#because in no world should any white person feel comfortable telling the black man and the brown woman what oppression is 😭

[ambrozians]

disappointed but not surprised to see white characters condescend to black and brown characters about oppression because the x-office makes it seem like all mutants have the same exact life experience re: oppression (unless they’re physically different, like kurt and hank)

[drewsbraziliangf]

nothing to say when heaven falls | Drew Starkey x black!reader

summary: what can you do when the person that’s supposed to understand and be on your side chooses to doubt your fears?

Word count: 1388

a/n: not edited, we die like soldiers!!!!! pls let me know if you wish to be added to my taglist

"How can't you see how disrespectful this is to me, Drew?" You ask with a strained voice and teary eyes. "Everywhere you go she's looming like a shadow."

"She's my friend, what do you want me to do?" Exasperated, he asks.

"I don't know. Maybe tell her that your fiancé doesn't feel comfortable with her following you around, traveling abroad to see you or fuck, being all fucking touchy and handsy with you in public."

My throat was burning as the words slipped my mouth but I simply couldn't avoid it any longer. I am so tired of this whole situation and it has been going on for far too long. I just can't hold it back anymore.

"Can't exactly tell her what to do," he rolled his eyes this time.

"Really? Am I really asking for that much?" I look at the man in front of me with disbelief, "I just want to feel like I'm not invisible in my own goddamn relationship. She sees you more than I do and I am the one with a ring on my finger. How is this fair?" 

"Babe, listen, there's nothing going on between me and her. You have to believe me," he pleads as he runs his hands through his hair.

"You don't think I'm trying to believe you? I'm in the trenches everyday telling myself this over and over again, but how can I turn a blind eye to it when the first thing I see whenever I'm online is that you're both coincidently in the same city. For the millionth time."

I know that pulling this out in the open this way isn't the best option. But how could I keep bottling all of this up when it's causing such a heavy pain in my chest every time I see their names together?

It was always clear the perks of dating a public figure and I never backed out on it. Now seeing the man who asked me to spend the rest of my life with him and have his babies walking around with the woman everyone swears he was romantically involved with is messed up.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” he admits as he walks away from me.

That felt like a punch. Because how could I make it anymore obvious? Do I have to draw it to a thirty year old why he should respect the woman he chose to propose to? 

“Are you for real right now?” I asked as I follow him into the kitchen of our shared apartment. “Did you really just said that to me, Joseph?”

At this point it felt like there was no going back anymore, either this was going to be totally fixed here or it wouldn’t at all. The bandaid was ripped and the wound was open and burning.

“How can you be so dull? You really can’t see what the problem here is?” 

I watch as he fills a glass with water and turns his back to me. He did it twice already. The off white walls of the kitchen lacked the warm they always brought when we were in it together. It felt claustrophobic and like the roof was going to fall over our heads at any given minute.

“You’re acting like I’m cheating on you. Like this is some major fuck up. It isn’t, you’re turning it into something it isn’t.” His tone was cold but looking at his posture it was clear that he was trying to maintain his calm.

The condescending tone in his voice made me want to shrink into myself and hide away from the world.

“Oh, right. Yeah, blame it on me for thinking that my fiancé going out of his way to be with his ex fuck buddy isn’t normal.”

“Careful,” he warns once finally looks at me.

“Or what, Drew? What else could you possibly do that will make me feel worse than I already do?” I challenge, my gaze locked on him as I wait.

After a few minutes of us staring down at each other, he shakes his head and sighs. 

“I’m not doing whatever this is. I’m done entertaining this,” he declares and he leans against the countertop.

Drew and I met around two years ago through a mutual friend. We instantly hit off and after a few dates, he officially asked me to be his girlfriend - which I obviously accepted. We had this instant connection that isn’t common. At first I was terrified of it, I knew who he was and the fact that his life was always being scrutinized by thousands of people. I knew what people said online about him and as we got closer and closer I couldn’t help but lose myself in the speculations about him even more.

Our relationship was great and we always made sure that each others boundaries were respected, so color me stoked to be in this situation right now. I am not dumb and every single day there is a needle pinching me making me think of stuff and situations like the one we find ourselves right now just indulge those thoughts.

In the early days of our relationship we made sure there were no secrets between us and past relationships. I knew I was his first black girlfriend, I knew he was born and raised in the South too. So joining that and the fact that I am an immigrant did make me scared of a lot of things, the main of them being the fact that it isn’t uncommon at all for men to always find their way back to that they are used to. 

So seeing her upon him all the time while people online barely know about our relationship feels like hell. Because even though I’m in family pictures that his sisters post online, and the very visible ring on my finger I am never considered the option of being his significant other. She is. Every single time. And he never did anything about it - hell, he never even set boundaries with her and she knows that we’re together. Am I really reading too much into things? 

Being three months away from our wedding day, this isn’t the kind of thought or conversations I would like to be having. I should be fucking excited and dress hunting, but lately the only thing that I feel like doing is swallowing lumps and holding back tears, faking smiles and pretending I’m fine. I’m not, I’m fucking falling apart and I’m so tired of begging to be seen. 

“I don’t know how else to tell you that I am not comfortable with this and that you shouldn’t be either,” I point out as the first tear cross the edges of my cheeks. “I don’t know how else to ask you to respect our relationship.”

“I respect our relationship, I always did. I just don’t think that what you’re saying right now makes any sense. Whatever I had with her in the past is over.” He says as he runs one of his hands through his face.

“Drew, honey, you’re not seeing things from my point of view. Imagine if it was me catching planes every other day to be with someone that I was involved in with in the past. And all of our friends know that you and I are together. How would that make you feel?”

At that he says nothing but silence can mean many things, and in this case it means consent. 

Tired of this back in forth conversation, I reach for my phone that was besides his on the counter and as if the timing couldn’t be more right, the screen of his phone lights up with an incoming call. No surprise flashes through my features as I see the picture on the caller id, both of them in a mirror picture as they brush their teeth.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I confess watching as he reaches for his phone quickly declining the call. “Not when you’re up to your eyeballs into whatever this is. I’ll make the calls tomorrow and cancel the dates with the venue.”

I grab my phone and my purse and I walk towards the front door before he can say anything else, I’m closing it behind me. 

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Slipped Through The Cracks

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.6k

Warnings: angst, domestic violence, bruises and cuts, heartbreak

Summary: Three years ago, you married your fiance while staring into the eyes of the love of your life. Spencer watched you get married to his brother when he had the chance to stop it. He should have. Three years later, you go running into his arms because your husband isn’t who you thought he was. Spencer let you go once, he won’t do it again.

Square Filled: go through me for @badthingshappenbingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

Then

A wedding day should be special. It should be the best day of a woman’s life. You’ve dreamed about the perfect wedding since you stumbled upon your mom’s dress when you were six. You even made a toilet paper veil to go with your short white dress you only wore for church on Sundays. You should be crying because you’re overwhelmed by the happiness, not because you’re terrified.

You’re standing at the altar with your fiance but all you’re thinking about is his brother. Spencer Reid is supposed to be the one you’re marrying. He’s supposed to be at your side, ready to promise you the world. Instead, it’s his older brother, Zack. Zack is… scary. He’s dominant. He’s possessive. He’s controlling. It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be but compared to Spencer, he’s the devil.

“Do you, Zachary Reid, take Y/N to be your lawfully wedded wife to cherish and to hold, to love until death do you part?”

He squeezes your hands and smiles.

“I do.”

“Do you, Y/N, take Zachary Reid to be your lawfully wedded husband to cherish and to hold, to love until death do you part?”

You open your mouth to respond but pause. Three seconds. That’s all you’re given to think about this decision. You look from Zack to Spencer who is standing right behind his brother. Spencer is the best man. There’s so much history between you three. You love Zack, don’t mistake that, but you’re in love with Spencer. When Zack was having one of his moments, you turned to Spencer for comfort.

Spencer was the one who stayed up with you when you couldn’t sleep. He’s the one you told all your secrets to. He supported you when you wanted to go back to school to get a bachelor’s degree. He came over when you were sick to take care of you when Zack was busy with work. He always gave you an extra present at Christmas time and on your birthday after everyone else had gone to bed.

He was your New Year’s kiss every year until Zack caught you two. He wasn’t mad but it wasn’t suspicious that Spencer sported a black eye the next day. He’s your best friend and soulmate yet you’re marrying someone else. If he feels the same as you, then this last second is his moment to say something.

He doesn’t.

“I do,” you say and pull your eyes from Spencer.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Zack pulls you close and kisses you in front of everyone. Cheers erupt and music plays as everyone celebrates this new chapter in both of your lives. The celebration moves to the reception area where everyone enjoys good food, good music, and each other’s company. The first dance begins and Zack pulls you onto the dance floor. He holds you close to him and sways softly to the music.

You look past his shoulder at Spencer who is watching you two with hooded eyes. He’s always been an easy book to read but at this moment, you can’t read a goddamn thing he’s feeling.

Now

You should have seen this coming. The warning signs were always there. Even before he laid a hand on you, something was telling you to run and never look back. It’s hard to say no to a man like Zack. He wants things done his way and if they aren’t, he turns into a whole other person. Someone darker. Someone with bad intentions.

He made it damn near impossible to leave.

The second an opportunity arose for you to leave, you took it. It’s why you’re running in a rainstorm toward the one person who can make this better. Even if he can make it better for a few hours, you’ll take it. You might have a few hours before Zack knows you’re missing if you do this right. You made sure none of his men or staff saw you on your way out.

Your tears blend in with the rain so the only indication that you’ve been sobbing is how puffy your eyes are. You’re in pain but the thought of going back to Zack brings you more pain than any of the physical wounds on your body.

When you get to his house, you lean on the door frame to catch your breath. It hurts to breathe since your ribs are poking your lungs but you manage. You knock frantically on the door until he opens the door. Spencer’s eyes widen when he sees the state you’re in. Torn dress, bruised skin, and soaking wet.

“Y/N… what…?”

You fall into Spencer and he wraps his arms around your body to keep you from crashing to the ground.

“Please help me.”

Spencer looks around to see if there is someone around to make you behave this way but sees nothing. He pulls you into his house, ignoring the pools of water on the floor. He brings you to the couch and sits next to you so he can examine your wounds.

“What happened? Does Zack know you’re here? Does he know you’re like this?”

It’s because you feel so safe with Spencer that you don’t think twice about telling him this. Once you say it, he’ll be the only person you have ever told about this part of your life. Zack has everyone on his side so no one will believe you.

“He’s the one who did this to me.”

Spencer turns on a lamp so he can see you better and gasps when he sees just how badly you’re bruised. You have a black eye, there is a yellow bruise under your chin that’s healing from the last time he hit you, your arms are both purple and a sickly yellow from the different stages of bruises, and he’s sure if he took off your dress, he’d see more bruises.

“Fuck.” Spencer doesn’t curse often so you know it’s a big deal when he does. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No!” Panic flurries in your chest at the thought. Zack has eyes and ears everywhere. “No hospital. You’re a doctor, right?”

“Not that kind of doctor,” he winces. He sees the desperation in your eyes and sighs. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

Spencer leaves the room and comes back five minutes later with a hefty first aid kit. It hurts when he touches your bruises but you let him try and clean you up. You know he wants to ask because you can see it in his eyes but he respects you so he doesn’t.

“Zack and I went to a coffee house before going to his work. We were in line and he was on his phone. The guy behind us started a conversation with me. It was nothing. I don’t even remember what we were talking about. He was really nice but that pissed Zack off. When we got to his office, he accused me of cheating on him. I tried to tell him I never have but he wouldn’t hear it.”

“Is this the first time?”

“No,” you whisper. “It’s the fifth.” Spencer takes some gauze and dabs a cut on your face to clean some of the blood off. He’s shaking from how angry he is. “When it happened the first time, he kept saying how sorry he was and how much he loved me.” Tears spill over your eyes. “God, I’m an idiot.”

“He won’t hurt you ever again, okay?” You nod and he continues to clean you up as best as possible with his first aid kit. “Alright, the bleeding has stopped.” He gently caresses your face. “I shouldn’t have let you marry him three years ago.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” you ask with a whimper.

“I thought you deserved better than me.”

You cry. “You’re the best there is, Spencer.”

Don’t do this, Spencer. This is wrong. She’s hurt and vulnerable. The little voice inside his head is telling him not to kiss you but he finds himself leaning toward you. You close your eyes expecting to feel his lips. Instead, your phone ringing is what interrupts you two. You don’t have to see it to know who it is. You take your phone out of your pocket and see Zack’s name on the screen. Spencer immediately snatches the phone from your hand and answers it.

“Zachary,” Spencer answers with venom.

“Where is my wife?”

“With me, but if you want her, then come get her. You’ll have to go through me to do it. Trust me, you don’t want to fuck with an FBI agent.” Zachary is flabbergasted and stutters as he tries to think of something to say. He could never stand up to Spencer despite being older. “Get a lawyer. You’re never seeing her again, you dick.”

Spencer hangs up on your husband, and you stare at him with parted lips and wide eyes. No one has ever stood up for you like this before. He looks like he is going to get up, and you grab at his arms to stop him.

“Please don’t leave me,” you beg.

“I’m not going anywhere.” He pulls you into his lap and kisses your head. “I’m not a doctor, Y/N. You need to go to the hospital.”

“As long as you come with me. Tomorrow. Tonight, just hold me.”

“You got it.”

With ease and comfort, he scoops you into his arms and brings you to his bedroom. You’ve been with him for nearly an hour but it’s the safest you’ve felt in a long time.

x

Want to be tagged? Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[ponett]

Whenever I complain about graphic or dark content in media I watch, I keep hearing people retort with this apparently very popular opinion that people who enjoy comfy, wholesome things are actually more likely to be raging assholes than people who love things like death metal and gore. As someone who seems to enjoy comfy, wholesome things yourself and likely met many others who enjoy similar such things, do you agree with this opinion? If so, why do you think this happens?

So I've been sitting on this ask for like a week, not knowing whether or not I wanted to touch it because it kind of feels like being handed a live grenade

For one, I don't like being pigeonholed as someone who just likes "comfy" or "wholesome" things. Yeah, I enjoy My Little Pony and Animal Crossing. I made a game with cute furry characters and lots of bright colors. I also enjoy things like Berserk and Chainsaw Man and Doom and violent crime dramas and punk rock with vulgar lyrics and porn. Variety is the spice of life

Anyway: I generally don't think it's a good idea to make sweeping statements about peoples' moral or intellectual character based on what genres of story they enjoy, regardless of what direction you're coming at it from. But this is a very leading question that kind of skirts around the root problems

There's frequent (perhaps a bit exaggerated) pushback these days against people who prefer their fiction to be a warm blanket, a form of escapism meant to distract you from the real world. In particular, the dreaded "person who only watches kids' cartoons" is a form of this that gets brought up a lot. I don't think the root problem here is what media people enjoy or don't personally enjoy - taste is subjective, and I don't think it's a moral obligation for everyone to have diverse tastes in TV shows - but I do think some folks should try to get out of their comfort zone a bit more. Sometimes stuff that seems like it won't be for you on a surface level will really end up speaking to you, but you won't know until you give it a shot. Trust me, I've been there many times

It becomes a problem when people demand that media ONLY cater to that "warm blanket" attitude. And I think that's part of the reason why that stereotype you mentioned about fans of ""wholesome""" media being assholes exists. People who view dark or violent content as an inherent flaw because it's not what they like. People who yell at creators when they make bad things happen in their stories, because how dare you do this to my comfort characters? People who say movies should never have sex scenes. People who want "problematic" moral complexity stripped out in favor of black and white moral instruction. People who seem to hate any sort of interpersonal conflict in fiction at all

These attitudes can be the result of many different cultural factors, factors that can't all be traced back to Tumblr or what shows you like, but sometimes it's definitely because of that lack of broader perspective on media. You can tell when someone's opinions on The Right And Wrong Ways To Write Fiction were shaped almost entirely by, like, Steven Universe discourse. (Yes, this is a jab at Lily Orchard.) And when these people are very loud about their opinions, well, it becomes a trend people notice

Like. I don't know you. You sent this anonymously. But when you say you "complain about graphic or dark content in media you watch"... that could mean a few wildly different things! Maybe you're just venting about something that unexpectedly triggered you, and that's totally fine. But the wording could also imply that, like, you take issue with these things being present at all, and that you expect a person who likes "death metal and gore" to be more of a "raging asshole" than someone who likes the "wholesome" things you like. So... well, maybe you're more dismissive or judgmental of things outside your comfort zone than you realize?

Unfortunately, in case it's not already obvious, on the internet this shit quickly becomes a proxy battle over dozens of intersecting cultural issues at once where everyone is kinda just talking past each other. So it gets messy

For example, I have no reason to believe that the people who run the "Wholesome Games" showcases have anything against games that are dark or violent or contain adult themes. (They've outright said they don't. Many times!) But when you see people going "why is Spiritfarer allowed in the showcase? That's a game about DEATH and that's NOT WHOLESOME, why would you make me think about death?" or "Ugh, why does Disco Elysium have to be about a cop? Why can't we apply these systems to a game about a young witch who's trying to find a lost cat in an idyllic village instead?" it... Well, it makes me sympathetic towards the indies who don't feel comfortable with the "Wholesome Games" label and consider it limiting. But it also doesn't make me think that devs catering to a demand for more chill, nonviolent video games are categorically facilitating fascist censorship from the Christian right

It's complicated! The written word is imprecise and the internet is a nightmare

I've kind of gone off on multiple tangents here. Basically: I do think that people can kinda turn fans of "comfy" media or "adults who only watch Bluey" into an overblown boogeyman these days. I think people online generally have a habit of swinging too hard in one direction or another in their stances on certain things, overcompensating based on what group of people online are currently annoying them the most and turning said group into like The Main Problem With Society Today. But I also think that boogeyman only exists because of very real examples of people demanding that everything cater to their narrow comfort zone. Go like what you like, but also, y'know. Don't be that person

[eris-snow]

2. 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐭

Tags: anachronism, shoto x fem!reader, shenanigans, sweet shoto, confusion, confusion, confusion

The person he’s dancing with wears a smile. It’s pretty and kind, and Shoto can’t help but smile too.

“Do I know you?”

Shoto waits breathlessly for your response. Confirm it. Laugh at him. Tell him he’s right. Call him an idiot.

You look at him carefully, watching him like a cat.

“No.”

Shoto doesn’t know why he expected otherwise.

He nods, suddenly aware of how hot his face is. “Right.”

Feeling embarrassed, he walks down the stairs like it’s his walk of shame. Maybe he needs a brain surgeon together with that family therapist. Shoto knows that he’s not the best at picking up social cues, but something up there is obviously not working.

“But I’m flattered that you think so.”

Shoto whirls around, and finds you staring at him curiously. The electric air from before has vanished, but you don’t seem fazed at all as you power through the sparks of awkwardness like this was an average Tuesday.

Shoto may be able to bench-press a car and walk through fire, but the way you breeze through the tension with such leisure puts you in front of him by buildings.

“Exchange numbers?” You suggest, seeing his loss of words. He probably looked like a mess.

Please kill me now.

“Yeah.” He manages, fumbling with his phone. Man, why couldn’t he just say that?

The tension is so thick between the both of you he’s surprised something didn’t shatter.

You look at him with a smile, and Shoto swears he’s going through a cardiac arrest.

“What’s your name?”

He bites his lip, and tastes blood.

“Shoto. Shoto Todoroki.”

—

Shoto was, simply put, fucked.

His head was in a mess and was pounding as he clenched his phone tightly in his hands. On its screen was your number, and your profile picture of a blurred unglam of you. Shoto finds it charming.

What in Endevour’s name happened?

No, scratch that, his father was trying to atone, but Shoto had no qualms about stealing his credit cards and maxing them all out.

He’s done it before, and he’ll do it again.

Shoto grasps his shirt. His heart was only now slowing down, and he felt like he accidentally ingested Shinso’s triple shot Expresso heart attack. In case it wasn’t obvious, Shoto was freaking out. So much so that he almost burned down the dorms again because of his mini “emotion explosion” (He’s getting that trademarked).

It was as if his world was compressed to the size of a stress ball, and any more pressure would cause it to burst. It felt as if it was just you, him and the snow…

Shoto cradles his head in his hands.

What’s this feeling? Why does he feel like his heart is going to explode?

He thinks back to your expression, your eyes, rich with shock and…something else.

Shoto knows it. That you felt it too.

“Stop it.” He whispers. “Get a grip Shoto. Come on.”

He does not.

—

There’s a hand on his shoulder and the other in his own. There’s a glow from an oil lantern, and the rest of the scene is blurry with greens and whites. the marble under his feet squeaks as he dances. The person he’s dancing with wears a smile. It’s pretty and kind, and Shoto can’t help but smile too.

The atmosphere is soft, relaxed, comfortable. Everything is, from the way his steps coincide with the person he’s dancing with, all the way to how his hand is fitted on the mysterious maiden’s.

“Sho,” What a soothing voice.

The words slip out like butter. “Snowflake.”

It feels so right.

All but suddenly, the oil lamp is snuffed out, plunging them into pitch-black darkness.

His alarm clock blares, and Shoto rips his blanket off him as his eyes snap open.

The aching sensation of loss lingers at the back of his throat. Flashes of foggy dialogue linger at the back of his mind. There’s yelling, and there’s crying, all mixed into one glob that pierces the back of his mind like a pike.

Damn, that hurts like a bitch.

-

Shoto cracks his skull against his bedframe and dies.

Or so he wishes.

We should meet up and talk sometime.

Wanna study together?

It’s like he thinks he’s God or something.

He glances through your string of messages with a head stuffed into his pillow, all conversations cut by his ‘I got to go now.’ or ‘Maybe some other time.’

Shoto and you’ve texted. Texted a lot.

But that’s just it. Texting. Your whole chat is essentially a game of Trivia with dialogue ripped straight out from a ‘How to Make Friends’ question list.

He knows enough to find out about your birthday and Quirk, your favourite food, and if he squints, your favourite movie.

Seen each other? Not so much.

It’s not his fault that he has to hit the gym every day, or has twice the amount of assignments to make up for lost time, or has detention for setting the toaster on fire—

Okay maybe that was his fault.

He can’t do this. He tells himself. It’s not fair for you.

Even he knows that’s not something he shouldn’t do.

Shoto wants to see your face, hear your voice, go schizophrenic every time he sees you in the hall. Just, for a prolonged period (and not die.)

That’s why he is determined to schedule a study session with you today, at 2, and no matter how cluttered his schedule is, he will—

“You sure like to get lost in your head, don’t you?”

Shoto turns around and finds you leaning against a pillar. Your smile is dripping with amusement.

Shoto wipes the sweat off his forehead, eyebrows crinkling.

“Urgh, stop that. You really should work on your greetings, Mister I’m So HOT AND COOL—”

Shoto slams a hand on your mouth, hissing. “What is wrong with you? There are people—”

You lick his hand, making him recoil.

Your lips spread into a lazy grin, eyebrow cocked as if to say, do I look like I care?

“You should care,” Shoto replies seriously. “I do.”

“Well, I ain’t you, hero,” you respond. “And to answer your scrunched-up face, I was passing through. Wanted to see what you were up to.”

“The gym and alcoholism.” He says with a straight face.

You’re not fazed in the slightest. “Yeah, that makes sense. Heard about your family and everything. Really, sorry about that, by the way.”

Shoto shrugs. “Well, it’s getting better. Or, it will. Eventually.” Shoto rubs his hand on his sweats, making another round to the weights before he grabs another, heavier than the last. “Oh, right. Are you free this afternoon? My schedule’s clear for once, so I thought we could study together.”

Haha, liar. He had to pull strings to make time for you, but it is worth it when you nod and smile. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

He tries not to think too much about the dream.

When he thinks too hard, it gets even fuzzier. Everything felt so vivid. The warmth in his hand, the gaze on his face, god, he can still remember how much he loved it. He wishes to relive that dream.

He wishes for a lot of things.

Some of them, he can’t quite remember.

[sinistraes]

ASSHOLE. ₊˚.༄

𝐁𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 was heard in the room, spitting insults right there and then. not caring about the world. "stop your damn whining. why the hell are you blaming me for this?" "Because we're the only people in the house at the moment?!! not to mention, YOU have a 3-year-old 'son' watching Disney in the living room, you dunce-face."

 Ah, the fresh air of sibling drama. nothing new at the L/N household. constant yelling between the two siblings, except for the youngest of course. their relationship is beyond on the edge, no apologizing, nothing. it explains why they're not close, at least not anymore. "Ma!! I'm telling you! I didn't do it this time, I was in my room trying to find a job to buy my own house!" m/n's lying ma! why would he want to find a job just to pay for our needs, sounds like an excuse to me!" the said person glared at the one beside him, and so did they as well. sharing an intense staring contest that was cut off by the mother. "Enough of this fighting, Zephyr, I'm afraid your brother is right. He told me he was going to find a job to help around the house, he's growing up you know? also. get ready for dinner, you both, alright?" and the woman went back to cooking her dish. a hum of amusement was let out of you, your brother looked wide-eyed at the mother's response made you snicker.

 "so, Y/N, have you found any jobs that suited you, sweetheart?" his mother's calming voice stopped the comforting silence. "Well, I do have one into consideration, but I have to move out of here and go live there. but the salary is good too. so I mig —" you were cut off, rude. "oh, you're moving out? good! pack your shit and get!" Zephyr, cut off his a few months older brother. "Zeph! watch your language young man, you shouldn't be insulting your brother. He's trying his best to provide something for his family." a stern discipline was brought on. making Zephyr grumble under his breath, god. brothers. amirite? 

Weeks passed, You had to pack your stuff to go and see your new place. Your mother insisted you go on with the job, so you agreed to your mother's choice. "Are you all ready sweetheart? haven't forgotten anything?" "nope, all of my stuff is ready. please take care of my son ma, I'll be going now." and just like that, the oldest of the L/N household has moved out. taking out your car keys you did your last goodbye to your small family, and going inside the car. 

'Jeez, I never realized the location would be this far.' he thought. He was so glad his college wasn't far off, you wouldn't need to wake up super early just to arrive. "Where was the house again? big black gate, big mansion.. ah!" he looked up to the supposed location, 'i didn't think it was this big..' your sweat dropped. taking out your phone, you decided to chat with your boss or should I say, bosses.

<You>

 : hey !! just arrived in front of your gate... I need a hand with these bags.. ;(

<Gingery>

; oh! I'll come down to you in a bit. 

<You> 

thanks so much !! mwamwa 

seen by; Signora hottie, Gingery, and Scarababes.

not even just a second of looking up from your smartphone, you already see a ginger-haired man running up to you, and OHHH MAN his outfit made you breathless. a sleeveless vest buttoned on his stomach area, showing off his curves, and a white long-sleeved polo shirt rested nicely on his body. you could feel yourself heating up, was it from the weather or him? "Earth to Y/N? you seem hot and bothered, something wrong?" his gentle voice made you step out of your trance. "a— ah! sorry, was thinking of something. I'm all fine, now can you help me carry some of my stuff to the house..? I may or may not pack a little over enough." your response made the other chuckle, eventually carrying all of your bags, much to your dismay. 

"question about the job, what am I going to do exactly?" you asked curiously and hoping not to make the taller/shorter male confused at your question. "eh, you'll just be a male wife there." his seven-word sentence made you stop in your tracks, MALEWIFE?! you were screaming internally. "I'll explain the information inside, did you doze off in our zoom meeting or something..?" "I did." now he was a laughing stock, reaching the main door of the mansion he had to wipe a tear not to make you more embarrassed. "go on in, make sure to remove your shoes and slip on some slippers. I don't want the floor dirty..and I'll put your stuff in the guest room." you nodded at him, and did as your told.

"This is the employee you were talking about?" you were sat in the middle of three people talking about you, and I mean you. You just wanted to know about your job, not get stared down by fancy-looking people (not to mention hot.) that made you want to melt into a puddle. "do you have a thing for men that is a single father and a househusband?" a platinum-haired woman interrupted both men. "I might've. but look at him! he's built well." "he looks like my next victim." you didn't know who to be scared of, you just looked back and forth at the three people bickering about why he picked you. 

you wanted to cry, not out of the loud environment, but also because they were all confusing you. There's always one person that admires you and immediately gets turned down, you let out a sigh. This wasn't ending was it? The arguing made you remember Zephyr, your younger brother who was probably crying his heart out because his older brother left and he had no one else to spit insults to. He didn't want to admit it, but you knew he loves you. He just doesn't want anyone to know that he's a soft-hearted person that breaks into pieces when his brother isn't there. You were making sure of yourself to always check up on him whenever you both ran into each other at the university, as an older brother instinct.

screeching of a chair broke the voices, looking wherever the noise was. "I'll be going to rest now, just text me if you need anything." you sat up, pushed the chair back where it was supposed to be, and eventually went to the guest room. throwing your exhausted body onto the surprisingly soft mattress, you just laid there. till you get a notification, 'ugh. not even a peaceful minute, goddamn.' turning on your phone you clicked on the messages notification, and it read,

 'From: Scarababes

You forgot to eat your dinner, dumbass. open the damn door.' 

of course, it was around..8:50 tops. sitting up with a slight trip from getting trapped by the covers, you open the door with a ravenette who was holding a surprisingly delicious-looking meal. "I cooked it, and don't worry, I didn't poison it. sadly. Just wash the dish after." putting the tray in your hands and flew off.sitting on a chair and setting the tray of food onto a desk, you booted up your laptop to work on some presentations and projects that were due next week, you don't want to get your ass beaten by your professor. 

after eating that DELICIOUS meal you went out to the kitchen, which is the light was still on. not even caring to take a glance at the figure standing with their elbow on the counter, you washed the dish, giving respect to the one who made it. "I didn't expect you to wash it." a voice made you jump up like a cat. "scared you that much?" oh, it was scarab— Scaramouche. "don't creep onto people like that! Jesus Christ, I thought I had a heart attack." you exclaimed, in return, you got an uninterested hum as he left. you thought he was just an introvert that likes to keep to himself but hoo boy, maybe he's more than that.

but '3:04' it read on your clock, and you're extremely dehydrated and in need of an energy snack. 'i should stop procrastinating and do things early..look what it got to me." you thought, but knowing damn well you couldn't keep that thought in your mind for long. exiting your room, you see darkness. of course, no one is awake at this point. reaching the kitchen with a help of your phone's flashlight, you decided to make iced coffee and take some biscuits as a snack. "why the hell are you up so fuckin' late? it's 3 in the morning." that voice made you jump up again. fucking hell, scaramouche. you didn't say stuff now, you're warming up to it, plus, your voice was hoarse, and you weren't in the mood right now. turning away from the counter, carrying your tray of snacks, you start to walk away, "where are you going?" Scaramouche, immediately raced beside you. "wherever you aren't." you grumbled under your voice, but loud enough for the other to stop in his tracks and went the other way. 'finally.' you thought. 

but he didn't miss a day of not messing with your buttons, throwing a glass of cold water while you were asleep was one time, now completely putting temporary hair dye in your hair products. but you pulled it off with a smile that caught him off guard, was he not annoying you enough?! He grimaced, out of ideas on how to get you fuming like a kettle. You were too calm for your good, and Scaramouche didn't like that. "I'll be going now! don't trash the house too much scarababe~'' you coo at him, making him red in the face, chuckling to yourself, you left off to college to see if your brother was there of course. 

Due to your surprise, you were engulfed in a tight hug and with a yelp coming from you, you looked back to see your younger brother with puffy eyes hugging you. "Geez, Zeph~ you missed me so much huh?" "Shut up you dunce...I did miss you." you were glad to hear those words from your brother, even if it was just a day since you left the abode. "Say, Zeph, I'll treat you out later. How's that sound?" hearing your reassuring words, the brunette perked up with his eyes shining like he had seen an angel. "Really?!- ah- uhm...yea sure. I do not mind." You hum, "I'll see you later, my little brother~" you cooed at him which caused the other to flush in embarrassment. 

The college has been tiring, for you at least, your brother insisted you should have gone home, and that, he will as well, but you did not budge. Entering a small cafe and ordering takeout, you both walked to your destination, which was a small lake. No people to bother you both, just two brothers hanging out till curfew.

[koifishart]

I want to be Your Koi Fish - Nine Tails

Warning: +18 content, criminal underworld, intercourse, strong language - and so on

Fanfiction based on: "Baki" by Itagaki Keisuke

>3<

Goro had always known that his children were special, but would never have thought of one of them becoming a FOX. Not at the costume party in kindergarten, but in real life. When they came to tell him, he almost had a heart attack. Kaoru said painfully that there was nothing they could do, she knew what to spell for, and she nodded, ears down. He mentally admitted that his son-in-law scored like no one else. In such a situation, many would most likely disown the spouse, and he stayed with Hanabi, still hoping for her return. He happily watched as the huge yakuza stroked the white fur with the utmost tenderness. All the more, he wasn't surprised by the bit of conversation.

- A husband should support his wife in any situation. - he said in a low voice. - If you understand marriage differently, you mustn't have grown up with it.

He heard the floor screeching, followed by more, then the door slid open in front of him. In them stood a tall young man wearing rimless glasses, a face cut up like a map of the world, one eye shining hazel brown and the other colorless.

- Goro-san?

- I was just looking for you, Kaoru-san. - Soga replied calmly. - SOMEONE is waiting for you at your parents' graves ... you'd better hurry up.

>>><<<

Brazen and immature. How can marriage be approached in this way? Would he leave her because she lost her body? Of course it was as likely as the return of the deceased to the living, which, by the way, also happened a few months earlier, but that's no reason why he should leave the person whom he swore love to the grave! He didn't throw words to the wind, they always knew, and for insulting his wife ... Well, Hanabi was gone, should be back a long time ago. Usually she would come back quickly, this time it seemed to be prolonged. He stretched himself to a standing position to move towards the door. On the threshold he met his father-in-law, clearly tired of life and the whole row of difficult situations that had been falling on him recently.

- Goro-san?

- I was just looking for you, Kaoru-san. SOMEONE is waiting for you at your parents' graves ... you'd better hurry up.

Someone ... SOMEONE ... he didn't need more. They have known each other too long. She heard something again, or said something depressing, and decided that had to free him from herself, relieve him, as if she was an unnecessary ornament. Just like when, with another depressed state, she accidentally found herself in front of his apartment building and almost rejected their engagement shortly before the wedding. Then she felt remorse for all the murders committed, and the feeling that she could not blame him with her so dirty existence. What was going on in the little head this time? He actually found her at his father's grave. She was sitting hunched over, eight tails tucked up, and a round bundle on her back. A real pile of misfortune, tied with a black satin around the neck. He came quietly, she must have been very pensive, usually heard his footsteps.

- Don't apologize for anything, Hana. - he muttered, crouching beside her.

She jerked her ears up, turning her head towards him. The charming white mouth was quivering with nerves, and the frightened pale green eyes were begging for mercy. He reached out a hand toward her, at first she pulled away slightly, but then let him catch her. She made it comfortable in his hand, while he was taking the bundle from her small nape and tucking it into his pocket. He noticed a large, glistening tear dripping from the round eye. Wiped it gently.

- I know that face, you always do it when you apologize to someone for something or feel guilty. Stop. - he replied calmly, stroking the silky fur. - You have no one to apologize for. I'll wait as long as it takes for you. I told you after all.

She nuzzled her mouth against his thumb, dangling long tails. He wouldn't have forgiven himself if she had run away from him. She probably thought he wouldn't look for her, he wouldn't care. Of course he'd put the entire mafia on its feet to find her, got all contacts off the ground. He couldn't live without her anymore.

>>><<<

He reassured her, it would actually be a terrible stupidity, and she was still afraid that she didn't deserve someone else's love again, so she should leave. Kaoru was good to her, he cared for her, he guarded her like own eye in head, at the same time giving her freedom, and for such a long time she couldn't repay him in any way. She tried so hard to let go of it, especially from the moment found out that her mother had rejected parental rights. It wasn't easy ... luckily Kaoru didn't give up either. Were it not for him, she would most likely be lying somewhere now, maybe in her human body, but all cut up, rejected, wishing only to embrace death. Meanwhile, she could fall asleep peacefully in his grandfather's house, cuddling against her husband's broad chest, listening to the steady beating of his heart, the most beautiful sound in the world.

She woke up in the night, didn't even know why. The door to the garden remained partially open, Kaoru had to forget to close it. The silver glow of a full moon streamed into their room through the resulting rift. It shone so beautifully, attracted her as if it were saying "come, child." She sat down on the edge of the room, unable to take her eyes off the shining disk in the sky, mesmerizing her more and more every moment.

>>><<<

Fortunately, he was able to calm her down. She even jumped in the shower while he was bathing. Then she fell asleep quietly beside him, breathing steadily, laying long tails beside her. He remembered such a rolled up ball. When he woke up in the night, he couldn't feel any warm fur. He rubbed his eyes, looking straight ahead to the only source of light in the room - moonlight streaming through the open door. Something obscured this. For a moment he felt as if he was just dreaming ... but he woke up, he was absolutely sure of it! There was a woman sitting on the threshold of the room, her back to him. Drenched in a delicately silvery glow, she seemed almost immaterial. Her slender body was obscured by black, long hair, half a bit shorter, revealing a slightly shaded back with a colored drawing and a dragon's head on the shoulder. She stared at the shield in the sky as if couldn't take her eyes off it. His throat went dry with the excitement, he swallowed and decided to take the risk. At most it turns out to be a very painful waking dream.

- H ... Hanabi ...? - he whispered in her direction.

She shook herself as if awakened from a dullness, he heard a metallic clink, and she turned her face towards him. A beautiful face, with pale green eyes and an upturned nose, rewarding him with the warmest smile in the world.

- I'm back, my love ...

His eyes widened in astonishment to lunge at her, pinning her to the ground with a juicy kiss. He felt soft lips again and nimble tongue with the titanium piercing. He was overjoyed, and so was she. Hanabi broke away from him for a moment, leaning slim hands on his muscular shoulders.

-You don't even know how ... - She laughed a pearly, pausing, looking along her body. - I'm completely NAKED!

He put one arm around her, to tear the fundoshi off hips with the other hand and cover both of them with the quilt. After all, he could hug wife's warm body, not just a tiny ball of fur. He sank fingers into long hair on the back of her head, unable to tear lips and hands away from her. She settled on his torso, letting legs slide down between his thighs, tiny hands wandering over his slashed face.

- It's all over, darling. - he muttered against her ear. - This whole fucked up story has just ended.

- Yes, fortunately. - she laughed lightly. - Tofu was already coming out of my ears!

- Do you remember anything ... on the other side?

- Yes, I remember looking for each of the tails. Some things blur ... I'll tell you later, now I'd rather just hug you. - she replied with a smile, adding the mischief. - May I?

He sighed with relief as took her to him. Hanabi immediately settled down as usual, like a kitten in a den. The waiting was hard and painful, but if SHE was the reward it paid off.

In the morning she woke up fresh and refreshed, immediately stretching heavily. He looked at her with joy, accepted the little affection he had missed so much for many months. He reluctantly released her from hands, but they had to go back. He got up to put on the fundoshi, she sat down on the mat.

- I don't have much to wear, sweetheart ... - she muttered sluggishly.

- I thought about it before. - he replied, handing her the black "emergency bag", the same with which she came to help with his studies. - I have always taken it since you became a fox.

- You're sweet! - she said happily, blowing him a kiss.

He pulled on pants and fastened the belt, examining her a little more closely. She seemed a bit thinner, but still beautiful. The last bold haircut left a mark of unevenness, which left part of the back hidden. He walked over calmly, drawing knife.

- I suppose it would be appropriate to level them, don't you think? - he asked, reaching for her long hair and catching the blade against it.

- Stop it, I can do it by myself ... Kaoru! - she protested, but he did his job.

After a while he held a rather long and uneven ponytail in his hand, and a cascade of dark strands ran down her pale, still bare shoulders. He combed her hair, she looked a little grumpy as pulled a pale blue dress with an elastic waistband from bag. She put it over her head, tightening the strings a bit, temptingly revealing the entire shoulder girdle. She got up hastily, ready to leave.

- I liked the previous hairstyle too ... but it suits your face better in the longer ones. - he muttered, tickling her behind the ear.

She smiled as she rested cheek against the palm of his hand. Moments later, was wearing white leather sneakers and almost jumping joyfully following him towards the people waiting by the car. As soon as they saw her, everyone's jaws dropped with emotion. This time he wasn't holding a small fox in his pocket, but was taking a young, beautiful wife by the arm. Ryuji and Yoji looked as if they were about to cry with happiness. They were probably the closest to his wife, through her trapper escapades. Quite mechanically they opened the door, unable to take their eyes off.

- Ha ... Ha ... Hanabi-sama? - Kizaki stammered out.

- As you can see. - she said with a smile. - Finally, I was able to come back!

- But how?

- She just showed up last night. - Kaoru replied casually, looking at her. - Why don't we eat out on this occasion?

- Yeah! - she squeaked happily, then grew serious. - Nothing fancy, really ... after this tofu-hunger strike, I'm going to eat like a wild animal.

- If not a fancy restaurant, then maybe "rude ramen"? - he looked significantly.

- Oh, you remembered! - she sighed, hugging his shoulder as if she was about to melt with joy.

- I don't really understand ... - said the deputy.

- Direction: Taito! - she ordered, jumping into the back seat.

He watched with great satisfaction as his wife burst forth with energy and enthusiasm. Of course he remembered. They ended up in that pub by accident, he wasn't going to go anywhere, but rather to take a walk around and that's it. Much hasn't changed since then, it was still standing near the Ueno station, just as traditional, simple, in the colors of burgundy and dark wood, illuminated by a string of lanterns. Along the wall was a modest, unglazed kitchen with a long counter and a row of chairs. In a separate room stood the cook-owner of the place, cutting vegetables. The delicious smell of real, essential broth spread over the whole, tiny pub.

- I warmly welcome! - he threw, probably automatically, in their direction, reflecting on seeing the green-eyed woman. - Hanabi-chan! I haven't seen you for a long time!

- May you have a good supply of beef and eggs, otchan *! - she laughed, sitting down in front of him. - I'm dying of hunger!

- I see! - The man laughed, after a moment paying attention to the person in the white suit. - I also see that you still stick together. You are nice couple.

He tossed the pasta into the boiling water, hastily chopping up more vegetables and skillfully frying the meat. The hard-boiled eggs were already marinating in soy sauce, ready to be placed in spacious bowls. He even treated them with a pretty good drink. As soon as full, quite large dishes appeared in front of them, Hanabi couldn't help herself. He had rarely seen her this hungry. It was hardly surprising, in the body of the fox she couldn't eat much.

- The best ramen I've ever eaten! - she marveled.

- You say that every time! - the man laughed.

- Looks like you've known each other for a long time. - Hanayama finally interjected.

- Yes, boy, I've known Hanabi since she was a child! She often ran around my sister's cafe in Wakayama.

- I saw Hino-san a couple of months ago. - she said calmly. - You can see that the children took over the business. This isn't what it was anymore.

- Oh girl, you talk like you're my age. - the cook snorted, then added. - But yes ... you are right ...

_______________________________

*otchan - [jap.] uncle, old man; middle-aged man in the Kansai dialect (traditional Japanese: ojisan);

[iarshiastuff]

All in my head

Sometimes i remind myself that life isn't so black and white, as much being analytical in grey be my most comfort zone, i can't help but have feelings which aren't so logical. No i don't do this to impress others who are a tad too emotional?, they are usually discourse poisoned and shallow so i have come to despise them the most. Which is why i wish i didn't have something somewhat common to them, but oh well can't help it la la 🎵 we're all human afterall. If humanity were aware of their every action and look at themselves exactly as they are without any alterations, it wouldn't take long to realize that nothing is obsolute, it's all a silent room where they fill it with their own noise and pretend it came from anywhere but themselves. Nothing is except the way nature intended to be. So many fights, belitteling and shaming done to someone because people think they have the right reasons, but truth is, there are no reasons to be an energy sucking vampire. Perhaps i could look at nature and think that i should not become so worse to someone unless i keep myself protected from them. I realize, i may have forgotten, legit, how most of humankind can be, so i keep looking at my screen and feel disgust at tons of people who i do not know, because the things they say just don't eve feel fake, but fake in a mean spirited way toppled with "i am a good moral person who is making the world a better place", it feels like they are a control freak mostly. But i just wonder "This isn't my world right? Please tell me the world outside the screen is anything but like the screen" the answer may be debatable, but i can give a sigh of relief when i realize that its still not the same. I never knew how sick these people- no, specific-traits-layered-upto-one-trait makes me feel. But humanity isn't ready to embrace its both sides isn't it, you wanna show one side, you show one side, but pretending to be an angel does hurt. No one is inherently a devil either, but we will tear those down who hurt us, as if we are hurting the devil himself. I don't think humans should think they are near to the standards of both A&Ds. I realize, i may have been a peculiar person my whole life, and i am actually proud of it. Yes, from being a smart precocious preteen making philosophies in my room and who could make the older ladies jealous if i wasn't so sheltered; to a teen who can immersely experience the world- different perspectives and being a jewellery ethusiast who can withstand storms - i own all of it, i have experienced being myself in my shoes and and i from the bottom of my heart sincerely do not care to soothe you if this is too much for you. I am not heartless, i very much have the ability to feel sadness (yes, not faking it) for even something which you would least expect me to feel sad for given the way i am. My driver may be abducting people and i wouldn't know, but i'd still treat him with general courtesy. Mom used to warn me and got it clear in my head not to trust a stranger on street, i would look at an evil looking man and think maybe he could kill me, but i minded my business. If something which isn't my business does not sit right with me, i will express my feelings as well as keeping in mind that i cannot control said person, and no poisonous energy will be fed to such person.

[bubblinelovechild]

I honestly didn't expect that last post to get this much traction, I posted it and went back on to Twitter I am used to Tumblr being like an empty void to yell into and just wanted to tell my feelings about something that has made me uncomfortable for a while.

So you can imagine my shock when I came back to a white woman lecturing me on racism and telling me, a black person attending an HBCU and studying for a major in History and a minor in African Diaspora Studies, that I don’t really care about minorities. I understand that you have gotten very comfortable saying a lot of stupid shit unchallenged in this fandom but I am not the one for this bullshit. Luckily for you, I love a good argument so here is the attention you wanted so bad.

I am generally of the belief that there is no such thing as a good racism allegory. I have never seen or heard of a well-executed one and believe that if you want to write racism (or any type of oppression) into your story, you should just do that. I have read and enjoyed fantasy novels with racism in the past (check out the Legendborn series yall), so racism allegories to me just seem like an excuse for writers to capitalize on the oppression of minorities without actually representing them, or their struggle properly. They are also a goldmine for people who lack basic media literacy or basic intelligence like you. 

I understand that people might not like Adam because he is abusive and I take no issue with that. Being uncomfortable with or disliking Adam because of his abusive past with Blake is fine. I am not holding you at gunpoint and making you like him. You can dislike Adam and still acknowledge the flaws in his writing. I noticed that you specifically left out the paragraph where I acknowledged people's feelings towards Adam coming from his canon presentation and then said that does not excuse buying into anti-black rhetoric. I hope that wasn't intentional.

Adams in canon skin tone does not matter, so please stop harping on it. The faunus and their oppression are based on the real-life experience of black people in America, regardless of how he is drawn Adam is allegorically a person of colour, as is Blake and any other faunus in the show. The show's choice to portray multiple faunus as white people is a flaw on the part of the crew but it doesn't take away from my point. If we go by your logic Blake is also white as is the rest of her family, their lecturing a bunch of Faunus about how they brought their oppression upon themselves is not a good look when you consider that. This issue is part of why racism allegories don't work, Adam is depicted as a white man but is contextually a POC, which leads to a lot of confusion in discussion and implications of things the writers might not have meant to. 

I know racism is bad, and I am glad both you and Miles know that as well. I am sorry to tell you that saying racism is bad is the bare minimum. The show's portrayal of racism is incredibly shallow. We are way past the slavery is bad part of the conversation, I am sure that would have been incredibly groundbreaking in 1834. It is clear that the writers had a whole lot of nothing to say about the topic of racism being bad and a lot to say about how much that hate revolutionaries. It is also clear that you have never read a book in your life, I suggest "By Any Means Necessary by Malcom X".

"We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary."

You spent most of your response ignoring my base point, I make it larger so that won't happen again

ADAMS WRITING VERY CLEARLY MIRRORS RACIST STEREOTYPES ABOUT BLACK REVOLUTIONARIES MANY OF THEM FROM AS FAR BACK AS SLAVERY

All the excuses you gave for Adam being a bad person; him being abusive, out for revenge instead of equality, not really caring for his community, being a terrorist, being a faunus supremacist and reverse racist etc are real world arguments used to de legitimise black revolutionaries repeatedly even as recently as the fucking BLM movement. It is especially disrespectful when you remember that the white fang are based on the BPP a group that was successfully shut down by the government using these stereotypes. As many as 12 BPP members are still in jail and many had to flee the country to avoid jail time for "terrorism"

You also ignored my point about people bastardizing the memory of reverend king and how Ghira being a stand in for his ideology is deeply disrespectful btw. MLK beleived in peaceful revolution but he was not a doormat, he understood that violence was often necessary for the revolution and went as far as applying for a gun liscence himself when he felt his family was threatened and in danger. When he was denied he hired armed bodyguards. Ghira's philosphy of subjecting yourself to violence in the name of being one of the good ones is a deeply stupid and racist person's view of MLK is.

The fun thing about people who have this sort of attitude towards Ghira is that I can guarantee you or no one else in RWDE has the guts to actually take part in the specific kinds of acts that the story questions. Are any of you Adam stans going out and kidnapping the family members of CEOs, or burning down businesses owned by racists? Are any of you even doing anything for social causes, other than being offended about white men not being the real heroes of one single story?

Im going to be real with you this disrespectful shit is what prompted me to make this response, you have your head so far up your ass but that confidence only exists because you are sitting behind a screen. You are so godamn condescending talking down who someone who knows more on the subject than you do. I dare you to say this to black person irl so you can get the living shit beat out of you. You are one racist bitch, for the fucking record I do not need to be subjected to violence at the hands of the state to be upset about a white man's racist portrayal of my race. Next time just call me a nigger white man's whore and call it a night you miserable cunt.

In the future keep your dumbass arguments for people who do not know what the fuck they are talking about because that is certainly not me

The RWBY fandoms treatment of Adam makes me very uncomfortable

This is very long sorry I was rambling <3

There’s something really odd about the dedication RWBY fans have to hating Adam. So much so that they’ll admit the writing of the WF is racist but refuse to admit that Adam a member of the white fang also suffered from that racist writing.

There’s this weird dedication to pretending there are no problems with the choices made around Adams character and vilifying literally everyone who tries to talk about it, for the sake of continuing to blindly hate him. The fandom seems to struggle with understanding that the show is fictional and everything that happens in it is a direct choice of its writers. Y’all talk about Adam like he is a real person who has personally offended you irl. Just a huge lack of media literacy tbh.

A white man wrote a civil rights group, that he admittedly based off the black panthers, as the generic bad guys of his shitty anime knockoff and made a central theme of the show the idea that fighting against your oppression violently makes you just as bad if not worse than your oppressors. Then he mad the leader of that group a generic abusive meanie bad guy. Who essentially is what white supremacists think civil rights activist are all the way down to being the fictional equivalent of a black supremacist.

When there was backlash to this he made a knockoff Malcom X and then killed her in her only scene and made a character whose ideology is basically sit down and lick the feet of your oppressors and had the audacity to say he was based off of MLK. How the fuck do you base a character off of somebody without doing basic research on them because contrary to what people seem to believe MLK was not a doormat and this is a conversation for a different day but I’m sick and tired of his memory being weaponised against black people.

What’s worse is that Adam is the only character portrayed as actually doing something to fight racism. Ghira’s faction is only ever seen fighting against other groups. I don’t know if y’all know this but that’s not how the civil rights movement worked. Most of the leaders didn’t agree on methods but they coexisted because the main goal was the liberation of black people and they knew they had to coexist. MLK did not go around calling the cops on revolutionaries he disagreed with.

The problems with Adam and the WF are not separate and cannot be. Most of what’s wrong with the Faunus plot line is the way the show handles Adam. The choices made with his writing cannot be separated from those they made with the WF overall. Adams choice to kill his attackers to keep himself and other Faunus safe, from people literally trying to kill them, is treated the way it is because of the stance they took with WFs writing. When Adam kills a human supremacist trying to kill Ghira you’re supposed to see it as an extreme and the beginning of his turn to evil. Adam isn’t a real person every describe he makes is informed by the white writers of the show. Why would the bias they displayed writing the WF apply to him?

Some of you have been abused and relate to Blake in that sense, a lot of you seem to be projecting your abusers onto Adam. I’m sorry you went through that but you are not excused from buying into racist rhetoric. It’s incredibly uncomfortable as a black person to watch people talk about how “healing” it was for them to watch a civil rights leader admittedly inspired by black people slapped around and killed by two white women. It is anger inducing to watch fans celebrate “queer representation” dancing on the corpse of a monumental disrespect to black people and our history.

RWBY doesn’t even handle abuse well tbh and most of the queer rep is not that great, there are many shows that do it so much better, there is actually no excuse for hanging on to the black people are bad for fighting against racism show.

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Draw your swords

Summary: In order to keep Ravka intact, general Kirgan, the Darkling, must marry. Needless to say, he’s not happy about it, but neither is his bride.

Warnings: indicating smut, slight angst

============================

Standing at the altar, wearing his black kefta, the Darkling grinds his teeth at the closed door at the end of it.

Any moment now, the door will open and his bride will appear as an angel in white. Except, the Darkling preferred to think of her as devil incarnate.

Although her beauty is without faults, her mind is sharp and her tongue can be sweeter than honey, Y/N Y/L/N is everything the Darkling hates.

She's entitled, bratty, arguably manipulative and downright cruel. She's all that and more, at least to him. But the one thing he cannot forgive her for is her lineage. As a daughter of a man he sought to destroy, Y/N became general Zlatan’s bargaining chip.

“You must marry her and she must be included in all decisions concerning Ravka on my behalf, or we will declare independence.”

General Zlatan gave the emperor no room to argue on the matter, forcing the marriage onto them. As the emperor had no male descendants to marry off, the next in line was general Kirigan. And while the Darkling fought the emperor on this instance, he was given no choice – either marry Zlatan’s daughter or someone else will be ascending as a leader of the Second army.

"Is it too late to run?" Ivan turns to Kirigan and Fedyor with a breathless chuckle, earning a dirty look from the official Y/N insisted marries them. She caved on the Palace setting, but no one could bend her will on who it is that seals their marriage contract.

"You promised." Fedyor reminds him and Kirigan closes his eyes, letting out a heavy sigh.

"Maybe some promises are best broken. She'll be the death of Ravka." Licking his lips, the Darkling glances at the door as a faint noise is heard on the other side of the door.

‘Of me’, he thinks to himself, ‘She’ll be the death of me.’

“She is Zlatan’s daughter with no special powers”, Ivan scoffs, “What could she possibly do?”

"I'll make her just as unhappy as I am now. She's never going to love me and I most certainly will never love her," the Darkling huffs, straightening his back as his eyes narrow at the door. “Unhappy women are always dangerous.” He pauses, pursing his lips, “Even if they are just human.”

"You said this is a business deal, so think of it as such." Ivan raises an eyebrow, wondering why is love even on Kirigan’s mind. In all his time serving his general, Ivan never heard the word pass his lips before now.

"I will”, the Darkling rolls his tongue, focusing on Ivan and Fedyor again. "Tell me you’d fight with me to preserve Ravka if I walk away."

"Do whatever you want, but you better be fast because your bride is coming", Fedyor nods toward the grand opening of the grandiose door, revealing a vision in white and the veil covering her face.

"Fuck", the Darkling mutters under his breath, his heart jumping at the sight.

He watched her walk, his nerves gnawing away at him and all he could think about is why his heart is beating so fast. Why would he be nervous? She should be the one drowning in nerves instead of walking so confidently. Why is she not afraid of him?

Folding his shaky hands behind his back, the Darkling could have sworn every step she took closer made his heart drop further in his chest. It was only a matter of time before he had nothing left but to accept his destiny and take an ordinary woman such as Y/N as his bride. Oddly enough, he found comfort in her mortality. She would die eventually and he’ll be free of her. If she angers him or her father stirs up trouble, he’d make sure he’ll be free much sooner.

Finally in front of him, Y/N holds her breath as the Darkling reluctantly pulls the veil up, revealing her face.

When she first met him, it was on a field of scattered, mangled bodies. He looked at the sky like a man would look at a withered flower in which he no longer sees the beauty he plucked it for, thus destroying it.

And when he looked at her, Y/N forgot to breathe.

There are no traces of doubt, no evidence this isn't the happiest day of her life. If anything, the Darkling is in awe of her and her ability to maintain composure without showing the slightest inkling of her disdain for him. He’s looking for a weakness, studying her in order to find something, anything he could use to make her submit to him, but she’s not flinching. Her stare is unyielding, fierce, and she is unbowed, like a rose in the eye of a hurricane.

"You should have worn the white kefta. Black is for funerals", she notes, her voice low and cold and the Darkling can't help but scoff.

“Black is my color. Besides”, he leans in, pressing his lips against her cheek before whispering, "It is a funeral."

While the crowd whispered and awed over the little exchange, Y/N's lips twitched into a brief smile. Reaching out for his hand, she tilts her head to her left, hiding her face with the veil as she scowls at him.

The ceremony begins, but neither the Darkling nor Y/N can truly focus on a single word said. Y/N is busy wondering what she could do best to make his life hell. This isn’t exactly what she had in mind for her future either and being exchanged like a broodmare to delay a war is unforgivable. She couldn’t forgive her father for giving her over to a known monster, nor could she forgive her seconds-to-be husband.

He is cruel, manipulative, a beast hidden under a handsome built and he may be appealing to the eye, but she can feel he’s rotten inside.

The Darkling’s eyes are fixed on her, examining every single inch of her rather small sized body. Though her curves are undeniable, her height would leave him with a craned neck and back pain in the future. Inhaling sharply, he tried to understand why his thoughts of all the things he hates about her include ripping that wedding dress straight off her. She looks far too appealing in a dress for him to ignore and it sparks a fire to further fuel the flames of hate he’s tended to.

Either way, quicker than imagined, the Darkling found himself saying "I do", forcing a smile that matched the one she displayed. Unlike his cold smile that didn't reach his eyes, Y/N was capable of making her smile believable, enough for him to envy her acting skills.

"You may kiss the bride."

Licking his lips, Kirigan's eyes flicker to Y/N's lips. He never kissed her before, the human who perfectly portrayed an ice queen. It would be a lie if he said kissing her never crossed his mind, but it didn't feel like he'd willingly do so even if he had a chance. He didn’t desire her at all. He refused to allow himself as much.

Y/N glanced at the crowd, seeing their little whispers about how long Kirigan is taking and how they pity her for marrying someone like him – a dark shadow, an abomination even in their world.

She felt a shuddered breath pass her lips as Kirigan leaned into her, torturously slow and the worst part? He smells good, intoxicating kind of good. And whether she liked it or not, her heart fluttered as his lips grazed hers and his hand cupped her cheek.

The Darkling's heart quivered, his mind overflowing with frustration. He couldn't comply and kiss her wholeheartedly, but he found himself wanting to turn her over, to have his way with her.

She's infuriating, unlawfully cocky and unjustly stunning. No wonder hell is where most mankind would go considering the beauty of its tempting demons that poise as naïve angels.

Snapping out of the daze, she pulls back first, whispering against his lips. "Hope you enjoyed it, because it will be the last time you’ll ever taste my lips in your lifetime."

Blinking slow, the Darkling smirked, genuinely entertained. "We will see about that", and he took her words as a personal challenge. 

He would melt the ice queen and have her on her knees, begging for his love before the year is done. He will demean Zlatan by turning his own daughter against him and he will do so with pleasure.

Part two

[yesimwriting]

All The Good Dreams

A/n this one is based on a request from @ateliefloresdaprimavera who requested a fic where General Kirigan has been dreaming of the reader for as long as he can remember and that’s one of his few reasons to smile and the reader has been having the same kinds of dreams about him and when they meet they just know. 

This one is being written in third person bc it’s the only way I can see this fic being done but I’m a little insecure about writing in third person so be gentle lol

Also a little personal update I’ve been working on my original novel and it’s coming together y’all!!

--

ALEKSANDER. 

The morning sunlight seems to only come to take her from him, peaking through the curtains and stirring him awake and away from his dreams. Aleksander keeps his eyes closed for a moment longer, trying to will her features to remain in his mind. She had looked more angelic in last night’s dream, dressed in all white and watching him with an adoration he doubted real life could duplicate. 

The girl has haunted his dreams like a ghost of promise since before he began to change the world. Since before anything in his life was solidified. He lets out a sigh, something similar to a smile playing at his lips. Thinking of her would not bring her to him, if he could manifest her, she’d be by his side right now. He has things to do, duties and obligations that will bring his final goal closer. Each day is a step closer to victory, and each night brings the promise of dreams. The promise of her. 

--

Y/N.

“Y/n.” The voice is gentle and distant. “Y/n,” a little harsher. “Wake up, you’ll be late.” 

Fighting against grogginess, y/n wakes up, eyes squinting open. “What time is it, Danna?” 

“Late.” Danna’s reply is curt as she steps away from y/n’s cot. “I thought you were awake already and then I came in to look for my boots and you were still asleep with that ridiculously peaceful look.” Danna paces around the room. “You must have been dreaming of your prince again?” 

Y/n feels her skin warm. “He’s not a prince!” It’s a weak defense. “I regret telling you that almost every time I dream I see the same man.” 

Danna drops down, grabbing her worn boots and pulling them on quickly. “You’re making me believe in soulmates, l/n.” 

Y/n rolls her eyes, sitting up and placing her feet on the ground at her own leisure. “It’s nothing like that--I’m not even sure he exists.” 

Lacing her shoes, Danna narrows her eyes at y/n. “Sure.” Y/n opens her mouth to protest, but Danna beats her to it, “If you need to argue with me, do it while getting dressed, we can’t be late today--General Kirigan’s visiting this camp for the first time and I doubt he’d appreciate being interrupted by a non-Grisha medic.” 

At that, y/n wrinkles her nose, but she stands anyway. “Ugh...Grisha.” She walks towards her uniform. “They can get away with anything and I hear Kirigan’s the worst of all of them because he’s in the same order as the Black Heretic that began all of this.” Y/n pauses, crossing her arms. “And it’s ridiculous that the army even needs non-Grisha medics. Healers exist and they should not be primarily reserved for other Grisha who rarely get injured, especially to the extent that the rest of us do.” 

“I know, y/n, but don’t speak like that until the General is gone.” Danna draws her lips into a thin line. “And hurry up before you get us both in trouble.” 

Y/n lets out a sigh. “Go ahead without me, I’ll catch up.”

Danna eyes her friend wearily. “Alright, worse comes to worse I’ll try to cover for you.” 

“You won’t need to.” Y/n isn’t sure she believes herself. “I’ll be there.” 

Danna pulls on her second boot, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t really believe you.” She stands easily. “But knowing you, you’ll talk yourself out of any trouble the way you always do.” 

“I do not always talk myself out of trouble.” 

Turning to leave, Danna pauses, “Whatever you need to tell yourself.” 

Y/n rolls her eyes. If she had more time to argue with Danna she would take it. But she doesn’t. She’s quick to get dressed, thoughts of the mysterious stranger from her dreams keeping her company. Last night he seemed more tired than normal, a crease between his dark eyebrows as he sat by her side. A part of her she keeps buried worries about him. It’s ridiculous, to concern yourself over a figment of comfort your mind created for you. 

By the time y/n’s changed, she knows she doesn’t have much time to get to her station. She’s rushing out of her tent, one boot still untied. The medic bag she slings over her shoulder swings as she jogs towards the medical tent. Today the camp is hectic, everyone desiring to appear efficient and reliable for General Kirigan. It’s all ridiculous to Y/n. General Kirigan will never be impressed by them. If he’s revered even among Grisha, Y/n can’t imagine the superiority complex that man must possess.

Her eyes scan the soldiers and workers she knows so well, each of them behaving so differently than normal. There is no friendly chatter this morning, no casual banter. There is only the business of war. 

Y/n watches the people she knows, so focused on their nerves that she barely registers the person she crashes into. “Sorry!” The apology leaves Y/n on instinct.  Her bag falls off her shoulder, gauze and antiseptic falling onto the ground on impact. Y/n bends down instantly, beginning to pick up her supplies. She mentally curses herself for being so easily distracted and not properly shutting her bag this morning. “Everything’s so hectic today and I was running late and I just--I have no idea how I didn’t see you.” She drops her supplies back into her bag. “I guess it’s a good thing they keep me off the battlefield and in the medical tents.” 

Reaching for the last of her supplies, Y/n’s eyes land on the shoes of the person she just crashed into. They’re leather. The fine kind of leather meant for marble halls, not trekking through the unknown. Y/n’s mouth goes dry as the possibility of the graveness of her mistake sets in her mind. She exhales slowly, daring to look upwards as she closes her bag. 

When her eyes meet those of the stranger, she is left with no choice but to gape. She’s not staring because she’s now at the mercy of General Kirigan. She’s not staring because nothing could have prepared her for his beauty. She’s staring because she knows that face. She knows those sharp features and steady eyes.

His lips are slightly parted. Y/n is struck with the odd thought that perhaps he too has words wedged into his throat. 

“It’s you.” The whisper leaves her faintly. 

The words seem to unfreeze Kirigan, his expression moving from shocked to stoic. “Excuse me?” 

Awkward regret floods through Y/n. She drops her head downwards, desperate to escape the power of his gaze. “General Kirigan.” She uses her words as a way to dismiss the emotions her chest seems to be brimming with as she stands. He’s not the man from her dreams. That’s impossible. “I apologize for my inappropriate behavior an--” 

“No, no,” he shakes his head once. Y/n bites her tongue at his dismissal. “You said ‘it’s you.’”

Embarrassment knots her stomach. “I just hadn’t realized that I ran into you, General. I--I knew you were coming today, but I wasn’t expecting to see you much less like this.” 

Kirigan’s eyes seem to be nothing more than inviting pools of kindling emotion. So familiar yet so distinct. He can’t be the man from her dreams. The man from her dreams must be nothing more than a composition of traits she finds generally attractive. General Kirigan just happens to possess those features. That explanation is the only thing that keeps Y/n’s feet rooted to the ground, but the longer she looks at him the more that explanation loses its strength. There’s just something so knowing behind his expression, so specific to the face that she’s only seen while asleep. 

Tearing his gaze away to scan the area, Kirigan reaches forward, placing a hand on Y/n’s arm. The touch leaves Y/n warmer than it should. Maybe that’s why she lets him lead her forward, ducking into an empty medical tent. She keeps hold of her bag as he turns, his eyes full of something dark and unknown. But not angry, Y/n notes, no, not angry. The look is too peaceful for rage, perhaps even hopeful. 

“When you looked at me…” He exhales, voice low and sacred, “You said ‘it’s you’.” Y/n can only blink, still mesmerized by something so foreign and familiar all at once. “Do you know me?” 

In his urgency, Kirigan’s hold on Y/n’s arm becomes more assured. Something in Y/n wants to pry herself free in order to prove to herself that she’s capable of resisting his drawl. But his touch is not to trap her, the look in his eyes tells her that. His touch is pleading--desperate and hopeful. 

“Everyone knows you,” when Y/n finally finds her voice, she is not convinced it is her own. 

The corners of Kirigan’s mouth fall downwards, something in him threatening to deflate. “I meant--have you seen me before?” The question is not one Y/n is too willing to answer. How could she tell this strange man, this general she was convinced she’d dislike on some fundamental level while never speaking to him, that she knows him? She knows him like she knows her own beginning. “Because I’ve seen you.” 

Y/n can’t help the way her eyes widen. This doesn’t mean anything, she warns herself, he could have seen her walking. “I didn’t see you, that--that’s why I ran into you--” 

“No, you’re avoiding the question.” Her face is warmer than it was when Danna was teasing her this morning. It’s warmer than it’s ever been. “Because you’ve experienced it as well.” 

The swelling in her chest is overwhelming. “Experienced what?” 

Kirigan eyes the entrance to the tent once more, confirming that no one is approaching. “All of the good dreams,” he exhales, “They have been of you.” 

Y/n can’t help the way everything in her melts. She’s not insane. She’s not projecting something dangerous onto the Shadow Summoner. “I see you in my dreams always.” 

Slowly, he releases his grip on her arm. Watching her like she might be a mirage, Kirigan raises his hand, brushing his knuckles along Y/n’s cheek. She lets him, holding her breath until his hand falls back to his side. A part of Kirigan expected the girl to be a trick of the light, something that his touch would reveal to be a fallacy. But she remains true, watching him with eyes the size of saucers. 

“How long I’ve been waiting for you, you’ll never know.” His voice is as heavy as a lament. 

Y/n feels her back straighten slightly on instinct, desperate to pass whatever scrutiny is being passed over her. “How--how does this happen? How do two strangers dream of each other for so long and...” 

Something knowing colors his smile a shade of ambitious green. “What is your name?” 

“Y/n.” 

Kirigan’s minds flit through lifetimes worth of faint memories. The girl laughing, the girl teary eyed, the girl embodying all the stars he’ll never have, the girl representing all he needs. Y/n. There’s finally a name to her. 

“Y/n,” the name is a gift. Kirigan pulls a ring from his fingers before grabbing Y/n’s arm. Too lost in a strange euphoria, she lets him pull her arm forward before pressing his ring into her skin. Her brow furrows as he begins to guide the metal down her skin. That slight confusion quickly turns to total shock as a thread of light begins to spindle down her skin, following the path he’s creating with the ring. “You and I are going to change the world.” 

--

General Taglist: @theincredibledeadlyviper @grishaverse7 @lonelystarship @mentally-in-northern-italy @uhanddreag @kaitlyn2907

[thefanbasewhore]

Retirement.

Summary: Blood is something Bucky has grown used to but when he's covered in yours, he's sick. Don't worry, happy ending!!

Warning/Content: almost death, getting shot in the head, Bucky cries but finally gets everything he deserves 😅

Paring: Bucky Barnes x female reader

Bucky Barnes tag list and master list

"Buck -" The rasp comes from the piece in his ear, he barely hears it as bullets that wiz past the surface of his head and bounce off the ground. He's out of breath, gasping as he find shelter behind an abandoned car, pressing the piece closer.

"What is it? Did you get in?" He pauses, "We need those files."

"Buck, he has a gun, he has me. Compromised." His heart is already unsteady and those words only make it beat faster. A pit forming in his stomach instead, he hears a male voice in the background.

"Who has a gun?" The silence makes his brows crease, heart drop as his voice cracks. "Answer me!"

"He wants to know where you are and what files you want." Bucky let's out a breath he didn't even realize he was holding at the sound of your voice.

"Tell him, give him the drive." There's no hesitation in his voice. There nothing in this world he wouldn't do to save you, nothing else mattered. Not the mission and definitely not the data.

But you know this, he's hard headed but instead of listening to Bucky you decide to test the waters. Looking up at the man which isn't hard, he has you on your knees, hands out in front of you but a gun inches from your head. "He said fuck off, if you shoot me you'll never know."

"What are you doing? Give him the drive, now." The growl that emphasizes the last word would usually be enough to have you shaking, but you don't give. Despite how rough he sounds, he tries to soften it "That's an order, give it to him sweetheart."

"Oh, he said fuck off again."

Bucky body runs hot, adrenaline pumping through his veins, warming his entire body as makes a b-line for the building you disappeared into a short while ago. "Give him the fucking drive."

It's useless, he hears rustling and talking but nothing he can understand but that's until he hears you talk to fast he can barely understand. "Office, we are in the first office second floor."

It's music to his ears, a second of relief but he feels dizzy as the found of a gun going off through the comlink almost paralyzes him.

"Fuck!" He yells, as he calls your name repetitively but there is no answer.

Nothing can stop him, he's running so fast he can barely register. It's all a blur, up the stairs through the main office until the stench of blood greets him.

There you are, lifeless and surrounded by your own blood.

His hands grasp gently grasping your head, blood seeping through his gapped fingers as good heart drops. "No..no." he mumbles to himself, managing to turn you over. It's hard to breath, he can't even think, see over the tears that blue his vision. A large lump forming in his mouth, it seals his throat.

There's too much blood to see anything, it soaks your scalp and mats into the hair around it. His fingers blindly look around for an exit wound but nothing is there, instead his focus falls to the rise and fall of your chest, still breathing.

Eyelashes flicker again cheekbones, disoriented and confused as Bucky let's out a sign of relief while you crunch your nose together in pain. He takes a second, just one to lay his head on top of yours and thank anything - anyone.

"Where does it hurt? I can't see, your bleeding too much baby.." Bucky watches as your eyes flicker from his steel blues and your hand reaches up to run a knuckle again his jaw, feeling the course fine hairs there. "Hey, listen to me, where does it hurt?"

Following the path of your shaky fingers he lets out a sigh of relief, the bullet managed to just graze the side of your head. The spot is hot under his trembling plam, beginning to scab and the hair is ripped away but he feels so thankful in that moment.

"He missed." It's not funny but both of you can't help but laugh as your sense of mind is returning. Hues of yellow and blue already forming under both of your eyes, no doubt from the head trauma.Bucky feels one of your hands push against his chest which he responds by tightening his core.

"Get off, I'm fine."

The look he gives you is filled with annoyance, eyes widening as if he can't believe the words that came out of your mouth, especially since his pants are wet and sticky seeing he is actually kneeling in a pool of blood.

"Are you crazy? You will bleed out." Bucky is quick to rip a piece of material from a nearby blanket, wrapping it tightly around your head but keeps pressure with his palm. "You need to get stitched up before you bleed out."

"I'm fine." Trying to push him away again but the look he gives is warning enough so you don't fight him as one arm slip underneath your knees, and then other supports your head against his chest.

"Scared me." Is all he manages to mumble as he starts his ascend towards stairs, a small kiss pressed against the uninjured part of your head. It's gentle, filled with so many words as his lips linger there, more so to reinsure that the skin is warm, full of color and lively. "Don't ever do that again, please."

"Bucky I couldn't just give it to them." Something is placed into his coat pocket while you tap it with a small smile. Hooded eyes weak, threatening to close with every passing second. "So I didn't, it's safe, the morons didn't even bother to search me."

Great, the mission is still ago but he's frowning. "I don't care about the mission. I care about you risking your life for some file, you disobeyed my orders I told you to give it to them and to tell them. If that bullet was an inch closer you would have died."

Silence feel over the pair, nothing else to be said because Bucky was right. The agreement was Bucky was in charge, in order for you to come everything would be up to him, especially because you weren't supposed to be there in the first place.

"I'm sorry, Buck." Guilt creeping over, pressing a small kiss to the underside of his jaw. Small tears beginning to blur vision but you're not sure if it's from the look of disappointed and fear that line his handsome features or that fact that you were that close to death and blood is soaking threw the make shift bandage and trailing down the side of your head. "I should have listened."

"I need a medic." Bucky brings his wrist to his lips before laying his cheek against the top of your own. The heavy, swish of air from the helicopter does little to him, he still stands confident and strong as he speaks.

"Don't cry, doll. I'm not mad, I promise." He pauses but you can feel his hands trembling, heart pounding inside of his chest. "Just scared, I'm covered in your blood and i hate it."

***

He was right, from head to toe, smeared across his face and dying his hands pink even after scrubbing them effortlessly in the shower does little to get it off. The smell of your blood is still fresh, enough to crinkle his nose with distaste. Every time he looks down it's a reminder that he almost lost you.

When he enters the bedroom with a towel around his waist you look up, head still spinning but now the wound is stitched up, white bandages knotted behind your head. After the initial shock left your system you notice the side affects, right below where the bullet grazed, your right ear is ringing. You can hear anything and honestly, the doctors couldn't give a definite answer if it will ever come back.

"How your head, did the medicine start working yet?" Bucky asks, throwing on a pair on underwear and doesn't bother with anything else.

With a defeat huff you shake your head, squeezing your eyes shut as the bright light of the bathroom hurts. Bucky notices and shuts it off before curling up into the bed, legs entangling with your own as he presses a soft kiss against your neck.

A few more soft ones pressed against your cheeks, the warmth gathering the few tears that slip from your eyes. A hand runs through the soft strands of the involved side of your head, a soft hum of comfort vibrates against it. "Shhhh, it's going to be okay sweetheart."

As the underside of his hand comes back up to comfort you the pink hue catches his attention once again and a frown fills his features.

"I don't want to say this..." his words are rushed and desperate but he can't keep it in any longer. "Every time I close my eyes I see you there, in your own blood. I can't shake the feeling of your blood oozing through my fingers."

Bucky is never one to hold his partner back and to be honest he thinks you're one of the best agents he's ever met, skilled and smart but none of that will matter if you are dead. "I don't want you going on active missions anymore."

"You don't get to decide that." You argue, he fears the worse as your head moves from his hand, no longer seeking the comfort. "You can't do that."

"I need piece of mind, you're the only person I have left." He argues. The bright moon creates just enough light to illuminate one side of your face through the window. Eyes are black and blue and red shot, a popped vessel on the corner of your right eyes almost swells it shit. They're also puffy, no doubt from the wound and all the crying. In pain, agonizing pain, who knew getting shot in the head would give you such a bad headache? His soft hands find you again, pulling you close and gently for you face him.

One hand slides over the skin of the back of your arm, squeezing the muscle there as he presses an experimental kiss against your lips in fear you'll pull away. You couldn't if you tried, pull away that is. The smell of his soap overrides any other sense, his skin is soft and warm, his lips gentle as he strokes your hairline, pushing the hair away from your forehead. "I didn't say you have to stop, just be more careful about it, no more active missions but you can go after, make the arrests, still get in on the action."

"So let everyone else do the hard work while I sit on the sidelines? That not who I am."

"Please." He sounds desperate, blue eyes roaming over the soft features of your face, the wrinkle of irritation pinching lines between your forehead, the curve of your nose to the fullness of your lips. Beautiful, breathtaking, he's never loved something so much before. The fact that you're still laying next to him, breathing makes him want to cry.

So he does, unwanted tears fall in a messy, zig-zagged pattern as he hiccups. A soft, small hand finds his head, the buzz cut smooth under finger-tips.

"Bucky, baby.."

"I have lost everyone. My parents, my friends... Steve. I don't want to loose you either." A sound so sad, choked up and stuttering jumps his chest as he cries into your neck.

It's long over due, he refuses to speak about it. The last year of his life as been challenging to say the least, he's trying to adapt but struggling. Coming to terms of what he's done over the last 70 years but also learning how to love again, how to become human again.

Steve still haunts his dreams, his best friend, the man who saved him from Hydra, from everything is now gone. The one person who has been constant, his backbone but now he's finding that in you and honestly, his heart cant take much more.

"It's alright Buck, I'm not leaving you. I promise, I'm right here." It doesn't help, his heart his burning, chest crushing under the pressure of tears. The ball of emotion and growing and growing in the back of his throat, making it hard to speak. "You can't leave me.. you can't."

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm okay."

"You're not okay, you can barely keep your eyes open. You have a gun shot wound in the side of your head! I felt it, your blood stains my hands. It's all I can smell. I thought you were dead... I can't take it."

What If he didn't miss? If Bucky had found you lifeless and cold?

"It's okay." You rub soothing circles to the middle of back, letting him cry it out. He needs it, he needs to talk about his problems, grow from them.

"What If we both stop?" Bucky's words silence you, "No more missions, we find a home, settle down. Just me and you."

The thought had crossed your mind more than once, a peaceful place to call your own with the man you love. Who knows what would happen? There's no doubt the pair of you would be bored out of your minds but can also gets jobs to fill the void, teach self defense classes.. start a family.

The thought alone makes your heart pound, so filled with love. "I want a normal life.. it's all I ever wanted. I can't imagine it with anyone else but I also need you safe. We can...." He's hesitant, not sure if they're the right words. "We can get married, get a home.. leave all this behind."

It's all so much, his words mix with the ache in the side of your skull but you don't need to think twice. The promise of Bucky forever is impossible to pass up on. "Yes."

"Yes to what?" Bucky's breathing is normal now, a few stray tears soaking your skin but his chest doesn't move. Like he's not breathing because he'll miss the words you say.

"All of it, to being your wife, to starting a normal life with you." After everything Bucky has been through, it's the least he deserves and you're going to give it to him. As his smile grows against your skin, you're breathless. Heart beating rapidly against his own and you swear you fall in love all over again.

[wandaromanova]

Left Behind

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader

Warnings: cussing, death

A/N: hi! this was a request! hope you guys like this one! y’all can blame @midgardianweasley for this one. happy reading <3

anon requested: Natasha x fem! reader. Reader and Natasha were in a building on fire trying to get citizens out and a wooden beam lands on reader. It’s too heavy for Natasha to lift it but won’t give up. Reader is screaming for Natasha to go! Giving her a smile that everything will be okay! A fireman then pulls Natasha out of the building against her will seeing the whole building collapse in reader.

Summary: Natasha and Y/N go on a mission, but don’t make it back together.

Word Count: 1.6K

| masterlist | request rules/guidelines | wips |

please do not repost or try and take ownership of my work. reblogs, likes, and comments are always welcome. <3

You were an Avenger just like your girlfriend; Natasha. You had met the redhead when you first joined the team.

You were one of the highest-ranked S.H.I.E.L.D agents and Fury had decided to recruit you into the team of heroes. You had heard many stories about the Black Widow and to say you were a fan was an understatement.

You had an immense amount of respect for Natasha. Her past wasn’t a great one, but she turned her life around and made it beautiful. She didn’t let her mistakes define who she was and you admired that.

The assassin had taken a liking to you. You guys immediately hit it off. About six months after your arrival, you began dating Natasha.

Natasha’s room became yours too. You’d spend your nights laid on top of the redhead as she stroked your hair gently. You’d close your eyes and ask her to say anything because the sound of her voice was your favorite.

She’d sing Russian lullabies to you. You were the only person she’d ever let hear her sing. She said she was a terrible singer and not letting anyone hear her was a gift, but she was actually amazing at it.

Her husky voice sent chills down your spine whenever she would speak. So when she sang to you in Russian? You were speechless.

You felt blessed to know that Natasha was truly herself in your presence. No one had ever seen her true colors, until you.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

You were the person that Natasha went to for everything.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Exhausted after a long mission? She’d run into your arms as soon as she’d land. Steve and Tony annoying the fuck out of her? She’d rant to you about how small their brains were.

Devastated after a mission had gone wrong? She’d find comfort in your presence and your words. You’d whisper soft reassurances against her ear as you’d rock your bodies side-to-side.

Receiving good news? You’d be the very first person she’d tell as the excitement took over her. You’d match her energy, feeling just as excited as her, if not more. Natasha would beam as you’d press a soft kiss to the crown of her head, mumbling an ‘i’m so proud of you’ against her scalp.

You were Natasha’s person and she was yours. You genuinely believed you were made for one another. From the way your hands fit like two pieces of a puzzle with one another, to the way your thoughts and ideas seemed to always align. You guys just got each other in a way no one else could.

So, naturally, you were always assigned partners on missions. You two had the best communication on the team which led to tons of successful missions. However, communication couldn’t prevent nor predict the surprises of enemies.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

You and Natasha were sent undercover to a gala being held by one of the leaders of Hydra.

The goal was to capture him for questioning and keep him in custody. That should be easy, considering there was booze everywhere and everyone was either tipsy or black-out drunk.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Well yes, it would’ve been easy; if your cover hadn’t been blown.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

You were currently sat on the target’s lap as he not so subtly stared at your cleavage. You were with him in a private area further into the party, while Natasha remained in the public area.

The drunk man looked up at you and you smiled down at him; trying your best to hide your disgust. However, he didn’t smile back at you.

You were caught off guard when he abruptly shoved you off of his lap, your body colliding with the marble floor.

“You’re an Avenger. You bitch!” You quickly stood up at his words and attacked him. You spoke into your earpiece while fighting off the man.

“Nat, our cover has been blown. I need backup.” You said as the man landed a heavy punch onto your abdomen. You stumbled back and he took the opportunity to rush out of the room.

“взорвать это место, сейчас! (blow the place up, now!)”

Your eyes widened at his words. Before you could rush out of the room yourself, an explosion pushed you back. Your body collided with a wall and you let out a scream of agony as a beam from the ceiling landed on top of you.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

The sounds of screams and the fire alarms accompanied the ringing in your ears. Your only thoughts being; your pain and Natasha.

She had been on her way over here before the bomb went off. Was she okay? Did she get hit by the force of the bomb? Was she gone?

You tried your best to lift the beam off of your body, but to no avail. You realized that a piece of metal that had been sticking out of the beam had lodged itself into your chest.

Your eyes tore away from the beam on top of you and landed on red locks. Natasha stumbled into the room; or at least, what was left of it anyway. She paused in her tracks at your state.

Tears threatened to fall from her eyes as her hands shot up to cover her mouth, a muffled gasp escaping her throat. She quickly got it together and rushed over to help you.

Nat got down on her knees, not caring about how harsh the rubble was against her bare skin. She moved to lift the beam, but you stopped her.

“Natty, no. If you lift it, I’ll bleed out.” You sent her a small smile before you began to cough. Natasha’s heart sunk to her stomach at the sight of blood pouring out of your mouth.

“I have to get you out of here, babe. We have a movie night planned, I have to make sure that still happens.” Nat tried to joke in an attempt to console you, but it was more to control her own fear than anything.

Your conversation was interrupted by the sound of another explosion. The building quaked as flames began to invade the room. She needed to go; now.

You shook your hand that was sticking out from the beam slightly. Nat got the message and held your hand with both of hers tightly.

“You need to leave, honey. This place is going to collapse any minute now.” You croaked out, ignoring the metallic taste in your mouth.

“I’ll be damned if I leave you behind. If you’re going down, I’m going down with you.” You couldn’t help but smile as you took in every inch of Nat’s face.

She was absolutely beautiful. Even with the dust and dirt littering her face and her worried expression; she was still the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen.

The flames began to rage. The smoke was beginning to cloud your vision of the woman in front of you. You rubbed one of her hands with the back of your thumb, not minding the pain that accompanied the action.

“Go. Now. It’s okay. I love you so much and you aren’t leaving me behind; you never would and I- I know that.”

You stuttered towards the end of the sentence as you were overcome by an intense chill. You were losing so much blood and it wasn’t going to be long now before you were gone.

Your eyes drifted towards a figure entering the room. A firefighter. His eyes widened as he noticed both of you. He rushed over to help you, but you stopped him.

“Hey buddy, I’m a goner regardless if you get this off of me or not. Get her out of here. You can’t save me, but you can save her.”

You managed to let out as another fit of coughs shook your body. More crimson liquid spilled out of your mouth and Natasha finally let her tears fall.

The man nodded solemnly before he grabbed Natasha by the waist. She struggled against his hold as she kicked and screamed; her arms reaching out for you.

“No! No! Please let me stay! I can’t leave you! You can’t leave me!” Natasha’s words paired with her tone of agony and desperation tore your heart apart.

All you could do was smile lovingly at her as you slowly felt the life leave your body. She was going to be okay eventually and that’s all you wanted for her.

“I love you, moya lyubov (my love). It’s okay. Take care of yourself.”

You spoke quietly, but it was loud enough for Natasha to hear. She watched as the bright light that once filled your irises turned to a blank stare.

Natasha fought even harder against the man’s firm grip as she sobbed out. He had finally managed to get the both of them out of the room and out of the building. This all happened in the span of a few minutes, but to Natasha, it felt like an eternity.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

The firefighter placed Nat down once they were a good distance away from the building. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she ran towards the building, but before she could make it back in; the entire structure collapsed.

Natasha’s knees roughly hit the floor as she took in the sight. The building that you were in was nothing but broken concrete and rubble. You were buried beneath all of that carnage.

Natasha sobbed without care. She couldn’t give two fucks if people were staring at her with pity or sympathy. She had just lost the love of her life.

Natasha couldn’t help but blame herself. If she had gotten to the room sooner, she could’ve gotten the both of you out of there. You wouldn’t have been crushed by a beam.

She wouldn’t have had to watch as you bled out. She wouldn’t have had to witness firsthand; as the soul she had fallen in love with left the world.

Natasha cried out into the night. The chaos going on around her turned to white noise. Her surroundings were in slow motion as she mourned.

Each tear that fell from her eyes represented each obliterated possibility of a future with the woman she loved.

Each scream that left her mouth served as curses to every higher power there was, for so cruelly taking the love of her life; you.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

───────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────────

join my taglist!

taglist: @midgardianweasley @mindofwesley @d14n4ol @marrymemcgrath @marvelwomen-simp @fayhar @ymzki-haruki @peggycarter-steverogers @unstable-sapphic-hoe @q-hearts @hallecarey1 @blackbird06 @prentisshoe @tquick99 @levram @romanovaslut @madamevirgo @hopendeath @romanoffprint @hagridsmomma @mrsromanoff @mrs-avenger3000 @acertainredhead @b-5by5 @lauraageorgiaa @peterbparkersbae @walter-boswell428 @miricalebev @kozumeeekoi @mrs-scottmccall @ywuen @weelight @pattypavo @simpforwandanat @marvelxfandoms @kayla-25 @thewidowsghost @sapphic-stress @looseheartedlady @thewryter @lesbihoenestt @mmmmokdok @mcubreakdown101 @fishyandco @alexajbitar @ilovemarvelwomen @blackwidowismylove @imasimpfornatashamaximoff @iblameitonclint

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[lovenona]

ON THE SACRED BONDS OF BROTHERHOOD.

synopsis; choso may be their beloved frat brother, but he’ll always be your brother first. (for the frat au collab.) 

pairing; frat boy! choso x f! reader

contains; stepcest, dubcon (reader is under the influence but having a good time), extensive descriptions of knife play and blood play, marking (choso carves his name into you), oral (f! receiving), borderline yandere/possessive choso (he loves you A Lot), choso goes from mean to Soft, consumption and romanticization of drugs and alcohol, (1) use of ‘angel’, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns, this is essentially all foreplay and ends before the fucking because i got tired, minors do not interact or perish

word count; 6.5k

the yard outside is clean, well-kept. there’s talk that the house’s landlord is a retired gardener who receives great joy from keeping up the hydrangeas and peonies along the sidewalk. it’s certainly award-winning, that front yard, with its colorful blossoms and plush bees circling the mailbox. 

they’re so lucky, students bemoan on their way to and from class. i can’t believe the frat boys get to live there. i bet they don’t even know how lucky they are.

it’s a seemingly kind house from the outside – recently renovated with navy blue paint and white trimming, a large front porch and a few inviting windows. the place that omega lambda now calls home is, simply put, a dream. it sits just a few minutes from campus and it tells the street proudly, fondly, that there is no better place to be than here.

it’s true, in some respects, that omega lambda likes to see themselves as above the sweat and grime of their fellow frat brothers. they don’t spend their weekends “fucking and drinking” and tracking dirt across the carpet like animals. their fun is calm, refined: to be invited to a night with omega lambda means a night of smoke curling into the air, of gossip over olive-colored couches, of pills under tongues, of ease and relaxation.

it’s slower than the others, they say in the back of monday morning lectures, but no less extreme, no matter what those boys try and tell you.

i think i was tripping for days, the girl from psychology 101 boasted. whatever the fuck yuuji gets is strong. 

such stories amaze you: and even as you stand on the sidewalk outside the perfect blue house, petunias curling inward with the evening breeze, you cannot believe they are real. it’s hard to imagine the face of your beloved stepbrother tied to these antics. it’s hard to imagine that the boy who used to come home every winter and summer with bloodshot eyes and a beat-up skateboard also swore a loyal, unbreakable oath of brotherhood to a band of boys you’ve never met. 

it’s hard to imagine that your own stepbrother, choso, the one who taught you how to ride a bike and how to apply eyeliner and how to kiss without teeth, quite literally runs what has been dubbed the chillest fraternity on campus.

but yet, here you are, new to university, fresh-faced and eager, cowering outside the door of the omega lambda residence. your favorite skirt hovers around your thighs and you tug at the collar of your shirt, fiddle with the charm of the necklace choso gave you for your birthday a few years ago. 

he’d invited you here almost immediately after learning that you and your roommate had tried your hand at partying with beta pi epsilon. naoya is trash, choso’s fervent texts read the next morning. absolute dick – don’t trust him. come hang out with us instead. he’d attached the address of the blue house along with a reminder to have a snack and take some medicine for your godforsaken hangover. 

the message had taken you a little by surprise. choso’s always been sweet to you – doting, even, if you wanted a better word for it – but you hadn���t been sure how he’d handle attending the same university. your other friends all complain that they’d rather die than see their families; twins separate after orientation, brothers and sisters look the other way if they pass each other in the quad. you feared choso would be the same, that the omnipotent attention he gave you at home would completely dissipate the moment you moved into your dorm.

but his text reaffirms you, if anything. and although your roommate had opted to be wined and dined by the boy from calculus this evening, you don’t mind attending alone. her absence from your side only means you will be able to see your stepbrother without a distraction.

the music buzzes through the door as you knock and wring your fingers on the doorstep. should you just walk in? should you text choso and wait for him to fetch you? the ins-and-outs of frat etiquette cloud your mind until the door swings open and you’re met, face-to-face, with a young pink-haired man dangling a blunt from one hand and his phone, opened to his spotify playlist, from the other.

“hi,” you say, words foreign in your throat. “choso invited me?”

“oh, cool,” itadori yuuji says, shrugging his shoulders like he never would have questioned it. “come on in. you can put your shoes over there.” 

while omega lambda is not packed from wall to wall as your night at beta pi epsilon had been, the various couches propped against the walls and surrounding the living room coffee table are nearly packed to the brim with the frat brothers and their guests. the air, hazy with smoke and desire and drinking, shifts and swirls as it curls around purple LED lights before fogging up the windows and disappearing up the stairs. it is warm here, easy, like dropping into the depths of a pleasurable dream.

“there’s drinks in the kitchen,” yuuji is saying, voice thick with his high, “and we’ve got some other stuff on the table, although you’ll have to pay yuuta for those–” 

yuuji’s narration is cut off as a familiar figure crashes into yours, sweeping you into a hug so tight you fear your bones will snap from the pressure. choso smells like the cologne you bought him for his birthday, like fresh laundry and comfort; you breathe him in, deeply, and let yourself relax into the soft cotton of his black t-shirt.

“glad you could make it,” choso mumbles into your skin. he draws back slightly, drinks you in, your little skirt and your dainty socks that he’s always been partial to. he looks from you to yuuji, still vibing to the side with his playlist, and his eyes crinkle in what must be mirth.

“it’s good to see you,” you say. 

“you saw me at lunch with mom last week.” choso smiles, the black line across his nose crinkling when his eyes light up. 

“you get what i mean.” you tap his shoulder, lightly, as emphasis. the anxiety dissolves; it’s you, and him, like it’s always been. it’s your stepbrother choso who watches your shadow and wraps you up to keep the rest of the world at bay. 

but the tender moment is broken when someone, a tall blonde girl with the aura of a lioness, calls out to choso to ask him for assistance. he looks at you, a bit forlorn, before telling yuuji to help you get settled in and making his way to the other end of the living room.

“yes, this way!” yuuji grabs your arm and drags you across the floor like you’ve known each other forever. “i make some fucking good drinks if i do say so myself.” 

which, consequently enough, is how you find yourself losing your mind within the walls of omega lambda. 

it’s not that you’re a virgin to the world of cocktails and lime and pills: it’s that you’re too sweet to know when to stop. it’s hard to tell yuuji no more, thanks when his face is so bright, when he and the strange, blue-haired frat brother mahito are asking you to try this and try that and to let us know what you think. 

so you let yourself sway through the house, from couch to couch, listening to this mahito boy tell you about his latest philosophy courses as he dances cold fingers across your shoulders, listening to yuuji explain the very serious business of pulling an all-nighter without coffee, watching the LED lights shift from purple to blue and back again.

(you’re not sure where choso is. perhaps, in your altered state, he’s sitting just across from you and you don’t even know it. but you don’t mind, because his brothers get along with you just as well. you don’t mind, because you’re too drunk or too high to know any better.) 

“and how are you doing?” a dark-haired man slides into the empty couch space next to you. arms littered with various tattoos and dark hair pulled back into a casual half-bun, he could have been your beloved choso had he not exuded such finesse, such arrogance, which choso could never be capable of doing.

“i’m alright,” you say, but you’re more than alright. the room is so warm and your brain is so fuzzy that you might melt into the couch if someone looked away for even a minute. “i don’t think we’ve met before? i’m choso’s stepsister.” 

he simpers, a humid thing, one that coils around your eyelids and sets your insides alight. “ah! i’ve heard a lot about you. it’s nice to meet you.” he holds out a manicured hand; black nail polish glimmers in the dim light. “geto. i’m one of choso’s frat brothers.” 

his handshake might take your soul with it. his hands are smooth, refined. you swear he can feel your quickening pulse as you introduce yourself. he watches you like you might be the only person in the room, like you might be the sweetest thing to have ever crossed the threshold. and filled with rum and liqueur and confidence you take it, gladly, because you’re young and the thought of university still puts stars in your eyes. 

“so what are you studying?” geto is saying, prying you apart, picking through your history. he’s in his final year and you’re in your first and he knows all there is to know while you still have nothing. you latch onto him because he gets it, because he’s handsome, because you’re silly and desperate and drunk. somewhere along the way your thighs touch and his hand greets your shoulder and you think that you finally made it into his lap because mahito complained that the couch was too full. 

geto smells like expensive cologne. you smell vaguely of lemons and shampoo. yuuji jokes with you from across the table and you like it, the way these brothers’ eyes fall on you. 

so you spiral, further and further, into a daze you cannot escape from. you barely react to geto’s firm hand snaking up your bare thigh because you are too busy trying yuuji’s latest creation and asking mahito for more of whatever he gave you. it’s fun, it’s weightless; you feel beautiful, supreme, like the kind of college girl you’re supposed to be. you’re desirable, cute. you’re the girl to be in love with, the one who sets the scene.

those rumors were right. the party is certainly slower than the other frats you’ve visited, with more emphasis on sitting and vibing than on dancing and drinking games, but no less extreme. you’re so far out of your brain that you wonder briefly if it will ever be possible to come back down. maybe you’ll be her, on monday morning, the girl who’s still tripping.

“you know,” geto is saying, his breath eerily close to your pulse, a moment away from pressing a kiss to your cheek, your neck, “you should stop by more often.” 

“yeah?” you hope you sound sexier than you are. “i’d love to–”

“excuse me,” choso’s voice cuts through your lazy fantasy like the sharp fall of a guillotine. “i’d prefer if you didn’t hit on my sister, geto.” 

geto’s laugh reverberates against your back, your ears. his grip on you lightens immediately, and whatever words he’d saved for you die away. “i’m not,” he says, but his voice is too easy to be honest. “just keeping her company. right, sweetheart?”

you’re finding it hard to see straight. caught in this game of cat and mouse you find you can do nothing but sit lamely in geto’s lap and watch choso’s favorite necklace reflect the purple light. it’s only after a revolution around the sun you realize you haven’t spoken, that you’ve done nothing but hover, a lot of drunk and a little high and a little nervous, between one man and the other. you mumble a yes in affirmation but it’s clear from the tension that choso doesn’t believe it. 

“oh, for fuck’s sake,” choso sighs. “come on, then. you’ve had enough for one night.” familiar arms lift you off the couch and you stumble, much like a baby gazelle, into the safety of choso’s chest. the room spins with the sudden change; you cling to him like a lifeline as you abandon the party to head upstairs. 

of course, bedazzled out of your mind, you do not question when choso leads you to the end of the hallway and over the threshold of his bedroom. it feels expected in a way, safe, as if the party had always been meaning to end here. as if there was no other place you should be.

“so?” choso asks, casually, shutting the door behind him with a damning click. “did you enjoy being a little whore with my brothers?”

his words take a long moment to settle in your ears. you’re caught in the swirl of euphoria in your brain, the black t-shirts scattered across the floor, the small houseplant you once bought him seated on the windowsill. it warms your heart to see it there, after all this time.

“well?” choso demands your attention. he takes your jaw in his hand and lifts your eyes to meet his gaze. his silver rings, imposing and cool on slender fingers, burn into your heated flesh like embers. his eyes swim with distaste and you know it’s your fault, somehow, but when the walls tilt and your rationality fogs over, you can’t quite pinpoint why.

“i–” your words catch in your throat. it’s clear, from the darkness in his eyes, from the way his nails dig into the soft flesh of your jawline, that anything you say to defend yourself will be futile. it’s choso’s world, you’ve always known, and even now, you’re merely living in it. 

“i invite my sister to see me, because i miss her,” choso’s words nestle themselves deep into your bloodstream, settling amongst the brandy and wine, “and she chooses to spend the night bending over for my brothers. how do you think that makes me feel?” 

it’s a look you know: a look that has haunted you for hours and days, a look that you know better than any other. it’s the look that guides the hand between your legs at night and the look you recreate in your mind’s eye when your vibrator just isn’t enough. you’re crumbling already, like sand beneath his touch.

“i’m sorry,” you say to him, but the words are soft and whispered things, shy beneath the weight of your own guilt and disappointment. “i didn’t mean to–” 

“no,” choso admonishes. he steps closer, guiding you backwards until his bedsheets brush the backs of your knees. “of course you didn’t. you’re still too dumb to know what you’re doing.” his voice, evenly condescending, hardly matches the gentle brush of his fingers as he moves to cup your cheeks. you close your eyes against it, savoring the shivers he sends across you body with every heartbeat, every movement. “still need your big brother to keep you in check.” 

you do not respond: he does not intend for you too. instead choso presses you back until you fall onto his bed, crawling over you to cage your body beneath him like a predator and its prey. your brain falters with the sudden movement, with the lateness of the hour and the depravity of your position, but you can do nothing but look at him with your helpless doe-eyes while something saccharine pools in your belly. 

“look at you,” choso says. “high out of your damn mind. good thing i caught you when i did. who knows what would have happened.” 

you believe him, you do, especially when choso dips his head to kiss you and demands your subservience. his tongue licks the aftermath of your cocktails from your lips and claims the expanse of your mouth, your teeth, your sanity. you let him take you, body and soul, even when you’re clamoring for air and freedom. there is no safety but choso’s lips, flavored with his cinnamon chapstick, no sacred home but the warmth of his mouth. 

“there’s my girl,” choso breathes, nose brushing against yours as he pulls back for air. “going to be good for me now? going to make it up to your big brother?” 

he doesn’t wait for a response; fingers dance along the silk of your blouse as he undoes each button, one by one, letting his fingers dip slyly against the newly exposed expanse of your collarbone and your chest and your stomach. you make no move to stop him, caught somewhere between choso’s aura and reality and time. 

(and maybe in another life you would have stopped him. maybe in another life you would have been ashamed. but it’s choso, your sworn protector and god among men, and you would be a fool to try and stop the one who knows best. he is safety, protection. who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t taken you away when he did.) 

“is this new?” choso asks, studying the curve of your bra as he rests against your hips. “who are you trying to impress?” 

it’s thin lavender lace, choso’s favorite. your face warms at the observation and you turn your head away, nestling among the sheets, as if you could escape choso’s eyes: but his fingers still trace the material and you can still hear him breathing and you know he will never look away. 

“i just got it,” you answer, humbled and mildly humiliated and certainly a little fucked up. the words are slow and imprecise as you stumble over your own tongue. “i wanted to…treat myself.” 

choso’s exploratory hands move from your bra to the waistband of your skirt. “could’ve just asked me,” he says earnestly, intently. “i would’ve gotten it for you.” 

your affirmative hum is lost when choso mindfully pulls your skirt down your legs and discards it somewhere in the shadows of the room. he says nothing of it, of the thin fabric or the way it flattered you just right. perhaps he is jealous of it. perhaps he does not want to remember the way his brothers looked at you when you wore it, the way geto’s hands caressed the places no other man should go.

“they match, i see,” choso gestures towards your underwear. terrified and knowing and aware that you’re growing damper with each passing minute, you press your thighs together. “they’re cute.” 

“t-thank you,” you whisper. “i… i got them for you. your favorite color.” 

he smiles, a precious and glorious thing, a smile that causes flowers to grow and birds to sing. you electrify at the sight of it, blissful only when he is. 

“i’d hope so,” choso says, “because i don’t think i could take it if this was meant for someone else.” 

he reaches over to the nightstand while his words claw through you. choso smells like cinnamon and safety and pleasure; your heartbeat quickens as his t-shirt brushes against you, as your world collapses into nothing but choso’s profile, his butterfly hair-clips and his glowing skin and his power. 

when choso settles back over you, resting against your thighs until you think you might die of it, something silver and shiny rests in his palm. you’d recognize it even if your eyes were closed, if the room were so dark that you couldn’t see if you tried. a searing and insatiable sensation lodges itself in your veins; it is fear personified, it is anticipation of a behavior you cannot even name. 

choso twirls his beloved switchblade deftly between his well-manicured fingertips. it reflects the low-light of the room. it calls out to you, the beautiful and dangerous thing, a siren’s song that promises both your misery and your fortune. choso’s face is relaxed, serene, as the envy and the fury seemingly melts away from him and leaves only a disinterested vessel behind. 

he lets you study it, lets you study him, and you know he’s pleased when he can feel your thighs tense, when you try so damn hard not to let choso know just how affected you really are. he shifts, grinding gently against your pelvis as he moves, causing you to bite your lip in a desperate attempt to surpress the gentlest of moans. 

“well,” choso says, disregarding the state he’s slowly working you into. he shifts down your body and runs a lackluster hand across the lacy expanse of your underwear. shivers pierce your navel, silver rings poison your skin. it’s all you can do to watch him, his heartless eyes and his casual form, as his thumb prods at the place where you underwear crosses your hip. “let’s get these off. i’d hate to have anyone else see you in them.” 

you feel the blade before you see it. cold, unfriendly, it rests against the gentle skin of your hip, a killer ready to take a life. a humiliatingly choked whine is out of your mouth before you can swallow it; your gasp reverberates throughout the room, the sound of one who knows they’ve lost a fight. 

“choso–” you breathe, but you don’t know quite what it is you’re asking him for. 

he doesn’t answer immediately, opting instead to tease you further with the blade as he presses it against you until goosebumps rise in chorus. your fingers curl in on themselves, desperate for purchase, while fear and longing hum everywhere in your being. 

“don’t worry,” choso says. “i’ll buy you more. now be good and stay still.” 

you want to writhe, to lash out and squirm beneath the intensity of the moment, but you fear choso’s disappointment more than you crave such release. your big brother choso has never been afraid to hurt you: to pierce the skin where it hurts, to draw blood where he means it. if you move, the blade will move with you. you know this as you know every scar choso has left behind. 

it’s agonizing, this pace. choso’s tongue peeks out from between his teeth as he works with the ease of a great master. it’s like watching paint dry, like waiting for grass to grow or continents to shift. he cuts away at the expensive lingerie you bought just last weekend like he has all the time in the world, like he does not care if the sun rises and you are still crying beneath him.

(and he does it, you know, because you’ve never been one to be patient.) 

“choso,” you whine, drawing his name out, long and frustrated, as if in song. “go faster.” your legs twitch in protest and the blade comes ever closer. 

“no.” choso does not even spare the kindness to look at you, his beloved little sister. “stop whining.” 

the rest of your complaints lodge in your throat. you fear disobeying him, so you grip the comforter like a lifeline, exasperated tears pooling in the corners of your eyes as the blade cuts through your clothes and ghosts across the bare skin beneath. it’s embarrassing, really, the way you can feel yourself becoming more and more desperate the further choso drifts away from you, the more he refuses to indulge. 

you wonder if he can sense the arousal on you, feel it, smell it, even, like you’re nothing but his own little plaything in heat. 

after an eternity, the blade finally cuts through your panties with a satisfying rip. the torn fabric sits pitifully against your hips, a reminder of your own subservience, until choso peels it away from you with enough condescension to move you to tears. the cool air of the room hits your thighs, your cunt, like a ghost who’s taken up residence beside you. 

blissfully unaware of your feelings, choso studies the remains of your ruined underwear, the thin fabric and the obvious stain of your arousal. locking eyes with you, he bring it to his nose for a brief and pleasurable inhale before he discards it somewhere on the other side of the room.

“there we are,” he says, as if he hadn’t just smelled yourself in front of you. “now no one will ever know about it but me.”

“choso,” you whimper, hot. it’s a gift and a humiliation to be beneath him like this, to shake with need and yet to be denied it, to ask for something, for anything, in a voice so unabashedly loud that anyone who passes by the door might hear it.

he ignores you, again, and turns his attention to your bra as it flutters against your fervent chest. you watch with wide eyes as the blade comes closer, closer, dancing against your ribcage and sending ice into your lungs until it slices through the front of your bra, down the center of your chest, like the thin fabric was made of nothing but water. 

“get rid of this,” he says; you listen. with quick and quivering fingertips you shimmy your way out of the delicate material and toss it over the side of the bed faster than the speed of sound. choso, pleased with your obedience, intently traces the curve of your breasts, thumbing your nipples until you find yourself arching into his touch. 

(choso, you mumble, eyes falling shut at the feeling. still, as always, he does not listen. he draws his hands away.) 

it kills you, the way choso’s eyes possess you, own you, dictate the movement in your bloodstream. it’s akin to being pulled along on marionette strings, a puppet of choso’s own design, made to dance for him and him alone. 

it’s the prize he deserves, your big brother, to own you and protect you, body and soul.

it’s that very intensity which moves you to misty tears, which causes your hands to fly out to meet him against your better judgement. choso lets you pleasure yourself for a moment with the texture of his t-shirt and the outline of his shoulders before brushing your hands away like unnecessary flies. 

“did you whore yourself out like this when you went to naoya’s?” choso prods. the patronization lies beneath feigned and genuine curiosity. there are no inflections, no signs of anger. this is how your big brother gets you, every time: it’s the neglect, the disinterest, that breeds your guilt. “are you really so easy for every boy that comes your way?” 

you shake your head and wish you could bury yourself further into the bedsheets. no, never. try as you might the first-year college boys here just haven’t been enough, the older ones too preoccupied with better cunts to look your way. 

“just because those guys are my brothers,” choso continues, shifting further and further down your body, spreading your legs until he can fit himself comfortably between them, “doesn’t mean i have to share everything with them.” 

“i’m sorry, choso,” you try again, “i’m sorry. i don’t want anyone else–” 

“that’s right,” choso interrupts. “you don’t need anyone else. no one is ever going to love you the way i do.” 

the way your big brother does, his eyes say, but he doesn’t have to voice it. you already know. it’s true that no one knows you better than choso does. no one understands your limits and your desires the way your brother has for as long as you’ve known him. no one knows how to caress you when you cry, how to run their tongue across your lips to silence you when you’re too eager. it’s always choso. it’s always been choso; but sometimes you’re just too much of a fool to see it. 

the blade, cool and demanding, presses against the soft flesh of your thigh, just below the hip. you twitch in surprise at the sensation and curl your toes to quell the ache in your cunt. it’s slick, weeping; you can feel it, the arousal, as it pools and pools and drips quietly onto the comforter. 

“choso, what are you–” you ask, breathily, pitifully, but choso’s quick glare reduces you into obedient silence. 

he licks the cinnamon chapstick on his lips. a stray hair falls across his eyes and kisses the dark line across his nose. he is love and danger, a cocktail of possession and surrender. “i think,” choso says, the words slow and thoughtful, “you need a reminder of who loves you the most.” 

a strangled cry escapes your lips when the blade pierces your skin just enough to draw blood. the sting travels up through your spine and fogs up your senses, causes your cunt to weep in horrible anticipation. it hurts, it does, the first cut, but still you find yourself waiting for more of it, more, in terror and lust and love. 

“choso–” you cry, a misty tear escaping out of the corner of your eye, but the call is met by another stroke, longer this time, drawn out, until your knuckles clutch the bedsheets so tensely they might as well turn to stone. 

“stay still,” choso admonishes amidst the burn of it. “you’ll hurt yourself.” 

as if you were the one in control. but you listen, obediently as always, and the alcohol from earlier combined with the need in your chest mixes together until your body is as taut as a desperate wire, until you no longer have control of yourself or your limbs. the knife cuts easily, choso’s hands as steady and precise as ever. you can feel the blood dripping onto his sheets like a series of hot tears.

it’s too much, all at once. it is a fire which destroys you, which renders every coherent thought into ash and causes you to sob nothing but drawn-out cries and pleads of choso’s name into the dark bedroom. he has you just where he wants you: pliant, dumb, obedient. if he asked you to fetch him a star, you would have asked him which one he needed.

choso’s tongue darts between his teeth as a steady hand continues its masterpiece. you sob unabashedly in reply with every stroke, with every flex of his fingers as he works his blade against your tender skin. and yet, as the pain grows, so does your need for something, for anything, for release; with every aching minute your cunt grows hotter and lonelier and emptier between your thighs. 

you crave something, anything, choso, perhaps even more than you wish for air.

“there you go,” choso says, just as you release another cry so piercing there’s no way even yuuji wouldn’t have heard it. “all done.” 

you sit up on your elbows to peer down at the masterpiece below your hip. smeared with blood, aching and raw from the blade, the word CHOSO spreads across your upper thigh in an uneven but heartfelt script. it makes you dizzy, this marking, this sign that no one owns you better than your sacred brother does. you wonder if it will leave a scar, if it will heal; and even more so, you wonder if choso will merely rewrite it, again and again, until every cell in your body knows that you are nothing without him.

you say nothing; a whine escapes your lips as your eyes flit from the mark to choso’s eyes, dark and possessive, as he looks back at you.

“you like it?” he asks, once again the sweet thing, the doting one.

“yes,” you whisper back, never one to lie to your perfect big brother. 

but you cannot hide the insatiability. choso notices the way your thighs twitch from the intensity, the way your cunt drools and your eyebrows furrow because you cannot relieve this ache on your own. you’re helpless, entirely at his mercy. choso tilts his head with a soft and unreadable simper at the sight.

“you’re really worked up, huh?” he pretends your distress is not blatantly obvious. he twirls the bloodstained knife between his fingertips for a moment before bringing the flat edge of the blade against his lips in a somber kiss. “this little thing’s got you down bad, i see.” he flashes the switchblade at you like a diamond. you watch, entranced, as choso slides his tongue across the metal until any traces of your blood disappear into his mouth. 

your belly’s on fire. the switchblade shines with choso’s spit and he smiles, your blood on his tongue, while he prods your legs apart, further, until you’re entirely open for him with nothing to hide. you whine lowly as choso’s eyes flicker between your eyes, dazed and helpless, and the slick on the bedsheets. 

“choso,” you repeat. “please, help me.” your eyes are wide and your voice is small and you crumble beneath the weight of your own needing, of your own body working of its own volition, of the high that collapses all over you. 

perhaps it’s the way you call for him, your big brother, in your time of need. perhaps it’s the way choso can never really deny you, even when he feigns disappointment or rage or neglect. he’s bound to you, your protector, and you can see in the way his eyes soften ever so slightly that choso will not deny you this request.

“sure thing, angel. let me clean this up for you.” choso’s voice is generous as he bows his face towards your hips with the reverence of one before the altar. he leaves no room for your answer. an eager tongue swipes across your thigh and laps at the blood which pools there. his movements are indulgent, refined, as he holds your legs open with intimidating palms and drinks you in like medicine.

“choso–” you gasp, unable to look away. his eyes flit back to meet yours in reply but he continues his ministrations, slow, teasing, as he ignores your cunt entirely and licks at the fresh wound until it’s finally, sacredly, clean. your newly beloved CHOSO glimmers with his spit when he pulls away. he smiles at you then, praying over your hips, lips stained red with your blood, with your being. 

“i may be their brother,” choso gestures towards the door, to the party which must still rage below, “but i’m your brother first, and now you’ll never forget it.”  

the words are followed by his tongue on your inner thigh, fervent this time, as he travels downwards, downwards from his name on your leg until his nose is a breath away from your clit. you thrust your hips towards him impatiently and he accepts it, gratefully, burying his face deep into your cunt like he’s searching for gold. choso lavishes your clit with plump lips and an eager tongue, drawing the bud into his mouth and kissing it until you cry, until your legs tremble as they ensnare him in your garden.

“choso–” you’re crying, voice transcendent throughout the frat house, his favorite song. there’s a tongue prodding against your hole and a silver ring on your clit and you lose yourself within it, within choso’s breath on your folds and the fire which erupts into chaos. 

when it comes to pleasing you, choso does not require air. he refuses to resurface as his tongue explores every inch, as he laps away at you with the passionate abandon only an older brother can provide. what you need, he needs, and what you desire most, choso is always willing to provide. he holds you steady as he works so you cannot escape him. he forces you into stillness as he abuses every sacred inch of your cunt, as he works you into a frenzy with his fingers and his tongue until you can think of nothing but wanting to cum. 

and then, then, at the precipice of pleasure, choso pulls away. you pause as you catch your breath, heartbeat like an earthquake, and recollect your shock. why has he stopped? where has he gone? you’re about to sit up, to feign sobriety, to demand what the matter is, when something cool and smooth presses against your clit.

choso’s cheek rests against your inner thigh as he presses the flat edge of the switchblade against your cunt. it’s cold and dangerous and sublime and you cannot help but think of the way it could ruin you, that if you shifted or choso wanted it everything could end here, now, forever. and it is this fear, coupled with the coolness of the blade suffocating your clit, with the alcohol in your bloodstream, that sends you into a place from which you may never return. 

the orgasm is as violent as a hurricane. the moment you tense and begin to quake with a strangled sob choso replaces the blade with his tongue and rides you through it, coating his lips with your cum and swallowing the vibrations and heightening the sensation until you are tortured by it, by the sting of pleasure and overstimulation and want. 

(“that’s it,” you think he says into your skin, but your ears ring too loudly to know. “cum for me, just like that.”) 

it takes some time for the waves to recede and for your body to become still again. with a head comprised of of jelly and limbs made of water you lie still, panting, as choso nonchalantly licks your slick from the switchblade with a hum and gingerly sets it back down on his dresser. you watch as he slides the belt out of his jeans and tosses it into the dark room, as he hovers above you like an angel and its lover. 

“better now?” he asks against your parted lips. you nod. he kisses you, deeply, a kiss made of iron and cum and blood, tongue swiping across your teeth before he draws the air from your lungs. your vision swims when he plants a kiss on the tip of your nose, your cheeks, your forehead, between your eyebrows. he plants his love until there is nowhere left untouched, until you are buzzing with the security only your brother choso can give you. 

“yeah,” you mumble back to him, content, satisfied. even the sting of his name on your body is a pleasantry now. 

“good.” choso wipes the perspiration from your brow. his jeans scratch against your pelvis, and it is only then that you finally register his cock, hard and eager, waiting patiently for its turn. it is only then that you realize choso’s lesson is not yet over, that your brother’s desperate need has only begun. 

“now,” he purrs, gently, lovingly, “can you show me how much you love me?”

(as always, forever, you do. you show him your love, endlessly, even when the party ends and the house falls eerily silent. you show choso everything, all of it, loyally, just as he asks, with an only you, choso, and a no one else loves me like you.

because although choso offers his love to the brothers downstairs, he will always, forever, be your brother first, til death do you part.)

[blackstarising]

coming back to this post i made again to elaborate - especially as the ted lasso fandom is discussing sam/rebecca and fandom racism in general. there are takes that are important to make that i had failed to previously, but there's also a growing amount of takes that i have to, As A Black Person™, respectfully disagree with.

tl;dr for the essay below sam being infantilized and the sam/rebecca relationship are not the same issue and discussing the former one doesn't mean excusing the latter. and we've reached the glen of the Dark Forest where we sit down and talk about fandom racism.

i should have elaborated this in my last post about sam/rebecca, but i didn't. i'll say it now - i personally don't support sam and rebecca getting together for real. i believe what people are saying is entirely correct, even though sam is an adult legally, he and rebecca are, at the very least, two wildly different stages of life. for americans, he's at the equivalent of being a junior in college. there are things he hasn't gotten the chance to experience and there are areas he needs to grow in. when i was younger, i didn't understand the significance of these age gaps, i just thought it would be fine if it was legal, but as someone who is now a little older than sam in universe, i understand fully. we can't downplay this. whether or not you think sam works for rebecca or not, even despite the gender inversion of the Older Man Younger Woman trope, whether or not he is a legal adult, i don't think at this point in time, their relationship would work. i think it's an interesting narrative device, but i don't want to see it play out in reality.

that being said!

what's worrying me is that two discussions are being conflated here that shouldn't be. sam having agency and being a little more grown™ than he's perceived to be does not suddenly make his relationship with rebecca justified. i had decided to bring it up because sam was being brought into the spotlight again and i was starting to realizing that his infantilization was more common than i felt comfortable with.

sam's infantilization (and i will continue to call it that), is a microaggression. it's is in the range of microaggressions that i would categorize as 'fandom overcompensation'. we have a prominent character of color that exhibits traits that aren't stereotypical, and we don't want to appear racist or stereotypical, so we lean hard in the other direction. they're not aggressive, they're a Sweet Baby, they're not world weary, they're now a little naive. they're not cold and distant, they're so nice and sweet that there's no one that wouldn't want approach them, and yeah, on their face, these new traits are a departure and, on their face, they seem they look really good.

but at a certain point, it reaches an inflection point, and, like the aftertaste of a diet coke, that alleged sweetness veers into something a lot less sweet. it veers into a lack of agency for the character. it veers into an innocence that appears to indicate that the person can't even take care of themselves. it veers into a one-dimensional characterization that doesn't allow for any depth or negative emotion.

it's not kind anymore. it's not a nice departure from negative stereotypes. it's not compensating for anything.

it's patronizing.

it is important that we emphasize that characters of color are more than the toxic stereotypes we lay on them, yes, but we make a mistake in thinking that the solution is overcorrection. for one thing, people of color can usually tell. don't get it twisted, it's actually pretty obvious. for another, it just shifts from one dimension to another. people of color are still supposed to be Only One Character Trait while white people can contain multitudes. ted, who is pretty much as pollyanna as they come, can be at once innocent and naive and deep and troubled and funny and scared. jamie can be a prick and sexy and also lonely and also a victim of abuse. sam, however, even though he was bullied (by jamie, no less), is thousands of miles away from home, and has led a protest on his team, is usually just characterized as human sunshine with much less acknowledgement of any other traits beyond that.

and that's why i cringe when fandom calls sam a Sweet Baby Boy without any sense of irony. is that all we're taking away? after all this time? even for a comedy, sam has received a substantive of screen time over two whole seasons, and we've seen a range of emotions from him. so as a black person it's hurtful that it's boiled down to Sweet Baby Boy.

that's the problem. we need to subvert stereotypes, but more importantly, we need to understand that people of color are not props, or pieces of cardboard for their white counterparts. they are full and actualized and have agency in their own right and they can have other emotions than Angry and Mean or Sweet and Bubbly without any nuance between the two. i think the show actually does a relatively good job of giving sam depth (relatively, always room for improvement, mind you), especially holding it in tension with his youth, but the fandom, i worry, does not.

it's the same reason why finn from star wars started out as the next male protagonist in the sequel trilogy but by the third movie was just running around yelling for REY!! it's the same reason why when people make Phase 4 Is the Phase For Therapy gifsets for the mcu and show wanda maximoff, loki, and bucky barnes crying and being sad but purposefully exclude sam wilson who had an entire show to tell us how difficult his life is, because people find out if pee oh sees are also complex, they'll tell the church.

and the reason why i picked up on this very early on is because i am an organic, certified fresh, 100% homegrown, non-gmo, a little ashy, indigenous sub saharan African black person. the ghanaian tribes i'm descended from have told me so, my black ass parents have told me so, and the nurses at the hospital in [insert asian country here] that started freaking out about how curly my hair was as my mother was mid pushing me out told me so!

and this stuff has real life implications. listen: being patronized as a black person sucks. do you know how many times i was patted on the back for doing quite honestly, the bare minimum in school? do you know how many times i was told how 'well spoken' or 'eloquent' i was because i just happen to have a white accent or use three syllable words? do you know how many times i've been cooed over by white women who couldn't get over how sweet i was just because i wasn't confrontational or rude like they wrongly expected me to be?

that's why they're called microaggressions. it's not a cross on your lawn or having the n-word spat in your face, but it cuts you down little by little until you're completely drained.

so that's the nuance. that's the subversion. the overcompensation is not a good thing. and people of color (and i suspect, even white people) have picked up on, in general, the different ways fandom treats sam and dani and even nate. what all of these discussions are converging on is fandom racism, which is not the diet form of racism, but another place for racism to reveal itself. and yeah, it's uncomfortable. it can seem out of left field. you may want to defend yourself. you may want to explain it away. but let me tap the sign on the proverbial bus:

if you are a white person, or a person of color who is not part of that racial group, even, you do not get to decide what is not racist for someone. full stop. there are no exceptions. there is no exit clause for you. there is no 'but, actually-'. that right wasn't even yours to cede or waive.

(it's also important to note that people of color also have the right to disagree on whether something is racist, but that doesn't necessarily negate the racism - it just means there's more to discuss and they can still leave with different interpretations)

people don't just whip out accusations of racism like a blue eyes white dragon in a yu-gi-oh duel. it's not fun for us. it's not something we like to do to muzzle people we don't want to engage with. and we're not concerned with making someone feel bad or ashamed. we're exposing something painful that we have to live with and, even worse, process literally everything we experience through. we can't turn it off. we can't be 'less sensitive' or 'less nitpicky'. we are literally the primary resources, we are the proverbial wikipedia articles with 3,000 sources when it comes to racism. who else would know more than us?

what 2020 has shown us very clearly is that racism is systemic. it's not always a bunch of Evil White Men rubbing their hands together in a dark room wondering how they're going to use the 'n-word' today. it's systemic. it's the way you call that one neighborhood 'sketchy'. it's how you use 'ratchet' and 'ghetto' when describing something bad. it's how you implicitly the assume the intelligence of your friend of color. it's the way you turned up your nose and your friend's food and bullied them for it in middle school but go to restaurants run by white people who have 'uplifted' it with inauthentic ingredients. it's telling someone how Well Spoken and Eloquent they are even though you've both gone to the same schools and work at the same workplace. it's the way you look down at some people of color for having a different body type than you because they've been redlined to neighborhoods where certain foods and resources are inaccessible, and yet mock up the racial features that appeal to you either through makeup or plastic surgery.

it's how when a person of color behaves badly, they're irredeemable, but a white person performing the same act or something similar is 'having a bad day' or 'isn't normally like this' or 'has room to grow' and we can't 'wait for their redemption arc', and yes, i'm not going to cover it in detail in this post but yes this is very much about nate. other people have also brought up the nuances in his arc and compared them to other white characters so i won't do it here.

these behaviors and reactions aren't planned. they aren't orchestrated. they're quite literally unconscious because they've been lovingly baked into western society for centuries. you can't wake up and be rid of it. whether you intended it or not, it can still be racist.

and it's actually quite hurtful and unfair to imply that concerns about racism in the TL fandom are unfounded or lacking any depth or simply meant to be sensational because you simply don't agree with it. i wish it was different, but it doesn't work that way. i'm not raising this up to 'call out' or shame people, but i'm adding to this discussion because, through how we talk about sam, and even dani and nate, i'm yet again seeing a pattern that has shortchanged people of color and made them feel unwelcome in fandom for far too long.

coach beard said it best: we need to do better.