#even if he wanted to genuinely prevent his death

[ihrthoney]

no grave can hold my body down

pairings: arkham knight!jason todd x f!reader

warnings: fluff, angst, a lil bit of suicidal thoughts but nothing too major

word count: 1.8k

an: this is a more detailed version of this post! please request jason todd fic ideas pls pls pls. sorry if theres any mistakes it’s almost midnight lol

Almost two years had passed and Bruce Wayne came to your door and revealed who he was. Nearly 730 days since your boyfriend "died". Gotham was a city full of awful crimes and even worse people but you've never hated anyone like you hated Batman.

You can understand that he tried, the guilt he must feel probably consumes him and a sick part of you is glad. Not only was your boyfriend killed, with video evidence might you add, but his body was never recovered.

Jason would hate it if you saw the video of the Joker killing him but you needed to know. It was all for naught though, you never buried a body so your brain fully believes he isn't dead.

Whether or not it was the grief of having the love of your life ripped away from you or the feeling in your gut, you know Jason isn't dead. Until there is a body in front of you, you will do anything that you can to find him.

-

It started with swallowing your pride and asking the person you loathed for help.

Bruce obviously refused, he wanted to avoid another young person's death. You caught him by surprise with how you begged for his help, he fully expected you to be mad at him, to threaten him for answers. But no, instead you got on your hands and knees and begged him for help, which somehow made it worse.

For weeks you kept reaching out to him, asking him for any clues or hints, anything at all! He has all the resources a person could ever need, he's known as the greatest detective in the world but he can't find his son?

"I've told you, Jason is... Jason is dead. You saw the video. Get out of Gotham and move on, there is nothing more I can do for you."

You knew of Nightwing, that he was the robin before Jason. So you reached out to him when he was on patrol. Unlike Bruce, you actually felt bad for asking for help, especially since he was working and was grieving himself.

Even through the domino mask, his face scrunched in sympathy, and as gently as he could he told you he couldn't consciously help you. He couldn't let a civilian rope themself into business they wouldn't be able to walk out of.

Understanding of his reasoning, you started going against the law. You started to sneak into offices at different police stations in Gotham (they were sloppier than you could've ever thought, no wonder people love Batman).

Given Jason's at the time profession, he taught you how to defend yourself. There was never a time you didn't carry a knife on you, but you always left your gun at home. Living in Gotham, it was best to take all and every necessary safety precautions.

Using the very low-level skills you had, you searched places that were abandoned and discarded, anywhere that Joker was ever near in the past few years. A part of you knew that what you were doing was dangerous, that if Batman had found anything he would've done so already.

But you couldn't just go to work and pretend your boyfriend wasn't out there somewhere, alive or not you had to be absolutely sure. If you died trying then so be it, it's better living in the reality of Jason not coming home.

-

A year went by, 365 days of feeling your sanity drain out of your body. You've been caught a few times by the police for trespassing and once by Batman himself who scolded and lectured you about your activities. He was livid, upset at you willingly putting yourself in danger. You were at a higher risk of dying than he was and yet you go out in nothing but black clothes and a few weapons. He's genuinely shocked you're still alive.

After Bruce catches you, he makes sure to keep tabs on you which prevents you from going out. Even if he's busy, if he sees your tag too far out he will drag you back to your place.

There's a part of you that wants to give up, to actually take his advice and move away. But you know deep down inside nothing will put out the fire of finding Jason. Even if you moved to a different country, you know you would still look for his hair, to listen to his voice in the crowd.

Months of gaslighting yourself that he'll knock on your door and say it's just one big prank, that he was on a big mission far away and couldn't tell you to keep you safe.

Millions of excuses rolled around in your head day and night, work was a blue. Bruce even tried to compensate by offering to pay for your rent, to help you seek medical help like a therapist. You know it would do you good to rest but the guilt of leaving Jason behind was too strong. He's been through so much in his life, you wouldn't dare abandon him.

You still stayed in the apartment you were looking at with Jason, "a safehouse" he called it, you weren't even 18 at the time but you both allowed yourselves to think ahead.

Every piece of furniture you bought with him in mind, "This would be convenient for him to hide his gear," "He likes this color, plus the blanket is soft so it'll help him sleep." Jason consumed you, call it unhealthy but he was your night in this dark city.

There was a spare bedroom, you were going to originally use as an office/workspace but instead, it's covered in all the papers you've stolen to find him. The floor, walls and even the door were covered, overlapped, and written on in any possible clue you could've stumbled upon. It's been months since you've been able to add something that wasn't already on there. So instead, you sat in the room and just stared at it, cried, ripped things down, and put them back up with tears streaming down your face.

The hallucinations started back when you stumbled upon a hostage situation in an old arcade at the end of Gotham, you swear it was Jason but when the guy looked up at you all you saw was a stranger. You were stuck in the police station for hours, yelled at for stupidly interfering in a dangerous situation. The cops looked at you with annoyance now, you were nothing more than a crazy love-sick girl.

-

Work was exhausting, learning there was a new robin made your stomach swirl. It was like Batman just moved on, how is that fair? How could he move on while you were stuck chasing dead ends? Why couldn't you just accept his death?

Instead of eating dinner, you let yourself boil in whatever hot water Gotham could provide and scrubbed layers of guilt off of your skin. You put on an old shirt of his, it was horribly faded by how much you wore and washed it. The bed was too big but you didn't want a smaller one in case he came back.

Usually, you triple check that your windows and doors are bolted shut but for tonight you just trusted your brain. Sometimes, it felt like it would be easier if you didn't wake up anymore, at least when you closed your eyes you could see the Jason you knew and loved.

Tonight was one of those nights where sleep was in and out, so when you felt a hand push back some hair behind your ear, you grabbed the knife under your pillow and lunged forward though there were no sounds of anyone in pain, in fact you heard the knife hit the floor.

"You have to be faster than that, sweetheart."

That voice. You would know that voice anywhere.

You blink your eyes open, slowly revealing the man you love in front of you. Except, he wasn't in front of you. This wasn't the first time he's appeared in front of you, it broke your heart all the same.

The exhaustion creeped up your throat and tears started to slip down your face, "No don't cry baby, it's okay." 'Jason' attempted to reach his hand toward you but you shook your head, backing into the corner of the bed,

"This isn't real. Go away, please. Not tonight."

The ache Jason felt in his chest at the sound of your distress hurt him in a way he's never yet experienced. His poor girl crying, thinking he wasn't real.

"I'm real baby, I promise." He calmly approaches you, kneeling on the bed, a hand reaches out towards you again,

Your head was buried on your knees as you hugged yourself into a ball, "You're not! I haven't found you! This can't be real!"

"Please look at me sweetheart."

You noticed his voice sounded different, deeper, more matured. It caused you to slowly look up, "There you are."

That's when you see him. The scars, the tired look in his eyes, the rage he's hiding behind it; There a difference in color in his eyes but they're beautiful all the same. They still look at you with love.

None of your hallucinations were this detailed, to be honest you couldn't imagine what he would look like after the years have passed. So to see this, you knew it was real. (Or some villain was damn good at illusions.)

He was caught off guard as you hugged him tight, he had to swallow down the feeling to pull you off. You were the exception to everything, so for now he could stomach the feeling of being held in place because he (is trying to convince himself) knows it's out of love.

You sobbed in his chest, apologizing over and over and over again, "It's okay baby, take deep breaths please."

Again, you started to shake your head, "It's not okay, I should have found you. I tried to find you, I'm so sorry!"

"I saw the room baby, I know you tried but that wasn't your responsibility." He tried to reason with you, doing what he could to calm you down. It's been years since he's seen you, years since he's dealt with anything normal, his mind is all over the place.

"Don't say that, I love you Jace. I would rather die than stop looking."

Jason tensed at the phrase, after everything it's hard to believe you, to believe any of this but he wanted to see you. He had to.

A hand found its way in your hair, holding you close to his chest, "You did good honey, thank you for trying."

Lifting your head from his chest, you looked into his eyes, "I would do anything for you, I need you to know that."

He can only offer a small smile, he knows you did and there's a small piece of his heart that can rest knowing you didn't forget him, that you still loved him.

He hopes he can learn to love you again, too.

part 2? lmk down below :)

© ihrthoney. reblogs & feedback are greatly appreciated𑁤

[slow-reader-reads-books]

I find the most interesting difference between Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan isn't "malice" and "kindness" but rather Shen Jiu being a desperate-to-survive sore loser and Shen Yuan being an uncompetitive good sport, and it's interesting to see how their differences kind of flow from those two opposing traits

Both are desperate to survive in their own ways, however I guess you could argue Shen Jiu did everything to secure the life he wanted, meanwhile Shen Yuan idled and idled until fire was put under his ass and he finally had to do something to secure better living standards for himself

You could argue Shen Jiu has a stronger will to survive, but even being alive he didn't seem to enjoy it and be happy all that much. Meanwhile Shen Yuan strives for very little but generally is happy with the bare necessities and choosing to just loudly inflate his complaints about little things instead, which probably endears him to the people around him

[infiniteglitterfall]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[uvobreakmylegs]

Ouroboros

this fic is one I wrote a long while ago as a lil sequel to @hypnoswrites's fic Vengeance Tastes Bitter and she gave permission for me to post :D

please be aware of the tags if you choose to check out either of these fics

Uvogin x female!reader

Warnings: kidnapping, captivity, mentions of death, mentions of murder, past noncon, mentions of suicide, threats of violence, abusive relationships, attempted murder, dubcon, smut, Uvogin being a bastard

Word Count: 2.9k

The sounds of a door abruptly opening and then slamming shut were what announced his arrival. And despite being used to the sound of his return, you still tensed up when you heard him approaching as you determined how long it would take for him to find you within the house.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't very long.

Uvogin's gaze was on you the second he entered the kitchen, looking you over as you stood by the counter. You heard him hum to himself before he said anything to you, sounding slightly dissatisfied. Perhaps he was looking over the marks he'd left on your skin and was unhappy when he saw that they were fading.

Or perhaps it was because that you had yet to acknowledge him, instead keeping yourself turned away and looking out through the window at the scenery outside. The nice weather outside was a better thing to focus your energy on, though you wouldn't be able to ignore him for too much longer. He wouldn't allow that.

“Don't you have somethin' to say to me?” Uvogin asked you.

“…. I don't know what you want me to say,” you replied.

“What, you don't know that it's common courtesy to greet someone when they've returned home? Who raised you?”

That last comment stung.

“This isn't your home. It's not mine, either. Why the hell should I bother with that?” you asked bitterly.

“Because I want you to.”

He was enjoying this. You could hear it in his voice. And you already knew he had that usual victorious smirk on his face, pleased with himself that he had managed to make you snap at him.

Even though he liked the ways you would push back, he would expect you to comply at some point, and while you hated needing to bend to his will, things were better if you did that much.

Or at the very least, they were less violent.

Your shoulder's sagged as you sighed and then said, “welcome back.”

You then glanced over your shoulder to look at him.

He was smirking. As expected. Still getting a kick out of making you submit to him.

It had been several months since that fateful, awful day where you had convinced yourself that you could kill him and take revenge for your family. The day where he had soundly beaten you without even trying, and instead of taking your life for bothering him with the weak attempt, he had amused himself by humiliating you. Starting with pissing on you after preventing you from taking your own life and ending with him raping you repeatedly over a period of several hours.

He kept you at the camp he had set up for a few weeks after in the hopes that people would come looking for you so he could torment you even more by killing your would-be rescuers in front of you. But no one ever came, much to his disappointment and your relief, though it was depressing that no one seemed to have noticed that you were gone.

After that Uvogin traveled from place to place, moving from continent to continent while living a rather nomadic lifestyle. And he dragged you along with him, as you were there to be his greatest source of entertainment.

It was an existence that you despised. And he knew you felt as such.

He seemed to revel in that fact.

Uvogin tended to keep to less populated areas when it came to his camps. He seemed to genuinely enjoy surviving in the outdoors, so it was surprising when he had broken into the house you were currently in and announced that the two of you would be staying there. You could only assume that he wanted a change of pace.

You didn't complain, as it was nice to be able to sleep in a bed again, even if you did need to share with him. And Uvogin had seemed to have gotten that for you without killing someone for it, which helped in keeping you from feeling too guilty about staying in a stranger's house.

All you hoped for was that the actual owner of the house wouldn't come back while the two of you were still there. You knew what the outcome would be if that were to happen, and you would hate yourself even more if you were forced to stand to the side while someone died for no reason.

“Was that so hard?” Uvogin asked you, the stupid smirk still on his face. He was still trying to goad you into getting upset with him.

Instead you just sighed and turned away, looking back outside. The house he had found was still more on the outskirts of society, and not far from the kitchen window sat a mountain with a hiking trail where you regularly saw people walking through.

You had enough common sense to know that you couldn't go to anyone for help. Uvogin would just kill them.

And when he began to leave you alone in the house, he had warned against attempts to take your own life, telling you that if he did come back and find you dead, he'd go out and slaughter a hundred people. Even if you managed to escape him in death, he would go out of his way to make sure that someone paid the price, and he didn't care who it was.

A hundred people was a lot and it felt far too over the top when you heard it, but you didn't question him on how dedicated he was to that plan: you could absolutely see him carrying that out. And despite how tantalizing the knife block over to your right managed to be that promised you an easy way out, you kept yourself from going that far. No matter what, you couldn't give him any excuses to kill even more people.

The only way you could see yourself escaping him was if he finally got tired of you and killed you like you'd wanted for so long now.

It was an odd thing to wish that you would be so boring that he would kill you for it.

And unfortunately it seemed to be something that was easier said than done.

“What, nothing to say to that?”

When you didn't respond, you heard him hum to himself once again. Then he approached you, his footsteps sounding against the tile of the kitchen floor, and they stopped when he stood behind you, leaving very little space between the two of you.

Even without his nen, his presence was overwhelming. In part because of just how he towered over you and effortlessly made you feel smaller than you actually were. And Uvogin was clearly using that to his full advantage at the moment as he placed both of his hands on the edge of the counter, his arms on either side of your body as he kept you stuck in that spot. Any attempt to duck under his arms would just end with him holding onto you, so you stayed put. Even though him being in such close proximity wasn't ideal, at least he was keeping his hands to himself, if just for the moment.

Uvogin hummed to himself a third time.

“You've been quieter,” he said.

“Have I?”

“Yeah,” he answered flatly, “what's that about?”

“Why does it matter?” you asked.

“Because it makes you seem like you're up to something.”

“I'm not,” you said, then you added “I guess I'm just accepting my situation.”

He snorted at that.

“Accepting it, huh? Doesn't seem that way to me.”

“Okay,” you said, shrugging.

Uvogin didn't seem to buy your indifference.

“If you were really okay with this, I don't think you would've snapped at me earlier,” he said.

That time you didn't answer.

His gaze was heavy on you, and you swore you could hear the cogs in his mind turning as he tried to figure what would be the best way to deal with you. It'd be very easy for him to just hurt you, something he'd done many times before. What was stopping him from going that far right now was a mystery to you.

“It still seems like you're up to something,” he finally said.

“I'm not,” you answered.

But you couldn't help but add something else to that.

“Why does this even matter to you? Most of the time you're only interested in fucking me.”

He sounded pleased with himself when he answered with a “yeah.”

“But I've come to like our conversations,” he added.

That makes one of us

Something like that probably would've been your response only a few months ago. When you had just a bit more fight in you and hoped that if you yelled and insulted him enough, he'd kill you.

But that sort of reaction was the thing he was looking for, and your goal was to disappoint him. Something that you were failing at in the moment, but you could still try.

He was quiet again, and this time you heard his fingers tapping against the surface of the counter.

It made things feel a bit more dangerous, for some reason.

After a few moments of that, he spoke again.

“What would their reaction be if they were still alive?” he asked.

You knew who he was talking about even without him saying it specifically: the dead members of your family, who he likely didn't even remember murdering or even why he had killed them. The whole reason this awful chapter in your life had started.

The question was a trap. You knew that much.

“If they were still alive we wouldn't be here,” you answered shortly.

“Hm. I guess.”

He leaned down closer and you felt his breath tickling your ear. Despite your attempts to keep yourself steady, you couldn't keep yourself from shuddering at the feeling.

You knew that he noticed because he chuckled at you.

“If your family knew what would happen after they died,” he asked, “if they knew that one day you'd fuck up your attempt at revenge so massively that it would end with you becoming my slave, how sad do you think they'd be?”

You didn't answer.

The knife block was still in view from the corner of your eye.

“What would they be thinking if they saw you all those times you came while my cock was buried inside of you?” he whispered, “knowing that their last surviving member was the one who was getting off with help from the guy who killed them? How disgusted would they be? If they saw just how much of a slut-”

You grabbed a knife and tried to stab him in the face.

Uvogin caught your wrist, the blade of the knife mere inches away from his eye.

And he grinned as he tightened his grip around your wrist, forcing you to open your hand and drop the knife.

He won.

Again.

He'd been goading you again and you hadn't been able to help but fall right into his trap.

It went without saying that something bad was coming your way.

“That seems a bit extreme, doesn't it?” he asked you, glancing down at the knife where it lay on the floor.

“You're a piece of shit,” you hissed.

“I think we established that a while ago, babe,” he said.

Then he let you go and pulled away from you. Your hand immediately went to the aching area around your wrist, and when you looked back up at him, he was standing at full height with his hands on his hips and an expectant look in his eye.

You knew what he wanted. You'd seen that look often enough to know what it meant.

But for some reason, you decided to play dumb.

“What?” you asked.

“What, you want me to spell it out for you?” he asked back, “on your knees.”

“No.”

It would still happen. You knew that, but you didn't want to submit completely. It went against your strategy of being as boring as possible, but after trying to take out his eye with a knife, you figured there was no point in trying to keep up with that. Not for today, at least.

Instead of slapping you around before forcing you to your knees, Uvogin hummed to himself. Then his eyes went to the window behind you, as though he caught sight of something, and he smirked to himself.

That was what made you nervous. And your nervousness turned to dread after he motioned for you to look out as well and you saw what he had spotted.

Two people along the hiking trail.

Despite the distance between you and them, you got the sense that they were a couple. Something in the way they walked together, or when one of them looked back to the other. Just two people out on a hiking date.

Two completely innocent people who didn't deserve death.

The cracking of Uvogin's knuckles had you spinning back around, and he gave you a toothy grin as he said “I guess if you don't want to…”

He then turned as though he was going to leave the kitchen.

Placing a hand on his arm, you stopped him.

Like he knew you would.

When he turned back to you with that smirk still on his face, you did as he wanted and went down to your knees. It felt uncomfortable against the tile of the kitchen, but you told yourself that it could be worse. At least you weren't out in the open with stones digging into your skin while your leg was broken.

Pulling down the hem of his shorts revealed that he was already semi-hard. You frowned as you took his length in hand and began to stroke it. It wasn't long before he was fully erect, and you moved in closer to place a kiss on the tip.

“You can do better than that.”

There was a familiar feeling of a hand at the back of your head, and then you were being pushed in closer, the tip of his cock smearing precum over your lips before you forced your mouth open so he could shove the head inside.

“That's more like it,” he said, although it seemed he was saying that more to himself.

You fell into a rhythm that you knew well by now; your tongue glided over cock while you stroked whatever didn't fit. All the while he stared down at you with a triumphant look on his face.

He'd get bored of you eventually. That was what you told yourself. A man like him would one day get tired of you, when you would no longer give him any new or interesting reactions. And getting rid of you would be as simple as crushing your head beneath his foot.

Not today. You'd messed that up royally.

But eventually….. Eventually you'd get out of this hell.

Uvogin's grip on your hair got tighter and he pushed his cock into your mouth as far as he was able when he finally came. He kept you there for a while, ignoring the way you slapped his thighs to try and tell him that you needed air.

With a content sigh he finally let you go, allowing you to fall backwards onto the tile of the kitchen while you sputtered, coughing up remnants of his release. One may have thought you would've been used to something like that by now, but it always managed to feel like too much.

You were expecting more taunts from him, more goading insults to upset you further so you felt even more helpless when he would force himself upon you once again.

Yet nothing like that ever came.

And when you looked back up at him, it seemed as though he was thinking about something.

He snapped out of it when you made eye contact, however, and he grinned at you once more.

“You wanna stay here or go to the bedroom?” he asked.

“…. Bedroom.”

No sooner had you said that, he had bent down and scooped you up, throwing you up onto his shoulder just as he had done on that first day, and he began to march you over to the bedroom.

What happened next was expected: he threw you down onto the bed, tore your clothes off and roughly fingered you for a few moments before slamming his length into you. It hurt and you hated it, but you did your best to take it.

His mouth ended up on your neck faster than you were expecting, however, sucking on your skin to place new marks over the older, fading ones.

His lips were also faster in catching yours for a kiss, and when he pulled away, he saw the look of confusion on your face.

“What, you still gonna be a bitch about that?” he asked.

“…. Do what you want,” you answered, officially giving up.

“I intend to.”

Uvogin went back to marking up your neck, and in between leaving those marks, you heard him mutter “keeping you was the best decision I ever made.”

…. That was a little worrying, but your focus went back to the way he thrust into you.

One day this would end. He'd lose interest in you and then it would be over. He was just lying to try and upset you further.

….. Right?

[theriverbeyond]

it is soooooo interesting to compare the way the Fifth and Sixth engage with the necrocav dynamic because like, on first look (and especially compared to Everyone Else) they both seen so devoid of Issues and Problems and Violence. Contrast them with, like, the Third and Eighth houses, which are two of the most explicitly exploitative but also (IMO) the most honest necrocav relationships in the entire series -- they're (literally) exploitative, (literally) consumptive, (literally) violent, built on unquestioning devotion that demands blood. Pal and Cam and Abigail and Magnus seem almost idyllic in comparison, and YET!! their relationships are no less shaped by the Empire's cult of violent and required devotion, they are just less honest about it.

Like, the micro-level dynamic between Abigail and Magnus is as sweet and simple as they come, but there's no extricating their intimate relationship from the setting of violence in which that relationship is trapped in i.e. the cavalier as meat, the cavalier as a battery and the human body as something to be consumed and exploited.

And both Houses KNOW their relationships are built on violence. Both the Fifth (and Palamedes) seem visibly uncomfortable with the power dynamic inherent to the necrocav existance! Abigail and Magnus address this by attempting to perceive their dynamic as a marriage first and necrocav second, but their rejection of the necrocav framework is almost wholly aesthetic. They exist within and directly benefit from the bloody gears of the Empire without complaint, and even Abigail's critiques of the God/Empire seem to be purely academic in nature, more curious intrigue than any kind of genuine dissatisfaction with the status quo. And Magnus is by his own admission not a duelist nor any kind of fighter, but as a cavalier he takes up the sword, follows Abigail to Canaan House, and they both die together in the laboratory.

Compare this to the Sixth house, where instead of rejecting the paradigm at all Pal and Cam seem to have taken the stance of "through the power of love we can make necrocav healthy, actually", but again this is dishonest -- no amount of romanticization of necrocav consumption allows their relationship to actually BE non-exploitative, and the lie of equality haunts them to its natural end point i.e. their ultimate surrender to the Lyctoral process via their mutual death in flame.

And their relationship is especially interesting because of how Cam has thrown herself into the position of "cavalier" with complete abandon, leaving Pal unwilling to truly extricate himself from the role he has been assigned despite his clear discomfort with that level of devotion. See: "I can't bear this, I'm eating your life", "I never had rights to [your soul]" -- but, you know, he didn't HAVE to become the Master Warden, he didn't HAVE to accept Cam's devotion, he didn't HAVE to choose her as his cavalier. He chose to bear this, and he chooses to accept her ceding rights to her soul. I mean he does explode himself to prevent her from throwing herself on a spike to force his ascension but like, that didn't really stick, did it? Pal wants to escape the societal hierarchy he was born into, Cam says "no", and he accepts that answer, again and again and again.

"There was no alternative" / "We had the choice to stop"

[wistfulnightingale]

A Mini-Meta Musing (#2)

What a brave and handsome demon, eh? Courageously facing down the forces of Hell, standing tall despite the threat to his very existance. Crowley showed such fearlessness when he was dragged off to his diabolical trial.

Except that's NOT Crowley. The demonic good looks remain (!), but we know that's actually Aziraphale. The angelic Principality. In Hell. About to be sentenced to an unknown fate.

I've been thinking a lot about Aziraphale lately. Tonight, I was thinking about the incredible Courage Aziraphale showed in his willingness to appearance-swap with Crowley. It was also incredible Love.

Agnes Nutter's prophecy only said, "Ye must choose your faces wisely, for soon enouff ye will be playing with fyre." Nothing about Holy Water or rubber ducks. Hell has a very, very long list of things it can do to punish someone, demons included, many of which might "play with fire." Aziraphale went into Hell not knowing what tortures he'd be facing. But he knew one thing for certain...

He was going to protect Crowley, at any cost.

Over the millenia, Aziraphale had seen many times where Crowley was under constant threat of punishment. I talk about how this affected Aziraphale in another post, Anything to Protect Crowley.

Now, after helping to prevent the Apocalypse and living to tell about it, they get a predestined warning that the danger is far from over. A charred shred falls out of a book of prophecy. The forces of Heaven and Hell want to destroy them. They will be playing with fire.

Our Ineffables are clever, and they've been learning a lot, fast, about how similar angels and demons actually are and what each of them are capable of. Aziraphale can possess humans, and move them from one location to another (the airbase guard). Crowley can survive hellfire, even though it discorporated Hastur. Crowley can play with fire. So they decide to do the unthinkable -- The Appearance Swap.

They take it seriously, indeed. Aziraphale and Crowley had to convince Heaven and Hell, and for a time, they had most of us convinced too. Crowley was enraged at how his angel was being treated ("Shut your mouth and die already"), but he forced himself to smile and fawn and be as polite as an angel with a death sentence could be. Aziraphale, meanwhile, is trying to be cocky, clever, sardonic, every bit the swaggering demon he can be. But look closely. He's not succeeding very well at first. He's subdued. The words sound like Crowley, making ironic jokes. But his head and neck are tense, shoulders rigid. His lips are parted as he looks around in dismay. He genuinely doesn't know what to expect.

If Heaven wants to play with fire to punish an angel, there's likely only one way to do it. But Hell has infinitely diabolical ways to punish a disobedient demon.

"What's it to be? An eternity in the deepest pit?" -- Aziraphale

Aziraphale chose to go into Hell with no certainty that he would ever come out again.

Please pause for a moment. Imagine the Love. The Commitment. The Incredible Courage that choice took.

Aziraphale was willing to risk eternal punishment for Crowley.

Thankfully for our Ineffables, Michael breezes in with the Holy Water. Aziraphale stammers in surprise, but his face is angry as he watches the Holy Water fill the tub. Heaven is only cooperating with Hell to bring about a horrible death for Crowley. His Crowley. He's furious. His posture straightens, he quips about the new jacket. By the time he's splish splashing in the clawfoot bathtub, he's got a very rebellious and smarmy Crowley vibe going on, with just a bit of British-posh angel lingering around the edges.

"I don't suppose that anywhere in the Nine Circles of Hell there's such a thing as a rubber duck?'

Aziraphale then threatens Hell. Threatens. Hell. "So... You're probably thinking, if he can do this, I wonder what else he can do. And very very soon, you're all going to get the chance to find out..." Ominous. An empty threat, a calculated risk.

He convinces them to leave Crowley ALONE.

"Aziraphale is a coward?" "Aziraphale doesn't really love Crowley?" "Aziraphale only cares about himself?"

No. Sorry. That's a mistaken interpretation. Look closer.

He's not perfect. He's actually very human. He's lived here for 60 Centuries, after all. Sometimes he's confusing, contradictory. Aren't we all sometimes...?

But Aziraphale literally allowed himself to be dragged into Hell to save the Being he loves. With no guarantee of returning.

Does Aziraphale love Crowley?

Hell yeah.

[edwinspaynes]

I don't want to get too deeply into this in a post that I would encourage people to reblog, but one main reason that Dead Boy Detectives hits so hard for me is the lack of justice.

When I was in high school, some genuinely horrific things happened to me and several other girls. Obviously, it wasn't the same since we, you know, survived. But the Bad(tm) involved a teacher who was then investigated a few years later. We all went back and worked with both the cops and the school district to try and get justice for ourselves and the other victims.

The district did nothing. They had the teacher to resign in the interests of preventing a scandal. Like St Hilarions. What happened to us didn't matter, and the school covered it up just as they covered up Charles's death.

The first time I watched DBDA, Edwin's little speech at the end of episode 1 resonated with me in an incredibly deep way. Here was a person - two people - who did not get any semblance of justice for a grave wrong. I could easily feel Edwin's deep hurt because I experience the same hurt every time I remember what happened to me. It never stops being a raw open wound that sits in your chest, and the cover-up can sometimes hurt more than even the actual event.

For the first time, in DBDA, I was seeing people who were wronged like me. More than that, though, I was seeing people seek out justice for others because they did not get it for themselves. I was seeing an alternate version of my own story play out onscreen, and both Edwin and Charles made me feel much less alone.

They still do. Those boys will always hold a really special place in my heart for a lot of reasons, but this is a major one.

And, like me and at least three of the other girls involved in the Incident at my school, Edwin is canonically queer. And his queerness is handled so well, shown positively but also just as a small part of this rich, nuanced, complex character. He feels so authentic, like someone I could have met and loved in the real world. No part of him feels like a caricature, which is a rare thing in queer media.

Seeing Netflix cancel this show and end the boys' stories in such an unjust way feels like a reopening of those old wounds. These stories matter. They have to matter.

They do matter. Charles and Edwin showed me that, because they are wonderful and special and their story is resonant and wonderful. And to watch Netflix treat this story as though it's insignificant hurts So. Fucking. Badly.

[kroosluvr]

Goro hadn't turned around when he said goodbye - that was never his thing - but if he did, he'd see that Sumire Yoshizawa had, in fact, not flinched, or even blinked. Instead, she watched him walk down the entire sidewalk into the frosty night.

notes under cut: i dont have much but just for organization HEHE

its not that obvious bc i suck at drawing hands omfg. but sumire has a bad habit of picking at her nails until they bleed so her hands are a lil fucked up all the time and goro has the same anxious habit -> wears gloves in a vain attempt to curb it. he notices it from sumire but she doesn't notice it from him bc of said gloves

smth abt akechi being so acutely aware of his imminent death... though he himself is indifferent to it, he sees sumire struggle so much, so he wants to help sumire while he still has the ability to

smth abt Names and the idea of names between these two in particular.... names hold so much value... goro who was never really known as goro in his life, sumire who tried so hard to kill off her name and herself entirely i wanted to include the repetition of "don't worry" bc i think that sort of sentiment frm goro akechi HITS DIFF........

i think him genuinely trying to be there for her is a lot of awkward tough love because he doesnt really know how to go about it but at the same time his presence is exactly what she needs to overcome her fears. and i think he tries to say "dont worry" verbally so that maybe itll get thru to her a little bit more, especially when he wont Be there anymore to Say it out loud to her so he has to kinda beat it thru her skull Now

also smth abt royal trio all being acutely aware of all of their differing levels of suicidal ideation™️ because i think all of them have some variety of it. and ofc theyre the only ones they can depend on in this fucjed up ideal reality so they link themselves together as tightly as possible to prevent any spiraling.

even though akechi somewhat detests depending on these guys, he reminds himself that they need him way more right now, and, well. he'll be gone soon, so he can give up an ounce of his pride.

[rayroseu]

that tetekore merch but its briar nation (part 2) + in honor of book 7.5 releasing on EN 😭✨

My favorite part about this chapter except for Silver's dream is this moment between Baul and Lilia... 😭✨ Their conversation at the tunnel really increased the tension of the anxiety Lilia felt,,,, I also like they didn't put the Dream Trio in the convo because this moment symbolizes an actual moment that Lilia experienced in his life (it doesnt relate to them in contrast to the previous chapters),, this is not just some moment in this dreamworld that he needs to wake up from, its a real conversation from Lilia's past that we're hearing😭✨✨

Also a really nice moment to showcase Baul's character... 😭 This scene occured before Silver's dream because its a parallel to that scene of Sebek trying to get Silver out of the darkness (to realize that Lilia genuinely loves him), just like how Baul is preventing Lilia from sacrificing himself to help Maleanor (because Malleus needs his protection and Maleanor trusted him so)😭

Zigvolts often have this reputation that "theyre absurd" but inside theyre more simplistic in values 😭 I love how their loud voice is presented well when they become the voice of reason-- 🥲✨💚

This is making think of a situation where Baul and Lilia were (present) Malleus' knights instead , I think he would dream the same dream that Malleus wanted for Lilia, where everything is the same but theres no one dying, he's still a proud soldier under General Lilia, Maleanor and Levan are alive and safe and Malleus finally hatch without being in danger and he didnt have to see Lilia getting exiled because of the Senates and didnt have to experience Maleanor's death*, just like how Sebek's dream was just Diaosmnia living normally but Lilia isn't dying 🥲✨✨✨

(*Baul was the first to announce it which makes me thunk of this hc where he sometimes regret not taking Gen.Lilia's suggestion to go back then perhaps they could've rescued Maleanor albeit its a tiny chance ��)

DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW DESPERATE LILIA SOUNDED AT THIS SCENE 💔💔💔😭😭 and his long pause to compose himself before putting on the mask??? YOU CANT UNCONVINCE ME HE WASNT CRYING UNDER THAT MASK HE TRULY DIDNT WANT TO LOSE MALEANOR ON TOP OF ALREADY LOSING LEVAN AJFJARHW justtt LILIAAAAA😭😭😭✨✨🫂🫂🫂

I JUST APPRECAITE HOW NICELY FORESHADOWED THE SCENES WERE IN LILIAS DREAM like i kinda complain about the concepts being presneted KINDAAA but the sequence of Diasomnia dreams were nicely transitioned and probably tells how closely knit the Diasomnia characters are, even including the side charas like Maleanor and Baul😭✨✨

[missglaskin]

i feel like Otto would use Daemon and Rhaenyra’s secret wedding, mere days after their partners funerals, as the sole ammunition to have Rhaenyra disinherited and second-born!Reader named the Princess of Dragonstone after Otto reminds Viserys the sole reason Rhaenyra was chosen was to prevent Daemon from having the throne. and Alicent will begin planting the seeds of a doubt in Viserys mind that some may not want a the Reader on a throne because she’s adopted but if she married Aegon, the firstborn son, she wouldn’t be contested. that Aegon was better fitted as a consort anyways.

and the Velaryons have mixed feelings about the whole ordeal because Corlys really wanted his blood on the throne but Rhaenys believes the reader will be a much better ruler.

she’s kind of like the “peoples princess” if that makes sense. from a young age she began serving as the king’s cupbearer, allowing her the opportunity to watch the council work, and even there were times when she spoke up. advocating on behalf of the servants for better living conditions or pushing for repairs on the sewage system underneath the city.

not even Rhaenyra could deny that the reader would make a good queen but there’s some resentment directed to her father, angry he still won’t accept that she loves Daemon and there confusion as she watches Daemon wrap a beautiful necklace around the reader’s neck

I apologize for the long haitus, I wanted to return with something so here it is.

The plot just thickens

Before Daemon and Rhaenyra secret wedding, Alicent was already sowing seeds of doubt in Viserys's mind (the reader doesn't have any bastards, last she checked but even so it doesn’t count).And it would be a great irony if Viserys sent Otto away thinking he wanted Aegon to be king (which might be partially true), when in reality it’s the reader he desired to be in the throne. With Lyonel's death, and Rhaenyra's decision to move to Dragonstone with Laenor despite wanting to stay with her sister. Otto and Alicent are only given a better advantage to continue casting doubt on Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra and Daemon's marriage seals the deal, and soon after, they are summoned by a raven from King's Landing.

While the Velaryons may have mixed feelings, they are all in support of the reader in being the chosen heir. It’s Rhaenys who encourages Corlys’ decision to swear his fealty to her. It doesn’t help that Rhaenys believes Rhaenyra and Daemon are the cause for her son’s death and them marrying right after Laena’s death only adds salt to the wound. Rhaenys genuinely believes the reader will be a much better ruler. 

When the reader is named heir, there is one final step for both Alicent and Otto to ensure her position (or as they like to say). So it comes as little surprise when the reader is revealed to be wed to Aegon. She already has gained a great deal of knowledge regarding politics throughout the years she was compelled to relocate to accommodate the entire family, from Driftmark to King's Landing to Dragonstone. Alicent and Otto took a step further in letting the reader act as the king's cupbearer, and Viserys naturally agreed. Unlike Rhaenyra who felt undermined in the council, the reader isn't cut off when advocating for herself, rather, she's backed by the green council. 

As you mentioned, she has earned the title of the "people's princess” through her charity, her advocacy for improved living conditions for the castle's servants as well insistence on repairing the sewage systems and for better roads. Tales abound in the city about the princess who visits orphanages, escorted, of course, by the finest knights, among them Ser Criston Cole. With all of that, simply wedding the reader to Aegon, already wins him favor at king's landing, besides, it's evident to the court that it's the reader who holds all the power.

It's an internal struggle for Rhaenyra; she feels waves of resentment and anger, sometimes aimed at her father and other times at the reader. But, she can never take the reader's actions personally, not after she offers Rhaenyra dragonstone or when she vows to make her the hand when she ascends the iron throne. So how can she ever be genuinely upset at her beloved sister whom she also thinks would make a wonderful queen?

And for Daemon, whom she observes draping a beautiful necklace—akin to the one he gave her years ago—around her sister's neck. She observes as her ever naive sister turns to face him, beaming as thanks him for the gift.

And for Daemon who she watches wrapping a beautiful necklace around her sister’s neck, similar to the one he gifted her a long time ago. She watches as her sister turns to him, beaming and thanking him for the gift, her sister so naive and innocent. But it won’t be long before Viserys catches wind of it, and if not him, Otto and Alicent will and this is the last thing they ever wish to happen. For they know, no matter how many times they Banish Daemon, he will always find his way to return to your side.

[magicspeedwagon7]

a lot of analysis of "Saltburn" that i see on the internet focus on the text/subtext and maybe the symbolism but i'd like to focus on how messages can be conveyed by the visual elements of the film.

after your first viewing of the film, you've probably asked yourself a lot of questions, including: did Ollie genuinely like Felix (and all his plans derailed dramatically) ? or was Felix a mean to an end from the beginning (and Ollie's mistaken his obsession with Felix, more precisely what he represents (i.e. coolness, wealth, injustice etc) for genuine affection) ?

first and foremost, let's talk about the ratio used all throughout the film which is 1.33:1. so not a perfect square - that would be 1:1 - but here's a screenshot of my computer while i was playing the film on my media player so you can see the biiiig black stripes to the left and right.

such a square-ish ratio - especially compared to larger ratios, the hollywood standard being 1.85:1 - allows paying attention to the characters instead of the background in wide shots or floor shots and offers 'intimate' close-ups because little to no background is to be see as you get closer to the characters. the main drawback and that we cannot capture imposing backgrounds with it. it just doesn't fit.

the scene where Felix shows Ollie around the house illustrates perfectly the paradoxes of the film. Saltburn is central to the film and yet just a background.

the camera never moves away from Felix, not even when Ollie looks left and right. to add insult to injury, the narrow frame prevents us from looking at anything else even if we wanted to.

"some fucking hideous Rubens" said Felix. Rubens that...we will never see. same for the maze Felix will die in: we'll see it later.

of course, the previous scene depicted Ollie as insignificant compared to the castle but i think this scene is here to establish Duncan as the gatekeeper of the castle in a very literal sense. as if the gates of the castle had taken on a human form in the form of Duncan.

but the moment Felix comes in, all eyes on him.

for me, the message is clear: before the death of Felix, we don't care about the castle . there's not even a single room of that castle that you could describe extensively. do you know what Ollie's and Felix's rooms look like? and the dressing room? etc. Ollie was genuinely obsessed with Felix and he had to improvise when he died that aspect of him is not part of any scheme. in contrary i think the moments when Ollie's sexually excited by Felix (cf bathtub scene, grave scene) are Ollie's rare moments of vulnerability when his real personality slips through. he cold-bloodedly killed all the members of the Catton family except Felix he genuinely cried for.

that's why i do not subscribe to the view that every single thing Ollie does is part of a scheme from the get-go. sometimes, Ollie improvises and his obsession for Felix is not a mean to an end.

[natalievoncatte]

The storm was blinding. A white torrent fell from the sky in a raging tempest, the likes of which Lena had not seen since she left Metropolis for National City. This was no mere blizzard, but a genuine thundersnow- lighting flashed eerily in the strange pink-white night as thunder buffeted the windows. The Tower’s balcony door was sealed shut against the driving storm.

They were all out there and Lena was here. There was no supervillain this time, at least, not directly- the freak blizzards rolling through Southern California and wreaking havoc on the unprepared people and infrastructure were caused by some asshole calling himself the Weather Wizard, screwing around with the Flash three states away. Lena had seen him on TV; he was a few clicks above a Condiment King-tier villain. One of the joke guys that some cape would take care of on their way to a real fight.

Or he had been, until he got his hands on some tech he wasn’t supposed to have and started punching above his weight class. Lena didn’t care about that. She was thinking about only one thing right now: Kara.

They were all out there. Kara and the others. The city was a mess; people needed heated shelters, the power was out across two thirds of the city, and Kara had already prevent hundreds of deaths on a bridge that was about to collapse from the unexpected weight of snow and the intense cold. The blizzard had come on so fast that the rush our traffic was almost literally frozen right in place.

The city needed its heroes and Lena… Lena was stuck in the Tower. Literally; there was no way to get her home in this mess and she wasn’t going to leave, and she’d sworn off the idea of putting on silly clothes and picking a made up name to go cast spells and deploy gadgets with the others.

She had a feeling… more of a quiet understanding, really, that Kara was against that, even if she never quite said it.

Finally, she saw a shape in the whirling snow as a caped figure walked up to the balcony doors. As Kara stepped inside, a blast of arctic air followed her, chilling Lena to the bone.

Kara was *shivering*.

“Kara?” said Lena. “What’s wrong? I’ve never seen you get cold before.”

“J-just exerting myself,” said Kara. “Alex wants me in the sunbed for a few minutes to charge back up.”

She clearly needed it. Her cape was stiff and crusted with frost and there was snow everywhere, clinging to her hair and brows. She paused for a moment, as she descended the stairs, and looked at Lena. Really looked at her- despite the chill and the frost clinging to her, her eyes were warm, the warm blue of the sky on a summer day.

“Kara?”

“Nothing, sorry,” she said.

Lena watched her pass, feeling a bit off kilter, then rushed to the kitchen. She whipped up some of Kara’s favorite hot chocolate and didn’t spare the whipped cream or a cherry on top, and piled up some donuts and cinnamon rolls beside.

Kara looked haggard, groaning as she laid down under the lamps. Her face lit up brighter than the false suns when she saw the tray Lena carried.

“Oh Rao, I could kiss you for that.”

Lena almost missed a step, smoothly recovering from her stumble instead of dumping it all on Supergirl’s crest. Kara looked at her intently, an unreadable but wide-eyed look on her face.

“I know you’re hungry. Come on, eat.”

“Can’t stay long,” Kara said, between eating entire donuts in two bites, “they need me.”

“I know,” said Lena. “They always do.”

Kara sat quietly for a while, eating, and it made Lena feel more at ease to see some color coming back into her cheeks, even if the snowmelt wetted her hair. Absently, Lena brushed a damp lock out of Kara’s eyes.

“Are you going back out?”

Kara nodded. “I have to. They need me in five places at once. The city is completely unprepared for something like this.”

“I wish I could help.”

“You are helping.”

Lena sighed. “I could do more, you know. I’m starting to master the magic, and now that the Foundation is going strong, I can whip up tech pretty fast.”

Kara sighed and sat up. “I know, but I need you here. I can’t be distracted by worrying about your safety all the time.”

“You wouldn’t say that to Alex. Or J’onn. Or Nia.”

Kara let out an exasperated sound, but her voice was very soft. “It’s different when it’s you.”

Lena tried to swallow but her throat clenched, and she fought down the sensation of her heart doing a backflip. Kara rose from the bed and stood to her full height, and Lena was once again taken aback by how dashing and heroic she looked in her suit, like a modern day knight. It made her feel strangely small in a way that she didn’t dislike.

Kara carefully took Lena’s hands in her own, tenderly rubbing the pads of her thumbs over Lena’s knuckles, sending chilling shocks up her arms.

“Stay here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

Kara nodded and departed, rushing out of the Tower and back into the storm.

She was gone for hours again. Everyone checked in with Lena periodically, and eventually, Lena found a couch to lay on and curled up under a cardigan as a blanket. J’onn made this place much more comfy than the DEO, she gave him that.

Kara breezed back in sometime after dawn, trudging back inside, ice-caked and frost-encrusted, pale and worn down. She headed right for the kitchen.

Lena padded after her in her stocking feet.

Kara sighed. “Alex, Nia, and Brainy at helping with the shelters. J’onn is out there… there’s roof collapses and accordion wrecks and fires and people trapped. It’s going to be days of this, cleaning it up. How does a blizzard start fires.”

Planting a hand on the fridge, Kara leaned on it and sighed.

“How much time do you have?”

“Now that the sun is up, I don’t need the bed. I can just pop up above the cloud cover if I need it. I just wanted to get warm for a minute.”

“Sit,” said Lena.

Kara sat. Lena made more hot chocolate. The donuts had run out, so Lena tore open more of the little powdered cocoa packets and kept on making more until Kara waved her off.

“Are you getting warmed up?” said Lena.

The way Kara looked at her spoke volumes, but Lena couldn’t read them.

“Yes. I have to go.”

“Okay, but after this is over, you owe me some alone time.”

Kara smiled. “It’s a date.”

They both froze. It was a common phrase, an ordinary idiom, but it felt like something had just… unveiled itself, like fog rolling back from an unknown, verdant country. Kara was blushing scarlet.

“I’ll be back.”

“Wait,” said Lena.

She had to do this before she lost the nerve. She rushed around the kitchen island and rushed to Kara’s side, pressing a hand on her shoulder, and rose up on her tippy toes to press a kiss to Kara’s cheek- or rather, the side of her mouth, just this side of a real kiss. Kara went stock still and Lena thought for a moment that she’d done something terrible, misread the moment, but she could roll it back, play it off as a friendly gesture.

A hand, soft as silk and warm as honey, cupped Lena’s cheek and tilted her chin up, so her gaze met the boundless depths of Kara’s eyes, so full of welling emotion that Lena could drown in them.

“Wait for me.”

“I will.”

Then she was gone, giving herself back to the tempest outside.

Lena waited for her. It was hours again. The snow finally slowed, the sky beginning to lighten as the artificial snow weather patterns shifted back to normal and nature reasserted itself. The city would be in for a shock- it was going to be in the seventies by the next day.

Kara looked utterly worn out when she came back, finally, trudging down from the balcony with her shoulders slumped and her hair hanging in ragged wet clumps from her head as her cape drooped with moisture.

“You waited,” she said.

“I did. Let’s get you dry, huh?”

Lena worked a towel over Kara’s head, more than a little jealous as the effortless way her golden hair formed those beautiful lose curls as the water was wrung out of them, giving her a salon perfect finish with absolutely no work.

One that was done, Kara merely had to remove her suit to shed the rest of the water in a puddle at her feet, leaving her standing there in sweats and a cute fluffy kitten shirt that she had first ironically gifted to Lena and then stolen back, but only after Lena had worn it a few times.

“I’m so tired,” said Kara.

“I know, darling,” said Lena. “Plenty of places to get some rest here. J’onn made his superhero hideout cosy.”

“I don’t want to rest,” said Kara.

Lena’s heart began to pound. She knew deep down that she wanted this, but it seemed so distant and remote that she’d nearly given up even fantasizing about it. Now that Kara had revealed her identity, she no longer changed her posture or body language around Lena and stood tall, shoulders reared back and her lithe, impressive physique on full display even in cheesy loungewear.

Kara took the first step, drawing up into Lena’s space and crossing an invisible boundary, once first laid out over a brunch that was both tense and pleasant, and had been pushed and stretched and nearly broken so many times it could hardly be said to exist at all, and yet the moment she did, it was clear what was happening.

Kara was not putting her arms around Lena’s waist in a platonic gesture. The embrace she pulled her into was not what friends are for. The natural way they slotted together and Kara brushed her lips against Lena’s to ask permission was in no way friendly.

Lena rose a little on the balls of her feet and turned whatever this was into a real kiss, and Kara kissed her back. Kara’s hands roamed down over Lena’s backside before she realized what she was doing and the shot back up to a chaste spot on Lena’s back, prompting her to giggle into Kara’s mouth.

“Miss Danvers,” said Lena, “did you just grab my ass?”

“I… umm…”

Lena grinned. “Yes. Just say yes.”

“I actually wanted to ask you out on a real date first.”

Lena snorted. “Kara, we’ve been on a date for five years. Now, pick me up and carry me somewhere private already.”

Grinning, Kara picked her right up off her feet.

[shoutosbaeby]

Gojo x reader because I miss him

- “Love is the most twisted curse of all.”

“Where have you been, Satoru?” You huffed when your boyfriend finally came home after leaving for work unannounced.

“Aww, were you worried about me?” He chirped.

You loved him, but god this was man the most annoying person on earth.

“Seriously?! You can’t just leave like that.” You crossed your arms and glared at him as he walked into the apartment, putting his shoes aside and stripping off his jacket.

“I just went to take care of a curse. No big deal.” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it a bit before walking up to you with an insufferable grin. “It’s so cute that you were worried about me.”

“Please don’t test me right now.”

Just as you thought he was going to tease you, Satoru pressed a soft kiss to your forehead before walking into your shared bedroom without another word.

That might have just been the weirdest thing. Something was wrong.

“Hey!” You called after him, following him into the bedroom. “Satoru?!”

“Yes?” He replied cheerfully. But his voice was strained, he sounded tired.

“Come on. Talk to me.” You sat on the edge of the bed, eyes softening.

Satoru took off his blindfold and rubbed his eyes, revealing the orbs of shallow ocean water and sunlight. He wasn’t the type of man to talk about his emotions so easily. His entire life, he had to make sure he wasn’t weak. It was difficult for someone like that to be vulnerable.

The only person other than you who he had dropped his guard around had faded away. After Geto Suguru’s death, Satoru had never been the same again.

“Sit.” You patted to the space next to you and he waited a few moments before sighing and burying his face into your neck. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“…No.”

“Okay.” You said softly and kissed his hair. “I’m here. Don’t worry.”

Gojo Satoru was the strongest. The best. The world saw him with fear and admiration. He was like a god. But right now, buried in your arms, he was just a man. A human. Someone with feelings and troubles just like any other person. You ran your fingers through his hair soothingly, holding him tightly to your chest.

To you, he was not a god. He was just Satoru.

“You know I love you, right?” You murmured into his hair. “I’ll always be here when you need me.”

You felt his grip tighten on you, hugging you closer to him and sighing into the crook of your neck.

“I love you too. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

Gojo Satoru, the strongest, knew he would be nothing without the love of his life by his side. What would he be without you? He didn’t even want to imagine.

“Do you want to make noodles and watch mean girls?” You asked softly and he raised his head with a grin.

“I’m always down for that.”

“And then after you talk through the entire movie, you can tell me what happened.”

“Okay.” He exhaled. “But only if you let me talk through the entire movie.”

“When do I not?”

“I dunno, like all the time?! You’re always preventing me from really getting to my strongest point, you know? Horrible partner, seriously.”

You scoffed as he pinched your cheek, a soft flush dusting your face. He smiled, a genuine smile. At the sight of his eyes crinkling and the dimple on his cheek making an appearance, youd heart swelled.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” He leaned in and kissed you softly.

<3

I’m sorry if this was short 😭😭 I wrote this to try and get rid of my writer’s block, and also because I miss my glorious blue eyed king. I hope you enjoyed it!!

[cologona]

The thing about Bruce making Dick Robin is that it can be read as empathy. Bruce and Dick both lost their family in the same way, and so Bruce tries to help Dick by giving him what he wanted as a young orphan. Justice, closure, power, meaning. Something to make the world right again, some way to move forward, someone who understands.

But that same reading is not as easy to apply to Jason

If I were to read Bruce in a particularly unflattering light, I'd say Bruce fundamentally saw Jason as more expendable than Dick. He was so afraid of losing Dick that he totally sabotaged that relationship, but he's fine with this much younger kid playing the same dangerous role? Jason is a tough street kid sure sure, but is he tougher than 18 year old Dick motherfucking Grayson??? No.

If I were to read Bruce in a more sympathetic light, I'd say that in Bruce's mind orphan = craving-for-justice-that-can-only-be-satiated-with-vigilantism, and since he found out Jason's father was dead he was trying to give Jason the same guidance and empowerment Dick got. He genuinely thought it would work. He did this at the same time that he was actively hiding the death of Jason's father, because this intense self-projection is happening at the subconscious level. He simultaneously wants to comfort the orphan and prevent the orphan from becoming "real" by hiding the truth. It is not logical but it is well-meaning.

(This self-projection is also the source of Bruce's bizarre assertion that Jason has anger issues- he isn't a classist asshole he's just sensitive! 👉👈)

Either way, there is clearly an instability to the concept of Jason's Robin. Batman and Robin requires suspending one's disbelief about child soldiers to degree higher than other superheroes, but there's not quite enough to support that suspension here.

Because how exactly is being Robin supposed to help Jason? What about Jason's supposed anger issues lend themselves to being helped by vigilantism? Jason could've just been Bruce Wayne's son, so why is he also Robin?

...Would Jason have just been Bruce Wayne's son?

I.. don't think so. I don't think Bruce adopted him just to offer a good home- not really. Bruce certainly wanted Jason to have a good home, but that's what sending him to Ma Gunn's school was supposed to be. Ma Gunn didn't work out sure, but it's not like she was the only option. Bruce could've just done more research the second time around. If Jason had rejected becoming Robin, would Bruce have still adopted him? If Batman had not intended for Jason to become involved with hero work, could you see him still sending Jason off to Wayne Manor to be adopted?

Bruce didn't just want a son, or even just a Robin. He wanted something specific- he wanted the feeling of having Dick back. Bruce praises Jason for how similar he is to Dick in his head, and based on Alfred's warning and Jason's own behavior, he apparently compared Jason to Dick quite a bit during training. When Dick himself eventually comes to confront Bruce about why there's another Robin, he pretty much lays it bare: Jason is Robin because he missed Dick. That's the core of it.

Now on one hand this is flattering for Jason! It means he was chosen for the Robin mantle because he demonstrated the good qualities similar to the original. In another universe maybe Jason Todd's Robin isn't the angry one or the dead one, maybe he got to develop and he could've become the Robin that came from sharing laughter and life rather than grief. A Cinderella? A little lotus boy.

On the other hand that's not the universe we live in and this reason has absolutely fuck-all to do with Jason.

As for Tim, parentification is straight up the basis of his Robin. It’s impossible to read his “Batman needs Robin” spiel without reading it as a meta statement because in-universe it’s just an extremely frgiggi depressing scenario.

I think Dick might be the only person for whom Bruce's intense self-projection kinda worked out. Not that their relationship was good, but the core of it was okay? Cassandra comes close but Bruce sorta… lives out his dreams of being all-Batman all-the-time through her. He pushed his bad impulses onto her and she didn’t understand the value of not being Batman so it came off really creepy. He was encouraging her to rely him. Like a tool.

[dracomalfoy7]

Her.

Draco Malfoy x Slytherin!Reader 

Summary: One shot inspired by the Percy Jackson scene where Percy sees Annabeth for the first time.

Word Count: 1.2k+

Warnings: None

A/N: I saw a TikTok of this scene and really wanted to write about it!! Lowkey though about turning this into a series?

Draco’s third year at Hogwarts, he was almost sure that he’d either end up marrying Pansy Parkinson or, worst-case scenario, the god-awful Astoria Greengrass. It was as if his life had been plotted out like some cursed prophecy, but that all changed during the second week of school.

Draco and Theodore Nott sat in Potions, their heads resting heavily in their hands as Professor Snape droned on about the intricacies of the Draught of Living Death. Another day, another boring lecture—Potions had lost its luster after two years of Snape's monotone voice.

That was until the classroom door creaked open.

At first, Draco didn’t bother turning his head, thinking it was just another late student. Snape had a way of terrifying most people into punctuality, but even he couldn't prevent the occasional tardy Slytherin or Gryffindor from sneaking in.

But then, an arm invaded Draco’s field of view, jabbing lightly at his shoulder.

“Draco. Dracooo. Hellooo, Earth to Dracoo,” Theo muttered beside him, his voice laced with curiosity.

Draco groaned. “What. do. you. want,” he responded irritably.

“Look at that girl,” Theo urged, his eyes gleaming with something Draco hadn't seen in him before—genuine fascination.

Rolling his eyes, Draco lifted his gaze from the pages of his Potions textbook, following Theo’s line of sight.

“Hello, Professor... Snape, is it?” The girl's voice was soft yet assertive, a sharp contrast to the silken drawl of Pansy or the shrillness of Daphne Greengrass.

Snape turned around slowly, his dark eyes narrowing, clearly not accustomed to being questioned.

“Yes?” he responded, a hint of annoyance evident.

“I believe this is my class,” the girl said, unbothered by Snape’s intimidating stare.

“Yes?” Snape responded again, clearly uncertain where this was going.

“Well, where do I sit then?”

There was a brief pause, and then Snape, with a flick of his wrist, gestured towards the only available seat near Pansy.

“How about next to Miss Parkinson?”

“Thank you, Professor.”

It wasn’t until the girl turned to walk toward her seat that Draco truly noticed her. She wore the standard Slytherin robes, the green and silver crest shimmering slightly in the dim light of the dungeon, but there was something about the way she carried herself that made her stand out from every other student. Her dark hair flowed down her back, and her eyes—Merlin, her eyes—seemed to pierce through the dimness of the room as if they could see right through you.

Draco felt his heart skip, and beside him, he could sense Theo had gone equally quiet, entranced by the same sight. His gaze followed her as she walked toward the empty seat near Pansy, each step deliberate, almost regal.

Blaise Zabini, sitting next to them, noticed the sudden change in both of their expressions and snickered. He snapped his fingers in front of their faces, breaking the trance.

“What are you two looking at?” Blaise asked with a knowing smirk.

Draco blinked, shaking himself out of his daze. “What’s her name?” he asked, his voice unusually eager, the words spilling out before he could stop them.

Blaise laughed, leaning back in his seat. “Ha! She’ll squash you like a bug, Malfoy. Don’t even think about it.”

“Her name,” Draco demanded, his impatience growing. He didn’t like not knowing, especially when it came to someone who had captured his attention so completely.

Blaise rolled his eyes. “Y/N Gaunt. Heir of the great Salazar Slytherin himself.”

Draco and Theo exchanged wide-eyed looks, both equally startled and intrigued. The Gaunt family had long been considered Slytherin royalty—practically legends in their own right. To have an heir of Salazar Slytherin himself sitting in Potions with them?

Draco couldn't help but stare, his eyes still following Y/N as she slid gracefully into the chair next to Pansy. Pansy, who was often insufferably possessive of Draco’s attention, seemed unusually quiet, clearly feeling the weight of Y/N’s presence as much as he did.

The moment Y/N settled in her seat, as if sensing the heavy gaze on her, she turned her head ever so slightly, meeting Draco’s stare head-on.

For a moment, the world outside that dungeon classroom seemed to disappear. There was no Professor Snape, no chatter of students, no bubbling cauldrons—just those piercing eyes staring straight into Draco’s own dark grey ones.

He quickly realized he had no idea what to do. Draco Malfoy, heir to one of the most powerful wizarding families, had never been at a loss for words when it came to anyone—yet here he was, speechless under the gaze of Y/N Gaunt.

Her lips quirked into the faintest hint of a smile—amused, perhaps, by his blatant staring—and then she turned back to face the front of the class, leaving Draco in a strange, fluttering mix of awe and frustration.

Theo leaned over, whispering excitedly. “Mate, did you see that? She's—she's unreal. I mean, Salazar Slytherin’s heir? What does that even mean for someone like her?”

Draco didn’t respond immediately. His mind was still spinning, trying to process how he had gone from nearly falling asleep in Potions to being completely captivated by a single person.

“Come on, Malfoy, stop staring. You’re gonna look like an idiot,” Blaise muttered under his breath, shaking his head.

But Draco couldn’t help it. There was something about her—something that made him feel like his entire world had shifted in that brief moment.

Class went on, but Draco barely registered a word Snape said. His attention drifted back to Y/N again and again, watching the way she flicked her wand with effortless precision during the practical portion of the lesson, the way her lips moved as she quietly muttered incantations under her breath, the way her fingers delicately handled the ingredients, almost as if she were weaving a spell with her hands alone.

He had never seen anyone like her before, and it unnerved him. He was Draco Malfoy. He was supposed to be the one people stared at, the one people were intrigued by, the one who commanded the room. But now... he felt like he had been thrown off-balance, no longer in control.

As the class came to an end and students began packing up their bags, Draco stood slowly, his gaze still fixed on Y/N. He was vaguely aware of Theo and Blaise talking beside him, but their words were drowned out by the rush of thoughts running through his head.

Y/N stood, too, gathering her things with the same quiet confidence that had enraptured him. She glanced in his direction one last time before sweeping out of the room, her robes billowing slightly behind her as she disappeared into the corridor.

Draco stared after her, the same thought echoing in his mind.

He needed to know more about Y/N Gaunt.

“Draco,” Theo nudged him, breaking him out of his reverie. “You alright, mate?”

“Yeah,” Draco muttered, though he knew full well he wasn’t. Something had changed—he didn’t know what exactly, but he knew that Y/N Gaunt was at the center of it.

As they walked out of the classroom together, Draco found himself glancing down the hallway where Y/N had disappeared. He didn’t know how, but he was determined to find out more about her. There was something about her—something that tugged at his very core—and he couldn’t shake the feeling that his life had just taken a turn he hadn’t anticipated.

For the first time in a long time, Draco Malfoy didn’t feel certain about his future.

And that both terrified and thrilled him.

Request are open!

[tritoch]

I wish people were willing to have a slightly broader or more expansive understanding of FFXIV's women because I think there's so much there in terms of easily-unearthed subtext that no one really thinks about! And I don't mean this in a "people need to re-evaluate their response to the women of Stormblood" way (though I do think that's largely true), I mean I think fandom's understanding even of the women it mostly likes is pretty weak. And you can say that's because the women are underwritten, and I won't argue that they couldn't use more attention from the writing, but that doesn't prevent you from analyzing them the way you can any character in fiction.

Like everyone's always like, oh, Y'shtola and Krile are like your snarky wine aunts, haha. But...Sharlayan is a pretty ossified and patriarchal society from what we see of it in Endwalker and places like the AST quests. Can we open ourselves to the possibility that it means something that almost every young Sharlayan woman we meet, almost all young women in academia, tends to be a little sharp and quick on the retort? The arch and snarky ways in which those two carry themselves reflect in some sense the facts that Krile is almost literally a nepo baby woman in STEM who is barely older than her students, while Y'shtola learned her behaviors from her much older female mentor, a woman who hated Sharlayan academic culture so much she literally abandoned it to go live in a cave.

Or like, Alisaie! Fan jokes and meta frequently buy into her tendency to characterize the dynamic between her and Alphinaud as a jock/nerd, street savvy extrovert vs book smart introvert thing. Except, tragically, Alphinaud's highest stat is 100% Charisma and he absolutely pulled in his student days. All his greatest achievements are diplomatic, and he very easily develops strong friendships with people in every culture you learn about. Alisaie is the determined, sensitive genius who revolutionizes Eorzea by proving the tempered can be healed. She's just permanently carrying a chip on her shoulder that while she and her brother are remembered as the youngest students in Studium history, actually he got in six months before her, a fact pretty much no one else ever brings up once. She's constantly fuming over the fact that he was marginally better than her in certain specific ways in high school, and looking to differentiate them in ways that actually fail to credit her own obvious strengths and accomplishments. I think that's so fun! It's so juicy, and it's equally good for comedy or serious character studies.

Venat is a genuinely benevolent hero who has no compunction sacrificing lives for the greater good. Minfilia is kind and compassionate and clearly on some level actually buys into the narrative of her own unique moral authority. Ysayle is a revolutionary firebrand with almost no concern for the common man, whose death reflects her Javert-like inability to reconcile her own romantic belief in justice with the tragic ways her blinkered worldview (born largely of trauma) let her be easily co-opted by a violent system. But even people who like these characters rarely move past surface-level reads (people who think Venat is just an all-loving mommy figure make me want to fucking die). The fandom is allergic to drawing connections the game doesn't draw, and fails to recognize that FFXIV is a game where characters voice understandings of themselves and others that are wrong about as often as they're right.

You can already see the ways that women like Wuk Lamat and Cahciua and Sphene are getting flattened or losing their shading in fan reception and it's boring. Like I'm not even saying this because you should take female characters more seriously or something (though you should), I'm literally just bored to tears sometimes and if you guys turn Wuk Lamat into another Hot Dumb Jock Lady, I will combust.