#and i wish more people were willing to just. discuss their friendship at that level

[perryabbott]

not gonna lie it feels extremely biphobic to make every small physical interaction between buck and eddie into something sexual atp. buck has always clearly been okay with physical intimacy with his friends, eddie especially, and it's really discouraging to see post-coming out affection solely reduced to buddie. just because he understands he's into men now doesn't mean every time he touches eddie he wants to fuck him

[myopicry]

Ty again for responding to my question! This ask is less of a question and more of a mini ramble/vent of my own, idk if you'll find this interesting, pls don't feel obliged to answer this, if not I'll be back with more interesting stuff sooner or later. (disclaimer: im unsure of what terminology to use when) I don't consider myself as a radfem or GC, but in my past month or so of consistent lurking i'd say i've adopted some of the perspectives and opinions, whilst still being supportive of trans ppl and wanting feminism to result in equality between the sexes (i personally believe that this equality and the liberation of women aren't mutually exclusive but that's a different can of worms, also not saying that radfems and GCs can't also be those things). So it kind of shocks me when I at times return to more trans positive/inclusive (?) spaces and see how they talk about TERFs or just radfems in general. I'm skipping the part about how I don't see their arguments in the same light anymore, and more focusing on how they talk about those groups (while most of the time seemingly not having properly looked into them). Like, I have my fair share of criticisms for those 2 communities as an outsider looking in, but they're a lot more constructive and not as "automatic, knee-jerk reaction"-ish than what I've seen from TRAs(?). Furthermore, although I don't think radfems and GCs are necessarily always the nicest to trans ppl or even other qu**r groups, I've seen them being willing to engage in civil debates, clarifying that they don't wish harm on the opposite side/expressing some sympathy to at least a part of the opposite side, denouncing the issues within their own communities, encouraging each other to participate in more "tangible" activism (ex: volunteering at women's shelters), etc more commonly and on a more regular basis than TRAs (?) (not sure what terminology to use lol sorry).

What's even more surprising is that I feel like I can have a civil conversation with most, if not all, of my trans friends without it absolutely obliterating our friendship and mutual respect for each other and even ending up agreeing on some things, so it's odd to see such hostility towards even just *engaging with an opposing belief* and *asking more direct questions* online. Maybe it's more prevalent there than irl? Anyway, if you read this entire thing, thanks and I hope you found it entertaining at the very least x) 'till next time! ~🪼

hey I would be a hypocrite to not enjoy listening to other people ramble considering how much of it I do myself lmao

but also, I genuinely really enjoyed reading this! I totally agree with the sentiment. I did find it super interesting myself in my lurking journeys when the characterization of "terfs" was always built around word of mouth information, the worst faith interpretations of any radfem point, and constant reiteration of how they're irredeemable traditionalists who were completely not worth listening to and directly supporting hategroups (which. is pretty hyperbolic especially if you're addressing radblr lmao).

where as radfems always characterized "tras" directly with screenshots, literally listening to them and displaying them as they are. and yeah, even in radfem spaces where there can be varying disagreements, there is still some level of discussion or debate where you can trace back the discourse and see why they disagree. then, in contrast, when I lurk through broader lgbtq discourse,it's always full of calling people whatever-phobic and just never trying to understand the actual reasons behind any arguments. or it's people over-intellectualizing to the point of nonsense, then still turning around and straw-manning their opponent regardless.

and honestly, it probably is an online thing. the demographic of people online in these communities are just getting younger and everyone is getting more personal too. your identity and digital reputation are now "at stake" in the spaces you frequent, and all your friendships have become your "mutuals" who are an extension of your online personhood and credibility, so you MUST curate your space and your relationships to be unproblematic and aligned with popular opinion as to not be ostracized from these spaces and make yourself look bad.

In real life, people strive to care less what others think of them, and thus can entertain disagreement and nuance while not feeling threatened. online, people are quite literally incentivized to care what others think of them because what's the point of going online otherwise (yknow, if you disregard learning more about different perspectives and using the breadth of the world wide web to learn new things and deepen your understanding). ok, before I start ranting like a boomer comic strip on the "evils of social media" and how the youth are using the internet badly, I'll cut myself off :p

really really well written insights though anon! literally it is always a great time for me when I log on to this website and see you hanging out in the inbox! thank you, and I hope to see you soon !! ヾ(＾∇＾)

[isagrimorie]

[Initial reactions] Doctor Who - Legend of the Sea Devils

I’m going to lay it out there in the first line: I miss the energy, verve, and confidence of the Flux episodes and Eve of the Daleks special. I don’t know how much that’s Ella Road or Chris Chibnall.

Director Haolu Wung was great in the small, intimate moments but I think the action scenes needed more punching up.

But I also noticed the distinct lack of anti-empire/colonialism themes. It’s amazing how much you miss something when it’s gone. It’s a lot talkier and explain heavy than I thought would be and this was the one that was heavily script doctored according to Ella Road.

I wish I could say more about Madam Ching, and maybe I can after I rewatch but this is the first time a Chibnall historical figure didn’t pop for me. And I was expecting more for it because Chibnall is usually so good with historicals.

(Mind you, the original sea devil story IMO, wasn't my favorite Malcolm Hulke story either).

TBH the only time this felt like the Chibnall Who I liked was during the last act between Thirteen and Yaz, in the pebble beach area that I feel like is the same place as Twelve and Clara’s conversation about choices.

And that scene made me so happy, it’s bittersweet and sad but also something I’ve always maintained about Thirteen. She’s born out of Twelve’s (and the Doctor's) many losses and we never really discuss how long an immortal being can grieve a loss.

I think the only other show that really dug into it was ABC’s Forever. In that show, Henry Morgan is an immortal who fell in love with someone in the 1940s and Henry loved Abigail for the course of a Human lifetime. And that is a long time, even when she disappeared from his life, Henry loved Abigail.

It took a whole lifetime for Henry to grieve and finally begin the possibility of moving on from Abigail.

I think it’s very important that Thirteen brought up River, her wife, whose loss the Doctor’s been grieving since series 10. And that Thirteen could bring her up to Yaz, and putting Yaz on the same level as River says a lot.

But also the quiet talk between them was everything, the way that the Doctor can finally verbalize why they can’t. Being romantically attached is something the Doctor (as a whole, and not just Thirteen) has been trying not to do for years and failing at, and worse, Thirteen knows that her life isn’t for long either. She has a literal death prophecy over her head.

But also this talk between Yaz and Thirteen, weirdly, made ace!Twelve/Clara work for me because Twelve basically worked on the same principles as Thirteen. Except Thirteen verbalized it to Yaz instead of leaving it unspoken.

Because she owed it to Yaz to tell her. And it just, I love that. I know fandom’s waiting on a kiss — and I do think that would be in the last episode ala Nine/Rose.

And there was Dan who was fun and really not in the way of Thirteen/Yaz as many people feared when he was first announced because Thirteen was ready and willing to leave him at the drop of a hat just to be alone with Yaz. But I did like Dan and Di's phone conversation, and once again it's the conversation between the two characters that were interesting to me.

I do still love Yaz and Dan's friendship though but also it seems like there's an unspoken agreement between Thirteen and Dan, that if there's any danger, Yaz is their main priority.

And I’m going to cry now because:

THAT TRAILER WAS A SHOT IN THE ARM.

TEGAN! ACE! KATE! ORANGE SPACE SUIT! THE MASTER! THIRTEEN SHOUTING YAZ! THE REGENERATION ENERGY.

CRYING.

Also, can we talk about how DOPE that regeneration energy looked? It looked amazing.

I’m not ready fam.

[createandconstruct]

can i ask about amarant coral? the monk in red himself~

Can you ask about Amarant Coral? *cracks fingers* Oh I insist that you do. Welcome to my Amarant Appreciation Post:

favorite thing about them: First off best thing about Amarant? His theme. The percussion and the guitar. It’s great and it captures him so well. People out here like “take Amarant out of the game he adds nothing.” EXCUSE ME? You remove the Amarant you remove the Amarant Theme my friend and that is something I do NOT vibe with. 

least favorite thing about them: I wanna know more about him. Now Amarant doesn’t need a backstory or history in the game. In a sense, he already has one that connects him to Zidane and explains his motives and actions and eventual arc. But my issue is, Square never gave him anything else. If you look at Ultimania there’s additional lore about other characters, like Steiner for instance. You learn Steiner was a war orphan who was saved by the Pluto Knights - explaining his devotion to them. Amarant though? Square was like “uh... yeah he was born....? And then he uh got famous...? Idk then he met Zidane. You figure it out.” Square. I hate you. 18 years from his birth until he became “well known”. WHAT WAS HE DOING. WHY’D HE BECOME A SECURITY GUARD. WHAT WAS ON HIS RESUME. TELL MEEEE. Like, okay, what the actual in-game canon gives us on Amarant is sort of enough. He’s a purposely written mysterious “cool-guy” character so we’re given scraps to make him unknown but come on. In the published after-game canon, like Ultimania, we could have been given a bit more. He says he doesn’t remember anything about his origins or parents, but why. Was he another victim of Gaia’s wars? Probably. Was he born on a battlefield? Fighting for his life, living without comrades, taking scraps whenever he could? Was he betrayed when he was young? Is he a supposed to be a version of Zidane had he not been adopted into Tantalus by Baku??? These are questions I deserve answers to, Square.

favorite line: “’I can't just walk away. It goes against my nature...’ You're a real simpleton. Forget it, guys. There's no stopping this fool." I love this. Amarant figures Zidane out pretty quickly after Ipsen’s Castle. Zidane is hardheaded and also an actor. He acts cool and pretends his reasons for doing things are loose but when he’s decided something it’s always for a reason. You don’t need a reason to help people, but Zidane has his reasons for helping Kuja and while Amarant doesn’t give two shits what they are he knows Zidane won’t be stopped because, despite everything, Zidane saved a loser like him. Also this line “Tell me! Why didn't you kill me!?" Because I quote it all the time and it makes myself laugh. Amarant is such a drama queen and Zidane knows it. Zidane’s like “dude... what is your damage, it’s 5 pm on Tuesday in Madain Sari. I ain’t getting blood on my gloves cause you’re having a temper tantrum.” And then Amarant runs away to have an existential crisis. He’s 26 but compared to Zidane, he’s the real teenager with angst.  

brOTP: I could talk about Zidane or Freya with Amarant but instead I’m gonna say the underrated dynamic of Amarant and Eiko (and also Vivi).  Amarant with the kids is truly the greatest gift given by his presence in the game. Amarant has never known true suffering until he became a designated legal guardian of a group of minors. It also kills me how he’s the one to volunteer to carry Eiko and Vivi up the Iifa tree. He looks at Zidane and is like “you have seriously been the ‘adult’ of this group???”

OTP: Gotta say the Freya and Amarant dynamic. I really enjoyed their unlikely friendship in the game but then the content. The fan content. The Freya x Amarant fans out there, you win. Ya got me. You captured me and I am now imprisoned by their banter and begruntled allies to lovers story. Even if they’re not romantic I love them together and really wish the game gave us more of them. But even Lani and Amarant together are valid, though I prefer them as butting head bros. Not much content for my girl Lani out there either, she deserves more.

nOTP: Nothing I can think of. I tend to like platonic pairings for Amarant. The dude needs friends because he can barely define the word friendship.

random headcanon: Before Zidane returns at the end of the game Amarant wanders around a bit, unsure of what to do. He doesn’t feel any place with the others in Alexandria, Burmecia, or Lindblum. I imagine he goes off on his own for a bit like before but this time he’s not after Zidane or a fight. Instead he’s got no particular destination. Yet he somehow always finds himself running into people just like him - or the old him - friendless lonely people who are looking for a fight. He doesn’t go out his way to find these folks he simply runs into them and decides he might as well knock some sense into them. He does however make it his business to go after any murmur of people hatching any ideas of going after the far off little village on the Lost Continent. The home of the genomes and black mages. They were so helpless, so weak that anyone who’d want to mess with them is pathetic in Amarant’s book. Until Zidane returns, no one has the chance to even look at the Black Mage Village the wrong way because in the shadows Amarant lurks, making damn well sure of that.

unpopular opinion: I kinda love that he’s just there for most of the game? While I agree he gets the short end of the stick in the same way as Freya, not receiving additional individual character spotlight (which could have very well been supplied through discoverable lore in the world/npcs or through sidequests) I never considered his “standing off to the side” as a detriment to his character. 

Many would probably agree that Amarant always felt like a bit of a parody of the loner character, or at least the stereotype of the loner character. Amarant is so easily paralleled with Squall and Cloud’s surface-level attitudes because his dialogue always felt like something to poke fun at. As the player we’re supposed to align with Zidane’s way of thinking and how he views Amarant. When Amarant loses to Zidane and pretty much grits his teeth and goes “KILL ME,” along with Zidane we’re supposed to kinda raise our brow at him and go “...really, dude?”

 Amarant’s a character introduced as an antagonist who has more in common with the power hungry villains of the game. Like many of the characters in FFIX, Amarant is in search of purpose in life, which he has never found, because he was always looking in the wrong places - in places of violence and power. Very toxic-masculinity of him. Amarant is “cool” on an aesthetic level but in reality he’s the polar opposite of cool in terms of what FFIX states about the need for others to be intertwined in your experiences so that you can live a full life. 

I sort of love that he’s like a grumpy pitball following a 16 year old and his friends around. Then he sits in the corner when they all meet up and discuss current events acting like he doesn’t care (not to mention he casually walks as everyone is running as fast as they can to escape Terra - made me laugh cry on my first playthrough) He is “just there” but that’s because he has no where else to be, no where else to go, he’s a man without a home. And until Zidane offers his hand, at the point where Amarant is most willing to take it at Ipsen’s Castle, he’s not truly a party member. He IS an outsider for almost the entire game but at Ipsen Castle he joins the party, becomes a comrade, and decides he’ll allow himself to change paths and start a life where he has friends and lives, as well as fights for them. Which is why after that moment, Amarant finally has a victory pose.

song i associate with them: I was scratching my head for so long trying to think of a song or track that had Amarant vibes until it hit me. Outskirt Stand by Tsukasa Tawada (from Pokemon Colosseum). Amarant is so chill, he’s not a bombastic guy, so he needs a theme that drops me in the rocky open desert of the Lost Continent like I’m just lumbering around looking for a monkey-tailed menace. Some other Amarant tunes:  Pyrite Town, The Under, Snagem Hideout tracks from Pokemon Colosseum. This post is just an elaborate call to action for everyone to listen to the Pokemon Colosseum soundtrack. Tsukasa Tawada is so great and he has a YouTube. Check him out.

favorite picture of them:

Yoshitaka Amano’s Salamander Coral. I love him. He had too much power. 

Also everything drawn by @crispy-ghee. Everything. I will think of this Comic forever until I die. Tattoo it on my flesh. The banter, the dynamics, the post-game content, the Zidane prince-consort outfit, the new Amarant outfit, the stuck-in-the-same-place relationship him and Freya have. Perfect. Go read it and consume Crisipy’s stuff. And also check them and their current art out, they just consistently get better and better. Here’s a first panel preview of my fav comic. Read it.

 @hannahlady​‘s Amarant art and their Freya/Amarant art is just ugh. *Chef’s Kiss* Here is another preview because you should go look at it.

Here’s a piece that deserves so much more love by @snackage. I LOVE how they drew Amarant. Here’s a little preview. It’s SO GOOD

Anyway TL;DR: Amarant is love and life and you’ll have to pull him from my little gremlin hands.

[ilikekidsshows]

I edited the ask slightly to make it clear this is about apologists making excuses for Chloé's behavior and not fans who just feel frustrated over not getting an arc they wished to see.

Anon said: I think what really annoys me is Chloe apologists that cry she’s, “just a kid she can learn to be better and outgrow her abusive tendencies” seem to gloss over or ignore that Chloe has been given MULTIPLE chances to do better for 3 seasons and at every turn she always returns to her spoiled bratty bullying ways. Especially in season 3 where she didn’t listen to Ladybug about never getting the miraculous and felt entitled to the power.

It’s just so annoying how chloe apologists act like she’s the real victim just cause her mommy doesn’t love her, news flash she’s not the only character in the show who has a bad relationship with a parent. It doesn’t give Chloe the right to degrade and abuse people. Im not sure if Chloe needs to hit rock bottom before she turn things around or this is heading towards a corruption arc. However im also annoyed when parts of her fandom claim it’s misogynistic that she doesn’t get better.

Because sometimes bad people stay bad and never get better, it would be a very powerful lesson to teach kids who are in toxic abusive relationships especially with childhood friends that sometimes you have to let them go and cut them off because they’re causing you harm. It was very powerful of Adrien to stand up to Chloe multiple times as an abuse victim and not let her drag him down to her level. All the people mad at him for queen banana don’t realize that Adrien can’t make chloe a kinder person. No one can make someone mean good.

Plus the show is chock full of actual good and kind girls with positive supportive friendships so having one or even two female characters turn out bad isn’t sexist to me. Same with people who claim Zoe is a Mary Sue and it’s wrong that she’s replacing Chloe. Which is weird because Zoe can’t replace what Chloe never was, a friend to the main cast. Chloe was never close with the class or their friend even if she tried to be involved in their projects he never tried to get along with the others.

Plus Zoe made a mistake by trying to emulate her family and be a bully but eventually realized being awful like them wasn’t worth their approval. Whether she’s a better hero or deserves the miraculous is another discussion but we’re talking about Chloe here. If she continues down the path of selfishness and hate becoming like her mother and her sister Zoe, who also comes from an abusive family, doesn’t that just means one overcame their trauma and the other didn’t.

Sorry for the rant just I’m so tired of seeing the tag be cluttered up by Chloe apologists who won’t stop crying or complaining about her character.

With what the canon actually gave us, Chloé's arc could have gone, and could still go, either way on the redemption/corruption scale. Yes, Chloé messed up royally in the season three finale, but she was under duress to a degree. While Chloé showed few signs of becoming a selfless hero, since most of the people she helped as a hero were people she put in bad situations to begin with or she helped out to get to hang out with Ladybug, she's also showed no signs of becoming a true villain the same way Lila has. We can clearly see Lila developing into a supervillain, but Chloé is very much stuck in the middle and could go either way if she suddenly got superpowers with no strings attached.

The real issue here is Chloé's civilian life. She's never been kind to her classmates and goes out of her way to make sure they have a bad time. This has never been influenced by whether or not she had a Miraculous, so obviously something not-superpowers-related needs to happen for her to see anything wrong with what she's doing.

And there's a real chance Zoé is meant to be that thing that makes Chloé see. Chloé could see how her sister was forgiven and welcomed by her classmates and realize how easy it is to stop being awful and get validation and friendship from the class that way. This realization might make her look down on the class as gullible fools, like Lila, or it might make Chloé want to belong and try to adjust her behavior, having her follow Zoé's lead.

Of course there's still a chance that Chloé will just keep swinging between sitcom arch nemesis and not-quite-a-supervillain, that she'll still be used as a civilian life obstacle for the heroes to overcome and she's not meant to be redeemed or corrupted. In this case I can see this fandom discourse continuing for years to come, since it's the uncertainty of Chloé's role that's fuelling it so much.

Crying misogyny every time your favorite female character is treated in a way you don't like, when it’s used in a way that’s clearly just a buzzword meant to manipulate people, is something I'm just so done with. In the case of Miraculous, though, it's especially misguided, with how much the creators clearly try to be feminist. It's one thing to say something they did fails at that goal and leans into sexist attitudes and another to say they're being purposefully misogynistic because the show isn’t to your tastes. Because, let’s face it, a lot of the show’s attempts at being progressive have been tone deaf, but it usually seems to happen by accident and sometimes, at least with Fei’s design, they seem to be willing to amend a mistake when it gets pointed out.

Also, because sexism and feminism are about gender politics, the thing with discussing sexism is not actually comparing a female character with other female characters, it's about comparing a female character with male characters. If a show aims for gender equality, a character's gender can't influence how they are treated. This means we need to see if we can compare Chloé's character to a male character and find equality.

And we can. Miraculous Ladybug has a male character who causes others pain on purpose. This same character has several chances to stop being awful with "not being awful" costing him nothing. He even shows a softer side in 'Style Queen', just like Chloé in that same episode, but ultimately tosses that change aside when he finds something he thinks can help him gain his goals, like Chloé does in 'Miracle Queen'.

I am of course talking about Gabriel Agreste. I have repeatedly said that Marinette and Chloé are mirrors, what the other could be if they changed how they view other people and themselves. Gabriel is a foil to Marinette, so he naturally mirrors Chloé as well. However, Gabriel's arc has a similar forwards-and-backwards beat as Chloé's does. Even Chloé Apologists recognize the similarities between the two, since I've seen them voicing concerns that Gabriel might get redeemed while Chloé doesn't, because they think Gabriel having sympathetic aspects is a sign of a redemption arc for him like it supposedly was for Chloé. Instead, they are still both firmly in the area of antagonists and villains.

Although I will concede one key difference: Chloé is still way more likely to get redeemed than Gabriel.

I also think that, even if Chloé does get redeemed eventually, it’s still important that Adrien didn’t just hang on waiting for it when she spent so long proving again and again that she didn’t want to change. Because the other characters couldn’t know for sure if Chloé would change. Just like in the real world you won’t know for sure if your toxic friend will ever change, so you might have to let them go for your own sake. Even if they might get better one day, even if you’re not their target, it’s not on you to stand by them when they do things that are against your personal ethics.

[vidavalor]

Can we talk about how Sam is as useless at this as Bucky is, really, and it’s massively sweet?

Yeah, I’m writing about Sam because we all love us some brainwashed, century-old assassin endless array of hurt/comfort here but this idea that Sam, because he’s a therapist and not always a crying, nightmare-sweat-drenched mess, is Captain Got It All Together is not truth... because this poor broken-hearted kitten absolutely does not and it makes him so much more of a better-realized, fuller character... 

I’m not trying to wade any ship wars here or any fandom strife over the Bucky slant to fic/sometimes erasure of Sam here... I love both of these characters equally and ship them but my point here is that I think that because Bucky’s trauma is more well-documented and, for lack of a better word, “flashier”, that some people might think Sam looks perfectly well-adjusted. By comparison, he probably is but this other, quieter story happening with Sam is necessary reading here if you’ve been sleeping on the complexities of one Sam Wilson that aren’t the ones the show is focusing on more explicitly relating to his lived experience as a Black man in America. (They’re not completely separate either but not only this part of his life.) What do I mean, exactly? 

Been wondering how these two are falling in love but can mainly just get it from Bucky’s POV because Sam is awesome and Bucky is sad and need love? Not sure what Sam is getting out of his relationship with Bucky? Not totally sure you ship it but leaning that way? Yeah, pull up a seat because this thing I wrote after Ep 5 here (so spoilers through that) is basically an old-school ship manifesto at this point but comes at SamBucky/WinterFalcon from Sam’s side, rather than Bucky’s. (I have nothing *against* Bucky. I just think you’re missing half the goodness of this show and half the surprisingly tender romance of all of this if you are not focusing on Sam as much as Bucky.) If this interests you, then read on, being forewarned that it’s a little long...

So... Sam Wilson is a sweet, kind, warm-hearted, empathetic, drop-dead gorgeous superhero soldier flying military veteran therapist... whom the canon suggests is Bucky Barnes-level obsessed with his dead former partner (in some sense of the word), Riley. You thought it was just Bucky with the angsty past love? Oh no... oh, no no no....

Consider that Sam’s been back in Delacroix twice now in TFATWS and not once has his sister-- who adores him and who knows everyone in town-- suggested that she call up any one of the at least ten decent single people she has to know who live in the area to take her f*cking *dreamboat* of a brother out. Forget the show putting Sam in like twelve pieces of canon and not throwing a single human (not named Bucky) at him and what that implies-- we all know that Sarah wouldn’t care what kind of human her brother was attracted to and yet she and the entire community of Delacroix can’t seem to find this guy a date. He’s sweet and hot and an Avenger but our Sam’s a monk, you guys... More to the point... they don’t even try. They know better than to try anymore... which says a lot.

Going back awhile now, when Sam met Steve, he was still this equally dreamy and he didn’t even have any Avengers-related problems getting in the way of his potential dating life. He had a normal job working for the VA in DC. Yet, he clearly was seeing exactly no one and while I am willing to admit that pretty much any human would drop everything and follow Steve Rogers around the world, it’s clear that Sam wasn’t seeing anyone at the time because his life was able to be dropped in a second and he also had that file with Riley’s photo at the ready, man. At. the. ready... 

He responded to the opportunity to follow Steve with no less need when it came to his own post-trauma-of-war identity as Bucky does. This isn’t to say that Sam is *as* lost as Bucky because it would be hard to out-do the once-brainwashed assassin who has been alive for a hundred years but Sam saw all sorts of hell. He’s a therapist for veterans because he’s had to get beyond *his own* PTSD and he’s really aware of how that is a journey that doesn’t exactly ever end. It gets significantly better and he knows how well it can-- that’s why he can tell Bucky that there is hope of that-- but it is very clear that Sam Wilson is still suffering his own kind of PTSD and his own grief for the death of a guy who likely couldn’t love him the way he needed him to. 

I know we don’t know a ton about exactly what Sam and Riley were but I think there is enough to infer that they probably actually weren’t a couple. For one thing, Sarah never mentions him and even if the show wanted to be vague about things, they could phrase it like “it’s been forever since you brought back someone to the house, haven’t met any of them since Riley” or something. There are ways to infer that they were a thing and the nature of it, if the show wanted to do that but all they have suggested so far is that Sam was in love with Riley. We know he and Riley were friends and worked on the Falcon suit project together but what we are getting out of what they are giving to us is that Sam loved him but it’s not clear that they were even a couple. I’d even say the picture of them that he shows Steve and Natasha is supposed to evoke that they weren’t a couple-- it’s of Sam looking at Riley, smiling like he’s the moon and the stars, while Riley is smiling but just a bit and he’s looking at the camera, not at Sam. 

In other words, remember Miller’s analogies from school? Sam is to Riley as Bucky is to Steve. I just offended every person reading this who thinks that Steve and Bucky weren’t an unrequited thing *ducks* but I feel like we’re supposed to take from what they give us that Sam knows a little something about being mad for a guy who thinks you are his best buddy but doesn’t look at you in a romantic or sexual way and you feel like you’re dying over it. Sam gets Bucky because Sam *is* Bucky when it comes to this. 

If Sam and Riley were just the best of friends, Sam still would have mourned him greatly but it would not necessarily have impacted his love life the way it seems like it might have. I’m not necessarily saying there was no one but this is a man who even when it felt like Steve Rogers-- whom Sam obviously found attractive-- seemed like he was making Sam question whether or not he was coming onto him or just super-nice and making a new fellow veteran friend... even when that was happening, Sam’s response was that he didn’t hate it or anything and he was willing to help Steve with what he needed in this friendly, advice-giving sort of way and maybe they had a thing, who knows, but it was clear that Sam-- a guy who has to be hit on *all the time*-- wasn’t really used to the idea of there being someone in his life. So, he wasn’t letting anyone into his life. He would have had the chance, no doubt. He was choosing not to. Why would you choose not to? If you were grieving the loss of a man you couldn’t get over and you thought that you weren’t ever going to love anyone like that and maybe having someone wasn’t going to happen for you.

Like, imagine Sam’s surprise when The Winter Soldier turns up, nearly kills them all, disappears and they go on the run and he starts hearing Steve’s confessional stories about the guy who was his best friend and in love with him and Steve has literally never said those words aloud because they’re from the *1940s* and he’s felt guilty all this time for hurting him. Steve’s the kind of guy who would feel guilty for not being in love with someone who was in love with him. That’s when Sam, who thought he had more in common with Steve, realizes he’s actually *Bucky Barnes* in this story. He’s the damn Winter Soldier in the Steve-and-Bucky version of him and Riley. 

That is how Bucky evolves from “the kind of guy you have to stop” in Sam’s mind to the guy he’s hanging out with in every fight and snarking over the car seats with. He’s like yeesh, I thought I had a few years of this ungodly pain and that was bad... this poor bastard’s been in love with a Riley who could and probably will live until he’s a hundred and thirty. Sam starts getting into this whole antagonist origin story of The Winter Soldier here because he realizes that one wrong move-- one case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time-- and he could have been captured during the war he was in. He could have been tortured like that, so easily, and he knows what it’s like to be tortured by love in that way. 

Bucky, for his part, when he begins to get his mind back and more fully remember Steve and his past, takes one look at Sam and is thinking like... that poor SOB... oh, look, it’s 21st Century Me. So, you fell for Steve Rogers, huh? Welcome to the club. We meet every Tuesday at two to discuss being the pining best friend in love with a guy who, in all likelihood, is attracted to both of us but unless Tony Stark can shake loose a bit of the freak in The Star-Spangled Man With a Plan, we’re not getting anything but a most earnest and sincere friendship out of this (and if Stark can’t, no one can....)

Like, Bucky’s Steve love is pretty pure. He wants him to be happy. He’s hurt that Steve doesn’t love him the way he loves Steve but he does love him as his best friend as well and wants him to have what he wants out of life. If that’s going back in time to Peggy Carter (who wouldn’t, really?) and leaving him behind then, fine. He wishes he were still here but he’ll deal but he’s going to be keeping an eye out for the other guy left behind-- Steve’s new modern era best friend person. Bucky’s so gone over keeping Steve safe that he can’t even resent Sam’s presence-- he’s thrilled he exists. Someone good to look after Steve when Bucky couldn’t! Sam Wilson is heaven sent and must be protected at all costs! So frequently from some kid with webbed fingers, apparently! 

Sam, meanwhile, is challenged by the dilemma that Bucky appears to think that they’re in the same boat while Sam, who for sure had a little crush on Steve as who doesn’t, has really come to realize that he is far, far more into the tragic one here. He’s so irritated about it. It would be simpler if he just fell for another blond soldier with red, white and blue blood who couldn’t love him. At least he’d just be completely hopeless then but the brainwashed one? The one that thinks he’s horrid but is so good that he can’t even bring himself to be that jealous of Sam when he clearly thinks Sam is sleeping with the guy he’s loved for years? 

Oh, Sam’s gone on that one... 

Bucky’s still a mess then so it’s harmless enough to just pretend he’s not writing himself into touch-starved Bucky fanfic in his own mind here but when Bucky keeps saving him in different fights? When he catches him looking once or twice. When the bickering is really flirting and Sam knows he means it that way, too? When the poor guy just gets his mind back, they all reunite and go to one battle and then the two of them disappear and miss *five years* of their lives? When then, soon after, Steve is gone, too? 

When it begins to feel like *they* are now the story and meant to go through the rest of these things together? I mean, when everyone else is all on about the fate and destiny of it all-- Stark’s big sacrifice being the one way to save everyone, Doctor Strange going on about all the possibilities of the universe on a saving the world level but it so personal to the people Sam and Bucky know, Steve choosing to go back in time because he can and be with the woman he loved and never got to have... 

...standing there in the funerals and aftermaths of all of this together, by virtue of being Steve’s Friends Who Aren’t Really Part of This Gang Exactly... are Sam and Bucky. What are the odds that they are supposed to be the rest of one another’s story? Sam was wondering it. He for sure hadn’t felt like this since Riley... he might not have really ever felt it at all before. 

Can we just admit that while there’s been some guys in the past-- and it could be rephrased as ‘some people’, as while Sam is written to suggest he’s at least into men, he could be into people who don’t identify as men as well-- but there’s not been someone who has been able to love him the way he’s loved them. 

He’s from the South and Black and the show taps into the racism he’s been through as a result. Not obviously in Delacroix, where he feels safe and seen, where people care about him and don’t care that he is not straight, but in other parts. He’s been in the military, where homophobia is still pretty rampant and it’s a culture of a lot of heterosexual machismo. (Hell, the show even has a kind of walking, talking example of a guy everyone knows was the epitome of that kind of culture, even if he’s been broken by that world, too-- John Walker.) It’s not even really clear if Sam is out and, if he is, to whom. He seems to be the kind of person to want to be himself as much as possible and Sarah likely knows because they are close but I’m not so sure that a lot of Sam’s military buddies actually did. He really strikes me as the guy who gets along with everybody and whom everybody loves-- but whom few people actually *know* because he keeps himself (all of himself, not just his sexuality) private from others...

...which is also a hell of a lot like one Bucky Barnes. 

Guaranteed they became such fast friends not just from being sort of left with one another in the aftermath of Steve and their attraction but because Sam was amazed to find that Bucky was actually pretty funny and Sam just kept talking to him because while he has-- or had, anyways, before he ran off with Steve-- a ton of people he’d consider friends, he doesn’t really have anyone he’d consider to be a close friend and hasn’t since Riley. Bucky, just still stunned to be free of mind control and that there was another human being talking to him instead of looking at him as a weapon to program to kill, was eager to listen to and absolutely thrilled when he could find something sarcastic to say to make Sam laugh that surprised laugh and light up. 

These two damaged couple of guys spent most of this show and the months before it just terrified by how much love they were feeling for one another and were very happy to let any conflict they could get in the way of it-- any excuse to claim they weren’t feeling totally seen and run for the hills back into their own trauma.

It’s not just Bucky doing this. He might have been the one not returning the texts at the start, the one who seemed to be withdrawing more, while Sam was texting him still to check in on him but how quickly that began to flip around by Episode 5. 

Suddenly, the brave one is Bucky. It was Sam for the first few episodes-- he was stil trying and so hard, despite not getting what he needed in return and Bucky still sending signals that he wanted him but was happy to still revel in being too damaged and scared to try harder. By Episode 5, though? Bucky’s not only learned to trust himself again, it is proven to be what he was afraid of: not being able to protect and love Sam the way he wanted to and that Sam would leave him. Triggered by the shield as a metaphor for not caring about Bucky, not having a reason to still pursue him, Bucky thought he had successfully pushed Sam away and that Sam would really stop texting because to not do so would be to admit to one another that they wanted to be around one another and this wasn’t just about Steve/Captain America. By Episode 5, Bucky shows up in Delacroix not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but with eyes only for Sam and is every one of Sam’s favorite Bucky Barnes fantasies come to life. 

It’s now Sam flipping out. Would you have expected the Sam of the first two episodes to be a babbling mess in the face of a flirty Bucky stretching and claiming it’s time for him to go get a hotel room? To try to be playing it cool but winding up asking him to stay forever and telling him he likes his tight t-shirts in the middle there? To get so nervous that he suddenly is babbling about six toes and flirting with Sarah, showing how jealous he was of Bucky just... smiling and being this guy Steve had said was under there but that Sam had only had small glimpses of so far? If he was gone for the broken Winter Soldier... he’s wrecked by a single smile from this Bucky. 

This is the same guy who spent the first few episodes confident to a point of near-cockiness, loving flirting with and teasing Bucky, the one that seemed more well-adjusted and in control of himself. Overall, he is but there’s something there when Bucky shows up and White Wolfs Sam into a sputtering mess who is sending him little glances, as if they’ve switched bodies from the first few episodes. It shows *just how much* Sam is comfortable with Bucky and how rare it is for him because he would react differently to Bucky’s more overt flirting of Episode 5 if how he is with Bucky was his default in life. Instead, we see that some of it is posturing-- it’s the Sam equivalent of lifting heavy things and using power tools. His is the humor (what’s a better aphrodisiac than making the Winter Soldier laugh or flirt back or blush?) and the bicker-caring. We even see where it comes from, in a way. Sam is a soldier-- he knows how to help other traumatized soldiers and when we saw him in his VA group session when we met him, we saw him using that kind of machismo world and its language to communicate with the soldiers in the group. The difference for him with them versus him with Bucky is that he’s also flirting with Bucky. The buddy cop thing is intentional-- it’s Sam’s strategy, it’s been Bucky’s choice to respond to it and they’re playacting it as how they talk because it’s been easier than admitting that they are completely gone on another and just want all the soft things. 

Up until recently anyway and now Sam’s reeling from a man he’s fallen in love with showing up and loving him back. Don’t think for a second that Bucky doesn’t know enough by now to know that it’d totally undo Sam but the surprise of it to the audience only really exists if you don’t think Sam and Bucky have anything in common besides their now-gone mutual friend. In reality, they’re endgame. 

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi, since you were discussing about some interactions being fanservice. Do you think the sheer amount of Jimin posts by Tae in weverse, and the many 'I love you..I miss you.. Taehyungie..' posts by Jimin in Twitter were fanservice as well? Same as in the past fancafe posts?

In June 2020 a Harvard paper was published about BH and BTS in which, among many other interesting pieces of information, we were told this:

What this tells us is that while their twitter is overseen by the agency, they have relative freedom when it comes to what they decide to post and write on their Weverse accounts. They can ask for advice, but they don’t have to and the agency itself won’t stick their nose into their decisions (as long as they remain reasonable with what they post I’d assume). 

Based on that I’d say that while their posts on twitter, like selcas and birthday posts, are basically (to a certain degree, meaning not always but oftentimes) a form of fan service, since they post those to stay connected with us, to thank us, or update us on things, their Weverse activity is different. Twitter is their most known social media presence accessible and known by most people (though media seems to occasionally struggle with distinguishing the twt account belonging to the members and the one controlled by staff) while Weverse is specifically just for BTS and ARMY, the way fan cafe used to be. So I’d actually group Weverse and fan cafe into one, though fan cafe offered the members more safety and “privacy” than Weverse does, seeing as you had to pass a rather hard process in order to access and use it, which isn’t the case with Weverse.

Therefore we can assume that whatever it is Tae decides to post on Weverse (just like both him and Jimin did in the past on fan cafe) isn’t fan service but simply whatever it is they want to say and their way of trying to communicate certain things. After all Tae had complained about there not being a video posting function on Wevsere and the second he realized it was finally implemented, he basically left Seokjin on read (who was on Weverse at the time as well) in order to post a video of Jimin with that yellow ball from the Chilsung Cider ad set with the caption “cute”.

We think, and this truly is just our theory so don’t take this as like fact or anything like it, his posts fulfill five criteria:

Tae himself said that he misses the contact and love he gets from ARMY during concerts, so the closest substitute to that is interacting with ARMY on Weverse, which is a bit “safer” and more “personal” than twitter is.

Everything Tae does is planned, as in he doesn’t do anything on sns without thinking about it and being certain that that is whatever it is he wants to do and some kind of thought went into it, especially when he decides to post pictures of Jimin or something about him. Like that time when, after Namjoon was happy that he got some kind of food from the staff that he really wanted, Tae posted pictures of the remaining members in one post yet decided to make a separate one to post a picture of Jimin (despite being able to fit all the pictures into one post) with a separate caption as well. That in a way reminds us of those times when vmin would hug each other before hugging the other members in group hugs at award shows when they won something. So, with that, it seems like he’s simply trying to communicate that Jimin is special to him, since he highlighted him separated instead of along with the other members. Usually, when he posts something more risky or that he didn’t think through completely, like his “revealing” selcas, he deleted them rather quickly, and yet the posts about Jimin are all still there.

When posting pictures of Jimin with captions like “cute” or “our/my Jiminie” or “good until the end” or a selca in bed with just two rather suggestive emoji as caption, it’s rather clear that he is showing affection toward Jimin and also trying to showcase their closeness, especially during times when people might assume they aren’t as close anymore because they don’t appear on screen as much together (since that seems to be the universally accepted “real” friendship-meter, for whatever stupid reason). And no one will tell me any ordinary friend would just go and posts pictures of his best bro with such captions or find a post by ARMY containing their selca and reply by saying “95z is love” if there aren’t more feelings involved. Let’s be real.

By posting such pictures and affection on social media about another person I think it carries a certain message/meaning, as in that you wouldn’t post such things about and pictures of another person if you knew they are in a relationship with someone else, since that would just cause an awkward uncomfortable situation and also make you seem like an as*, but also that you yourself are not in a relationship with someone else either, since that would just cause your partner to feel weird as well, right? And Tae doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d want to cause any such awkwardness and hard feelings, so I think it’s safe to assume that Jimin doesn’t mind him posting these things, like knows about it, and that they are either (potentially) together or share some kind of higher level of shared affection wherein such posts are welcome and perhaps even encouraged.

We also know that Jimin isn’t on sns as often, he said himself he’ll try to continue staying away from it for the most part, so by sharing pictures of him Tae satisfies ARMY’s “demand” or wish for Jimin selcas that otherwise won’t get met (which of course is totally Jimin’s right and if he doesn’t want to post anything himself, that is totally fine and I hope he doesn’t feel any pressure to do something he doesn’t want to do, it’s not like twt has been kind to him in any way in recent months/years...).

So no, we don’t think Tae’s Weverse posts are fan service. When it comes to Jimin, his use of their sns is a little different from Tae. While Tae clearly favors Weverse, Jimin never used it much and rather stayed on twitter, so while some of his posts are more fan service-y, I’d still argue that some of his tweets directed at Tae, like the one where he proclaimed how much he loves and adores him along with a bunch of red and purple hearts, or when he told ARMY to be excited for Scenery, are genuine. Especially since Jimin is particular about his interactions and words about Tae, so for him to say these things and them just being fan service without actual feelings attached to them just doesn’t seem right. While yes, vmin engage in fan service together at times, just like all the other members, they are much more selective in what they are willing to show and share with us about their bond, so presenting such declarations and feelings in a non-serious manner doesn’t really seem like something they would do.

[cowtale-utau]

I know a certain Violet Queen who will be happy to see this go up ;p. Here are the basics of CT’s SwapFellPurple!Sans, aka Doc’s relationships.

Undertale Sans/Ace – These two ran into some conflict pretty early on. Doc is used to running things his way, and completely, where as Ace was not backing down. Eventually things settled down, as while Ace was the “leader” and would always have final say, he was also willing to let someone else do most of the work, so long as they worked in his allowed parameters. Doc deals with all the “menial administrative shit” that Ace hates. There is still a little of a grudge there but its at least a grudging acceptance. Undertale Papyrus/Lief – Lief is soft in ways Doc doesn’t always appreciate. While never needlessly cruel, Doc can be demanding, exacting, and abrasive. He expects people to do as they’re told and do so correctly. Lief is a much softer touch and often goes about “consoling” any “hurt feelings” after Doc has made his rounds. This is more than a little frustrating, and Doc often feels undermined. There have been arguments over it, and the two largely avoid directly interacting. Outside of “work” the two can be cordial, and while they will likely never be friends, there isn’t any animosity. Perhaps a little bitterness though.

Underfell Sans/Chisel – Doc doesn’t particularly care one way or another at this point. He doesn’t dislike Chis’s personality, in fact they do have some things in common, and can have decent conversations. There was a time Doc was very put off by the laziness of some of his counter parts, Chisel included, but has since let it go. Chis does work hard when he really needs to and his mechanical knowledge in invaluable. His opinion ultimately sits between appreciate, exasperation, and neutrality. Underfell Papyrus/Spur – These two did butt heads a fair bit at one point, but have since settled in to camaraderie. There was some issues with respective bossiness, both used to being in control. However Spur quickly caught on that he was never really “in charge” in any kind of practical way, and was in no way prepared to be now. While he was used to issuing orders, he had no expedience actually making people work. Once he acknowledged this, and that he had no interest in changing it, they got along much better. They often train and discuss techniques together when Doc has some down time.

Underswap Sans/Scout – Exasperation might be the kindest thing Doc feels for Scout. Very vaguely, distantly, fond exasperation. While he appreciates that Scout can work very hard, he is also frustrated by how erratic and easily distracted he is. It doesn’t help that Scout would sooner laugh than actually do any work he’s given by Doc. Underswap Papyrus/Piper – While there isn’t any particularly strong attachment here, Doc doesn’t mind Pip at all. He’s mostly quiet and largely stays out of Doc’s “circle”. He does his tasks well and is largely non-disruptive, which Doc appreciates.

Swapfell(Red) Sans/Whip – These two get along a lot better than most would expect. Doc has a surprising level of understanding of Whip’s mentality, and knows how to not only manage his moods but work with him on them. While neither would ever admit it, they can be found some mornings being catty gossips over coffee. Swapfell(Red) Papyrus/Coyote – Doc doesn’t mind Coy. When given a task, he does it well, and Doc appreciates that. Most would assume Doc would be annoyed by Coy’s “lack of initiative” but honestly he just see him as being rather ‘lost’ most of the time, something he can understand. While it was never really an issue for him personally, he does understand that the world and their place in it has rather been up-heaved and adjustment can be hard.

Horrortale Sans/Tender – They don’t interact one on one very often but they get along well enough. Doc pushes people and expects a lot, but he also actually quite reasonable and very understanding of different people’s limitations. He understands what Ten can and can’t do, and as the gang’s primary healer he makes sure to keep track of any changes. Tender is somewhat limited, but also very dedicated to what he can do, and Doc appreciates that. Horrortale Papyrus/Cook – Doc appreciates Cook. He has his role, and he does it to the absolute best of his ability without pushing himself too hard, important traits to earn Doc’s respect. They don’t have a ton in common, but they get along amicably.

Swapfell(Purple) Sans/Doc – Doc is confident, self assured, and comfortable. He knows himself, and what he’s capable of. While Underground, Doc never gave much thought to his “self esteem”, keeping a single minded focus on making sure he and Flint had the best they could in any given circumstance. Upon reaching the Surface, he found he was quite satisfied with who he is. He does have the rare moment of insecurity, where he questions whether he actually deserves what he has and is, given his methods were not always the most morally upright, but it doesn’t take long for him to shake this. He did what he could and had to with what was available, and he refuses to apologize for it. Swapfell(Purple) Papyrus/Flint – Things have gotten much better for these two since surfacing. While they were always close, and often codependent, Doc was often also at odds with Flint over Flint’s addictions. It became a matter of “as long as it directly interfere in anyway, I’ll ignore it” for a long time. When reaching the surface, there was a fair bit of arguing but Flint has started getting it together, as many of the stressors he had previously are gone, and Doc is proud of his little brother’s efforts.

Fellswap Gold Sans/Haze – Somewhere between solid friendship and grudging respect. There is a certain measure of playful competition between them, which as Fells can come off at times hateful to the outside eye. However it is something Doc has great fun with, and considers Haze a dear friend. Fellswap Gold Papyrus/Cirrus – Doc doesn’t mind how soft Cirrus is, but Cir does find him a bit intimidating. There is always an expectation that Doc will start bossing Cir around, and while at one point that may have been a possibility, Doc leaves Cir entirely to Haze. He appreciates Cir’s artistic talents, but has little time of his own for such pursuits. There is no dislike but Doc has firmly placed him in a “not my responsibility” box, so as to avoid any conflicts.

Underlust Sans/Shine – These two aren’t friends as far as Doc is concerned, but they do get along somewhat well. There are parts of Shine that grate deeply on Doc, but he is exceptionally clever in regards to all matters of the mind, and Doc can appreciate this. While confident in his own abilities, Doc does occasionally reach out to verify that his approach shouldn’t have adverse effects on the people involved. Underlust Papyrus/Calico – Calico is a strange and enigmatic sort, and Doc is largely ambivalent to him. While he doesn’t especially mind Cali, there is something unsettling to him that puts Doc, who much prefers the concrete to the esoteric, on edge.

Dancetale Sans/Shuffle – Doc and Shuff bond over their mutual like of children and teaching/guiding. They don’t have much else in common but will happily swap tips/stories. Dancetale Papyrus/Foxtrot – Fox is a bit much for Doc. He doesn’t hate him, but his energy is a bit off putting. While he would find his work ethic impressive, his tendency to ignore his own and others limits irritates Doc as it is inefficient. Doc usually just redirects Fox to elsewhere so as not to deal with him more than needed.

Outertale Sans/Saturn – There is no particular feelings either way here for Doc. They don’t see each other often enough for them to develop a bond or aversion. In the rare interaction, Doc doesn’t mind Saturn, and they can make comfortable small talk. Outertale Papyrus/Mercury – An amicable relationship. They don’t see each other often, but Doc doesn’t mind Mer at all, and will hold a decent conversation with him.

Farmtale Sans/Sage – Doc holds no animosity towards Sage. Doc holds not much of anything towards Sage. If his view could be defined in a singular word, it would be “disregard”. Most are surprised to find Doc cares not at all about Sage’s seemingly lazy and resistant nature. The fact of the matter is, Doc doesn’t care. He has completely dismissed Sage as being beneath effort or even notice. It’s not his job to fix Sage, and he doesn’t care to try. Farmtale Papyrus/Thyme – There is a good bit of mutual respect here. While they are careful to avoid the topic of Thyme’s brother, they both greatly appreciate how hard the other works to keep everything moving smoothly in their respective areas. Both also appreciate matters of the home, and the wish they could indulge in the peaceful domestics more often. Doc does often chide Thyme for not balancing work/life more efficiently, and they are as close to friends as they can get given how infrequently they directly interact.

G!Sans/Aurum – This one is a mixed bag. Aurum is impulsive and often unthinking and it drives Doc batty on the rare occasion he has to deal with it directly. Even more infuriating is that things typically just “work out” for Aur, when by all accounts they should not have. Doc views Aur largely as an unruly barely-adult, and must constantly resist the urge to lecture. He normally just would, but Doc has found the task pointless, and it’s much more effective to simply set Vir on him. Despite all this, he can respect Aur’s drive and work ethic, even if he finds it’s direction often questionable. G!Papyrus/Viridis – Friendly, when they manage to see each other. Doc appreciates Vir’s calm and intellectual nature. They often compare research findings and enjoy discussing assorted healing techniques, mundane and magical.

(Two in a day, as I know a certain someone was excited to see this)

[eleutheramina]

Is Scoopshipping Good Writing? An Extremely Long Text Post

This is partially a response post to criticism of the ship and Jack’s development in the Dark Signers arc, and partially my own analysis of Jack and Carly’s relationship--specifically whether it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization and whether it says anything meaningful besides just invoking the Power of Love. 

Introduction

It’s been over 10 years since 5D’s first aired, which is surreal. I still remember thinking the whole concept was ludicrous at first, but it eventually became my favorite Yugioh series (though I usually ignore the series post-episode 64 and consider the first 64 episodes by themselves). It was really primarily because of these two fools that I started watching in earnest:

I shipped them big time. Even now, I still really adore their relationship. Most of my ships I end up becoming less obsessed with over time, but Jack/Carly continues even to this day to captivate my heart and imagination. 

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about the question, is their relationship good writing? Especially in how consistent it is with Jack’s characterization in the Fortune Cup arc, and whether or not it works to develop him as a character afterward.

(Of course, my personal stakes in the question is, should I be shipping them? While ships obviously don’t have to be well-written in canon or anything like that for someone to ship them, it’s significant to me because so much of the reason I liked Jack/Carly in the past is because it did feel decent character development, especially in contrast to what came after the Dark Signers arc.)

Why I’m Writing This

This sense of doubt about the writing of their relationship is especially spurred on by this character analysis of Jack:

“A lot of people seem to think that the introduction of Carly and the whole romancey subplot developed Jack as a character and for the better. I could not disagree more. If there's one word I'd associate with Jack prior to his entire development and dignity as a character going down the crapper, I'd have to say it's 'ego'. How did Rex/Jaeger get him to sell out his friends, steal Yusei's stuff and join him? He appealed to Jack's ego. How did he persuade him to stay after his first loss to Yusei? By telling him about the signer and reassuring him, again, that he was special. Overall, Jack just struck me as a very focused and driven character, intent on achieving his own goals on his own. He actively pushed away everyone who tried to get close to him, most obviously Mikage, who is consistently worrying over him but whom he never spares as much as a thought or a kind word for in return. Ever. This egocentric attitude is also, at the risk of over-analyzing, consistent with Red Dragon Archfiend, both in its moving away every defensive obstacle in its way and in its actively destroying any monsters that didn't join it in attacking. I generally don't like going onto this level of symbolism because it so easily devolves into semantic nonsense, but given the parallels here and the similarly fitting effects of Yusei's Stardust, I thought it worth mentioning. This would also lend a bit of further significance to him handing the card over to Yusei before the tournament, not only affirming his egocentric wish to beat Yusei at his strongest (and thus redeem himself for their last duel) but also his rejection of the self-sacrificing/others first mentality that the card represents. His obsession with Red Dragon Archfiend after that duel is also consistent with this interpretation, with Jack pushing himself even harder to prove to himself that his way is correct.

“Overall, I don't object to the notion of Jack learning to be less ego-centric as development, but the way the dark signer arc handled it was beyond contrived and ham-fisted, pushing him into an impromptu romance that was completely inconsistent with egocentric personality thus far and completely glossing over the far more interesting questions of how he'd rebuild his ego after essentially losing his entire self-image as the king in front of everyone. Instead, apparently all he needed was for a crazy lady to abduct him from hospital, blackmail him for the sake of her own career, then give a few lines of generic encouragement and invoke the power of love. From where I'm standing, it was obvious that he was intended to be Yusei's main foil, representing a pragmatic, egocentric worldview to contrast with his idealistic views on bonds and friendship, but equally clear that that idea was quickly scrapped in favor of shipping bait and deifying Yusei.

“Jack Atlus, he deserved a far better closure to his development than Stockholm syndrome.” --Aea (http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=26&pid=735)

Before I get to what I think is actually pretty solid about this analysis, I want to address some points. The idea of Carly being “crazy” is pretty hyperbolic. Calling what she did “abduct[ion]” is just inaccurate--after all, Jack asks her to take him out of the hospital, and he also refuses to return when Mikage and Ushio go to get him. Of course, he tries to leave her place in episode 31, but he also seems to willingly return there at the end of the episode. Because she wasn’t really kidnapping him or holding him at her home against his will, their relationship isn’t Stockholm syndrome.

I do think there’s some validity to the idea of her blackmailing him for her career. She does try to draw attention to him when they’re out in public in episode 31 in order to get him to stick around so that she can get a scoop from him. As comically as it is presented in the episode, that’s nonetheless what she does (and she also tries to leverage his lack of gratitude, too!). But she does ultimately feels remorse for that and resolves to not write any article that would hurt a duelist (even despite the fact that Jack lets her write what she wants about him), which is glossed over in this analysis of Jack.

I also don’t think that the encouragement she gave Jack was super original. Here’s the exact quote (which she says in response to Jack divulging his past to her):

“If you get the picture that much, why don’t you just start your life over again? The old Jack died in that battle with Yusei. Now it’s time for the real Jack Atlas to live. Plus, it’d help you in becoming a real King, right?”

Essentially, she tells him that he can get back up again after his loss and be even better than he was before. Yeah, at face value, it is pretty generic. But I do think that it does speak into a lot of what he was struggling with, at least as it is depicted after his defeat.  Now, whether these are things that make sense for him to struggle with is a different issue that I’ll discuss in a later section.

And finally, I do think that Jack/Carly invokes the power of love trope. At least, Jack invokes it himself when he is talking back to Godwin in episode 63: “No matter how much I deny it, I cannot escape from what’s known as ‘bonds.’ And what helped me understand that was one woman’s love!” I don’t think the power of love is necessarily a bad thing, and I think it makes sense for someone who gave up their bonds from the past to pursue his own goal to be able to be moved and changed by someone genuinely caring for them.

Now, whether or not it was a good decision to have love be the driving force in Jack’s character development during the Dark Signers arc is a different question, which brings me to the points of Aea’s analysis that I find really compelling and want to grapple with.

What I read Aea as primarily saying is that Jack in the Fortune Cup arc is depicted as a highly egocentric person, and that his plotline with Carly in the Dark Signers arc is a) inconsistent with that previous characterization and b) not as interesting as a plotline in which his egocentrism could continue to serve as foil to Yusei’s worldview.

I think a lot of that makes sense. I do think Jack was driven by his ego, and I do think that it might’ve been more interesting if his self-driven worldview were able to be given as much validity as Yusei’s idealistic, others-driven worldview, which is ultimately what is privileged. I can also see how Jack being primarily motivated by saving Carly during the latter half of the DS arc may be incongruous with his egocentrism just 20 or so episodes before.

At the same time, though, I think there are a lot of directions 5D’s could have gone which have the potential to be more interesting than the one it actually went, so rather than wondering about what could have been, it would be more worthwhile to examine Jack/Carly’s plotline and see whether or not it is inconsistent with Jack’s previous characterization, and also to see if it has any merit of its own as far as it develops Jack’s character. 

Particularly, I am going to argue that a) although perhaps not as well executed as it could be, it made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

Also, b) Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

Point A: It made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

So throughout the course of one arc, Jack goes from being a man who is motivated primarily by himself and his desires (to the point of being willing to put down others for them), to a man whose main reason for action is someone else’s well being. It does seem like a stark change. Rewatching the Jack/Carly duel, the sheer amount of concern for Carly that Jack shows is pretty astounding.

But I think that it’s understandable for there to need to be a change. For one, the particular reason why Jack lost to Yusei in episode 26 in the first place is because he tried to win using the same strategy as before--he wanted to redeem himself for his first near loss. Clearly there is a need for a change: Jack loses not once but twice to Yusei in the same season, and Yusei also cites Jack’s pride as a King as his reason for his loss.

The drama between Yusei and Jack during the Fortune Cup arc is driven by Jack losing to Yusei and needing to duel and beat him again to redeem himself and prove he’s the better duelist--that he truly deserves the title of King. In episode 6, when Jack realizes he would have lost to Yusei, it’s clear that he’s not driven by how his fans perceive him. While his fans have no idea that he lost, he’s nonetheless still bothered because he, the King, knows. In episode 8, Jack feels like he’s not the King anymore, even though Mikage says he still seems like one. The cheers of his fans sound hollow because he knows he doesn’t deserve them.

Something I find interesting is Jack’s awareness of his counterfeit Kingship revealed through his calling himself a clown. After his initial defeat, Jack asks Mikage if he’s a clown in episode 8, in episode 25 he asks Godwin to release Rally and co as “reward for a clown,” and in episode 31, he also uses the language of a clown when he talks to Carly: “Back then, I gave up everything, and what I gained from it was the path to being a King who continually acts like a clown as he lies about his true identity.”

Because of this, the way I see Jack’s character is that his identity as the King was made counterfeit at almost the very beginning of the series (episode 5). He then spends the entire rest of the Fortune Cup arc trying to regain his original conception of his King identity, only to ultimately fail. From Jack’s own language, I think we’re meant to see this as Jack’s foolishness. While it may have seemed fine for two years, the King identity that he had held onto no longer worked for him. When confronted by someone from his past, his King identity starts to crumble--first he’s defeated not once but twice, then it’s revealed he’s actually from Satellite, etc. In episode 25, he even shows awareness that Godwin baited him with the idea of being a duel king; when Godwin asks if that isn’t what he wanted, Jack says that he wanted to rule as “the King [he] truly desired to be.” Indeed, it’s revealed that he wasn’t even valued by Godwin for himself, but rather as a means of getting to Yusei. It makes sense, then, that his development after his defeat should center around letting go of his original conception of his King identity and discovering something more true.

All of these realizations are those that Jack comes to more or less on his own; Carly even says that Jack already “get[s] the picture.” So I do think it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization for him to need to find a new way of being King in the Dark Signers arc. Hence the need to start over, as Carly suggests. (And which is revisited in episode 37 when Jack talks to Mikage again, episode 59 when Carly does her fortune telling stuff, etc.)

I think it’s because Carly gives him hope after he loses his King identity that she makes such a mark on him and effectively becomes his main motivation in the DS arc. And I mean, Jack in the DS arc is still pretty aloof and pushes others away—he makes it clear to Yusei that he “hasn’t become anyone’s friend” in episode 45, and he really doesn’t rely on anyone else even as he angsts over Carly. No one even knows the identity of the Dark Signer he’s fighting. While Yusei still draws on his friends for strength, we see Jack continue his independent streak. Heck, he even pushes Carly away! (And she honestly probably would have been better off and not have gotten killed if she had just stuck with him, but that’s for another AU...)

An aside - I sometimes read people saying that they think Mikage could have filled the same role Carly did. Maybe, if written differently, she could have. But I think it’s notable that when Jack is angsting about having lost his sense of being a King in episode 8, Mikage is not really able to understand or speak to him in a way that actually meets him where he is. She clearly cares about him, but I think she’s not able to get past the image of the King that she and his fans project on him. I think Carly is able to empathize with his pain more. When Jack calls himself foolish and a clown, Carly doesn’t try to convince him he’s wrong--instead, she says something more like, “Sure, that’s true--but that doesn’t have to still be who you are.”

Point B: Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

I would argue that this is because Carly’s own character, as well as their relationship in general, deals a lot with themes of selfishness. While not presented as starkly as Jack’s self-drive is, it is obvious that Carly is someone who is self-driven and desires to achieve her goals, not completely unlike Jack. Her first appearance has her going past a swath of reporters to talk to Godwin, and her subsequent interaction with her boss shows that her job is precarious and that the scoops she seeks after are at least in part to keep her job. Like Jack, she came from a lower class background (although “the streets” rather than Satellite), and she doesn’t seem to have any close ties (Angela the reporter might count, but that’s a stretch). And when she goes to talk with Yusei and Dick Pitt after their duel, her concern is not with their wellbeing but about getting information from them for a scoop. “Straight ahead is the only way for me,” is something she repeats, showing that she knows where she wants to go and is determined to get there.

Indeed, Carly would not have met Jack at all if she had not snuck into the hospital trying to learn if he was truly from Satellite. She is someone who is driven primarily by herself, albeit more innocuously than Jack is. This also underlies why she was willing to “blackmail” Jack into going to the amusement park with her. She needs a scoop and is ready to do what it takes to get it.

But, we see how in the same episode, she starts thinking less of herself and more about another--Jack. She thinks, “He’s really hurting inside. And here am I trying to write an article about it. Am I a bad person for that?” She considers what he is going through, rather than just her own needs. When she defends Jack to Angela, she is driven not by her desire to keep Angela from getting her scoop, but a genuine care for Jack. And when she figures out he’s going to the tower to look at Satellite, it’s only by inhabiting his point of view and thinking about what he may want. Yet the question she asks herself--whether or not it’s bad to be writing a scoop about him (after all, it is her job, as Angela points out)--is an important one for her.

As self-driven as Carly is, she realizes she has limits--that is, she would not go as far as to hurt another person to achieve her own goals. Jack, on the other hand, has already done that, putting Rally in peril and taking Yusei’s card in order to get to Neo Domino City and become King.

We see again how Carly can be self-driven when she tries to get closer to Jack after he leaves, and when it is ultimately an illusion of happiness with Jack that causes her to fall back into her Dark Signer persona. Yet even then, it is clear that she does not want to hurt anyone, and Jack repeatedly reiterates this.

This culminates in the conversation she has with Jack before she dies: Carly: I loved cheering people on who tried their hardest like you, Jack. Despite that, because I tried to wish for such selfish happiness, I must’ve been wrong for doing so, huh? Jack: That’s nonsense! Everyone has the right to wish for happiness. If you’re saying that’s a crime, then I’m just as guilty!

Carly says herself that she was motivated by her own desires. Jack, in affirming her desire to obtain happiness, also affirms the ambition that drove him to abandon his friends. However, we see in how Carly is reluctant to hurt others that while it is not bad to want to pursue one’s goals and happiness, it is important to consider the impact on other people. It wasn’t bad for Carly to want to be with Jack, but it would obviously be bad for that to necessitate the deaths of many; it’s not bad for her to want to write a successful story, but it’s bad for her to take advantage of duelists’ like Jack’s pain to tell that story. This allows us to view the Jack in the FC arc in a new light: his desire to escape Satellite and become a King wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right of him to harm others in order to get there.

Ultimately, Jack and Carly’s relationship is about two people learning how to pursue their happiness and also learning to put each other’s happiness first.

[oneboxofmatches]

This is a request I did for the amazing @strawberry-caffeine​ -- she’s been so kind to me and it was an absolute joy to do this request!

A few things: With the length of the request, while I still included friendship matchups, I decided not to write out descriptions/explanations along with them. To (hopefully) make up for that, I put the #1 friendship choice in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS with two other bonus characters I think you’d be good friends with in regular bold type (except for the Harry Potter: Marauders era because there aren’t many choices haha). I hope this is okay!!

Here we go!

--Supernatural--

I romantically pair you with…

JACK KLINE

You’re good at hyping your friends up? Please give this boy all the hype in the world -- he needs it.

Seriously though, one (out of many) of the reasons Jack loves you so, so much is how you’re able to talk him out of a slump. His constant doubts and insecurities regarding his identity plague him often, and the fact that you’re willing to both listen to him pour his heart out and still find a way to reassure him means the world.

Jack’s also still getting the hang of the whole “talking” thing, so you helping him along when a lull in the conversation arrives makes him feel supported.

Not only does your helpful nature benefit Jack, but it’s also one of his favorite traits of yours! He believes in a kind, just world and consistently seeing that from you never fails to bring a bright smile to his face.

Whenever you bottle up your feelings, however, Jack is admittedly at a loss at first. Though it would take patience, turning these moments into teaching opportunities will help him become more in tune with emotions over time.

During these moments, all he wants to do is help -- even before he really understands what’s going on. He’ll ask you what you need and rush to assist in any way he can. He hates seeing you hurt, it’s as simple as that.

Jack loves being around you because he learns so much, and you’re just as eager to teach him. Together, you learn to appreciate the little things in life because you both bring such different perspectives to the world.

Overall, the kindness you show Jack from the beginning is what drives your relationship, and he makes it his goal to make sure you know how loved and appreciated you are in return.

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

CASTIEL, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Charlie Bradbury

--Harry Potter--

In the Golden Trio era, I romantically pair you with…

NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM

Honestly, Neville’s insecurities may make him feel a little intimidated by you at first. Thoughts like, “How could someone as friendly, energetic, and spontaneous as her ever love me of all people?” are pretty common in the early stages of your relationship.

Of course, you help Neville understand fairly quickly that you aren’t going anywhere. Because you’re so good at reading and interpreting emotions, you’re able to assist him with addressing these doubts head-on. These personal conversations are what truly solidify your trust in one another and serve as the strong foundations of a powerful bond.

Also, Neville really appreciates your ability to keep a conversation going. He sometimes struggles with this himself, but he’s relieved he doesn’t have to worry about these shortcomings when it comes to you. Talking with you just comes naturally.

While his verbal communication can use some work, Neville is one of the best listeners to have on-hand when it comes to any problems that arise in your life. Someone’s pushing you to your limit? Neville has all the patience in the world to let you rant so you don’t have to bottle up your feelings. Need to talk through solutions to personal issues? He’ll give you his undivided attention while you work your way around to an answer, providing feedback if you ask for it. Feel the need to ramble? Neville will not only listen, but he’ll actually take a genuine interest in whatever it is you’re talking about.

While he otherwise second-guesses all his decisions, Neville surprisingly really enjoys venturing on unplanned, impulsive adventures with you. A favorite for the both of you is exploring areas on the grounds or in nature. You’re usually the one to charge ahead, excitedly talking while Neville hangs back a few steps. He takes in his surroundings, sure, but mostly he’s just watching you and simply feeling happy from the joy you radiate.

Speaking of things you love to do together, gardening is near the top of the list! One of Neville’s deepest passions is botany, and he doesn’t share his knowledge with just anyone. Seeing you take a true interest in your shared garden gives him all the warmest, fuzziest feelings imaginable.

Overall, you’re the one to bring Neville out of his shell, and he’s the one who takes time to listen to you. You bring out the best in each other, and your unbreakable bond makes the two of you fiercely loyal until the end.

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

LUNA LOVEGOOD, Nymphadora Tonks, Molly Weasley

In the Marauders era, I romantically pair you with…

REMUS LUPIN

You want to talk about one of the most understanding and patient individuals out there? It’s this one.

While Remus isn’t always keen on discussing his own emotions, he is very astute when it comes to sensing the well-being of others. Whether you’re burnt out, overwhelmed, on the verge of a breakdown or something bad just happened to happen to you that day, he knows.

Having people like James and Sirius as friends has taught him both how to tune in to the ramblings of a hyper person as well as how to utilize selective hearing. Remus realizes that he never wants to use that second skill with you. Unlike his friends (who he loves very much, mind you) he wants to take in everything you tell him.

It’s this active listening that makes Remus an excellent gift giver. A majority of the things he gives you are from offhand comments that you don’t think twice about making in the moment.

One of Remus’s absolute favorite things about you is the way your eyes light up when you talk about something you’re passionate about. He finds this trait so endearing, and it’s an easy way to make him smile.

Caring for you when your thoughts are traveling especially fast becomes second nature to Remus. Whenever he knows that he’ll see you, he always has at least one outlet (pen/paper, alcohol marker, etc.) for you. He’s also more than fine with you drawing something on his hand if you’d like -- he loves watching you work and he also gets to walk away with something that can remind him of you!

Remus also excels in history, reading, and writing, so I can definitely see many conversations between you two that revolve around these subjects. Also, after both of you complete your own essays, I believe proofreading and/or discussing each other’s work would become a habit of yours.

Overall, the shared ability to read and interpret emotions as well as the simple wish to care for one another draw you two together to form the sweetest couple around!

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

LILY EVANS

--Marvel Cinematic Universe--

I romantically pair you with…

PIETRO MAXIMOFF

Pietro was first drawn to how easily you can hold a conversation. He recognized immediately how easy it was to joke around with you once you warmed up (which didn’t take long -- Pietro’s somewhat gifted with the power of easy conversation himself). You both felt comfortable around each other relatively quickly.

Yes, Pietro’s known for his impossibly quick movements, but no one stops to think that this requires impossibly quick thinking. While Pietro has had some time to grab somewhat of a hold on his abilities, he still struggles with thoughts that just move too fast for him. You show him some of your tactics for dealing with this, and it literally changes his life.

Up until that point, your interactions had been mostly fun and rather lighthearted. But helping Pietro in such a thoughtful way and relating to him on a level that no one usually can made him see you in a different life. That’s how he knew he loved you.

This can be a chaotic relationship at times to say the least.

Many of your conversations can hardly be followed because you often build off of each other’s energy. While your quick minds are often on the same page, a third person might not be able to keep up.

Pietro does NOT hesitate when it comes to standing up for you. As soon as he learned about your people-pleasing habit, he took it upon himself to be on guard for anyone who could possibly take advantage of you. While you may find it hard to say no, Pietro has no problem stepping in and telling someone to back off.

You might feel as if he goes a little overboard with this sometimes, telling him that it “wasn’t right to be mean to that person.” He’ll just glance at you, shake his head and start up a lecture (albeit not a harsh one -- he really does care about you!) about asserting personal boundaries.

Pietro and his ego LOVE compliments, so you can expect a welcome reaction to each one you give him.

He’s also a big fan of going on spontaneous trips, discovering different parts of the world side by side.

But he’ll also settle for getting to hold you while you two talk about your day.

Overall, Pietro has no problem matching your energy, and you both want nothing more than to discover the adventures life has to offer together.

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

VISION, Thor, Tony Stark

--Hamilton--

I romantically pair you with…

JOHN LAURENS

John has a lot of respect for someone who manages to include everyone, so it’s no wonder you caught his eye.

First impressions already told him you were friendly and empathetic, but discovering the more energetic and spontaneous side of you? Yep, he was in love.

Both of you have always had a desire to help people, so being able to do that with someone who shares the same passion and energy feels special. You’re more than a couple; you’re a team.

Whenever John’s troubled by what’s going on in the world, it doesn’t take him long to turn to you. He’s one of the most stubborn people alive when it comes to admitting he needs help, but all he knows is that talking to you seems to relieve him of some of that load (please be patient with him!!).

Meanwhile, he knows you have your own ways of coping with racing thoughts so he feels comfortable giving you space when you need it. If what you need is a person to listen, however, he’s there in a heartbeat.

Serious topics aside, you two just know how to have fun! Between your friendly personalities that naturally draw others in and your impulsive natures that (most of the time) lead you to exciting experiences, you make so many mutual friends! Sharing a group of close friends -- surprise, surprise -- brings you and John even closer.

Overall, you and John can always be found by each other’s side when facing whatever comes your way, good or bad.

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

PHILIP HAMILTON, Marquis de Lafayette, Peggy Schuyler

[lambourngb]

Nailing that Dynamic- Recs - Day 1

Day 1 for Creator’s Week, and I gotta say, this is my favorite fan event, mainly because it was the first one I participated last year. This little rec set is devoted to dynamics, divided into friendship, found family, and finally romantic (and yes, that’s Malex with me.)

We’ve had two seasons of this show, and while I can’t really relate to aliens or even the immigrant story, I do relate strongly to the stories behind friendship. I can say my appetite for fic with a good friendship dynamic will always be there.

Will You Be My Friend- Circle Yes or No (recs)

Finding You by @myrmidryad  (122,000) - If by chance the canon from high school bums you out, this is the story to read. Gin writing malex is always a ‘no-brainer I’m gonna read it story’ for me, but what really set this epic apart was how beautifully Gin writes the friendship dynamics between Michael & Liz, and Michael & Max. It’s a canon-divergent story with no-murder of Rosa or the shed scene, where in order to avoid enlistment, Alex disappears from Roswell and joins the Max & Liz road trip with Michael in tow. They just need to fill that gap between high school and the opening of the dorms at UNM so they can start a life together. And fill it they do with this road trip. There were moments where I sobbed with how badly Michael needed this in canon and didn’t get it. It also made me like Max, so, yeah. Great writing and characterizations here.

Hit the Road by @bestillmyslashyheart - (7,100) - One of the brightest spots for me in season two was Rosa Ortecho, and one of the most frustrating parts of season two was the fact we didn’t get any interaction between her and Alex. *screams* At least I had a few crumbs of Rosa & Maria (not nearly enough!) but still. Where there’s a glaring gap in canon, thank god there’s fanfic. Marlo treats us to a delightful story written post season 1, but had some surprisingly psychic lines about Malex, number one how they don’t think they are good for one another. I really enjoyed what this story says about leaving-  and honestly, the town of Roswell has so much pain tied to these characters, they should all take long road trips away from it.

a few drinks and some conversation by @christchex / @michaels-blackhat (5,600 ) - this one is set post-season 2, with all the complications of Michael deciding now wasn’t the right time for him and Alex, while also working on giving Maria the right space after their breakup.  I think it’s pretty clear that Michael needs a friend he’s not related to and someone he hasn’t slept with - to provide him so low-stakes genuine company outside of the alien bullshit and love triangle dynamics. Christi does this beautifully through the eyes of an OC and the number of times I’ve read this story is like 10, and also, it’s inspired my current story about Michael going on dates.

and headin’ out singing our song by @stars-and-sunshine (4,100) post season 2, Alex and Michael head off on a road trip (okay, this is a trope I apparently like since I’ve recced three stories now, hahaha) after Alex’s car breaks down. There’s a careful space in this story, of two men building a friendship again. The roadtrip details are beautiful, but what stayed with me is a scene in the museum. That summer of 2008 had some ghosts to address.

If I Follow You Home, Will You Keep Me? found-family dynamics

When You’re Gone by @bestillmyslashyheart (8,200) - Before I tell you why I love this story, I want everyone to follow the next link and read this story about email and messages and grief in the digital age [trigger for cancer death] chat history by Rebecca  Armendariz. (She also wrote a follow up called Timelines published by the Hairpin that talks about the memory function on facebook.) So back to the story, this is Rosa, opening her email 10 years after her death and reading the messages people sent her, thinking they were speaking into the void. Liz, Maria, Alex, Mimi and Arturo, all of them sending her notes, sometimes time passes without an email, then an event triggers that memory of Rosa not being there- and yeah, I found this whole thing to be so moving.

Never Ever Getting Rid of Me by @spaceskam - (4,400) this probably could have gone in the friendship side, but I feel like when you work in a high stakes place like a hospital, friends is a term that ends up being too light, and with the level of competition and stress it grows a bond like family... anyway, this is an AU where Michael and Kyle end up at the same hospital as competing interns but some elements of canon are still there.

still fixing all the cracks by @emma-arthur -  (3,400) this is a pre-canon story, set when Alex is 14. He’s still a soft child, being tortured by his dad, and soaking up the attention from Liz, Rosa and Arturo when he breaks a glass and spirals. Heavy discussion of child abuse and homophobic abuse, but a really good exploration of the canon-neglected Liz & Alex friendship, plus with that paternal Arturo Ortecho in the mix...

Ophiuchus by @planetsam - (11,600) the other bright side of season 2 was the reveal of Walt Sanders as being not only Michael’s boss, but someone who knew his mother, knew what he was, and silently looked out for him...now of course I wish he had been more overt in doing this, but fanfic once again has fixed this canon-oversight. This is an incredible look through Walt’s eyes as he gets in over his head adopting an alien child, especially one who already had issues from previous foster placements. I could read a million words in this verse.

The Michael Sanders AU by @prouvaireafterdark (17,000 ) And speaking of great AUs where Michael is raised by Walt, I would be really amiss in not mentioning this one. It’s got hot high school Malex moments, emotional/hurt comfort for both Michael’s past foster placements but also the shit Alex is living with at home. I have to say “Honey if You Stay” is my favorite, just because of how badly I wanted to hug teen Alex...

and finally, no found family rec list could be complete without mentioning the epic series To Raise a Child (117,000 in progress) by @haloud and @maeglinthebold - season 2 put some hits on my headspace and emotional reserves, not to mention 2020 nonsense, so I’m dreadfully behind in commenting on this story. It’s just a huge emotional bandaid for me right now- it takes the idea of “what if the adults in Roswell actually looked out for their children (and other peoples children) and protected them from shit” and what would that change. Michael was found at 7 and then runs away to Roswell at 10, so yeah, humans have already done their best to convince him the world sucks and only finding his siblings matters... Jim Valenti steps in, knowing what he is, and finds him a place in Roswell with Arturo Ortecho. Anyway, everyone gets a turn- Jim, Mimi, the kids, etc in the story, it’s well rounded and fleshed out. Obviously being a malex person my favorite parts are the kid-friendship/this-is-just-a-crush moments in second story, where if you hadn’t lost your heart to Michael Ortecho by then, well, you’re a goner after that story. 

I Could Build Your Heart A Home (malex recs)

time will lie down and be still by @islndgurl777 (29,600) the Practical Magic AU - which I loved but I have never seen the movie it’s based on lol... anyway, this story almost belonged up with my found family dynamic recs, because the story opens with Isobel and Michael being 7 and 8 years old alien siblings and left with Mimi Deluca to raise with her daughter Maria, because with their father recently dead, their mother would soon follow as a species level soulmate bond. Michael vows never to fall in love. Then there’s a beautiful friendship between Maria, Liz, Isobel and Michael as they grow up together that I just wanted to roll around in forever... However this is a Malex rec, so once Alex enters the story in high school and things go down similarly with Jesse, Michael is heartbroken, his soulmate (he thinks) is gone, vanished into the Air Force, and he spends the next 10 years helping Maria, going to school with Liz, and keeping in touch with Isobel. Until 2018 when Isobel finds out her perfect man was like them, an alien, and bad, and they are forced to cover up his murder. Then Alex comes to town. But the soulmate storyline is the winner here and I just re-read it again.

here everyone knows (you’re the way to my heart) by @adamsparirsh (19,700) So this story tackles a dynamic that think will be the death-knell to the Alex/Forrest relationship- the weight of the alien secret and Alex’s responsibility gland and what that looks like to someone who wants to be in a relationship with him. The exclusion. But outside of that- there’s this part of Alex that isn’t willing to let anyone in that isn’t already there, and that’s Michael. I’m fucking weak for stories where these two assholes can’t connect with anyone but each other, and this one hits it. There’s also so many lovely friendship dynamics between everyone showing up for Alex- like Rosa, Isobel, Max, Maria. Obviously this is a Malex-is-endgame story, even though it starts Alex/Forrest.

it’s a long road back to you by @magsthemagical  (17,000) This was an interesting, now AU take on what if Maria/Michael dated at the same time as Alex/Forrest, and honestly, I thought basted on the season two spoilers that was where we were heading. I was gobsmacked by 2x13. Anyway, here’s a story that discusses the tension that would happen if there had been simultaneous dating going on…the parts where Michael sees Alex being open with someone other than him were very raw and true to how I would think he would feel. For 10 years he wanted that and didn’t get it, and so of course the problem was probably him?? Anyway, I enjoyed this a lot, and again felt robbed that we are heading into a new triangle for season 3. 

untouched by @prouvaireafterdark (5,200) - okay, you know when you have an alien soulmate idea in your head and you want it to appear on the page, and then it does and it’s everything you wanted? That’s what happened to me when ‘Untouched’ appeared. Obviously it’s AU, but my reptile brain just loves the idea that Michael and Alex can’t get off with anyone else, and then that frustration builds into a sexy explosion... there’s also some communcation happening with these clowns. But seriously for 5,000 words, A LOT HAPPENS here and I loved every word.

Would you come home by @caitlesshea (1000) How great would have it been if season 2 had ended with Michael and Alex found a baby in a stasis pod instead of Beardy Jones? Like seriously, this short little fic healed so many of my wounds from season 2 that I couldn’t help but include it here. I would take 50,000 more words in this sadly AU take. 

Hoarding you by @foramomentonly (1200) okay, so the rain smell, like 2x04 was low key my favorite episode of RNM ever, especially with Alex throwing that flirty line “It’s smells like rain, that’s what you smell like under the grease and bourbon’ and this author takes that line, and fucking murders me with the idea that Alex can’t move on because of that smell. And Michael is now his, and finds out about it. This is my head canon, okay? No one can talk me out of it.

If you like any of these recs, please leave a comment on the story- a ‘this was awesome’ is enough to propell an author into the stratosphere with happiness, so don’t worry about coming up with a unique, never before shared insight- sometimes a keyboard smash and emogi makes all the difference!

[potatocrab]

father’s daughter

Butch and Rosie; two stubborn kids who don't know how to communicate with each other—sparks are bound to fly. Just two lonely hearted people that were forced to grow up before they were ready.

After an unsettling argument, Butch relies on old vices to get him by. When he returns to the Megaton homestead, he finds that Rosie has been suffering in silence. Now, he's determined to reconcile their differences and help her grieve over a painful past.

x - x

*Set somewhat immediately after Loose Lips with direct references to that work and Whiskey and Rain.* 

Butch DeLoria x Rosie Sheridan (Lone Wanderer)

5895 words | [read on Ao3]

Drinking was a mistake.

Butch only seemed to come to that conclusion too little, too late—always way after the alcohol started weighing his stomach down, and the pleasant burn down his throat turned fowl. He should know better, shouldn’t he? Liquor was evil and the inventor of beer was a cruel mistress. Butch had to remind himself he only called it that because Rosie had taught him about the history of his ‘favorite poison’ as some form of torture while he recovered from a hangover one bright and sunny morning.

Served him right for what he put her through after getting sloshed at Moriarty’s. He couldn’t get a straight answer from her (or Gob, for that matter) on his actions from that evening, but considering who he was, and his track record, there was a probability he either did something or said something stupid. Probably a combination of the two. His only solace was that Rosie didn’t completely ice him out, insisting to drop the subject of his missing memories with the promise he cut back on his vices.

That’s where Butch messed up—again.

Instead of agreeing, he pushed back, digging and prodding for information that she wasn’t willing to provide. Their discussion spiraled into a heated argument before dissolving into bickering, reminiscent of their childhood in the vault. They were two stubborn kids who didn’t know how to communicate with each other—sparks were bound to fly. And so, she ran off to Moira’s to pout in private and he sulked away to the only place he could find comfort—the bar.

He drowned his sorrows, wishing for a different kind of spark between he and Rosie. He’d already been carrying around a flame for her, a fact he was just barely coming to terms with. It wasn’t something worth sharing and ruining a friendship over—not when he couldn’t even manage that. Butch stayed at Moriarty’s all evening—again—until Gob kicked him to the metal wayside.

He tried to continue his wallowing at the Brass Lantern, but all Leo would give him was a can of purified water, insisting he drink it to sober up if he was heading home. The implication nearly sent Butch to the Megaton common house instead—he didn’t deserve to call Rosie’s place that, not when he was still acting like an idiot who hadn’t learned anything since leaving Vault 101 behind. It was that idiocy—mixed with some drunken bravery—that made Butch decide he couldn’t hide away forever. After chugging down another can of water and using the restaurant’s facilities (nearly puking at the pungent, chemical smell of Abraxo), he headed up the rafters and right to Rosie’s front door.

The lights were off, which meant she was either asleep, or had crashed at Moira’s. Butch wasn’t sure which was worse. He either had to be sneaky, or deal with the repercussions of making her feel so uncomfortable that she didn’t feel welcome in her own home. He pushed open the unlocked door as quietly as he could manage, opting for stealth as he slid inside. The house was quiet—but all Butch could focus on was the dull throb at the base of his skull, hoping the sound of his footsteps against the staircase weren’t as loud as he imagined.

At least he managed to keep his balance all the way to the second-floor landing, releasing a deep breath he didn’t notice he’d been holding. All he wanted was to fall face-first into his bed and sleep the terrible day away. Just as Butch leaned against the doorway to his room to call it a night, he noticed the faint glow of a Pip-Boy light coming from Rosie’s bedroom. So she was home. The question now was, what was she doing? Maybe it would be better if he left her alone, but Butch was tipsy, and curious—especially when he heard the click of a holodisk through the slightly ajar door.

“I don’t want you to follow me.”

Hey! Butch perked up when he heard her old man’s voice. What was she doing listening to tapes from her dad, and why was she doing it in the dark?

“God knows life in the Vault isn’t perfect, but at least you’ll be safe. Just knowing that will be enough to keep me going.”

Butch frowned, finally registering that he was listening to Doc Sheridan’s last recording before he abandoned Vault 101—before he abandoned Rosie. At first he felt angry. Butch had to deal with the fallout of the doctor’s choices and had seen the pain caused to those he left behind—even if Rosie never talked about her father, or his death.

“Goodbye, Rosemary. Darling.” Shit—was she crying? He could definitely hear her sniffling. “I love you.”

That’s when Butch realized he was intruding—this was not meant for his ears. He took a step back, trying to slip into his room undetected. His boot knocked the door with a bang while the metal floorboards creaked beneath his clumsy movements. There was no recovering from that. He winced, clenching his teeth as he heard Rosie’s alarmed gasp, stuck to the spot just listening to the faint shuffling on the other side of the door.

“Butch?” she hushed, the light shining in the direction of the hallway. “I—is that you?”

Damnit. He sighed, slumping forward. The jig was up, and now his mind was racing with all the possibilities of how he could manage to sweet-talk his way out of the situation. Make it not look at bad as it seemed—like he wasn’t eavesdropping, or that he hadn’t just spent the last several hours knocking back stale beer and whiskey.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh.”

Well that wasn’t very reassuring. Butch couldn’t tell if she sounded disappointed, or surprised. Or just sad. He swallowed the lump in his throat, deciding to inch closer to the doorway, pushing one hand through the gap and wiggling his fingers in a wave.

“See?” he called, waiting a few beats before poking his head inside.

Rosie was sitting on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest, one thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders to combat the winter chill. In front of her was a spread of holodisks and other belongings—hard to tell when the only light was coming from her discarded Pip-Boy on the nightstand. But it was fairly obvious that she had been subjecting herself to some kind of melancholy trip down memory lane, something that Butch felt he was too inadequate and too inebriated to deal with. Still, he wasn’t about to just…leave her alone.

“Want some company?”

He was sure she was going to tell him to get lost, but she nodded, moving the tapes to the side so they were almost out of view. “Okay.”

Even with her whispered approval, he hesitated in the doorway, hating that he wasn’t as sober as he wanted to be, and probably smelled like a Brahmin’s backside. Or worse. Eventually, he made it to her bedside, rubbing the back of his neck as a nervous flutter of warmth radiated through his chest. She generally didn’t let him into the privacy sanctuary of her room and now he was inches away from where she slept. He’d feel more excited about the situation if his mind wasn’t so cloudy.

Rosie stared up at him with a disappointed frown. “You’ve been drinking.”

Butch gulped, trying to ignore the lingering taste of alcohol on the back of his tongue. Maybe it would’ve been better if he stopped for a smoke on the rafters before sneaking back there, or maybe that would’ve just added more fuel to the fire—he was supposed to cut back on that too. He slowly blinked, realizing the silence had stretched on too long for him to lie.

“N—yeah,” he said with a defeated sigh.

More awkward silence. He eyed the space she’d cleared. Was it meant for him? No time to be presumptuous—that’s usually when he made a total ass of himself. Rosie followed his line of sight and nodded, saying nothing else. Butch took the hint to sit down on the edge of the mattress, leaving enough space between them so she wouldn’t feel crowded. Even so, she shifted her legs away, adjusting the blanket so it was tight around her shoulders, almost like she was guarding herself from him. It was hard not to take it personally, but if Rosie didn’t want him there, she would say so. Right?

Ugh. He was too drunk to deal with this level of confusion and self-doubt. What he needed was an appropriate conversation topic that wouldn’t make her more upset. Butch nervously drummed his fingers against his knees as he glanced around her darkened room, before suddenly noticing there was something missing.

“Hey, where’s Dogmeat?” he asked. He thought about how there was no robotic voice to greet him when he returned to the house. “Or Worthy?”

“Moira offered to run Wadsworth’s maintenance routine so she could study his specifications,” she explained with a small shrug. “I left Dogmeat at the shop too, so it would be quiet. So I could be alone,” she avoided his stare. “I didn’t think you’d be coming back tonight.”

“Where else was I supposed to go?” Butch felt a little offended, frowning at her. “Common house was full—” A lie, but she didn’t need to know that, not when he was after sympathy points. “Don’t exactly have the caps to crash at the Saloon, ya’ know.”

Rosie regarded him with an annoyed expression, and he bit his tongue, already regretting what he’d said. “Plenty of caps to spend on the booze, though.”

“I’m sure you’re friendly enough with the girls there, maybe you wouldn’t need to—” she stopped herself short, pursing her lips as her face flushed pink with color. She turned away again.

Butch’s head was clear enough to catch her insinuation, and he didn’t care for it. He could deal with being called a drunk, but he wasn’t some manwhore, sleeping around with any available gal in the Wasteland. Those days were long behind him, especially now that he was with Rosie. Not with Rosie—not in that way.

What was with her, anyways? She’d been acting strangely lately; more flighty than usual, and more emotionally and physically guarded. A weird and worrisome setback after the trust-building they’d done in with their friendship. Rosie had been her usual, anxious self when they were hunkered down in that rainstorm a few weeks ago, albeit with a few mixed signals that had him thinking she wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss her. He decided to blame it on the whiskey and her head-cold instead.

But then he woke up one morning, face-down in his pillow with a pounding headache and Rosie’s cold shoulder. She still nursed him through his hangover, showing a reserved kindness with her bedside manner as he suffered through a stomach bug the following few days. No more of Moriarty’s moonshine, she ‘prescribed’, written down on a piece of paper that was taped to his Pip-Boy. A whole week passed of them tip-toing around each other, Butch struggling to comprehend what he’d done wrong. When he asked, Rosie skirted the issue, but he just couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. He stirred the pot until it blew up in his face.  

And now? Now they were here, back at what felt like square one.

Butch groaned, smacking his hand to his face as he tugged his fingers through the front of his hair. They really needed to stop running around in circles like idiots. No more falling back into old habits and old traits like they were still stuck underground and under the thumb of the Overseer. Didn’t they agree to a fresh start? Maybe that’s where the problem was. Nineteen years of rivalry didn’t just disappear with a simple apology and a handshake. The two never really talked about their past lives in Vault 101, like drudging up the past would make things between them more complicated than it needed to be. Seeing Rosie now, curled up on her bed, still teary-eyed from crying over the phantom voice of her dead dad made Butch realize that leaving the past behind and building walls never did any good.

He’d felt guilty before, but the knot in the pit of his stomach was a completely different level of regret. Now that they had a relationship—a friendship—he was desperate to keep it that way. Even if it meant pushing down the other, more intense feelings that had blossomed in his heart. It didn’t matter if he thought that maybe, just maybe, Rosie might feel the same way—he’d do anything to mend their broken bonds.

Rosie suddenly moved, leaning forward as she spoke. “I—I’m sorry, I—”

“Hey, no—” he interrupted, shaking his head. Butch turned towards her, scooting so he was sitting on the bed more comfortably. “You don’t need to apologize, Rosie. I do. I’m sorry. Acting like an ass, doin’ things I said I wouldn’t, and pickin’ fights with the only friend I got left in the Wasteland.”

He hesitated on that last part, heart aching within his chest. “We’re still friends, right?”

She nodded, the tiniest of smiles pulling at her lips. “Yes, Butch.”

“Phew,” he sighed, trying to inject some humor into the tense moment. He hated when things got too serious, even when it was necessary. “I really mean it. I don’t wanna keep fuckin’ up like this, backsliding into the jerk you hated growing up.”

He clenched his fingers into a fist before very carefully reaching over to tap her knee. She glanced at where his hand rested but didn’t flinch away.

“You’re all I got, ya’ know?” the words sounded familiar as he spoke them, but he wasn’t sure why.

Rosie’s eyes widened a little, and then, her smile increased—just barely. “Yes. Of course. Who else would take care of a sad sack like you?”

Butch pursed his lips, confused as to why that sounded familiar too. She rested her hand over his for a moment, giving it a light squeeze before flipping it over and sliding her fingers up his wrist to the latch of his Pip-Boy. He watched her movements, finding a strange sort of intimacy to her removing the device and glove for him, as if he wasn’t perfectly capable of doing so himself.

“My apology stands,” she sighed, resting the Pip-Boy on the nightstand next to hers. The light wavered, drowning them both in an eerie, muted glow. “I—I’ve been harsh on you, making demands when I should’ve been more patient.”

“I deserve it,” he replied. He wanted to put his hand back on her knee, wanted any excuse to touch her again, but held back, plucking at a loose strand on his jeans. “Hey, so uh…the other night…”

He trailed, anxious about bringing up the topic that had set off this chain of events in the first place. Rosie blinked at him and said nothing.

“I just—” he tugged at his shirt collar, wondering why he felt so hot. Was that a normal sign of intoxication? “Ya’ got me worried that I did somethin’ really stupid, like…” he trailed off, flicking his gaze away from her face, focusing instead on the way her fingers were twisting around the hem of her blanket. “I didn’t try to hurt you, or—”

“What?” Rosie said, alarmed. She shook her head in earnest. “No! Nothing like…that.”

As intense as she sounded, her words did little to reassure him. Butch continued to pout, wondering if she’d lie to him to spare his feelings. Then again, Rosie wasn’t exactly the best at fibbing, and had the worst poker face. She seemed to notice his skepticism.

“You…asked me to stay with you, so I did,” she reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind her ear and kept her hand there to rest against the side of her neck. It was distracting, almost as much as her soft laugh. “You thought that me helping to take off your jacket meant the evening was leading into something more, but I assure you, even when inebriated, the Butch-man is all talk and no action.”

He was momentarily stunned by her joke, before putting the puzzle pieces together. In a drunken state he’d propositioned her and now, instead of being mad at him, she was teasing him. He flashed her an overexaggerated pout, one that had her hiding her grin behind her hand. Butch leaned sideways across her bed, digging his elbow into the mattress as he propped up his head.

“If ya’ wanted some action, girlie, all you had to do was ask,” he beamed at her, adding a wink when he noted the tint to her cheeks. Too easy. But he wasn’t there to get carried away with flirtatious innuendo—not now. “Ya’ sure I didn’t do, or say anything else that night?”

There had to be more to the story, he just knew it. She wouldn’t have reacted the way she did otherwise. Rosie hesitated, all the humor draining from her face. “You didn’t.”

Before Butch could say anything else, she continued. “Why have you been spending so much time drinking at the bars anyways?”

The pointed question caught him off guard, and he struggled to think of a good enough answer. One that didn’t make him feel vulnerable, at least. As withdrawn as Rosie was about her feelings, Butch was way worse—just so happened that his coping mechanisms were far unhealthier, and probably genetic. From where he was positioned, it was easier to see the collection of holodisks and loose papers, remembering that he’d intruded on a very private moment. He owed her some honesty, for once.

“Homesick, mostly. I think. Maybe,” he cleared his throat, unsure. He traced his fingers against the fabric of her sheets, focusing on the way her left hand rested on the bed in front of her—he still wanted to hold it. “Not for the vault, but…ugh. It’s hard to explain. I’m just—”

He chewed on his bottom lip, in disbelief he was about to say it out loud. But it didn’t seem so strange admitting it to Rosie. “Sad.”

When he finally looked back to her face, he found her blue eyes shining with a kind of sympathy he didn’t expect to find. “I know the feeling.”

Silence blanketed them, but it isn’t as uncomfortable as it was before. There was a quiet understanding as they regarded each other—just two lonely hearted people that were forced to grow up before they were ready. At least they had each other. Butch only wished that fact didn’t make his chest constrict with a kind of yearning that could never be fulfilled.

In an effort to distract himself, he glanced back down at the tapes she had haphazardly shoved beneath the spare pillow. The question danced on the tip of his tongue, and if he had been sober, he probably would’ve remained silent.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Rosie wrung her hands together, obviously anxious at his question. “How much did you hear?”

“Noth—” he decided it was best not to lie, especially when she frowned at him. His whole body felt warm again. “Your pops. Calling you Rosemary.”

She flinched, startled, eyes going wide behind her thick framed glasses. Butch knew it was her full name, but nobody except her old man, the Overseer and Mr. Brotch called her by it. He’d certainly never used it, well, until now. No wonder she seemed surprised—did it sound as foreign as it tasted? She’d given him strange looks when he started using Rosie more often than Stitches, but this was something a little different. A lot different. Like he’d spoken something sacred and forbidden, yet she didn’t look like she wanted to smite him.

“I—” she took a shaky breath, steadying herself. “You know what happened to my dad?”

He nodded solemnly, remaining silent and unmoving. Butch kept his eyes glued to her face, thinking about how he learned about it all secondhand. When she found him in the Muddy Rudder in October, she briefly mentioned her father had died. It wasn’t until he traveled with her to the Citadel that the rest of the blanks were filled in, and he learned about Project Purity and the Enclave, and how Doctor James Sheridan had sacrificed his life to keep the technology out of group’s hands. Rosie had witnessed it all, and barely escaped with the surviving scientists into Brotherhood safety. But she never spoke about it, so neither did he. If Butch knew how much suffering she’d been doing in silence, he might’ve said something sooner.

“I’m still trying to get over it all,” she whispered.

His heart ached for her and the amount of grief she must’ve been fighting through. The regret returned to churn at his stomach, fighting with the ever-present butterflies. Some friend he was. He wanted her to know he could be a compassionate and thoughtful guy—he could show off his romantic side later, God willing. Tonight, Butch DeLoria wore his heart on his sleeve.

He slid his hand across the space between them, and lightly grasped her fingers, brushing his thumb across the back of her knuckles. “Maybe you don’t have to.”

Rosie stared at their clasped hands for a moment, regarding his words. He reluctantly let her go when she pulled away, suddenly turning towards the nightstand. She grabbed his Pip-Boy, placing it between them, leaving hers behind so it could continue to serve as a makeshift lamp. Then, she reached to rifle through the holodisks on the bedspread, the blanket around her shifting. Butch ignored the way her loose shirt flashed the bare skin of her shoulder—now was not the time to get excited over a little bit of flesh.

“I only got to work with my father for a brief time at the Jefferson Memorial,” she started to explain, lifting up a tape that was labeled Project Purity Personal Journal. “I collected all of his journals and recordings but didn’t get a chance to listen to them until…after.”

She hesitated on placing the holodisk into the Pip-Boy’s player. “Like father, like daughter. He was very meticulous in his recordings. Some of these journals date back to before my birth. Before…my mom died and…my dad fled to the vault.”

Talking about her old man was one thing, but Butch wasn’t about to broach the topic of her mother. Hell no. You want to talk about something forbidden, that was it. Rosie didn’t dwell on what she said, toying with the playback controls.

“I thought if I read his notes, listened to him explain…” her voice broke as fresh tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “I would get the closure I’ve been chasing. But—”

She pressed play, and Butch involuntarily winced at the sound of Doctor James Sheridan’s voice. In Vault 101, he wasn’t somebody that necessarily ever had a kind word to say to him, not that Butch was deserving of such respect. He was Rosie’s childhood bully, a general menace, and was always messing up his clinic with blood and excuses. It was strange to hear him in such a disjointed manner, musing about Project Purity. He sounded tired. Guilty.

“It’s been close to twenty years since my last entry. Since I left all of this behind to make a life for my daughter, Rosemary. We spent all that time in Vault 101, tucked away from the rest of the world. It wasn’t perfect, but it was safe, and that’s all I could have hoped for.”

He glowered at the squiggly lines that appeared on the screen of his Pip-Boy. If the good doctor thought Vault 101 was safe, he was living in a world of delusion. Probably why he finally broke out, come to think of it.

“Now, my daughter is a grown woman. Beautiful, intelligent, confident. Just like her mother.”

Rosie was covering her face with one hand now, but it was obvious that she’d begun to cry in earnest, teeth clamped down hard across her bottom lip so she’d remain as silent as possible.

“And as hard as it was to admit it, she doesn't need her daddy anymore.”

The recording ended.

Rosie was unable to hold back the quiet sounds of her sobbing and snapped both hands to her face in and effort to hide her tears. She pushed away her glasses, rubbing at her eyes and cheeks as she turned away. It wasn’t like Butch hadn’t seen her cry before, but this was raw, unfiltered emotion. More than ever he felt like an interloper, like he was seeing something not meant for his eyes.

“I can’t help but feel like…” Rosie hiccupped away another sob, frantically wiping at her face. “Like he blamed me. The reason why Project Purity didn’t continue, why it failed. The reason why my mom died—it was all because of me.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “All those years growing up in the vault. It wasn’t like he was…abusive, just…distant. And now I know why.”

Butch decided it was time to move, time to say something—time to lend some kind of comfort. Even if she ultimately rejected it, he had to try. He pushed himself to sit, scooting his Pip-Boy to the side so his legs could occupy the space instead. In retrospect, he was a lot closer than he intended to be, but there was no backing away now, no second-guessing his decisions. Heart. On. Sleeve.

“Hey, hey,” he tentatively reached out to her shoulders, rolling them under his grasp. “Don’t—”

He wasn’t about to tell her not to cry, but what she was suggesting didn’t sit right with him. Butch titled her chin up with a fleeting touch. Rosie inhaled sharply, and her hands fell to his forearms, but she didn’t push him away. She still couldn’t look at him, staring down at what little space remained between their bodies.  

“No way your old man thought that way about you,” he said, tilting his head in an attempt to catch her eyes. “I mean—he wouldn’t say all those things about ya’ if he didn’t think it was true, right? Never thought you’d hear them, so why lie?”

Rosie’s breath was still shaky, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. He quickly swept them away with the pad of his thumb and gingerly cupped the side of her face, fingers tangling in her hair.

“Beautiful, intelligent, confident,” he repeated the words from the holotape, hoping that if she couldn’t believe dear ol’ dad, then she’d at least believe him. “Sounds like the Rosie I know.”

Finally, she looked at him and the breath was stolen right out from his lungs. Her eyes were still glossy, but she’d stopped crying, the blue of her irises shimmering so intensely it was like he was being hypnotized. A blush had settled across her cheeks and nose, creeping up from her pale neck. Butch flicked his gaze to her slightly parted lips, realizing that by titling his chin down, he could kiss her.

A split second of clarity snapped his mind into focus and like a punch to the gut he realized how much of a dumbass move that would be. Kiss her? That was the kind of debauchery that got him into trouble with Rosie in the first place. He thought so, at least. Plus, he couldn’t kiss her when she was vulnerable, and while he was still so full of booze he might as well puke in her trash bin. No way did he want their first kiss to be one he regretted.

Rosie’s fingers dug into his jacket and regardless of what the silent signal meant, he pulled away, giving her space. He couldn’t look at her face for a long while, not wanting to see the possible disappointment in her expression. When he finally dared to glance up, he found her staring at his boots, dirty from whatever he’d walked across while in town that evening. And now they were resting across her bedsheets.

Butch let out a nervous chuckle as he swiftly untied the laces and pushed them off his feet. Rosie offered a lopsided smile at the gesture, though he had to wonder if she actually wanted him to leave instead. He wiggled his toes in his socks, reminding himself that if she wanted him gone, she’d say so. When the silence stretched on for too long, he awkwardly gestured to a holotape that was labeled differently than the others.

“What’s that one?”

Rosie’s smile was much more genuine as she read the label. “Better Days.”

“What’s on it?” Butch asked cautiously. “Doesn’t sound so science-y.”

“It’s—it’s one of my mother’s recordings,” she explained, in a quiet voice.

Butch’s curiosity was spiked. “Whoa, really?”

She seemed to be considering something before grabbing for his Pip-Boy again, swapping out one holodisk for another. This time, he wasn’t sure what to expect, leaning closer to the device in anticipation.

“...that batch of tests was inconclusive, but Madison and I are convinced it's a problem with the secondary filtration system. We're going to re-calibrate the equipment and try again tomorrow, so that—”

Rosie paused the playback, and Butch couldn’t help but grin at the voice he’d heard. He met her gaze, and softly laughed, which only perplexed her. “Your ma sounds just like you,” he said, catching her little, flustered expression. “I mean, you sound like her. Smart. Got those brains from somewhere, huh?”

“I—” she bit down on her bottom lip, holding back a beaming smile. Butch wished she wouldn’t. “I suppose so.”

“Is there more?” he felt selfish for asking. This was her mom, and she’d been willing to share such a private memory with him. He didn’t have to be so greedy.

Rosie fiddled with the Pip-Boy controls, the tint to her cheeks returning. “It’s…embarrassing.”

“Whadd’ya mean?”

She was suddenly interested in a spot on the metal ceiling. “My mom was uhm…interrupted,” she said. “By…my dad.”

Oh. Butch bit back a lewd expression, considering these were Rosie’s parents. Her deceased parents. She noticed his reaction and leaned forward to give his shoulder a playful shove. Well, that was a good sign, if any, that they were back on good terms. Or headed that way.

“Get your mind out of the gutter!” she reprimanded, even if there was a trace of amusement in her tone. “It isn’t like they recorded a—a sex tape, or something.”

Butch’s brain short-wired on Rosie uttering the words sex tape, and it took him a couple seconds to catch up to reality. He pointed at the glowing screen. “How do I know? You’re the one who won’t play it.”

She huffed, but eventually continued the playback, lifting both hands to press against her face as her mother’s voice echoed around them. Whatever Butch was expecting, it wasn’t the playful teasing of a woman scientist, distracted by her amorous husband. Much different than those racy holofilms the Snakes and him used to sneak a peek at in the restricted area. This was romance—this was love.

“We'll move on to diagnosing the issues with the radiation dampeners. That should... Ow! James! Now? We really shouldn't...”

The tiny chortle is what really set him off. Why’d it sound so familiar, like he’d heard it before, replying in his dreams? Butch quickly realized, as he looked back up to meet Rosie’s eyes that he’d heard her giggle in the same way—a rare and wonderful thing, but he’d heard it enough times to catch the similarities now. He wanted to hear it again. Not in a faded memory, but straight from her lips—and he wanted to be the cause.

“Sounds like…they were happy,” he finally said.

Rosie slowly nodded. “Yeah.”

She moved the Pip-Boy back to the nightstand, and he took the hint that there would be no more listening sessions that evening. He had no idea what time it was, but it had to be late, and no doubt that she’d exhausted herself crying—both before and after his arrival. It was time for him to leave.

“Butch?”

This time, Rosie was the one to close the distance, scooting closer to his body before wrapping her arms around his neck in a loose hug. She rested her chin against his shoulder and sighed, the sensation causing a shiver to run down the length of his spine.

“Thank you,” she whispered. It was all she said.

Butch caught up to the moment, looping his arms around her waist, daring to squeeze her closer. “Yeah.”

After a few minutes, she nuzzled her cheek into the leather of his jacket. “You smell like gin. And cigarette ash. If it weren’t for the pomade and cologne, I’d probably kick you out.”

Butch snickered, but his brain was too hazy to come up with a proper comeback. Either from a sudden onset of drowsiness or the lingering effects of his intoxication, he wasn’t sure. “Yeah, well you…”

He rested his head against hers, pressing his nose through her dark hair. She smelt pretty, fresh and warm from a recent shower. The words fell from his lips before he could stop them. “You smell nice.”

Rosie very softly laughed, a quiet little giggle that ghosted across the shell of his ear and warmed his body and soul. She went quiet after that, going still in his arms. He didn’t dare to move, even after several minutes turned into almost a half-hour. His eyes went droopy, and he started to tilt sideways as it became harder to combat sleep.

“Hey, Rosie,” he hushed, trying to rouse her. “Time for bed. Think you’d rather sleep horizontally, yeah?”

She hummed, arms tightening around his shoulders. “Okay.”

When he tried to pull away again, she protested. “Don’t leave.”

Butch froze in place—surely she was sleep-talking. Did she know what she was talking about? Just a few weeks ago she was abhorrently against the idea of sharing a bed and now…?

Rosie spoke one last time, in a barely-there whisper. “Please.”

There was no denying her now, not that he necessarily wanted to leave. Butch only wished the circumstances were a little bit better. Clearer. Less muddled and thick with heavy emotion. If he wasn’t so tired, he might’ve had a crying session himself, but that could wait for another evening.

Instead, he shifted their bodies backwards across the bed, uncaring that they were laying across the mattress diagonally, and that his feet were hanging off the bed. If he moved her again, he’d surely wake her and risk ruining the entire moment. He grabbed the blanket and pulled it across their torsos, shielding them from the cool air of her room. Rosie snuggled close, arms curled tight against his chest—she was blissfully asleep. Butch tucked his arm around her waist, allowing himself one fleeting kiss to her temple as he succumbed to the darkness of sleep.

“Goodnight,” he whispered. “Rosemary.”

[more-pokeimagines]

Can you write a Hop x reader where the reader has been champion for a couple of years and Hop is Soina's assistant and everyone keeps asking when they are going to ask the other out?

I’m terribly sorry for the long wait, sweetheart! I hope you’re still interested in this. Have fun reading and stay safe during this crazy time.

Friends or Lovers – Hop x champion!reader

“So, (Y/N),” Gloria chirped and watched you from the corner of her eye as you typed a message on your phone. “When are you finally going to ask Hop out?”

You didn’t even bother looking up from the screen. “We’re just friends,” you said. You had already told her many, many times before but somehow, no one seemed to understand that two people could just be really good friends without falling in love with each other.

“Friends,” Gloria repeated. It was crystal clear that she didn’t believe you. “You hang out every day and Hop’s constantly raving about you. Don’t tell me you’re just friends because it’s obviously a bit more than that.”

You held back a sigh. She wasn’t the only one who tried to convince you to ask Hop out (Sonia, your mother and even Leon had told you to do so too) but she was definitely the most persistent about it. Somehow, Gloria didn’t understand that you didn’t want to ruin your friendship with Hop by taking your relationship to the next level. It didn’t matter that you sometimes wondered how it would feel like to kiss him because you didn’t plan on finding it out. The risk that he was going to reject you was way too high to your mind – and besides, your friendship was the best thing that happened during your Gym Challenge, so you really didn’t want to risk losing him.

“I like him,” you finally said and grimaced at Gloria. “But I won’t ask him out. That’s just not what our relationship is about…. We’re-”

“Friends, I know,” Gloria finished your sentence. Then, she sighed and added: “That’s a shame, really, (Y/N). The two of you would make an awesome couple.”

You knew that she could be right about that but still, you felt like everybody was trying to interfere with your love life, even though it really was none of their business. And you already grew tired of the constant questions when you were going to ask Hop out. Why didn’t they understand that this was never going to happen? It didn’t matter that you spend most of the time daydreaming about Hop, especially since he never acted like you were more than a friend to him.

Gloria smiled as if she could read your thoughts. “You know, if you wanted to know how he really feels about you, you could’ve just asked me. I’ve known Hop since we were kids and he usually doesn’t keep anything from me. So… I guess I could ask him?”

For a second, you could only stare at her. It wasn’t the first time that Gloria tried to set Hop and you up but it definitely was something new that she took his feelings into consideration. You had always thought that this was only a game to her, something to entertain her when she got bored but somehow, you slowly began to realize that she really thought that you and Hop could be more than just friends.

“Don’t,” you finally said and shook your head. You didn’t want Hop to think that you encouraged Gloria to play matchmaker once again which was definitely one of her favorite activities, especially when it came to her friends. “I… I think I need to figure that out on my own. But thank you.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m always here to help!”

*

At the same time, Hop was sitting in his small office at Sonia’s lab. He usually worked from home because he needed more space to spread out his research papers but today, Sonia asked him to stay at the lab with her because she needed some help with digitalizing their newest findings about Galar’s legendary pokemon. It was a boring and slightly tedious work and while Hop would usually complain about it, it somehow didn’t bother him that much now. Maybe it was because Sonia was busy in the other room which meant that she didn’t get any opportunity to bug him about his relationship with you. He knew that she only meant well but still, it was slightly annoying that she always teased him about being in love with you. She constantly told him to ask you out before someone else did it – and he would tell her that the two of you were just friends every time.

Hop had no idea if it was true though. Over the past few weeks he had noticed that he thought about you way too often; he even messed up at work once because he couldn’t get you out of his minds. Much to his relief, Sonia hadn’t been angry in any way. Instead, she calmly asked him why he never invited you to go out with him.

He still remembered this conversation pretty well because he had been embarrassed the whole time but later he caught himself thinking about Sonia’s suggestion. Heck, he even thought about it now.

With a sigh, he raked his fingers through his hair and stared down at the papers in front of him as if they could tell him what to do. You were important to him and yet he had no idea if he liked you in a romantic kind of way. You had been friends for years now and while he knew that sometimes best friends fell in love with each other as the time went by, he just couldn’t imagine that something like this could happen to him.

Hop flinched when the door behind him flew open. “Lunch break, sweetie!” Sonia exclaimed as she gestured towards two large bowls of Curry that were set up on the table in the common area of the lab. “I went out to get you something too because I’m the best boss in the world.”

Hop nodded and followed her to the table. They spend a few moments in silence, quietly enjoying their lunch while Sonia’s Yamper romped about in the background. Then, they discussed their research and the latest findings before Sonia settled back and smiled at Hop. “You know, it’s great to work with you. You’re a really good assistant.”

“Thank you.”

“And a really good friend, too. I bet (Y/N) thinks the same way.”

Uh-oh. Hop augured ill. Whenever Sonia started a conversation like this, she was going to pester him with questions about his relationship with you sooner or later, and he didn’t know if he was willing to talk about that again. “Yeah,” he replied. “And our friendship is great the way it is.”

“I still think you should ask (Y/N) out. When are you going to do it?”

And there it was. The question Sonia, Gloria and a whole lot of other people had asked him for months now. It almost seemed like no one wanted to understand that the two of you had never thought about dating each other. You were friends. It didn’t matter that Hop sometimes wished that you could be more than that, especially since you were way too important to him. He didn’t want to risk losing you.

“Come on, don’t freak out,” Sonia said and nudged him with her elbow. “I’m just saying that you would make a cute couple. Of course you don’t have to date each other if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not about that,” Hop replied slowly. “I… I just don’t know if I want to spoil our friendship. What if we go on a date and it’s totally awkward because we’ve been friends for so long?”

Sonia raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure your friendship is strong enough to take something like this. It might be a bit strange at first but you’ll be able to laugh about it in no time.”

Still insecure, Hop avoided her gaze and stared down at his bowl instead. He wasn’t sure what he wanted or what he should do next but he knew that the constant questions about his (and your) love life needed to stop. It was time to take the matters into his own hands.

When he returned to his desk after lunch, he reached out for his phone and quickly typed a message.

*

A loud beep beep from your phone jolted you out of your daydreams. You had tried to read a book after your meetup with Gloria but somehow, the love interest had reminded you so much of Hop that you suddenly found it hard to focus on the story.

You angled for your phone which you had placed on the small coffee table in front of your couch. As you tapped on the screen to unlock it, you could already see Hop’s name. His messages was short but it was enough to make your heart flutter.

“Do you want to go out with me?”

[autumnslance]

((Free Day for FFXIV Write 2020, a WIP I’ve dithered on for awhile. Early Stormblood; follows the "Foibles" prompt’s events. Below the cut for those who prefer Tumblr to Ao3.))

Rhalgr’s Reach slowly recovered from the assault as the days passed. The bodies had been buried and all rites given, the living granted their too-brief time to mourn. Now came clearing the rubble, repairing what could be repaired, and somehow finding replacements for what could not.

Recruitment and morale were low, but Conrad and M’naago hoped to make steady progress while working with the Alliance forces, as even the token victories managed before the assault had aided their cause considerably. The Imperials, for their part, seemed content to allow the Eorzeans to have the East End and much of the lower Fringes, secure as the enemy was in Castrum Velodyna.

Krile, Arenvald, and a few other junior Scions continued to lend their aid to the efforts, even as they prepared to escort the worst injured back across the border to Gridania once they were well enough to travel. Y’shtola would continue on to Mor Dhona to recover in the comfort of the Rising Stones and take her turn as the senior Scion in the Toll; Thancred was now in the Reach, since she was injured and their comrades headed to the Far East.

Thancred’s mopey thoughtfulness since arriving in Gyr Abania had not been lost on Y’shtola, and she resolved to draw the cause out of him before she left. It would not do to have their senior representative in a surly mood at this critical juncture. The next opportunity presented itself not two days before she was scheduled to leave.

“What exactly is the problem now?” Y’shtola asked as Thancred entered her little sectioned-off “room” in the Barber to deliver her tea, then dropped onto the floor between the bed and the chair she currently inhabited, as he sighed heavily.

“So grouchy. Do you also require your medication?”

“No. And I am not ‘grouchy’. You obviously wish to discuss something.”

“It is not that I mind aiding the war efforts here in Gyr Abania,” he said with no further preamble. “I am simply missing people, with so many now off to the Far East. Having you ready to return to Mor Dhona seems to have sharpened that feeling somehow.”

“I am terribly sorry my recovery is inconvenient to your mood,” she said as she sipped her tea. He had remembered exactly the right amount of honey and cream.

“That is not what I meant and you know it,” Thancred said, settling onto his back, hands behind his head as he looked up at the ceiling.

“I am merely waiting for you to arrive at the point.”

“Remember when we were all still back in the Waking Sands, and I was rather foolishly pining after certain colleagues?”

“No,” she said, as acerbic as possible. He glanced up and caught her smile. “It only happened often enough to make keeping track difficult,” Y’shtola teased. Then she grew serious. “Except perhaps in one instance, where so far as I can tell, you never truly stopped pining.”

He winced and looked back at the ceiling. “You don’t miss much. Though I like to think I was managing my boyish infatuation and simply enjoying having so good a friend as Aeryn has turned out to be. I honestly expected nothing more, and I know there was...another interest.”

Y’shtola nodded. She had not known Lord Haurchefant well, but what she recalled was entirely favorable. She had returned from the Lifestream after the man’s sacrifice, but had heard much from Alphinaud and Tataru.

“I thought,” Thancred continued. “On my return from the wilderness, that much had changed for both of us. We practically had to learn how to be friends all over again. We sorted it out, however, and talked--about Minfilia, Lord Haurchefant, and others.”

“And you find your ‘boyish infatuation’ renewed?”

“No,” he said flatly. Her ear flicked at the seriousness of his tone. “I know those; they are often fleeting things, much as I enjoy that time and company. Or, did; I’ve not experienced such since...well, since before our Lifestream mishap, actually. Oh, I have spent a night or two sating physical desire with willing company, but it is...less satisfying, after everything.”

“Don’t tell me you have become celibate.”

He laughed. “Perish the thought! But it’s not as much of a priority anymore. For one, events do not always afford the time. But mostly because...There is only one person I am truly interested in, but she is--so far as I know--not interested in me.”

“You just said your infatuation had not returned.”

“It has not,” he replied. “I have been examining the situation, and have come to a new conclusion.”

“Oh?”

“I believe I am...perhaps...falling for her,” Thancred said quietly, reluctantly.

Hearing him say what she had long suspected was somehow still surprising. It was not that he had never fallen in love before--Y’shtola had been present for those few affairs, as both critic and support--but it was exceedingly rare that he allowed himself such a luxury; she had seen him too often sabotage his own relationships, usually due to his own deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy hidden behind his charming smiles and sarcastic wit. The man had only recently developed the capacity--or perhaps more accurately, the willing vulnerability--for the deeper levels of communication required to maintain longer term relationships with an intimate partner. Perhaps that contributed to this realization; Y’shtola knew he and Aeryn had been speaking more.

She also knew a few things Aeryn had confided to her, when seeking a viewpoint with more maturity and experience than Lyse or Tataru could offer.

This was going to be tricky; neither of these dear, swiving idiots would say anything to the other if not nudged--or outright shoved--in the proper direction. Luckily for them, they had both chosen her as a confidante.

“Have you asked her if she is interested?” Y’shtola asked.

He frowned, his uncovered eye turning to her. “I know she does not care for intimate relations--”

“And yet, she has had some form of intimate relationships,” Y’shtola pointed out. “That she does not look at others and feel such attraction does not preclude a want for intimacy--including physical, in some cases. In any event, it does not mean one wants to be without close companionship.” She paused to take another sip from her cup while he thought. “If she is willing for something other than friendship, then she can set boundaries and communicate what she is able to give. ‘Tis a matter of respect and patience, which I know you fully capable of.” She leaned over, careful of her slowly healing injuries. “And I will not hear excuses that you are not ‘good enough’ for the Warrior of Light, Thancred.”

“Gods, I must be in a state, if you are being kind,” he smiled up at her fondly.

She smiled back and reached down her free hand; he took it and gave her a gentle squeeze. “I’m a bit surprised, however, that you have no words of warning about entertaining such notions with a colleague,” he said.

Now he was looking for a reasonable out; she wasn’t about to give it to him. “I trust that to be something you have already considered yourself, and part of the reluctance to admit to these feelings,” Y'shtola answered as she let go of his hand and sat back again. “Denying your heart will do no favors for your working relationship, either; it must be confronted and discussed like reasonable adults.”

Not that her friends were reasonable, but they could at least pretend for a time she mused as she sipped more tea.

“‘Tis a moot point at the moment, you know,” he said. “She is in the East. It shall be moons before they’re all back.”

“Then we shall have to keep you from stewing over the matter too much in the meantime,” Y’shtola replied lightly. “And if your feelings have not changed by the time our colleagues do return to us, then you shall have even less excuse to not speak with the woman.”

“Logical as ever. Thank you, Shtola.”

“You’re welcome, Thancred. Now, will you get off my floor?” She set aside her empty tea cup.

“But it’s cool and actually fairly comfortable. I think I wore myself out running Arenvald through his paces earlier. The boy’s come a long way and has far too much enthusiasm for sparring practice.”

“Thancred, please; I wish to nap.”

“I’m not stopping you,” he replied cheekily, hands behind his head again, a faint smirk on his lips as he closed his eyes.

Y’shtola sighed--exaggerating a tad, perhaps--and carefully, slowly, moved from the chair, giving him only a light kick in the ribs as a formality. He playfully grunted at her tap, otherwise not moving, as she lay down carefully in her bed.

She was not sure if he actually intended to sleep as well, or was simply using her room for the companionable silence and safety from Resistance officers and enthusiastic sparring partners it offered. No matter; she did not truly mind his presence--he knew she had fewer nightmares of Zenos (helm looming over her, cold voice taunting before the world shattered, leaving her drowning in her own blood) when another was near--and if Thancred sought his own form of comfort, she could not begrudge him that when their fellow Scions were ever so far away.

The pair slept, keeping each other company.

[closer-stars]

It Just Takes A Little Pull - Yunho

Member: Yunho (with mentions of Mingi and Yeosang) Genre: Fluff Requested: Yes @atinyxtopia AU: High school (Prom) Word Count: 3k Content: It’s High school. Prom things. Kind of a slow start. Female reader. Boys being fun boys.  Note: I have not thought of prom since I left high school so this was an interesting thing to write. I tried my best and I hope it reaches your standards.

A part of you wished your school accepted both girls and boys, it might have saved you from spending double on events such as school fairs, fundraising events, prom. Unfortunately, you went to a school that was exclusively for girls. Yunho was also at an exclusive boys school. Truth be told, a part of you also wished that your school accepted both girls and boys just so you could see him more. Alas, you could only see him after class hours or on weekends-- at least you had something to look forward to. 

You were part of the varsity, while he was on the dance team. Both of you were a world or two apart for a good majority of your school years. You’ve heard of your fellow schoolmates fawn over his skills and face more than one. Deep down, you actually considered him your school’s representative heartthrob. The same could be said for you on his side. Boys have come to respect your skill and often talk about you in their hallways. In the end, you both knew each other by face and reputation but that’s all. 

Some of your friends have wondered just exactly how you became friends with him. It was always the same story. Yeosang’s sister was your senior captain, you crashed at her place one time, from there you met Yeosang and then you met Yunho. 

“Crap, I’m so sorry!”

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!”

Yunho and you ended up crashing into each other. Only thanking each other’s fast reflexes for being able to avoid falling over. A quick glance at each other’s face then either of you bolted in the other direction, too embarrassed to say anything else.

“Unnie, who��s the other guy? I thought you only had one younger brother?” You asked, as you towel dried your hair. 

The older female looked up at you after a moment or two, she was always a sucker for these dramas. “Hm? Oh! That’s Yunho. I think he’s sleeping over tonight since he and Yeosang has a project or something. Dunno with that kid.” She said with a shrug. 

Play it cool. “So that’s Yunho..” You mumble. You knew who he was but it was always from a distance. 

“Sang. You didn’t tell me you have a twin sister.”

The boy looked at the human embodiment of a golden retriever in surprise, a bit of annoyance on his features as he had to pause his video game. “Yunho, what are you even talking about?” 

“I saw another girl earlier??” He explained, gesturing at the direction of where he saw you.

“Dude, that’s my sister’s teammate.” Yeosang explained, mentioning your name. That’s when it clicked in Yunho’s mind. That was you. 

“She looks cool.” 

“I’m more concerned for your head if you think we look alike.” 

“Think you can introduce me to her?” 

A yell from Yeosang and Yunho looked up at him in concern. Yeosang dropped the gaming console in disappointment before turning to the male.“I’m blaming you for making me die.”

Yeosang did follow through with Yunho’s wish, after plotting with his sister that is. How else do you get insanely active people to bond? Food. Their mother had left them money for the night while she had to go on a business trip. What were the chances that the both of you would sleep over at their place on the same day? 

From that day on, the rest was history. You and Yunho were now pretty inseparable (as inseparable as you guys could be that is). The both of you would talk to each other whenever possible, much to the teasings of your friends because hey, what’s so funny? Why are you smiling while messaging something? Do you have a crush? 

You were finally one of his admirers, eventually catching feelings for him. It was hard not to and you could see why he had a fanclub or two in other schools. Did he return those feelings? You weren’t sure but you were happy with how the both of you were now. 

Fast forward a year later and the friendship has become one of the strongest friendships you have in your high school life. Both of you are now at the fated year level where the main topic of discussion would be prom. 

“Hey, do you have a prom date already?” Your best friend asks you as you ate your lunch thoughtfully. You look at her with suspicion. “What?”

“You have plans of setting me up with someone?”

“Why would I have plans? Also does that mean you haven’t asked Yunho yet?”

Your bottom lip juts out and you continue to eat, thus causing your best friend to groan. 

“My godd, you’ve known Yunho this long and you haven’t asked him?! Hey, did you even know he doesn’t entertain any of those love confessions anymore?” She complains to you. 

Confused eyes look at her for saying such things. “What does that even have to do with me?”

She shakes her head. “I’m just saying, ask him. If he’s not available then I can ask my brother, Hansol to go with you.” 

You flash an ‘okay’ sign at her, mouth full with noodles. Your free hand then reaches for your phone. 

[KKT: Dancing Doggo] Hey are you free on February 21 5PM to 10PM? It’s my prom, I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?

Your best friend watches as you compose the message and before you could even stop her, she had already pressed send for you. “Hey!” A tone of mild annoyance was clear in your voice as you try to bring your phone away from her. 

“Believe me, you’ll thank me later.” She says with such a grin, you might as well have called her the devil incarnate. Your phone buzzes almost immediately making you jump. Without another word, both of you huddle around your phone. 

[KKT: Sonic] Yeah! Of course I’m willing! Are you free also on March 6, same time? Same reasons. Hehe. 

That was when your best friend suddenly tackled you into an almost bone crushing hug. “I told you!” A hand is then placed over her loud mouth as you try to hush her. 

[KKT: Dancing Doggo] I’d be honored! It’s a deal then! :)

Maybe having to pay double for two proms wasn’t that bad then. 

The fateful day of your own prom arrives and you were actually pretty nervous about it. You’ve worn your own share of skirts and dresses but it was never this extravagant or feminine as your prom dress. A high-low skirt that starts below your knees down and ends just brushing above the floor when you’re in heels. The color matched your skin tone well, making you practically glow under the lighting. Your hair and face was all made up and to be honest, you were surprised that you could look like that under that much makeup and hair spray. A small part of you worried that the color you chose wouldn’t go well with Yunho but even before you could say your worry, he reassures you it was no problem. “Besides, if it doesn’t. I can pick the color for my prom.” He joked to you a few weeks back. Your mother takes a few photos of you before letting you go. 

You head towards the lobby that’s sprinkled with your own classmates in dresses that are just as beautiful if not more, along with a few familiar faces from Yunho’s school and others in suits that fit them nicely. You sent Yunho a message wondering where he is and just as you did so, you immediately spot him by the elevator, with Yeosang. 

“Yunho!” You call out, speeding towards the two boys and they look up at you both in shock. Your eyes lingered on Yeosang’s amusing reaction, it was rare to get a big reaction from him so having him look at you with eyes wider than him being caught eating his own sister’s food was fun. While on the other hand, Yunho was gazing at you, clearly dazed. He’s had his share of harbouring romantic feelings for you but to see you in such a dress that gracefully brought you out of your comfort zone had him at a loss for words. 

You squish Yeosang’s cheeks together much to his annoyance then shift your attention to your partner for the night. You look at his suit properly and find yourself breathing a sigh of relief. “At least I picked a color that suits you well too.” You say as you pin the boutonniere on his suit carefully. 

“Hey, I told you I’m lucky boy.” He points out as he slightly bends lower to not give you a hard time. His statement makes you hit his chest lightly. 

“Whatever, Yunho.” You return with a roll of your eyes. Yeosang excuses himself as he finally spots his prom date, who was surprisingly your best friend. “Yeosang! Tell her she owes me an explanation.” He looks at you, confused at the vague wording but knows better than to pry. He nods before making his way to her, leaving the both of you alone. 

Some of your peers slowly start to enter the venue. “Should we follow them or do you want to stay outside a little longer?” asks Yunho, turning to you. 

A small hum of thought slips through your red lips. “Let’s go! I want to see how they made the place.” You reply with an excited grin. Your partner for the night then offers his elbow for you to hook your hand to. 

“M’lady.” he jokes and for a moment he swears your giggle actually sounded cute. Your hand shyly holds on to the crook of his arm. 

“How cheesy of you.” 

“It’s prom. Might as well make the most out of it.”

He was right. For the entire night, the two of you exchange laughter and sassy remarks, ultimately becoming the life of your table (much to the embarrassment of your best friend and Yeosang. Athletes and dancers in one table might have been too much for her heart to take). He made you join the games that were sprinkled throughout the event (you guys won and Yunho wasn’t going to let you forget that). His presence was enough to make your stomach hurt from laughter. There was something in how he interacted with those around him that made them feel at ease. A small voice in your head thought of how you were perfectly fine keeping these feelings to yourself as long as you don’t lose him. The only time both of you mellowed down was during the meal proper. It wasn’t anything over the top but it was fancy enough to let you know the organizers put enough thought. 

The much awaited slow dance had come-- as if it weren’t obvious by the cheesy lightings and song choices by the DJ. Some couples have made their way to the dance floor, excited to have some sort of “moment” with their partner. You didn’t say much, being fine in your seat as you watched the others dance. This wasn’t going to pass with your partner though. In fact, he stands up first and offers his hand. You look at the hand that comes up to your view towards the owner of the outstretched hand.

“Let’s dance. We’re not leaving this place until we get to dance.” Yunho says firmly. 

“Fair warning, I don’t have feet like you do.” You return as you take his hand and stand up. 

“I got you. Don’t worry.” He reassures, flashing you that charming smile that has managed to get the girls to squeal earlier in the games. He leads you to the dance floor, guiding one hand to rest on his shoulder (thank god for heels), the other hand laced with his. His free hand then rests on your waist and for the first time that night, you felt conscious of how you looked in front of him. You had to admit, the dress, makeup and hair you had on tonight was lovely but to be under his gaze at such close distance for who knows how long has made a pink hue dust your cheeks, and you were sure that wasn’t blush. 

“Just follow my lead okay?” He says softly. His feet then slowly step to one side, letting you follow him. Just below his breath, soft enough for no one to hear but loud enough for your ears only, he counts to the tempo of the song, helping your ears tune in to what he hears. He’s done this in the past with you, with songs that he covers: all of which were fast paced. A slower paced song such as the one playing on the speakers was new to you. You have songs that you’ve shared in the past where you can pay attention to it as a whole then pay attention to what beats he catches underneath all the layers. This time though, you had nowhere else to distract yourself with. After getting the hang of the motions, you look up at him and find him gazing at you softly. “Got the hang of it?” 

You nod, trying your best not to look at his lips. He smiles again, proud of you for having done so. “We can stay like this for another song or two if you want. I know you’re tired of being in heels for the past few hours.” He reassures. 

“I’m fine. I promise. Maybe another song wouldn’t hurt.” You return. One song was enough for you to feel light headed from how close the both of you were, much more when you get a whiff of his cologne. The cloud nine feeling ends soon, with the MC letting the rest of the night be upbeat songs. You breathe a sigh of relief, wanting to give your feet a break from having to almost be on your tiptoes for the entire night. Yunho leads you out of the dance floor, and out into the lobby where the cool air helps you breathe easy. 

Some familiar faces were already outside too. From the looks of it, you could tell that Yunho also recognized them, judging from how jumpy he started to be. “Oh, Mingi’s here too huh?” He muses. Uh-oh. That meant one thing. The group was about to only have one brain cell for the remainder of the night. 

Both of you make your way to their table, the girls having the couch and the heels off their feet-- which you quickly followed once you sat down. The boys on the other hand sat opposite their side. Both having either iced tea or iced coffee with some snacks. Yunho then introduces you to the rest of his friends. You knew the girls too from another class. The rest of the night was once again filled with laughter. As some of the boys decided to try to fit their feet into the heels, some using the heels as a phone. Hell, Mingi tossed a heel at Yunho and they quickly hit the whoa. The girls, including you, found entertainment and embarrassment at their antics, even going as far as teaching them how it feels to be a girl at the worst times. 

One by one, the people in your table leave. Either to be picked up by their parents, or up into their rooms in the hotel. It was only you and him left once more. Your coffee was watered down and half empty. Yunho’s bottle of water wasn’t any different from yours. A comfortable, yet slightly awkward silence goes over the both of you. 

“Thank--

“Thanks for--”

Pause.

Laughter.

“You first-”

“You fi-”

Pause again. 

Then Yunho gestures for you to speak first. “Thank you for coming with me. I had a lot of fun tonight.” Your heart races as you speak. You hope this isn’t from the coffee and rather from the nerves of being just alone with him like this. “I’m sorry also for having you to bring me out of the venue when it was your type of music playing… I know you like to dance to those songs too..”

“I should be the one thanking you for inviting me. Even if you didn’t, I would’ve invited you to my prom.” He confesses, ears bright red as he does so. He rubs the back of his neck as he finds the next words. “Don’t worry about the music part. I can always play those songs in my free time and there’s still my prom. More chances to embarrass you too.” 

“Jung Yunho.”

“What?” He laughs at the sight of your stern face. “You know your strict face isn’t scary to me. You love me too much for that.” You hate how right he is, you also hate how he doesn’t know just how right he is. 

He looks at the clock then helps you into your heels. “Let’s get you back to your parents. They’re probably wondering where their little princess is.” He teases again which causes him to receive another whack on his arm. “What? You do look like one tonight!” You slowly push yourself to stand up. The pain of being on your tiptoes rushing back. He holds you gently, making sure you don’t wobble. 

“Easy there. I know you’re strong but even you got your limits.” He accompanies you to the elevator. 

“How about you?” 

“What about me?”

“How are you getting home?” 

He glances at you, somehow catching himself off guard with the change in distance. Why was it only now that he gets surprised by how close your face was to his. Heels really are something. 

“Oh, Yeosang and I got a room too. Are you worried about me?” He teases, batting his eyelashes at you. 

“Yunho, I swear--”

Before you could finish your words, the doors of the elevator slide open and both of you immediately enter. 

The ride up was a slow one. Both of you didn’t know that your rooms were on the same floor too, only on different sides of the building. 

Somehow, a part of you was hoping for something. You didn’t know what it was but you wanted something to happen. The same goes for Yunho. His hand immediately then holds you back gently. 

“I need to tell you something.” He says softly, his eyes downcast. Your stomach drops at his body language. Did he like someone else? Was he leading you on this whole time? 

“I actually wanted to tell you this earlier but there wasn’t really a good time for me to say it.” The words were flying a mile a minute. He could’ve beaten Mingi when it came to fastest speaker at this point. “I just really wanted to tell you that I have feelings for you. Not.. as friends but as something more.” He explains. His eyes steady on you, with no sign of his signature mischievous glint in his eyes. 

It catches you off guard, a little too lost for words because, Jung Yunho? He has a crush on you? Are the feelings mutual? He takes your silence as something else and drops his hand. “If you don’t feel the same way, that’s totally fine. We can stay as friends. I just.. Felt--”

“Jung Yunho, I like you too.” You immediately blurt out. 

His face brightens up at your words and he wraps his arms around you in relief. “We don’t have to be officially together if you want. We can just take it slow or just--” 

His lips feel nice against your own. The taste of the chocolate he ate earlier is still apparent. “You talk too much.” You say simply when you pull away and for the first time that night, he was speechless.

“I’d love to be your official girlfriend, you dumb butt.” 

“Your lucky dumb butt.”

[firequeers]

Station 19 Season 4 ending/ Season 5 hopes under cut along with random fandom feels 

Overall, I actually REALLY liked the ending of the season. I feel like the episode covered a fair amount of ground decently considering how pressed for time. I obviously think it could have been better, but the timeline was just so off for the season. I think they did the best with the set up they had.

The writing was a bit all over the place this season. None of it was really bad, there were some AMAZING scenes and monologues, but it kinda seemed like all the writers weren’t talking to one another. The episodes didn’t always mesh well together, especially after the winter hiatus. 

I am a FIRM believer that Maya knew something was coming her way - now IDK if she thought she was gonna be relieved of duty, but I rewatched the scene she made the call to save Zaza (spelling?) and I think it was a very calculated move despite the risk. She knew she was going to get reprimanded. It was a subtle build up, but they’ve had a lot of hints at the higher ups not really taking super well to a woman in chage.

Additionally, there were multiple instances this season they had Maya verbally reiterate that being captain isn’t the most important thing anymore. She was willing to risk it when she went after Andrew and Carina, she wasn’t quite there with the sex traffickers when they arrested Dean and Sullivan - but the cogs were in motion. She even said something about how not being on the track is okay.

Marina wedding was cute enough, loved the dancing. It could have been better, sure. But tbh I have little complaints.

I’m still unsure how I feel about Miller/Vic but I do sort of wish they let Miller shoot his shot, give him at the very least - some closure. This man has had a rough fucking go this year but has made it through it all amazingly. I just want what is best for him. Dean has such a level head on his shoulders, I really hope one day he gets a leadership position in the station.

Travis and Vic’s heart to heart about Theo and Emmett was really cute. I feel like we lost some friendship dynamics throughout season 4 - there was just less about being friends and more about the system and covid and romantic relationships. I liked seeing that core friendship survive it all. Theo and Vic are cute enough, def not endgame in my eyes and I do want Vic to just be single for a bit. But I get what they’re doing. I think Theo is more for Travis’s development than Vic’s.

Emmett and Travis are cute, I don’t love or hate them. I do just wish we had some slow burn on this show aside from Dean/Vic - but that’s one sided.

Jack and Inara’s breakup tbh was great. I think it’s an awesome send off for Inara - letting her go on her terms, ya know? I just don’t want them to throw Jack at Andy right away. Like if it eventually happens cool but right now? No.

SULLIVAN. UGH. I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU MAN. AND YOU HAD TO DO THAT. I’M MAD. For me it’s not just that he betrayed, Maya (bc yes she took him in but idt the man has to be indebted to her forever) but he offered himself. He elevated himself so much, wanting to skip the line. If Maya can’t be captain why isn’t it Jack or Andy? Or a LT from another station? Sullivan doesn’t deserve it yet. I wanted Sullivan to work his way up the right way.

BUT I ALSO HATE HOW PPL REALLY SHOW THEIR FUCKING RACISM WITH SULLIVAN. There are so many valid reasons to be mad at Sullivan or dislike him but I made the mistake of going in the twitter tags after the finale and people are fucking gross and racist.

I feel like we got a taste of old Andy back the last episode - like season 1&2 competing for captaincy Andy, ya know? There was a fire to her. I just wish we got answers about her pregnancy and some details on her family situation. Also can we discuss how FUCKING FINE ANDY LOOKED AT THE WEDDING? She had the best look hands down.

One of my favorite scenes of the episode was Vic and Carina - I just wish there was a mention of Andrew. 

Katherine Bishop is adorable. Vic’s parents are goals. Bailey is amazing. Theo is a cutie. The fucking end.

I hope next season has a time jump with flashbacks.

Main things I want for season 5:

Give Carina DeLuca storylines and friends 

More Vic!!!!!!! More more more Vic!!! Give her stories outside of men (including Travis)

Introspection into Sullivan - I think there is slightly more at play then we have been given.

More fires

Resolution/closure to Dean/Vic

More Dean conflict with raising Pru/JJ’s parents 

Jack finding his foster siblings and not throwing himself at another woman

Travis’s mom finding out about her husband

More of Andy’s family!

Episodes addressing why Maya and Sullivan became firefighters - they’ve done everyone else but them

PRT!!!!

More Ben scenes - especially if it involves Ben and his boys, I love that dynamic. I also wouldn’t mind seeing more of Ben’s sister. 

A new probie