at the contrast between your bitterness in the field to your kind essence in any other situation.

Steve Rogers constantly pointed out how hilarious it was that someone like you would end up with someone like Loki. Both took it personal —Loki thought it was an offence to him, “how could someone as caring and sweet as you end up with that mass murderer”. You thought it was an offence to you, “how could someone as dull and incompetent as you end up with a literal God”.

Natasha Romanoff… She didn’t talk much. But, unlike James, she didn’t even try to communicate. James was interesting, and you were sure you would call him a friend, someday. He wasn’t very talkative, but he was always there. Always laughed at your jokes. He memorized your coffee order. He liked the same shows you did and watched them with you, in silence. He was quiet, but his actions spoke to you much more than any other Avenger. Although, James “Bucky” Barnes, was not an Avenger. Much like Loki. He was just there, he was always helping.

“How are the trials?”, asked Thor, avoiding one of your daggers without much effort. You weren’t actually good at it. Thor had learnt to avoid them for the last thousand years.

“I have a week left, and then it’s done. I think I’m doing pretty good”, you said, hiding your exhaustion. Thor was barely moving and you couldn’t catch up to him as much as you tried. He laughed when you fell, and helped you up, only to blast you again with a tiny electric wave, that at that point you felt no more than a tingling sensation.

“My son”, heard Loki from behind him. He turned around and made a small reverence to her. She smiled and stood by his side, observing you too. “I see their determination”.

“Nothing better for a King’s companion, yes?”, he said, proud dripping off his words. Frigga rolled her eyes and nodded. She wasn’t amused that Loki, from all the choices he had, had chosen a dull midgardian to follow him for less than a century. And then he’d had to choose again. Hopefully, someone who would live longer than a damn heartbeat.

“We ought to have a little talk, boy”, she finally said, and Loki’s heart tightened with nervousness. Very few people managed to get him that nervous over a couple of words. “Join me to a more… private space”.

They walked in silence until his room seemed like the best option. Room was a formal way to call it, for it was huge as an apartment. You both had managed to make a standardized-looking studio apartment into a cozy space, decorated with care and dedication. It was obvious Loki’s good taste and your inherent warmth had a big role on the decorations.

Frigga roamed around the room, observing the hung pictures and passing a finger through the white Christmas lights. She stopped at a particular photograph of Loki and you ice skating. He was carrying you as if you were a feather-weight doll, your seemingly cold hands wrapping his blue neck. Frigga stared at the actions developing at that moment. Under your cold touch, he was half transformed in his Jötun form, completely comfortable. You looked at his eyes with a glimmer that Frigga knew it to be the same Loki looked at you with. You were both laughing, and he seemed to have carried you up bridal style only to tease you into throwing you into a snow pile.

“Mother?”, Loki pulled her off of her thoughts. She turned around. “You wished to talk about something”.

“You seem… in love”, she murmured under a confusing expression. Despite Loki’s perceptiveness, he couldn’t figure out if his mother was repressing a smile or holding back a frown of sadness. Perhaps both.

“I am, mother”, he admitted, appearing a mug of tea in her hand and inviting her to sit on one of the couches. “If I must be sincere with you, as I always have been, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way for anyone”.

“For a mortal, Loki…”, she sighed and sipped her tea. “You know what will happen now. You’re so… attached”.

“As attached as you are to Father, not as one is to a puppy pet”, he clarified.

“But much more like a puppy pet, they’ll live less than a quarter of your life. Much less. In fact, you’ll blink twice and you’ll be by an empty space on your bed, my dear”.

“I certainly hope you’re getting to a point here”, he scoffed. He’s had this conversation countless times before, and his mother never gave in.

“There is this last thing in the trials…”, she said, raising her eyebrows and getting up to pace around the room once again, barely watching over the decens of good moments in pictures you had displayed on the wall. “One thing that has to be surely not optional”.

Loki sipped on his own tea, looking out the window. He watched the spider boy try the man of iron’s flying boots and crush against a window. It was a much better thing to have his mind on, than in what his mother had just implied.

He didn’t realize it, but a few tears formed in the corners of his eyes, and he had to swallow harder to speak his mind. The implication alone of what that meant… he knew all of this would crumble under his touch. Sooner or later, he would have to make a choice, and he’d choose the wrong thing.

Both options were the wrong thing. There was no way out. There was no right path to follow.

“There has to be a way out of this question. Of this decision”, he hurried. His mother chuckled.

“Given your reaction, son, it doesn’t sound like there’s much to decide. It’s an answered question, and we all know it”.

“Yet you thought it wise to pull them through all of these trials, all of these…”, his lips trembled, and he had to stop to take a breath. “To rouse us with the illusion of the better life we always dreamed of?”.

“I had warned you about it, Loki. There is no us in your daydream for the throne. And much less with a short-lived being such as a midgardian. I had warned you”, she repeated, and rage boiled on Loki’s veins.

“Why is it that everytime I get a glimpse of what a good future could look like, it gets destroyed before it arrives?!”, he lost his temper, raising his voice. The tea fell to the carpeted floor and he didn’t even look at it. Frigga didn’t flinch, and walked closer to him. She gave him an arm-length grab on his shoulders that was supposed to calm him down.

“Hush, little boy… this is for…”, she tried to soothe the wound she opened, but he interrupted her before she could say anything else.

“For my own good? Were you going to say that, Frigga?”, he hissed. His mother dropped the arms. She didn’t like when he called her by name. It implied things he had implied before, and were no less true than what he felt like. Apart. Away. “And must I remind you I’m not a little boy you need to protect and make decisions for? This is ridiculous. I’m given, once again, the illusion of the choice”.

“Oh, Loki, when have I ever given you a golden apple you couldn’t actually reach?”, she folded her arms, furrowing her brows. “I’ve taught you magic so you could be unstoppable. I’ve raised you equally, despite your roots. I’ve…”, she enlisted, and Loki’s chest hurt so tightly he thought he’d finally die. He couldn’t speak. “I’ve left everything to your reach. Your arm just wasn’t long enough. You could’ve stretched it further, yet you decided to go for another apple, and that, my son, is not our fault”.

Loki sat on the floor, and she stayed standing. The height difference that would always make her look up at him was now gone, dissolved as the confidence Loki had gathered in the past few years he’s been living in Midgard, away from all of those words. Away from what he considered at some point, the truth. And you weren’t there to hug him and squeeze the lies away —it wasn’t true, it wasn’t true, it wasn’t true, he repeated himself like a machine. It wasn’t true, although it felt so much like it.

“Loki? You haven’t said a word in…”, she began saying, rotting her patience of steel.

“What would you like me to say?”, he asked, blinking some tears away. He got up, not letting her see how much smaller he felt now. Words are just words. “Perhaps you could facilitate me with a script, so I would never wrong my path again, yes?”, he spat sarcastically.

“Oh, son. You musn’t…”.

“Take this personally, I’m aware. Now, if you excuse me, my beloved will come from training any time soon now, and it would be very unpleasant for you to come across them and have to greet them, right? So I’d suggest we wrap up our little chat and you go… Queen around”.

“Now, you’re being just rude. I wouldn’t wish you to fail in anything”.

“I’ve never said that. You said that I’m just too… incompetent to reach, the apples, was it? Were you talking about Iduna’s or was it a metaphor for all the things you’ve taken from me?”.

“You’re putting words in my mouth”.

“You’re right. You’ve never taken anything from me. You’ve never given them in the first place. You’ve only put them near, so I could want them enough, and then give them to your real son”.

“You’re my son, too. You’re a real son, too, Loki”, she extended her palms for him to grab, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned around.

“Excuse me. I must have misunderstood”. 

“You certainly did”.

“Perhaps it’s because I live in a world of illusions, and I’m forgetting what’s real and what’s not”.

She nodded, hiding impatience. Without saying another word, she teleported away, disappearing behind a veil of yellow lights, like a flame surrounding and consuming her.

Loki dropped to the floor again, and inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled, inhaled… 

“Love?”, you asked, dropping your water bottle on the table without unlocking your eyes from him. You kneeled next to him immediately. “Love, what’s happening? Are you bad?”.

If he wasn’t in such a state, he would’ve laughed at the comparison of what caring for the other meant in your eyes and his family’s.

He didn’t let you see his face —torn apart, wet with cold tears that solidified to the touch of his skin, the blue form that couldn’t hide when he was too upset, or too broken, like he was right then.

He sank in your arms, hugging you as tightly as he allowed himself to. Grasping for your touch, for you to never leave him, for your soul to never leave your body and stay with him for the rest of his life.

His mother was right, he thought. He was all she said he was, and that hurt him. But it stung him even more when he knew how right she was about his short-lived being beloved. He was going to pull away from your hug and you would take a few more breaths, and that was it. And your worried face, frowning your expression as you couldn’t see what had taken over his lover this time, would become cold as marble.

“Please, please—I can’t live without you, not like this—not anymore”, he sobbed over your neck, sinking deeper into the embrace you would oh so tightly hold and hold —you wouldn’t let him go, not ever, not if you had the chance to. And Loki knew you would actually do it. He’d lose you because you would never agree to that, and with good reason.

“You don’t have to, I’m not leaving. I’m here, Loki. I’m here, love, and you’re alright. Deep breaths, breathe with me, love, come, breathe with me”, you helped him calm down, rubbing big circles on his back, your palms open and warm trying to cover the immensity of him compared to you.

There wasn’t a single moment where he could forget how fragile you were. How different your life span was compared to his —he wanted to give you all of his enormity, all of the years that wore too big on his bland and heavy life.

He couldn’t keep you by his side forever.

He could, on the other hand, keep you as far as he could manage to.

He was already stable, now. You cuddled him on the couch, weighted blanket surrounding his body, a few ice cubes inside a bag for his forehead and neck —you knew it would always make him feel less pushed, keeping his Aesir form costed an extra amount of energy he sometimes couldn’t handle to bare— and your hand kept brushing his hair, braiding it, letting him know he was safe.

He opened his eyes and there you were —an angel, a healer caring for his wounds. He sighed at your sight, and embarrassed himself for even thinking about it. No, no. Of course he would choose you. He would never choose the throne if he had to give you up. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

He raised a hand to cup your cheek.

“I’m sorry”, he whispered.

“Don’t be”, you assured.

“I… I have to ask”.

“Tell me”.

And so he asked,

“Would you, ever, at any given point of your life, want to have a child with me?”.

You stayed silent. You looked at him, every bit of his face, every expression that would tell you what he was actually thinking about. Why was he asking this now? After all of this? He knew the answer, why would he bring it up again?

And then it hit you.

“Your Mother was here”, you lowered your gaze. Your legs started bouncing.

“She was”.

“This is a condition”.

“It is”.

“Heir”.

“Not more and not less”.

“What will we do?”, you asked, raising your eyebrows. As you looked for Loki’s eyes to be wet, to have any emotion of regret, they weren’t. He was hiding them very well.

“We will stay here. No more trials. No more boring royal things for you to learn”.

“This can’t be possible”, you frowned in concern. “Loki, this is the thing you most want. You can’t give it up for this”.

“For what? For being with the love of my life? I certainly can and will”, he smiled. It was a sad smile, you noticed. His eyes couldn’t hide what his lips tried to. He noticed you didn’t believe him. “We’ve talked about this over and over. I will bargain more. But as for now, I can see the most likely option will be this one. I propose we get comfortable. You once talked about a house by the mountains and cats, right?”.

“Don’t change the topic, mister”, you frowned and he laughed. You hugged him tightly, and murmured in his ear “are you sure you want this?”.

“So, so sure, my little darling”.

(Taglist: @lucywrites02 , @louieboo87 , @the-departed-potato , @jesuswasnotawhiteman , @idontknow296 , @beksib , @spythoschei , @geekwritersworld , @whatafuckingdumbass , @mysticunicorn7 @shadowolf993 , @joscelyn02 , @t00-pi , @selfship-mishaps , @sallymagnoliaposts , @deadgirl88 , @enderslove)

[blackberries45]

To anyone who cares, and I'm not judging you for not ❤️, I see your reblogs and comments on my fic and you are amazing!

I also see where I've been tagged. You are dolls ❤️

I am not in a mental space to handle nice things right now. My sister lives in a red state where they are changing laws quickly. My father and stepmother decided to cancel both our votes in the 2016 election and as a result, I hold them responsible for what is happening now to her and I. I have cancelled a trip to a side of my own state to see my in-laws because they did the same.

I'm not in a good head space. My mother in highschool protested and fought for women's rights and her work has now been erased. Missouri has now said even an IUD will be eligible for prosecution. Nothing makes sense. Just because I live in a blue state doesn't mean that it can't change here. I'm gutted and heart broken but mostly worried for my sister who planned on trying to start a family soon, but has a history in her family of miscarriages and deformed babies. She thought she'd have a right to choose. She no longer does.

Love to whoever reads this and is confused, angry and heartbroken over all of this. Fuck the 4th. Screw us who didn't understand minorities and what they have gone through before. But now we know and we won't stop fighting. ❤️❤️❤️

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

So I watched 10.09 recently, and it has that part where Dean tells a story about him basically being almost roofied as a teen, but somehow it ends up framed as the funny joke and yet another proof that John "did what he could", and I kind of hate this? And it's the same episode in which MoC!Dean killed guys that kidnapped and tried to rape Claire, and you'd think writers would've addressed the parallels and acknowledge that Dean could've been triggered by this situation. 1/2

2/2 But in the end, it's never addressed, and the whole situation is framed as the proof that Dean is evil now. And I'm not even sure what I am trying to say, but with that being the show's approach back in s10, I'm not surprised about the finale anymore. Guess we should've known?

That’s an excellent angle to look at the issue because the Mark of Cain arc is a clear example of how people with different experiences will see the same thing in wildly different ways. There’s this phase of season 10 where everyone is like “oh no Dean is Getting Worse” and when you look at what Dean is doing... you actually go “...good for him”.

Let’s give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It’s not “the writers” in this case, it’s Dabb. Plenty of other writers don’t fall into this John apologism thing. Just look at how the episode before Lebanon, written by Buckner and Ross Leming, says that sometimes John would temporarily kick Dean out because he was “pissed at him” despite Dean always taking his side to mantain the peace. It almost seems like a statement to sprinkle some salt given what Dabb does in Lebanon, you know? Maybe not, but there is a tension between “John was shitty” writers and “John did his best” writers.

In hindsight, we gave Dabb too much of the benefit of the doubt. We were like, weeell, that’s supposed to be way the characters perceive the truth, which is distorted by the trauma... But now it’s obvious that he truly believed in the John-did-his-best version. He brought him back and got Mary back with him. No matter what happened to the finale, the network didn’t print those pictures of John and Mary to hang on Sam’s wall. He never took Dean’s abuse seriously and it shows.

The “anedocte” of Dean getting drugged and “saved” by John from being raped is obviously there to parallel him with Claire. Which works! It’s so weird because it’s like. You are soooo close to getting the point. Younger Dean was assaulted just like this teenage girl is assaulted and Dean saves her... but apparently John yelling at those people is a good way of dealing with the issue, while murdering child traffickers is an overraction thus bad.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? That Dean’s murder spree is framed as an overreaction. Sam is like “tell me you had to do this! tell me it was you or them!” - the answer to which (by the narrative) is obviously no, it wasn’t self defense, he just killed them because he could. He just murdered those men for no reason except he felt like being murdery. And the audience is supposed to be like “oh no! Dean is murdery for no reason except for murderiness! That’s bad!”.

But it’s a power fantasy, isn’t it? Going on a murder spree on rapists and traffickers. I bet any people who’s been violated like that has fantasized of doing the exact thing Dean does here. Killing them all.

Dean had the physical strength and skill to kill them all, why shouldn’t he kill them? (I mean, in real life I’m against private justice because I’m a fan of the state of law, but the Supernatural universe obviously works on different principles than the state of law. Again, it’s a fictional narrative that plays out as a fantasy for the audience, so.)

So what was Dabb’s intention? I’m afraid it’s the worst one. “John Winchester’s not going to win any Number One Dad awards, you know? But, you know, damn if he wasn’t there when we needed him”. What the fuck, Dabb? It’s been established since season 1 that John WASN’T there when they needed him. Which... I’m afraid... leads us to the Cas-Claire plot in the episode. Cas has fucked off with Jimmy’s body leaving Claire on her own. Parallels how John wasn’t going to win wny Number One Dad awards. But! Cas is there when Claire Really Needs Him i.e. when she’s about to be raped by older men. Parallels how John was there when Dean Really Needed Him i.e. when he was about to be raped by older men.

I think the point is to say, Cas kinda sucked because he took Claire’s dad away but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Claire because he gets there in time to prevent her from being raped. Just like (ew) John kinda sucked as a father because hunting and stuff, but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Dean because he got there in time to prevent him from being raped.

It’s pretty yucky. Literally NOBODY wanted a parallel between Cas and John. But he made one. And he made one to absolve Cas from the guilt he carried for what he did to Claire (Claire’s mother is a mother so who fucking cares about her. She’s basically a Blurry Wife(TM), she’s only a tool for Claire’s arc, Cas apparently only cares about the harm he did the child, not the wife, for some reason.) and to absolve Cas from his guilt it absolves John too. Don’t worry, being a parent is hard. You often screw up. But you can *looks at smudged writing on hand* prevent the kid from being raped by predatory adults and everything’s fine now.

It’s not really important if the child suffered hunger or whatever, the only important thing is that they don’t get raped, because that’s bad, everything else is just a little detail.

All Dabb got with that scene was to paint Sam as extremely unsympathetic because he’s no longer a child, he’s a full adult now and still thinks of that episode at the CBGB as a funny story. That’s not a good look. It almost makes you think that the writer himself saw it as a funny story. Lol teenage boy biting more than he can chew. But then why the Claire parallel? The Claire scene onviously is not supposed to be anything but horrific. I'll give Dabb the benefit of the doubt on this specific thing.

It’s weird, yes, because Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon where he establishes that John was a bad husband/father even before tragedy hit the family. But apparently that’s the “not going to win any Number One Dad awards” part, I suppose? I guess he intended to write John as this flawed, ~complex~ figure who was imperfect but still brave and whatever blah blah did his best blah blah. I’m all for flawed complicated characters but a horrible father is a horrible father. A rose by any other name... parental abuse is still parental abuse even if the poor guy was complicated and traumatized and did what he thought he had to do to prepare his sons for a violent world.

Also, the story frames Dean’s escapade as a teenager being stupid. “You know what he got for that? Me whining about how much he embarrassed me. Me telling him that I hated him. But then he stopped and turned around looked at me and said, Son, you don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked.” “It’s my job to raise you right.” This seems straight from a novel about teenagers doing something stupid that they’re too young to realize that their parents are right to be against them doing. But this isn’t just... a parent walking into a bar to stop their child to drink alcohol. Dean literally describes feeling sick from something that was inside the alcohol.

Sure, it makes sense that he’d lash out to John because of the shame and shock. But the scene is... off. Are we supposed to see this as a typical teenage mistake? Are we supposed to read it as something as horrific as what happened to Claire, literally sold into rape? Or, worse, are we supposed to see what happened to Claire as a teenage mistake, ah silly teenager, blindly trusting shady people, no wonder you end up in a situation where you’d get raped if a father figure didn’t sweep in and save you. I hope that wasn’t the intent.

To get back to Dean’s Mark-of-Cain violence, the writers clearly didn’t intend it to come from the Darkness up to a certain point. It was supposed to an arc about your own inner darkness (consider the Charlie episode, a couple episodes later). Then they came up with the idea of The(TM) Darkness, the suppressed cosmic feminine. While it caused a bit of dissonance in the subtext, it doesn’t really change Dean’s narrative, because his inner darkness is the trauma, and his trauma is inherebtly tied to the “feminine” i.e. the parts of him that don’t fit seamlessly into the scheme of toxic masculinity values. That the violence that comes from the Mark of Cain comes from Dean himself and that’s it, or is connected to the Darkness, it doesn’t change what it means for Dean. Dean and Amara have parallel histories, the feminine principle locked away, the trauma the anger stems from.

In 10x09 we’re still in the Before The (TM) Darkness era, before the suppressed cosmic feminine. The Mark of Cain arc is still about... well, Cain. But the shift is the signal that someone looked at Dean’s arc and said... you know what? “Lucifer gave me this curse so now I’m demonic and murdery” is meh. “Toxic masculinity suppresses the feminine and it creates trauma which rage and violence comes from” is more interesting. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good idea, and surely the idea came from seeing how Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding.

Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding in a certain way, in fact, because of a pretty simple reason. There’s a fundamental tension in Dean’s MoC arc. We want him to go murdery, but it’s also our main character, so we don’t want him to do really horrible things because he still needs to be relatable. The audience cannot hate him, so he must NOT do something entirely unforgivable. He still needs to be somewhat relatable, even when demonic or demonic-adjacent.

So he goes on a murder spree... but it’s rapists and child traffickers. He’s demon, but he kills a misogynistic dude that wanted his wife dead for cheating on him. He’s a demon, but beats up dudes that harass women. He does a slaughter, but they’re nazi. He’s off the deep end, but works a case of kidnapped and abused young women...

Speaking of which. 10x23, written by Jeremy Carver. Dean works a case where a girl was killed while dressed scantily and Dean makes some slut-shaming remarks, and we’re supposed to think “whoa Dean, that’s bad”. But later he confronts the girl’s father and what does he say?

I’m just doing my job, Mr. McKinley.

By suggesting my daughter was a slut?

I’ll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home.

You shut your face right now.

And you know what? I don’t blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

Back then the episode was super controversial and everyone hated the case because of the apparent slut-shaming but I loved it! Because it’s not about the girl. It’s about Dean. Dean doesn’t think that a girl gets killed because she dresses in a miniskirt so it’s her fault. Dean is projecting on himself and he’s not actually victim blaming the girl, he’s victim blaming himself. And when he absolves the girl by putting the blame on the father... well, subtextually he’s absolving himself by putting the blame on his father. On the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervaded his own home. He’s textually not ready to absolve himself, of course, he summons Death to ask him to kill him later, but subtextually he’s on the right path.

Rose McKinley basically did the same mistake Dean did at the CBGB when he trusted some older people who offered him drinks and the same mistake Claire did when she trusted a man who sold her for money because he offered him a place and stability. She trusted the wrong people (in this case, vampires, which adds the whole subtext of vampires and sexuality) who took advantage of her. Except Rose had no one to save her. (Her friend, Crystal, gets rescued by Dean, even if he causes the other hunter Rudy to die in the process.)

Carver’s writing is pretty brutal. The girl made that mistake because was abused at home, so she was desperate for validation and that desperation drove her into the wrong hands. (Rose even has a brother who blames himself for bringing her sister to her future murderers, destructive sibling relationship check.) It doesn’t actually even matter if Dean guessed right about Rose’s family situation, because what matters is what it tells us about Dean. He basically relates to a dead abused girl. Actually all through the season Dean is paralleled to “skanks” “sluts” and sex workers. Obviously this happens kinda all through the show, the whole “the business is based on absent fathers” thing happened much earlier in the story, so it’s not new. But s10 draws a picture of female suffering - abuse, manipulation and death. Season 10 was difficult to go through. In hindsight, it was probably on purpose because it was supposed to be darkest hour of the feminine. Summed with some good old fashioned misogyny, but hey.

The Carver era was wonky but Carver wanted to free the feminine. (I believe that Mary’s comeback, while written by Dabb because of the showrunner shift, was planned before the showrunner shift.) We thought the Dabb era wanted the same, with Mary choosing life and Amara being independent and so on, but it evidently wasn’t the case. Not a single woman arrives at end of the story. It’s hardly ~Bucklemming or ~the network or ~covid because it starts before the very end.

I’m not saying that dead sluts are more feminist than living women, but if the women die or disappear anyway (and they did) I’d rather have an exploration of trauma than nothing. And I definitely prefer a dead slut narrative that calls out parental abuse than a narrative where women live but abuse gets the you-did-your-best treatment.

Whoops! I digressed! But feel free to ask for any clarification or send me any observation or thought.

[cloudninetonine]

Cogito, ergo sum

Chapter: 2

Pairing: Connor (RK800) x fem!reader

A/N: Hey guys! I want to apologise for the long wait between chpaters but seeing as I’m on my last year of college my school work is coming before everything else so it’s a little hard working between them! Don’t worry, I’m not dropping this series or anything just expect chapters to take a little long to be loaded and everything! Also, this chapter seems a little too far paced for me, so sorry about that as well!

Tags at the bottom once again!

I do not own Detroit become human this is merely fanficion

Warnings: Bad language, physical assault, threats (?), hints of abuse, (Name) being weird like always, also angry (Name), mentions of drugs, there’s a bit of slander against drug abusers that I do not condone!

Undercut babes!

It’s fascinating, it really is, the way her beautiful gaze follows you as you round her, studying her feverishly, your eyes wide and bright.

She’s...well, words cannot describe her. Her beauty lies beyond your imagination and you’re not quite equipped to say anything that her magnificent ears deserve to hear, your words are below her and she’s just-

Wow.

“Ms (Last), please-”

You raise your hand towards the younger engineer, silencing with a small utter of ‘hush’ and he’s shutting his mouth, falling back to the side of your desk with not much else to say.

The android you’ve been un-shamelessly ogling for the past 10 solid minutes is still very quiet, she’s just watching you in her manufactured attire, shy, nervous, scared- everything you really wish she wasn’t right now because there is no way you want her to see you as some sort of threat, far from it.

“Henry” Turning back towards the engineer, he stiffs up like a board, sweat forming on his brow “Why didn’t you dismantle her?”

It’s rude, it’s horrible to say and it sours your mouth when you form those words, but it’s an honest question, you want to know why someone would do this, keep her alive, see her for all her glory.

The public spoke strongly about their opinions of androids, like toys to be played with, slaves to be worked, not the thing you so desperately wanted people to see them as. The masterpieces that stood beyond human comprehension.

The android lets out a noise similar to a whimper as Henry stammers out.

“I-I couldn’t she- um- I-” Finally, he sighs with frustration, Henry makes eye contact with you “She said was scared and...I couldn’t”

You snap back to face her.

“Is that true?”

She hesitates, one second, two seconds, three seconds, four- it takes a whole 30 seconds before she’s finally responding. “Yes…”

Your chest bursts in excitement.

“You’re incredible” Henry deflates in relief, placing a hand against your desk while you grasp her cheeks, her warm grey eyes glancing between your two hands then meet your own stare, confused. “Amazing, beautiful, fantastic, so, so much more”

“...thank you”

You sniff, then you’re pulling away, trying to keep your tears abay. You really can’t believe that your work has gone so far, that new forms of sentient are evolving from a human’s hand, you’re so overjoyed by it all but you’re also kind of realising how weird you’re being.

“Sorry, I’m becoming the creepy stereotypical scientist, let me just-” Pulling off your lab coat, you throw it over her shoulders, pulling it tighter around her for her dainty hands to grasp and hold, a smile growing on her face in gratitude. You’re really still in awe of it all but send her a giddy smile back “Henry get Kamski I’m sure he’s gonna love this”

When the man disappears, closing the office door behind him, you guide her to a chair, kneeling before her kindly.

“Tell me” She waits patiently for you to continue “What’s your name?”

When she opens her mouth, you interrupt her, grasping her hands “No, not the name you were given, the name you have chosen. What is your name?”

You’re at the beginning of history right here, you can already see the books that are yet to be written, all starting at this very moment, with you and her. This android, this amazing, piece of living metal, is the start of something great and you can’t wait to be a part of it.

“My name is….”

-----------

“(Name), I’m sorry, but there isn’t really anything I can do”

Your hands come down on the desk, expression unbelieving.

“But he attacked Ortiz in self defence, it’s not fair for him to be shipped to Cyberlife! That hellhole already has enough test subjects with other deviants, why can’t he be let go!?” Pushing yourself back up, you drag your hands down your face in exasperation “He’s a victim! He was defending himself, why can’t we let him off with a lesser offence?”

Billie sighs, shutting the file softly. “Because in the eyes of the law, he’s not a victim. He’s property and there isn’t much we can do about that. Besides, because Ortiz is dead, his ownership basically goes back to Cyberlife, so they have the authority to take him back”

Billie’s right, you know that they’re right, but it’s just so frustrating, so vexing that this is the case. An android, in the eyes of society, is nothing more than their components, why should they be given the same privilege as those who eat, shit and breathe?

Billie may be a judge, but they didn’t make the law.

You remember years ago, when something like this would have been seen as detestable, that the masses would have stood up to fight this kind of horror, but for some reason, with age came stupidity and ignorance it seemed. What the fuck had happened to you all?

You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again before huffing, taking the file from their desk and ripping your coat off the hanger.

“I’m sorry, (Name)!” Billie calls and you wave them off, shouting back a ‘Don’t worry about it’ then close their office.

The courthouse is only a few blocks away from the precinct, a good walk away, a good way to calm yourself down until you’re having to face the frustration that comes in with having to work in such a high strung place. It’s funny really, you used to say ACAB when you were younger, still believed it too, so it’s really a wonder as to why you joined, but then again sometimes to make change you have to become the very thing you hate-

“Detective (Last)-” 

You scream, almost dropping your files and jumping a meter within the air. Passerbys don’t even spare you a glance, a generation raised on the weirdest websites like Vine, Tiktok, Youtube and god forbid, Tumblr, have them desensitised to whatever shit people like to play at now-a-days.

“Oh my God, Inspector Gadget” A hand falls to your chest, checking your racing heartbeat “You can’t just sneak up on a bitch like that”

Connor, the big old puppy, tilts his head in mild confusion “But I called your name twice, detective”

Oh.

“What are you doing here, Connor?”

The android joins your side and you continue your way. “Lieutenant Anderson informed me that you were heading to the courthouse, so I decided to come and brief you about a new case”

A new case, of course a new case, deviancy keeps popping up all over the country rapidly but you can’t hold your surprise about the fact that it’s been a  few days and there’s already a new case.

“Deadass?”

Wait, you hadn’t mean to say that-

His eyes narrow “Deadass?”

A snort escapes you “Oh my God I can’t believe you just said that, it sounds so cursed coming from your mouth. I meant, seriously?”

You swear on your life, on everything that may be above and so much more, that the android lets out a laugh when he continues, explaining the details as you finally enter the office.

You realise, as he talks, you feel a whole lot lighter than you had earlier.

-----------

“This guy is as scummy as it gets” 

Unfortunately, you can’t help but agree. Todd Williams is about as charismatic as a dumpster fire, messy hair, messy face, stained clothing and the stench of alcohol clung when you finally met him, having to hold back a wince of disgust.

You don’t usually speak ill of others, but you know his type, from the way he carries himself to the way he speaks. You’ve had to face men like him before, his whole demeanor brings back bad memories and you’re so glad that you’re not the one having to get details from him, to have to speak to him.

One thing’s for sure though, you don’t blame whatever deviant decided to book it from him.

“Why doesn’t he just...get a refund from Cyberlife?” You take a sip of your milkshake, staring at Hank, Connor and Mr Williams who looked to be ending off their conversation. “They do that for deviants, don’t they?”

Yes, if you remember, the new flashy CEO of the hell corp spoke it for all to see, that deviance is guaranteed to offer you your cash back.

How inhumane it all sounded.

Gavin scoffs, drinking his coffee “You think a guy like that cares about refunds?”

No. You know why he’s doing it. It’s all about power for fuckers like that.

Mr Williams leaves, Hank is looking through his notes, Connor is heading your way, probably to refer all the information back to you and Gavin is taking in a breath to start his bullshit again, despite your civilness that you had been sharing.

Eh, peace was never an option-

“Your metal boyfriend is heading this way”

The noise you make isn’t human, it’s a mix of a wheeze and scream, like you’ve just choked on the air your breathing and in all honesty, you have, but you’re not letting that mother fucker get away with catching you off guard, especially when he starts laughing.

“Shut up, furry”

Your actually feel the air from his head snapping towards you. “I’m not a fucking furry, quit fucking saying it!”

You pat his shoulder “It’s alright, Reed, we all know you wrote yiff fiction in your spare time-”

You dodge his fist, running away from his red, angered face and petty insults, dragging Connor away from the break room to the side, all while laughing up a storm.

Having your attention on the android again brings back Gavin’s words, his tease of ‘boyfriend’ which makes your face heat up, in what? You’re not quite sure, but it’s enough to make Connor notice your oddity.

“What were you and Detective Reed-”

“Nothing” You cackle, patting down his shoulders to distract yourself “He’s just being an arsehole again, nothing to worry yourself over”

And worry himself he didn’t, because he couldn’t of course, android and all.

Connor was quick to fill you in, an AX400 by the name of Kara had stolen (the word kidnapped comes to mind but you know that the robot detective will just ‘correct’ you on your wording) another android, Mr William’s ‘daughter’, model YK500 named Alice after assaulting him the night before. Mr Williams had been knocked out after the ordeal, as to why it had taken him so long to report it. 

“Were there any signs of assault that you could see? Ones that could lead to a potential take down or unconsciousness?” Connor takes a moment before shaking his head “Yeah, I didn’t think so”

What a lying fuck.

“Let’s head to the briefing room”

Hank is there, as well as a whole group of other police officers, talking amongst themselves as you situate yourself behind the podium, screen remote in hand and smiling brightly. Your partners are at your side, Connor in his usual stoic stance while the old fart has his arms crossed, bored as always and you’re ready to debrief the many uniforms but they keep talking, even after you clear your throat.

You’re not one to get angry at being talked over, annoyed, yes, but anger leads you nowhere with a crowd, so instead, you use your most favourite tactic to date

“Pay attention to me or I am gonna start screaming people” You sing. Not a threat, but a promise. “And you all know I will screech like mother fucker”

The room is silent in the next second.

“Great! So-”

The door to the room bursts open.

“Fucking really-”

“Detective (Last)'' It's the front office assistant and by the looks of it, he is panicked, worried even, as he addresses you. You suddenly feel your stomach knot up  “I’m sorry, but there’s been an emergency with your relative Carl Manfred”

You swallow, hard. “What?”

The meeting ends right then and there.

-----------

Hank hurls to a stop right outside the entrance. You’re already halfway out of the car when he shuts off the vehicle, Connor is taking off his seatbelt and you’re already racing down the soaked concrete path to the front door, rain pelting down on you.

You barely feel it though.

You startle the receptionist when you slam your hands down, eyes wide in panic, breathing coming out in fast, short pants and just looking as though you faced the masses to make it to this spot, right in front of her.

“Carl Manfred, he was brought here about an hour ago is he-”

She interrupts “Are you family?”

“Yes, please, I-”

“In what relation do you have to the patient?”

Is she really fucking serious right now? You debated leaning over and strangling your answer out of her, letting her know what kind of fucking pain you could put her through in this very moment-

But the hand that is placed against your back keeps you still. It’s warm and comforting and keeps you from mauling the fucker right out of her chair, though it doesn’t calm your anxiety, no, but at least it’s there.

You turn to see Connor, who nods towards you politely.

Huh, what a twist of events.

Hank leans over from your other side, looking just as angry as you feel, though he keeps his voice civil when he speaks “Listen, her old man’s just had a heart attack, could you drop the formal shit so she can see him?”

Her voice is sharp, just like her stupid fucking face and she snaps back “I can’t let you in unless I know your relation, unless you’d like to be escorted out by security”

Damn, she’s playing with fire and you’re ready to throw oil all fucking over her.

��I don’t fucking think so-” Pulling out your badge, you slam it against the desk, with nothing short of a growl “Police. Now, tell me where my fucking dad is or you’ll regret the next words that come out of your mouth”

You never abuse your power as a cop, it’s inhumane and back in your younger days you sneered at the disgusting police who would use their authority for their own gain, so you hate to admit but the nervous look that crosses her face when she sees your badge and Hank’s when he pulls it out for extra effect scratches an itch you begged to be scratched.

“Floor 3, the front desk will inform you what room”

“Thanks” You spit, already rushing to the elevator, the other two following.

Connor is quiet, to your surprise. Honestly, you expected him to speak out about your behaviour, your attitude, your unprofessionalism, but he says nothing, just trails after the two of you in silence, obediently, just like he was made for. 

It’s comforting having him here, even if he’s just following orders.

The next receptionist is kinder than the last (she even scowls at the mention of her coworker) and points down the hallway, to where two officers stand with cups of coffee within their hands. They stiffen in surprise at your arrival, but you pay them no mind, pushing your way into the room where you finally pause, taking in the scene of your beloved father figure, laid still within the bed, pale, heart monitor beeping occasionally. 

The doctor by Carl’s side looks up at you. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

Hank and Connor wait outside.

“(Name) (Last), Carl’s daughter and emergency contact” You explain, walking further into the room “Is he- Can I-”

“He’s fine” She explains with a comforting smile “And yes, you can come closer, though the medication has him knocked unconscious so he won’t be talking any time soon”

The relief almost has you collapsing, brings you back from the panic attack that threatens to kick your arse right in front of everyone and you finally breathe normally.

“Thank you, and you are?”

“Dr Collins” Collins offers her hand and you shake it weakly. “Your father is going to be okay, (Name), but he’s going to need a lot of rest. Cardiac arrest at this age can be fatal, so we were lucky that he lived so close”

You nod, tiredly slinking to Carl’s side to drop into the cushion chair, taking his hand in yours. Kissing it lovingly, you place it close to you in comfort, in reassurance.

‘He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s going to be okay-’

“What are you doing here?”

Your anger shoots right back up, as does you head when you turn to look at the doorway.

“Leo” The name is dragged out of your mouth, it’s spoken with a heavy coat of venom and dirt and for all the participants who are about to see this wild shit show, is a clear indication that you’re far from happy to see the man that stood there. “The fuck are you doing here?”

He scoffs “I’m family, what else am I here for?”

“Oh I don’t know,” You’re standing, stalking closer to him with a raged gleam in your eye “To mooch off him a little bit more?”

The tension can be cut with a knife, everyone can see it, feel it, even Connor, who looks ready to intervene at any given moment.

“No, detective” One of the officiers starts, cutting in in hopes to keep you both calm. “He was there when it all happened, he saw everything-”

“He was there?” No, her words only add fuel to the fire and you’re glaring at your brother once again “You were there? The fuck were you there for? You did this?”

“No!”

“Please calm down” Collins cuts in “I understand the anger but the other patients-”

You ignore her, glancing around the area when a thought struck you.

“Where’s Markus?”

Connor’s the first to respond, “Who’s Markus, detective (Last)?”

“Dad’s care bot” A pin drops, no one is speaking, the two cops are quiet, Leo is scowling, but he’s not looking at you and your anger is quickly making room to fear, cold and stabbing when you push again, harsher, angrier “Where the fuck is Markus?”

The second officer speaks this time, hat in his hands and you know what happens next is not going to be good.

“He was leaning over your father when we walked in detective, Mr Leo Manfred told us he attacked him” The man gulps, hesitating. He’s not nervous for what he’s done, no, he’s nervous about the dark look that seems to be slowly taking over your eyes, “I shot him”

A beat goes by. Then another, another, another, another, another-

“Why were you there in the first place?” It’s soft, curious, but the rage behind it is big, your need for an answer is keeping it back “What was the call for?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“Answer the question, officer”

His partner offers up the answer “....A break in, ma’am”

There’s silence, then you nod in understanding.

No one is quick enough to stop you from shoving Leo into the wall, hands wrapped tightly around the lapels of his jacket and holding him up so you can scream at him properly, face feeling hot from anger, eyes wild from rage, practically feral. 

“You fucking did this! This is your fault, you good for nothing fuck!” You pull your hand back and punch him right in the face, he’s too in shock to react but everyone else is trying to pull you off “What?! Were you off your shit from snorting that fucking powder again, you damn druggie!? Huh!? HUH!? You high right now, too!?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, (Name), let go!” Hank yells but he’s fucking impressed by your resistance.

“He could have died because of you, you good for nothing cunt! Worthless piece of shit! Now, Markus is fucking dead because of you, the person who was actually fucking taking care of him! This is all your fault! He’s in that hospital bed, because of you! You! Did! This! All for those stupid drugs! You’re fucking pathetic!”

You’re finally tugged off by someone, their arms slipping under your own to stop you from going back at him again. The officers are acting as a wall between you and your brother, Dr Collin’s is checking his nose as blood drips down his face, Leo is still in shock and Hank is leaning over, hands propped onto his knees. That leaves...

“I’m sorry detective (Last), but I’m going to have to restrain you until you calm down”

You scream in frustration and try to fight against it, but damn, you have to admit in a moment of clarity, Connor is fucking strong.

“Lieutenant Anderson, if you could take her legs, we can escort her out of the building without much trouble” Hank huffs something under his breath probably a grunt of ‘fucking android’ but complies, glaring at you when he leans down.

“You kick me and I’ll kick your ass”

Your respect for him makes you comply, but the anger doesn’t stop you from cussing both him and the android out, naming every threat under the sun as they carry you out of the building, back to the car which you are shoved placed into.

“Let me out of this fucking car, Hank!” You bellow, glaring at the man with sharp eyes who stood outside the vehicle, leaning against it “I’ll break this fucking window, I swear to fucking God!”

“You can try, but we both know you won’t!”

Once again, you’re screaming, tugging frantically at the door’s handle that you know is locked, but are way too angered to care right now.

Connor sits by your side, a good distance away to not antagonise you, silent, waiting and watching as you slowly fall from angry to desperate, tears welling within your eyes and falling down your cheeks. It only takes a few more moments for you to stop altogether, your shoulders shaking as you sob, quietly but strong.

The android finally speaks “Detective (Last)-”

You’re on him in a moment, arms wrapped around his frame, face buried into his shoulder, wetting his suit jacket as you cry, shaking.

It’s a new one for Connor. An android built for detective work, to sniff out the bad deviants, to question suspects and actually built with a comforting feature for victims of crimes. But this is a first, a first he’s seen anyone to tears, more importantly, a first of seeing you so broken. Sure, he had seen you defeated those few days ago, but this is different, you’re not trying to hide conflicting feelings behind your bubbly smile and weird jokes, you’re just...crying. Nothing more, nothing less.

His arms are hovering at your sides, hesitant, unsure and it’s not until Hank gestures from outside the car to ‘fucking do something, you stupid machine’ that the protocol finally kicks in, his arms coming to wrap around you securely and comforting, reassuring you through your whimpers.

Connor is a robot, a machine that feels nothing.

But seeing you cry isn’t something he can just let happen.

Software instability.

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Tags: @dillxpixkles @1950schick @pinkittwice @iris-suoh @loveflowsthroughme @thatlonelyalto @starcatcher-kay​ (ya’ll I’m half asleep if I forgot you in the taglist I am SORRY-)