#he is literally the only one i can think of who has explicitly had a thing with a man and not explicitly had a rhing with a woman.

[lastflowerofyourhouse]

i think it's funny that tamsyn muir can concieve of and convincingly write so many different types of people. a downtrodden jock with self-esteem issues. a twitchy little nerd with layer upon layer of self-hatred and guilt. a slimy, power-hungry princess desperately trying to escape the shadow of her sister. a middle-aged biologist who accidentally became God. the soul of a murdered planet with amnesia. so many types of people, with so many neuroses and hangups and hopes and tragedies informing characterization so layered and complex it can take hours to unpick. to say nothing of the way she writes the relationships between those characters. and through all of that. through all of the flashbacks and hints and unreliable narrators and infinitely suggestive lines of dialogue. she has yet to create a single one of them who is not attracted to women.

think about it. some of them are bisexual. but that's as far as it goes in the other direction. some of them are unconfirmed. but there is not a single character whose sexuality or romantic history is explored in any detail, who is not attracted to women. i find that extremely funny.

[elodieunderglass]

On the topic of the monarchist animals I'm just really curious. What makes the winnie pooh real animals bourgeois? It's not like they own much more than the others. Do they just have bourgeois energy?

(In reference to my addition on this post; https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/748488762087047168/hold-on-lets-do-this-properly-paddington)

In the post I state that none of the stuffed/toy animals in the Winnie the Pooh series are monarchists, but that the real animals are bourgeoisie. Obviously this is tongue in cheek, but it’s still politically interesting to me because nobody ever reads Winnie the Pooh as an actual book. They just draw depressed Disney Eeyore and think they’ve done something.

Owl and Rabbit are real wild animals that live in the Hundred Acre Wood. The other characters in the story are Christopher Robin’s stuffed animals.

The “real” animals (reasonably) consider themselves to be separate from the stuffed ones, but where it becomes unreasonable is how they assume superiority and how they use this to exert authority.

(A charming response about how the stuffed animals view this: Piglet points out that Rabbit is both clever and Has Brain, and Pooh replies that this is why Rabbit “doesn’t understand anything.”)

Owl is characterised by being a bit of a fraud. The stuffed animals respect him for his presumed education and literacy, but even a preschooler understands that Owl can’t actually read. he actively deceives the other characters in order to maintain a higher social status over them. (Actually, Rabbit’s the most literate character in the Wood.) Owl gains relatively little advantage from this status, apart from his belief that he is superior and the pleasure in everyone deferring to him. A notable theme throughout the written series involves characters approaching Owl for advice, based on his self-made reputation of being wise and thoughtful, and him giving explicitly bad advice, rather than admit that he has no idea how to help. Also, they forcibly give him someone else’s house, in such a way that the actual possessor of the house (Piglet) feels he can’t speak up. Pooh immediately offers to Piglet that he move in with him, which even as a kid felt like an incredibly unsatisfactory solution to having the shyest character’s actual house given away to the character who casually lies about everything just to feel superior.

Rabbit is a grown-ass adult real wild animal. He is the social leader of a massively large family and an extended group of hangers-on (he has fifteen or seventeen close relatives, and the extended Friends-and-Relations are a sort of army); he is the only actually literate person in the narrative, so it is understandable that he feels this (although he also believes Owl can read.) literacy and Brain are considered very important in the Wood.

Rabbit believes in his own superiority and believes himself to serve as a sort of cadet to Christopher Robin. In the series Christopher Robin is the ultimate judge, and a kindly ruler; Rabbit positions himself constantly at Christopher Robin’s right hand and wants to be his enforcer. Christopher Robin, who is five and a fairly distracted God, does not really enforce anything. This does not stop Rabbit from trying to organise the entire Wood. It’s frequently mentioned that Rabbit wants to feel important, he wants to be the Boss. A beautiful, beautiful commentary on his character is when he wakes up feeling “important, as if everything depending on him… it was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said “Yes Rabbit” and “No Rabbit” and waited until he had told them.” Fantastic!

However, we can see where this leads him. In the first book Rabbit is shown being hostile and actively anti-foreign in his approach to other people. When kanga and roo arrive in the forest - sanctioned by Christopher Robin who has received new toys - Rabbit instantly says they have to get rid of them. Like there is NO friendship in Rabbit’s heart here. There is no “god has placed a new friend in the wood so we have to get on with it.”

Rabbit’s anti-immigration stances are funny, and in-character, and shown by the narrative to be wrong and unfair. But they’re pretty unleashed.

His plan is to kidnap the baby and hold it hostage until the mother agrees to “leave the forest forever and never return.”

This is not a normal response to a new character. It is in fact fucking unhinged. Coming from the most normal-adult real animal in the story, it comes out of nowhere. “We have to eliminate them instantly. Take the baby hostage, blackmail the parent and deport them” Rabbit these are war crimes.

Anyway it’s all very heartwarming as Rabbit learns that he likes Baby Roo. (Their relationship grows warmer as Baby Roo says “yes rabbit” and “no rabbit” better than anyone else.) We never really learn why Rabbit is so violently anti-immigration that he instantly jumps to doing crimes, but it’s possible that he doesn’t like the threat to the status quo. Baby Roo, by deferring politely, thus turns out to be a valuable social inferior for Rabbit’s power base.

But in the next book we also get another new character introduction: Tigger. rabbit does not like tigger. In fact, he stops visiting Roo because Tigger lives with them. Rabbit, frustrated by Tigger’s bounciness, also decides to deliberately trick and bully Tigger in order to make him “small and sorry.” The fact that this comically backfires on Rabbit is part of the Pooh-lore storytelling style, of course, but it’s still something obvious even to the preschool audience - that isn’t how you treat your friends.

In conclusion, due to their hoarding of (social) capital and behaviors that prop up an unjustly unequal social system, I think the real animals in Winnie the Pooh are a bit bougie.

[pocketbelt]

they announced one of the main writers for FFXIV: Dawntrail is the one who wrote the Shadowbringers trial series, "Sorrow of Werlyt", and the amount of people going "ew no that's the one that redeems Gaius" drives me kind of insane

That storyline takes Gaius and says "Behold this idiot, watch and be stunned as everything he ever said to anyone turned out to be fucking obviously wrong. Watch as the fascist imperialist philosophy he ingrained into his beloved children makes them run to their deaths, even as he pleads them not to, and they tell him to fuck himself and do it anyway. Marvel as he watches them die by your hand, you, who destroyed Gaius himself at the peak of his life, and he can do nothing to stop it", and that's a redemption arc to people

The only surviving kid only makes it because her brother acts to protect her, she doesn't make it because of any act of Gaius'

The entire story is literally "In case you somehow missed it in ARR and most of Stormblood, everything Gaius believed in was horseshit and there's no such thing as a 'noble general in the evil empire'". All his meritocracy bullshit vanished the second he was gone, no-one but his own children believed it or held onto it, and the empire put someone directly opposed to that belief into his old seat when he vanished. No-one cared, no-one else "believed", the Empire was never about that, it was only propped up in his own singular legion by him being there and the second he was gone the legion dumped it and moved on and only Gaius was too naive and stupid to see it.

I mean for fuck sake, the Empire digs up the chemical gas weapon he explicitly had sealed away and destroyed all record of after he's gone and if it wasn't for a particularly dedicated and enterprising catboy and his comedy crew of hardcore engineers, it would have caused the eighth apocalypse

Even the follow-up in patch 6.4, of the family portrait, isn't some "aw he good now" thing. The family portrait you help organise for him has to have four of its six members be projected onto the scene via a machine's reconstruction of them as normal people because they're dead, they threw their lives away because the ideology Gaius taught them meant they could only think to die fighting and nothing else. That's his loving family portrait: four ghosts stood at his back as his last living child smiles through her pain.

"well the people of Werlyt didn't kill him for conquering them" they let him clean up the mess he made (which meant watching his children be killed) and as "thanks" they're letting him stay there to live out the last third of his life or so attempting to atone by fixing the damage he did.

He's 56 at the time of ARR; the Empire he gave 3-4 decades of his life to is gone, it's a smouldering ruin, all but one of the people he loved is dead, his surviving daughter is scarred by the path he led her down, and what few friends he had are also dead. He learned that his beliefs were all horseshit and pretty much everyone around him except for himself knew it, he must live knowing that those beliefs got his children killed, all that he achieved that he once considered "good" was for nothing, he learned that the cool old emperor he idolised who had no magic but built an empire by pulling up his bootstraps and who told him that magic and gods were bad was actually an ancient incredibly magical sorceror attempting to resurrect his own god.

That's not a redemption arc, he's the most owned man still alive in XIV

[eightmakesonebraincell]

ateez as pirates who fall for you (hyung line)

read maknae line here

genre: pirate!ateez x gn!reader (fem!reader for hongjoong), fluff, angst, crack, and as always - a brainrot of every pirate trope to exist

length: 10.4k

c/w: heavy and mature themes - mdni, explicit language (swearing, insults), death, violence, blood & injuries, weapons, illegal acts (piracy, ransoming, verbal abuse, abduction), alcohol, pet names

a/n: maknae line will come yes but who knows when 🤷‍♀️ work has been really testing my dopamine vibes this year 😔👎 thank you @sorryimananti-romantic for keeping a detailed hitlist for me ♡

hongjoong

pov: you're a royal princess rescued by him

“captain, are you sure we can’t toss her overboard?”

jongho and hongjoong watch as wooyoung’s face falls after you pointedly ignore his attempts to make conversation once again

for someone who is technically their guest aboard the arriba, it seems as though you are hellbent on being as difficult as you can be

“unfortunately, we can’t,” hongjoong grouches to the younger, “not unless we want to exchange our payment for a hefty bounty on our own heads”

when jongho sighs, the captain squeezes his shoulder in comfort and adds on, “trust me, i’ve thought about it too”

hongjoong and his crew are privateers - pirates in theory, but technically excused so long as they have their letter of marque to state that they are authorised to attack other vessels

rescuing a royal princess was never explicitly part of the contract, although he thinks that not rescuing you would have pretty much been equivalent to a blatant show of insubordination

you had been taken ransom by one of the merchant ships the arriba had been plundering

needless to say, they had been close to tossing you overboard too; your kingdom had never paid for your ransom

the lack of response from your parents wasn’t anything you weren’t expecting but it’s a sore spot nonetheless

so it’s certainly hard for you to play friendly when you’re quite literally shucked off from stranger to stranger faster than a hot potato

san tugs wooyoung closer towards him and gently says to you, “he’s just trying to be nice - we all are”

the movement doesn’t go unnoticed by you

“i don’t need your pity,” you answer, the only sentence you have spoken today

you’ve lived two decades of your life pretending you don’t see the pitying gazes of your maids and butlers

you certainly don’t need pity from these people - pirates no less

“it’s not-” wooyoung starts to say

but the captain steps in before he can defend himself

“if this is how you’re always acting, i’m starting to see why your kingdom never paid for your ransom”

had hongjoong been less preoccupied by your words, he would have realised that your tone is candid, as if it is only natural for the people around you to pity you

but he’s clouded with his mindset as captain, unable to stand by idly while his own crew put up with your attitude, and so the words come out anyway - shards of shrapnel that bury themselves into your heart

there is only a fleeting second when your eyes dilate with hurt

you conceal it immediately, replacing it with a steely gaze, yet the image has already seared itself into hongjoong’s mind

“maybe you should throw me overboard, then,” you counter, “i’m sure my family will thank you for it”

and even if you have completely neutralised your expression, no one misses the wounded tone of your voice before you disappear down into the lower deck

mingi lets out a low whistle after the resounding slam of the hatch closing

“you fucked up, captain”

hongjoong doesn’t need anyone to spell it out for him

the heavy feeling in his stomach is telling enough

it isn’t until the moon has long since risen that you emerge through the hatch again

you had bypassed the sleeping quarters to the hold, wedging yourself between barrels of grain until you were sure no one would find you

not that they would have tried to anyway - seonghwa had told them all to give you some space

you had run your finger up and down the sides of the barrels repetitively for hours on end, mind simultaneously void and filled with thoughts

the walls you had built around yourself kept you safe, but it had started to become awfully lonely after a while

when it had become a little too suffocating in the hold and you guessed that most of the crew was asleep, you had softly padded back up the stairs and across the main deck

you now sit on the foredeck where the endless expanse of the sea stretches out in front of you, closing your eyes and letting the swaying of the ship lull you into tranquillity

tonight, the moon winks down fondly upon the waters

hongjoong watches you from the quarterdeck

he’s seen you sit at the front of the ship on many nights when you should really have been asleep

he wonders if you’ve always looked so small and fragile with your knees drawn up to your chest, or whether it’s because the flash of hurt in your eyes and voice is still fresh in his mind

“go, captain,” yunho murmurs from where he’s at the helm, “it’s a quiet night”

hongjoong startles at having been caught gazing, clearing his throat and dragging his eyes away

“why should i, if she’s just going to ignore me?” he scoffs

but he knows he’s just being petty at this point and his chest churns in agreement

“maybe,” yunho hums softly in response. “did seonghwa ever give up on you, though?”

it’s rhetorical - hongjoong knows the answer better than anyone

the captain doesn’t say anything but after several beats of silence, he sighs and makes a move to the foredeck where you are

yunho smiles to himself

you and hongjoong may be more similar than his captain realises

your shoulders stiffen when the sound of hongjoong’s footsteps approaches

you’re not sure what to expect and you don’t exactly want to find out and risk getting hurt

but having spent all day swimming alone in your thoughts, you do want to show that you feel apologetic because admittedly, you were being an ass too

getting up to walk away when he’s taken the first step certainly won’t help your case

you hold your breath in awkward silence as he settles down beside you, leaving a respectable distance between your hunched figures

only now is hongjoong realising that he hasn’t actually thought about or decided on what he wants to say to you

but he can feel the confusion rolling off of you in waves, so he grits his teeth and says fuck it

“i won’t apologise for defending my crew, but i’m sorry for how i did it and for what i said”

he hopes you know he is sincere when he continues, “we all have our prickly edges. i can’t fault you for yours”

compassion is a foreign concept to you and so you’re a little stumped for words

hongjoong isn’t sure whether your silence is a good or bad thing, but you have yet to stand up and walk away from the conversation

“there’s only about a week left until we reach port and we’ll leave after you make it back to your kingdom and we receive our payment. i’m not asking for you to be friendly, but let’s at least be civil with each other until then,” he says

you want to nod, agree, anything

and yet you can’t seem to make your head move or the words to come out of your mouth

rome was not built in a day. but neither did its walls fall in a day

hongjoong doesn’t push for an answer when instead, you ask, “how many people have you actually tossed overboard before?”

he resists the urge to laugh at your question, suddenly endeared by the fact that you’re still bothered by his very empty threat

“none, but my offer still stands. you’re welcome to be my first,” he deadpans

you let out a snort and although you quickly turn your head away, hongjoong sees the hint of amusement in your eyes

no further words are exchanged between the two of you and you do not acknowledge him when he eventually stands to rejoin yunho at the helm

but it’s a start

and as with any relationship, be it friend, foe, or lover, there is always that

a beginning.

hongjoong isn’t really expecting much to change immediately so he doesn’t pay you much mind when you walk into the mess hall the following morning

you hesitate at the entrance when you see most of the crew are already present, the conversation you had with hongjoong last night replaying at the forefront of your mind

you chew on the inside of your mouth

wooyoung stops mid-conversation at the scrape of a plate on the table, looking up to find you sliding into the seat beside him with a tight-lipped smile

to your surprise, he greets you with enthusiasm and immediately drags you into the conversation

hongjoong watches as you slowly warm up and add one or two comments of your own in between bites of your hardtack

and when he catches your gaze after staring for too long, he gives you a smile to convey his appreciation; to acknowledge your efforts

you return it with a small smile of your own and unbeknownst to you, it stays on your face for the rest of the day

slowly, there become more and more reasons that elicit a smile out of you

you still sit out on the foredeck when everyone else has gone to sleep, but on most nights, hongjoong will join you even if just for a while

the two of you are content to sit side by side with nothing but the steady pulse of the ocean and intermittent creaks of the ship’s hull to break the silence of the night

tonight though, you find curiosity burning through you

“what’s it like?” you ask

“being a pirate?” he clarifies

you shrug vaguely, unsure yourself either, “being a pirate. being at sea. sailing with your crew”

he takes a moment to gather his thoughts - not because he doesn’t know what to say, but because there is too much he wants to say

when hongjoong answers, his voice rumbles softly from within his chest, tender and heartfelt

“there’s a sense of freedom that you can’t obtain when you’re bound to land and society. sailing the waters, the only limits are those of the open seas and of your own compass… the sunrises, the storms, the moonlight - it all becomes part of your home”

hongjoong leans back to rest on the palms of his hands, tilting his gaze up towards the twinkling sky

he reflects, “you experience brotherhood and gain a family that is worth multitudes more than the treasures you can accumulate, even if you were to live as a pirate for several lifetimes”

you’re enraptured by his words, like poetry that swirls off the pages of a book and drifts into your very soul

“i may be the captain of this crew, but they make me who i am. without them, i am nothing”

his words wash over you and unearth vivid memories

“that’s what the queen always says to me,” you reveal

a small smile starts to grace hongjoong’s face, but it falls just as quickly when he hears your next words

“that without her - without her title - i am nothing”

it’s funny, how the same phrase can hold such different meanings; can evoke such different emotions

you don’t elaborate any further, but hongjoong doesn’t think he needs you to in order for him to understand

he just wishes he had more time to show you that your mother is wrong

he can’t though

tomorrow they reach port and you will return to your rightful place in the palace

“tell me more about your crew,” you attempt to change the topic, “how did you all find each other?”

so hongjoong tells you

he talks for hours and hours and you listen all the while with a heavy heart, clinging onto his every word

on your final night, you two stay like that until the stars disappear and the horizon becomes streaked with the pale hues of sunrise

after the ship docks mere hours later, only hongjoong accompanies you to your kingdom after goodbyes are exchanged

wooyoung doesn’t take it well, and you find yourself holding back tears of your own as you are let through the palace doors with the captain by your side

but you blink them away when you approach the throne room because vulnerability is not an emotion you are willing to display

“y/n”

the queen addresses you curtly when you enter, and hongjoong wonders for a split second whether he has brought you back to the wrong kingdom

he knows your mother does not treat you fondly, but it’s still staggering to see it before his very own eyes

the monarch glances distastefully over him before her eyes flicker back to you

“i did not expect your return,” she states

your eyes remain impassive as you merely answer, “neither am i delighted to be back”

hongjoong recognises this look

he’s seen it when you first boarded his ship; he’s seen it when your hackles were raised

he’s seen it in himself, when he had been a teenager filled with nothing but growing resentment, before he had met seonghwa

your mother sneers, “then you should have made yourself useful and stayed with the pirates. as a whore or a dog, whatever it took.”

hongjoong has understood you since learning of your demons, but right now, he is you

he sees fifteen-year-old kim hongjoong, standing before a couple who are his parents only by title

he sees fifteen-year-old kim hongjoong, who doesn’t know what he has done that deems him undeserving of love

he sees fifteen-year-old kim hongjoong, all alone with no one to take his hand

“or really, you should have died on the ship”

hongjoong is close enough to you to hear the small hitch in your breath at your mother’s final jab

he may not have had someone to save his younger self, but he can do that now

he can be the person he so desperately needed years ago

and so he does just that.

hongjoong grabs your hand and drags you out of the palace

no one stops the two of you from leaving and he is unsure whether his heart hurts for you or sings with relief

you can only stutter in shock as you try to keep up, “hongjoong, what about your payment?”

his determined steps do not slow down, even as he looks back at you with a sure smile, “i told you before. some things are worth more than money”

the comforting squeeze of his hand conveys that you are worth more than any amount of money

the form of the arriba grows bigger in the distance and you think you can see the movement of excitement on deck when the crew spots your figures

hongjoong has slowed down his steps, but he has yet to let go of your hand

“and you deserve to know that. welcome to the crew, y/n”

to a family and love that you never had

you think you like the sound of that

“thank you, captain”

seonghwa

pov: you're a royal navy officer in disguise

you lay awake in your hammock, listening to the soft snores of the crew members around you

sleep doesn’t come easy to you anymore

particularly tonight

you contemplate whether it’s worth the risk to simply not show up

you know what the consequences are if they capture you - a slow and painful death - but you’re unsure whether you want to put ateez on the line too

your ship is currently docked for the night, having made a port stop at alcarres following one of the crew’s wishes to retire the pirate lifestyle and settle in the small town

their last night with ateez had been celebrated with sloshing rum and rowdy jigs, something you had found strange

there’s none of that in the royal navy

when one leaves, it is shameful and through one of three options only; old age, crippling injury, or…death

you had asked seonghwa, the quartermaster, why he and the captain were so accepting when crew members left as they wished

he had simply smiled and answered, “better a small but loyal crew than a large and unpredictable crew”

his words are like a sharp stone in your shoe as you finally slip out of your hammock and make your way off the ship

as ordered, you head to the tavern addressed

you salute the person in front of you and ease into your seat with a formality only when he disregards you

“admiral jang”

“you’re late,” the royal navy officer raises an eyebrow

“sorry, sir. i had to make sure everyone was asleep”

it’s not exactly the truth, but no one needs to know that you had spent an hour in your hammock questioning your morality

he ignores your excuse, jesting as he asks of your captain, “has the pirate king found the chart’s whereabouts yet?”

the charts

centuries ago, a crew of experienced sailors had travelled the six great seas and created the original navigational charts

the charts had become scattered and lost over time, but its value only increased exponentially as more and more sailors became victims to the sea trying to map its waters to the same detail and accuracy as the original charts

of the six originals, only the whereabouts of five are known, with most of them within the possession of the royal navy

it’s rumoured that hongjoong - the pirate king - has his hands on two of them and is currently tracking down the lost chart of the aurorian sea

the only sea that has yet to be chartered after its original map due to its dangerous and unpredictable sailing conditions

you know that your next words can hold an inexplicable amount of possibilities

“not yet. the last lead didn’t get him anywhere. turned out the last of the ahn clan had passed a decade ago”

his lips flatten at the lack of worthwhile information

“where’s the captain headed to next, then?” he probes

for a split second, the thought of lying crosses your mind

you can’t provide a different location - it would be much too obvious and would raise immediate suspicions

but you could give him a different time frame

after all, it’s not uncommon for navigational routes to be one to two weeks off should the waters be unpredictable enough

you find the truth spilling out of you anyway once you’re looking into his stone-cold eyes

“vlasgar. in about three weeks’ time”

for a moment, time stands still as your heart pounds and you attempt to slow your breathing, the officer staring back at you calculatingly

then he finally hums in satisfaction

you think that he is going to dismiss you, but as you make a move to leave, he leans back in his seat

the split second of hesitation was enough

“remember where your loyalty lies, y/n”

the air feels cold with the underlying threat

seonghwa’s words flit through your mind

better a small but loyal crew than a large and unpredictable crew

you swallow, “of course, admiral”

and then you’re dismissed with a nod

the unsettling feeling follows you all the way back to the ship and every miniscule creak of the floorboards underneath you seems to be amplified in the silence

you let out a short gasp of surprise when you’re about to climb back into your hammock, only to see seonghwa blinking blearily at you

“couldn’t sleep ‘gain?” he mumbles

you choke out a response, “yeah”

“i’ll make you tea b’fore you sleep ‘morrow,” his words slur with sleepiness

“okay,” you whisper

but you know it won’t make a difference

after all, there’s no remedy for guilt

it continues to fester the next day, as you linger outside the captain’s quarters

you can’t remember why you had come down to the lower deck, but it doesn’t matter now, not with seonghwa and the captain discussing what you think is related to the aurorian chart

“do you think he’s still in vlasgar?”

“min taesoo? it’s hard to say. but i’m sure he’ll have acquaintances still on the island who may have an idea of where he’s gone”

min taesoo

your brain tries to carefully file the name away, knowing that it’s what admiral jang would want to know, but at the same time, your heart tries to pretend it doesn’t know what you have heard so that you can forget about it

you find yourself scratching the name onto a scrap of paper anyway

unbeknownst to you, at the almost-imperceivable sound of your footsteps walking away, the two men behind the doors share a look

the crew sets sail again in the afternoon towards the next destination - vlasgar - and the scrap of paper in your pocket weighs you down so heavily that you feel off-kilter as you absentmindedly follow jongho up into the rigging to unfurl the sails

you’re near the top of the ropes when a sudden wave lurches the boat to starboard

it’s only a small push, really, but with your mind elsewhere, it catches you off guard and you miss your next step

the feeling of your hand dislodging from the sudden drag of your body weight brings you back to the present with a yell of surprise

(whether it’s your own or jongho’s, you can’t remember)

your sailing experience takes over and you try to swing your body back towards the safety of the rigging

you barely manage to grasp the ropes again but your hands slip down with your weight until they hit the next knot, the hot rush of friction threatening your grip

with adrenaline rushing through your body, you shakily climb back down, where there are several pairs of hands waiting to help you down the rest of the rigging

seonghwa’s hands do not leave you even after your feet are planted on the deck again

dread and shame heat the back of your neck and curl around onto your cheeks, knowing that a mistake like the one you had just made - accidental or not - would lead to a punishment like confinement in the lower deck back in the royal navy

except, when an apology starts to form on your lips, seonghwa bursts out in dismay

“y/n, your hands!”

you let out an unintelligible noise as seonghwa gently turns your palms over and you realise that the ropes have grazed some of the skin off

“it’s fine,” you want to say

but you’re silenced when he leads you to the small sick bay on the orlop deck

even if there is no surgeon on board, there is a small chest fastened to the wall that is home to their few and valuable medical supplies

you sit as he fusses over you with alcohol and strips of cloth

although he does a good job of wrapping your hands, your insides start to bleed with how intensely guilt eats away at you, like a maggot deep inside the core of a festering apple

that night as you shuffle towards your hammock to sleep, you flinch when you find seonghwa already sitting in his

he’s fighting the heaviness in his eyes as he carefully cradles something

upon seeing you, he wordlessly hands it to you with a sleepy smile before he finally sags into his own hammock with a content sigh

you look down and the warmth of it seems to burn through the padded dressing that the man before you has tenderly wrapped around your palms

the sensation travels upwards to burn your heart too

because in your hands is a cup of warm chamomile tea

and yet, despite the emptied cup, you find yourself unable to fall asleep

but in the darkness of the sky, with no witnesses other than the waves and sea foam themselves, a small piece of crumpled paper gets tossed overboard that night

the closer their ship approaches vlasgar, the more distant seonghwa notices you become

he worries

seonghwa thinks he worries for the reasons that he should be

he is the quartermaster; entrusted to protect the crew as the captain’s right-hand man

if that means ensuring no one will compromise the rest of his crew, even if it’s you, then so be it

that’s what he justifies to himself as he walks through the cobbled streets of vlasgar, slinking through the shadows as he follows your figure from a safe distance

(in reality, seonghwa worries for the reasons that he is not quite ready to admit yet)

he follows you into the dim bar of a tavern and carefully situates himself where he can watch over you without being discovered

he orders a mug of common ale as you approach someone

the man is dressed in civilian attire, but seonghwa can tell straight away from his demeanour and expression that he is not as ordinary as he appears

it’s confirmed when he hears you say, “admiral jang”

and then he sees it

the small but striking lapel pin on the breast of the man’s coat - the royal navy’s insignia

seonghwa feels for the sash that’s hidden underneath his own jacket and his fingertips meet the cool metal of the pistol tied inside

“you better have updates for me, y/n. what’s the pirate king’s purpose here in vlasgar?”

seonghwa knows he only has about five seconds to make a decision - one that could jeopardise the crew, or one that could jeopardise you

but you surprise yourself and the both of them when you answer steadfastly, “i don’t know, sir”

despite the din of drunker patrons in the tavern, it seems to fall deathly silent

“am i hearing wrong, officer?” the admiral questions with a disbelieving scoff

to your credit, your voice does not waver when you state again, “no, sir. i believe the captain and quartermaster are lying low. they have not revealed anything to me nor the rest of the crew”

seonghwa suddenly understands why you have distanced yourself

the admiral’s jaw tics

“is that so.”

you do not respond, only focusing on the spot between his raised eyebrows as he leans forward across the table

“where does your loyalty lie, y/n?”

neither the admiral nor seonghwa need to hear your answer to know the truth

a small crew may be outnumbered, but they have strength in loyalty and devotion

there’s a glint of movement from underneath the table as the admiral inches something out from his belt

seonghwa makes his decision

you flinch, eyes wide as there’s a deafening gunshot and the table beside you splinters and scatters the tankards of alcohol onto the floor

instantaneously, chaos erupts

there are drunken yells of fright and weapons clumsily brandished, tables upturned and chairs hurled across the room

it only takes one other misfired shot for the tavern to descend into hellfire as customers who were previously drinking together now turn on one another

nobody notices the two pirates dashing out, not even admiral jang, who is busy wrangling two inebriated men off his arms

your composure dissolves the moment you are dragged into an alleyway several streets away and you look up in shock to discover-

“seonghwa?! why are you here?”

“i could say the same about you,” he counters, hardly out of breath

you’re stunned by the fact that he seems completely unfazed by the mess that he has just dragged you out of

something clicks

“was that you? did you know all along?”

seonghwa smiles, “let’s just say you’re not as subtle as you think you are when you sneak around. plus, it’s uncommon for sailors to have the experience that you do without having had some sort of training”

you curse under your breath and wince, “does hongjoong know too?”

the quartermaster nods and you fear the answer to your next question

“then why has he not…why have you not…”

“killed you yet?” seonghwa chuckles. “i’m sure you’ve realised by now how skewed the royal navy’s beliefs are”

you’re quiet

the royal navy has always been cult-like in preaching the ruthlessness and barbarism of pirates, drilling into the officers the belief that pirates are the scum of the sea

but everything that you’ve known has been proven false since you’ve joined ateez; ironically, the pirates are more humane than the royal navy themself

their crew stand at attention whenever hongjoong or seonghwa walk onto the deck - not out of cultivated fear but genuine respect

when jongho is sore and tired from handling the riggings on a particularly rough and windy day, the others will offer to cover for his chores instead of flogging him into submission

and when mingi is divvying up the shares of the provisions and loot, the others will slip an extra bar of soap for seonghwa, the shiniest ring for mingi, or the largest bottle of rum for yunho, because they want to make each other happy

“hongjoong is the pirate king, yes, but a king should not take the lives of others for his own power. a true king uses his power to change the lives of others for the better…like yours…and like mine”

you frown with a jerk of your head

“what do you mean?”

you can’t see seonghwa as a broken man whatsoever

he gives you a weak smile, “i, too, used to be part of the royal navy”

your jaw drops

everything clicks into place - how he had figured out you weren’t just a common sailor and why he hadn’t confronted you about it

the shame and guilt come rushing back over you in a storm that is much too familiar by now

“i’m so sorry, all i’ve done is betray your trust-”

“but that’s what second chances are for, no?” seonghwa cuts you off, playfully flicking your forehead as he reminds you, “and i’m pretty sure you’ve chosen me over the royal navy”

your cheeks grow hot

“not you. the crew,” you mutter

he laughs and it’s a wonderful sound

“come on, it’s late,” seonghwa beckons. “let’s get some sleep”

when he sees that you’re still rooted to the spot, unsure whether you are deserving to go back, he decides for you and moves behind you to gently nudge you forward by the shoulders

you let him guide you

his hands are warm, you note, even through the linen of your shirt

his hands are also pretty, you observe, when he tries to fluff your hammock once you two have crept your way back to the berth

seonghwa helps you up into the hammock and you watch as he climbs into his

his hands are also teeming with love, you realise, when he wordlessly extends his arm nearest to you in a silent invitation

if you both reach out, you can just entwine your hands together from your respective hammocks

the burns on your palms have healed nicely and without the need for them to be wrapped, you can feel every expanse of his hand covering yours

he doesn’t retract his hand and neither do you, even though it’s not the most comfortable position and you both lose feeling of your arms soon after

but you lay in your hammock, drifting to the soft snores of the crew members around you and the soft tug of seonghwa’s fingers in yours

sleep comes easy to you

particularly tonight

as it will for the rest of your life

yunho

pov: you're the crew's navigator

you know it’s going to happen even before it actually does

you can feel it in the air and from the way the baby hairs around your hairline start to frizz

but you never say anything because you wouldn’t trade it for the moment when the first raindrop hits the back of yunho’s neck and he abandons his duty at the helm to drag you out onto the upper deck

(hongjoong only sighs in defeat before he stations himself at the helm instead)

you don’t like the rain

not like yunho does

you are already looking up from the map spread out in the captain’s quarters, a knowing smile on your face just from the sound of his bounding footsteps alerting you of his presence, when yunho appears with the beckon of rain

you pretend to let yourself be dragged to your feet along to his urges of come on!

but then you dash forward towards the hatch with yunho chasing after your bright laughter

in the short span of time that it has taken him to fetch you, the sprinkle of rain has steadily grown and the weathered planks of the deck are already a dark grey

you feel the coldness of the raindrops hitting the crown of your head and the spreading chill as your clothes start to become damp

but that’s not what makes you feel alive

yunho catches up to you easily and then he is snaking his arms around your waist to lift you up into the air

you barely have time to squeal and steady yourself on his broad shoulders before he is spinning the two of you around, the world blurring away as the spotlight shines on him and he is all that you can see

the deck is your stage and the sea is your audience

rain with yunho is twirling hugs, tiptoed kisses and tinkling laughter. it’s soaked shirts and rosy cheeks and the only thing that matters in the moment

you don’t like the rain, but it’s easy to like the rain when it’s with him

(hongjoong lets the two of you be - so obviously and hopelessly enamoured by each other - because when one sees people in love, one cannot help but watch and smile)

the rain eventually peters out and you and yunho must return to your respective duties, but not until you two have changed out of your drenched clothes and sneaked in a few more kisses

a few hours later, you hear the racket above the deck as a ship pulls up beside the arriba and ropes are thrown across from both sides to lash the vessels close together

hongjoong comes down to join you in his quarters, but he’s not alone

behind him is the captain of the silver light, dae jihoo, and his quartermaster, with seonghwa entering last

you note that this crew doesn’t have a navigator of their own

but you suppose that’s one of the reasons why their captain had implored an alliance for this particular raid

the crew of the silver light are wanting to target the prosperity triangle - an area between three large ports that is frequently trafficked by wealthy vessels transporting valuable goods

it’s a raid that would prove difficult for a smaller pirate crew like your own and the silver light, and especially if they have no navigator

but it’s not uncommon for pirates to form temporary alliances for such purposes, and together, your crews have a good chance of plundering a fortune

you nod your head in acknowledgement when hongjoong introduces you to the two pirates as ateez’s navigator

you don’t miss the way jihoo’s eyes seem to linger on you for a second too long before he flashes a crooked grin and gestures towards the navigational map spread out on the oak table

clearing your throat of discomfort, you step forward and flatten the creases out with your hands

“this is the most open spot within the triangle that the vessel we’re after will pass through,” you tap an annotated spot on the chart, “and this is where we are now”

you slide your finger across, “we’ll follow the rhumb line west to avoid the shallower waters and when we can catch the trade winds, it should be smooth sailing from there”

jihoo challenges you, “how can you be sure we’ll catch the ship within the triangle?”

“they’ll need to sail past the equator and i’m almost certain their ship will be slowed down by the doldrums. we can easily gain knots on them”

he squints at the scribbles you’ve made noting down what you’ve gathered of the wind patterns

you know for a fact that it will mean nothing to him, but whatever he sees must satisfy him because jihoo appears to make up his mind

“when do we set sail?” he directs his question to your captain

“three days from now”

he grunts a noise of affirmation and stands, which hongjoong takes as the cue to see them and the rest of their crew off your ship

you trail behind the group as you all head back to the upper deck

you prepare to emerge from the hatch with a playful wink, knowing that yunho will be craning his neck from the helm to get a glimpse of you, when a sudden holler surprises you out of your thoughts

it’s immediately met with the answering cries of several other pirates - none from your crew - and you hurry to clear the hatch to gain your bearings

you’re thrust right into the throes of battle as ateez are forced to unsheathe their cutlasses to defend against silver light’s sudden attack

having been caught off guard, basically none of your firearms are loaded with gunpowder, rendering them unusable

you will have to make do with the short sabre at your waist

there’s no time to account for the whereabouts and safety of your crew members and you just have to pray that you all make it out of this unscathed

especially yunho

but as ateez retaliate, you all notice something is off about the situation

your crew is very quickly overpowering the other pirates - it was a losing fight for them from the very beginning

it makes no sense to you nor the rest of your crew

the losses of breaking the alliance before the planned raid, much less through betrayal, far outweigh any gains they could possibly make from their choice of action

it makes absolutely no sense

until it does.

you are blocking the swing of a sabre with your own when you are tugged backwards harshly by the collar of your shirt

there’s an angry snarl in your throat as you prepare to turn around, but it’s quickly silenced by the warning shot of a pistol right beside your ear

the cold ring of metal is then pressed to the back of your head

you know that firearms require time to reload and there’s a chance that this pistol is now useless

but, like wooyoung has taught the rest of the crew to do, they may have pre-prepared several pistols and you are not willing to play with fire - especially when you are only the flex of a finger away from death

you vaguely hear someone yell out your name in panic, but you’re not quite sure you hear correctly over the clamour of cutlasses clashing, warcries resounding and your own heartbeat pounding

“stand down or your navigator dies,” the voice behind you thunders

it’s jihoo…and he wants a navigator for his crew

“ateez,” one of your men commands, “lower your weapons”

your crew may make decisions fairly, but in battle, only hongjoong has the power to make commands

yunho has never spoken against his captain or disobeyed orders

until now

the words do not come out of your captain’s mouth but yunho’s

the rest of the members hesitate - they will not stand down unless hongjoong commands them to, yet, they are unsure whether they will be able to follow should he demand them to fight on, even if it means endangering your life

but there is no guarantee jihoo will let your crew go unharmed even after you all surrender, and as the captain, hongjoong must make decisions in the best interest for the crew

“captain!” yunho yells desperately

yunho never yells

“stand down,” hongjoong commands

silver light’s captain steps in closer behind you until you can hear and feel the noise of intriguement that leaves his mouth down the back of your neck

“that your loverboy, hmm?”

he smirks

there’s a false moment of primal relief when the press of the pistol is removed from the back of your head, but it is immediately replaced with fear that is irrevocably worse as he aims it in yunho’s direction and shoots

“no!”

you shriek and pull against the tug of his hold, still fisted around your collar, your pupils blown wide with terror at the sight of the clean hole in the mast right beside yunho’s head

“it’ll be pretty boy’s head next if you don’t come with me,” jihoo coos into your ear

the fight slips out of you immediately

because if you can save him, a life for a life, then you will

even if the sight of mingi holding yunho back from lunging forward when the pistol’s barrel returns to your head makes your heart clench painfully

“y/n, don’t you dare,” yunho pleads, voice filled with anguish

you’re barely given enough time to lock eyes with him and say resolutely, “remember what you said to me,” before you are tugged away to the boarding plank

ateez can only watch helplessly as the planks are removed from over the bulwarks and the last of the ropes are untied, releasing the silver light from their ship for good

jihoo tugs you down the hatch as the ship starts to pull away, and just like that, you’re gone from their sights

“fuck!” yunho shouts furiously, unable to contain his emotions as he turns around and connects his fist with the mast

right where the musket ball had made a hole

his hand pulls away with bloodied knuckles from the splintered wood and the sheer force of his punch

a concerned whine leaves seonghwa’s mouth and he tries to approach the taller, but yunho shakes him off and looks determinedly at hongjoong

“we’re sailing to the banver isle just east of the triangle. we’ll ambush them there”

seonghwa looks between the two, hope flickering in his chest at the potential plan, “you think the silver light are stupid enough to try taking on the prosperity triangle alone?”

yunho chuckles darkly, “they were fucking shitbrained enough to take y/n, so yes”

nobody disagrees and hongjoong smirks dangerously

“ateez, ready the sails for banver isle,” he commands. “prepare for battle”

because not only have the silver light taken you away from ateez, but they have also annihilated the light from yunho’s eyes

gone are his warm brown orbs - they are now black holes thirsty for retribution

there will be lives to pay and even that will not be enough for the void

unaware of what your crew is capable of, jihoo looks down at you with a triumphant leer

“you’ll navigate us to the triangle in three days’ time. don’t even think about lying - you’ve already shown me where the location is”

with an even nod you reply, “of course”

it’s true though - you have absolutely no intention of navigating them somewhere else

because you know yunho will be waiting there for you

amidst chaste kisses exchanged between plush lips cold from the rain, yunho tells you in a brief moment of seriousness

“don’t show them where the real location is,” his breath is warm across your cheeks. “you know the coastal island roughly ten nautical miles away? show them that instead”

you tilt your head to look up at him, “you think they’ll betray us?”

“no,” he reassures you with a deeper, slower kiss, “but we can never be too safe”

and even if your vessels miss each other this time, you have complete faith that yunho will sail to the very ends of the world just to find you

two days before the originally-planned raid, the arriba sails as closely to banver isle as possible without risking running aground

yunho has navigated the ship around the back of the isle so that the form of the rocky terrain conceals them from sight

once the anchor is lowered, the crew members use every ticking moment to make preparations

swords are sharpened and firearms cleaned

mingi distributes the gunpowder and ammunition, which is pre-loaded into muskets, pistols and swivel cannons ready to be engaged

the ship’s sails and riggings are checked and yeosang keeps a keen lookout in the crow’s nest

and it’s as if the world itself can sense the brewing storm that grows inside yunho

the sea is eerily still and silent, but the sky is an omen to something impending, its rolling clouds dark and angry with the threat of rain leering over the waters

yunho doesn’t actually like the rain

he only likes it because it’s with you

rain with you is barefoot dancing, breathless confessions and bashful giggles. it’s drenched locks and fluttering eyelashes and the only thing that exists in the moment

but as the profile of the silver light finally approaches the isle two days later, the heavens split open and you are not by his side

rain without you is falling pinpricks, frigid winds and flaunting mockery and yunho despises it with his entire being

at yeosang’s call of, “vessel approaching from starboard,” up in the lookout, yunho smothers the fervid desire to barrage the other ship with cannonballs like hail from hell; to unleash an inferno that blazes through their hull as he sadistically watches the crew jump for their lives

he stamps out the hunger to shoot the ones that make it into the sea, not to kill, only to maim and induce a long, painful struggle in the open waters until death becomes inevitable - until there is enough blood spilt that it becomes the only stench in the air that stretches across for miles

yunho leashes his monsters with an iron fist

because he will not do anything that could even remotely endanger your life

even if it means that he has to hold back - to sit and wait like prey instead of advancing on the other ship like a predator

at least not yet.

silver light do not know, but this is the calm before the storm

the heavens may be crying, the winds may be howling and the waters may be roiling

but this is nothing compared to yunho

yunho is a tempest of unparalleled rage and their ship is in the eye of his storm

as the bowsprit of the silver light starts to appear around the isle, the members ready their grappling hooks and yunho draws his cutlass with a menacing whisper of unsheathing metal

you are his treasure, and pirates never lose sight of their treasure

today…you return to him

yeosang

pov: you're a tavern keeper

watching the ale reach the brim of the tankard you are holding, you’re about to step away from the barrel when the voice of a patron sounds behind you

“‘scuse me, could i get a mint-”

you look up and turn around in confusion as their voice cuts off

only to have the question taken right from the tip of your own tongue as you’re met with the face of the person you had loved for years

the same person you have spent twice as long trying to forget

eyes searching each other’s in a surprised stupor, seeing kang yeosang standing right in front of you takes you back to those memories that you have tried to remember and simultaneously bury

it thrusts you headfirst into what used to be of your shared love - like the feathery remnants of a dream, so distant from the fingers of your consciousness, suddenly returning to vivid existence when you least expect it

“hey, mint leaf. i’m back”

yeosang at least has the perceptiveness to appear a little apologetic, immediately pulling you into a hug and pressing soft kisses against your hairline uncaring of the other people in the tavern

it’s been several weeks since you last saw him, and whilst he had warned you he would be gone for longer this time, you hadn’t expected it to mean two whole months

he’s a small merchant who also fishes along the coast to earn enough to make ends meets, so he’s often gone for a few days or a week or two

you knew what you were in for when you first made it official with him, but just because you become accustomed to something, doesn’t mean it gets any easier

and he’s never been gone for this long

something must have happened - something good - because he looks alive, cheeks glowing and eyes fiery

“i met the crew”

“the crew?” you ask, hands reaching for the bourbon to prepare him a drink as he lets himself behind the counter to stand beside you in your workspace

he nods excitedly, "wooyoung’s pirate crew, ateez"

you think you know where this is going to go and you hate that your stomach sinks at the thought of what your future may become, because yeosang looks so happy to tell you about this and a happy yeosang is all that you could ask for

“the captain offered me a position as their lookout”

you pick out your next words carefully as you hand him his finished drink - a mint julep with two sugar cubes, just the way he likes it

"aren't…isn't being a pirate dangerous?"

“not as dangerous as you might think, actually. they’ve been showing me the ropes the last couple of weeks and…and i think i want to join them. officially”

there it is

the forked end of the road

you wonder how far two people can keep walking with their hands intertwined before the distance becomes too great and they have to let go

his words become a little muddled when he goes on to tell you about how they divvied up their recent loot to include his share too

how he’s gained more money than he’s made from the last two years of working as a merchant and fisherman combined

if he joins his old friend and his crew, he could earn enough to buy his parents a proper house; earn enough to build you your very own tavern

you want to tell him that you don’t need the tavern, just him, but you also know just how important his family is to him

his filial desire to take care of his parents was one of the very reasons you fell in love with him in the first place

before you can say anything though, the tavern keeper is interrupting to let you know that your shift is over

yeosang immediately perks up and herds you out of the place, claiming that there is a new fishing spot he discovered that he has to show you

and so you sit while he rows his modest boat, only the splash of his oars disturbing the peaceful stillness that has settled over the waters as the sun dips below the horizon

the waning light casts a soft, warm glow over him, like a gentle kiss against his skin and birthmark

if angels graced the earth, there would be one sitting right in front of you

“i missed you, mint leaf,” he confesses, gaze shyly averted. “i thought about you when i was gone”

“did you think about showing me this place?” you feel a little breathless

he nods, “every single night”

and that’s enough for you

it feels like everything is okay again

it doesn’t matter if you’re standing at a forked road

you think that perhaps, for him, you can walk on an unpaved path - just so that you can keep holding his hand

“y/n”

yeosang’s voice is deep

the word sounds foreign to your own ears but you don’t dwell on it

(because if you do, you’ll wonder whether it’s because you’ve forgotten the sound of his voice or because you want to hear him calling you something else)

“what would you like to order?” you ask

(because it’s easier to pretend that he’s just another patron than to admit that he used to be all that you ever knew)

yeosang fumbles a little but then regains himself, “oh, um- just a mint julep, please”

you turn your back to him to prepare his drink, hands reaching for the barrels lined along the bottom shelves without needing to look

you’ve made this drink too many times to count

half of those times were in the safety of the darkness that midnight offered; when the tears could flow freely without anyone seeing

it’s only when you start to mix his cocktail that yeosang realises he didn’t ask for his sugar cubes, but he figures the drink will taste bitter tonight either way so he opts to watch you instead

he wishes that he could walk past the counter like he used to and wrap his arms around you

he wishes that he could whisper endearments into your ears and press them against your lips

he wishes that he could show you that he still loves you

“do you still love me?” your voice wavers with hurt as you stand in front of him

he’s finally back after being gone for four months this time and you hate this conversation as much as he does, but it was bound to happen eventually

yeosang pleads, “more than anything”

“then why does it hurt so much? loving you…and being loved by you”

he doesn’t have an answer

but god be damned if he doesn’t try to find a way to fix things

“tell me, mint leaf, what can i do?”

you blink back your tears furiously, having already made up your mind while he was still at sea

“let’s break up”

because in the end, unpaved paths have too many rocks, too many thorns and too many arched roots; they were never meant to be walked along

you pass yeosang his finished drink without another word and then move further down the counter to serve a different customer

his eyes linger on you wistfully before he tears them away from you

it’s a good thing his hair has grown long enough to cover his face when he looks down

because his eyes start to grow wet at the sight of the mint julep you have made him

with two sugar cubes in it, just the way he likes it

perhaps, once you’ve loved somebody, you never really stop loving them

yeosang shows up again the next day and seats himself at the bar

you don’t serve him though, actively avoiding his end of the counter and letting another of your staff tend to him

he orders his usual but he leaves out his request for additional sugar cubes

it feels wrong for him to order it from someone that isn’t you

but you’re watching out of the corner of your eye as the worker mixes the bourbon, sugar and water, topping it with a few mint leaves and then sliding it across the counter for him

you let out a little sigh, half amused, when he takes a small sip and smacks his lips together at the bitterness

you take two sugar cubes and drop it unceremoniously into his pewter cup before you realise what you’re doing

yeosang immediately seizes the opportunity to talk to you

“my crew’s docked for the fortnight…” he waits to see if you’ll respond. you don’t, but you also don’t move away, so he continues. “we’re making some repairs to the hull and sails before our next raid”

you have half a mind to walk away after you reply, “i didn’t ask” 

he forges on regardless

“we’re going to work with another crew for this one. it’s going to increase our chances of a successful raid because-”

your voice comes out a little harsher than you mean for it to when you hiss again, “i didn’t ask”

yeosang’s mouth closes as he pulls away slightly, back straightening

then he says in a softer voice, “i’ve been doing well. wooyoung still takes care of me, even though i���m not new to the crew anymore. i also saw my parents today and they’re happily retired now…”

you don’t stop him from talking this time

because how many sleepless nights have you spent sitting outside your tavern looking up at the stars; how many times have you served a mint julep to a patron and accidentally added sugar cubes; how many moments have you been consumed by the thought of him, simply wondering if he is living well?

this is everything that you have ever wanted - yeosang in the flesh letting you know that, yes, he has been well

but it is also everything that you have ever feared - that he has been well even without you

you don’t know what to feel

“my parents asked about you,” he says gingerly. “how have you been?”

his voice is barely audible, as if he is afraid of what you might say

or perhaps, afraid that you might not say anything at all

“good. excellent,” you force a small smile, your eyes still focused on the mint leaves floating in his drink. you don’t think you can look at him. “i own this place now”

his body loses its tension, cheeks rounding as he looks at you with genuine relief

“that’s…that’s really good to hear”

his words sting

you are unsure if it stings your ego or if it picks at the wound in the shape of the person you have lost

but it hurts to know that he has worried over you in the exact same way you have over him, the whole time you two have been apart

you’re suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation and hot tears well in your eyes almost immediately

your bottom lip starts to crumple so you rush into the back room to escape

“y/n!” yeosang calls out after you, alarmed

when you don’t stop, disappearing into the storage, he jolts up from his seat and follows

your body shudders with every heaving breath you take, unable to stop yourself from crying even harder when you feel him tug you into his chest

you try to pull away but his sturdy arms tighten around you

yeosang refuses to let you go once more

“i hate you,” you sob, struggling against his hold as you hit his chest weakly

he hushes comforts against the crown of your head, soothing noises as he endures your fists

“you have every reason to”

yeosang holds back tears of his own

he feels your body gradually losing its fight, sinking into his embrace instead, hands desperately holding him close

your voice is so impossibly small when you tearfully confess, “but i still love you”

“oh, mint leaf,” he brushes the stray locks of hair away from your face and cradles your jaw tenderly, “i still love you, too”

he presses a soft kiss against your forehead, pulling away once only to reaffirm, “so, so much”

when he kisses you again, his lips taste salty against your own, but nothing has ever tasted sweeter than this

your breath no longer stutters but the tears continue to run down your face because your heart finally feels right after all these years apart

and yet-

you pull away

“we can’t do this”

yeosang feels his heart shattering

“why not? i don’t understand,” he whimpers

“you know why,” you say distressingly, “my life is here, yeosang. i can’t just leave and return whenever i want. but you, on the other hand? you can. you go where your crew goes - you belong with them”

“but my heart belongs to you. please, y/n,” he begs

his arms are still wrapped around you and you feel his desperation as his fingers cling onto you like a lifeline

you look earnestly into his bloodshot eyes, your own vision blurry, “yeo, you’re not the one who gets left behind here. you’re not the one who waits weeks, months, years on end, just hoping that the next person to walk in is the person that you want to see”

he wants to plead that he waits to see you, too, but he knows that he’s the one who leaves, too

“you’re the right one for me - the only one for me - but it’s not the right time,” you tell him gently

slowly, his arms lower themselves from around you

“it wasn’t the right time then and it isn’t the right time now,” he repeats, “then when is the right time for us?”

you shoot the question right back at him, “when is the right time for someone whose life is to sail the world?”

neither of you know the answer

nobody does, because loving a pirate has no certainties

but yeosang doesn’t give up

“if we can’t ever be sure, why don’t we just make it the right time ourselves?”

you caress his cheek sweetly, and despite having stepped away from you earlier, he leans into your hand, starved of your loving touch and affection

“yeosang…what if we’ve already had it? what if…meeting each other was already it? what if we’re just meant to love from a distance, not side by side?” your voice is poignant but resolute

he brings up a hand to cover yours, still warm and tender against his wet cheek

how is it that he can be touching you yet simultaneously feel worlds apart from you

“okay,” he accepts with a whisper

if loving you silently is the only way he gets to love you, then he will choose it in a heartbeat over losing you entirely

he thumbs away the remainder of your tears

“can i kiss you? one last time?” he asks

you nod

“one last time”

your lips slowly meet, slotting together as they find their home in each other’s dips and curves

his hands cradle the small of your back and neck and your own hands rest against his chest

the kiss you share is steady, longing and bittersweet

it conveys everything that you want to say to each other, and even then, it is hardly enough

thank you

i’m sorry

i love you

goodbye…

you can feel your eyes burning up again, but you focus on the feeling of yeosang’s lips against yours instead

because you know that the moment one of you pulls away, that is it forever

in the world of love, there are people who are ill-fated

they meet the right person, but at the wrong time

and then there are people like you and yeosang

not ill-fated, but star-crossed lovers

the right person…

but just not meant to be

[stevieschrodinger]

Just imagine how put out Dustin would be. He's spent months and months working on Steve, trying to get him to come and play. It had been a personal, ongoing campaign. He used every trick and manipulation and wasn't above just outright whining about it. All he asks is Steve try it; just once.

Just imagine how put out he is when Eddie gets out of the hospital, and he asks Steve one time, and Steve says yes. But of course Dustin can't complain OUT LOUD, because he got what he wanted, didn't he? Steve's going to play.

Dustin makes this as absolutely painless as possible; Steve doesn't even see his character sheet until it's done. Dustin has him roll for stats. They talk about race and class. They talk about what skills his character should have...but he doesn't go into detail. he wants to make this fun for Steve, so he lets Steve pick whatever the hell he wants and when Steve calls his gnome Trip Hazard, Dustin doesn't even bitch about it.

Dustin corners Eddie ten minutes before their one shot starts, and explicitly tells him to let Steve get away with absolutely any and all bullshit. The goal here is that Steve comes back.

Of course Dustin has no idea that Eddie has been making heart eyes at Steve for literally years and fully intends to do that, anyway.

It's a one off, so Eddie has some fun with it. He's generous with the XP and everyone has two levels before lunch, excitedly choosing new skills and spells. After a mini boss battle they come across a hoard of treasure; some of it magical.

It's a free for all and everyone walks away with a fun new powerful toy for their character; Eddie's even pre made little cards with illustrations, descriptions, and the magical abilities of each item. He does a whole array, more than they need, but everyone gets one thing each.

Steve, hilariously, chooses a seven foot spear.

Eddie holds it together and does not laugh. He lets Steve do whatever he wants, and when Steve has a moment of madness and acts out his tiny gnome suddenly getting his spear stuck in every single doorway, everyone looses their shit.

The final battle though, that evening, rapidly because serious; an acid spewing black dragon. Everyone rolls initiative. The Dragon, with advantage, goes first, and the battle goes back and forth for several turns before, "the great beast raises itself onto it's back legs, mighty wings spread, so massive they fill the cavern," Eddie climbs up on his chair, spreading his arms demonstrably, "the dragon draws in a mighty breath...Will the Wise, your move."

The party uses their turn to attack, moving their little people on the board appropriately. Steve's turn comes and everyone looks at him..."I'll, ah, move, I think."

"Attack Steve!" Dustin encourages him.

Steve moves his little gnome, with hilariously oversized cardboard accessory, to directly in front of the dragon, the air in the room grows heavy, intent, "no attack...I set to receive a charge."

Every turns to look at Eddie, who frowns down at the map.

"It's on here," Steve volunteers the little card that came with his spear. "This counts, right? Double damage because it's magic, then setting to receive a charge is double damage again..."

Everyone looks back to Eddie again who, solemnly, frowns...then nods.

The dragon unleashes it's attack, everyone in the party taking damage. The dragon falls forward, aiming to land on all of it's feet again.

"Does that...work?" Steve asks hesitantly.

Eddie nods. The damage is so great when Dustin works it out, they have to borrow dice from Will to combine with Dustin's so Steve can roll them all together. The combination enough to fill his cupped hands.

Steve kills the dragon. Everyone is up, screaming and cheering.

Steve is the only one to notice when Eddie rolls damage; Trip Hazard is instantly killed by the crushing force of a dragons corpse.

Steve doesn't care, especially not when Eddie gets real close to whisper in his ear, "that was so fucking clever, I'm furious."

[ace-and-the-rpg-horrors]

i feel like some of the fandom is a bit harsh on Monty... like, trauma is definitely not an excuse, but it does give pretty much all of his actions an understandable explanation?

like... Monty was actively being abused by Esther in practically any scene they were together. he said something she didn't like, and she yelled and grabbed him threateningly. both of the times she transformed him, from crow to human and then back again, she literally stabbed and ripped him up in a really gory way.

i sure wonder why an evil witch's familiar who's constantly treated like that would follow her orders even if he disagreed with them!!

and considering that Esther is potentially one of the only humans Monty came into contact with before meeting the others, and she's like that - he turned out alright, didn't he? he's petty, a bit rude sometimes, and takes things personally, but generally, he's a shockingly decent person.

yes, he didn't take it well when Edwin rejected him. but, as others have pointed out - how was Monty genuinely meant to know any better? he had lived his whole life as a crow in a cage too small for him, where the only person he knew was his extremely nasty and cruel owner. and then, all of a sudden, he's forced into a new body and has humanity thrust upon him against his will. he explicitly expressed this discomfort himself when Esther degraded him for getting "too emotional" for her liking.

"i never asked to be human. with all these... feelings."

even after the bitterness of the rejection, Monty never actually wanted to hurt the Dead Boy Detectives. turns out, he didn't even know that Esther's plan intended to end them completely, and was so horrified upon finding out that he made an attempt to lead them to safety, which was, by the way, putting himself at massive risk. Esther already punished him likely under the assumption that he just didn't put enough effort into manipulating them - can you imagine what she'd have done to him if she knew about his last-minute attempt to actually save them?

of course, i don't think Edwin was wrong for not forgiving Monty. he deserved that. Monty still helped in the scheme that aimed to destroy him. he also fully deserved to reject Monty if he wanted to (conversely, i do also see people say that Edwin "could have handled it better," but honestly, i don't know if it's just me not being neurotypical or something, but i genuinely do not see how Edwin could have been nicer about it? he was straightforward and polite, then afterwards, still tried to be Monty's friend until the betrayal.)

however, Monty was still very much a victim himself, and any harm he did was not from his own will, instead motivated by fear of the terrifying witch who had him fully reliant upon her, often through both verbal and physical force. Esther never hesitated to hurt him. he was painfully aware of that. she didn't care about him beyond how useful he could be. and when he failed at that, her reaction was violent.

but he didn't have anyone else.

[ghosts-and-glory]

Some Narinder character analysis for y’all.

This is a slightly re-edited excerpt from a much longer post of mine where I was specifically trying to provide a rebuttal to someone else. I’m kinda proud of some of my takes here and the write up took me hours so I’m gonna repost it here on its own.

I’m going into specifically into Narinder’s

Speech patterns and way of expressing emotions.

Implications of his post defeat dialogue

Relationship with Aym and Baal

Feelings on Ratau’s death

And a little extra on why do we “babygirl” Narinder

Full analysis under the cut.

The way Narinder expresses his positive feelings

First I gotta establish Narinder’s voice. Narinder seems almost incapable of giving a genuine compliment especially without turning it into something about himself.

Here’s three examples of him giving a complement to The Lamb. Taken from after defeating Amdusias and Shamura. He also complements The Lamb when you sacrifice Ratau but I’ll come back around to that.

I wanted to grab the entire quotes so it didn’t look like I was nitpicking.

"Very good, my vessel. It seems I chose well when I kept you from Death.”

First example, “very good,” is the complement, but immediately after he takes credit for this by calling you “my vessel” thereby claiming ownership over you. His vessel did well. And again “I chose well” doubled down and complemented himself.

“I admit, you have worn it (the red crown) almost as well as I could have myself.”

Again we see the complement layered in ego. “Almost as well as I” in other words you did well, but don’t forget I’m better. Also important to draw attention to is “I admit” this is a very explicit statement of his refusal to acknowledge the success of others.

"Your appetite for death is something I can admire, Vessel. But the Crown is mine, and none - NONE - are worthy. None other than I.”

Here he almost lays down a complement. “Your appetite for death is something I can admire” straight up, states his admiration. He seems to almost realize what he’s done and quickly pulls back into his ego, “But the crown is mine” “-none are worthy- None other than I.”

These are the three of the four ONLY times that Narinder ever says anything explicitly positive about someone else when he is a god. Thus establishing that the head ass cannot give out a compliment to save his life. The one time he gives you full credit for your actions he immediately pulls right back into his ego.

I cannot stress this enough. Someone who is characterized as cold and emotionally closed off as Narinder is WILL NOT suddenly undo this characteristic when they try and express a positive feeling.

Okay with that established we can look at his follower dialogue. Specifically these two examples from when you resurrect a follower and allow him to go on a mission.

“I cannot begrudge supplantation by one such as yourself.”

Literally saying I don’t resent you for taking my place. It’s not an explicit statement that he respects you but this is he weird fucked up little way of saying it. Of course he still lays it out in a way that’s self centred but we know from the way he has spoken that this is about as much verbal praise he is capable of giving.

The other one is a less explicit statement but I think it’s a interesting reflection of the final place of his character.

“…my thanks, Lamb.”

Being his last bit of unique dialogue, it’s an incredible ending to a character. He thanks you. That’s all he needed to say.

Narinder’s reaction to his defeat that he would rather die.

Let’s go over his dialogue in some depth.

"You weak, snivelling, foul thing. You - wait! Waaaiiiiiit!"

I’m starting with this line as it compels me the most. I find that there are two separate readings of this and I can’t really point to one above the other. On my play through I had assumed his wailing was more in reference to being denied death. It could also be read as him not wanting to be reduced to a follower and realizing what your mercy really means for his future.

“-are you to be a vengeful false idol, or a merciful coward? No longer can you blame your vile acts on me."

Okay, looking at the way he presents your two options he seems to push more for the murder action. “-vengeful false idol,” is how he refers to murder. It’s not exactly a glowing review but his use of the word vengeful is important. We know that one of Narinder’s main goals in the game is revenge, we he already acts with revenge I can’t say that he’s using this word as an insult. The false idol part of this statement seems like he’s attempted to separate himself from you, again for is ego.

Then he presents the spare option by calling you a “merciful coward.” The flow of this full sentence puts more pressure on this option. He presents it as the “or” the second option. This is the bad option, the option of a coward.

“So. vou are no different to me after all. You have become as I am."

I know this is a deranged order to go over these quotes but last we got murder. Compared to his spare dialogue this is incredibly sombre. We know from already establishing how big his ego is that saying you are the same as him is almost a compliment. I do find this dialogue incredibly interesting tho, I can’t exactly explain why but I can’t help but read this as damning as well. It’s like he means it in both ways, the ultimate fuck you. You are just as I am, for better and worse.

But from what we know about Narinder his edgy ass cannot express emotion. He wraps his statements in layers of irony and selfishness. Unless it supports the persona he puts on or inflates his ego he WILL NOT right out state his feelings or needs, especially when he was a chained god.

Relationship with Aym and Baal

Aym and Baal are incredibly hard to characterize. They don’t have much dialogue to work off of and only three characters every speak on them, Shamura, Narinder and Forneus. The context of the game does present them as more Narinder’s first (and second) hand, less followers more apprentices, almost, but where’s the fun in assuming.

"Intended as keepers, perhaps, but they were young and in need of guidance. Must I be blamed for my influence?"

I wanna draw attention to the specific wording of keepers. Again, based on the way Narinder speaks its safe to assume he means the formal meaning of a keeper, meaning a caretaker. It is unclear if Narinder was told they where his keepers or if he assumed so, but either way he still speaks on them as such.

For the sake of argument (and I don’t wanna rewrite this bit entirely) I’m gonna put the idea that Narinder brainwashed Aym and Baal against my presented idea of them being his keepers or apprentices.

The proposed idea of the brainwashing angle can be developed based on Narinder saying that “they where young and in need of guidance, must I be blamed for my influence.” This implies that, as much as Aym and Baal may have been sent as keepers, they where still young and Narinder could not help but be an influence on them. I am gonna come back around to this thread so hold onto this for a moment. Moving on.

“Two kits I did have, true love found! And yet one lackadaisy summer day, my beautiful children were taken away... a gift, they said, for the one they loved most, the one that waits...”

“Ooh, kits... I remember, I remember... two kits in my claws... a gift.."

It is unclear and morally dubious how Aym and Baal came to Narinder. First we’re not 100% where Narinder is chained. The wiki lists it as the afterlife and in dialogue Narinder refers to it as “at the gates between this life and the next, trapped at the nexus of what was and what wasn't.” (When he asks you to send him on a mission.) We can travel there both by dying and being summoned there by him.

Either way the assumption is that Aym and Baal had to die. (As an aside I have my own speculation on the conditions required for a person to be presented to Narinder or to be resurrected but that’s off topic.) The horrific implications being that either Shamura themself killed the kits or that they where already dying. However you cannot blame the reaper for ushering the dead away from life.

I’m going to work off of the cult specific definition and characteristics of brainwashing. It’s hard to characterize where Aym and Baal sit here as, again they have little dialogue and due to the nature of brainwashing it’s hard to spot. First I wanna grab my brainwashing resources.

I’m using Encyclopedia Britannica’s page on brainwashing, cults, indoctrination, manipulation as my primary resourse.

Again I kinda wanna apply a layer of irony to how literally I apply real life tragedy to this game that obviously uses cults in a comedic manner. I wanna focus in on the characteristics displayed by victims of brainwashing and the techniques used in brainwashing by an abuser.

Looking at the elements used in brainwashing the only one I can say off the bat that is present is isolation, obviously. But with that let’s grab all of Aym and Baal’s dialogue.

What is clear from their dialogue is their obedience to Narinder. They call him master while his keepers and still when you meet them later when adventuring. And physically we do see them by Narinder’s side the entire main game and they fight the Lamb first. But if we add some nuance and look at their role as keepers or my own theory of being apprentices both actions of obedience make sense still for those roles. On the same note they also don’t display traits you would expect for someone fully under Narinder’s control. They speak to the Lamb out of turn and attack without prompting from Narinder.

Other characteristics are hard to imply. With torture I do want to pass it off an unlikely as based on the way Narinder tries to manipulate the Lamb it’s only verbal and he cannot attack while chained and I don’t see that changing with the keepers. Traits like sleep, water and food deprivation can’t be applied for various reasons (mostly the being dead one) and we don’t know anything about Narinder and the keeper’s interactions in the past so I’ll have to disregard other traits like suggestion.

Baal: "It's you. Usurper of the Red Crown. The one who freed us."

Aym: "Ha! You are nothing compared to our Master. We have not been in this world long, but already I can tell you are weak. You lack discipline. Our Master wielded Death with precision and control. You allow chaos to reign."

Baal: "What my brother means to say is thank you."

Moving onto groupthink I can pretty comfortably say that this is not a present characteristic of Aym and Baal. In their limited dialogue we can easily characterize Aym as more outwardly defensive of Narinder but Baal is more reserved and even contradicts Aym and is able to speak freely of Narinder.

Looping back around to the way Narinder speaks on his influence on Aym and Baal. Again we know how Narinder speaks, he cannot give honest compliments and dodges affection like it’s a professional sport. With the way he will outright tell the Lamb to manipulate followers and then uses the words “guidance” and “influence” about Aym and Baal, he has to be avoiding admitting affection to the keepers. He does follow that up with “Do what you wish, scornful God. I care not for them.” But again does Forneus not also allow her kits to do as they wish?

My own reading of Narinder’s relation to Aym and Baal is that of mentorship but it could also be read as parental. But saying brainwashed is a big stretch.

His feelings on the death of Ratau

This is like another example of like, yeah, wow, an evil character does evil? Who could’ve possibly foreseen this? Sarcasm aside I do see his comments on this being a lesser evil.

First I do have to ask why, if Narinder held strong sense of unrest against his former vessel, did he not have him struck down? The main reason I can see is that Ratau is still devoted to the red crown, most clearly seen by the statue at the lonely shack which generates devotion.

Second, Ratau’s death isn’t on his hands, it’s on yours. I find his pride here is from The Lamb’s actions not the death of Ratau. You killed your mentor, he describes your actions as “treacherous opportunism” and says “A great Vessel takes their master's will as their own.” Based on his later dialogue this is likely more foreshadowing the Lamb becoming as Narinder is. Narinder tried to kill his siblings, and you did kill your mentor. “You have become as I am."

I’m gonna tangent quickly cause there’s a line here that is incredibly interesting.

"He renounced his position after striking a bargain that resulted in the sacrifice of a Follower. He was weak."

Incredibly interesting the way he condemns Ratau’s sacrifice of a follower. Narinder directly contradicts himself. It is implied that the follower was lost to another being that did not benefit Narinder, but the Lamb also sacrifices followers to the Fox and Midas. Just something to chew on.

Why do we “babygirl” Narinder and other evil characters?

This is kinda the last bit I’m gonna get into before I cap this off. It is incredibly funny for me to say “I babygirl Narinder” only to get a reply that’s like “I don’t think you babygirl him on purpose.” But I wanna talk about why this happens and why it happened to specifically Narinder.

When people complain about the fandom interpretation of Narinder I think they forget the tone of cult of the lamb. The closest thing I could think to call it would be a dark comedy kinda energy.

The game has very dark themes going on. Mentions of real horrible things like genocide, cults and religious abuse. But also just like look at the game, it’s visual style is so cute and non threatening, the bird characters have two mouths to commit to the bit. If you look at the way it depicts cults it’s very surface level, it’s more focused on being a satire on the common satanic media kinda look of a cult. Visually it bathes in its aesthetics, taking names from books like The Lessee Key of Solomon, uses villainous depictions of symbols like the pentagram or old Hebrew script, disregarding its nuanced origins.

And then they go onto do the funniest thing ever. The other bishop’s? Gross little freaks, based on commonly disliked animals, worm, frog, squid and spider. And then- and then they make the god of death, who they characterize and manipulative and evil, they make him a catboy. You cannot tell me they did not know what they where doing.

Why have I shot Narinder with the babygirl beam? CAUSE THE GAME DID IT FIRST!

I’m gonna call the god of death my little meow meow and point out his status as a Tumblr sexy man cause he’s a little guy and I wanna give him head scritches. But I’m also gonna call him a layered, fucked up and an incredibly interesting character in the same breath.

[stellas-and-tonitruses]

these last 3 chapters more than ever have left me wondering about the timeline of spy x family and in particular,

donovan's age.

i'm not going to go too deep into the full timeline because i simply don't think we have enough info to make a real robust timeline, BUT i do think we can very feasibly approximate donovan's age with our current info.

I also won’t be using any precise years like 1964 or whatever bc at this moment in time I find that to be kind of useless, bc the only years we have happen very early in the story in background details and for a lot of those ones, I noticed endo had a tendency to just carelessly put whatever so long as it looked fine from afar, which includes news that were happening around the time of that chapter's release. SO unless he decides to explicitly highlight actual years, I’m not gonna be like “this happened in 1964 and that happened in 1953” and anything of the sort.

now, i shall partake in my least favorite activity.

✨math.✨

so uh buckle up my fellas and feel free to correct me anywhere where i might be wrong bc i am more than aware that math is NOT my strong suit!

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTERS 97, 98 AND 99!

gonna start with the facts!

according to the spy x family EYES ONLY fanbook, henry henderson is 66 years old at the time of the current events of spy x family! in the past three chapters we have learned that there is a 3 year age gap between him and martha, so that would make her 63 years old currently.

as of the events of chapter 99, he is 22 years old (and martha is 19), assuming there wasn't any years-long time gap that was not mentioned within the chapter! which, it doesn’t seem like there were any MASSIVE time gaps, so I’ll be using those ages for calculating.

so, what all this means is that we are (roughly) 44 years into the past at the moment! previous info about the war of loid and yor's childhoods puts it at around 20 years old, so from where we are in the backstory, we still have roughly 20 more years before Luwen is attacked — clearly, because this first war has already ended with donovan still in school.

while we don't have loid's age, we do have yor's, who is 27 years old — meaning she was born around the time of henry being 39 years old, aka clearly neither loid nor yor have been born yet as of the events of chapter 99. too into the past for now!

now, how am i gonna get donovan's age out of all this?

simple! henry's his teacher and has a talk with him after his jail time.

like I mentioned previously, I shall be sticking to 22 for henry’s age here. it may not be fully correct, it may be a year or two off because we aren’t given concrete details on exactly how long he was in jail, so just take it with a grain of salt! it's only going to remain as a rough estimate until we get a definitive answer on donovan's age.

so! henry has a talk with donovan, but the conversation itself, while very important for the plot and especially for our understanding of donovan’s character, is irrelevant for this conversation. no, what's crucial here is what henry is holding. endo even highlights it by focusing an entire larger panel on it!

it's a history textbook for year 7 students!

it being a history textbook is very poignant for the conversation they're having, but the reason this is important to me is because it's very clearly a year 7 textbook.

now, i don't know how much of eden academy's curriculum is based on the uk! but because pretty much all of the architecture of it is based on eton college and endo has literally just returned from a london trip where he showed us he visited a kindergarten, so i think that's grounds enough for me to assume eden academy's year 7 is generally populated by children between 11 and 12 years old. luckily for me, that seems to be the general age for germany's secondary school year 7 too, so even if it's not the british one, it's still close enough!

with all that being said, if donovan is, say, 12 in that moment and henry is 22, that means there is a 10 year difference between the two of them, which, drum roll please, means donovan desmond is 56 years old when our story's events take place! assuming the war of loid's and yor's childhoods took place exactly 20 years ago (when yor was 7 and henry was 46), this would make him around 36 years old when he became ostania's prime minister! it would also mean he had damian at 50 years old, and if demetrius is 12 right now, that would mean he was born when donovan was 44 years old (and his birth would’ve been in the last years of the war).

so, rough events timeline based on all that, focusing on ages!

66 years ago: Henry Henderson is born.

63 years ago: Martha Marriott is born.

~56 years ago: Donovan Desmond is born.

49 years ago: Martha (14) transfers to Eden and meets Henry (17)

47 years ago: Henry (19) graduates Eden.

44 years ago: Henry (22) joins Eden as a teacher, in the same year becomes Donovan Desmond’s (~12) history teacher. Martha (19) graduates Eden and joins the Women’s Defense Auxiliary.

~44 years ago: Martha (~19) is presumed dead. Henry (~22) faces jail time. The war ends, and he marries.

27 years ago: Yor is born. At that time, Henry is 39, Martha is 36, and Donovan is 29.

~27 years ago. [REDACTED] is also born. Same as above, just approximate this time!

~20 years ago: Second war begins. Yor and [REDACTED] are ~7, Henry is ~46, Martha is ~43, Donovan is ~36. Yuri is born.

~12 years ago: Demetrius is born. Donovan is ~44, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~15, Henry is ~54, Martha is ~51, Yuri is ~8.

~10 years ago: Second war ends. Demetrius is ~2, Donovan is ~46, Yor and [REDACTED] are ~17, Henry is ~56, Martha is ~53, Yuri is ~10.

6 years ago: Damian is born (and most other kids in his and Anya’s grade). Demetrius is ~6, Donovan is ~50, Henry is 60, Martha is 57, Yor is 21, Twilight is ~21, Yuri is 14.

5-4 years ago: Anya is born. Damian (etc.) are 1-2, Demetrius is 7-8, Donovan is ~51-52, Henry is 61-62, Martha is 58-59, Yor is 22-23, Twilight is ~22-23, Yuri is 15-16.

1 year ago: Yuri (19) becomes part of the SSS. Anya is 3-4, Damian (etc.) is 5, Demetrius is 10-11, Donovan is ~55, Henry is 65, Martha is 62, Yor is 26, Twilight is ~26.

I HOPE THAT HELPS PUT THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE?? melinda is not included bc we have nothing to go off of for her age outside of purely subjective things like her appearance.

super glad endo included the year 7 thing JAKLSDFKLSD

anyway thank you for reading!!! :DD

[jozor-johai]

This is just a short note I will expand on elsewhere, but GRRM has this somewhat infamous quote about LOTR, about what to do with the orcs after the story ends. This is about rulership—what happens after the conquest?

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Part of what I love to death about ASOIAF is that it seems fundamentally more interested in these questions than the excitement of the conquest itself.

I see this quote brought up about the Others every once in a while, but I also think that we might be seeing one iteration of this idea with Dany in Meereen and the children of the slavers:

“The Sons of the Harpy are laughing in their pyramids,” Skahaz said, just this morning. “What good are hostages if you will not take their heads?” In his eyes, she was only a weak woman. Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing,” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.” (ADWD Dany IV)

There are obvious differences—for a start, humans have the potential to grow up to be anything, rather than the known entity of the inherent evil when it comes to orcs.

In an ASOIAF-relevant context, though, the question is similar: you won, do you eradicate your enemies? Their remaining families? What if it looks like a direct path to peace for those you were fighting for? “What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children?”

Considering that slavery is some of the clearest evil we’ve seen in the books thus far, I think this is one way GRRM is be bringing his thoughts on fantasy rulership to a more human context in ASOIAF.

The issue of letting the children live (or not) also makes for another very interesting parallel between Dany and Robert Baratheon, who is another key figure in ASOIAF’s exploration for how one rules after the battle has been won. Barristan makes the connection nearly explicitly for the reader, standing up for Ned’s name:

“Your Grace,” said Selmy, “Eddard Stark played a part in your father’s fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand.” (ADWD Dany II)

Robert was faced with the same choice and, over the course of his reign, has been given two different takes, one to start his reign and one at the end of it. Robert’s peace was bought with the blood of Rhaegar’s children, the young Aegon and Rhaenys, delivered—albeit unsolicited—by the Lannisters, to cement Robert’s legitimacy and their own stake in his rule. At the end of his reign, Robert is faced with the premise of a new Targaryen baby being born and Ned offers an contrary opinion much like Dany’s own (in spirit if not in allegiance):

“Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?”

There’s plenty more to be said, but I just want to point out this angle for interpreting the GRRM LOTR quote. For one, sometimes people take issue with how literally GRRM himself is enacting his criticisms (saying things like, 'we never see Robert's tax policy either')—but this is a great example of how GRRM can raise a criticism that fits for a different series and make it work within his own world by adjusting the circumstances.

Also, I think that for discussions that attempt to predict where the story will go from here based on comments like this from GRRM, it’s important to see where GRRM is already exploring these ideas. In ASOIAF, this sort of application doesn’t require this idea to be explored with some kind of similarly-undying evil like the orcs or like Sauron, GRRM is applying these ideas to much more human evils, like slavery, and much more human applications, like any kind of military victory.

[wellofdean]

Here's what sticks in my craw: why ON EARTH does fanon imagine that Cas has 'self-esteem issues' and experiences his love for Dean as a wet, miserable kind of yearning? What is it about any part of anything that happens on Supernatural makes anyone think that Cas, a cosmic, Eldritch being, a warrior of god, who literally hung the stars and has existed for a bazillion years, is reduced to teenage angst by Dean's pussy?

Like, when Cas says "the one thing I want I know I can't have" why do y'all think it's a piece of Dean's ass? Why does ANYONE think Cas doesn't know Dean loves him? Dean has shown Cas he loves him with literally everything he has again and again and again. Even the way Dean feels like Cas can absorb his anger is Dean showing Cas love and trust. Cas and Dean have chosen each other, forgiven each other, and been the only reliable thing in each others' lives over, and over and over again. Cas fucking knows that Dean loves him. Cas can literally hear Dean's thoughts, and feel his yearning. Cas was only saying the quiet part out loud when he said he loved Dean, because it was already obvious! If there was anyone feeling wet and lovesick, it would be DEAN, if he ever had a break in the battle to fucking feel things, which he did not.

Like, hear me out: what if the one thing Cas knows he can't have is the one thing he knows he signed over to the empty? His happiness, and by extension, Dean's, because he knows Dean loves him? What if Cas is saying: I know I can't have this thing I want for myself: to be the one to MAKE YOU HAPPY, but I can save you, and maybe Cas's belief in Dean is such that he still hopes and believes Dean will find a way to make himself happy if he lives.

After Cas's death, Dean is trying to live for him. Trying to be what Cas believed he was. It's what CANONICALLY gives Dean the strength to defeat Chuck by not killing him! And, after Dean's death, he CANONICALLY goes in search of happy endings. Like... THAT IS EXPLICITLY STATED.

I AM HAVING AN ALL CAPS MOMENT, SO SUE ME.

Guys, Cas is not a wet, yearning baby who needs Dean to say or do ANYTHING to validate his love. HE KNOWS. He is a being of unimaginable age and power. He is not beleaguered by self-esteem issues, or the need to tongue-wrestle Dean. Like, he might WANT TO, but he CANONICALLY does not need to in order to experience a happiness so complete that it puts paid to his deal. His happiness is THAT NOW DEAN ALSO KNOWS, and he can tell Dean why, and show him who he is in the mirror of that love.

Also, he is not dead, he is just on another plane of existence, and neither is Dean. Cas is a profoundly unselfish badass. He is not fucking PINING. He made a play, the best one he had. He is a strategist, and he knows Dean BY HEART.

[jackdaw-kraai]

I think there’s something rather strange going on with all the folks who insist that the Jedi Order in the PT was right and didn’t forbid love and Anakin should just have followed their teachings when the whole point of the prequels is that they are prequels. They come before the OT, and the OT proves the Jedi wrong. They literally do not make sense if they don’t do that.

Luke, in the original trilogy, gains his ultimate triumph, his ultimate victory, because he loved in defiance of the teachings of the old Order. He quite literally had the ghosts of the past telling him, explicitly and without ambiguity, that he has to put his love for his father aside and kill him, as is the duty of a Jedi. Luke has the weight of millennia of teachings weighing down on his shoulders, telling him they knew and know better than a young, inexperienced man barely out of his teenager years. That he should follow their teachings or be destroyed. That is an immense weight to carry, and many people would and explicitly have given in to it in-universe. What are your feelings and ideals in the face of such immense legacy, after all?

But Luke doesn’t give in.

He doesn’t bend.

He says “I may be young, and I may be new, but I believe to my heart and soul that love matters more than this legacy. Matters more than your teachings.” And he says this to the ghosts of his mentors. That is such a powerful moment and one I can’t believe George Lucas didn’t create deliberately for even a second. This young man, being told he has to kill or die trying for a system that is dead or dying itself, that couldn’t survive itself, and refusing to do so. He is the living refusing to continue the violence of a dead generation. He is the young man refusing the draft into a war the old generation started, saying “peace and love matters more than you being right.” He is the embodiment of breaking the cycle.

And the movies vindicate him.

The main villain vindicates him with his last dying breath.

Darth Vader, dying, says “You were right.” and admits he and his were wrong. The main antagonist, Luke’s nemesis, in the face of his son’s immense, defiant love, gives way and does the impossible: he comes back to the light and dies a Jedi. The very thing the old Order says was impossible.

They were wrong. They have to be. The narrative demands it, the movies don’t make sense without it.

The solution was never to continue the cycle of the old Order, or Luke would have failed there, would have failed when he said “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” And claimed that defiant, deviant, condemned definition of being a Jedi over the one presented to him by the Grandmaster of the old Order. If the old Order was right, Luke would have to be wrong. Be wrong about love, be wrong about laying down the sword, be wrong about refusing to fight. He would have to be wrong.

But the old Order is dead, explicitly killed by a monster, in some part, of their own making. It’s members only existing as bones in the ground or ghosts speaking from beyond the grave. They did not deserve it, it should not have been inflicted on them, but the narrative is clear on this: “The old way is dead, and was dying for a long time before that. Long live the new.”

Luke is that new. Luke is the breaking of the cycle, the reforging of swords into ploughs, the extended hand. Luke says “I don’t care how much I was hurt, I refuse to hurt you back, and you don’t need to hurt me either.”

“We can end this together and choose love instead.”

And Darth Vader, killer of the Jedi, End of the Order, lays down his arms as well, and reaches back as Anakin, saying “You were right.”

It wasn’t Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Qui-Gon, or even Ahsoka who achieved the ultimate victory in the end, following the tenants of the old Order. It was Luke. Young, inexperienced Luke, who saw that the age of legacy handed to him was only history, that the sword handed to him as his life was only a tool, and that the decrees of the dead were only advice. And he took it all, said “thank you for your experience, but I’ve got it from here,” and laid it all down to instead extend an open hand towards his enemy.

And his victory, his ultimate triumph, his vindication, was that he was proven right when his enemy reached back and became just another person. Just another person, just like him.

The Jedi did not deserve what happened to them, and they did not deserve to die. But the story is clear on this: the Jedi of old were wrong, and the Jedi of new, the Last Jedi, was right. No sword or death will ever end the rule of the sword or end the bloodshed. But love?

Love can ignite the stars.

[hauntedjellyfishwitch-blog]

First off your writing is incredible. I was in literal tears reading your Daryl fic.

But I thought I'd send in a request, a jealous Daryl. Doesnt have to be established reader, pretty easy. I just like it when he's all riled up. 😂 Please and thank you

Jealousy

Summary: He could have just told her, couldn’t he? That would have been simple. He’d had to yell at her instead though, because Daryl can never do things the usual way round. Hand down her skirt and about to run away for the second time really was more his style.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader (No use of Y/N)

TW: Nervous!Daryl. Angst. Fluff. Friends to lovers. Alexandria era. Vague, very short smut.

A/N: Thank you for this request and the beautiful compliment! I may have rushed the editing a little so if you notice any errors please tell me!

It’s not that she’s been avoiding him, it’s the complete opposite, she’s absolutely, inarguably, infuriatingly normal. He’s clawing at the walls of his own brain and she’s acting as if everything is fine. Maybe it is, he thinks, maybe she’s over it, maybe she’s been over it since the second he screwed it up and he’s the only one still hanging on to whatever it was in the first place. He can’t even claim he’s hanging on to much, they’d barely even kissed and it was months ago, but he hadn’t exactly been good at this kind of thing before the world threw a damn apocalypse into the mix.

He’d loved her since the moment he’d heard her laugh. He’d found her in a cabin in the woods on a run, just after Woodbury had fallen, back when the prison was still strong. He didn’t want to bring her back, one more mouth to feed, one more person to keep an eye on, but she’d saved him from a rogue walker he hadn’t seen coming, shrugged like it was nothing, like she’d have done it for anyone. She’d offered him food and water, a rundown but relatively safe place to lay low for a few hours, she was kind. The words were tumbling from his lips before he’d really thought about them.

He’d avoided her for a good while, despite her efforts to befriend him, he’d lost so much already he didn’t want to let her in. But then he’d said something sarcastic, something snappy and prissy and she’d laughed; an honest to goodness belly laugh that had her head throwing back and him smiling from the side of his mouth despite himself and something deep in his chest felt warm.

So he’d loved her, quietly and from a distance. Safe. Until she’d kissed him.

He watches as she laughs, the same laugh, big and warm and real. It’s not aimed at him, and he hates it. After he’d run away from her, he worried he wouldn’t hear it again, but he’d been wrong, and this was worse. He taps his fingers against his thigh, trying to keep a scowl from his face. Failing. He thinks steam would come out of his ears if it were within the realm of possibility.

He’s always too late. Always takes too long to get comfortable. Always spends so long waiting that he misses out on the thing he wanted, and she’s not a thing but his blood is fucking boiling. At the man she’s talking to, at himself, at her too if he’s a little honest.

The man, who’s name he doesn’t know and now never wants to, is handsome. If you’re into that suburban, well groomed, boring kind of thing. He has a punchable face. Daryl is not allowed to punch people unless its necessary anymore, Rick has told him that explicitly but surely flirting with his…flirting with the woman he’s in lo…flirting with her makes it necessary.

He can’t stand the thought that he might not be the last person to kiss her lips. He can’t stand looking any longer, but he doesn’t mean for his knife to clatter loudly on the floor as he tries to flee. He doesn’t dare turn around, but he’d be able to tell she was looking at him even in pitch black. Knows she’s watching the solid, tense set of his shoulders as he retreats.

-

She startles at the sight of him sitting on her porch, quickly schooling her face into the nonchalance she’s been practicing around him since they arrived. It was easy enough, on the road, to pretend he hadn’t hurt her. They were so busy trying to survive, so busy being busy that she could avoid an inevitable conversation where she’d had to apologise for getting their wires crossed.

But since they’ve been behind the walls of Alexandria? She can’t stop herself from searching him out, finding excuses to be near him, trying to act like they were back at the prison. Friends. She can do friends. She has been absolutely nailing being just friends, as long as she can ignore the tightness in her chest and the way she feels like she’s going to cry every time she walks away. Friends.

She flips the knife in her hand with ease, shielding his hand from the blade as she passes it back to him. He nods his thanks as he squints up at her.

“What crawled up your ass tonight?” She asks, but there’s a teasing smile on her face as leans against the railing to her house. The porch light is dim, warm golden yellow illuminating them. Daryl hasn’t been one for a lot of words in a long time, but he intends to bat the question away, distract her with something funny, something acerbic but good natured. Friendly, he can do friendly. He can’t, could barely do it on the road after everything happened. Now though, when she’s showered and brushed her hair and dressed up, lit up by a damn porch light? He doesn’t stand a chance.

“Dun’ kiss him”

“What the fuck?”

Fists clenching to calm himself down, unfurling them when he feels more grounded, he looks up at her again, daring to lock his eyes onto hers.

“Ya like him…tha’ guy?” He tries to keep his voice steady, hopes she doesn’t understand he’s begging her to say no, begging for her to give him a chance, but how many can one man have?

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Dun’ kiss him, please” He asks again, with a shake of his head, knocking his hair in front of his eyes as the ground in front of him becomes the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. She sighs quietly, but the sound reverberates in his brain, he can hear the disappointment that weighs it down, the disappointment he’d hoped to avoid by avoiding talking about this thing between them entirely.

“I’m not having this conversation with you on the porch” She pushes herself off the railing, turning to open the front floor. She means for him to leave but he follows her inside, tapping his fingers nervously against his thigh as he closes the door behind him. Every part of his body is telling him to run.

“I know I ain’t got no right t’ ask”

“No, you don’t. Why are you asking?”

“‘cause I can’t stand it”

“Why do you care?”

“’cause ya shouldn’t be wit’ him!”

“Who should I be with then, Daryl? Huh?” He doesn’t respond, not that she expects him to, head hanging low toward the ground “You have no answer, because it’s not you, is it? You didn’t want me!”

“I didn’t-what?”

He’d tried to make it obvious, had given her extra food, had nudged her shoulder with his, had talked to her more than anyone else. But she’d tried to kiss him and he’d fled, had retreated safely back into the comfort of his walls. Then he’d come back. He’d kissed her and again he’d fled. Daryl Dixon is the human embodiment of emotional whiplash. He knows he’s not easy, but he thought at least he’d been clear, he can’t imagine the way he looks at her has ever been subtle.

“I did want ya”

Her mind thinks over the weeks he’s been standoffish, the time he’s spent avoiding her touches, thinks back the first week they’d arrived here and he’s barely spoken a word, all the while watching her with an intensity that would have been uncomfortable if she hadn’t wanted his attention.

“I can’t do this, you can’t play with my head because you’re jealous all of a sudden”

“Ain’t jealous” He argues, knowing they both know he’s lying, but he still, even now, won’t let himself be vulnerable. “I know I fucked up, ‘kay? I know, but I’m ‘ere now!”

He snarls, frustrated and bordering on vicious, practically diving towards her as his hands grip her hips tight enough to bruise. He smashes his lips against hers, unpractised and clumsily before his brain catches up and he goes to pull away. Her response is so fast he doesn’t get a chance, dragging him back in as his brain shuts down.

The kiss is hard, angry and fast, all hip bones pressing into hip bones and teeth clacking against teeth. It’s not the romantic, affectionate start she was hoping for. It’s not the gentle steady and slow he was. She’s angry, he is too she can feel it in his body as he presses it against her.

The room spins, air thick and foggy with months’ worth of frustration, tension so thick it could be cut, it’s only when he swallows a heady, deep moan from her that he realises he needs more. Tongue sweeping into her mouth he grips the fabric of her skirt in his hand, bunching it up until he can reach an insistent, rough calloused hand inside her underwear, ripping his lips away from hers to heave a breath in. She’s soaked, dripping around his fingers and he’ll have time to be absolutely fucking floored by that when he recounts this later. His forehead sticks to hers as she moans.

It’s not that he hasn’t had trysts before, it’s just that they were short and unimportant, he’s barely been confident enough to use his hands. He wants to touch her in the right way, wants to know what he’s doing but she’s snaking a hand into his trousers and wrapping her fingers around his cock so thinking isn’t the top of his priorities right now.

It feels incredible, and in the vague recess of his brain he thinks he should have done this at a pace he'd be more comfortable with but he hasn’t done this in years, and barely successfully then so its not long before he comes all over her hand, whining as his head dips down to pant heavily against her collarbone. His fingers still, embarrassed and suddenly full of crippling self-doubt. She knows he’s going to remove them about a second before he does.

A thud echoes through the suddenly too big room as she tips her head back to hit the wall behind her.

“You leaving?” She lets out an incredulous laugh, hurt, betrayed, surprisingly unsurprised. The zip on his trousers seems louder than anything she’d yelled at him less than an hour before. It feels like an eternity before she lowers her head to look at him, doesn’t bother to mask the absolute disappointment on her features.

“I-uh-yeah-I”

She can practically see the walls slamming back up around him, the walls she’s been watching for weeks. A tear rolls down her cheek as he turns away from her, heading towards the front door.

“You don’t get another chance with me, Daryl” the finality in her voice makes him pause, hand on the doorknob. She sighs, hating that she’s about to give him the grace she is “You need to make up your mind, because I’m not waiting for you, not again. If you’re not certain by tomorrow you need to leave me alone”

The shaky nod from him is so small its almost imperceptible.

-

She’s not expecting the knock on her door as soon as the sun is up, really she isn’t. The whole night has been sleepless and filled to the brim with dread, knowing for sure that he wants her but fully believing he will never be able to let himself have her. She isn’t unaware of Daryl’s tendency to self-destruct. Maybe this is it, she thinks, maybe he values her enough as a friend if nothing else, to tell her face to face, but he’d never been able to before and the tiniest hint of hope lights her up as she treads carefully down the stairs.

Daryl stands there with a small, nervous but hopeful smile on his face. The hope hasn’t missed him, either. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, so out of his depth he might as well be drowning, but the knowledge that she wants this too means he’d rather fumble his way through this with her than do well without her.

“I’m a’ idiot”

“Yes you are” She laughs, setting him alight on the inside. The laugh that started al of this, almost. Doubt underneath her voice is the thing that finally settles it for him, makes him pull her towards him, gentle this time, the way he’d wanted. He’ll never let her doubt his feelings even when he doubts himself.

“I always wanted ya” he murmurs against her lips before closing the distance.

“You’re not going to run away again?”

“Ain’t runnin’, ain’t ever runnin’ again”

[blorger]

Hello and welcome to today's instalment of "Harry doesn't know what he's feeling when he's feeling it". I'm in the middle of going through the books (for nerd reasons) and I stumbled upon this passage:

And the thing is: this happens in book 1, right at the beginning of the school year. Not only have Draco and Harry interacted very little so far but the inciting incident that made Harry react this way is peculiar.

You see, Harry here is thinking back on his first ever potions lesson, where Snape tried to humiliate him at every turn. In that scene Draco does not interact with Harry, all he does is be a gleeful spectator to the dressing down and also make potions. Literally.

Draco mentions in the scene:

The slytherin boys (or at the very least the ones Harry knows so far) are amused by Snape's roasting of Harry

2. second verse, same as the first

3. Draco is good at potions, this irritates Harry

That's literally everything. All Draco is guilty of here is being present for Harry's humiliation and being competent at something Harry is trying for the first time. Yes, he's laughing at Harry's misfortune but this is not described as a performance for his benefit (unlike in later books where Draco will make sure Harry sees him laughing at his misfortune). Harry sees Draco's reaction (and Crabbe and Goyle's) but are they the only ones laughing or are they the only ones Harry is paying attention to? Harry explicitly says, in the second passage I mentioned, that he tries not looking at Draco+ Crabbe&Goyle; this to me implies that he's especially conscious of them and their reaction.

As I remarked here about their very first interaction, Harry's feelings towards Draco are, from the get-go, more complicated and nebulous than one might think. If I had to name what sentiments Draco inspires in Harry in these first interactions, I'd say a non insignificant one is inadequacy.

We can see that during the first potions lesson, and again at the thought of a shared flying lesson, Harry very much dislikes the thought of being seen failing by Draco . Why, on Harry's very first night at Hogwarts he has a nightmare and you know who's featured prominently in it, witnessing Harry in an embarrassing situation and laughing about it? None other than Draco Lucius Malfoy.

I find this interesting because Harry claims his feelings towards Draco are similar to what he feels towards Dudley (at this point in the narrative he's remarked on it more than once) but Dudley's actions towards Harry are intentional (pre-Hogwarts dudders loves bullying Harry) whereas Draco has yet to do anything to Harry other than try really badly to befriend him (and be stung by his rejection).

Furthermore Harry, from what we see from his interactions with Dudley, does not seem to be at all self conscious of the way he behaves in front of his cousin nor does he measure his achievements by comparing them with Dudley's. I'd say his general attitude toward Dudley is dismissive, in complete contrast with the competitiveness he feels with Draco yet, somehow, Harry keeps associating the two in his mind.

There's this element of self-fulfilling prophecy in Harry and Draco's interactions (no doubt because jkr is telling us to dislike Draco before showing us why) that I never noticed before. Harry dislikes Draco at first sight (more accurately, he's unsettled by him and decide this means he dislikes him) so he's going to look for other things to dislike in order to reinforce his bias:

Draco receives packages from home? Wow, he's spoiled just like Dudley, nevermind the fact that countless other students are undoubtedly receiving just as many packages.

Draco is a competent beginner potions student? Oh wow, it's just like that git to succeed in a class taught by another git (essentially: if you're favoured by a bad person that means you're bad too)

And because these reactions don't happen in a vacuum, Draco notices them, which fuels HIS complicated emotions vis-à-vis Harry. Add all of this to the feelings of rejection he has no doubt been stewing on and voilà, you have the birth of Draco's decision to be Harry's enemy (since he can't be his friend).

tldr: Harry indadvertedly started the rivalry with Draco and Draco followed suit because negative attention is still attention.

[betweencomfortandchaos]

the way some people talk about luke & nicola is disgusting.

at first, the "bridgerton glow up" was a fun joke, but now people are taking it too far. it is literally just a better haircut and better wardrobe that is all the glow up is. i saw someone call luke "ugly and fat." as if he isn't a real human being. just straight up called him ugly and fat and then proceeded to objectify him in the trailer and say he "redeemed himself." respectfully, you can fuck all the way out of here with that. that is such a fucked up thing to say. and i wasn't online when it happened but apparently, these fuckwads are the reason why luke doesn't smile with his teeth much anymore? idk if that's true, but if it is you are a villain. an actual villain. you bullied someone into not smiling, are you proud of yourself?

and nicola. i don't even want to quote the things i've seen said about her. she is a queen. a queen. and yeah, people bring up her body and her looks and say she doesn't deserve to be the lead. the casual fatphobia is disgusting, to say the least. nicola has literally been promoting 3 things at the same time, and she has not lagged on either project. she is the reason we have bts from filming and are getting important moments from rmb. she is a professional and she has a heart of gold. she is also chronically on line (affectionately) so she does see all the shit you antis post. and, i can't even believe i need to say this, that shit hurts. because she is a human being. she has explicitly stated, multiple times, that she wants the focus to be on her work and not on her body. thinking caps on: why do you think that is?

they are both human beings with real feelings. no one is saying you have to love penelope or colin or polin, but they are fictional characters. they won't get affected by some of the fucked up shit yall say. but luke and nicola are real human beings. you can have opinions on them, we all do, but if it isn't positive, maybe shut the fuck up?

it also needs to be said that a lot of the hate comes from people who are fans of kanthony. i usually wouldn't call them out but name but it's true. the person who called luke ugly and fat had anthony bridgerton in her user name. she also had an israeli flag in her bio but that's another rant. most of the hate i see about polin and luke and nic come from people who stan kanthony and/or are huge fans of jonny and/or simone. and that is 50 shades of fucked up. do you think they want fans like that? fans who will say disgusting things about their friends/colleagues and then turn around and praise them? jonny literally calls luke his little brother. no one is saying you have to love polin, but why do you need to say this shit? why can't you just quietly stan kanthony and go about your lives? why do you feel the need to bring down not only fictional characters, but real people?

[luniviravosshipper]

Okay, so this is going to be a very low effort post because it’s late where I am and I’m tired, but I honestly really want to talk about this so I’m going to anyways.

So. About Sol Regem eating Pharos.

This is most definitely one of my most favorite scenes and moments in the show for many different reasons. But one of the many aspects I thought was great about it was that it did the opposite of ‘tell no show’.

The show has been hinting for ages how the dragons see the humans and elves as ants for them to stomp on or to toss around. It’s always been implied or explicitly said. There’s several moments in the show where we see the dragons threatening the lives of the main cast whenever they are even slightly displeased with them. All in all, they see them as just small things that they can disregard the lives of whenever.

Although they perhaps have more of a bias against humans, in general they look down upon both humans and elves and view them as less then. They don’t value their lives because they find their lives to be so short and them to be so minuscule in comparison to them.

And yet when we finally get to see a dragon prove this sentiment by literally eating someone, they end up choking. It’s only fitting for a dragon who believes himself to be so powerful and shows absolutely no remorse for harming the lives of others around him to end up dying literally by doing just that. His pride and arrogance, as Aaravos calls it, finally caught up to him. And in a way, as awful as it probably was for Aaravos to basically sacrifice Pharos here, it helped prove a point. It proved Aaravos’s whole argument regarding the dragons, and how selfish and apathetic they are. How they do not care about life. In this situation in particular, Sol Regem did this knowing that Pharos wasn’t the real body of Aaravos and that he was only manifesting himself through him and still ate him rashly and in a fit of rage, not even considering for a moment that he’s hurting this other person and not even remotely doing anything to harm Aaravos. If anything, again, he only helped his argument.

(I can talk about this more in another post, but I just realized that it’s also ironic how much Sol Regem hated humans because he thought they took life and showed no care for it when that’s literally all that he does. And I think that specifically is actually what Aaravos was kind of trying to prove all along. His personal vendetta against him started off with him wanting to get back at him for ratting out his daughter for sharing magic with humans, but I can imagine that after he discovered dark magic it started to shift and became more so about proving to Sol Regem that he simply had no place in general to judge dark magic or humans who use it.)

This works very well thematically and really helps to better shape the viewers understanding of the role the dragons take in the world building of this universe. As these creatures who have been put into positions of power throughout Xadia’s history, not because of what knowledge or wisdom they have or because of some special capabilities that they possess that others don’t, but because they’re so feared. They’re these big, angry, and violent creatures that everyone has just grown too fearful of to actually face.

And when we’re finally shown why they have been so feared, we see one of them face the consequences of his own actions within the very same moment he acts. And it’s great.

[starcurtain]

What do you think Aventurine would be like as a boss?

Aventurine's first character story tells us that people both outside the IPC and internal to the Strategic Investment Department are explicitly racist toward him, so I would say first that I suspect Aventurine's team is much, much smaller than other Stonehearts like Topaz. For example, we constantly see Topaz's dumb "support squad" following her around in most of the events she shows up in, while we've never been introduced to a single "Aventurine support squad" member.

My suspicion is that, between the rampant racism and the undoubtedly common rumors about Aventurine's dangerous behavior, very few people are even willing to be put on his team in the first place. I suspect he's much more likely to be paired up with one or two "strategic partners" (like Ratio) and sent to handle things that way, rather than actually having a large group of underlings he directly supervises.

But just logistically speaking I'm sure he does have a few underlings, and I think... He's probably a very difficult person to work for, for a couple reasons:

He will almost certainly beat assholes to the punch. If a majority of the people who have been assigned to work with him don't want to be there, you can bet he's not going to wait around for new people to prove they are racist garbage. I imagine that, for the most part, he's off-putting and offensive to new people from the get-go. You ask which desk is yours and he just goes "Oh, feel free to set your things anywhere!" then turns around like: "Wowwww. Jim, this rookie is trying to steal the desk you've had for ten years! How inconsiderate our new friend is proving to be~!" New people on his team probably have the worst few weeks of their lives. (Because... If people are going to hate him on principle alone, he might as well give them a reason, right?) However, this has the effect of weeding out most of the people who are incapable of dealing with Aventurine's antics, so I imagine that the few who persevere through the hazing are probably genuinely decent folks. Those that make it past the initial "Let's see how much you hate Sigonians and disrespect me personally" vibe check probably end up on Aventurine's good side, and I think he eventually eases off his newbies after a while. (Not before they've proven their exceedingly high tolerance for shenanigans and even higher ceiling for shock factor, though. If a new employee makes it past the first month of working for Aventurine, literally nothing else will ever phase them. An elephant-sized Warp Trotter could warp them all six galaxies over and they'd just be like "Anyone got a working cell? I need to tell my babysitter I won't be back by 9.")

I think he's just never there. Absentee boss in the extreme. It's not that he ever slacks or doesn't do the work--it's just that he's constantly going off and doing the missions all on his own. It doesn't matter how many times the higher-ups assign him to do a team task, tell him he has to take the full squad... He just scampers off and does the deal entirely on his own, comes back covered in blood, and is like "Hey guys, I took care of the problem; enjoy some comp time on me!" I don't think he drags his average-level underlings into his dangerous gambles; I think he just does all the work with their clients by himself or with a high-caliber partner. You would think this would make him a great boss to work for, but I implore to put yourself in such an employee's shoes: You go into the office every morning only to see your to-do list is empty. Your boss isn't there to give you any new direction. After twiddling your thumbs for four hours, you find out the reason he isn't in the office this morning is that he's recovering from betting he could take an entire pack of Borisin in a fist fight. He's not in the hospital because of the fight (which he won). He's in the hospital because he was then promptly shot in the back by the guy he was betting with. Why is your life like this? Why must you be subjected to the soap opera of your boss's own self-destructive spiral?

Even when he's around, he's probably weirdly awkward. Don't get me wrong, I bet when he's in a good mood he throws all kinds of extravagant parties in the office, and his employees would never lack for bonuses and perks. But I think he has never really bothered to learn--or perhaps simply does not care--about normal managerial behaviors and boundaries. Like, you slip up and tell him your mother-in-law is in the hospital. He comes back five minutes later to tell you he's just bought six bouquets (sent from your address), commissioned a personally embossed card for her with your monogram, and contracted the services of the best-reviewed individualized medical team in Pier Point under your name. He's patting himself on the back for being an incredibly thoughtful boss. You don't know how to tell him that you haven't spoken to your mother-in-law in years, not since her last attempt to poison you. Every six months he buys the whole team new cars. You have no idea what to do with all these cars. It's too many cars. Put some cars back. He calls everyone his "friend," but even after working for him for years, you still have absolutely no idea about his likes, dislikes, or hobbies outside of the IPC. You could not name his favorite food if someone put a gun to your head. Does he exist outside of the workplace? You literally can't imagine him anywhere but on a mission or at a poker table. He's constantly bringing an "I am the party!" vibe to the room, but everyone else is a bored 8-5 worker who doesn't have a drop of enthusiasm left in their veins. It's like when a singer asks the audience to cheer along with a song, but nobody in the audience makes a peep. Absolutely no one in the IPC cubicles can match his particular freak. Aventurine's a smooth-talker and a street-smart cookie for sure, but something about the way his smile looks like it's made out of plastic when anyone tries to engage him in chitchat at the water cooler gives you the vague impression that he's probably never had an actual friend in his life. If "uncanny valley" was a vibe a workplace could have, Aventurine's office would have it.

Long story longer, I think Aventurine has very few people willing to tolerate him as a boss, whether because they are racist or simply because his quirks are just too quirky. However, I like to imagine the few who have hung in there are ride or die. You know they have an "Aventurine Protection Squad" group chat. They probably all wear peacock-teal and gold accessories in solidarity. They have definitely disappeared people for talking shit on their boss before. Aventurine has no idea how much they actually like him.