#characters go. their stories are over in canon !!!!!!! we cannot keep doing this to them LET MY BOY REST !!!!!

[simcardiac-arrested]

i'm curious, how do you feel abt the whole uuh, Michael reincarnated/his soul is stuck in glamrock freddy theory? if you've seen it floating around :0

yeah i’ve seen it around, my thoughts are that as an actual canon theory: it doesn’t make a lot of sense and just isn’t very interesting or compelling. like why exactly would mike be possessing freddy when they’ve never had any relation??? there’s no actual proof for it in the game or ANYTHING. glambear doesnt even act like mike At All people just came up with that theory because gregory looks like evan . but listen we have GOT TO LET THE AFTON FAMILY REST FOR REAL !!!! WE HAVE GOT TO LET MICHAEL REST HE HAS TO GOOOO !!!!!!! as an AU concept: sure why not. it can be interesting but also honestly i think a lot of people just Dont Understand how mike would act if he was actually possessing glamrock freddy. he would not be doing all that niceys fixing his mistakes and projecting shit he would be in the fucking torture labyrinth. having to deal with a kid that looks like his dead brother? Yeah he’s in the torture labyrinth. everyone include this in your mike is glamrock freddy au

[verdantwyrm]

In Defense of Curly (Again)

This post is not about absolving Curly of his “sins” or anything, Curly is not an innocent angel that has done no wrong, no, he is morally grey as they come. But I will not stand for slander on my wife NO MORE. Curly is not as guilty as you would think, but neither is he Innocent. Anya is so much more than a victim, Curly is so much more than a bystander, and Jimmy is so much more than a rapist, they are multifaceted characters in a very multidimensional game. They’re all characters that have been individually crafted to tell a story, and everyone is avoiding that by reducing them to a singular note of events rather than their entire personality and even going as far to twist their dialogue and character to fit their own bias, ignoring whats actual factual and canon for the sake of projection.

So with that out of the way, let us begin.

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A sense of timeline for better understanding.

Curly's Psych Eval (and by extension, Jimmys) was 7 Days before the crash. Curly does not know Anya is pregnant here. 

The birthday Party is 6 Days before the crash. Curly doesn't know here either. 

The Dead Pixel scene is 2 Days before the Crash. Curly doesn't know here either. 

Anya stealing the gun is 1 Day Before the Crash. Curly Finds out Anya is pregnant here and that Jimmy is responsible. Anya tells Jimmy about the pregnancy and tells Curly about it. 0 Days before the crash (The Same Day)

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Pony Express’ Abuse

As for the first subject, I want to make it very clear about Pony Express’ Failure to comply and have any standard safety measures (most noticeably in the lack of locks) and the fact that they very often penalize their employees by taking from their pay and that they’re extremely lazy and known to cut corners for everything. The poster in-game tells us a lot about this if not backed up directly by the dialogue.

"Proper preparation prevents accidents, it is your responsibility to keep yourself and the crew safe. Medical expenses will be docked from person credits."

"Punctual delivery is our pride and promise- No matter where you are! Late deliveries will be docked from personal credits."

"Teamwork is the soul of success! When you have completed your tasks, always check on other tasks! HR complaints about poor team synergy may result in collective punishment"

"Sleep is the best rest after a long day of work, earn that rest! Don't overdo it or fall behind! Do not indulge in over 5 hours of forest, including leisure time. Sleeping over the allowed budget will result in disciplinary actions."

Neither Curly nor Jimmy are getting anything close to the required amount of rest for such a demanding job, with only 5 hours compared to the IRL guidelines for pilots to get an average of 10 hours of rest between shifts with 8 hours of sleep, it's also implied by Anya and Curly's own dialogue that he struggles to sleep. Which all together implies that they're both working 19-hour shifts every day. Every. Single. Day.

We see them both on shift at the same time multiple times during the game and Curly is the only one with clearance to make certain extremely important navigation decisions (like turning off the autopilot) and we can easily come to the conclusion that they are both extremely overworked, Curly Especially.

We can easily see that Pony Express are not shy to punish their employees and even goes as far as to routinely engage in collective punishment, and this is shown to be the drive behind a lot of Curly's decisions in particular, especially with how he reassures Anya that her stealing the gun case will not go on the performance log and reducing the chances of her being punished at all and to probably put the pressure onto himself in case Pony Express does find out. Given her precarious financial situation, she literally cannot afford to have her pay docked and Curly knows this.

Pony Express is known for its laziness, negligence and its ability to cut corners, they are also seen to not trust its employees by making everything have to go through him from axe usage to making a cake. To not supplying enough medical equipment, a fifth cryogenic pod to account for Daisuke or even to account for him at all. Curly himself even commented on how he should have made a bigger “stink” about the situation of Daisuke being thrown on the Tulpar last minute, which implies that he did raise this as an issue and a safety risk and was ignored.

I'm not going to take this as seriously but it is worth mentioning regardless because it is just absolutely Kafkaesque levels of absurd, They actively make it borderline impossible to report anything, so even if Curly or Anya were able to get ahold of Pony Express to send in a report, they never could due to the requirements and the prerequisites. It also implies that if you apply for a job there but refuse the medical evaluation, they can fine you despite the fact that you don't even actually work there yet.

Another classic example of Marx's theory is of the alienation in capitalism, wherein workers are estranged and separated from the products of their own labour. The crew had absolutely no idea what they were delivering, and judging by how much was put in place, they were never supposed to.

Marx's theory, the implementation of automation would negatively impact workers by depriving them of job opportunities that could have been filled by humans. This is strongly suggested to be the primary reason for the downfall of Pony Express and why the crew was fired.

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Anya’s Assault

Anya being assaulted is never outright said, with an intentional layer of vagueness layered over the top with how she talks about it and how she mentions it to Curly. The words “Assault” “Rape” or even “Attacked” are not mentioned at any point, we only learn this through visual imagery and subtext of Anya mentioning the lack of locks on the doors, how unsafe she feels around Jimmy, and she would rather him not have the gun at all—fawning at his every response in a panic of upsetting him or escalating the situation. The words are never explicitly said as many other victims can sympathise with, saying the words out loud can be very difficult sometimes, and Anya’s vagueness was intentional on the happenchance that Curly did take Jimmy’s side. She was trying to put distance between herself and that possibility by being as cautious and as vague as she could, in hopes that Curly would pick up on the signs himself and come to that conclusion himself instead of Anya babying him and dumbing down the situation.

This is a believable reaction, especially when your abuser has any kind of power over you or other people, and he isn’t the only one either. Curly has just as much power, if not significantly more over her, which adds more to the fear of even mentioning such a thing, as mentioned earlier in my section of Pony Express' Abuse towards them, the possibility of being penalized with her– and everyone else –pay being docked because she made a simple complaint, was a very real threat, and even more dangerous after finding out about the whole crew being laid off. Jimmy tears her down every chance he gets, makes her feel little and even compares her to Polle in his hallucinations. And Anya knows that he and Curly have a very lengthy history, so her caution and anxiety about even mentioning the incident, let alone saying the word “rape” is borderline impossible for her. It’s a manifestation, it’s a verbal acceptance and confession that it’s even happened. Something she has been trying to avoid coming to terms with.

And when she does eventually tell Swansea what happened, as much as you want to think she told him- she most likely told him to not do anything, to try and keep the peace for as long as possible.

Again, her vagueness is not her fault, nor is it her responsibility. It was Jimmy’s responsibility to not abuse and rape her.

It’s also very present that Jimmy is verbally abusive to her, putting her down at every opportunity by ignoring her very talented medical skills by saying Pony Express only hired her to cut corners in an attempt to reduce costs because she failed Medical School and that she’s not a “real nurse” because of that, and how he constantly questions her skills despite keeping Curly alive for such a long time in such a state.

After being insulted by him multiple times, she fawns to get him to actually do something beneficial because she knows he responds well to praise, and he complies, all while still insulting and belittling her for being "weak" and "sentimental"

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The Dead Pixel In The Room

Going to immediately preface this with a very big obvious “Curly did not know Anya was raped” warning sign to hopefully weed out the weak that don’t want to actually read this. You can leave now if you’d like, no hard feelings. This scene is supposed to be your first clue as a player, as well as Curly's. It's intentional to be like that, it makes the most sense chronologically as well because up until that point, we don't even know.

Okay, we can start now. First, off the bat, I want to talk about that dead pixel scene. And how both Anya and Curly have their own individual meanings behind It, and how both play into each character’s relationship with Jimmy. With Anya’s being a constant reminder of Jimmy’s presence, how it affected her and how it’ll always be there no matter what. And Curly’s is something that he knows exists, but cannot see for himself, because he’s too busy looking at the bigger picture. Even if he knows it's fake, even if he knows it’s an illusion.

He doesn’t doubt her here either, and even though he admits he cannot see it. He believes that it's there, despite this, and that it doesn’t ruin the image. Choosing to see the good, the beauty, of the bigger picture. The Dead pixel scene isn’t just about Anya, it’s about the both of them. And you’re probably asking how Curly hasn’t gotten the point Anya is trying to make, and thats again because she’s being intentionally vague here, and her comment about the lack of locks ties up pretty well with the previous two conversations she’s had with Curly directly. Complaining about Jimmy being weird during the psych evaluation and then her pithy comment about Pony Express’ cutting back expenses on their food and the comment she makes about the code scanner during the birthday party.

All of her previous conversations with Curly have been about their work or something going on in the ship or even with Pony Express directly. So it’s not unusual for her comment about the lack of locks on the sleeping quarters, it’s not random, it’s pretty on theme with the direction of how their conversations go, Curly wouldn’t pick up on that alone because it’s not a strange thing to say.

It's also very much shown that Anya trusts Curly, trusts him enough to not only confide in him first about the pregnancy but also allow herself to be open and friendly with him, even going as far as to try and get him to open up to her during his psych evaluation. She is also hiding behind his seat when she steals the gun. She feels the safest when she is with the real captain and how uncomfortable she is listening to Jimmy's orders to strip Curly of that title.

Every single time that Curly and Anya speak directly, he is always reassuring her, attempting to calm her down and her safety is the first thing he's concerned about when he finds out she's taken the gun.

And once she mentions the pregnancy, his priorities flip, again to her safety, reassuring her that she won't get punished for this. Once again telling her that everything is going to work out, that WE will fix this, WE WILL figure this out TOGETHER. He and Anya.

A key important word here is "what would you have done"

Would. Not, what will you do, no she's asking in past tense. The assault has already happened, she is reassuring herself here before telling him about the pregnancy that he is on her side, that he believes her and that her trust in him isn't misplaced.

And when he does find out she's pregnant, he still doesn't know exactly how. And it's important because it reflects back onto how Curly does ultimately behave when he does approach Jimmy. He doesn't know he's confronting a rapist, and his dialogue here proves that he does just think it was ultimately her choice, her decision. And the most painful part Is the very blatant unwanted pregnancy, not anything else.

Anya is still being intentionally vague here as well, as mentioned earlier. Curly did not actually know that Anya was raped, as the only thing that's mentioned is the pregnancy and that Jimmy is involved. Which is absolutely something to be worried about, regardless of how it happened, because they're on a ship. In the middle of Space.

Someone who knew would not react like that. Curly never once doubts Anya's words or her truth. And after Anya tells Culy about how she told Jimmy about her pregnancy, Curly says that she should have waited for him because he wanted to be there just in case.

Curly even does it literally. The most important part that everybody overlooks is how determined he is to get to the cockpit as the ship is crashing. He knows it's crashing but all he can do is try, he could have run away, but he didn't.

Curly took responsibility multiple different times which is easily overlooked because so much happens in such a short time span that people literally think he had months between knowing about Anya being raped and then the crash when it was barely a day. Just like how people easily overlook the dead pixel scene and how it also represents something to Curly as well, and just like how people overlook Anya's "I told you so"

Curly's kind, forgiving and trusting nature is not inherently bad. It was how it was used against him in an extremely difficult situation, which is exactly what Abusers do time and time again. He failed Anya in such a delicate way and in such a difficult situation, but it's something to understand that Pony Express failed her first, failed her in all the most important ways by even allowing a situation like this to happen. It was Jimmy's responsibility to not be a rapist, but it was Pony Express's fault for even enabling that in the first place.

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Curly's Trauma

A very common thing that people tend to overlook, and this is either because they subconsciously forget that men can be victims of abuse, or simply because they don’t care enough to consider Curly to be one– his relationship with Jimmy and what we can glean from is very abusive, emotionally and verbally and then soon later on physically. Curly is just as much a victim of Jimmy's mistreatment and abuse as Anya is, in their own unique and parallel ways, they both had everything taken from them. We can tell in Jimmy’s behaviour and the way he intentionally isolates Curly in the Birthday scene and the Psychological evaluation in the cockpit, Jimmy takes Curly’s weakness and anxieties and twists them around to isolate him from receiving any help or support from others.

Curly’s biggest weakness is his forgiving nature. We all talk about how Anya is a victim of Jimmy, and she absolutely is, but so is Curly. His first immediate response Jimmy's reaction to Anya announcing her pregnancy is met with immense fear and anxiety with the added soundtrack of what could be equivalent to the sound of Curly's heart racing. He freezes, he fawns, he panics.

Curly's good-natured heart, being lax, trusting and a constant mediator isn't inherently a problem. It was the circumstances that turned that so volatile. If Jimmy wasn't who he was and so readily abusive then Curly's character would not be that detrimental, and his actions would not have such a catastrophic impact. And everyone immediately boiling down those harmless traits and villainising them does much more harm than good, especially since the character they should be targeting is Jimmy, not Curly.

He is beyond terrified, and when he does finally get to Jimmy, he immediately fawns and freezes. He makes absolutely no mention of Anya or anyone else because all that mattered in that panicked situation was easing Jimmy down and resolving the situation. There was truly, absolutely nothing that Curly could have done that wouldn't have resulted in either direct consequences or collective punishment. All of Curly's thoughts, behaviour and actions were as carefully thought out as he possibly could in the short 24 hours or so that he was made aware of Anya's pregnancy and Jimmy's involvement.

He is trying to eliminate all potential problems in the situation so Curly can take the full front of Jimmy's rage. This again furthers the point of exactly why Curly wouldn't recognise the signs of Anya being abused as well because this is all so normal for him. He’s terrified of Jimmy, and an abuser's main tactic is to make sure that their victims never feel confident to speak up against them, or to ever seek out help from others. It’s why he never rushes to defend himself, he just lets Jimmy do and say all of these horrible things.

And Jimmy immediately stabs back putting him down. Twisting the blame and putting it into Curly. Like he somehow was a part of it all and that it was his fault.

Curly was and has been a victim of Jimmy's abuse for a very long time on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario which devolved into physical and medical abuse very quickly once Jimmy got his chance. And it is also true that Curly had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed due to bias towards his abusers, and his kind and forgiving nature of simply wanting to see the good in Jimmy, which is also another aspect of what victims believe. Curly enables Jimmy's behaviour towards himself and even goes as far to completely blame himself for everything that happened in How Fish Is Made.

A lot of victims tend to surround themselves with excuses of why they’re abused, that it’s somehow their fault and that he’s done something awful to deserve it, that this a normal thing that happens, that Jimmy has his reasons to be like this and it isn’t his fault. People argue that Curly should have done more and that he "failed" in any regard is putting a huge expectation onto a victim like him of someone like Jimmy's relentless abuse and how it takes such an impactful toll on someone like Curly. Everyone who plays or watches the game looks over the very easy and subtle warning signs of this abuse and is too busy claiming Curly to be the antagonist here and holding him responsible instead of Jimmy.

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Conclusion + Other Comments

Curly is not perfect, but he is not as guilty as everyone wants him to be. If you go into mouthwashing anticipating Curly as a cruel, selfish monster, of course, you're going to interpret him that way and twist everything he ever does or says to fit your narrative although he very obviously isn't that way at all and get upset when someone tells you you're wrong. You need to remember that he had a whole crew to think of, Curly is not judgement, nor is he the executioner. His hands were absolutely tied and for one reason only: Because Pony Express does, did, and will not care. Pony Express has it explicitly like this so you cannot do anything. So people like Jimmy who manipulate the vulnerable can prey upon his co-workers and get away with it.

The situation on the Tulpar is not as straightforward as people would like, I understand it's extremely cathartic to think of a situation where Jimmy gets what he deserves but it isn't realistic, and thats what this game is trying to say. Abusive corporations, exhausting capitalism, this environment breeds Abusers like Jimmy and victims like Anya and Curly. There was nothing that could be done. Pony Express is what doomed them all, they're the catalyst.

At some point, you have to understand and accept the fact that certain scenarios are simply just cathartic fantasies that simply couldn't have happened. They were all doomed, right from the start. It wasn't just Jimmy's actions (Although they significantly influenced the outcome), and it sure as hell wasn't Curly's inaction. It was Pony Express. I think something that a lot of people get mixed up in their interpretations of Curly is that he's not us, and we're not supposed to be him. Constantly projecting your own fears and experiences onto him to sway your interpretation of his words takes away from the already written-in-stone character he is. You saying "He didn't mean it" when talking about Curly saying he cares about Anya is not only incorrect, but it's YOUR projection onto a character that is already extremely upfront and honest about his intentions and kind personality. He is not malicious, evil, cruel, selfish or misogynistic, so saying that because you interpreted his words to be half-truths or him lying through his teeth to Anya and that his kindness is fake is literally obstructing his character.

Everyone wants them both to be perfect examples of victims and refuses to understand or even believe Curly's situation. Curly DID fail Anya but not for the reason everyone thinks he did.

They're both victims to the same man, they both believe in the best of people (although to their own detriment in a way) they want to find peace, and fulfilment in their career and life. They're so alike in such delicate and intimate ways, that trying to constantly paint Curly as this great, horrible oppressor over her does way more harm than good.

Curly's character is painfully obvious, very very upfront and honest. He is kind, constantly weighed down by guilt and anxiety about his future and career and is being abused by his so-called friend and the company he's working himself to death for that he absolutely hates that just discarded him like he was nothing. Like a lame horse.

Thank you so much to the Mouthwashing Mania Discord server for helping me with this thread! Specifically Mogs for their amazing analysis on Capitalism which can be found here!

Thank you for reaching the end of the thread, please don't be scared to share your thoughts in the tags or in my inbox, I'd love to hear them! good job! (っ˘з(˘⌣˘ ) ♡

[alegendoftomorrow]

The Gift

Summery: Fives and the 501's civilian medic are friends and possibly more if they weren't in the middle of a war. After another long day with far too much pain for the both of them, Fives finds a way to bring a little holiday magic to your lives, even in the middle of a war zone.

Characters: Arc Trooper Fives x Fem!Reader (no use of y/n)

Words: 2,947 Words

Warning: Injury (very minor), brief peril and canon typical violence, mentions of loss, grief, war, injuries, slights angst. Mostly teasing, slightly suggestive (just hinting at it).

A/N: This is my entry for the incredible Life Day exchange hosted by @cloneficgiftexchange . Thank you so much for always hosting such fun events that push me to get out of my comfort zone and write again. This piece is for the awesome @arliganzey I really hope you like this fun little adventure I went on. It was my first time writing for Fives and I hope I captured his essence for you :)

“You know we cannot keep meeting like this.”

You freeze halfway to reaching into your rapidly emptying medic bag. Groaning through hard pressed lips as you spin in your chair to see a very cocky smile pulled up on a very familiar face.

“People are bound to start talking.”

“Fives,” you groaned. Pinching the bridge of your nose and counting to…. well, five before you risk looking back up at the arc trooper leaning against the doorway. Suspiciously standing off his right ankle.

You already know there’s going to be a story. There’s always a story with Fives. Before you knew any better you used to think he was getting hurt just to come and see you. Now the war has dragged on for longer than you were prepared for, and you’ve buried far more men than it feels like you ever save. Seen more planets and systems torn apart than you ever thought possible. Things like crushes and love seem like silly things reserved for storybooks rather than your day-to-day life.

Doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to flirt back with the man who walks through your door almost once a day with some injury or another. Battle related or not.

“What is it this time? Echo dare you to jump off the bridge or did Jesse kick your butt sparring again?” You asked. Standing from your desk and walking over to an exam table. Raising a brow when Fives doesn’t move from the doorway.

“Can’t I just come say hi to my favorite medic without there being an injury?” He asked. In a tone that almost sounded innocent, and perhaps a little hurt that you’d suggested such a thing.

You flashed him another eye roll and crossed your arms. “You can but, Kix isn’t here right now.”

Fives actually snorted at that. Dropping his arms to his side and doing his best not to limp on what was clearly an injured ankle. “Kix is not my favorite medic.”

“Mhm why’s that?” You asked. Already moving down to undo the plastoid armor he wore over his boots when he hoped up on the table. Ignoring the warmth that spread over you when you looked back to see Fives grinning down at you with his hands tucked behind his head.

“Because he doesn’t look half as pretty as you do,” he said with a smirk. “And he’s not as nice to me as you are.”

Now it was your turn to snort at him, Maker he is insufferable, you thought. And the best part of every day, another part of your mind added rather unhelpfully. You went back to examining his ankle before you said something ridiculous. Taking off his sock and hissing through your teeth at the purple bruise already spreading around his scarred ankle.

“Maker what happened here?!” You asked. Looking up at Fives again with genuine worry this time.

He waved a hand dismissively and puffed his chest up a bit in a way you’d come to learn meant he was hiding pain and quite proud of something he definitely shouldn’t be proud of.

“I came here with a blaster bolt to the knee a few rotations ago. How is this worse?”

You started at him blankly for a minute. Simply blinking up at him and hoping your silence made something click in that incredible thick head of his.

It did not.

“You were shot in an active war zone running to give Captain Rex cover. I honestly expected worse than that. However, we have been flying for three days with no enemy contact. So, you shouldn’t have gotten so much as a cough up here; yet here you are sitting here with a twisted ankle. So, I ask again. How did you get this?”

The smile slipped a little from Fives’s face as he actually looked a little…. embarrassed? Was that something he was capable of feeling? You watched as he bit down on his lip and fidgeted slightly with his shoulders seeming to try and buy time.

“Really, it’s not important. I was…. doing something for someone else and my foot slipped okay? It’s not a big deal,” he said. Very adamantly not making eye contact with you.

You rolled your eyes and threw your hands up in surrender with a sigh. “Fine don’t tell me. I hope this someone was worth it.”

“She is,” Fives said. There was a sincerity in his voice that caught you by surprise. Giving you pause and making your breath catch as he looked at you with something that was almost soft. Something you didn’t dare name floated between the shades of honey and earthen brown of his eyes.

“Right. Well…...good.” You stumbled out. Moving away from the table and back to your medical closet to get some bacta and a wrap for his ankle. Trying hard not to meet his eyes again. The ones you can feel boring a hole through the back of your head as you set his ankle.

He doesn’t even flinch once while you work on it. Even though you’re certain this must hurt, he just sits there and stares back at you while your hands make quick work of their task.

“Alright, that should hold for now. Do you want to do the song and dance where I tell you to stay off it and then you tell me something about being a hero of the Republic who can’t take breaks and must soldier on for the good of the galaxy?” You asked. Crossing your arms over your chest and raising a brow at him.

Fives grind like an idiot again and laughs. Maker that sound… You wish you could bottle it up and keep it with you when he went away again. Listen to it on repeat when the nights pressed in to darkly.

“That’s a terrible impression of me,” Fives laughed. Snapping you out of your thoughts.

“I thought it was very accurate,” you snip back. Your tone bears no bite though.

Fives smirks wider like a loth cat that’s gotten into the cream. Swinging his legs gracefully back over the bed and gripping the edge in a way that makes his biceps flex under his blacks. Not that you’re looking. He leans in a little closer and it takes all of your willpower not to lean in towards him too.

“What’s your excuse then Doc?” He asked lowly.

You tilted your head and furrowed your brows. “My excuse for what?”

“For not resting,” he said. “You said it yourself, I’m a hero of the Republic, but you….”

He trailed off and reached a hand up to tuck back a curl that had come loose from the updo you had it in. Your breath catching in your throat as you swallowed tightly under his touch. Rough fingers brushing so softly over your skin you wanted to melt.

“You need to rest too. The whole ship would fall apart without you.”

You might have laughed if he wasn’t looking at you so seriously. Like he meant every word of it. It made something warm and fuzzy creep up into your chest. Something that felt dangerous and far, far too real.

“I’ll rest when you do,” you bargained.

Fives shook his head. “No, I cannot allow that. I know exactly what that means. You’ll come in here and pretend to lay down then get right back to do work.”

“I could say the same for you,” you shot back. “So how do you suggest either of us rest then?”

The smirk that crawled up his face as he flicked his tongue out to lick his bottom lip almost made your knees wobble.

“Well, it seems we have no choice but to rest together,” he said. Like it was the most obvious answer in the world.

Your mouth fell open as you gaped at him. “What?”

“That way I can make sure you can’t get up to do work, and you can make sure I don’t walk on my ankle.”

Your mind reeled for a moment still all the possibilities that scenario presented before you recovered yourself enough to smirk back. Leaning back on your heels and staring back eye level with the arc trooper with a glint of playfulness in your gaze.

“You know if you wanted to sleep with me, you could have just asked.”

Fives looked taken aback for a moment. He recovered much too quickly though and leaned forward a little more. His breath ghosting over your cheeks as you stood your ground in front of him. Heart racing while his eyes moved over your face, taking in the details like he was trying to memorize you.

“If I asked now, would you say yes?” He asked.

“I—” whatever you were about to say was cut off by the loud screaming of alarms that startled the both of you apart and jerked you out of moment of peace.

“That’s the attack sirens,” Fives warned. Jumping off the bed and hoping towards the door as he pulled his boot back on.

“We can’t be under attack,” he replied. Rushing to the com link in the wall and punching in the code to Captain Rex’s channel. “We haven’t seen any vessels since we left— “

A sudden explosion sounded distantly and the whole ship lurched to the side. Your hands gripping into the handles on the wall to steady yourself while cabinets and shelves clicked locked, so their contents didn’t go everywhere.

“Apparently the separatists don’t know that,” Fives grumbled from the doorway. Looking down the hall both ways once before turning back to you with a brilliant smile that felt far too out of place for this moment. “Don’t worry I’ll handle this; you just sit here and look pretty and we’ll finish this conversation when I get back.”

He winked and then was gone. Running as fast as his weak ankle would allow. You wanted to protest every word he’d just said. Wanted to run after him, yell at him to be careful, maybe smack him for being so cavalier with his words, but he was gone before you could even get his name past your lips.

Be careful Fives.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(Many Hours Later)~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were lucky this time,  that’s what Captain Rex kept saying.

The separatist vessel had only damaged the cargo holds on the lower levels before the captain and his men were able to destroy it. General Skywalker’s plan somehow once again working despite sounding ludicrous to you. You were lucky the casualties had been minimal, but the injuries were heavy. You would have to restock before your next engagement. As it was, you’d already patched supplies together for those less injured than others.

Leaning back against the hallway wall you slid all the way to the floor and pulled your knees to your chest. Leaning your head forward to rest there and forcing yourself to breathe deeply so you didn’t fall apart out here where anyone might see you.

Footsteps approached slowly from your left and you half hoped they’d keep walking. Let you wallow in peace and quiet, but the uneven footfalls stopped just in front of you and a voice cleared their throat above you.

“Hey…you alright?”

Fives.

Jerking your head up you blinked at him through your watery eyes. Staring at his grease smudged cheeks with parted lips. He was breathing heavier than normal and still standing off his foot as best he could. His blacks were stained with blood and smoke, but he looked mostly unharmed.

“You’re, okay?” You asked. Voice trembling.

Fives grinned. “I’m always alright. I’m a hero remember. Heroes can’t die.”

You rolled your eyes and made some kind of half sob half laugh sound. Wiping your eyes with the hell of her hand and sniffling a little.

“Hey, come on love no tears.” He crouched down and grinned softly. Reaching out and brushing the tear that dripped down your cheek gently. “It’s okay. We lived to fight another day, more of us than usual at that. That’s something, and more will live because of you. Yeah?”

Without thinking you leaned into his palm and nodded softly. Closing your eyes and focusing on his words. Clinging to them tightly.

“Besides, you’re in the presence of a hero who saved the day and is about to make yours better,” Fives added proudly.

You laughed at him and shook your head. Blinking your eyes open to stare at him again. The lights giving him a halo around his dark hair. Making his tattoo stand out a little sharper against his skin. “How exactly are you still this cocky after everything?”

“It’s who I am. Come on. Up you go.” He grabbed under your arms and pulled you to your feet.

“Mhm does that hero line ever actually work on anyone?” You asked following after him while he kept his arm wrapped securely around yours.

“I don’t know, I’ll let you know later.”

“You are unbelievable,” you groaned.

“That’s the running theory,” he replied proudly.

Following him down the halls of the ship, letting him lean on you a little more as his ankle began to ache worse, you let the pair of you fall into an easy silence. Even if you were a little nervous about where you were actually going, you didn’t have the energy to ask.

“Alright we’re here. Close your eyes and don’t open them until I say so,” Fives said. Stopping the pair of you in front of a plain dark door.

You looked at him with a raised brow. “Fives is this is an elaborate plan to scare me I’m warning you I—"

His laugh cut you off. Throwing his hands up in a surrendering motion as he shook his head. “I promise, I promise, we’ve both been scared enough for one day. Just cover your eyes. You’ll like it trust me.”

You hesitated only a moment longer before closing your eyes and covering them with your free hand. Feeling Fives take your other hand and weave his fingers together with yours, the door whooshed open, and a warm burst of air hit you as he tugged you forward. Your feet following after him without hesitation. You trusted him, even if he drove you crazy.

“Alright, open your eyes,” he whispered from behind you.

Slowly you lowered your hand and opened your eyes. Gasping at the scene spread out before you.

“Fives….”

Strings of lights blinked in multicolored drops that had been hung around wide windows that showed off the thousands of twinkling stars blinking like spilled jewels across the ebony sky. Looking around the rest of the room there was a small table sat in the middle of the window. The two chairs were tied with bright red ribbons and a small box sat in the middle wrapped with blue paper. Soft holiday music played from some kind of hidden speakers and there was holographic snow drifting down the walls.

“I don’t…. I don’t understand,” you said. Spinning around to face Fives who looked a little sheepish with his hand lifting up to rub at the back of his neck.

“You do so much for everyone here. Keeping us alive and healthy. You care, really care, where most people just…. don’t. I remember you telling Echo your favorite holiday when you were a kid was Life Day but that you hadn’t gotten to celebrate it for a very long time. I had the guys help me research it, so I knew what it was and then I set this up for you,” he explained. Shrugging a shoulder like this wasn’t the most amazing thing anyone had ever done for you. Like all the hours and credits, he must have spent to make this little bit of joy come true wasn’t the most incredible gift ever.

“I know it’s a few days early, but you looked like you needed this today. So, I um….” He trailed off and let his hand drop back to his side. “Do you like it?”

You can’t even bring yourself to answer. Forgetting how tired you are and how sore he probably is, you rush forward and launch yourself into his arms. Gripping him tightly as he stumbles back to catch you. Wrapping you up in a hug just as tight.

“I’ll take that as a yes then?” He teased. Lips brushing beside your ear.

“Yes!” You said into his neck. “I love it Fives. Thank you. This is… this is the best thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you.”

You feel him smile more than you see it. His arms flexing around you tighter. “You’re welcome love. Happy Life Day.”

“Happy Life Day Fives.”

Pulling away you smile up at him wider, tears brimming in your eyes for a whole different reason now as you reach a hand up to cup his cheek. His fingers curling around your wrist as he turns his head to kiss your palm lightly. Maybe love isn’t just for fairytales and storybooks. Maybe there is hope left in this war after all.

“Fives?” 

“Yeah?”

“Did you roll your ankle putting up the lights?”

He sighs dramatically and then bursts out laughing. Scooping you up into his arms and spinning you both around as best he can before setting you back down and kissing you chastely. The softest press of his lips to yours before he’s pulling away again and winking down at you.

“It was worth it to see you smile,” he said.

You shake your head at him one more time before rising to your toes to kiss him back just as softly.

“My hero.”

“You’re mine too love.”

[thr0wnawayy]

Useless Heroes and Hori's spinelessness with setup.

Salutations! I remembered my password.

(Jk, I've been busy)

It's no secret that Japan's heroes in MHA are extremely incompetent, I've pointed out their general disregard towards human life and surrounding infrastructure.

However what some of you might not know is that a majority of heroes in MHA are completely and utterly useless.

And I'm not just talking from a Doylist perspective either, Heroes in MHA are more of an obstacle than the villains they fight.

Take this panel for example:

Originally I was going to crop this to only include (ugh) Birdman, however on a second read I realized how asinine every single hero (not counting All Might) is.

First off the "clean up". I shouldn't need to explain what's wrong with this. The crowd posing a security risk, the minimal security. The fucking plastic bags!?

I mean really, what the hell can Backdraft achieve here, or Kanami or Mount Lady. The list goes on.

(That also ignores how these 4 imbeciles are getting paid for what a clean up crew or police force could do easily. Not to mention this whole incident veing their fault)

Anywho... We then see Death Arms and another "hero" yelling at Midoriya, who was also a victim of the Sludge Villain and actually bought All Might time. Whereas Bakugo failed like a panicked animal and worsened the situation.

It is here we see the first plot point: Heroes are hypocritical and biased towards those with flashy quirks.

They automatically downplay Midoriya while also neglecting to get him checked on by a paramedic.

Even Bakugo doesn't benefit as these so called Heroes swarm him like a vulture. Just so they can use him to boost their own popularity.

(and if I'm honestly speaking, if Birdman were somehow a high ranker. Bakugo would have fallen for it hook, line and sinker)

This subtly introduces a second idea: that Heroes are not as pure as they seem. Perhaps they can even be corrupt.

These two ideas, plotpoints, call them what you will. Do a good job at showing us the cracks in the mirage. Cracks that seemed to be widening come the Sports Festival.

So what happend?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the utter disappointment/disaster that was MHA's epilogue.

Regardless if you believe the initial final chapter to be canonical or the more recent 'improvement'. We can all agree that it bombed in regards to doing the above any justice.

The simple answer is that Hori (in my opinion) is a spineless hack, who can draw really good but for the love of god. Keep him out of the Writers room.

Hori seems to whine about how dissatisfied he is with MHA's direction towards darker themes or even complaining about characters he wrote into the story himself (see Tetsutesu x2.)

Hori lacks any guts when it comes to his own writing, preferring to laze-about in what's comfortable. The problem is he didn't write a comfortable story.

Corruption, Eugenics, Peer Abuse, Negligence and Human Trafficking. These are all things that MHA brings up but Hori refuses to touch on. Despite having wrote them into the world (and plot) himself.

Someone once commented under a post of mine that my W.I.P worked as a story because the events fit, rather than simply existing for shock value.

Now I cannot confirm whether or not the above were added to drive up stakes. However with how MHA ended up, I wouldn't be surprised if it was like the Big Three all over again. Hori adding something, nor knowing what to do with it and then desperately trying to smother it while introducing the "next big thing".

Ultimately, I find it humorous that someone so inspired by comic books and Star wars, is such a coward when it comes to pushing boundaries. Instead choosing to fall in line with what's trending, what the polls say, chasing after something that could never be obtained in the first place.

But hey look at the bright side, at least we have fan-works.

[cdroloisms]

always absolutely fucking hilarious when sbiers in their self-righteous need to assert themselves as better than everyone else in the same way they've done since 2020 even when they're apparently 'out of the fandom' and consider the whole thing cringe and dead (skill issue, methinks) go all um acktually no one cared abt any of the lore except for c!sbi. like well for one thing i don't know of a c!sbi personally speaking i'd like for you to point out to me where character sleepy boys inc ever like, existed, because it certainly wasn't in any dream smp i watched like is there even a single moment where the four of them interact together alone??? and secondly, it's always reeeeeeally obvious when they mean this as a diss on The Other Side Of The Fandom (read, dream team and co) when two-thirds of the dream team just did nawt have any interest in being part of the 'main characters' in the first place and would much rather do their own thing and roleplay in ways that wouldn't get picked apart for ages on twitter dot com, and the other member of the dream team played a character so integral to the lore that even c!inniters will often name him before they name their own goddamn guy because they cannot keep his name out of their mouths (see, the meme i saw like literally just yesterday that boiled down to me, after learning the dream smp lore: i need to kill c!dream). like bro yall are c!inniters you're not fooling anyone you think that the entire story revolves around this one teenager being abused and then completely ignore the months of abuse that was shown on screen for us before exile. "c!sbi" like cmon now guys the ao3 pages are like, right there, we all know who ends up being the villain for ur sbi fanfic that has its foundations in a dynamic that literally never existed in canon.

like "no one cared about anyone's lore except for wilbur and tommy--" well yes they were in fact some of the main fucking characters. imagine someone going up to you and going "well no one cared about the lore in the star wars original trilogy except for luke and leia" like damn really?? (now imagine this same person trying to convince you that darth vader's role was unimportant, actually.) like yeah the dream smp involved a lot of separate storylines and each of those storylines might've had their own "main cast" of characters but i'm also not blind bro, the story that started at the start of the fucking server and the start of the fucking lore was ABSOLUTELY the "wilbur-dream-tommy" triangle that is, in fact, the story that the l'manburg revolution was built on and the story that remains the throughline literally until tommy and dream have their confrontation with a nuke coming down over their heads, something that the characters themselves acknowledge with the repetition of the idea of tommy and tubbo against dream. LIKE ALKJSDFKJSADF yeah bro there were main characters in the tommy-dream-wilbur story an that's also the story that people tended to be invested in in the beginning, to the point where even other self-contained stories in the dream smp absolutely referenced and emulated it (cough cough, las nevadas). like, why are we acting like it's at all groundbreaking for people to be invested in THEEE fucking story the one that first started to exist because at the time basically no one else was part of The Roleplaying Trio and then slowly got padded out and developed as the server developed more and more into the lore server?

and it's the fact that none of these people, too, would deny that they care about ex. c!schlatt in manberg, right, or c!quackity in relation to c!wilbur's deal, etc etc whatever. like breaking news you gaf about The Story as a dream smp fan wow am i supposed to be like, surprised. do you want a medal. LIKE LKJASDJF

[blackkatdraws]

Black and Narry lore! [Narry is owned by @insomniphic and some of the art here were drawn by her too]

[Small Note: None of these are canonical to their stories and were made just FOR FUN.]

As a being of purity and light, Narry was appalled when he first came across Black who appeared to be the very embodiment of darkness and wrongness [at least in Narry's point of view]. Narry sees Black as a waste of potential because of how much power Black ["the bad guy"] has at his disposal.

Black feels indifferent to Narry's existence, as he's already used to similar beings like him. He sees Narry as a waste of power since he's clearly holding it back for the sake of the people he wants to protect.

Because of how much impurity Black's power emits, Narry is incapable of seeing Black normally.

In Narry's perspective, Black is a huge writhing mass of something that's very unpleasant to look at. This appearance is inconsistent and can shift continuously. This effect extends all the way to even photos or depictions of Black.

He physically cannot [refuses to] be in the same room as Black because he can't stand the feeling, the smell, the sight, everything about his power. It sickens him.

There's no context for this comic. This is a What If scenario where Black and Narry are going somewhere together when a group of bad guys come and attack them.

Narry is the type to hold back his true power in order not to hurt the people that are attacking him which annoys Black into stepping in [because he has somewhere else more important to be and Narry is delaying it].

Of course, Narry ends up getting injured and Narry makes Black promise he won't kill the aggressors before passing out.

[Admittedly, this scenario breaks a few canonical lore for both characters but we'll go with it for now.]

As a response to that idea, Insomni drew this.

Narry wakes up after the fight was long over and he sees piles of bloody bodies laying on the floor. He gets upset that Black didn't follow through their promise.

Black does not care. Instead, he laughs at Narry for finally snapping [considering it took a while for Narry to finally loose his cool at Black].

Black did keep his promise. All the aggressors are still alive, but barely.

We talked some more about their dynamic and we both drew these.

In this scenario, Black and Narry are fighting. [Started by Narry, who had the full intent to kill him for (what he perceives as) the greater good.]

He thinks this world would become cleaner without Black around.

Narry is convinced that Black is a monster incapable of feeling or doing anything remotely positive. Even as Black saves Stanley from the attack that Narry himself sent towards Black, he's still in that mentality where he sees everything that Black does as something for negative reasons.

Narry is a good person but his (justified) blind dislike for Black leads him into taking extreme actions at times. Plenty of people dislike Black for what he is, but Narry is the only one with the power to actually do something about it.

[The last drawing is another What If scenario where Black had to take Stanley and flee because he keeps getting in the way of their fight (and Narry is too focused on his task to take other people into account). Black doesn't want Stanley dying because of a stupid scuffle.]

[Note that Narry won't actually hurt anybody EXCEPT Black, he's a good guy who wants to do what's best for other people. Black is just EVILLLLL mwehehehe]

[Then I proposed another What If scenario where Narry won the fight causing Insomni to draw this.]

As Narry was about to strike with a powerful attack to finally end him off, he felt something familiar coming from within Black.

In the ocean of filthy dark energy Black emitted, there was light.

It was small. It flickered weakly in the air as the darkness that kept it safe was falling apart, but it didn't go out. It lit up softly without any signs of extinguishing any time soon.

Narry was in disbelief.

Stanley had done the impossible. His relationship with Black had given birth to a different side of Black's power, tucked away deep inside where only they're allowed to see.

And it was now in full display to Narry.

As a being filled with goodness and empathy, his guilt starts to eat away at him as he finally snaps out of it and sees the extent of what his impulsive actions have done.

[Insomni and I both agree that their fights would probably be settled with a draw or mutual death, so this scenario is not as probable to happen. It's interesting to think about though.]

[Again, breaking a few canonical lores but we like gay people here so it's whatever. I was the one who proposed the idea anyway. (❁´◡`❁)]

-------♦

[Here are fun extra doodles!!]

[redbreastedbird]

Is smut allowed to be written about the mmu characters seeing as in the canon of the books they're now all over 18? A prominent person in the fandom has smut fics up and it's causing debates so I thought I'd ask

I am going to answer this in the same way I’ve answered other asks like this in the past: to tell you that in this case, what I think doesn’t matter. I know what I think as an individual human being, but Robin Stevens the Author does not have a single opinion on the subject, because nothing she has to say matters in this case.

The joy of fandom and fan response is that it happens completely separately to the author or creator of a story. We can engage with fans if we want - I do like to, it delights me to see that you care so much about my books - but we literally can’t guide fan response because we cannot get inside your brains. If your soul moves you to see my characters a particular way, or imagine them doing a particular thing, I can’t stop you. I can think what I think on a personal level - again, I definitely do, there are some fanons and takes that I like more than others - but as Robin the Author it’s not my place to comment publicly on that. I have personally been in fandom for enough years to see other creators try to do that, and see that it always goes horribly wrong for them.

So I could tell you that there are Right Ways and Wrong Ways to interrogate my texts, but it wouldn’t be useful or productive and it would only lead to people getting (correctly!) angry with me. What I am going to do is as always refuse to read fanfics based on my characters (because it feels a bit invasive of the fic authors’ privacy, and also because it keeps me away from any potential legal challenges from fans who feel like a story I write is excessively similar to their fanfic). Then I am going to tell every single one of my fans who gets in contact with me that I think they’re great and valid and brilliant.

I will say that fandom arguments are absolutely soul-destroying when you are part of them. I sympathise entirely! It is hard to disagree about something you love, and hard to realise that the way you see a thing is not the way that other people see it. What I have learned after many years of arguing on the internet is that you can only control your own response to a thing. Other people will be out there having responses you absolutely hate! The only productive thing you can do in this situation is send your friend a private message complaining about it, and then have a really long and satisfying private discussion with them about how right you both are and how wrong everyone else is.

[antianakin]

I think I'm able to perhaps put a few words to why I really dislike that the Ahsoka show had her choose to come to the conclusion that Anakin was GOOD, that he was a good person and good teacher to her, rather than having her refuse to forgive him and just having to let go of him entirely.

Ahsoka is a character who has been, for her ENTIRE RUN on Star Wars, defined by Anakin and her relationship to him. She's never been able to escape that. She was created as an explanation for why Anakin "matured" over the three year gap between AOTC and ROTS, but her lack of existence in the films means she can have no greater impact on Anakin than that. She is wholly irrelevant to his character but she does not EXIST without him. In Rebels, she is only in one season where all of her appearances are fixated on her discovery of Anakin's betrayal and how that impacts her, leading up to their final confrontation where she appears to die fighting him. She comes back only so her relationship with Anakin can be used to help Ezra let go of Kanan. In TOTJ, she has an entire episode dedicated to explaining that the only reason she survived Order 66 was because of some kind of special training Anakin gave her that made her stronger, better, faster than any other Jedi. In The Mandalorian, her appearance was full of subtext about her trauma regarding Anakin and the way she reacts to other Jedi as a result of that. In The Book of Boba Fett appearance, that subtext is still there, primarily in her conversation with Luke where she even tells him how much he reminds her of Anakin. Which leaves us with the Ahsoka show itself and how it REVOLVES around that relationship, from Sabine being turned into Anakin 2.0 to everything in episode 5 to Ahsoka claiming she'll support Sabine in everything because this is what Anakin did for her to Anakin literally showing up in ghost form to Thrawn predicting everything Ahsoka will do because he has some familiarity with Anakin.

Ahsoka CANNOT escape this relationship, she cannot move out from this particular shadow and become her own person because her character seems to ONLY EXIST to be "Anakin's student." She can almost literally not stand on her own at this point. If her story doesn't revolve around Anakin in some way, it doesn't seem to really exist (please keep in mind here that I am mostly looking at HIGH CANON appearances for this because that's what I am familiar with; I'm sure that some comics have probably managed to move away from her relationship to Anakin a little bit sometimes but I haven't read any of them so they're not being counted in this analysis, especially since I don't think they're really impacting her higher canon characterization anyway).

It's even just visible in how other characters perceive her. She is constantly being COMPARED to Anakin, we keep hearing how like Anakin she is. The only time I can think of that she is compared to anyone OTHER than Anakin is when Trace and Rafa tell her that she acts like a Jedi even if she isn't currently calling herself one (bless their SOULS for this moment, they deserved so much better than the hate they got and one single appearance on fucking TBB). We never hear anyone say she reminds them of Obi-Wan, or Yoda, or Plo Koon. It's ALWAYS Anakin even though she's known Yoda and Plo Koon longer and she seems to spend almost as much time with Obi-Wan as she does Anakin.

By having Ahsoka decide to deal with her feelings about Anakin by just... setting aside all the bad shit he did and focusing ONLY on the good moments that he had and letting that define him, it makes it nearly impossible to separate her from him. If he's good, then it's a GOOD thing to compare her to him. If he's good, then his influence on her HAS to have been a good one. For me, it ruins ANY nuance that could have come from going the opposite direction and recognizing that while he had some good moments, he was in fact an overall bad person who was a terrible teacher to her. He betrayed her, he tried to kill her (and only failed because she was saved by someone else), he abandoned her. I don't care WHAT he did before this, this automatically makes him a BAD TEACHER.

And recognizing that Anakin was a bad teacher would force Ahsoka to look at HERSELF more critically, too, to recognize the places where she has made the same mistakes perhaps, where she's started leading herself down a similar path to his, and then choosing to NOT BE LIKE HIM. Anakin should be (like he is with Luke) the personification of her own darkness. Palpatine represented Anakin's greatest demons and personifications, Anakin can represent something similar for Ahsoka. He is an indisputable part of her now, but she doesn't HAVE to become him, she doesn't have to let that CONTROL her. And by making that choice, she frees herself from being defined by him for the rest of her life.

But now, the narrative has bound Ahsoka to Anakin forever. She'll never be anything more than Anakin's student because this has become what defines her as a person and a character. And it just... it sucks. Ahsoka deserved better than that.

[aurora-313]

Heyyy,

I've tried and tried again to find the bright side of the ending and the Canon couples but I just can't. I don't even like the kids and thier designs are lacking. On top of that, I'm also dreading the day we get to see them in the anime🤦‍♀️

I've given up on the anime. It's glorified fanfiction, and honestly, nothing Kubo can do can really salvage it. Short of ripping Bleach apart from the very first arc and rebuilding it from scratch.

Franky the thing that I fail to comprehend is how Bleach went from "Monster of the week", where the monsters were fundamentally human in their hatred, desires, miseries and pains, to "let's kill/overthrow God and destroy reality".

Implausibly massive leap for a world that only consists of 3 towns and an empty void, wouldn't you say?

The dissonance is so jarring that it breaks suspension of disbelief. The cardinal sin of storytelling. That's why I don't enjoy TYBW. That's why the epilogue and the hell arcs make no impression on me.

A damning indictment of TYBW's quality as an arc is how forgettable it is. Remove it from the story entirely, and absolutely nothing would change.

There's a cult following in the west, sure, but that's all it has. Manga sales during TYBW tanked in Japan. Viewing figures in japan are in the toilet. The only thing keeping it afloat are diehard groupies who are easily distracted by shiny lights and crappy effects to hide how poorly composed it is.

The arc was utterly forgotten until the 2020 trailer dropped.

The storytelling is jank AF and the main villains are forgettable crybabies.

It's funny. By and large, I feel more emotional connection to three relative scrub Hollows from the shinigami sub arc, characters that only had a dozen chapters between them and viscerally hate them for how human their sadism is, but my eyes glaze over at the Sternritters. I barely remember any of their names.

The Quincy are boring. Yhwach is boring. There was an opportunity to salvage him by playing into the manga evidence he was a grifter who conquered, cursed, enslaved, and ate his way into power... but no. They replaced that with basic bitch daddy issues.

Then, there's artificially inflating Chad and Orihime's importance. The problem is that they're pathetically powerless humans by comparison.

Observe their first encounter with Quilge. Weak in the grand scheme of things, Quilge was casually stripping chunks of flesh off them. Compared to the feats the other Sternritters pull off, what can Chad and Orihime really do? Realistically. What CAN they do? The answer is nothing and worse than nothing.

Chad and Orihime, civilians who use reishi-based attacks, against an army whose been training for years-to-centuries, who dominate reishi as easily as breathing. No amount of training can change the fact they're a stupendously bad match-up against the Quincy. They realised their presence is pouring oil on a fire and thought the solution was to pour even MORE oil on the fire.

Tbqh. Ichigo should've put his foot down and told them to leave with Riruka and Yukio. Chad and Orihime simply cannot keep up with Ichigo anymore. Ichigo had left them completely in the dirt after Soul Society, and the rest of the series is Chad and Orihime in denial about that.

Why does Ichigo have to go through this exhaustive humiliation of a character arc, thanks to his elders leaving him to stew in ignorance, while Chad and Orihime got a free pass? And are ultimately rewarded for living in denial.

Want them to grow? Have them confront and accept Ichigo simply doesn't need them anymore. Have them accept their place isn't on his battlefield but protecting their mutual home. Have them accept they are mortals tangling with gods and demons, and they are in way over their heads.

The only plausible reason Ichigo DOES keep them around is cannon fodder.

As for the endgame ships; I don't want to talk about them, except that Ichigo should have categorically refused to have children on principle. After the shit his heritage put him through, why would Ichigo subject another child to that?

[carlos-in-glasses]

I'm having some thoughts and feelings, for reasons.

The feelings are that I'm so grateful for this beautiful fandom and the beautiful couple in the picture above. The thoughts are beneath the read more and can be taken or left. The picture cannot be left, however. Taken is the only option. You need to see it because look how cute they are!

For prosperity:

Something I always 'explore', if you will, in my own writing is how people process the concept of time. Endings, beginnings, the past and the future linking up. Your past self always being with you like a spectre. The present feeling like a marble rolling around a tube... I think this is because I'm not good with change or saying goodbye, but I do know that endings always lead to something else. Which is scary, because you don't necessarily know what that will bring.

Thinking about all of the above in terms of Lone Star is a different beast for me personally, because I've never had this kind of experience with a show or characters before, where I'm so compelled by it that I found my way into the fandom and have been creatively stimulated to the point of writing 25+ fics for it (which isn't nearly as many as others have produced! But to me it feels significant). So for that reason I want to say: When the show ends -(WHENEVER THAT MAY BE) - the characters don't. They don't end, not really. As long as we choose to keep talking about the themes, sharing meta posts, writing them or drawing them or creating gif sets, and revisiting them in rewatches or YouTube clips - there they are. Always. Either suspended in their moment and so easy to revisit in all their glory, or put in new situations in fic and art even years into the future. If this hiatus has taught us anything, it's that even without the show on air, there are still plenty of stories to tell and interpretations to be had, based on what came before. When the show ends, the thing that will unfortunately go is the speculation aspect, but what we have instead is a beautiful completed work that can inspire and be meaningful forever to those who already love it and for those who will find it in the future - and it will be found. Anything that exists can be found. (See: deep sea fish that glow in the dark (!)). And things that don't exist can be imagined.

We're so lucky to be the ones in the know when it comes to the show and to Tarlos. We know how special it is, what a gift it is. I'm not a spiritual person but I do feel oddly spiritual when it comes to this. Idk.

Something I've always hoped (as I'm sure we all have) is that we would know ahead of time that it's over. The show not being renewed between seasons is a thought that horrifies me to my core. I remember thinking towards the end of season 4: "At least if it doesn't get renewed, it ends with Tarlos being canon-married." Which, as a Tarlos super-fan, was my no.1. concern, but I love and care about the other characters too of course.

Going into season 5 and fearing it could be the last season, I had a huge tummy ache wondering if Tarlos would be on the rocks. If they ended on a cliffhanger having assumed season 6 was on the cards, we'd never get a resolution. But Rafa's Cameos have really eased my mind in that regard. Based not only on the tiny amount he's given away, but the way he talks about them loving each other, it sounds like they're going to be okay - and we're going to see it for ourselves that Tarlos really is endgame. In a time when hope is needed, we do have this. AND we have each other! As long as Tarlos ends happy, I for one intend to keep dancing, even if it means I'm the eccentric up on the table on my own doing the robot. But I would always like others to dance with.

Whatever happens, which we don't officially know yet, we can get through it together.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

(I wish I could ask this in a video with GamingMagic13’s editing style, but I don’t have the energy for that.)

People say that, after Antibug, Chloé’s redeeming qualities started to show through throughout Seasons 2 and 3 because Thomas Astruc didn’t contribute to those episodes of those seasons as if he wasn’t on the writing team for every episode for those two seasons, including the ones showing Chloé’s redeeming qualities.

It’s not “Thomas left so the other writers started to make a redemption for Chloé, but then he came back and threw it all away”, it’s leaning more towards “Thomas, along with other writers, wanted to waste our time with Chloé pity parties for two seasons and trick people into feeling bad for her, which worked on plenty of reactors, and then yank the rug out from under them just for the sake of pulling a rug out from viewers” whether it’s the truth or not.

Also, do you get the feeling that, if people weren’t harassing Thomas and his family over Chloé’s “abandoned redemption”, Chloé wouldn’t have been made into evil incarnate to spite people?

Considering that the hiatus between Seasons 3 and 4 started towards the end of 2019, had to continue throughout 2020 due to the COVID pandemic with only the New York special to keep us busy in September 2020, and then finally ended shortly after 2021 started, that would have been plenty of time to rework scripts, because we know he was also on the writing team for every episode of Seasons 4 and 5 alongside 2 and 3, to made Chloé more and more unlikeable while propping up the male adults to spite Chloé fans, like several episodes of Teen Titans GO! and even this show are guilty of.

Whether all of this is true or not, I think it all lines up too well for too many other outcomes.

The "Thomas Astruc was able to completely rewrite the plans for this character and no one stopped him" take has always been a little wild to me especially since Chloe never showed meaningful improvement in canon. In fact, now that we've seen her story play out in all it's disappointing and time-wasting glory, you can even argue that Despair Bear was straight up telling you what we were in for since it's the same plot, just on a smaller scale.

As far as I know, there is no evidence for this "Chloe was rewritten" conspiracy. At the very least, no one has sent any my way on the multiple occasions when I've asked for it. Astruc is a credited writer for pretty much every episode involved in the Queen Bee arc and, while head writers have a good deal of power, they often don't have supreme power over their shows. This is especially true when it comes to kids shows since those have a lot of restrictions on what they can do. While I cannot speak French, I've been told that this class involves one of the writers talking about the multiple darker version of Chat Blanc that were rejected, leading to Chat Blanc being a season three episode instead of a season two episode like they originally planned.

These shows are products that are being sold to buyers who do have the power to reject the product and the writers work for a company. In most cases, they can be stopped!

There's also the fact that this is Astruc's career that we're talking about. You're arguing that he purposely messed with his reputation and screwed up the writing in the show that he's most well-known for in order to get back at online randos instead of just blocking them and moving on with his life. That's an insanely hard sell for me. Unintentional bad writing is a much easier explanation especially since he has nothing to gain from people disliking the Chloé stuff. This wasn't situation where Astruc needed to tank the show to get out of writing it. If Astruc left the project, then Miraculous would go on without him. While he came up with the initial idea, Zag owns the property.

Unless someone has hard evidence that Chloé was changed to spite fans, I am never going to buy into this conspiracy theory. Her bad writing is too in line with the show's other issues. Remember, this is the show that gave us Derision, everything about Lila, and Gabriel getting an 'ascends into the light with a smile' ending while his son sat the fight out and remains in the dark. Is Chloé really meaningfully worse than any of that?

I'd say no and, if you agree, then why do you think that she's so special? I've previously called her a canary in the coal mine and that's going to be my read until someone gives me evidence of something else. She was your warning sign that the writing was never going to be very good. I don't think she foretold just how bad it would get - that's why I kept watching - but her story showed that these writers were only good at short-form content and sucked at long-form content. In fact, Chloé's story is arguably better than a lot of the long-form stuff that the show gave us in season four and five. At least Chloé's story logically flowed together even if it was massively disapointing!

I also don't consider Chloé's season four and five writing downgrade to be all that telling because, once again, it's not unique to her. The class gets a similar downgrade in quality, going from "we'll help Marinette with her confession plans when she asks, but this isn't a major thing to us" to "we live for Adrienette and will make our own plans for Marinette to confess and force them on her/try to force Adrienette to kiss." It makes the entire class feels more shallow than ever.

Gabriel also gets a downgrade with his writing going more over-the-top than ever. We have things like him locking Adrien in a cell and using Adrien's amoks for no obvious reason even though Gabriel is supposed to get an ending where he dies totally at peace and ascends into the light. Totally nonsense choices just like the choice to make Marinette's inability to speak to Adrien because she's anxious into a full-out trauma response.

These are just a few of the many, many, many writing downgrades.

If you truly believe the Chloé conspiracy, then I'd strongly encourage you to watch at least the first of the videos I'm about to link and see if you notice similarities. I have all of them set to the specific, relevant timestamps in case you don't want to watch a massive video to see what I'm talking about because they all talk about more than the conspiracies that arose in these fandoms when the writing got "bad" (especially the last one. The conspiracy gets a very brief mention. I really only included it because I wanted three examples and just went with ones big enough that someone else had done research on the topic because it's not an area of fandom that I've ever waded into).

I'm linking these videos because I wanted to give you more than me just saying "this kind of thing happens all the time when media gets bad." Watching just a few minutes of each of these should give you the context you need assuming the timestamps work:

As you can hopefully see, the Chloé stuff is nothing new. So many pieces of media do something disappointing and then fans create conspiracies for why it happened, refusing to accept what is most likely to be the unfortunate truth: the writers thought they told a good story or, at the very least, they did the best they could within the confines they were working with be those confines monetary, temporal, and/or the limits of their own skills. That doesn't make the bad writing okay, you're fully valid in being upset, but there's also no need to create a conspiracy theory around it. It's probably not that deep. This shit happens all the time, especially in larger fandoms.

This is why I often give the advice of, "don't trust your mental health to stories that you have no control over." Is not that fandom isn't fun, I've just seen this shit before and I always feel bad for those who get involved with it. I've luckily never gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole, but I have gotten really upset when other fans continued to like a show that was bad, actually, and got a good deal of catharsis when most of the fandom woke up after the final was terrible. That still wasn't a good experience for me, though. It was not a healthy mindset to be waiting with baited breath for total strangers to agree with me that this random show was bad. I'm much better of bashing it with those who agree that it's bad, moving on when I'm no longer having fun, and letting those who like it be wrong (that is both a joke and real advice. Don't waste your time trying to change people's minds on something as insignificant as Miraculous. Just let them be wrong.)

[fancobs]

Why I&'m not happy with the Inanimate Insanity finale we got and how I& would fix it

So even before the finale, I& had my& theories on how it was all going to end. To me& it was obvious that there was a thematic throughline in the narrative that was going to lead to a simple yet powerful conclusion.

If you were to analyze the themes present in II, you will consistently find complex characters, ones that hurt others in the past, yet have found ways to change themselves and improve, regardless of whether they're forgiven or not. Balloon, Taco, Knife, Nickel... even MePhone4.

When it started becoming clear that Cobs was going to be a central character in the story, to me& it was obvious that he would go through a similar arc. Let me& explain.

The way I& think it could have gone is, Suitcase and Knife escape from that cell with the help of Bow possessing Apple, but don't run away from the ship entirely. They can't - their job isn't over yet.

One thing about Suitcase is that she values honesty a lot. Cobs wasn’t selfless when he told them the truth about their existence - it is quite obvious it was a tactic to get them on his side - but it was still the truth. And Suitcase can also tell that the story isn't quite complete yet, because there is still a question that hasn't been answered.

So, with the help of Toilet and Bow, Knife and Suitcase hunt Cobs down in the ship and pin him down. That X model that Toilet can control perhaps comes in handy, too. But despite what Knife wants to do, Suitcase stops him and confronts Cobs with words. All she asks is: Why are you doing this?

Of course, Cobs initially tries to pull some bullshit about how he's doing it for the progress, or for money, or even for the sake of the sake of the contestants themselves, but before he can even finish his sentence, Suitcase shuts the excuses down and repeats the question again: No REALLY. Why?

"The Future Is So Yesterday" is playing muffled quietly in the background so that in the brief moment of stunned silence, you hear the lyrics "So Cobs, is your whole persona intended / To keep those suspicions extended / So all your schemes become blended / And your work cannot be contended?", hinting towards how he's cornered in this moment, and to highlight how he's merely playing a persona.

So this is when we get a MePhone4-style flashback moment into Cobs's memories, in a moment when he gets hit with all the realizations and cannot evade the doubts anymore.

So, if you've been paying close attention, you'll notice that Cobs himself doesn't have a very positive relationship with his parents. He says so himself in "Theft and Battery" when he shows off the garage in which he invented his first computer. It is not hard to see how perhaps the pressure from family and a bit of gifted kid syndrome made him think that he has to monetize his hobbies, and eventually led to him tying his company's financial success to his personal self worth.

This is important to the analysis - it's not just greed that pushes him to attack the aliens, the stakes are much higher from his perspective because if the company fails, everything he's ever worked on for his whole life is destroyed.

And so, he's pushed by external factors to do horrible things. At first with good intentions (progress and innovation), although at some point it's undeniable that sunk cost fallacy would sink in.

All of this would get visualized through little scenes of his past, depicting this slow descent. But then we would get a scene of another thing he canonically admitted to doing - watching the show, and finding comfort in it.

You see, there's gotta be something that caught his attention and made him this deeply obsessed with the show. And would it really be a stretch to say that, especially with how it's basically confirmed that MePhone4 was basing some of the characters on the things he saw in Cobs, that perhaps he sees those parallels to himself and that changes him?

Remember Marshmallow's grief over how the competition pushes you to be your worst self? To play a persona that isn't really you?

He's not completely ready to change just yet, he has too much to lose, but it undoubtedly saws the seeds for it in his mind. He has other feelings to work through, perhaps the bitterness that he feels at seeing how MePhone4 feels more like a real person than he ever was. He feels inferior, almost like he's failing at his one and only purpose in life. And we know for a fact that Cobs is a complete and total perfectionist - of course these standards he has apply to himself too.

That is why he decides to take the matters in his own hands for the show, and the things that we see and get reminded of in the flashback.

But now, we return back to the present. Cobs is pinned down, disarmed, surrounded by the very contestants that helped his own revelations, and for the first time, someone is actually asking about the real him. He's helpless - Knife has taken the blade in his pocket away, and he can't escape. He cannot dodge the question, and at this point, he realizes that there's not really a way out for him.

Why did he do this? He confesses quietly: "Because it's all I've ever known." And here we have another comparison point - where MePhone4 said this with a pleading desperation, Cobs says it with determination. It's all he's ever known, that's why he did it and that's why it's all he'll ever do. Hurt others like his parents hurt him, and like he hurt himself. To him, that's just a fact of life, and one he prides himself in.

And here is where the main point of this essay and rewrite is - I& want to see Cobs change, get the same character arc as the others have gotten. I& want Suitcase and the others to go and firce him to apologize to MePhone4. He doesn't need to forgive him - in fact, it'd be more fitting if he didn’t - but I& want to see Cobs give his company away to 3GS or MePad, to resign from his past of cruelty, and to have at least someone (perhaps even Suitcase, who has always seen the best in people such as Balloon) support him in this journey.

I& hope you can see from the examples I&'ve provided throughout this essay how this is a much more natural and logical conclusion to this story. I& was extremely disappointed to see that the ending painted Cobs in such a one dimensional light - especially since, unlike the contestants that were intentionally created to be flat and simple, Cobs is supposed to be an actual real person, and it just does not make sense that the theme of self improvement and forgiveness seen so thoroughly throughout the show wouldn't apply to him.

The only thing I&'m not sure how to include in this ending is the Box and MeLife lore. Those parts of the finale were genuinely fascinating and enjoyable, and I& would love to hear other people's suggestions on how we could still have the lore revealed while also giving Cobs a more thoughtful and well rounded ending.

[dreadfulgentleman]

what's the story behind knowing & living with the director of meet the robinsons

Time for a long story. I cannot shorten it.

In 2014-2015, I was miserable. I was working at WDW in FL at the time and going through the worst depression of my life. Everything bad that could have happened to me seemed to hit all at once. Losing my fiancee, losing housing, dealing with significant trans-related dysphoria, having work-related issues, having complications with unsupportive relatives, etc. The only thing keeping me going was the movie "Meet the Robinsons". More specifically, it was the character Bowler Hat Guy and the 'keep moving forward' quote that provided a crutch for me as I hung onto life by a single thread. Things came to a head when I thought seriously of taking my own life. I remember being in that moment, going through all the questions in my head of what would happen if I made that choice: What would happen to my stuff? What would my family think? What would happen at work? None of the answers to those questions mattered to me at all. It wasn't until I arrived at the very last question I asked myself that something changed. I asked myself, "If I could choose, what would I put on my tombstone?" Immediately my mind said, "Well, Keep Moving Forward, of course." But no sooner had I said that did I realize the irony of those words. How could I put those words on my tombstone and yet also take my own life? It made no sense. I thought, "What would the director think if I did that?" So I made the decision to put the knife down.

Several months later, I was dressed as Bowler Hat Guy to a Halloween party at Magic Kingdom. Someone came up to me very excitedly explaining that they were so happy to find someone who knew what MTR was. We laughed together and quoted the movie to each other and generally had a silly interaction based on fandom-sharing. Until suddenly she came right up close to me and said, "No, you don't understand, my cousin is the one who directed that movie." Well, of course, I freaked out. Immediately I clasped my hands against her shoulders and told her he and that movie had literally saved my life. I begged her to put me in contact with him in order to thank him directly. She said she absolutely would. Several days later and sure enough, there's the director in my inbox talking to me. I was starstruck. I told him why Meet the Robinsons was so important to me--how it had literally saved my life. As it turned out, he and his family were going to be visiting WDW the following month so he offered to meet up at a starbucks to chat. I was over the moon.

That starbucks meeting was three hours long. The entire time was chatting about how the movie was made, how he felt about it, how I felt about it, etc. I'll never forget that the first thing I asked him was, "What's BHG drinking in the playtime planet cup?" to which Steve replied, "What do YOU think is in the cup?" When I told him I had always imagined it was chocolate milk, he said, "Well, then, I guess it's chocolate milk." It was both a kind and humble thing to say as well as frustrating because that meant there was no canon answer (Ha!).

We inevitably left starbucks that day but remained friends on social media. A few days later was Thanksgiving. Steve's wife Heather found out that I was going to be alone that day so she told Steve they should both go out to dinner with me. So I was promptly invited to a pizza place with just the both of them. That dinner ended up being five hours long--I suppose we just had that good of a time! I was awestruck by their generosity and kindness. They felt like the real Robinsons, being automatically welcoming, encouraging, and supportive. I felt inspired by them and I was overjoyed that they had taken the time out of their vacation to hang out. When I walked out to the parking lot with them, feeling awed and humbled by how incredibly nice these two people were, Heather said something to me that I'll never forget. They both knew by now how many terrible things had occurred in my life up until then. They knew how much the movie meant to me. Heather said, "Would you like to be an Anderson?" Naturally, I cried on the spot and said yes.

The question at the time had simply meant to be one of general support and encouragement. But little did we know what would be coming next.

I was invited out to their house the following spring. It was only meant to be a week-long visit to see what California was like (I had never been before). Well, we were having such a good time that I extended my trip another week....... and then another....... and then suddenly the question was asked: "Would you like to just move in?"

So I did. I packed up all my stuff in FL and drove my car to CA just to be in their tiny guest room. A fresh restart in life. I legally changed my middle name to "Yagoobian" and we often joke that the five hour pizza dinner on Thanksgiving was my adoption interview. (Though for clarity sake, I'm on good terms with my actual relatives and this situation isn't meant to be a literal adoption scenario. My blood family and the "Robinsons" get along very well)

We are now in a bigger house where I have my own upstairs apartment and life is extremely akin to a real life version of The Robinson household. We're all artists so Steve is still working on movies, Heather sews and sometimes works on costumes/cosplay with me, I make short films (that sometimes Steve and Heather both help me with), and we thoroughly enjoy picking apart movies that we all watch together. We most certainly discuss MTR regularly and really enjoy looking at fanart or reading headcanons online (although it's mostly Heather and I, especially on tumblr. Steve unfortunately cannot be told most headcanon things for legal reasons, but we show him fanart all the time). I'm calling her out right now so you can ask her Robinson things if you'd like :P -- @bowler-hat-gal

This scenario sounds stranger than fiction, I know. And it is. I would never have guessed I would be where I am now. I often feel like I'm in the timeline where BHG had taken up the offer to live in the Robinson Household, being given the chance to restart his life and be happy. And I AM happy. I'm really glad to have found the place that feels like home.

All I can say is I'm so glad I put down that knife.

I'm so glad I chose to Keep Moving Forward.

[paragonrobits]

a while back I had a frustrating argument with someone who sticks to the 'Decepticons are inherently revolutionary and always the True Heroes of Transformers' rhetoric, during a point I made about how the then unreleased Transformers One movie was clearly headed in the direction of reusing aspects of G1's origin where the founders of the Decepticons, fearful of all alien life after their abuse at the hands of the Quintessons, decide to wipe out/conquer all alien life so nothing is capable of being a threat to them while the Autobots basically just go 'wtf NO' and the war begins

well the argument basically went nowhere and was one of the most annoying wastes of my time in the history of annoying wastes of time for me personally, but it did make me realize a few things based on the argument, specifically on the sort of people who make arguments like this person did

a key point to me was the viewing of being on the right side/narrative heroism as an instrinsic quality unrelated to the characters actions. Like they kept emphasizing Megatron starting out as a revolutionary in IDW, being abused by cops and beaten by the authority of the time, constnatly bringing up his personal suffering in a 'this justifies him rising up'. conversely my main point was that the Decepticon ideology and intentions, in IDW SPECIFICALLY, are intrinsically colonizer/supremacist ideology. As in, you literally CANNOT have the Decepticons in that setting believe anything that is not related to those, its baked into their mentality as believing the Cybertronian people are superior to all other forms of life.

The 'Cons, in IDW, believe that 'cleansing the universe of beings too backwards to understand how inferior they are' as a core aspect of their beliefs. It's the bedrock to EVERYTHING about them; removing this removes the entire basis of their ideology. Megatron devised a plan to infiltrate worlds, weaken their defenses, and then kill all living tihngs on that planet; colonizing and genocide formalized to its most logical extremes.

This person ignored those things, and kept bringing up Megatron's personal suffering over and over, and it made me realize; to this specific fan, the Decepticons doing those things is irrelevant. They were formed in response to injustice; therefore, this mindset seems to go, they are incapable of being evil no matter what they do, and these mindset seems to just consider their horrific actions irrelevant (or that timeline-wise, the Funcitonalists ceased to exist or threaten them in relatively short order; the Decepticons have spent most of their political life pursuing absolute conquest and fighting the Autobots to do it).

And this bothers me a lot; I HATE character-focused morality, in that the objective morality of the story is based around the characters and what personally benefits them, and not their actions, but it does illustrate how someone might focus on that. I find it baffling, and just how far some people will go to ignore canon to keep up a strange fandom fixation this perception of the Decepticons as revolutionaries even when they outright scream at every opportunity about "we want to make an eternal empire and kill all alien life in the universe"

but it does suggest how to IMPLEMENT this kind of thinking in-universe, for use in writing antagonistic groups, and I suppose illustrate how some people just fixate on origins as more relevant than a character's actions, which is usually the case with most villain characters go; people focus on their origins or motivations, rather than what they actually do, and this is the most extreme form of that.

[achaotichuman]

ACOTAR Fandom Rant

Trigger Warning- Discussions of sexual abuse.

I think some people forget that even if a book is in the fantasy genre, you cannot just say "it's fiction, so it doesn't matter" there still needs to be rules to the world. It cannot all be a free for all, there needs to be consistency. When you make a rule for the world, it needs to apply to everyone, your world needs to serve the story, not the other way around. Everything has to revolve around moving the plot forward, and part of this is how your society functions and treats certain experiences, including experiences like SA.

You can have books that stretch the boundaries of what is and what is not acceptable in your fantasy, but, it has to make sense within the world and you have to be consistent.

This goes for Rhysand, Nesta and Feyre. All of them were SAed by their captors of the time. Amarantha put Rhysand into a position where to avoid harm and gain even a little bit of autonomy he had to have sex with her. Rhysand put Feyre in a position where she was forced to do lewd acts for him and in front of people whilst (practically) naked, until she vomited. Cassian took advantage of Nesta being in a vulnerable position, knowing she had been using sex as a means to self-harm, to have borderline violent sex with her.

It's SA across the board, even though SJM cannot for the life of her admit that. Idk why she keeps writing about SA when she cannot at all, but she does. However, it's not right, and no one should be picking and choosing like she is within the series.

SJM is unable to create good world-building and handle these kinds of experiences with the delicacy and respect they deserve. And no one should be trying to do the same as she is, by attempting to say one character's SA was not valid when it was.

I'm not trying to comment on anyone in particular, but I wanted to comment on this idea as a whole. Because I think it does come down to people picking and choosing because of who their favourite characters are, which is fine and dandy, but the discussion is revolving around what actually happened in canon. And what happened in canon, is that Amarantha raped Rhysand for fifty years. Full-stop. There is no argument. Like there should be no argument for Feyre and for Nesta.

Amarantha had all the power over Rhysand. Like Rhysand had all the power over Feyre, and Cassian had all the power over Nesta.

In each situation, Rhysand, Feyre and Nesta had been forcibly removed from their homes, put in a place where they were locked up and emotionally and physically vulnerable, and all choice was stripped from them.

Amarantha had enslaved Rhysand. Rhysand had taken control of Feyre. Cassian was the equivalent of Nesta's prison guard.

Even though it is fiction. Fiction has the ability to explore these kinds of topics. They are very real, and have very real consequences.

Fiction can stretch boundaries, it can go well beyond what we consider morally right irl, but a good fictional writer will still implement rules and keep consistency with their writing.

There is no morality in fiction but there is a massive difference between a poorly written book and a really well-written book. And there is a difference between genuine discussion and commentary on media and invalidation of experiences, even when it comes to fictional characters, because as I mentioned above these are very very real situations and when it comes to big authors, what they write, can have a very real effect on people.

All this to say, Sarah.J.Maas is a horrible writer, she lacks any kind of consistency and cannot keep up with her own rules. But instead of picking and choosing, and invalidating one experience whilst upholding another, we can look at her writing as an example of how not to handle themes of SA when it comes to the victims in her books.

[emilykaldwen]

The Maiden and the Drowning Boy | Aegon x OC | Chapter Seventeen

Rating: Explicit

Ships: Aegon II Targaryen x Abrogail Strong (Lyonel Strong's Daughter), Jacaerys Velaryon x Helaena Targaryen

Summary: As the kingdom teeters on the edge of chaos, Alicent Hightower swaps the pieces on the board: Aegon will marry Abrogail Strong, Larys’ younger sister and heir to Harrenhal. Caught in the web of intrigue and political machinations, the pair must figure out where their loyalties lie, and what they mean to one another.

Tropes: Childhood Sweethearts/Friends to Lovers, Generational Trauma and Cycles of Abuse, It's All About the Character Development, Unreliable Narrators, Multi-POV, Canon Divergent, Bisexual Aegon II Targaryen, Book/Show Mash Up, Fix-It Of Sorts, Stopping the Cycle of Abuse before it gets us all killed, Team Neutral, fairy tale vibes meets victorian medievalism meets grrm

No tag list. please follow @emkald-fic and turn on post notifications for updates or subscribe on AO3

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Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen

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Author's Note: We've got Rhaenyra POV! We've got Aemond POV! We've got a surprise in the end! Thank you for all the support and patience. You're all getting this chapter early since I'm out of town for the weekend! Enjoy!

PLEASE PLEASE subscribe to the series page or my author page so you get updates when we start the next story! You're not going to want to miss it. (And follow @emkald-fic on tumblr if you read here!)

All my love to @vampire-exgirlfriend for her love and support and holding my hand through this chapter that just kept kicking my fucking ass. If you need more Aemond content, you must read, They Say I killed You (Haunt Me Then)! Now complete! (epilogue going up soon!)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Parrying the Daggers Thrown At Us

Rhaenyra receives a letter. Aemond cannot find peace until he gets a taste of it.

Grandfather is still ill, much like we saw him last but he prefers his wheel chaired more oft than not…

Things have been tense, understandably so, but Queen Alicent has been cordial and has made sure we are comfortable and have what we need… 

Aegon and Aemond keep their distance, perhaps so they can glare all the better…

I do not know how to make amends for what happened… 

…and they say Aemond is taken by his pains at times, darkening his room as his head aches from his wound… 

I should make amends, it is right… 

What do you think I should do?...

Heleana has been the warmest… 

…we danced together at the feast and she was quite happy to do so. It is nice spending time with her…

Aegon is happy around Lady Abrogail and she laughs freely with him. He is not like how he used to be as much with her… 

I think Lord Lyonel and Ser Harwin would be pleased to see how well she is treated…

Many houses were represented at Aegon’s nameday… 

Most seemed to wonder if Aegon would have been named heir and displace you but none came to pass… 

…they will inherit Harrenhal. I can see the wisdom in it as Luke will have Driftmark one day, but I think of Joffrey and Aegitsos and my uncles who do not have lands and holds to occupy them…

I love you much, Muñus, I hope you are well and that I will see you soon…

Rhaenyra ran her fingers over her son’s careful script, her mouth twitching in fondness amidst her worry of her zēapos. His letter was long, too much for a raven’s wings and she started from the beginning once she had read it through once. Twice. Her ribs ached as if Jace had been carved out of her to go on this journey and she shook her head, trying to let the feeling flit away on the breeze. Her eldest had a temper, much as she did in her youth, much as his father had, in the ways that drew her in. Time stole away much, and her own bouts of temper had cooled with each broken toy, each yelling fight, each ‘he pulled my hair!’ and ‘He pushed me and won’t share!’

The sounds of swords clanged in the yard and her gaze flitted from her son’s letter - pages crinkled in her grasp - to the courtyard below where Daemon was testing the new recruits to the Dragonstone guard. His silver hair was twisted back from his face in braids as he preferred, something about war and mindset and always be prepared.

He called something towards Joff and Aegitsos as the knight before him panted, having been bested against her husband.

Baela had not written, that much she knew, though Jace had said that she had found a friend in Helaena after a tense standoff. Rhaenyra had found the mention of it surprising, for her little sister, in the times she’d been around her, had been a quiet thing, eyes large in her face, gaze flitting to everyone and no one.

Helaena has been the warmest…

Helaena was not yet married. The match with Aegon had never come to pass.

The invitation lay on the table before her next to the plate of lemon cake she liked for her morning meal on days such as this.

The wedding of Prince Aegon of House Targaryen and Lady Abrogail Strong of Harrenhal…

In five moons, the spectacle would be held in the Riverlands. In five moons, the realm would look upon her brother once more, peacocked and pulled out, as Daemon sneered, by Otto Hightower to show him off as a contender, to put pressure on her father to change his mind. Her father had nearly twenty years to change his mind and still, he had not. Not even in her absence, cowardly as it sometimes felt to retreat and lick her wounds, had her father’s support of the claim and her family seemed to waver. Try as the Hightowers might to scream and spread slanders that would call for bloodshed, her father still would not be swayed. It was the sense of satisfaction that she had felt when he came to her defense in that shadowed hall those years ago, the heated of curl in it that no matter what, there could be no question as to his choice.

He had chosen her.

Even as the feeling waned over time to give over to those moments where she doubted, all the times he had failed to reign his wife in with her abuses and vitriol, the words her son had sent her bolstered her.

I think Lord Lyonel and Ser Harwin would be pleased…

Harwin’s little sister, big blue eyes and red curls bound in braids, peeking curiously over the edge of Lucerys’ cradle next to Jace because ‘She asked if she could see the baby and give him this,’ Harwin had said, as the little girl presented her attempts at embroidering a little dragon on a pillow. Little Abrogail, half Harwin’s, half Alicent’s. She had tried to bring the girl to Dragonstone with them. Would she not be happier away from the court politics with her brother and the quiet? Lord Lyonel had given her a surprised, then hard look, and Rhaenyra had felt chastened in a way her own father had never been able to evoke within her.

“I will keep my daughter with me, and should I send her away, it will be back to her home, at Harrenhal, with her brother.”

Grief washed through her like the crashing of the waves on the rocky shore below and she felt her own jagged edges inside of her. Lyonel Strong had been the best of them, putting the realm first, always by her side at every council meeting she attended, encouraging her, even as his face grew graver with each brunette curled boy she bore.

Violet eyes swept across the parchment again. A servant in the camp had tried to attack the girl, Jace said. Crept into her tent, assuming she would have been alone. Inquiries were being made, but as far as anyone could see, the man had just been a baseborn servant - blending in like no other. Rhaenyra pursed her lips and looked down at the training yard once more, fingers drumming along the stone ledge of the terrace.

She wondered how wrapped around Lady Abrogail’s finger her half-brother might be… and how opportune this moment was.

Alicent’s eldest was marrying and taking a seat in the Riverlands. It was not the bold choice that Rhaenyra had thought would happen. Surely one of the many Lannister girls, or one of the Baratheons - a great house who would be invested in their own daughter becoming queen would have made more sense.

Harrenhal, for the wealth and lands that it had, did not command armies the way the Stormlands did. It did not have endless coffers the way Casterly Rock boasted of. It was a moody fortress on the edge of the God’s Eye, surrounded by lush farmland and woods that were dark and deep and felt that you were somewhere fanciful, somewhere that didn’t hold dragons nor thrones, nothing except for a warm hand wrapped around her own.

The clashing and screaming of steel in the yard below pulled Rhaenyra from her thoughts, and away from the path of her sorrows and regrets. Turning her back to the sight below, she reached for her own parchment and quill, pushing aside the letter from Lord Celtigar.

Lady Abrogail… Good tidings on news of your approaching nuptials…

Aemond pursed his lips, his gaze rising from the book before him, a study on the Conqueror’s approach to the first Dornish war,to squint across the barrel room near the top of the tower that held the library in the Holdfast. He drummed his fingers upon the scarred wooden table, a fingertip running along the crescent burn from the time Abby had accidentally knocked over a candle while they were reading about Harren the Black.

He exhaled slowly, the way the Braavosi manuals advised and looked back at his book.

It had been weeks since his brother’s festivities, and the chill of the end of the growing season had crept in. It was not cold by northern standards, but the air cooled, the rains rolled in for the next several months, and angry storms fell over them  from the Narrow Sea, their winds piercing and frightening, as if they were dragons themselves in the winds that the Storm God rode, threatening to tear apart the Red Keep brick by brick.

Helaena’s nameday had passed with quiet fanfare, the lingering lords of the realm who had not left parading their sons in front of his maiden sister. As if any of them were worthy of a dragonrider, someone as clever and kind as Helaena.

It had been complicated over the past weeks since the talk in the garden, and Aemond still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt. What had been most surprising had been the strange sense of release when his sister let him go, leaving him to sit in the rain before Visenya’s statue, her words ringing in his ears. 

‘I would burn Dorne for you… but I do not want to leave behind a world of ash and bone.’

How desperate Helaena had looked, angry and frightened and full of hope as she begged not to have a husband, but a brother back. ‘How else am I supposed to protect her?' he had wondered. How else could he offer his sister protection and security if it wasn’t to marry her, to tie her to him so that she would never have to fear, never have to doubt her acceptance and those who loved her?

Aegon had not wanted to marry her. She was weird, he’d sneered. How miserable Helaena would be, how miserable they both would have been. Aemond had done the right thing. He’d stepped up, he had gotten Mother and The Tower to break the betrothal. Even if they had not promised him and Helaena to one another, that was alright, it would simply be a matter of time.

He had Vhagar. There could be no further doubt that he was truly a Valyrian. There could be no more doubt as to his place in the world. All that was left was his sister.

Guilt gnawed deep in his stomach, shame twisting around his throat when the thought filtered through. Helaena was not a bauble he needed to collect to prove something. Collecting her was not protecting her. Collecting her was not about her, but for him, and it was this knowledge that he had thought about constantly.

His sister deserved more than being a broodmare, to be a pawn in the games. The forced distance the last few weeks had given him, after Helaena pushed him from the proverbial nest, had left him unsettled and snappish.

The loud thud of a book hitting the stone floor reverberated through the room. A heavy tome, judging from the heft of the sound, followed by a soft giggling, a deeper snickering sound chasing after it before they muffled and fell quiet.

He knew, with the utmost certainty, why it had fallen quiet.

Ever since the betrothal, the grip on his best friend had been slipping. Oh, him and Abrogail were an unlikely pair, but few appreciated books and history as his cousin did. While digging in the dirt and helping Helaena catalog her collection had been fulfilling, there was something joyous in being able to have someone who understood the quiet and sanctity of the library, and who loved books and reading and learning as he did. Lyonel Strong had always indulged his questions when was young - far more enthralling than Mellos and Orwyle were, and he had fostered that curiosity in his daughter.

‘All she’s going to care about is making babies with Aegon!’ Helaena had cried, frustrated and angry when they’d been alone after the fight in the brothel. 

There was a soft cry, and Aemond scowled at his book before his chair scraped across the stone floor and he strode purposefully towards the source of the sound. The histories of the Riverlands were there - not just observational books, but the census, the trade information, things used by the small council’s not-quite-so-small army of clerks and counters and lawmakers. The section of the library that Abby had frequented since the announcement and that he had helped her with.

“Not here,” came the whispered whine, laced with laughter. Aemond rolled his eye as he turned the corner of the aisle. It was shadowed somewhat this far down, The strategically polished silver angled to bounce the light around so as not to pose a fire risk among the precious books, although the day was gray and cloudy and the light reflected was that of a lamp. Abby was pressed against the bookshelves, the blue and silver brocade of her skirts rucked up with her stockings on display, her legs at present, wrapped around his stupid brother’s waist. One arm was stretched out to grab onto the bookshelf behind her, and the fallen book that had been in its place was still on the ground. Aegon’s face was buried into her chest, or maybe her throat? 

He was half-blind, after all, sometimes details could be mercifully missed. Or ignored.

“This,” Aemond said, his voice even and dripping with every ounce of annoyance and betrayal he felt, “is the library, not a brothel.”

Aemond’s fists clenched at the disrespect both of them displayed to a place they knew  was important to him. At the announcement of his presence, Abby squeaked, Aegon’s arms tightening around her as she scrambled to lower herself without sending them both toppling. He held his arms folded behind his back, his hand scraping along his elbow as the pair of them got themselves in order and he shook his head when Aegon looked at him, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. Abby had turned to straighten her gown.

“Are you really going to act like this?” Aegon said, for it was barely a question. “We weren’t in front of you and your book. You were the one seeking us out.”

“Because you both weren’t as quiet as you thought you were,” Aemond snapped. “It was distracting.”

A lazy smirk crossed across his brother’s flushed face and he wanted to punch him square in his stupid nose. Let him kiss his future wife with his face bashed in. “Well, my lady is distracting-.” There was a soft sound as Abby smacked Aegon’s shoulder, cutting him off with an exaggerated ow, the flinch was nowhere near the violent response that inhabited his brother when it was their mother doing the hitting. She peered around Aegon’s shoulder, her mouth just as swollen, her cheeks just as flushed and her features apologetic.

“We’re sorry, Aemond. Things just got out of hand. I shouldn’t have-”

“Don’t you apologize,” Aegon interrupted her this time, a fierce look on his face. 

“No, actually,” Aemond cut in, taking a step forward, using the few inches he now had on his brother to straighten his shoulders. “She’s right. Thank you, Abby, for apologizing. Are you upset that she has to apologize for you, since your self-awareness is worse than a billy goat ramming his head into things?”

Aegon’s mouth gaped in offense, his flush deepening. There was a bruise along his neck that was going to be difficult to hide. The glib nature of his eldest brother was a trial at the best of times, but this? “You know this isn’t your place to run about as you please. Shall I just unlock my doors, let you roll around in my sheets and over my personal things while you’re at it?”

“It’s the fucking library, Aemond. It doesn’t belong to you-”

Abby let out a startled cry as Aemond’s fist shot out, but as much as he would love to punch his brother, he shoved him instead, feeling the crackling of frustration, the rumble of Vhagar in his chest.  “Because it’s all yours, is that it? You mewling fucking kitten. This isn’t just my library, it’s hers too, but you don’t fucking care about anything that means something to anyone else if it gets in the way of what your limp cock wants.”

“Aemond, truly, we’re sorry - Aegon, no!” Abby’s voice was lost in Aegon’s growl as his brother came back with another shove, sending him back a few steps. Aemond laughed, a hint of a sound like the thin scrape of wind whistling through a crack. Yes, yes let the idiot push him around. Let him continue to pull his friend away from him, from him and Helaena both. His gaze darted briefly to the redhead, blue eyes wide as she pressed herself back against the shelves, before meeting his brother’s lighter gaze.

“You are a glib fucking fool, Aegon,” Aemond said lowly, his mouth curling as he readied for a fight, needing to expend the burn of flame inside of him. “I don’t care what the pair of you do, I’ll say nothing should Mother hear of it, but-” he stepped forward and shoved Aegon hard into the bookstack. The ancient wood creaked and groaned, but the stacks were bolted to the floor to prevent them from topping. A few books fell from the force of Aegon’s frame smacking into it. “Stay the hell out of my library.”

He did not look over his shoulder, even as Abby called his name, apology rife in her tone. He strode through the halls, calling for his horse to be saddled while he went to angrily pull on his riding leathers. The left side of his temple ached as it was wont to do when his face was full of tension. Helaena would make him tea, protect him in the quiet, but that was not meant to be today. The last he saw, his sister was in the gardens with Jacaerys. 

How he ached to wring the stupid bastard’s neck.

How bright he seemed to make Helaena laugh.

How betrayed Aemond felt by it all.

Why hadn’t Helaena said anything? Why hadn’t she told him that she didn’t want to be married? Why had she just let him wander around like a puppy and now left the fool?

‘But hadn’t she told you?’ a little voice drifted through Aemond’s mind and he paused in the lacing of his leathers. Had she not told him by pursuing that fool Warren Fossoway, and the time that he had spied her kissing him - for he had seen Helaena push the squire behind the carved dragon pillar by the gardens. 

‘But she would let me kiss her, she would kiss me, and she’d touch me and I her and-’ The flurry of thoughts ached as he pulled on his boots.

It would not hurt as much if it was anyone but Jacaerys.

The ride to the beach beneath the shadow of the Red Keep was a blur. The rock outcropping of Aegon’s High Hill was a craggy, sheer thing, but the beach below was one that Vhagar enjoyed sunning herself, a guard dog laying at the foot of the bed in a way. Her head lifted as Aemond approached, lowing in greeting and shaking sand from her scales. The tension in Aemond’s chest began to ease at the sight of her, and he approached, patting a gloved hand along her scarred neck, scratching along a vicious scar she must have received in Dorne. There were no words exchanged, not the way Aegon chattered with Sunfyre. Aemond’s bond with Vhagar was one of feeling, of such deep understanding that no words needed to spill from him. In no time, he scaled her great bulk and yelled out the command to fly, which his dragon responded with her own, what he assumed was excited, call in return.

Vhagar landed on the cliffs on the western side of Massey’s Hook, the bay below dotted with smaller fishing boats this far out from King’s Landing and away from the bustle of the capital. Rage and grief, anger and fear were a tempest in his gut and he rankled at the call of Moondancer as his cousin circled above them.

If Baela wanted this fight, then he would meet her, unflinching. Let her see what dragons were made of. They did not all reside on Dragonstone.

“Laodijes peldios!” Baela howled at him, her voice a sharp shout on the breeze, her face twisted and ugly with fury, fists at her side as she readied herself to hit him should he get within reach.

Aemond glared at her, the distance between them shrunk now to an arm length. Vhagar was a great shadow behind him and he could feel the sulfuric heat of her breath as she exhaled buffeting at his back. Moondancer was a little ways away, shrieking fearfully and Aemond could not tell if the dragon reflected her rider’s mood, or her fear of Vhagar.

“You’re a fucking fool. Daemon Targaryen is your father, your mother a Velaryon, and you still don’t realize that a dragon cannot be stolen.”

“You had no fucking right!” Baela snarled. “Vhagar was for Rhaena to claim-”

“If Vhagar had not wanted me, she would have eaten me and you damn well know it.” Aemond cut her off, watching her jaw click shut with a curl of satisfaction. “Vhagar chose me, not your sister. What? You want to kill me to give her another chance at claiming her? Is that what you’re here? To finish the job that you all started?”

“Why would my mother’s dragon choose you?” Balea cried, and this time, there was a choked quality to her rage. Aemond’s eye widened slightly and he leaned back from her, a curl of uncertainty that he despised. His words had been harsh, full of the anger that he had felt simmering these past years. Aemond shrugged it off. He had earned his harshness in this. He’d been the one attacked, the band of them setting upon him simply because he chose to claim his right as a Valyrian prince.

‘Why would my mother’s dragon choose you?’

Aemond ran his tongue over his teeth and leaned back on his foot, watching Baela gasp for air amidst her choking sobs, and turn from him to look out to the bay, towards Driftmark and High Tide.

He remembered his mother’s cries, her rage, her such careful and elegant control snapping as her voice cracked in the silence of the Hall of Nine.

“He’s your son, Viserys.”

“Why did Moondancer choose you?” Aemond asked. “Why did Moondancer choose you, and my egg never hatched?” Baela did not look at him but he could see the way her shoulders tensed. “Why didn’t you go find the guards? Why did you come, thinking a thief had stolen a dragon and Jacaerys brought his blade? Why did they give me a pig, pretending they had found me a dragon as they both had their own? Why did they do nothing but terrorize me with that fact for our childhoods?” 

Aegon had done it too, gone in on the fun, drunk on being the eldest. It had lessened considerably in the wake of Rhaenyra leaving the capital, even if his brother sought other ways to tease him - he’d never again mentioned his lack of dragon.

Aegon had come to him in his sick bed, his curls shorn, red eyed and puffy faced, tears on his cheeks, had knelt at his bedside and vowed to him. 

“We protect our own and I did not protect you. I do not care if you’ve claimed Vhagar, for I was not there for you when you needed me. It will never happen again. I will protect you. I will be by your side.”

Aemond had sometimes wondered how much of the words were his brother’s own, but he had known, with certainty, that the feelings were genuine. His brother was an idiot, and they butted heads, but his brother loved him in his own way, and for as angry as Aegon could make him, he loved him too. In his own way. 

He might admit that on his deathbed, unlike Aegon, who would only need to be in the depths of his cups and into the sad and tearful mourning edge.

“What do you know, Baela?” Aemond said, his voice even, coldness creeping along the edges. “Of fighting and scraping for everything that is owed to you?” He forcefully bit his tongue, copper exploding in his mouth as he broke skin, to keep from pressing further at the loss of her birth right to Driftmark for Rhaenyra’s folly.

“A prince has to scrape for all that is owed to him.” It was rhetorical, biting, and Aemond snorted, taking a step forward, his own gaze looking out at the water.

“You may have been an idiot child, but don’t play me for a fool.” It was impossible not to see how little Viserys thought of his second family, and he had seen it plainly on Jacaerys’ face, the surprise in witnessing it. “I’m sure your father relishes every word you send to him. His little spy.”

Baela’s lip curled in a snarl and she stalked closer. Aemond stayed where he was, watching her with a narrowed eye as Vhagar let out a low growl behind him. She did not move, did not lift her head, but her nostrils flared and Aemond felt the heat of her breath swirl around him. Baela’s eyes widened, and she paused, the indigo of them shining with tears. 

He turned his head slightly to look at Vhagar. “Ȳgha iksi,” he reassured her, feeling Vhagar’s displeasure seeping through him, her warning and the remembered rage from those years ago when she could not protect him or take away his pain. He reached for her snout, pressing his hand to the scar above her left nostril, rubbing against it. He turned his back to his cousin and brought his other hand up, feeling the anger hot as coals, hot as dragonfire in his chest. Vhagar was full of tension. He could feel it. Would she feel that way if it wasn’t him? If she was not so worried for him, would she recognize the girl behind him as the child that Laena Velaryon surely brought to her, as Aemond would have brought his own child? Had his grandfather, Baelon, brought his sons to this dragon before them?

The silence filled the air around them, the wind thick with tension. Aemond pressed his forehead to Vhagar, took strength from her, squeezed his eye shut and ignored the pain that lanced through his head and pulsed behind his scar.

The sob behind him was soft, and Moondancer’s cry was mournful.

“He’s your son, Viserys.”

“I did not mean to tarnish your mother’s memory,” Aemond finally spoke, his voice carrying as he looked, blind side towards Baela. “It was not done to hurt you, or to take something from you. It was… It was my only chance. And it’s something I don’t think you’ll ever be able to understand. I am… I am sorry about the loss of your mother. I did not have the opportunity to give you my condolences then, but I can give them to you now.”

The sound Baela made was strangled. Aemond turned to look at her. Baela was stiff beneath her red and black riding leathers, the metal rings in her hair tinkling as the wind tugged at her braids. He recalled the mourning child she had been sitting by her twin and Jace, the vicious yell she’d let out when she punched him in the nose that night, the howls and scream of pain. He felt Vhagar twitch and groan beneath his touch, another warning and he hushed her again, stroking her snout. He watched her gaze go towards Moondancer, who was crying fitfully, grounded still, her aquamarine wings more green against the lush grass of the clifftop.

“Do you want to pet her?”

Baela stared at him, the hostile lines to her face instantly slacking in surprise. “Skoro syt?” Her voice was small and wary, even as her eyes were wide with grief.

“My condolences,” Aemond repeated, and he found the words genuine. It was not Baela, nor her sister, or even his bastard nephews that rankled him. Oh, he wanted his revenge, He wanted what was due, but more of the blame lay with his eldest sister and their father. Of that, Aemond was secure in. He would gladly feed them both to Vhagar, to take an eye as payment for his mother.

His cousin shifted on her booted feet before whatever compelled her brought her forward. Aemond shifted, beckoning her to take her place by his side as he murmured words to Vhagar. Baela had taken her glove off, her slim, tanned hand reaching tentatively up before resting along the scar on Vhagar’s nostril.

They stood there for how long, Aemond was not sure, quietly beside one another as Baela grieved for the mother at the bottom of the Narrow Sea, and his own grief at what was taken from him.

“Do not mourn me, mother…”

‘But mourn the boy dead on Driftmark.’

It was not lightness or peace that settled over Aemond when he and his cousin parted later. He was not certain how much time had passed, only that after she had sobbed, they sat there in a strange, companionable silence eating hunks of bread and cheese and apple that Baela cut with a wicked blade. She did not give him thanks, she did not say anything, but Aemond took the offering of shared food as her own gesture of whatever truce was settled between them. The exchanged curt nods before parting, Baela northeast and away from the city to what Aemond assumed was High Tide and her grandmother and twin, while he circled back towards the city.

Aemond was not certain of the feeling he held except that it felt like he had scratched something out on a list, or deposited a burden that he was trying to carry with all his other, more cumbersome burdens. It was a closed door. That was enough for Aemond, and there was a part of him that wanted to march to his sisters and tell them that he had made nice, to have Abby’s warm smile proud with him, and Helaena’s little clap and promptly being the receiver of her latest mountain spider that Uncle Rodrik had brought her.

Instead, after entering the inner courtyard of the Red Keep and handing off his horse to one of the stablehands, he made his way to the gardens and to his own preferred solitude when the library - so recently desecrated - was not an option. No, Aemond needed air, he needed the statue of Visenya to look down upon him. There, where Helaena had snipped the strings and released him from the vow he had made, the goal that held him that was more about him than it truly was about her. 

Where his sister had set him free, and he loved her all the more for it.

The problem, he found, upon striding down the paved path and through the dripping ivy, was that his garden was not, in fact, as empty as he hoped. Wylla Karstark was kneeled in front of a bush of hyacinths, carefully cutting the purple blooms and placing them in a basket beside her. She was clad in a dove gray dress, the black fabric of her kirtle beneath poking out through slashes along her shoulders and puffed at her elbows. Her fox features were pinched in concentration and Aemond watched her for a moment, silent as she had clearly not heard his approach.

Wylla Karstark was an unknown. She was pretty enough, with a long nose and sharp jaw, gray eyes that flashed when she was annoyed, which was the majority of the time. She had a rather frustrating talent of being able to look down at him even as she had to arch her neck, for she was as petite as Abby was. Their joint misfortune, just like Aegon’s. She was also well read, their conversation at the feast turning from a mutual annoyance to discussing the book of poetry that he had seen her reading, which itself had turned into a rather long and in depth conversation on the Valyrian poet, Praxilla, whose work had survived by the grace of her living the life of leisure in Lys when the Doom happened. Wylla and his elder brother unknowingly shared a fondness for drinking songs penned by the scribe, although Aemond was smart enough to know he shouldn’t bring that up.

Not until he needed to.

“It is polite to speak when coming upon someone, Your Grace,” Wylla’s northern burr was arch as she focused on her task. “I would curtsy, but you can see I’m already on my knees.”

Aemond’s cheeks flushed at the turn of her words, and he was not certain if she understood how they could be taken. He decided that she didn’t, for she did not turn to look at him, seemingly unbothered. All for the best, he supposed, for Aemond did not think he could meet her gaze should she be facing him.

“Why are you cutting my flowers?”

“Your flowers, Your Grace?” Wylla laughed, a sharp, lilting sort of sound and he wondered if that’s what she sounded like when she sang. Did she sing? He had not asked her. “These flowers belong to Queen Visenya, for it is her garden, is it not?”

“It is my garden,” he pushed back, frowning at the back of her head, the mass of thick, twisted black braids kept in place with a woven, pearl hair net with wicked looking, pearl tipped hair pins to keep the heaviness of it in place. He flexed his hands, wiping them on his riding leathers as he approached. There were other flowers in her basket, like wisteria and some of the roses from the main garden. He sat, bending his one leg to rest an arm on while the other reached in.

Up close, he could see the red flush to her pale cheeks. He did not recall them looking so red when he saw her the day before, outside of the bit of sun all the girls had gotten during the sun.

Her smack was quick, the sound of flesh stinging flesh loud and he immediately pulled back with a hiss and a glare. “How dare-”

“Those aren’t for you,” Wylla said forcefully, the gray eyes of her bright in her face as she finally looked at him. “They’re for Lady Abrogail.”

Aemond had killed a man for the fox-faced woman before him without hesitation, and the knowledge of it settled in him still, generally buried over the past few weeks because he had no idea what to do about it. They’d been attacked in the night, and Wylla Karstark had shoved a knife between the man’s ribs without hesitation. So tall, Wylla Karstark seemed, so loud, filling up the spaces she was in without holding herself back, that he had so often forgotten how small she was.

Until she was there, in front of him, those gray eyes like the storm ridden ocean.

Aemond held her gaze, reaching back into the basket to pluck one of the deep purple, nearly blue anemones that she had gathered, twirling it idly between his long fingers before reaching up to tuck it behind her ear. Wylla was still beside him, her red painted mouth parted slightly, so he could see the flash of her white teeth behind it. Her cheeks deepend in their red to match the paint on her lips and Aemon hummed. 

Abby had been understandably shaken. Knowing her as long as he did, even with the smiles affixed to her face, he knew the signs as intimately as he understood Helaena’s or Aegon’s, or his own mother’s. Wylla Karstark was a mystery. She had been quiet, from what he had seen, but the wedding preparations had taken up much time with the girls, as well as her brother finally leaving the capital earlier that week.

He clenched his jaw, a muscle ticking, before he met her gaze. “Are you alright?”

Her inhale was loud. It trembled and she pressed her red lips together, her throat bobbing with a swallow and looked back at the flowers but did not move to cut anymore. Aemond did not push her, but only waited.

“Yes? No? Strangely yes,” she finally whispered. “I think that’s what bothers me more.”

“That bastard came in with intent to harm,” Aemond said. “If you didn’t kill him, someone else would have. You were incredibly brave.” None knew  where he’d come from. The assailant had been clad in the same red garb as the rest of the servants. A baseborn man. Waters or Storm, Aemond couldn’t remember, much like he had no memory of the man’s face before he stared down at it, red and wheezing before he killed him.

“At least it wasn’t Aegon,” Wylla whispered, her eyes wide, drawing his attention back to her. “What would have that turned into - him sneaking in for them to slobber all over each other. Me thinking he was an attacker and-”

The snort of laughter that escaped Aemond at the idea of it all could not be held back. He bent his head, gasping for air as his shoulders shook and it was only a moment before Wylla’s own peel of laughter joined his. It had been some weeks since he’d laughed, in the wake of what happened at the hunt drying up what little humor he’d indulged in. There was an infectious quality to Wylla Karstark’s amusement that he found comforting. Aemond looked at her, her face flushed from her laughter, and he leaned in, kissing her.

The laughter abruptly stopped, her mouth soft against his, still from her clear surprise. She tasted like oranges. Abby must have indulged in the sweet and sour orange cakes they had at the feast. Wylla did not respond, but she didn’t move away either and Aemond took that as acceptance, and he lifted his hand to cup her cheek, thumb swiping softly against the apple of it. Kisses with Helaena had been different - always expected, always ready, with her initiating many of them. The one time he’d kissed Abby, when they were little and Jace had dared him to, did not count. The both of them had made faces, vowing to never do it again. 

Kissing Wylla, though? He never wanted to stop, especially not when she reached up, the clippers making a soft thump along the grass to wrap around the end of the braid slung over his shoulder. She tugged it gently and Aemond broke away, blinking and gasping. “What?” he asked. “Should I have not done that?”

“Oh, you should have,” she reassured him, breathless and red faced. She licked her lips and looked at her fingers still wound around his braid, toying with the leather tie. “I was just reminded of something someone told me once.”

He cocked his head, mouth pursed. “What was it?”

The smile that cut across Wylla’s face was amused, the scar along the top of her lip giving a mischievous bend to her small, red mouth. “It was about how dragons purr when you pull their hair.”

Whatever thought started to coalesce about her late night conversation with his sisters was pushed right out when her lips found his.

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