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wirewitchviolet · 2 years ago

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The Entire Plot of Final Fantasy 14, with all the expansions, and some serious analysis of how good it actually is. (Part 10 - Post-Endwalker... mostly.)

Last time, we covered Endwalker, the most recent expansion as of when I’m writing all these, and genuinely serving as an ending to the story. To date, the plot irons we’ve hard in the fire are the threat posed by this evil empire which was very much going for a nazi thing, this mysterious council of evil weirdos whose motives were never really pinned down until the third expansion, and this whole tragic cycle of races not considered to be human summoning gods that just exacerbate tensions with their neighbors, and we genuinely did resolve all of that. We also got uh... let’s say kind of ambitious, and established that basically all life anywhere in the entire universe has been wiped out except for the people on your planet and a few stragglers showing up at the cafe we’re helping some unstoppable killing machines set up as a change of pace. And I don’t actually expect them to walk any of that back, except maybe the god summoning, because I’m pretty sure the current writing team did in fact get the memo that people MUCH prefer the later relatively light-hearted self-contained adventures to the grim political stuff.

Also last time I tried to embed this cutscene from halfway through the final boss fight and it wouldn’t let me and I need to stick it in here because seriously it is hilarious how they just sucked all the tension out of fighting the would-be destroyer of all life in the universe to throw in this random silly nonsense.

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I also didn’t really get a chance to share my closing thoughts on the expansion, which are of course that it’s kind of a huge mess? Tonally it is all over the map in a really jarring way. That’s largely true of the game as a whole, but usually there’s a much smoother ebb and flow to it. You build up to a big tense dramatic moment, leave to regroup somewhere, have some lighthearted encounters with the locals, and build back up. Then major side content between expansions is either all silly, or a raid that builds things up then releases the tension with some super sappy happy ending. Here though? Intrigue with NO payoff, then some hijinks, then torture and suicidal nazis, then a big action beat immediately giving way to cute little moon bunnes, then tender gay moments with the past selves of villains, then a really legitimately dark climax, and this jaw-droppingly comedic bit with Zenos here. Just what the hell? Plus you know the actual major threat that this big old apocalypse is really going to actually destroy the world and all its splintered off alternate dimensions simply holds no teeth, because we’re coming DIRECTLY on the heels of the expansion where you pull one of those back from the bring of destruction, and nobody in their right mind would retroactively make that some sick shaggy dog story. Also it doesn’t really make sense how it plays out. We built up this meteor shower imagery forever but then it’s literally just an ominous skybox and we’re actually dealing with some sort of psychic attack.

It’s also a weirdly comedic expansion on the whole. I don’t know if I really properly conveyed it but basically every major scene has someone kinda taking the piss out of the whole conversation by being too self-aware about things in one way or another, and like, I’d honestly say it all lands. Anyway, I can’t get into the entirety of the next between expansions interlude because as of time of writing only 60% of it has been released, and again, that’s 60% of each plotline going on, so nothing has a conclusion right now. But I said I’d cover what there was to cover so here we go.

After getting back from the far reaches of space we have no outstanding crises to deal with for the first time ever, and have some nice relaxed conversations with people. Mostly Krile and Tataru who respectively are responsible for the cutscene above to some degree, and uh... from where I sit the biggest remaining threat to the world? While everyone else was off saving all life in the universe, Tataru was just aggressively expanding her personal business dealings all over the world. She’s got this international trade network going, status as a fashion designer, her own personal airship, and she’s just rolling in cash to a point where she just gifts you your own private island.

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The island is it’s whole THING where you basically play like Stardew valley in your downtime and I haven’t really personally gotten into it as I have work I’m trying to get done. Everyone else is off doing their own thing in semi-retirement. The twins are still doing relief work in what’s left of the empire, Krile and G’raha just sort of went back to college, with her clearly having a thing for him and him still having this hopeless crush on you. Pretty sure Thancred and Urianger are just shacked up somewhere and hanging out with the moon rabbits, and Estinein is hanging out with Vrtra and damn right do I ship’em. Hanging out in the markets though, he finds out about this secret underwater treasure vault which is another of the things Emet-Selch shouted out as something to maybe check out when you get home, and the most recent apocalpyse mainly hitting Thavnair means there’s a lot of orphans and such who could use rebuilding money. Y’shtola comes along too because any weird unexplored secret area could be of some help in her current personal project, working out how to hop dimensions at will, both because it just seems cool to do, and because she misses the cat man she was shacked up with in the First.

So you head to the bottom of the ocean, fight some guardian constructs, reach a huge treasure vault, and it has both heaps of gold and some big ominous construct which turns out to have a small stable portal to the void inside. Oh and then Vrtra walks in and basically goes “hey guys, you’re uh.... not seriously breaking into my personal rainy day fund to rob me are you?” And uh, whoops? We also explains what’s up with the gate, and turns out that forever ago, during the backstory to that demons and air pirates raid after Heavensward, he had a big sister who charged straight on through a gate duing a big demon invasion to take the fight to their leader. I’m not really cool with us continuing to retroactively give Midgardsomnr more children we’d just never heard of so hopefully five is our final count? Anyway, he wanted to rescue her, which is the reason he made his weird little kid spy body to begin with, but figured it wasn’t worth the risk. Y’shtola is all about taking a field trip to hell, because hey, portals one can actually walk through open up to there all the time, and this was even a thing in the First with the offensive caster role quest. Vrtra has misgivings, being a responsible adult, but all you have to do is take those new warding scales we have all over to keep the protagonist from being the only one who can do most things, have Cid add some extra protective plating, research how to create an artificial version of a hell-mouth demon to absorb this stable portal and make it bigger, and in you go. Vrtra wants to come along personally and gets an upgraded version of his weird kid body that’s an adult with a worse voice actor because again, these days actually playing with other humans is strictly optional and you need a switch hitter tank/DPS to round things out. Oh and for some advanced scouting Y’shtola sends in some nixies she creates with a ritual she came up with when she was like 6 and is now deeply embarassed by.

Before we get into that though, we have some side quests to maybe deal with, and we are officially way overdue to check in on Hildibrand. After your last interaction where people got sucked through an interdimensional rift, Gilgamesh went off to do Gilgamesh things, and Hildy’s body got spit back out over in Thavnair somewhere, but he’s in a coma, so Nashu took him to a doctor. Doctors can’t fix souls being stuck in the First, which is clearly what’s happening here, so you just... rinse out that soul container you’re still carrying around and head off to grab him, and uh...

He’s fine, he just never ditched his ridiculous getup from the last time you saw him and has amnesia again. You apply the traditional cure of throwing big cartoon bombs at him and drag his soul home. There’s a bit of minor drama with Dr. Lugae’s sort of back from the dead form which ends with a big robot head in a jail cell, and then Hildy being kidnapped by a badly drawn alien in a crappy little UFO. You, Nashu and this conspiracy theorist crackpot you’re hanging out with head up to the moon to look at him, and find him... several times over. The little alien he met just kinda made a bunch of clones of him for fun. You deal with that, there’s more random shenanigans, his dad randomly shows up, as he’s wont to do, and messing around with the big stone face of mars type structure on the moon causes it’s mouth to open and this to happen.

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Apparently this was a big welcoming party thing they set up and nobody remembered to call it off when people didn’t end up needing to evacuate to the moon. Also Godbert’s here looking for meteors to combine with his own extra manly sweat as the base for this expansion’s obligatory set of ultimate weapons with a very involved side quest. Kind of him to share his terrifying power.

Meanwhile, there’s those twelve gods people theoretically worship that you’ve never had a chance to kill. That’s not right. The nerd squad and some random wandering bard type guy, along with another glasses wearing orc girl nerd end up investigating a mystery spot that takes you to a big secret floating island right over Mor Dhona which turns out to kinda basically be Mt. Olympus. When you show up to poke around, a decent swath of The Twelve pop out and insist you fight them. At first they fake you out with this whole bit about being bent on taking over the world given the new power vacuum but after you go smack them around they just pop up again and apologize for messing with your head. They swear up and down that no, really, they aren’t actually gods someone summoned who are parasitic and mind controlling and all that (but yeah Louisoix totally did someone some of those based on his ideas of them the one time), and don’t actually have any evil plans. They’re just chill party people and they want you to beat them up, for reasons they’re all kinda weirdly coy about. Given that they have freaking adorable little animal alt forms they might have the same basic thing going on as the auspices, the cute animals in a cave who need to be beaten up periodically to not go berserk from post-Stormblood. They’re very upbeat in any case.

Again, this chain is only two out of three 24 person dungeon raids in, time of writing, but they’re super friendly and after you’ve punched roughly 8 out of 12 in the face, a couple ask if you wouldn’t mind touring around with them, checking in on things, as they help the nerds research what their actual deal is more. Somewhere in here Halone, the goddess they worship in Ishgard, asks you for your honest opinion on what her worshipers are like these days and uh... you are diplomatic enough that the list of possible responses doesn’t include being REALLY honest. What with the calling everyone heretics and casting them into pits and waging holy wars against the dragons and all. She’s pretty disappointed in them.

Our other raid meanwhile involves heading into the past again to help some random Ascians deal with daddy issues and some security breaches at the incredibly haunted looking prison for really super dangerous monsters people make that for whatever reason people don’t just unmake. It... really isn’t grabbing me at all, because as I’ve said, they’ve only ever managed to make one Ascian even a little interesting as a character and I particularly can’t for the life of me be made to care about the tragic backstory of Lahabrea of all people. I will note that at one point you pretty much fight Dracula though, and at another point you fight the prehistoric megafauna version of carbuncle, the very pikachu-like starter the summoner class gets. Slightly less cute than the standard variation.

Also the current cliffhanger to all that involves the whole prison appearing in the present, which is less than ideal, but again, resolution to this currently on hold.

Oh and there’s also some sort of choose-your-own-adventure dungeon with 12 possible storylines I... really should have gotten around to before I sat down to write this, and a bit where Alpha and what’s left of Omega are exploring around as the latter continues to struggle with trying to work out the whole power of love and friendship thing. Mostly though, the real meat on the bone here is getting back to that field trip to hell, and a serious extension to Endwalker’s tribute to FF4.

You pop out at this big and honestly quite beautiful gothic castle with twisted and warped architecture just kinda floating in a big cloudy void, and start just kinda charging forward killing any demon who looks at you funny to secure the area, eventually reaching its master, which is... for some baffling reason a nod to Beatrix from FF9? But as soon as you take her down, in swoops another demon you immediately have to fight after he absorbs the big smoke cloudshe desolves into, the archfiend of earth, Scarmiglione, who yes, is the first in a series of four bosses we are going to fight in rapid succession, who are all serving a big super-powerful guy named Golbez, who I guess fairly appropriately swung by to seize power after the last time you were here and killed the final boss from FF3.

Having dealt with that, you just sort of have free reign of the place. There’s still various weird looking demons running around, but while it’s not particularly useful, they’ll talk to you rather than attack. Mostly begging you not to eat them and wondering what they’re going to do now that their mistress is gone. They do however point you to a smarter than average demon they have in the prison in the basement who Beatrice was planning to kill and eat later, who as you go down and let her out, recognizes you and asks if you’re Zenos’ friend.

OK look. You can’t just go and ask a thing like that. Especially not with Y’shtola standing right there, she is definitely the type to be too perceptive and never drop it. Not a conversation to really have in front of Estinien and his new boyfriend either for the matter. Turns out that when Zenos picked up that scythe, officially switching to the Reaper class, he bound his soul to this demon (that’s just what the class’ deal with, you get one too if you take it, proving you somehow learned absolutely nothing about giving random sketchy entities a space key to your soul after Shadowbringers), and ended up back here after he died. Which... is a little confusing to me. Like he DEFINITELY died, but that was at the end of Stormblood, before these two met. Before the credits rolled, the protagonist just had a knock down drag out fist fight with him, and I didn’t get the impression AT ALL that he got punched in the face hard enough to kill him. You could make some kind of argument about him just like burning himself out to get there or not having a way back or something but... there’s a nice cafe right there. Get rest up, get a sandwich and a coffee, show up for an awkward third date in another expansion or two. You don’t go to all that convoluted effort to bring this sick freak back and then give him an implied off camera death. Anyway, you clear up how you know her, and a big light crystal someone suggested you take along for elemental opposition purposes flashes and changes her to a less demonic form.

She’s pretty apathetic and doesn’t really recall a name she feels like giving you, so Y’shtola just decides to call her Zero, and apparently the developers claimed to be incredibly shocked when a huge chunk of the fanbase developed an instant crush on her. Which is about as plausible to me as when Capcom put out that press release about not wanting to see sexy doodles of the giant woman with the cool hat from RE8 and then proceeded to list her exact height and shoe size. Don’t go pretending to be surprised when people are into the badass futch slow to open up half-demon woman who acts tough but is secretly all caring and dresses like freaking Vampire Hunter D. We all see what you’re doing there! Anyway she has plenty of useful info but explains that all interactions here in the void are contract work with payment, generally in the form of draining aether out of each other. Also that the reason she looks human is that she hadn’t been born yet when everyone in the world started turning into demons because look for real she’s just female D here.

Anyway Scarmiglione, as is his deal from FF4, does not stay dead and jumps in with a second boss fight. He and his minions just keep coming back no matter how much you kill them, and Zero explains that yeah, death never sticks here. Now, I already knew that, it’s something I’ve been griping about this whole plot summary, but like, it’s an official canonical thing in the Void. The connection to the whole great aether flow/lifestream from FF7 deal is just broken like a lot of the laws of physics and general state of matter in the area, so when you die either another demon eats what’s left of you, getting stronger but then also having your soul and memories stuck in their head forever, or you just... come back from the dead after a bit, totally fine, at full HP even. She doesn’t actually say “full HP” but she comes weirdly close. So the only way to keep Scarmiglione down, since you not being demons can’t eat him, and she doesn’t want any jerks all bound to her soul like some kind of protagonist of this game, that just leaves her using her super cool ancient artifact scythe that kills you and converts you into a big magic crystal. But you know, gotta pay her first.

Anyway, the other deal with this place is the world’s kinda missing but if you’re sufficiently cool you get your own personally little castle on a floating rock and minions to boss around if you promise not to eat them. Zero invites you back to check hers out and see if any of the loser demons she lets live their if they promise not to start anything know anything useful about this missing dragon sister or this Golbez guy who’s apparently a real big shot she’s not personally familiar with. All the demons look like horrible evil things and they’re all just massive cowardly dorks and I kinda love it. There’s a mindflayer hiding out in a corner who’s all traumatized having gone in for one of those summoning deals and turns out it was just some real Hellraiser type psycho who wanted freaky bondage demon sex and knife play and just nope, nope nope, screw that, back to hell, never getting summoned again thanks!

Anyway on schedule, your next boss fight is Bayonetta. I mean Barbaccia. Or maybe I do mean Bayonetta because she totally has magic hair and halfway through the fight makes a skintight bodysuit out of it and starts making her hands and feat all super huge to smack you around.

After the fight you get one of those Echo flashbacks but all it tells you is Golbez doesn’t do face to face meetings so you still don’t know where to find him, but he does have our missing dragon, who still hasn’t become a demon because dragons are just tough like that. Except for the dragons you fought the first time you were here. OK elder wyrms are tough like that, OK? Anyway, Zero overexerted herself crystalizing Barb and a significant percentage of her mooks, and not really feeling cool leaving her unconscious with always hungry opportunistic demons around, you drag her back out with you. I appreciate how the whole party apologizes profusely for yanking her to another dimension without her consent, it is kind of a rude thing to do. In order to help her recover you bring her some apples, and she just goes “OK the deal was supposed to be that I take your aether directly, but, I guess this still works, holds her hand out, and drain’s an apple’s life force out.

And this of course leads into this whole “no no, eat it all regular, get the flavor” and her not really being impressed, and you giving her a tour around the place, and promising to take her home, and her just being “I literally don’t care about anything that isn’t basic survival, we’ve been over this. You wanna keep paying me in apples to help with your thing, sure, otherwise I’ll just sit around wherever.” But then you’ve got a whole thing with Cagnazzo getting conjured through by demon summoners Golbez has an in with in what’s left of the empire, Vrtra feeling his sister’s presence over there, which turns out to just be her eye, but it’s something, and generally dropping everything to run up that way. And while you’re distracted with that, Rubicante slips through the other portal and smashes it so you no longer have the upper hand on travel. Oh and I’m just kind of assuming you’re on a first name basis with the major bosses from FF4 here. If you aren’t go play FF4 already, it’s an absolute classic. But yeah, Italian names, elemental themes. Earth zombie, wind woman, water turtle-guy, fire flasher.

While you’re being distracted up in what’s left of them empire, because you know, they also brought a whole horde of demons around and the people who are survivng out there are just barely surviving, you run into the twins again. Alisaie is super jealous she didn’t get to go to hell. And you encourage Zero to socialize with the locals a little, figuring maybe she’ll get along better with depressed former nazis than socially functioning people. And she kinda does. Bonds with that jerk from the one cutscene I linked last time a little over buuz. Spicy mongolian dumplings. Imported from the steppe here, and the absolute food worship from Endwalker continues. It comes in a paper takeout bag too.

We’ve got hair misaligned textures on hair that clips through people’s collars in cutscenes all the time still, but we are pushing these graphics to the absolute cutting edge to tear apart cheeseburgers and spicy dumplings. Like most depressed goth women I know, Zero is super into spicy food. Damn it I’m hungry now. Anyway people get spread around, Zero feels obligated to fight off a big horde of demons alone to pay back that free buuz. Partway through the boss does the fairly standard trick of dropping rocks from the sky that you need to face tank before they hit the ground, but there’s too many dropping at once to solo so down she goes (I have the same problem trying to solo a couple otherwise easy old bosses, it’s annoying). And then of course everyone else shows up to the rescue, heals her, and has a proper fight where she learns the meaning of friendship via standard boss mechanics. We get more of the spread out and catch the rocks, and some of the “everybody run to the person with the crosshairs on her to split the damage of an attack that’d otherwise kill her” thing, and yeah, thanks to the combined impact of that and spicy dumplings, she comes around to the concept of doing good things for people without a contract. Again I much prefer this sort of stock sappy love and friendship crap to the grey morality political crap from the start of the game.

That just leaves confronting Rubicante to ask about what Golbez’ deal even is, and fight him. And you know, then fight Golbez when these patches finish releasing. Turns out his plan is actually really straightforward. Every single demon has been alive and literally living in hell since the very first time Ascians tried to recombine things and messed it up, most are all screwed up from absorbing the souls of a bunch of wimps they beat to death, and let’s be frank here, a lot of them have real messed up bodies like just a floating head, or big wad of goop with a ton of eyeballs. Many of them would largely like to come over here where death at least theoretically sticks sometimes and properly get to he afterlife. It’s pretty hard to object to that, except you know, they’re also all big horrible monsters with the uncontrollable urge to eat people and it’d probably cause one of those cataclysmic elemental imbalances and also these guys are jerks literally delivering body parts of a hostage. And of course this is all in a big post-boss fight speech before Rubicante kills himself all honorable warrior style, so first we have this big fight with a fun gimmick tracing lines across moving puzzle pieces, and while the other three had pretty standard renditions of either the normal boss theme or the theme of Golbez and pals, when this fight starts we get the unmistakable strings and drums from an all-time classic remix.

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No really. In one of the most impressive fan service moves of all time, they actually tracked down Hyadain for an official commission to use this remix. That’s just great even if they DID chicken out on the lyrics. Maybe later for one of those tell-this-bard-about-it remix fights with the whole set or something. As is here’s the version we actually have.

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Anyway we leave off with a challenge to come face Golbez on the moon. The uh, moon in the Void to be clear. Which presumably has a nice Lunar Subterrane tribute going on. And past that, I don’t know. It certainly feels like we’re setting up dimension hopping for the next expansion, but if I stopped this far into the interlude after Heavensward I’d have thought we’d be going directly into Shadowbringers. This might resolve and then the last patch sets up some completely different thing. All I know is I’m not going to care about the whole Ascian prison raid, I don’t expect a real shocking twist to fighting the rest of the Twelve, and wow between Fray, Sadu, Gaia, Y’shtola’s class-change look, and Zero here, it is VERY clear the current head writer has a Type.

Short of double checking the last 10 levels of the few job quest lines I haven’t done for interesting bits, I have nothing left to sum up, at least until there’s another expansion to this. If you enjoyed all this though, again, money so I can survive would really be appreciated. I also have a wishlist of mostly games I’ll likely have thoughts on when I get to them. And if you somehow found this blog without seeing it, you might enjoy my also rather extensive multipart essay from a few years back about how Ranma, the character, is in fact trans, on top of the magic gender change stuff.

Past that, not sure what my next big project is going to be. Might get back to Twitch streaming, or just focus on this browser game I’ve been working on for a while. I have honestly enjoyed playing FF14 a hell of a lot more than most recent entries in the series and definitely more than any other MMO, so I could MAYBE be convinced to see what’s up with 11 if I can work out how to without costing me a ton of money and time I really don’t have? We’ll see.

Now that you’ve finished this depreciated version of this, here’s the formal, finished part 10, covering this but with more, you know, conclusions.

#final fantasy 14 #ff14 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #it was legit tempting to skip this and just end on that last part's note #will this renewed interest in hyadain remixes finally give us wood man and air man?

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percontaion-points · 11 months ago

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Can we fix it?! Maybe! Everlife series

Time for another instalment called “Can We Fix It?!” where I attempt to walk through what I’d to to make a series be not so terrible.

I finished the Everlife series, so… Can we fix it?

The answer is maybe! Let’s take a crack at it. Buckle up guys, because this is going to be a long read...

First and foremost, the series’s biggest weakness is that there was never any actual reasoning for the wars. Heaven and Hell were fighting, and the readers were simply supposed to accept this and move on. I don’t think that I would even attempt to write anything without understanding the motive behind the actual plot.

Right off the top of my head, I can’t exactly think of any reason. But I’m sure if you pressed me about the issue, I could summon up a few possible ideas.

Next is the “holier than thou” level of hypocrisy from Troika. It didn’t really start kicking off until the second book, but it’s something that’s kind of been bugging me.

See, in the beginning of the story, Ten is in a place specifically designed to torture literal children into compliance. Ten speaks of the guards and Dr. Vans himself raping the literal children prisoners, of torturing them in various ways…

If Troika is supposed to be this beacon of all that is holy, of stopping injustices that happen in the Harvest Lands (aka on earth, to the living)... Why was this torture and rape factory allowed to even function at all?

Since Ten’s family are Myriad, and obviously have this huge contract that Ten would sign with them as soon as she was old enough to pick, I can see if the entire thing was some sort of underground Myriad human punishment thing. But it wasn’t. And the fact that Archer went in there to help protect Ten indicates that Troika 100% knew about it… But actively CHOSE not to do anything.

And you know Ten wasn’t the first unsigned who was being tortured in there. Fuck those people, I guess. They don’t matter, because they aren’t THE CHOSEN ONES.

Speaking of the Chosen One, I really hated that aspect of the story. Especially in the first book, and into the second. The reason why characters like Katness work so well is because there is 100% nothing special about her. She made a sacrifice to save her sister, and then kind of went “Well, since I’m here, I guess I’ll be the figurehead of this rebellion.”

Ten was nothing more than a passive participant in her own life through a book and a half. Which is really saying a lot, considering that this was a fucking trilogy! She kind of went along with what whomever person in authority at any given time told her to do… And she kept doing this even after she was in Troika. The only reason why she even decided to try and stop things was mainly because she couldn’t have kissy times with Killian.

In order to fix a lot of problems with the first book, I would have started off with Ten when she was a lot younger. Maybe a year or two before she reached the age of her decision, and built it up to be a big thing. This would give me time to establish the world, and to kind of explain to the reader through the Troikian and Myriad representatives why she should sign with them.

But I would also interspice this with her going home after a day spent at the Troika learning centre, and her dad getting angry and saying that the only choice she has is Myriad. He doesn’t actually hit her, but he’ll say this in such a way that leaves no doubt in the minds of the readers that this is a man who is only holding himself back simply because you don’t hurt your golden goose.

There would also be a heavy implication that he’s not holding himself back with his wife. Like I want everybody to understand that Ten’s mom is a broken shell of what she once was. Maybe mention abandoned art projects that were collecting dust or something. That she holes herself up most days, and has lost a lot of weight recently.

When Ten turns… How old was it? Let’s say 18 is the age of choosing. I would paint it as this big cultural moment. You know, much in the same way that we have stuff like bar and bat mitzvahs and sweet 16 and such. Like maybe not so much of a huge blow-out party, but it’s this huge turning point in everybody’s life, where they must sign with one side or another.

Any actual worldbuilding in this story was seriously lacking, especially from the human side of things.

I would have also sprinkled in some hints about the anti-choice group. The people who are like “You both suck! We’re not joining you!” But on the morning of Ten’s 18th birthday, she wakes up before her father does, leaves the house, and goes to the address on some flyer she found. And it’s this headquarters of these people who are like “Down with the realms! They only see you as expandable! Why should you be expected to become a servant starting from your 18th birthday, slave away for them on earth, only to die and SLAVE AWAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR AFTERLIFE?!” As you can imagine, Ten would be like “You might be onto something here!”

She goes home after a couple of hours, where her father gets angry with her for having delayed her “choice”, despite the fact that it’s obvious he doesn’t want her to actually have one. At this junction, I’d want to highlight the idea that Ten puts her foot down against her father’s control over her for the first time in her life. But this causes him to physically harm her for the first time. I want it to be violent, and I want the reader to feel immensely uncomfortable over the entire thing.

So Daddy-dearest ships Ten off to the Myriad-run torture and rape factory that I mentioned earlier. But it’s at this point that the mother snaps, and starts to pull some strings in an effort to try and save her child.

At this point, the readers are finally introduced to Archer as he goes undercover at this place. I wouldn’t include the business with Bo, because that was the stupidest fucking shit, and it served no actual point. But as he’s talking with her, trying to figure out the series of events that landed her there, he’s like “Why are you so special? Why is your dad so set on ensuring that you end up in Myriad?” Like he is genuinely confused; she’s simply some girl. No CHOSEN ONE here.

Killian would be there too, trying to seduce her and to be her friend. But none of that “candlelit dinner” bullshit; that was fucking derranged. Ten is quick to figure out that Archer is an angel, sent to help her out. But not with Killian until later.

So they do the break-out scene, and that’s when Killian’s true colours start to show. Ten is obviously leaning more and more towards Troika, because like… They don’t have secret underground torture clubs. And Archer isn’t openly lying to her about his expectations. Killian doesn’t give a shit so long as he signs Ten, but Archer genuinely wants whatever is best for Ten… Even if at some point, she decides that she does want to sign with Myriad.

But Ten refuses to sign with Troika, even after all that she’s gone through. Because despite Archer’s help in her escape, she’s been thinking a lot about what the anti-choice people had to say. That there’s no reason why people should be forced to give up literally their entire lives for shitfucks who don’t care about you. That you’d be forced to be another cog in the system… Forever and ever until the end of time, Amen.

However, it’s her continuing refusal to sign that forces Ten to go on the run. Myriad sends more soldiers after her, to grab her and force her hand again. At this point, we can introduce side characters such as Clay and Sloan.

From there, I think that they’d go on the run, like they had in the book. Except that instead of going to a safe house with some sort of “fallen angel” that was literally never talked about again… I’d really hammer in the entire “fallen angel” business. Some contact of Archer’s from like a thousand years earlier. Really hammer in the idea that these people are immortals, right?

Anyway, this guy is one of the contacts for the anti-choice people. Like he’s seen so much that he’s turned away from it all, and doesn’t even mind being kicked out of Heaven, if only because it’s all fucking bullshit anyway. And obviously this would be how Ten and the reader learn a lot of plot-relevant information. Whatever that might end up being.

The fallen angel would send Ten from safe house to safe house. But in the end, I do like the idea that she ran off because somebody slipped her a message about her mom.

Now, the subplot with the pregnancy and Jeremy was honestly kind of dumb and it never went anywhere. So instead, it would simply be the dad using mom as leverage in order to get one last shot at his wayward daughter.

And I think that the big climax should be that it was actually the father who killed his own daughter, rather than Sloan.

Now, the direction for the second book could possibly go in two different ways. I was thinking “if you wanted to fix it to be pretty similar to the first book”. But then as I was contemplating this, I was like “Wouldn’t it be fun if the reason why she was being hunted so desperately by Myriad was because Ambrosine coveted her for a bride?”

Mainly because I refuse to believe that in the millions of years that Troika had been around, nobody had ever once figured out how to turn other people into conduits OR architects. That was so fucking dumb.

Anyway, so springboarding off from the second idea, I think that it would be like a Persephone and Hades thing. Where no matter what happened with Ten, she would still somehow get dragged down to Myriad. Maybe Ambroisine ends up being the love interest, and both Killian and Archer were nothing but supporting characters. Maybe Killian is actually the real king of hell. That could be fun, too.

However, choosing to not do that, and sending Ten to Troika instead, I feel like there wouldn’t necessarily be any reason not to have her hook up with Archer. Maybe the entire first book would be nothing but her waffling between the most important decision of her life… Not which afterlife she goes to, but which guy she wants to be with forever. Hey now, I never once said that my fix was going to turn this into high-brow literature. It’s still a YA dystopia.

But, for my Killian-stans out there, I think that the Romeo and Juliet aspect is fine, too. That the reason why she wants to fight back so hard is because she simply wants to be with him. However, I would totally lean way more into the source material of the star crossed lovers aspect. Make so many Shakespear jokes. Not so much that she’d be obsessed with the play, but like… she’d be hanging out in a rose garden and be like “Even the scent of these roses reminds me of Killian. Do you think that he’s looking up at the sun right now, the same as I am?” Do better, authors. If I can come up with this analogy in five seconds without smacking you in the face with “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”, then so can you.

Moving forward into the actual plot of the second and even the third book is a lot harder to narrow down without proper worldbuilding. But no matter what, Ten would want to stop the war.

The only thing that I can comment about how the book shouldn’t end, is that for sure “the power of love!!!!!!!!!!!” shouldn’t be the answer. I’m not saying that love isn’t a powerful emotion. But maybe don’t have it be the duex ex machina for the end of your series.

However, I will make an accept to that statement if “love is a powerful magic” is something that’s already known in Troika. Like what if in order to charge up magic spells (fireball, heal, etc) you have to think about different people you love? That could be fun. Maybe Myriad magic revolves around hate.

Anyway, these are simply some spitballed ideas on how I would personally fix mainly the first book and a little bit of the second book.

I don’t have the time or emotional energy to actually write this series, however. But if reading through this sparked some sort of plot bunny in your head, by all means. You don’t have to message to ask for permission; you’re allowed to use any of these ideas! But you can message to bounce ideas off of me. And please, for the love of sanity, let me read when you’ve finished!

#bookblr #readers of tumblr #writers of tumblr #writing prompts #writing advice #writblr #writers on tumblr

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serpenteve · 3 years ago

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why we ship darklina

an essay literally no one asked for

Nobody needs a "reason" to ship Darklina. But considering this is a villain x hero pairing, it got me thinking about why we shipped it in the first place when the narrative and author so badly wanted us to root for the more sensible alternative pairing and why it became the most popular ship of the entire trilogy.

Personally, I find it really interesting (and low-key hilarious) that a lot of the reasons shippers gravitated towards Darklina can be directly traced back to how badly Bardugo bungled Alina's character arc, Mal's entire characterization and narrative role, Nikolai's wasted potential as an alternative love interest, and the noble intentions she gives the the Darkling.

Alina's Character Arc

Alina's character arc doesn't match who she is as a character. I've written more about that in this post, but a lot of readers were introduced to a passive and insecure protagonist who we were expecting to undergo a typical YA coming-of-age character arc where Alina acquires self-acceptance, confidence, and embraces the full breadth of her powers over the course of the trilogy. Instead, Bardugo gave Alina the kind of character arc that's usually deserved for power-hungry anti-heroines or tragic heroes with a fatal flaw to punish.

The plot offers a strange binary: either Alina suppresses and hides her powers and therefore stays away from descending into villainy OR Alina attempts to find Morozova's amplifiers in order to defeat the Darkling but then becomes corrupted by power in the process. Alina's journey to self-acceptance and exploring her own powers are unfortunately entangled with her relationship with the Darkling. The only way she is allowed to move forward through the plot is to succumb to the corrupting influence of the amplifiers.

For better or for worse, the first character to really embrace her powers instead of thinking she's a fraud or that she's weak or that she's an unholy abomination is the Darkling. He's the first person to recognize her power for what it is and accurately judge its potential and implications for the rest of the world. He advocates for her in front of the royal court, in front other Grisha who think she's weak, and even against Baghra who is initially a very ill-tempered mentor with little to no faith in Alina's abilities. He even rather ironically advocates for her even when the heroic person who's supposed to be supporting her (Mal) does not.

At the start of her journey, Alina is insecure and in constant need of assurance and validation. The Darkling's role as her mentor and guide into this unfamiliar world of Grisha makes him the perfect advocate not only for her powers but also to help Alina see her place in the world. However, once he is revealed to be the villain, Alina also fails to realize that it's time for her to advocate for herself and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Mal's Characterization & Narrative Role

When Alina loses the Darkling as an advocate in S&B, Mal steps up to take this role. Alina is still rather passive for the majority of the first book and it's Mal who originally wants her to have Morozova's stag as an amplifier if it will mean being able to stand against the Darkling. Bardugo intended for him to be a heroic love interest as a foil to the villainous love interest and I believe she mostly succeeds for the first book.

However, because this is a story about punishing Alina's "evil ambition" (despite there being very little evidence of that) Mal is supposed to serve as a voice of reason in the narrative. Once Alina considers the necessity of acquiring more amplifiers to defeat the Darkling, it is Mal's role to warn her of the potential consequences, to remind her of her inner humanity, and to ward against the corrupting influence of Morozova's amplifiers. Mal's declarations that he wants back the old girl he knew without any power is meant to drive an ideological wedge between them, yes, but he's also meant to be Correct™ because, again, Bardugo is writing a story about a corrupted power-hungry heroine who goes too far and needs to be punished rather than the arc we were all expecting and the one that Alina's character needs: a coming-of-age story of self-acceptance and personal growth.

Some point after the backlash of Siege & Storm, Bardugo seems to have become aware of her mistake and attempts to scrub Mal's character to be more sympathetic. There is a bizarre exchange half-way through the third book when Mal finally declares:

"I wasn't afraid of you, Alina. I was afraid of losing you. The girl you were becoming didn't need me anymore, but she's who you were always meant to be."

This is an interesting line because it's a complete reversal of Mal's narrative role so far. He's supposed to be her voice of reason that opposes her at every turn but readers interpreted him as being resentful of Alina's powers and angry that she was no longer dependent on him. Bardugo is forced to retcon Mal's entire role in the narrative from being a voice of reason that opposes Alina's quest for power to a supportive friend who will fight by her side. But this was never her initial intention and I believe this change was brought on 100% by audience reaction because she failed to understand the arc her heroine needed and the kind of story her audience was anticipating for such a character.

Needless to say, having your heroine's main love interest actively resent her quest for power until half-way through the third damn book did not endear many readers to Mal. Because Bardugo failed to understand the kind of character development her heroine needed and failed to understand audience expectations, we hated Mal. He became the embodiment of every toxic chauvinist we'd ever met who can't stand the idea of his partner's success and feels entitled to be the center of her universe. He was not the voice of reason. He was an annoying gnat hellbent on dragging the heroine down and away from her destiny. We did not want to root for him. Even the villain was more sympathetic than him because he could bring her closer to achieving the self-acceptance the narrative was obsessed with denying her.

Nikolai's Wasted Potential as a Solid Love Interest

Nikolai plays several roles in Alina's journey but most importantly in our discussions for why we ended up shipping Darklina, his entire potential as a serious love interest is wasted.

When we meet Nikolai, we have hitched our wagons to the Darklina train because despite being the villain, the Darkling is the only one who will allow the heroine to accept her powers and come into her own. Her heroic love interest, Mal, is actively sabotaging her efforts and holding her back from her true potential. But then, in swoops Nikolai and we pause, wondering if there may be a better heroic alternative after all?

In a lot of ways, Nikolai and the Darkling alike: they are eager for Alina's power and see her as a solution to all their problems. They may want to use Alina to prop up their own agendas, but unlike Mal, Alina's summoning powers are a massive plus, not a burden. Nikolai is the heroic alternative to our villainous Aleksander. So we wait, wondering if Nikolai will be the one to fix this mess of a romantic subplot. His royal connections offer an easy path to upwards mobility for our heroine and we sense that an alliance between them (even if it's initially political in nature) may bring our heroine closer to obtaining more power, influence, and self-acceptance not only for herself, but also for the oppressed minority she is a part of.

But, again, Bardugo is still obsessed with that "punish the heroine for wanting power" agenda so while Nikolai exists as another mentor figure who offers Alina advice on how to rule, how to appeal to other people, how to charm, how to win people over, and Alina learns and applies much of what she learns from him, he is not treated as a real love interest.

Despite Nikolai being written as a fairy tale prince (handsome, charming, smart as a whip, brave in battle, etc) Alina never actually considers him romantically. They are friends and allies at best and the only time she considers kissing him is only when she's pissed about Mal.

Nikolai's proposal at the end of Ruin & Rising feels like one last saving grace, one last opportunity for our heroine to take control of her life and make a dramatic change to break from the past. But this too is rejected because Alina's arc will never let her access any power. She does not reject Nikolai because she wants to marry for love. She rejects him because she has been "punished" for wanting power and has internalized that she must not seek any more power for fear of angering the plot gods (and Bardugo). She must return to being nobody in order to remain a good and moral person.

(And, of course, we resent Mal even more because who in their right mind would choose him over Nikolai? Once again, he becomes a roadblock on our heroine's journey to power. We grow irritated that the heroine is failing to grasp an opportunity to elevate herself. We throw the book against the wall. Why are we even following this heroine?)

The Darkling's Motivations

Still, all of the above might still not have been enough to pull the reader to the villain's side. But the Darkling is the living embodiment of Villain Has A Point™. He is not pure unadulterated evil. He is not Lord Sauron or Voldemort or the Terminator.

He's more Magneto, Roy Batty, or Ozymandias---a man who is part of an oppressed minority who longs for justice and power but is absolutely unhinged in his methods.

Alina runs away because she does not want to be a non-consenting weapon in hands. But we always end up wondering what would have happened had Baghra not warned her. What would have happened if Alina gladly joined the Darkling's side? There's hundreds of fanfics written precisely about this situation because despite the villainy of his methods, we wonder if Ravka might not have been safer after all?

If the Darkling had used the Fold as a weapon against Fjerda and Shu Han, would any of the problems Ravka faces in the later books even exist? Would any Grisha fall victim to the khergud programs or be killed as witches? The Darkling wipes out Novokribirsk and kills hundreds of lives, but how many would he have saved with the Fold as Ravka's greatest shield and sword? 🤷🏽‍♀️

And therein lies the problem with the trilogy inconsistent moral landscape. The Darkling is an anti-villain that exists in a narrative that is very black and white, unlike the rest of the books in the Grishaverse where our protagonists are anti-heroes who kill, steal, and torture their way through the plot with nary a judgmental glance from the narrative. We long to see our heroine give in to her dark side and get her hands dirty because watching a naive, passive, scared little girl grow into a ruthless powerful Grisha would have made for a hell of a compelling story.

But that's not the story Bardugo wanted to tell.

The Greg Trilogy

Despite taking place in a fantasy Tsartist setting, the Grisha trilogy is oddly anti-Grisha. The narrative doesn't spend much time trying to examine the context or implications of an oppressed minority group fighting for power other than to say "magic powers = evil". Nikolai skates by on a throne of inherited wealth, privilege, and imperialism but it's okay because he's charming and witty and the only monstrous part of him is the Darkling's curse. Literally everything is worse for Ravka and their Grisha after the destruction of the Fold but Ravka must move forward into a new age without relying on Grisha power but putting their efforts into new muggle technologies. Alina must be stripped of her powers and returned to her "old self" in order to be purged of evil.

Basically, it's all one gigantic ✨ dumpster fire ✨ of mismatched character arcs, incompatible moral aesops, inconsistent characterizations, wasted potential, unexamined plot points but it's a a dumpster fire we lovingly and spitefully embrace in fanfic.

We don't ship Alina with the Darkling because we're stupid abuse apologists who somehow missed the giant flashing moral aesop of the books---and honestly, who could have possibly missed them when it's shoved in the reader's face every other chapter? We ship Alina with the Darkling because the entire ship is the embodiment of wasted potential (and wasted ✨aesthetics✨ tbqh 👀). We ship Alina with the Darkling because we're sick and tired of stories where female power is demonized. We ship Alina with the Darkling because the plot gave us literally no other alternative to see our heroine succeed except to give in to her alleged villainy.

But most of all, people ship Darklina because Leigh Bardugo utterly failed in writing the story she intended to write because had she succeeded, Darklina would not be the most popular ship of the trilogy.

#darklina #sab meta #grisha meta #grisha discourse #wow im embarrassed by how fucking long this is #but you know i had to write it #anti leigh bardugo #its not really anti so much as it is just pointing out why her story flopped for a lot of readers #alarkling #viv metas

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hopelesshawks · 3 years ago

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Dead Already Part 2

Hawks x gn!reader

So @lilchickie dared me to write a part two to my fic Dead Already where y/n comes back as a nomu. I've been struggling a bit with motivation so I figured what better way to try and get the juices flowing again then by accepting the challenge. This ended up getting quite a bit away from me SO depending on how people feel about this part I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with it but I don't think it's going to get any better at this point

Warnings: discussion of prior main character death, PTSD-style flashbacks, disassociation/depersonalization

General Masterlist Kofi (Help Lulu <;3)

Chrome Extension to replace y/n with your actual name

“Hawks are… are you really ok?”

“Course I am Kid! Why do you ask?”

Tokoyami looks skeptical and concerned, glancing nervously between his mentor, dare he say it his older brother, and the paperwork they’re working on together in his office.

“Where have you been sleeping?” Tokoyami asks by way of answering.

“I’ve got that new apartment downtown, you’ve been there bird brain,” Hawks laughs but it doesn’t assuage his sidekick’s concerns in the slightest.

“Yes but you haven’t been sleeping there have you?”

“You worry too much.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m fine, kid.”

“Respectfully Hawks, I don’t believe you. No one would blame you for taking today off.”

There’s a tense moment where both men simply stare at each other and Tokoyami is sure he sees something flash through Hawks’ eyes. Before he can call his mentor out on it the moment is shattered by the phone ringing. The flash of something is gone as quickly as it had come as Hawks ignores Tokoyami again and picks up the phone. “You’re go for the Hawk man, what’s up?” he answers, leaning back in his chair and kicking his feet up on the desk. His face darkens for just a moment before the look vanishes again. “Got it, no problem big man. Tsukuyomi and I will be right there,” he answers with faux nonchalance, already bringing his feet off the desk and having a couple of his feathers bring his jacket to him. He hangs up the phone, rising swiftly. “Endeavor got a lead on the Shadow Brigade, needs back up to bring them in from their compound,” he explains as he pulls on his jacket. “Why would he call you in for this?” Tokoyami asks. “I am the number two Kid, comes with the territory, remember?” Hawks chuckles.

“Who cares what your ranking is? Going after the group responsible on the anniversary of-”

“We’ve got a job to do, Tsukuyomi.”

It’s not the first time Tokoyami has been blown off by Hawks recently.

At first he had been just as relieved as everyone else to see Hawks returning back to normal. But then Tokoyami had returned to the office one night long after his shift had ended, only to find his mentor passed out on top of the Shadow Brigade file, still turned to the pages detailing the fire that had taken your life. He’d assumed at first that the approaching anniversary of your death had been reopening old wounds, but as Hawks otherwise continued as normal, Tokoyami began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, Hawks had never actually returned to normal in the first place. His suspicions are only confirmed as he watches his mentor flying towards the location Endeavor had given them, straight towards the villain group that had burned Hawks’ whole world down around him, on the very anniversary of the horror. As much as Hawks is still presenting as his old, chirpy self, Tokoyami knows he can’t possibly be alright.

The closer they get to the compound the more he can still hear Hawks’ words in his ears.

You should’ve let me burn

“Hawks, did you hear what I said?”

Endeavor’s voice is booming even though he’s speaking in the quieter part of his vocal range just outside the compound he had summoned Hawks and Tokoyami to.

“Totally, but why don’t you hit me with it one more time,” Hawks tells him cheekily, causing Endeavor to roll his eyes heavily. Sometimes he wonders how the flippant young man in front of him is the same one who’d infiltrated the meta liberation front. “The members of the brigade are inside, including a new member with a heteromorphic fire quirk we haven’t previously identified. We think they’re protecting someone or something but haven’t been able to identify what yet. Someone needs to take on them while the others take in the rest of the brigade.”

“I’ll take on the new member.”

Both Endeavor and Hawks’s gazes snap to Tokoyami in surprise.

“Kid, I-”

“I mean your quirk doesn’t make sense against a fire quirk and fighting fire with fire also feels like a mistake so I’ll go,” Tokoyami insists.

Endeavor notes the way the young sidekick and his mentor seem to share a look, although he can’t parse what that look is. Regardless, they’re wasting time standing outside so he swiftly moves the conversation along. “Fine. Let us know if you need backup,” Endeavor nods before swiftly moving towards the building, ending whatever silent conversation the other two may have been having. Although Endeavor was initially nervous about letting a sidekick handle the new brigade member, the mission seems to operate smoothly enough. It doesn’t take him and Hawks long to subdue the original members, the other man operating with a devastating efficiency that Endeavor can’t help but admire. Every move is executed with ruthless precision and once again the older hero finds himself in awe that the carefree man he knows has such a serious side as well when it comes to the work itself. Just as Hawks is about to rush off towards his sidekick, the young man appears. “I’ve got them,” Tokoyami huffs, hoisting someone young with flames where their head and hands should be over his shoulder while Dark Shadow heaves along a familiar looking old man. “Is that-” Hawks starts but Endeavor swiftly cuts him off. “Let’s get these villains detained and then we can interrogate them properly at Tartarus.”

Hawks stares at Dr. Garaki and tries very hard not to think.

Or is it Keigo again now?

He’s not sure in all honesty. He hasn’t felt like Keigo in a long time. In exactly a year actually. But Hawks wouldn’t feel nauseous just looking at the villains he’d brought in for questioning. Hawks wouldn’t be trying desperately hard not to think of what the Shadow Brigade may have been doing with a mysterious new member and the infamous inventor of the Nomu. Hawks wouldn’t be thinking about the suspicious similarities between the new villain’s quirk’s heteromorphic manifestation and Kurogiri.

But he is. He is and no matter how much he hides it from the others, he knows he’s seconds away from doing or saying something he’s going to regret.

So Hawks makes a cheeky joke about being too popular and needing to make a phone call as he steps into the hallway. His hands tremble as he withdraws his phone and dials the number for the HPSC president. He supposes Keigo isn’t quite as dead as he thought because although he fully intended on keeping up appearances over the phone, the minute the president’s voice reaches him down the line, all pretense drops. “Did anything happen when you were transporting their body?” he demands, voice lethal. “I have no idea what you’re referring to Hawks,” the president sighs. “You know exactly what I’m referring to. Did. Anything. Happen?”

There’s another heavy sigh down the line and he can practically see the president pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration.

“There may have been a minor incident but everything turned out fine, you had enough going on,” she finally admits.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” he demands, venom in his voice like never before.

“You were in the hospital, remember? Ashes were delivered to the cemetery, that’s all that matters. It’s not like you ever visit the damn place anyway.”

Keigo’s just about to lash out when the precise wording the president used sinks in and suddenly he feels ice cold.

“What did you just say?”

“I said you never vis-”

“No before that. You said ‘ashes were delivered’.”

“Yes, so?”

“You didn’t say the ashes or their ashes. You just said ashes. Did you cremate my partner or not?”

There’s a long silence on the other end and it’s answer enough.

Without consciously making the decision to do so, Keigo’s feet carry him towards where Dr. Garaki is being held. The president is making excuses in his ear but he doesn’t hear any of them. They fade into the background like white noise until he finally hangs up his phone. Endeavor tries to stop him but the words fall on deaf ears as Keigo approaches Dr. Garaki with single minded determination. He doesn’t put his hands on the man, he doesn’t need to, the infamous doctor is already a sniveling mess just at the harsh look in Keigo’s eyes. “What have you done?” Keigo all but growls. “W-well I had just met the brigade and thought it would be such a waste! Your partner was quite smart, y'know. They’re by far one of my best creations!” Garaki whimpers, trying desperately to reassure the angry man in front of him in hopes of leniency. His words only further enrage the hero though, grief and pain and fury creating a storm that even years of HPSC training cannot hold back. “Don’t you dare talk about them like that,” Keigo growls, feathers ruffling in agitation. He’s about to abandon all semblance of protocol and put his hands on the cowardly, whimpering man before him when he’s suddenly being hauled bodily back.

��Don’t Hawks, you need to collect yourself,” Endeavor commands, his flames starting to roar to life in warning. It’s an attempt at authority, trying to command Keigo into submission with a reminder of who in the room is number one, but it’s a mistake. The realization of what you’d been turned into was already jarring enough, peeling back the feeble bandaid Hawks had put on the bulletwound of his grief, but the sight of the flames only makes it worse. Suddenly it’s like he’s right back in that room a year ago and he knows it’s different now, that he isn’t actually there, but his body can’t seem to get the message. Adrenaline burns hot through his veins, his every instinct screaming to go to you, to find you, to save you. Endeavor extinguishes his flames, hands coming up in a placating gesture as his eyes go wide and he realizes what’s happening, but it’s too late. Dark Shadow comes up to wrap around Keigo’s waist but that only agitates him further as the instinctive need to go to you continues to overwhelm all rational thought. He thrashes and writhes in the grasp, wings beating almost violently as Dark Shadow struggles to haul him out of the room.

“Let me go! They need me!” he demands but the grip around him doesn’t ease, even as Tokoyami’s concerned gaze comes into view.

“It’s not real Hawks, you’re not in the house anymore,” Tokoyami explains, sadly but patiently. How naive of him to assume Hawks had truly gotten better. “It’s just a memory, it’s not real.”

It takes several tries of Tokoyami explaining in the calmest voice possible that Keigo is having a flashback for him to finally snap out of it. As he returns to the present, the adrenaline wanes and suddenly he feels tired. So incredibly tired. His eyes meet those of perhaps the one person he is almost as close with as he was you and he collapses. The breakdown he had held off so long punches through him as his emotions overwhelm all the defenses he’d learned growing up. Tears blur his vision and sobs start to wrack his body soon after, as exhaustion and grief and the crushing guilt of knowing he failed you weigh heavy on his shoulders. All of the emotions he had denied himself from the past year rush through him at once while his sidekick kneels in front of him and pulls him into his arms. “It’s ok to not be ok,” Tokoyami whispers to his mentor and it only makes Keigo sob harder.

Because it’s not ok. It may never be. Even after your death he had managed to fail you again, his own selfish grief stopping him from protecting your body and allowing you the peaceful transition to the afterlife you deserved. You’d been twisted and turned into a monster and it was all his fault. It’s too much to feel and process on top of all the emotions he’d been holding back since his release from the hospital.

As Keigo tries and fails over and over again to grasp hold of Hawks and force him back into his body’s driver’s seat, he can’t help but think he much preferred being dead.

General Taglist: @ahtsuwu @oikawaandkuroostan @larkspyrr @oliviasslut @black-rose-29

#hawks #wing hero hawks #hawks x y/n #hawks x reader #keigo takami #keigo takami x reader #keigo takami x y/n #hawks angst #keigo takami angst #mental illness tw #depression tw #disassociation tw #depersonalization tw #hopeless.oneshot

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greensaplinggrace · 3 years ago

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honestly THANK YOU for saying all that abt baghra bc i thought i was going crazy from not liking her??? bc i haven't read the books and only summaries of them on wiki and like. i dunno why ppl like her actually even in the show bc this guy, her son, is like "i wanna make the world better for us grisha" and she's just like "no." even tho he sees that she's MAKING HERSELF SICK from suppressing her powers! she's literally like in bed coughing in the flashback yet seem much healthier at the little palace. also like after everything, after her disapproval, after the fold, after centuries of waiting for the sun summoner.. he never abandons her. he makes sure she's cares for. he doesn't harm her. and i have to wonder if baghra has ever thanks him for that, for just not leaving her alone. like i dunno how im suppose ro believe aleks is a heartless villain when he still cares for his abusive mom like this. like has baghra even told her she loved him (honestly she reminds me of a classic emotionally unavailable asian parent but maybe that's just me). also im wondering if baghra ever told aleks that he had an aunt.. bc like.. now that u bring up her isolating him it's like hmmmm...

not at me being like alina... why do u trust the bitter old woman who literally beats u with a stick and verbally abuses u every chance she gets.. just bc she showed a bad painting... like.. pls use two braincells to see that who u figured out as his mother... is also using his protection..

like baghra could've upped and left with alina. but no. she stayed bc she knew she was safe under aleks's protection.

alsoim just impressed that after his first friend tried to drown him and harvest his bones... he didn't go into hiding???? he still wanted to make a safe heaven for grisha!!! HE STILL WANTED TO PROTECT GRISHA EVEN AFTER HIS GRISHA FRIEND TRIED TO KILL HIM FOR HIS FUCKEN BONES. like... this is the guy im suppose to believe is the villain???

honestly i feel like part of the reason why LB's plotlines seem so bad and disconnected (and sometimes outright racist but that's another rant) and why darkles is disproportionately more violent and villainous in the later books is bc she didn't expect the darkling to be so popular and wanted to stick with her guns of making him the villain. but also wanted the money from aleks's popularity. but like you can't have ur cake and eat it too.

Well thank you for sending this ask! It's very sweet and very passionate. I'm glad you liked my post! I didn't put as much thought into it as some of my others lol. I kind of just talked. But it was nice to be able to finally talk about some of the problems I have with both her character and the fandom/author's perception of her.

HERE is the post this is referring to, in case anyone's wondering.

👀👀 You've hit the nail on the head for so many things, here!

Baghra is extremely emotionally unavailable, basically to the point of neglect. She's also verbally and physically abusive, traits which I doubt were only reserved for her students and not her son. Baghra claims she would do anything to protect him, but I've known a lot of parents who have that mindset and yet still harm their children because they think it's "good for them".

Aleksander stays at Baghra's side for years, and even when they're opposing each other she's never too far away from him. Idk if you've read the books but he does eventually hurt her. And as much as I don't like Baghra, I think his actions were horrid. But I'm also honestly kind of surprised it took him so long lmao.

Yeah I mean, in terms of isolation, let's not forget that she never wanted to introduce him to his father, either. Baghra's sense of eternity clouds a lot of her judgments on relationships, which means she views most people as dust and therefore teaches her son to as well. The problem with that is that he's a growing child, and he needs those social and emotional attachments for healthy development.

I would bet quite a bit of money that Baghra has either never told him she loves him or she has told him so few times it's practically forgettable.

And everything becomes more complicated because so many of Baghra's actions are understandable because of her life and her history, but the impacts they have on the people around her, especially Aleksander, are permanently damaging. And the fact that that's never gone over in critical depth in the books or how it's glossed over in fandom is just very disconcerting. Like, acknowledging Baghra's failings doesn't mean we're excusing Aleksander's actions, it just means we're holding Baghra liable for her own. Which the fandom should be doing, considering she's the epitome of an abusive parental figure.

And Alina trusting Baghra over Aleksander is even more confusing! Especially in the show!! This is the woman who beat her and abused her and tortured her friends when they tiny little children (and who probably still does so now that they're adults). This is the woman who mocks you and harasses you and insults you on a regular basis. Why does Baghra revealing she's Aleksander's mother make Alina change her mind?! Like fuck, I'd just feel bad for Aleksander. No wonder he kept it a secret, I would too! And that painting is enough evidence?! Really?! A random painting shown to you by this abusive mentor that's been making your life hell. That's what you're going to betray your new lover over?

The friends trying to harvest his bones thing is a good point, too. I think Aleksander, especially show Aleksander, is incredibly idealistic. I think he cares too much for others - those he's deemed worth his care (a sentiment given to him by Baghra). Despite everything she's tried to teach him about hiding and abandoning others and never caring and never doing anything to help or reach out or connect with people, Aleksander still continues to do so. It's likely because he never got it from Baghra growing up, and so is desperate for those emotional needs to be fulfilled elsewhere.

His turning point, when Baghra tells him it was understandable that those kids tried to kill him because the world is such a hard place for them - that's crucial. And the reason it's possible as a motivating factor is because of that idealism and that desire to help and that desire to be everything his mother isn't. Baghra tells him this trauma he just experienced was because of the oppression of his people, and instead of following her lead and accepting that, going into hiding and abandoning everybody to their misery, he goes I can do something about that. I can make it so this never happens again. Which is usually how trauma like that combines with one's core personality traits at a young age, especially when there's none of the essential support systems in place to aid in recovery (ie, the role Baghra should have been filling but wasn't, because she decided to exacerbate the problem instead).

And yeah, one of my biggest problems with the ham-fisted "beating you over the head with a sledgehammer of evil deeds" look-how-bad-this-character-is! portrayal of the Darkling in the later books comes from the impression I get that Bardugo doesn't trust her readers. She's so desperate to have us hate this character and think him an irredeemable villain, not trusting any of her readers to engage critically with a morally gray character, that it feels quite a bit like condescending fucking bullshit. Which ew, I know how to engage with literature, thanks.

She really does seem to look down on a large part of her fandom, and imo, the infantilization of the female characters in her books seems to carry over to her impression of most of her female readers as well. Which is why the Darkling's character arc gets fucking destroyed. But he's still a good cash grab, of course, so she'll shake his dead corpse in front of the fandom for money every time she wants something from it.

Also! Another reason I think her plotlines feel disconnected (I'm sorry Bardugo I respect you as a person, but shit-) is because the writing in SaB is just bad. I mean, nevermind the absolutely nauseating implications of the way she portrays the Grisha as a persecuted group who's situation is never actually fully addressed as it should be, considering Grisha rights is what her main villain is fighting for (imo for a series called the Grishaverse, LB seems to be pretty anti Grisha), but her characters and story alone are just wrong for each other. They don't fit together.

And the ending is one of the main pieces of evidence in that regard! You can’t say the ending where Alina isn’t Grisha anymore is her “going back to where she started” when she’s always been Grisha. She just didn’t know she was Grisha because she denied that part of herself that she was born with.

Alina is reluctant to move forward or change, she struggles with adapting, and she’s very set on the things she’s grown attached to throughout her life. She also has some latent prejudices against the Grisha, and so denies the possibility of being Grisha for those reasons as well.

Alina’s lack of powers in the beginning of her life because she willfully doesn’t learn about them to avoid change versus her lack of powers at the end of the book when she’s accepted them and then they’re stripped away from her by outer forces are two entirely separate circumstances. You can’t make a parallel about lost powers and lack of Grisha status bringing her back to the start when she was always Grisha and she always had powers and she simply refused to come to terms with it because of personal reasons.

The first situation is an internal conflict that indicates a story about growth and a journey of self acceptance. Denying herself the opportunity to learn about her heritage and to find acceptance with a group of people like her because she’s tied to the past and because of the way she was raised is the setup for a narrative that tackles unlearning prejudice and learning how to connect with a part of her identity that was denied her and learning how to grow independent and self assured. It’s the setup for a different story entirely. The second situation is an external conflict that centers around the ‘corrupting influence of power’... for some reason.

In a world where Grisha do not have social, political, or economic power and they are hunted, centering your heroine’s journey of self acceptance and growth around an external conflict about... the corrupting influence of power (in a group of people that don’t actually have any power?!) just doesn’t work. It is literally impossible to connect the two stories Bardugo is trying to push in Shadow and Bone without seriously damaging the main character’s developmental arc.

The only way a narrative like this would work, claiming that she has gone back to where she started, is either a) if the Grisha weren’t actually a persecuted group and instead were apart of the upper class, or b) if the one bad connection between the two instances is acknowledged - that Alina denied a part of herself crucial to self acceptance and growing up, and that losing her powers at the end has also denied her. It is a tragedy, not a happy ending.

Alina suffered because she didn’t use her powers. She grew sick. It was bad for her. This was not a resistance to 'the corruption of power and the burden of greed', it was her suffering because she couldn’t fully accept herself.

Framing the ending as a return to the beginning can’t be done if you don’t address how bad the beginning was for your main character. You brought her back to a bad point in her life. You regressed her. This should be a low point in her arc. It should be a problem that’s solved so she can finish developing organically or it should be something that is acknowledged as a tragedy in it’s own right, for the future the world (the writing) denied her.

This is a ramble and it makes no sense and I’m really sorry, but my point is that Bardugo put the wrong characters in the wrong story. The character arc required for organic development doesn’t match the story and intended message at all. The narrative doesn’t fit the cast. She's got two clashing stories attempting to work in tandem and she ends up with both conflicting messages that fans still can’t comprehend in her writing and an ending that doesn’t suit her main character to such an impossible degree that it’s almost laughable.

So yeah, there's a few reasons why I think the story and the plot feels so bad and disconnected. I hope you don't mind me making this answer so long! 😅 I was not expecting to write this much.

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elonaackerman · 4 years ago

Note

In a few hour's the spoiler leaks are going to be released for the final chapter of Attack on titan manga and the official translation on April 9th so before all that happens what are you're thoughts and predictions between the character's and the end of the storyline?

https://ww7.readsnk.com/chapter/shingeki-no-kyojin-spoilers-raw-chapter-139/.

Hello Kian ! I see several of your questions about the ending and I must say I was lost myself with everything happening. However, I think I elaborated a good theory now !

Theory number 1: Eren is alive

This is the theory I acknowledge the most. Many people say that Eren not dying would be too strange after he already survived so much times to his expected deaths, but I don’t think so. Isayama loves to take some clichés and to twist them:

Here is a brief list:

- The MC not dying in the first episodes

- The power of will and friendship (which is shown to be useless in the Trost arc)

- The guy protecting the girl (Mikasa is Eren’s bodyguard, not the contrary)

- The main trio sticking together until the end

- The MC being « special »/being the « chosen one » (Eren is an usurpator)

Something very used in films/books is to use the absence of body as a way to cancel the absolute truth of a death. By showing us a body, Isayama can fool us by transgressing this common rule of « body=dead ».

Also Eren’s death in chapter 138 was just serving Mikasa’s development arc climax. It didn’t solve any matter of their world.

You know I feel like Eren was very relaxed when he saw Mikasa approaching to kill him. He probably already knew what she was going to do and even closed his eyes when she did it (you can see it since on the last panel, Eren has his eyes closed). I feel like if Eren acted this way, it’s because he transferred his consciousness to his body (all this time his head was controlling the titan so he may have regenerated a head on his body). It would explain why this concept was introduced to us with Reiner in season 3 and then never used again.

Plus, Grisha said everything would go along to Eren’s plan, but if Eren didn’t succeed, the Rumbling is stopped and hell awaits eldians: they will be killed after what happened, considered too dangerous, more than they already were. And even if the titan power is removed, there will still be a large part of hate and of revenge in the Rumbling survivors’ hearts. I don’t believe the « Code Geass theory » which says that Eren did the rumbling so the world could see Eldians defending it, and stand united with Mahrs against him (in the role of the bad guy), especially since some Eldians sided with Eren and that he exposed them in Revelio or even in Paradise with his devoted Yeagerists. It’s not realistic at all and it doesn’t fit nor Eren’s character, nor SNK spirit.

Eren had defined goals: « exterminate them all », and that’s what he did, he doesn’t seem to want to stop the rumbling on this panel:

Isayama said he didn’t like characters who weren’t true to their goals, that let the story change their plans and motivations too easily. He wouldn’t give to his MC the traits of a writing he despise.

Another reason why I believe the guy is alive is because his POV was hidden all this time. What’s the point of not giving to us Eren’s perspective while his final battle, when it would have been more powerful, if you did not have a big secret/plot twist generator to hide ? I think Eren and Ymir, who smiles like a creep in 138, manipulated everyone: the way Armin came with all the titan shifters in 137 with the help of Ymir was already really suspicious. Kruger, for example, had no reason to stand against Eren.

Chapter 137 was Armin, 138 was Mikasa so we will surely get Eren perspective for 139. And it will be weird if we have it while the guy is dead. Of course we’ll see what happened in chapter 130 between Eren and Historia (I can’t wait for their POVs) and Historia’s baby. The final panel makes me even more sure that Eren is still alive otherwise who on earth would say « You are free » to a new born child ? Eren x Freedom is canon.

• The Attack Titan

We know the path is a place out of time. It’s in this place that titans are sculpted by Ymir, and that’s why I think it makes sense for Eren to be the first owner of that titan: the attack titan is the only one who ascends in the past instead of descending in the future. If physically it seems to be passed down following the classical timeline, all of it is actually playing in the paths. The Attack Titan was only possessed by rebels, directly influenced by Eren’s mindset. It disappeared at a time, and it was also a part of Ymir’s titan: it’s her rebellious part designed to « attack » the world 2000 years later. I think Isayama might add depth again to the title of the story in 139.

• Major deaths

I can’t help but think: why did Eren let Mikasa cut his head and even indicated his location with titan marks ? I think that it’s possible he wants his last friends to fly away from the battle, thinking they have won when they didn’t, so that he can restart the Rumbling without killing them. The survivors would be Levi, Mikasa, Armin and probably Annie. I think Reiner will die to let Gaby eat him, so that Falco and Gaby, representing the future, can be saved.

It makes sense for Reiner to sacrifice himself for his little cousin: he lived for the ones he loved even if he didn’t wish to live himself, and since Gaby represents the new generation, hope, and that she was the potential inheritor of the Armored Titan, I am convinced she is the one who will eat him.

After that the most probable thing is that Levi and Mikasa, who grew incredibly closer, will live together, same for Annie and Armin. Eren will achieve the Rumbling then go back to Historia and we will have that Akatsuki no Requiem ending.

However, a darker possibility is that everyone except Falco and Gaby might die. I am in denial 😄✌🏻

But, I ask myself how Eren will make titans disappear. I think he might have plotted something with Ymir, after all isn’t she free from King Fritz now ? Or maybe Falco will eradicate the worm (bird vs worm is kinda obvious). However I do not think the people transformed into titans will turn back to normal, it’s not Isayama’s style to « bring back » dead characters, it would make Jean’s and Connie’s deaths less tragic. I think that only shifters will loose their ability and the 13 years thing.

Theory 2: if Eren is dead

• Ymir’s manipulation

I don’t wanna believe it but what if all of this was Ymir’s plan ? If he IS dead, it’s Ymir who is the mastermind and manipulated him so that the parasite would die and that she could get out off the paths. « I took the world’s freedom to gain mine » what if it’s YMIR TALKING in 133 ? She could even had sent the dream to Mikasa in 138 so that she would know WHERE Eren was and kill him, all of this after Ymir took revenge on the world. Remember, the titan who protected Zeke came from earth, and Ymir entered in contact with « the source of all organic life », which means she could be the one behind the birds we keep seeing, including the one on Mikasa dream. She could be smiling because her plan WORKED.

Also remember in the paths where Eren was talking to the Alliance ? He was in his kid Eren form, like Ymir, we didn’t see his eyes, showing his slavery and a strange alike-look. Ymir was standing right next to him, in the exact same position, mirroring him as if he was a sort of reflection/puppet of hers. Everybody thought the contrary until now, that Ymir followed Eren. While she was here, Eren was saying that the only way to end all of this was to take his life: what if Ymir made him say that ?

It makes even more sense when Ymir helped Armin with summoning shifters and that they also had their mouths don’t moving.

• Eldian Society ?

The only way to resolve everything if Eren is dead is to create an Eldian empire domination with the rest of the world being weak and wiped out. Everybody would live on Paradise and would be teached about the cycle of hate and the heroes who stopped the Rumbling as new Helos, giving us an explanation of that picture in the opening (it could also be Eren’s society as well meant to not repeat the same mistakes as well)

I hope you liked it ! Let’s not suffer too much during the waiting and organize cottagecore RM and EH weddings with the beach Aruannie one instead of crying 💁🏻‍♀️

#rivamika #snk #aot #ackerman clan #erehisu #levi #levi ackerman #ackerman #mikasa #eren #snk 139

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noctilucentstorm · 3 years ago

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Digimon Ghost Game: Episode 11

Kamaitachi

A rumour spreads of a strange weather phenomenon causing damage to trees and shop signs. Meanwhile, Angoramon is keeping secrets from Ruli, leading her to question their bond.

Last week was Kiyoshiro and Jellymon, this week we get Ruli and Angoramon!

I was actually really relieved this wasn’t another evolution episode on the back of the last one. It works better as a contrast to emotion of the previous episode and, more importantly, we get some good development of Ruli and Angoramon’s relationship which was sorely needed. This episode has left me hopeful that the writers really know what they’re doing and that when we get that evolution it’ll be well deserved.

Characters

Where last episode focussed on Kiyoshiro and Jellymon, this one gives a bit more to Ruli and Angoramon. We haven’t really had a proper episode centring on both of them since their debut, so this felt really necessary in comparison to the other partnerships.

Of the six main cast, Angoramon has felt the least fleshed-out of the characters. From episode three we know he enjoyed relaxing on the rooftop and listening to Ruli play the piano and that he wanted to protect her from other digimon, but not much about his own motivations. His partnership bond with Ruli felt like one of necessity comparted to Jellymon, who chose her partner, and Gammamon, who was either specifically chosen or possibly created for Hiro by his father. After all, he had no interest even in fully materialising until it was the only option left to protect Ruli. We get a hint as to why that might be when we’re introduced to his information group. Unlike Gammamon, he had a life before becoming a partner digimon. It does make me wonder how much he misses that freedom, especially when his laid back attitude clashes with Ruli’s enthusiasm and penchant for getting into trouble which we see in this episode.

We know a bit more about Ruli even if she hasn’t always been the episode focus. She’s impulsive, loves trying new things, and is very social. There have been a few moments where her actions have come across as a bit frivolous, her summoning Hiro and Bokomon to the café and then leaving them for her friends being this episode’s example. Given how popular she is, I imagine this is something her friends have come to accept about her since she does genuinely caring things for them as well, but it’s a little different for Angoramon who appears to like a certain level of predictability. As an aside, I love how close Jellymon and Ruli seem to be that they chat/hangout with each other even without their partners!

Ruli and Angoramon’s relationship has felt underdeveloped compared to the other partnerships, but what I had initially assumed was bad writing I now think was probably calculated given the theme of this episode. Ruli’s increasing awareness that Angoramon is hiding something from her rubs the wrong way and leads her to question the strength of their partnership. This especially makes sense on the back of last week’s episode as a contrast to Kiyoshiro and Jellymon's stronger bond. Ruli is sharing all of her interests (no matter how fleeting) with Angoramon while she seems to get little back. It’s understandable that she would feel put out by his behaviour.

Relationships are built on mutual interests as well as trust. By the end Angoramon realises that keeping Ruli at arm’s length has been damaging that. I think it’s important that he’s making the first move to bridge the gap. Angoramon doesn’t go as far as introducing Ruli to the group (yet), but by opening up the way he did it leaves them a chance to grow closer. Predictably, Ruli returns his trust with kindness and understanding, and admitting her own fault in their distance. It’s a lovely hint towards how their partnership could evolve further over the series (pun intended).

Worldbuilding

Not much to say here, other than I can’t believe I didn’t realise Reppamon’s parallels with the tamaitachi. I continue to enjoy the crossover between actual lore and digimon lore.

#digimon #digimon ghost game #angoramon #ruli tsukiyono #ruri tsukiyono #ghost game spoilers #digimon ghost game spoilers #review #episode 11 #I realise I'm maybe coming off as harsher towards angoramon #but only because ruli's realisation was spelled out more in the episode

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aurora077 · 3 years ago

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MDZS fic I'll probably never write (but I want to so...maybe)

So Jiang Cheng actually finds a woman willing to marry him but she's afraid of dogs too.

Since Lotus Pier has no dogs (hmm I wonder why...), the first time he finds out this tidbit is when Jin Ling is gifted Fairy and proudly comes to visit, wanting to show her off to his aunt and uncle. Except said aunt is terrified and clings to her husband who is suddenly getting ~war~ flashbacks. And by that I mean rapid memories of Wei Wuxian clinging and screaming whenever he encountered a dog.

Despite the fact that he loves this woman and they've been married for years and she has in fact handled zidian before (aka u know, she can't be possessed or zidian would do the zap)... for one hot second his brain goes 'wife + fear of dogs = wei wuxian possession/reincarnation/shapeshifting???'

He just barely tells Jin Ling to take Fairy for a walk and turns on his wife all accusingly. She's already clinging to him so he just grabs her arms and she has no idea why he's reacting like this and is all concerned like "A-Cheng what's wrong, you're gripping me rather tight. Are you afraid of dogs too?"

And he's just like "Wei Wuxian!"

"You're afraid of Wei Wuxian?" says poor confused wife.

"No! You! You are..."

"I'm afraid of Wei Wuxian???"

Girl is now wondering if Wei Wuxian turned/reincarnated into a dog and is now A-Ling's pet.

But her silly husband is staring at her with a slightly unhinged look and is all like 'Wei Wuxian where is my wife? What did you do to my wife?'

And she's really confused now and is like... 'But.. I am your wife. I'm right here? A-Cheng are you okay?"

And he's losing it like what? Wei Wuxian was his wife all along??

She realises from his mad ramblings that he thinks she's Wei Wuxian and can't help but laugh.

She's all like, "But A-Cheng... I share your bed, how could I be Wei Wuxian?"

"A-Cheng...did... were you and Wei Wuxian... like that?"

And my boy spits blood. He just implodes at the thought of Wei Wuxian and him like that. And his wife is concerned but also finding this like absolutely hilarious.

This of course makes him realise that no it's not Wei Wuxian, he wouldn't come near Jiang Cheng with a ten foot pole, so his wife is just terrified of dogs all on her own.

Years later he goes on a hunt to Dafan mountain with A-Ling and they meet the mad demonic cultivator who Jiang Cheng knows is really Wei Wuxian this time à la his Wen Ning summoning.

Wei Wuxian hides behind Lan Wangji and is all like 'You're not my type Sect Leader Jiang' thinking that he'll make JC forget about the Wen Ning thing by offending him as Jiang Cheng is competitive and doesn't like being called second best.

Except he has the surprise of his life when Jiang Cheng just heaves a huuuge sigh of relief and vehemently says 'THANK F**K.'

Somehow, this turns into a fix-it.

His wife of course has never let him live down the time he thought she was the Yiling Laozu.

---------------------------------

This just randomly popped into my head and it's now living here rent free but I have no zeal to actually write it because it's easier to imagine it and dang I wish I was motivated lol I have 2 WIPs for this fandom just sitting there staring at me accusingly.

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deascheck · 3 years ago

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Sam Winchester's Love

Summary: You are in a relationship with Sam Winchester. You don’t feel deserving of his love as your depression causes you to sink into a deep rut. Sam does some research about depression and responds to your lapse in happiness with a gentle approach that ends with him showing you just how much he loves you.

Word Count: 2906

Warnings: talk of depression and suicide/death, angst, and all the fluff with some smut added in there.

A/N: First- I’ve never written smut before. So be nice! Second, I struggle with depression and anxiety, and wanted to write a fic that expresses what would help me (or hopefully anyone struggling as well) feel appreciated when I’m low. I bolded symptoms of depression to help people see what it feels like to have depression. These are not the only symptoms. If you identify with one or more of the symptoms, I encourage you to reach out to someone and start a conversation. It could be a complete stranger or a loved one. (I'm always a listening ear, too!) Whatever you’re most comfortable with. All “Google results” are from my own google search. The crisis text line is a real resource for you to use, if you find yourself in a mental health crisis.

Also tagging a couple people who might like to read. Sorry if that's overstepping! @winchester09 @that-one-gay-girl @supernatural-harrypotter7 @winchest09

The one good thing about living in a bunker was that there were no windows. Your room that you shared with Sam Winchester was no different. It meant no morning sun could wake you up, and you could keep the room as dark and cool as you wanted to. And on this particular morning, your depression had you keeping the room as dark as you possibly could.

You knew the boys would be wondering where you were, since it was 10:30, and you were always up by 8:00. But you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You couldn’t move, you couldn’t get dressed, brush your teeth or hair, or even get your legs swung over the edge of the bed. You were so emotionless that you couldn’t even cry. You simply didn’t care. Nothing felt important to you. You had no motivation to do anything except lie there in the gloom, curled around yourself, stuck in this dark rut.

You had no idea how much time had passed while you stayed there, motionless, until Sam came in, knocking softly as he opened the door. Your eyes glanced over to him and you could see the surprise and concern on his face at discovering your lack of activity.

“Y/N? Love, what are you still doing in bed? It’s 2:00 in the afternoon.”

You sighed. “I don’t care,” you said softly. “Nothing matters to me right now. I wish I would die. Then I wouldn’t be a burden to anyone anymore. No one would miss me.”

Sam knew you struggled with depression, but in the short time you’d been together, he had yet to see a truly deep depressive episode. It scared him, and he replied, “What? Y/N, I would miss you! You’re scaring me.”

You moved your head marginally to be able to look at him for real, and asked, “Would you let me be? I just need to be alone.” Your tone was expressionless, and it freaked Sam out.

He nodded and slowly and quietly closed the door. Once the door was latched firmly, Sam beelined for his laptop. He’d be damned if he was going to let you suffer alone and in silence.

Opening his computer, he typed in “symptoms of depression”. Among the results were, “fatigue, sleeping too much or too little, feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, loss of interest in activities that once brought pleasure, appetite loss, feelings of sadness, loneliness, or ‘empty’ feelings, thoughts of suicide or death”. His eyes widened. You met every single one of those criteria for identifying depression.

Determined to help, he next googled “how to help someone with depression”. The answers ranged from helping the loved one cope, to opening a conversation with the loved one and getting them to talk about their feelings. Asking questions such as “What caused you to start feeling like this? How can I help you right now?” Stating things like, “You’re important to me. Your life is important to me,” or “You’re not alone, I’m here for you.”

One resource he found as he researched fervently was the crisis text line. It was a number (741-741) someone could text and speak to a certified individual about whatever their crisis was. Sam noted that in the back of his mind as something to bring up to you.

Sam nodded as he read. He knew he could do all these things. His biggest goal for you was for you to feel supported and loved. Seeing you in the state you were in concerned him and it had almost sent him in a tailspin of worry. But he would remain strong for you. You needed Sam to lean on if you were going to get up to see the light.

Sam noticed Dean wander in and motioned him over.

“Hey, I gotta talk to you about Y/N. She’s in a really bad depressive episode. She said she wanted to die.” Sam’s heart rate sped up with fear just saying those words. He swallowed and continued. “I’ve been looking up depression online and I think I know how to help her. But I could use your help.”

Dean quickly responded, “So that’s why she’s still in your room. Of course. What do you need?”

Sam answered, “I’m going to have a conversation with her and see if I can’t convince her to get out of bed. Actually, once we finish talking, I’m going to carry her out if she won’t walk. But I want to give her some ideas of simple things we could do as a group that would help her snap back to us.”

Dean nodded in agreement. “I think you’re on the right track. I dated a girl for like, a week, years ago who had depression, and getting outside really helped her she said. Maybe we could go on a walk with her down to the lake. Or hell, even loop around the bunker’s perimeter a few times.”

“That’s a good idea. I was also thinking something easier, like a movie night squished between us - something to show her she’s loved and not alone. Or maybe making dinner with us, so that she’s up and about but doesn’t really have to do much.” Sam ran his hand through his hair as he thought out loud.

Dean grinned. “Oh we’d show her she’s loved. She’s like my sister. She’s not going anywhere.”

His grin faded. “Hey, what if we took her on an easy hunt? Tried to get her back in the swing of things? Maybe it would distract her from the depression.”

Sam shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. She said she wanted to die, which makes me think that she might do something stupid on the hunt, like try to get killed. Or even just make a stupid mistake because her head isn’t in the game. No, I don’t think a hunt is the right option for her right now.”

“Of course. Duh. I should have known that,” Dean rolled his eyes in exasperation at his cluelessness. ‘I wouldn’t want to put Y/N in danger.”

Sam sighed. “Well, we’ve got some ideas. Let me go talk to her and see what I can get her to do. We’ll be out in a bit one way or another.”

Dean nodded and headed to the kitchen to grab a bite and some coffee before doing his own research on your debilitating ailment.

----

You still hadn’t moved since Sam had come into the room. Your mind felt empty, like everything had been drained from it. You just lay there quietly, waiting for nothing.

The door opened slowly, and Sam silently came in, shutting the door behind him. He didn’t say a word, just got in the bed with you and wrapped you up in his arms to hold you close. Your back against his chest, he tried to shelter you with his body, as if he could protect you from the dark thoughts. Sam wanted you to feel his love first before he tried to say anything. The two of you stayed like that for several minutes, the only sound in the room was the sound of two humans breathing softly. You hadn’t even known, but his touch was what you’d been needing. You soaked in the moment, grateful Sam was giving you space before speaking.

“Y/N?” Sam kissed the nook between your shoulder and your neck. “I want you to know you’re not alone. I’m here for you every step of the way.”

You didn’t respond, but it created the first semblance of emotion you’d felt all day. You could feel your eyes start to well up, not understanding how he knew exactly what to say to you.

“I don’t know what triggered your episode, but I think it would help if you talked it through with someone. It doesn’t even have to be me. You could text the crisis help line, and speak to someone through that. What do you think about that?” You could hear the hesitation in Sam’s voice, as though if he spoke too loudly or firmly he’d break you.

Sighing once again, you summoned the motivation to speak. “If I talk to anyone, I’d like it to be you.”

You could feel the smile on his lips as he again kissed you.

You drew in a shaky breath and decided to describe to him how you were feeling. You told him in a whisper about how you had no motivation, no gumption to do anything. How you felt worthless and unlovable. You told him how you felt he’d be better off if you just died so you weren’t a burden anymore and how you couldn’t bring yourself to care about anything today. As you spoke of your symptoms and feelings, you could feel a couple warm tears dripping into the crook of your neck and shoulder.

Once you finished, you felt Sam take a couple steadying breaths, clearly attempting to get himself together. “My love, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. If I could take this all away I would. But I’m here. I can share the weight of your burden. You mean the world to me. You are the farthest thing from a burden on me. You are the shining light in my life, guiding me and loving me. You have given me a reason to fight on. You are what I hold on to in my dark moments.” Here Sam paused, unsure whether he was overwhelming you or even getting through to you.

You turned in his arms so that your chest was facing his, your arms pressed against his chest as you brought your head to tuck under his. “Sam, I can’t tell you how much that helped me,” you said softly.

Sam took that as a cue and gently unwrapped one of his arms from your back and brought your head up to his. Tenderly, he pressed his lips to yours, sending you the message “I love you”. You allowed yourself to respond, capturing his lips with yours. Your kiss was sending the message, “Thank you.”

The two of you kissed delicately for a minute before your body began to respond. You pressed your mouth more firmly against his and adjusted your body to press closer against Sam’s. You brought one hand up and began to run it through Sam’s hair, something you knew he was crazy for. As the kiss began to become more passionate, you grabbed Sam’s hair at the roots and gently pulled, letting him know it was ok to take this a step further. He moaned a little against your mouth at the feeling of his hair being tugged on and involuntarily ground his hips into yours.

You automatically responded by thrusting your hips back against his. Sam broke the kiss long enough to look at you with an unspoken question in his eyes. You nodded, understanding his desire to show you just how much he loved you. Sam rolled you onto your back before resuming the kiss, running his tongue along your bottom lip, lazily requesting access to your mouth. You granted it, and began to explore his mouth with your own as if it were your first kiss. You could feel Sam slowly grinding against you, not rushing, but clearly feeling the need for some friction. His erection was bumping against your abdomen, and both of your breathing began to get shorter and heavier.

Not breaking the kiss, Sam lifted himself up on one arm and began pulling your nightshirt over your head. You allowed your lips to leave his only long enough to get the shirt out of the way and immediately brought your mouth to Sam’s again. His free hand roamed across your stomach, tracing lines in circles and random shapes as he made his way up to your breasts. Your breathing hitching, you moaned into the kiss as he began to massage your breast, pinching your hardened nipple. Your hips began to grind back against Sam’s, now also needing friction. Your arousal was beginning to pool between your legs, and you weren’t wearing panties.

Sam began to move his kisses down your jawline and to your neck, where he sucked through his teeth, determined to leave his mark on you. You cocked your neck to the side to allow him full access but he was already moving lower, taking your nipple in his mouth and swirling his tongue around it, sucking on it. He pulled off it with a pop, and moved to the next one. Sam then continued to work his way down your body, kissing every inch of your stomach, navel, and down to your inner thighs. You shuddered, his lips so close to your slick folds. Sam smiled against your leg. “You like that, sweetheart?” All you could do was whimper in response as you ground your hips desperately. “Ok,” he murmured. “Ok, love. Let me show you how much I love you.”

Sam ran his tongue between your folds and immediately you felt the tightness in your core begin. He knew every sensitive spot, every place to make you writhe in ecstasy. He sucked on your clit and slowly stuck a finger in your hole. You threw your head back, eager for him to insert another, which he obliged. He bent them and ran them against your walls, curling and pumping. Your juices squelched a bit, letting Sam know just how ready for him you were. He continued to run his tongue in swirls around your clit and through your folds as he finger fucked you. The tightness in your core becoming unbearable, you could feel your release coming. You moaned loudly and stuttered, “S-Sam, I’m gon-gonna…”

“Cum for me baby. Come on, that’s it. Good girl,” he praised as your orgasm exploded, pleasure coursing through your body, your pussy clenching around his fingers over and over again as he rode you through it.

You lay limp against the sheets, unable to form words. Sam looked up at you and chuckled. He slowly brought himself up along your body to recapture your lips with his, putting all his love and passion into the kiss. “Now do you know how much I love you?” he asked. You smirked. You could feel his erection pressed between your bodies. You wanted to feel him deep inside you, filling you, satisfying you. “Mmm I’m beginning to,” you murmured. “I might need you to show me more.” Sam smirked back at you and said, “As you wish, my love.”

He lined himself up at your entrance, rubbing his cock in your juices. Slowly, he pushed in, letting you adjust as he went. That was one thing you loved about him. Sam never rushed your body. He worshipped it. Once he was fully sheathed, he pulled halfway out, and slowly thrust back in, creating a slow, lazy pace that made you two feel like you had all the time in the world. As he thrust, he grabbed one of your legs, and put it over his shoulder, giving him a new angle, to get him deeper.

You moaned and your pussy clenched around his cock as he hit places that gave you waves of pleasure. He groaned as you clenched around him and sped up his pace, his balls slapping against your skin. Sam took his free hand and started rubbing your clit again, trying to help you get to your climax. His other hand held your hip in place as his pace picked up even more, almost becoming erratic as he got close to his release. You threw your head back again as you felt the familiar tightness building in your core. “Oh don’t stop. Oh Sam. Oh my god. Don’t .. don’t… ahhh!!” You came loudly and harder than last time, your back arching and your pussy milking Sam’s cock for all it was worth. Sam grunted - he couldn’t handle it, the tightness, the pulsing - and released inside you, jerking his hips, spurts of cum coating your walls.

Sam gently pulled out of you, his cum dripping from between your legs. He got up and grabbed a towel from the closet and quietly cleaned you up, careful to not be too rough. You lay there in heaven, a stupid smile on your face, unsure if you’d even be able to walk the next day. Sam crawled back into bed with you and gathered you in his arms. He pressed a soft kiss to your temple and said, “Do you believe me now? How much I love you?”

You smiled adoringly at him and whispered, “Yes, I do.”

Sam grinned. “Good. Because we have an activity outside the room that we’re going to do. And you need to be clothed for it.” He winked at you cheekily. “Dean and I were talking, and we brainstormed something the three of us could do that would help you feel less alone. So, let’s get UP,” he rolled you on top of him and then over him to get you to the side of the bed. “And dressed, and then we’ll go meet Dean.”

You smiled again at him, and good-naturedly shook your head as you got dressed. The darkness was gone for now. You knew it would be back, but you had ammunition to combat it the next time it came a-knocking. Sam Winchester’s love.

#supernatural #supernatural smut #supernatural fan fic #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester fanfiction #sam winchester #spn fic #deascheck

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adhd-asd · 5 years ago

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What are some tricks for getting executive dysfunction to bugger off long enough to do the thing?

Here are some ideas I’ve either found work for me or I’ve been told work for other people. Hopefully you’ll find some of them effective or, if not, maybe they’ll inspire you to come up with some brand new strategies of your own.

Declare your intent aloud. Announce to yourself (and other people, if they’re around) that you’re going to do the thing you need to do. Eg: “I will clean the sink.” “I am going to have a shower.”

Talk yourself through the task. Narrating the steps of my current task as I do them helps me to concentrate and follow through. Eg: “I am gathering the empty cups from the table and putting them in the sink.” Sometimes I can then even start narrating things I am not doing and I’ll automatically follow through because it’s become a habit in the moment. If a task involves reading, try reading it aloud.

Steal the energy from elsewhere. Engage with something that makes you feel good first, then ride that high to do the thing that doesn’t. If the task involves doing something physical, put on some energetic music that makes you want to dance and then channel that dance energy into task energy.

Hype yourself up. Channel your inner feel-good sports movie coach and start telling yourself how awesome you are, how you’re gonna kick this task’s butt and this task doesn’t stand a chance. Repeat random over-the-top motivational phrases until the motivation has no choice but to appear, like summoning an eldritch being by annoying them until they acknowledge you.

Break the task into steps. Very often I’ll have trouble tackling tasks, even simple ones, just because I don’t know where to start and the whole thing feels bigger than it is. In this case I find it helps to determine the steps that a task involves and do them one at a time, treating each one as its own job. Eg: Instead of “I will write an essay” try “I will write an introductory paragraph” or even just “I will write an introductory sentence”.

Write the steps down. Goodness knows I can’t follow verbal instructions for the life of me unless they’re given one step at a time. Rather than trying to keep the steps straight in your head, write them down and keep referring back to that list when you get sidetracked, lost, or stuck.

Do the task out of order. If the task allows it, try doing whatever part is most appealing first to ease yourself into the workflow.

Make the workload smaller. If jobs like doing dishes or laundry seem like too much work, consider if you can get rid of some of the clothes or dishes to cut down on how much work there is in the first place. If you’ve committed to too large a project, see if you can simplify it or distribute the work involved among a group.

Narrow your focus. Rather than tackling an entire task at once, try breaking it into easier-to-manage chunks. If you need to do laundry or dishes, specify that you’re only going to wash shirts or plates. If reading an entire book is intimidating, assign yourself a certain number of pages at a time. If reading an entire page of text is intimidating, try covering the page with a loose piece of paper and slowly revealing lines as you read.

Do it in five minute increments. Set a timer for five minutes and do the task for the duration. If you feel like you could do a little more, keep at it. If you’re still struggling, give yourself a break (you can also time your break if you find that helps) and try again later.

Use a buddy. See if there’s someone who’s willing to have a call going or who will come sit by you or even just check in every once in a while to keep you accountable. ADHDers are notorious for lacking internal motivation, so employing someone else to externalize it can make a big difference.

Be kind to yourself. Sometimes, no matter what you do, your brain just doesn’t want to cooperate. If you feel yourself getting frustrated, remember that it’s not your fault. Take a step back, have a snack or drink of water, give yourself some time to decompress, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Taking care of yourself will help you to actually be in good enough condition to do the job.

I’ve also talked more in-depth about how I personally tackle doing tasks despite executive dysfunction here, and I have an ADHD Writing Advice post here that has some tips that may be applicable to tasks other than writing.

To others who struggle with executive dysfunction, what are some strategies you’ve discovered work for you?

#Brady Answers #adhd #actually adhd #asd #actually autistic #tips #executive dysfunction #long post

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anotherplumbob · 3 years ago

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I love your series (even tho i started following kinda in the middle and i still need to go back and read yearly generation's posts). And im sorry if this comes out the wrong way (English isn't my first language). But I kinda feel sad seeing Sev and Saith like that. When they were kids I thought they would go on and have some big adventure like their moms. Like with one of them magical and the other kinda jelly of it. I thought there would be a big magical conflict in the realm of magic that they would solve. So it's kinda sad for me to see them ready to pass on the generation without leaving a big note in sim-history. But that said I really enjoyed their small "slices of life" stories. (Yeah i know the Bonehilda was a big one but i feel its big only for their family and can't compare to defeating mother plant). Ok, i really don't know how to word it otherwise but i just gonna summon: I LOVE your stories, I'm in no way complaining about them or something of the sort. I just wanna share my personal feelings about the characters with their creator. I'm sorry if because of my incompetence in writing it came out the wrong way. I really love your legacy and it is pure joy to see updates on them on my dash.

Hi!! Thank you so much for ask and for the thoughts!! :) and no worries, I totally get what you mean!

To be honest, I kind of thought of stories like that for them, but I didn't want to get too much into "story" (not gameplay) territory because when that happens...I usually lose my motivation to play. With their moms it was easier because Strangerville *was* actual gameplay, so it was easy to do xD

But I have this problem when I venture too much into "stories" that depart from gameplay...there is a point I just don't feel like playing the save. That is actually why I haven't touched the Lacey save in a few weeks. There are too many loose ends I have to tie and I just want to play the game and have them do sim things, and I feel I can't because they have to do all these "story" things xD

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mooshs-crack-headcanons · 4 years ago

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Hello 23 your old me, it's 22 year old you. Write some some motivational birthday sex headcanons with Vergil, and happy birthday you poor bastard.

(Posted December 16th 2020, Moosh's birthday.)

(NSFW under the cut as always!)

With the life Vergil has had up to this point the eldest son of Sparda doesn't have that many objects of sentimental value. He had traveled on his own for most of his life and with frequently moving from place to place to learn about the history of his father, he really couldn't have that much on him that couldn't be placed in the confines of his coat. So the only objects that had meaning to him that he took with him were all reminders of his past; Yamato, his book of poems, and his half of the perfect amulet. All tokens of his quest for power.

Vergil is a very different man than what he was when he was nineteen. He been corrupted by his mother's murder for decades and as V he learned the outcome and destruction of what happened to the people of Redgrave because of such power. He now only has two of those sentimental objects; the Yamato, which stays always on his side whether he be holding it or it being tied securely around his hip, and his book which if he isn't reading stays tucked in the inside pockets of his coat, his half of the perfect amulet with had been apart if the Devil Sword Sparda for several decades was now with the sword itself and Dante's rebellion fused with his brother to make his new sword (Vergil was pissed for literal weeks in hell when Dante finally told him)

So when his brother of all people asks him what he's going to get you for his birthday, Vergil freezes.

Another thing that Vergil is very new to; relationships. Sure, he has had sex a few times on his travels but they were all people he was 100% sure he would never see again (*cough cough* Nero's mother *cough*) and it was a very rare scenario that would happen, not out of lust but curiosity and to clear his mind from the stress of his quest for power. With this being the case and him trapped in hell at a very young age as well as just him burying (THE LIGHT DEEP WITHIIIIIIN) his humanity for so long, it's guaranteed that you're his first true relationship. So imagine his shock that he learns your birthday is so soon and his light offense that you haven't mentioned it to him at least once. Sure, he hasn't had that much experience with birthdays, the last one he celebrated was his and Dante's 8th, but you're...different, you've made your place in his old lonely cold heart heart and he wants to give you something that shows that you mean a lot to him, something of sentimental value to you as the Yamato and the book have to him. Though the problem is...he has trouble finding what that something could be.

It stumps Vergil thinking about it, that he doesn't appreciate, he sits and thinks of all the things that the two of you have done together just to try and think of...something. Unfortunately he just can't think of anything that he could convince himself would be good enough and he ends up going to bed frustrated on those nights. As the hours and hours to your birthday grow more near, Vergil let's his pride crack just a little bit to ask for help.

And out of all people he goes to, he goes to his brother for help.

At first he was considering going to Nero, since he actually has a significant other but...this is Vergil and he just couldn't bring himself to do it with everything he's done in his quest for power. So instead he bites the bullet and goes to Dante.

Of course Dante isn't that much help, the younger son of Sparda having not the best when it comes to relationships, however in their little heart to heart (that only broke out into one fight) Dante actually considers something that Vergil...takes into consideration.

It's not...exactly what he originally had in mind. It's not a physical sentimental object like the Yamato or his book. It's...himself. When Dante suggested it, he did so in a foul joking way (which got him a summoned sword to the chest) when his brother originally suggested it Vergil thought of the idea as incredibly selfish and saw that it would have no effort put into it whatsoever. But then he thinks about it this way; he loves you and he wants nothing more but to express that love for you, so why not let you make love to him with none of his guards up or any of his silly pride in the way? Just let you have...all of him?

To say that the sight of him laying naked on your bed and presenting himself with his legs spread and cock hard and waiting for you left you in shock the moment you opened your bedroom door was an understatement. He calls you over with a mesmerizing curl of his fingers which causes your feet to move in horny autopilot over slowly to his bedside.

His hand feels warm and smooth as his palm runs against your cheek, his other trailing along your back before pushing you closer to him making you fall down to sit on the mattress. When his lips meet yours you quickly don't waste time in adjusting yourself to where you straddle his lap, feeling his cock give an approving twitch along your backside.

In between heated kisses does Vergil flip you on your back and help you rid of your clothes followed by deep whispers of "I love you" and other such praises which at first take you off guard.

He makes his place between your legs looking up to you with a very loving look in light blue eyes, a look that is meant only for you, his fingers trace light patterns on the inside of your thighs as he holds them back to where your knees almost come to the sides of your head, one hand ever so slowly trails down to have a gentle hold on your sex before devolving his mouth to ravish.

With how good his tongue feels on you you can't help but to tightly grapple onto his silver locks and with a rough rhythm do you bob his head around to find your own pleasure. You eventually come with a loud whine put curse and your lover stays in his place between your legs drinking in you up as much as he can before pulling back to his sweat soaked face for breath, the sight of your come drenching his lips only further fueling your arousal.

It becomes clear to you exactly what he's doing, which makes a grin appear widely on your face and your heart skip a beat as the two of you not just have sex, but make love. Everything about Vergil's movements; his kisses, his lingering touches, the light bites and kisses along your chest, and especially his voice, all you can feel every ounce of his love in. Your arms wrap tightly around his neck as his tongue explores your mouth, his hand holding your leg back as he sweetly hammers that special spot that gets you loudly moaning against his lips.

His moans that normally he would hold back are all let out right next to your ear as his warm breath fans over the skin of your neck.

As the two of you get closer and closer to your end, he looks down at you with those loving eyes with his hair messy from your touch and in the most clear voice he can muster he tells you how much he loves you, how much you mean to him, and how much he's changed because of you and that he appreciates every moment he can to give himself over to you.

He fills you up deep, the sticky juices sticking and rubbing to the point where the two of you are connected as the Vergil is collapsed ontop of you and you can feel his heart beating rapidly in his chest from his high. With a groan he slowly slips out of you to readjust himself in you arms and with one hand he slowly brushes a strand of hair out of your face and pressing a quick kiss to your lips before finally settling in to lay his head in the corner of your neck.

The two of you lay there in silence for a good amount of time, you almost let yourself drift to sleep before the rumbling from Vergil's chest as he speaks next to your ear stops you.

"Happy birthday, (Name)...I'd wish to have given you something more than just...this - I just couldn't find anything that would've been good enough to show how much I care and appreciate all you've done for me."

Your hand goes to comb at his hair on the back of his head as a exhausted smile appears on your lips.

"Vergil, you didn't have to get me anything just you being with me is as good as any present could possibly be."

He looks up at you confused and opens his mouth to retort but he stops in his tracks when you hand retracts from his hair to hold his face. His eyes dart all over your face below closing as his still sweaty forehead moves to bump against yours, the anxiety in his chest ever so slowly beginning to quell.

The two of you end up sleeping with smiles on your faces that night.

#devil may cry #vergil sparda #mine #vergil x reader #sin content #birthday present to myself i guess

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