#i feel like everything changes DRASTICALLY when actual children are involved.

[sketchehm]

Augh wait, completely non Canon but I just had an idea for like, if the cats were actually kids

_-_-_-_-_-_

'I have an important message for you'

The message is followed by a three minute audio.

Finally, after hours of scrubbing through months and months of massages between Sapnap and his old family, they finally found something about his mission to infiltrate Team Mafia.

(Shadoune swears Sapnap wasn't on his phone this much. How did he find the time to text these two so much? How many times do you need to text someone a reminder to eat in one day??)

The phone is already connected to a speaker so they can all hear everything without having to circle around it, so there's only hesitante stopping them from pressing play.

This is what Sapnap was sent here to do. This spells out exactly the ways he was ordered to betray them.

Shadoune presses play.

"Hi Dad! Hiiiiiiiii" Two children voices come from the speaker, "We miss you lotssss!! I got the tiara you sent me! Me and Patches are matching now, we look like sisters!"

"Of course we do, we are sisters stupid."

Another child's voice sounds out, a little father away and a little deeper

One of the first two kids giggles, and there's a shuffle before the other's voice sounds again

"When are you coming back home? Pops and Papa say we should take down the Christmas decorations, but I like them!! Milo don't steal the phone! I'm asking Dad when he's coming home! Oh yeah... Dad we miss you a lot, will you be done with work soon?"

"You two..."

There's two tiny sad sighs

"We know... Be careful Dad, we love you lots! You need to tell us all the cool work stories when you get home! Yeah, we need like, 5 whole bed time stories when you come back! Love you bye! Byeeeeeeeee-"

The audio ends. There's pure silence in the room, a variation of shell-shocked faces all around. Serpias looks a little teary, and no one is quick enough to grab him before he rushes off, thankfully up to his room instead of to the basement.

"Creo..." Rich starts awkwardly, "Creo que eso es suficiente por hoy."

_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Honestly Serpias would probably run straight to Sapnap, but if anyone ever brought up his kids while he was in the basement he would murder them with his bare hands and I didnt know how to write that right now so... Serpias! To your room!

Serpias beloved 🥺

He just wants the best for Sapnap always and forever....

Serpias after going through every crisis and still not thinking straight, he makes a quick pitstop, shoving something in his pocket before going down to the basement in the dead of night.

Sapnap is actually awake with Dream this time. And when they see Serpias enter... Eyes bloodshot, sniffling, overall looking terrible.....well. Sapnap is beyond worried. He grabs Dream's arms tightly. He doesn't know what Serpias is gonna say.

"Lo siento."

It's quiet. Could barely hear it over his sniffling.

Sapnap thinks they're going to die.

Dream asks what's wrong. Tone dangerously grave.

"You....have children..."

Dream will tense. But Sapnap will be on his feet. Hands already gripping Serpias' shirt collar and slamming him against the door

"What happened with them?"

Serpias has never heard Sapnap so serious, so frightening. It's actually the first time he's heard Sapnap speak on his own without Dream.

Sapnap will scream in Serpias' face asking what happened. Threatening to make his death and everyone else's in this house slow and painful if they laid a finger on them. His eyes are wild. The kind of insane he's only witnessed watching Sapnap in the ring and taking down an opponent.

This is life or death to Sapnap he realizes.

George is waking up from the noise as Sapnap continues to yell and slam his head against the door. What happened. WHAT HAPPENED!

"NADA! SAPNAP HICIMOS NADA!"

Serpias can barely get it out. He feels dizzy. He might be bleeding.

"Then why are you sorry." Sapnap's cold tone hurts Serpias' more than scares him. Never wanting Sapnap to hate him ever. But he knew this would happen. Expected to be more than half dead by this point.

"For taking you away from them....They are alone..."

It's quiet again.

"Why are you saying this?" It's Dream. His tone is cold and calculating, something Serpias is familiar to. Welcomes it even. Something to focus on that isn't Sapnap's hatred.

"Para escaparé." He produces the keys in his pocket. They're for a car.

And Sapnap let's him go. Serpias feels really dizzy without the support now. The headache so overwhelming, he can't help close his eyes. He's out cold before he falls over.

When he wakes up he's in the infirmary with Farfa at the side of his bed. He can feel the headache of a concussion, the back of his head pounding. He notices the bandages wrapped around his head.

"Se fueron."

Serpias jumps at Farfa's voice. But once the words register, despite the incredible pain, he can't help but be relieved.

[the-far-bright-center]

Re: Obitine and Anidala

I originally wrote this in response to @marvelstars' excellent post on the subject, but I wanted to share it again because it's one of many topics in which I have a differing view from the prevailing fandom perspective.

Above all, it truly drives me nuts how the fandom pits these two relationships against each other. I'm a die-hard Anidala shipper and when I first watched TCW, I was DELIGHTED by the Obitine ship. I saw nothing about it that made me think it was supposed to be viewed as somehow 'better' or more 'ideal' than Anidala. I only ever saw it as a relationship that was more suited to Obi-Wan's character and personality. Not to mention that Padme and Satine are presented as friends who get along well and go on adventures together to right political wrongs, much in the same vein that Anakin and Obi-Wan go on their many military exploits together. The story sets them up as two couples who, in an a more ideal timeline, would be besties who go on double dates together. In my opinion, fandom's insistence on viewing them through the lens of 'which one is a 'morally better couple' is completely missing the point. Personally, I see them as two sides of the same coin.

Since @marvelstars' post was specifically about these two couples as they relate to the idea of commitment to the Jedi Order, I also focused on that angle. Imo, the way Obitine's relationship panned out made sense for their characters and context. Just like Anidala's makes sense for theirs. Obi-Wan and Satine met each other as young adults and had a whole year 'on the run' together before having to say their farewells, whereas Anakin and Padme first meet as children, then re-meet and fall in love over a short span of time, and then suddenly their world is at war and they are facing imminent, possibly indefinite, separation. That's why they marry while still remaining in their respective Jedi and Senator roles, because they feel it might be their only chance to have anything resembling the family they both long for. They understand that they might not survive the war. Whereas Obi-Wan and Satine had first met when Satine's world was already enmeshed in civil war, and then they parted once peace was reestablished and their lives were no longer in immediate danger. And when they meet again during the Clone Wars, it's a wholly different scenario and things have drastically changed (she is the head of a neutral system, he is already established as a general in a war she is opposed to). They are also older, in their 30s, while Anakin and Padme embody the headstrong impetuosity and passion of young love. So it's not as though Obi-Wan and Satine are going to drop everything and enter a committed relationship/marriage in that context in the same way Anakin and Padme do in theirs (when, notably, Anakin is still a padawan and about to be sent to the frontlines to fight in a war for the first time).

As mentioned above, when I was watching TCW I never thought that the purpose of showing both of these relationships in contrasting-parallel to one another was somehow to demonstrate that one was more 'sacrificial' for remaining in the Order and giving up the relationship while the other was more 'selfish' for trying to have both at the same time. Rather, what I feel the story is actually saying is something completely different. It's important to remember that both of these relationships involve a Jedi and the political leader to whom he had originally been assigned as a bodyguard. What is the significance of that? Well, I would argue it's more than just a romantic trope. When I watch Lucas-era Star Wars, I'm always aware that the characters have both an immediate role in-story as well as a symbolic function. Satine, a pacifist, can be seen to represent Peace. Padme, as a Senator, stands for Justice and the rights of the people. And what is it that Obi-Wan says to Luke all those years later? That the Jedi were 'the guardians of Peace and Justice in the old Republic'. This strikes me as hugely significant. Especially if we understand that the Jedi Order had lost its way as of the Prequels-era. While the fandom focuses on which couple is 'better' because of how their relationship affects each Jedi's respective commitment to the Order, I see it from a completely different angle. My understanding is that the Jedi's TRUE purpose (in relation to their role within the Republic) was actually to dedicate their lives to protecting Peace and Justice and those who truly upheld these ideals in the galaxy. Obi-Wan and Anakin's actual callings in life should have been to protect Satine and Padme, whom they loved. Whether this manifested in a more chivalric, courtly love scenario or an outright marriage is immaterial. Rather, what matters is that being a Jedi and dedicating their lives to these women due to their love for them was not incompatible with their role as protectors and defenders of the galaxy, but was in fact the truest expression of it. The so-called 'commitment' to the Order itself was never truly the point, and that's the tragedy of the Prequels-era. Because it was the Order that had by this point forbidden love and family, and which had embroiled Obi-Wan and Anakin and the rest of the Jedi in a war that went against their own principles. A war that, it could be argued, ultimately lead to the deaths of both Satine and Padme, and with them Peace and Justice—the very values that the Jedi were supposed to protect and serve.

[omnium-gatherums]

God.

So.

I had an online therapy appointment at 12pm, but I forgot about it and ended up taking some of the chocolate edibles I have until I randomly remembered and I was like shit I'm way too high I better not still be feeling this edible later when I wake up again for therapy (spoiler alert: that's exactly what happened).

I have never been more embarrassed in my entire life. I'm feeling better about it now and less ashamed and embarrassed, but I was so embarrassed and ashamed earlier.

I actually ended up sleeping through my phone alarm and she had to call me and I was like shit fuck I forgot so I was like okay I'm gonna go get my laptop and join the session.

But I could tell I was still extremely high and I could tell I was rapid switching and I knew SHE could tell I was high because it was so fucking obvious and I know therapists can tell, so I was just fully honest and explained everything to her because I figured that was the best thing I could do, I knew that it was obvious that I was high and that pretending I wasn't was only going to be worse for all of us lmfao.

And I knew that my switching was extremely obvious both because when I'm high, my switches involve much more extreme, drastic personality changes and because my amnesia is much more extreme as well, I literally have no idea what she and a different alter talked about for the few couple of minutes because then I switched again and couldn't remember anything at all that we had Just spoken about, and that was when I was like okay I'm just gonna explain everything to her, I can't pretend and hide that I'm not switching extremely drastically and that I'm not completely off my shits right now lmfao

At one point, I figured getting my tiger plushie to try to ground myself might help, but decided against it because I didn't want child alters fronting. I partially wanted to because I was curious what might happen, what child parts might front, what they might say, but I was too embarrassed and ashamed and didn't want to be even more embarrassed because my child alters are very much children in their behaviors and ways of speaking, so I really didn't want to deal with that embarrassment too.

I ended up crying a lot and basically panicking because I was so embarrassed and ashamed and I felt like I did something bad, like it was bad of me to have shown up to therapy still high. Like I felt like I was in trouble.

Anyways. Don't show up to therapy extremely high or else you will rapid switch to the astral dimension and your alters will be panicking trying to pretend to be normal and failing badly at it.

[the-far-bright-center]

Thanks for making this post! It truly drives me nuts how the fandom pits these two relationships against each other. I'm a die-hard Anidala shipper and when I first watched TCW, I was DELIGHTED by the Obitine ship. I saw nothing about it that made me think it was supposed to be viewed as somehow 'better' or more 'ideal' than Anidala. I only ever saw it as a relationship that was more suited to Obi-Wan's character and personality. Not to mention that Padme and Satine are presented as friends who get along well and go on adventures together to right political wrongs, much in the same vein that Anakin and Obi-Wan go on their many military exploits together. The story sets them up as two couples who, in an a more ideal timeline, would be besties who go on double dates together. In my opinion, fandom's insistence on viewing them through the lens of 'which one is a morally better couple' is completely missing the point. Personally, I see them as two sides of the same coin.

Since the above post is specifically about these two couples as they relate to the idea of commitment to the Jedi Order, I'll try to focus on that angle. As OP noted, the way Obitine's relationship panned out made sense for their characters and context. Just like Anidala's makes sense for theirs. Obi-Wan and Satine met each other as young adults and had a whole year 'on the run' together before having to say their farewells, whereas Anakin and Padme first meet as children, then re-meet and fall in love over a short span of time, and then suddenly their world is at war and they are facing imminent, possibly indefinite, separation. That's why they marry while still remaining in their respective Jedi and Senator roles, because they feel it might be their only chance to have anything resembling the family they both long for. They understand that they might not survive the war. Whereas Obi-Wan and Satine had first met when Satine's world was already enmeshed in civil war, and then they parted once peace was reestablished and their lives were no longer in immediate danger. And when they meet again during the Clone Wars, it's a wholly different scenario and things have drastically changed (she is the head of a neutral system, he is already established as a general in a war she is opposed to). They are also older, in their 30s, while Anakin and Padme embody the headstrong impetuosity and passion of young love. So it's not as though Obi-Wan and Satine are going to drop everything and enter a committed relationship/marriage in that context in the same way Anakin and Padme do in theirs (when, notably, Anakin is still a padawan and about to be sent to the frontlines to fight in a war for the first time).

As mentioned above, when I was watching TCW I never thought that the purpose of showing both of these relationships in contrasting-parallel to one another was somehow to demonstrate that one was more 'sacrificial' for remaining in the Order and giving up the relationship while the other was more 'selfish' for trying to have both at the same time. Rather, what I feel the story is actually saying is something completely different. It's important to remember that both of these relationships involve a Jedi and the political leader to whom he had originally been assigned as a bodyguard. What is the significance of that? Well, I would argue it's more than just a romantic trope. When I watch Lucas-era Star Wars, I'm always aware that the characters have both an immediate role in-story as well as a symbolic function. Satine, a pacifist, can be seen to represent Peace. Padme, as a Senator, can be understood to represent both Truth and Justice. And what is it that Obi-Wan says to Luke all those years later? That the Jedi were 'the guardians of Peace and Justice in the old Republic'. This strikes me as hugely significant. Especially if we understand that the Jedi Order had lost its way as of the Prequels-era. While the fandom focuses on which couple is 'better' because of how their relationship affects each Jedi's respective commitment to the Order, I see it from a completely different angle. My understanding is that the Jedi's TRUE purpose was actually to dedicate their lives to protecting Peace and Justice and those who truly upheld these ideals in the galaxy. Obi-Wan and Anakin's actual callings in life were to protect Satine and Padme, whom they loved. Whether this manifested in a more chivalric, courtly love scenario or an outright marriage is immaterial. Rather, what matters is that being a Jedi and dedicating their lives to these women due to their love for them was not incompatible with their role as protectors and defenders of the galaxy, but was in fact the truest expression of it. The so-called 'commitment' to the Order itself was never truly the point, and that's the tragedy of the Prequels-era. Because it was the Order that had by this point forbidden love and family, and which had embroiled Obi-Wan and Anakin and the rest of the Jedi in a war that went against their own principles. A war that, it could be argued, ultimately lead to the deaths of both Satine and Padme, and with them Peace and Justice—the very values that the Jedi were supposed to protect and serve.

Anakin & Padme vs Obi-Wan & Satine

I have some thoughts on both of these relationships especially because I enjoy both but I don´t like when some fans use one to put down the other in terms of their relationship with the Jedi Order

First off, Obi-Wan and Satine deciding to go on their own way because Satine had a duty to her people and Obi-Wan wanted to remain a Jedi despite loving her is totally in character to the kind of people they are and what they care for, Obi-Wan was raised at the temple, he didn´t know his birth family, the order is his world and Satine didn´t want to put him in a position of leaving his world for her world and she most probably wasn´t going to leave her duties to her destroyed planet as the heir of Mandalore, especially after a civil war.

In this I agree with the majority of fandom, in what I disagree is the fact that Satine and Obi-Wan decision not to pursue a romantic relationship is a legitimate one while Anakin and Padmé´s choice to begin one is selfish and a show of attachment, I believe both decisions and both relationships ARE legitimate, after all being a Jedi is a choice and just like Ahsoka showed, you can leave without being made an enemy of them precisely because the Order is supposed to offer this freedom.

Anakin was born in a family, he wanted to become a Jedi to be able to free the slaves on Tatooine, later he had to sacrifice this dream to remain a Jedi because freedom of slaves on Tatooine or the outer rim simply wasn´t a priority for the Jedi Order because they did mostly what the Senate asked of them and freedom in the Outer rim wasn´t something the Senate cared about at all.

In this scenario Anakin falling in love with Padmé, the girl he helped when he was a slave on Tatooine, the same one he promised to help free her planet which he ultimately did, is a good and honest feeling, just as Padmé´s auntentic feeling of wanting to have a family with Anakin once her period as Queen was done, so she could execute her plan of them going to live on Naboo once her time as a Senator was done.

Anakin´s decision to leave the order to built a life with Padmé and a family is a legitimate decision. At no point did he wish to impose his pov on the order or make them change their oppinion on marriage, his position was simple, he could not remain a Jedi if he was married to Padmé, he stayed during the clone wars to help the order but he had already decided to leave once peace was achieved and who could condemn him for that? if that decision could very well have led to him finally achieving his childhood dream of freeing the slaves once he wasn´t a subject of the Senate dictates as a Jedi? especially given Padmé´s help and influence on Naboo could have helped in achieving this and who knows, without Palpatine´s direct influence over Anakin, this could have helped fulfill the chosen one prophecy in a better context than ROTJ

In both cases, the characters are making a decision that makes sense given their background and point of view which is completely legit, even in the real world, life long compromises of the kind monks/ catholic priests make, they are made aware they have a choice if they ultimately decide to live their life as part of a family and that it´s an honest and legitimate decision, in fact catholic priests are given a whole year to decide before making their formal votes.

So in Anakin´s or Obi-Wan´s case, while the Jedi Order certainly didn´t take well seeing their members leave, it wasn´t banned, it was a legitimate decision one could take if the circunstances led to it as Ahsoka showed and I believe this is the least they can do given they take their members so young, before they are able to fully understand the decision they are making.

My two cents.

Double date by Ame

[unironicallycringe]

Hey, given Things Happening In The US, I'm feeling compelled to speak up about my story with abortion. CW for everything associated with that.

First and foremost, I am staunchly pro-choice. In spite of my emotions with it all, I'm not going to tell you to fuck off if that statement bothers you. Rather, you're free to leave in peace if that's your boundary. I don't want to waste emotional energy arguing over it. But if you'd like to continue reading, I'd just ask that you take time to examine the consequences of your worldview, and what happens to families when they're unprepared and unwilling yet are forced into the role regardless. Your view doesn't end at birth, it extends into what kind of life will result, and you should never turn away from that.

Anyways, to those who are still here, I'll be frank: I've had to undergo an abortion.

At the time, I actually had a vision of a future where I'd have children. But I'm still thankful I was able to access abortive services. I was 22 in the midst of a science degree, already shackled with tens of thousands in student loans, no long-term job prospects, no housing of my own, and in a relationship that I didn't realize was extremely unhealthy.

Now we can say "you shouldn't have ended up pregnant in the first place!" Sure. I agree with that. It doesn't really change things does it? Mistakes will happen, contraceptives will fail, etc. At best, I would've ended up a single parent. At worst, I would've brought my child into an unhealthy, unstable environment with a partner who lacked compassion. I was not ready for either choice. Pregnancy and child-raising can be a deeply spiritual, beautiful, fulfilling experience; it can be one that's horrific and filled with sickness and stress; it can be a mix of it all. Some people can make it work, and they choose to embrace it.

But that's the thing isn't it?

It's the childbearer's choice whether or not they are able to go through with it.

And I can tell you from firsthand experience, it's not a lightweight choice to make.

The circumstances of each person's life are so drastically different. There is no blanket government rule which will address each one adequately and harmlessly. It's up to that person and that person alone. All I hope for is that people have the support and love needed for whatever they choose.

For folks fighting for reproductive rights: we've been here before. It'll still be a long hard road. It's a very scary time right now and it's easy to feel helpless. But get involved and do what you can, rather than getting consumed with worry over what you can't.

To note, I will not respond to inflammatory or argumentative messages. Please don't waste your energy, it's really not worth it! It'll go straight in the trash because I love myself.

[softest-sheep]

✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰   ☾    ✰  ☾

Komahina Week Day 4 - Free Day / AU

I had finals week this week so I’m just gonna do as many of the prompts as I can, in order from which ones I have the best ideas for first.

Au Synopsis Under The Cut [Spoilers for SDR2, Nagito’s Backstory]

Here’s the basic premise. Maybe I’ll actually make it into a fanfic, but for now it’s just a synopsis:

In this AU, Hope’s Peak Academy decided to study Luck long before Nagito ever became a student there. In fact, one Ultimate Lucky Student had already graduated when Nagito was still an infant. When Nagito’s parents died, both Hope’s Peak and the Ultimate Lucky Student (Alumn?) were able to properly identify the incident as an act of Luck due to how absurd it was (I mean, a meteor just happened to take out an armed gunman on a plane, saving Nagito’s life- what are the odds). As such, he was quickly adopted by the alumn, whose Luck was able to mitigate the damage that Nagito’s own Luck would otherwise have caused.

    Nagito was raised in a loving household with a parent who supported and encouraged his interests. He was also provided with one of the Ultimate Therapists, who knew full well that Luck was a legitimate thing and would thus believe him and actually help him cope with his trauma that he endured as a result of it (rather than, say, treating it as a delusion). At the same time, his parent was able to teach him what they had learned about Luck during their time at the Academy, which gave Nagito a better understanding of his own abilities and also some semblance of control.

    Nagito was given the best possible childhood given his circumstances, and this included proper socialization. Although introverted, he made a few friends at school. One day, however, his adoptive parent took him to a party where other children would be. It was there, during a round of Hide and Seek, that he met Hajime Hinata. They chose the same hiding space. Hajime frantically told him to pick a new one, but Nagito hopped in and informed the other boy with a smug smile that nobody would find them. Then, he used his Luck to make that a reality- he simply wished for everybody to overlook their hiding spot, and it happened. After about thirty seconds, Hajime ran out of patience for being quiet and started a conversation with Nagito. He had a gamegirl with him, and the two of them huddled together around the tiny glowing screen as Hajime showed him Pokémon Gold (pictured above). 

They quickly became best friends, and although Hajime didn’t go to Nagito’s school, they lived close enough to one another that their parents were more than willing to coordinate hang outs. The two of them grew up together, Hajime was Nagito’s first crush, and they started dating in high school. Having known Nagito for so long, Hajime did genuinely love him. Combined with his self-loathing related to not having a talent, this actually drove him to the Kamukura Project sooner because he wanted to be the best possible version of himself so that he would feel worthy of the partner that he loved so much. This resulted in The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History, which played out the same as canon. In the Neo World Program, Nagito and Hajime (having their memories reset to the first day of high school) started dating again.

Post-game, they did have to work through the mess involving the choices that Hajime made. The Izuru situation was also a much bigger deal to Nagito given that he fell for Hajime, and Hajime changed drastically when Izuru assimilated with him. I’d say they probably took a break during that time, but got back together once they had actually addressed everything in a way that satisfied both of them. After that, their relationship was a positive force of good in both of their lives that helped them thrive, they were able to lean on one another for support in the most difficult of times, and neither one of them ever felt like they had to face the world alone. I can confidently say that they lived happily ever after.

Feel free to send me asks about the AU if you want.

✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰  ☾    ✰   ☾    ✰  ☾

[newdougsblog]

The Tragic Hero Full of Fear

Hello everyone! Before I get into this, I’d like to thank @jasontoddiefor​ for both the name and being the main enabler of this fun piece of writing. I also want to thank all my wonderful friends over on Discord for letting me bounce ideas off of them and helping me. You are all amazing!!

Ok, so let’s get into it!

The first six Star Wars movies (the Original and Prequel trilogies) are commonly referred to as “the Tragedy of Darth Vader.”  But what makes these movies a tragedy? How is Anakin Skywalker himself, the main character of said tragedy, a tragic hero? In this meta/essay, I will discuss how Anakin himself is definitionally a tragic hero and outline his story as it relates to the structure of a classic Greek tragedy.  

This essay will focus solely on Anakin’s character as he is canonically portrayed.

The Hero

Let’s go through the main traits of a tragic hero (as per early literature) and discuss them in the context of Anakin Skywalker.

Possesses immense courage and strength and is usually favored by the gods

Anakin’s courage is evident throughout his entire life, such as when he participates in the pod race in TPM or on the front lines during the Clone Wars. 

While we cannot definitively ascribe Anakin’s abilities to any deity, we can associate them with the Force. The Force is able to somewhat influence the happenings of the universe in certain ways and takes the place of any sort of deity.

Whether Anakin is the “Chosen One” or not, his connection to the Force is stronger than that of any other Force-sensitive being, so he is consequently closer to it than most, if not all, other Force-sensitive beings. 

Extreme loyalty to family and country 

Anakin is consistent in his demonstrations of loyalty to those he has strong feelings for (whether those feelings be romantic or platonic).

His devotion to Padmé surpasses his loyalty to the Jedi, and he is always willing to go to great lengths to ensure their safety and well-being.

Anakin also exhibits a strong sense of devotion to his mother, Shmi. His devotion to her, and by extension her wellbeing, surpasses his duties as Jedi. 

In ROTS, Anakin says, “I will not betray the Republic… my loyalties lie with the Chancellor and with the Senate… and with you” (you, in this case, referring to Padmé). In this quotation, Anakin’s loyalties are made quite clear. At this point, he is not faithful to the Jedi, but to his government, its leaders, and, of course, his wife.

Representative of society’s current values

During the Clone Wars, Anakin is known by the moniker, “the Hero with No Fear,” and is one of the Republic’s “poster boys.” He is charismatic, kind, seemingly fearless (obviously) and a strong fighter, thus representing the values that were important to the Republic at the time. The last characteristic is especially important because of the assurance it instills in times of war. As a representation of the Republic, Anakin’s prowess on the battlefield creates hope for its citizens that victory is possible. 

Anakin also empathizes with the opinion that the seemingly outdated Jedi Code holds them back. In the Citadel Arc, Tarkin remarks that “the Jedi Code prevents [the Jedi] from going far enough to achieve victory.” Anakin actually agrees with this statement, replying that “[he’s] also found that [the Jedi] sometimes fall short of victory because of [their] methods” (Season 3, Episode 19). He shows a sense of allegiance not to the ancient ways of the Jedi, but to the newer, more modern ideals regarding military action. 

Anakin claims to have brought “peace, justice, freedom, and security” to his “new Empire.” While the Empire's interpretations of the aforementioned values are skewed, Anakin continues to represent them as Darth Vader. 

Anakin’s statement to Obi-Wan also mirrors Palpatine’s declaration to the Senate: “In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society which I assure you will last for ten thousand years.” The people applaud this statement, demonstrating a general sense of exhaustion in regards to the war and a yearning for what this new Empire is promising them.

Lead astray/challenged by strong feelings

Though there are many, many examples of Anakin’s emotions getting the better of him, we’re simply going to list two:

Anakin’s fury and anguish after the death of his mom leads to his slaughter of the Tuskens

Anakin’s overwhelming fear of losing Padmé is ultimately what leads to his Fall.

Every tragic hero possesses what is called a hamartia, or a fatal flaw. This trait largely contributes to the hero’s catastrophic downfall. Anakin’s hamartia is his need for control, which partially manifests through his fear of loss. 

Let’s explore this idea in more detail. 

Though Anakin grows up as a slave, the movies neglect to explicitly cover the trauma left from his time in slavery. However, it is worth noting that slaves did not have the ability to make many choices for themselves; they didn’t even own their bodies. After being freed, Anakin is whisked away to become a Jedi. He does not possess much control over his life as Jedi, for he is simply told what path he is going to take. While Anakin does make this decision on his own, becoming a Jedi is a disciplined and somewhat-strict way of life and not one that allows for an abundance of reckless autonomy as he is wont to engage in. 

(Side note: I’m not here to argue about Qui-Gon’s decision-making abilities, nor do I wish to engage in discourse regarding the Jedi’s way of life. I am simply presenting and objectively stating these facts in relation to Anakin because they are pertinent to my point.) 

During AOTC, Anakin is unable to save his mother from death. As Shmi dies in his arms, Anakin is absolutely helpless. The situation is completely out of his control, and he is forced to contend with the reality that despite all of his power, he cannot control everything that happens. 

He also feels that he has a larger potential for power and is being held back by Obi-Wan: “although I'm a Padawan learner, in some ways... a lot of ways... I'm ahead of him. I'm ready for the trials. I know I am! He knows it too. He believes I'm too unpredictable… I know I started my training late... but he won't let me move on.” Anakin believes Obi-Wan, his teacher and mentor, is holding him back. He expresses a self-held conviction of his status and skills and does not trust the word of his superior. 

In ROTS, Anakin starts dreaming of Padmé’s death. Considering what occurred the last time he dreamt of a loved one’s demise, Anakin is justifiably (or at least justifiably from his point of view) worried. He consequently wants to stop these dreams from coming true in any way possible. His fear of death, especially that of his loved ones, represents his need for control over everything, even things that are uncontrollable. This overwhelming desire leads to Anakin’s drastic actions.

As Darth Vader, he no longer possesses such fears, for everyone that he loved is either dead or has betrayed him. He is the epitome of order and control, eliminating any who disturb this perceived equilibrium. 

However, this changes because of one person: Luke Skywalker. 

Luke reintroduces something that was (arguably) long-absent in Vader’s life, which is interpersonal attachment. Vader yearns for his son to join him by his side. When Luke refuses, Vader continues to attempt to seek him out. In ROTJ, Vader is forced to choose between the Emperor, a man he has long trusted and followed, and Luke, the son he never knew he had. Out of a desire to protect and keep what little family he has left (and likely a sense of “I couldn’t save Padmé but at least I can save her legacy by keeping her child(ren) alive and safe”), Vader defeats the Emperor and saves his son. Though his actions are definitionally heroic, Anakin never truly overcomes his hamartia. 

The Structure of a Tragedy

Classic Greek tragedies follow a specific story structure, which, according to the German playwright Gustav Freytag, is as follows:

We’re going to focus on the three aspects that best represent Anakin’s story as a tragedy: The peripeteia, the anagnorisis, and the catastrophe/denouement. These occur during and/or after the climax. 

The peripeteia is the climax/the turning point in the plot. Said change usually involves the protagonist's good luck and prosperity taking a turn for the worse. 

Within the tragedy we are discussing, the peripeteia occurs when Anakin chooses Sidious over Mace Windu and solidifies his allegiance to the Dark side, becoming the very thing he swore to destroy. It is at this point that things really start to go downhill. He kills children, chokes his wife, fights his best friend, gets his remaining limbs cut off, etc. 

The anagnorisis is the point in the tragedy when the protagonist recognizes their error, seeing the true nature of that which they were previously ignorant of, usually regarding their circumstances or a specific relationship (such as Oedipus’ realization that his wife was actually his mother). In most tragedies, the anagnorisis is in close proximity to the peripeteia. In Anakin’s story, the anagnorisis occurs during ROTJ. After being wounded in his fight against Luke, Vader watches as his son is brutally electrocuted by Sidious. It is at this moment that Darth Vader realizes that Luke was right—there is good in him, and he still has the chance to redeem himself. 

The catastrophe/denouement (since this is a tragedy, we’re going to go with “catastrophe”) is the end of the tragedy. Events and conflicts are resolved and brought to a close, and a new sort of “normality” is established. The catastrophe often provides a sense of catharsis (release of tension) for the viewer. The protagonist is worse off than they were at the beginning of the tragedy. 

The catastrophe within “The Tragedy of Darth Vader” transpires soon after the anagnorisis at the end of ROTJ. Though the realization of his capacity for good is the anagnorisis, the follow-through (via his actions), as well as what consequently occurs, is the catastrophe. As previously discussed, Vader saves Luke by killing the Emperor but does so at the cost of his own life. This serves as the resolution of the tragedy, for the hero’s fate has been confirmed—Darth Vader fulfills his destined role as the Chosen One and, in doing so, brings about his own redemption and dies as Anakin Skywalker.

In conclusion, the categorization of Star Wars as a tragedy is a choice that heavily influences Anakin, the protagonist and hero, of the story. He is without a doubt a tragic hero whose fatal flaw leads to his downfall. In accordance with Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, Anakin’s tragedy is constructed not by personal agency, but by the narrative itself.

Works Cited

“Darth Vader.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader.

“Dramatic Structure.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Feb. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure.

“Hero.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 19 Oct. 2016, www.britannica.com/art/hero-literary-and-cultural-figure.

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars: Episode III— Revenge of the Sith. Lucasfilm Ltd., 2005.

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars: Episode II— Attack of the Clones. Lucasfilm Ltd. , 2002.

Michnovetz, Matt. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars, ‘Counterattack.’” Season 3, episode 19, 4 Mar. 2011.

“Sophocles: the Purest Artist.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature/Sophocles-the-purest-artist.

“Theory of Tragedy.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature/Theory-of-tragedy.

“Tragic Hero.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/tragic-hero. 

[brooklynisher]

Gonna counter you here! Not because I actually disagree with you and much less because I know what I’m doing, but because I’m not gonna get another excuse to talk about this so

[x]

First, Cornelius: Yay

Second, Daisy and Tristan: Now this one I wouldn’t know the chances of being canon, in fact, this is probably entirely headcanon, but I was thinking a lot about how steambots age during my play-through. It was Leeway and Daisy’s talk about frames that made me think they don’t age normally. Instead, what they do is wait until they are a certain age range, and are given a body frame based on this. I’m not sure how they convince people to get old but there’s gotta be some sort of honor attached to it right? Perhaps it’s just looked down upon to refuse to change your frame. Could totally make a dystopian sci-fi movie based on a bunch of steambots who refused to age. I feel like something like that could help establish the importance of aging but I DIGRESS! Essentially I imagine, there’s more frames as they are younger, less when they are older. So newborn (0, no frame, whatever that means), infant (0-1), toddler (1-3), child (4-9), tween (10-12), teen (13-17), young adult (18-32), adult (33-54), elder (55+) Don’t ask me about numbers, I’m just throwing stuff out there. But essentially, with this idea, they don’t grow as naturally. As in it might not be subtle at all. Like aging in The Sims 4, they just change shape drastically. Must make birthdays pretty special if you were to assume this was canon ;P “Okay honey! Let’s go pick out parts for your new frame!” Or however it is they go clothes shopping

Third, Poe: Yay

Fourth, Beacon: Probably a good point to mention that Tristan and Daisy were the only ones I really gave a lengthy explanation to so expect these ones to be shorter. But hey, if you see the world as being mostly Navy run, I wouldn’t doubt that the colleges kind of sucked. Have you seen how stupid the Navy can get, it’s kind of funny. These guys do NOT care about doing things the right way. They just do it how they want to. Only real example of this is Wesley’s school. Nothing really suggests other schools were navy run, especially because his school specifically was focused on fighting, but the Navy seems corrupt enough to do something like that. I’m sure it would’ve been brought up more if this was canon but shhhshshhsh.

Fifth, Chimney: Okay! I have nothing to add to this except that I feel like she’s been this way quite some time. Maybe I see college more as a way of letting out all her excitement but yeah. Checks out!

Sixth, Wesley and Leeway: I feel like I should have more on them considering how fixated I am on these two, but I don’t! (<- Liar apparently, girl what is this, this is longer than the first one) All I can assume is that Wesley appears older than he really is thanks to war aging him. I do feel he’s incredibly strong, healthy, powerful, and ambitious for a war veteran which does make me feel he can’t be that old. You never hear him complain about his age or his frame which I suppose could be discipline, but could be because he’s just not that old. Idk, Wesley being in war sort of explains everything about him, but also creates some conflicting points. Now, I’ve got too many headcanons attached to them knowing each other at a young ages. One of them involves them knowing each other since they were children which I originally thought, there’s no way they go back that far, but I liked the concept so much that now I see it and it’s like whagag. They’ve got to have a well established relationship though considering that before endgame, Wesley’s the only one Leeway doesn’t refer to in a professional manner, that is, by last name. Yeah it could be more actions>time, but I feel like it’s had to be quite a bit of time considering how “good friend” and “my friend” could’ve made perfect sense in place of “old friend”. Maybe word choice doesn’t matter, maybe it does. Anyway, I like to think they knew each other at a young age, went their own paths, Wesley realized he hated the path he was going on (Navy), and decided to join Leeway’s path for headcanony reasons oooo 🌀🌀🌀 That’s at least how I would do that if I wanted to explain why it is Leeway doesn’t know some things about his friend’s experience. Oh god I just remembered Wesley doesn’t LIKE to talk about the war and actively chose not to talk to Leeway about it until way later. That makes me think Leeway knew him at least WHEN he went to war, because that’s how he knows he went to war in the first place despite not knowing any details. I GUESS Wesley could’ve mentioned it offhandedly too butttt

And that thing about the Sola x Crowbar shipping was based on one message I got from my friend, my brother, and one other person, I forgot who.

There’s them, Wesway, Piperbane was it called? And then a secret fourth one that I’m gatekeeping for now. I’ll show you guys laterr

Age headcanons for the steambots Youngest to oldest Let's go

Below are my reasonings. There will be character specific spoilers!

Tristan and Daisy are well established to be kids kind of. The way they're talked to and talked about suggest that they are children. Especially because they talk about their childhoods like it was just a year ago. Tristan is still too young to understand how traumatic his childhood was. Daisy is similar but I think she at least sort of acknowledges that her childhood wasn't the best.

Poe and Beacon just seem younger to me. Poe I feel is very knowing for her age, but I think that's due to being raised to scam people. She probably had to grow up faster than most to be able to see everything as a money making opportunity. And Beacon, well, Beacon seems college student age. I don't remember where they were exactly, but it involved rocket-science level machinery and I can't think of many reasons they'd be there if not college. College deals with those sorts of stuff kind of.

Chimney seems like she graduated college not too long ago. Her affinity for roughhousing and drinking just gives off the vibe of a college party. I mean, where else would she find a group of friends like that?

Quincy and Wesley were hard to decide on. All the dialogue I'm getting from Leeway tells me he is a young adult. He's definitely AN adult, but he's not too old considering how new he is with certain things and the amount of times he said "I wasn't even assembled back then!" He probably would've been younger if it wasn't for Wesley. They're established to be "Old friends" which obviously they knew each other in their younger years. And because it's rather uncommon for kids or teenagers to be friends with people noticeably older than them, I figured they'd have to be in the same age range. Wesley is why they're not younger. Considering that he's been in war, has been in higher education, was there with Leeway both when the Submarine was lost AND found(In fact, he found it), I figured, he should probably have some time to do all that. 27 and 29 isn't that old anyway. Sure, I think they still qualify as young adults.

Sola and Crowbar, I had no idea for Sola, but Crowbar seems to be just a smidgen older considering how many how many crews she's been on. Not too much older because she's quite the fickle. Sola was originally going to be the same age as Leeway bc I can see some nerdy 27 year old working at an aquarium or something, but then I remembered there are like 3 people that ship her with Crowbar, and that's a lot considering the number of ships in this fandom, so I didn't want their age gap to be too crazy even if it's technically not that bad bc they're both over 25 years old.

Judy and Cornelius are both well established to be old. If the gray hair doesn't give it away, then it's the talk about their life experiences. Cornelius apparently used to be a super terrible guy, and he thinks he'll need to spend a lot of time apologizing for this. Also I think he used to serve for the Royalists in SWH?? maybe not I'm not sure. Either way, he's done a lot in his lifetime, and apparently most of it wasn't good. IIRC I don't think he feels redeemed even after defeating the Kraken. And Judy talks about her past experiences all the time. She already was something of a hero before she joined the crew and all her dialogue suggests she's super experienced so I'm giving her time to do all that.

[pa-panda-heroes]

currently thinking about Hawks personally. We see that when he's in public or when he's around people in general, he's always on that charismatic cool guy persona we all love. but when he's in missions we see him super serious and cauculist. that left me wondering if his charismatic self is just a facade. I think that due the things the Hero Comission putted him through he managed to hide his true self in missions. I also think that he is a actually smug little piece of sunshine type of guy in general, but when he's with people he's really close to, he manages to show the nuances of these both sides of his personality. What do you think?

Hello dear :> Hawks is a precious baby boy, must protect-

I would have to agree with that!!

I will say that I feel like fandom seems to take the goofy guy Hawks part a little too far sometimes. We’ve seen hawks goofing off and getting on Endeavor’s nerves for example, but we’ve also seen Hawks calculating his and his opponent’s every move and taking what he does very seriously. And we’ve also seen what the Hero Commission has done to him overall.

I think part of his austerity and seriousness comes from having that hammered into his head purposefully by the Hero Commission. If you’ve played NieR:Automata, you’ve heard the phrase “emotions are prohibited,” which is a concept I think the HC has taken on. Emotions can lead people to take drastic decisions, toss aside objectivity, and thus make mistakes. If Hawks doesn’t exhibit emotion or let his emotions control him, he is more likely to see “the bigger picture” of his work and to succeed in whatever task they give him, and less likely to see individual problems and get distracted by those individual problems. Think: Deku. When he saw Shouto’s turmoil and trauma, he didn’t reach for changing hero society and its children as whole; instead, he reached out to Shouto to help him as an individual, because Deku is a very emotional character and hero who wants to help everyone. Does this make sense? ^^;; Obviously, I do think Hawks takes his work seriously even despite the HC’s meddling!

Anyway, i feel like Hawks real personality is gentle, sweet, and goofy when he wants to be (or when he’s trying to hide his trauma/past/etc. like some abuse survivors do), but he’s not going to show it much because I doubt his true personality is really what the HC has envisioned as their “trophy hero.” Since he was a wee child he’s been conditioned and taught certain ways to do probably everything from breathing to addressing the public in an interview. When it comes to someone he’s really close with and really cares about, I definitely agree with you. But it’s very difficult for him to really become close with people imo, because I feel like the HC would control every aspect of his life, especially social, because they want his rep and public image to be squeaky clean (he can’t be getting involved in scandals and whatnot, for example). And he may push people away also, be it because of his job as a hero or just. Typical Trauma Things.

But yes, I definitely agree with you. We see Hawks at either 0% or 100%, and I think his personality is just a mix of both!

[lightrises]

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

[tomorrow-and-tomorrows]

Narrative perspective and how cursed techniques become worlds: Gojou Satoru

In a key moment when theorizing about the nature of soul and body, the Brain speculates that “techniques dictate our worlds”. One of the other ways in which technique = world becomes literalized is through the narrative perspective from which we see characters.

Perspective, or point of view, determines our angle of vision through which to perceive character and story. It shapes representation and determines both how and what we are allowed to see.

Gojou

Gojou’s default technique is Limitless, which brings forth the distance that makes it impossible for objects in the world to reach him; neutral Limitless puts an uncrossable distance between himself and the world.

In the one-year timeskip after Riko Amanai’s death, it’s precisely as he’s learning to have his Limitless activated at all times that he and Geto become unable to reach each other. As Gojou’s power increases to sustain this invisible space, an uncrossable distance opens up between the person who was closest to him.

But I think there’s an additional distance that opens up as Gojou’s technique strengthens: The narrative distance preventing access to Gojou’s direct perspective and interiority after the Hidden Inventory Arc.

In contrast to how we were plunged into Geto’s intense introspection, there is nothing of Gojou’s internal thoughts from the immensely important turning point of the Premature Death chapters to ch.79 when he approaches Megumi. During these chapters, his Limitless technique defines his “world” both within the story (physically and interpersonally/emotionally), and on this meta-level of narration.

From then on, Geto and the readers can only observe Gojou from the outside: his inner mind becomes inaccessible and unreachable. So much so that, as readers, we might feel the absence distinctly as if part of the story after the Hidden Inventory arc and during Premature Death arc is altogether missing or incomplete.

In order to understand his words and expressions here, we are required to interpret, to try to bridge that impenetrable space that never lets us get any closer to Gojou. These two moments in particular illustrate this narrative distance, again as the most defining moments of his life, yet we are left looking on from the outside, ever held at a distance from his actual mind.

These two moments are the most defining moments of his life - dealing with losing Geto, and the first step he takes to dedicating his life to raising young allies through education. These moments are angled very similarly; our angle of vision is to look at Gojou, not through Gojou’s perspective.

We get physically close to Gojou’s eyes as possible, but that is the limit: there is a silence, an uncrossable space between us and his interiority. We never get so close as to access his inner thoughts when it is most important. It feels almost impersonal, alienating as readers to not be privy to these turning points in his worldview.

And it’s not just the case in these two singular moments, but the entire situation after the Hidden Inventory arc. How did Gojou emotionally process Riko’s death? What was on his mind during the time he was sent on solo missions no longer accompanied by Geto? How did he feel about Haibara’s death? How much of Geto’s psychological state was he really aware of? How did his reflections on Toji’s last words lead to him reaching out to Megumi?

It’s also the narrative method after he kills Geto in the prequel: we are shut out from his private emotions, only able to see what he chooses to reveal to the external world - nothing more than an inscrutable smile and a brief expression of affection for the person he had just killed. Does he feel guilt? Acceptance? What were his emotions in the moments after Geto’s death? We are denied access to these answers.

Similarly, many of those above questions about the post-Inventory arc situation will never be definitively answered in the way of internal monologue. However, many of them are implicitly answered, just not in a conventional, straightforward way. Rather than understanding him by being able to access his interiority, we are required to construct an understanding of him based on his external actions.

“Narrative says less than it knows, but it often makes known more than it says.” - Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse

His response to failing to save Riko, to killing Toji, to Geto leaving, and so on -- we see how nearly all his subsequent actions are haunted by and in response to all these events. We don’t get internal monologue recounting what he feels, but we can try to discern how he feels in everything that he does, every decision that he makes throughout the rest of the story. Becoming an educator, finding meaning through raising allies to connect with, saving Megumi from the Zen’in clan, saving Yuta and Yuji from execution, endorsing Maki’s ambition to transform the Zen’in family, seeking change through education rather than violence, shouldering the balance of the both the jujutsu and human world--

In all of these decisions, we get as close to answer as possible of what he feels in response to the personal catastrophes of his youth that he had silently endured: above all, a deep sense of responsibility and a profound internalization of the experiences and painful lessons that come to define his entire life.

It is also no coincidence that, in Shibuya Arc, it is at the same moment the Prison Realm is able to physically overcome the distance of his Limitless technique, that this narrative distance established in chapters 76-79 is crossed for the first time in a meaningful way.

Throughout his fight with Jogo and Hanamai, we do get a some of his internal thoughts, but it’s for the practical purpose of knowing what his strategical deductions are; they tell us nothing substantial about his emotions, hence not what I consider a ‘meaningful’ overcoming of distance.

But as his Limitless utterly fails to prevent the Prison Realm from seizing him, suddenly that object in the world is able to reach him, and the narrative is simultaneously able to ‘reach’ his mind to a greater extent than before. Whilst he had previously successfully shut everything out, now he is suddenly permeable both in body and mind.

More precisely, what I’ve been calling this ‘narrative distance’ is crossed immediately before the physical distance is eliminated. The emotional distance is actually breached before the physical, but ultimately these two results are inseparable from each other.

Finally, we begin to understand directly, through just a momentary glimpse into his interiority, how strongly he feels the loss of his best friend, how present and alive those years of his youth are constantly in his mind. Seeing Suguru’s face after being emotionally and physically drained by his fight is what exposes his vulnerability, a weakness of the heart that we wouldn’t even be sure was still there until this moment.

It’s the delayed emotional insight into Gojou that makes it all the more poignant; we’re well past his Past arc, but it’s only now that we become privy to how heavily those events weigh on his mind. On a first reading, it would require us to slightly re-write what we would’ve understood of Gojou solely based on the previously distant, impersonal feeling we got from those past chapters.

The final major implication of what I’ve been suggesting is how, in light of all this, how to think about the effect of the last real substantial access to his inner thoughts/emotions.

The last meaningful unmediated access we get to Gojou’s inner thoughts/emotions during his Past Arc is this moment when he renounces human emotion and apologizes to Riko for feeling like he’s no longer fighting for her sake.

Even though this is a powerful, lasting impression of his inner mind for readers, it is not the case that this moment of egoism, self-centredness, and renunciation of compassion is completely who Gojou Satoru remains even as an adult. Gojou definitely retains some of those traits in his personality - I don’t want to overlook the extent of his individualistic mentality, self-involvement, and difficulty emotionally considering others. However, his actions in the aftermath of this spiritual transcendence demonstrate that this moment and those characteristics do not define his entire person at the expense of all others.

Again: the narrative distance that deliberately denies readers access to his inner mind after the Hidden Inventory Arc requires us to evaluate his character based on his subsequent actions that demonstrate his movement away from this emotionless, compassionless state, towards motivations that are highly emotionally driven.

Although this renunciation of human emotion and obligation towards Riko is the last substantial thought we receive from Gojou’s direct point of view, his character has not remained static since that temporary moment. On the contrary, he develops drastically from that, though we witness this change from the outside: the Gojou Satoru we see after the one-year timeskip and ten years later in the present day is a largely different Gojou Satoru than the one who feels no anger on behalf of a child he’d failed to protect - and the only way we can understand this when his mind is largely closed off to us is through looking at his external actions.

For example, in stark juxtaposition to his apology to Riko for not feeling anger or vengefulness, not only does Gojou immediately after think of killing the cult members to avenge her death, a large part of his philosophy as a teacher is founded on anger on behalf of children whose youth are threatened to be cut short. We get this primarily through external speech and action.

We do not experience his anger, realization of the value of working together with allies rather than exclusively as an individual, or decision to save children like Yuta and Yuji through a step-by-step psychological progression: we only see the end results of all that development that certainly occurs, but is hidden from us.

For such a major character, I find this a fascinating method that might run contrary to our expectations of how to portray and understand character development. It requires a greater degree of interpretation about the internal thought and emotional processes that, though not brought to the surface of the narrative, are at the foundation of his external actions, speech, and expressions throughout the story.

“Narrative 'representation', or, more exactly, narrative information, has its degrees: the narrative can furnish the reader with more or fewer details, and in a more or less direct way, and can thus seem to keep a greater or lesser distance from what it tells." - Gérard Genette

[honey-boyyoongi]

La Vie en Rose

Part: 40/??

Jungkook x Yn

Y/N is just trying to survive school and her best friends. As well as the cutie from her tutoring group.

Warning: a few curse words; violence? there’s a couple of slaps; this is not beta read and the author doesn’t know what they’re doing :)

Word count: 2.5k (my longest yet)

Was this a good idea? Objectively, no. Y/n knew she shouldn’t speak with Yubin, but the burning curiosity was overwhelming. Why did she feel the need to ruin her friends' relationships? Why did she feel entitled to them? What does she gain from this? Does Yubin actually harbor feelings for Namjoon and Jungkook? Was Yubin taking forever, because she wants to make a dramatic entry? No, but right now Y/N is trying to calm herself down with silly thoughts.

Jiminie 12:44 pm

Y/n where are you?

She knows she should respond, but this is the one thing she wants to do on her own. Y/n spots Yubin, and motions towards her table. Yubin looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world, as she takes her seat. Which is a drastic difference between them. Y/n knows her eyes are puffy, her hair is not done, but she did enough to manage it, her nail polish is cracked from the constant picking, and she’s in her most comfortable clothes. Yubin looks likes she’s ready to go out for the day, hair immaculately done, falling gracefully down her shoulders. Makeup done to perfection, nails done without a single chip in them. Dress fitting her lovely figure and showing off her long legs.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to be here. I need to talk about your relationship with Jungkook.”

Yubin sighed, trying hard not to roll her eyes,” what exactly do you want to know?”

“When did your relationship start?”

“We started sleeping together before school started, we stopped for a bit, then one night he invited me over and we fucked. We slept together more frequently, then I found out you were a thing. I felt bad that he was lying to you, so I decided to tell the truth,” she explained with ease.

Y/n didn’t miss how vulgarly she pronounced ‘fucked’, like Yubin was trying to indifferently apply more salt to her wound.

“Did that stop before, or after you started sleeping with Namjoon?”

Yubin’s indifference almost cracked, almost. With practiced ease she replied,” I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never slept with Joonie, he’s one of my best friends.”

“But you slept with Jungkook… who’s your other best friend?”

Yubin was starting to get irritated, what did Y/n know? She couldn’t possibly understand the connection she, and the boys had,“Yes, Jungkook and I share a special bond. It was natural for us to go the next step.”

“Oh, really,” Y/n paused, pulled her phone out and unlocked it to her gallery,” if you didn’t sleep with Namjoon, then why does he have these pictures of the both of you?” Y/n slid through the pictures Namjoon was kind enough to send,” You look so happy together, it’s such a pity that it didn’t last.”

There in the palm of Y/n’s hand, were Yubin’s and Namjoon’s happy moments. Their dates in his dorm, the trips to the park, early mornings at the cafe, and the nights they spent together. Yubin was seething, how did she have those pictures? More importantly, who did she think she was questioning what she did with the people she loved.

“Why do you have those pictures?”

“Namjoon was kind enough to tell Jungkook about your relationship. They told me everything Yubin,” Y/n muttered. “Why did you lie?”

“You wouldn’t understand. We have a bond, ever since we were kids it’s always been the three of us. They promised it would always be us, then Namjoon started attracting girls, obviously I had to keep them away. Those girls weren’t good enough for him. Jungkook was always shy with people, I wasn’t worried until he got his first girlfriend senior year. They didn’t last long, I made sure of it,” Yubin explained. Y/n felt uneasy hearing her explain her motives with fondness. “I didn’t lie about sleeping with Jungkook, we shared our first time together, and Joonie had a lot of firsts with me. We’re meant to be, I’ve been trying to show them but they just can’t seem to get it. You showed up… and all of the sudden I wasn’t important. They didn’t tell me about you, they didn’t introduce you, Jungkook was blowing off plans. Namjoon rejected me, and so did Jungkook. All because some random little girl got involved in our friendship. Could you imagine if out of nowhere your best friends left you for some person they barely know?”

“Did you ever think that maybe you’re the issue Yubin,” Y/n hesitated,” I’ve been friends with Jimin, Yoongi, and Seokjin for years, obviously things change as we grow up. There was a time where I felt we were drifting apart, but that happens. I always encouraged healthy relationships, we always got along with each other’s different friends.”

“What do you know? Have you ever felt connected to someone to the point you’d do anything to stay with them? You don’t understand what I feel,” Yubin was starting to get frustrated. She didn’t need to explain herself to someone so insignificant, Yubin started to raise her voice,”Leave us alone, they are mine. They are my friends, they are going to be with me as long as I can keep them.”

*

*

“Where do you think she is?”

“I don’t know Jin, she hasn’t answered,” Jimin sighed.

“Do you think she’s ignoring us,” Yoongi asked.

“No, I don- guys it’s better if we look around and see if we can find her.”

Y/n had ignored all of their texts and calls, which was very odd. They all agreed to answer texts, even if it was short to let each other know they were still breathing. She was a big enforcer with this agreement, ever since Yoongi and Seokjin started getting busier with their 3rd year. They checked the park, the local bookstore, the library, and even texted Jennie to see if she knew where Y/n was. Jennie hadn’t seen Y/n since she left in the morning for breakfast with her girlfriends, but she’ll keep an eye for her since they were leaving the restaurant.

They were starting to get worried, Seokjin decided to text Jungkook as he was the last to talk to Y/n.

Seokjin 01:15

Have you seen Y/n?

Jungkook 01:16

Not since last night.

Why, did something happen?

Seokjin 01:20

We’ve been trying to reach her, but she’s been ignoring our calls and texts. Jennie hasn’t seen her since this morning and says she’s going to help look as well.

Jungkook 01:25

I’ll start looking for her too. I’ll let you know if I find her.

Just as Jimin was going to inform Yoongi and Seokjin to split, there at the corner of the cafe was Y/n speaking with Yubin. It didn’t take a genius to see the tension between them. He motioned towards them and Seokjin was visibly confused, “What’s y/n doing with Yubin?”

“Y/n is with Yubin?” All three made their way into the cafe, trying their hardest to be inconspicuous. They ordered small items, and slowly made way to a table opposite of them. So far everything looked calm. In Jimin’s opinion something in Yubin looked defensive and rigid.

Seokjin 01:30

We found her. She’s at the cafe with Yubin.

Seokjin found it a bit masochistic of his friend, to be here with the person who is saying they slept with their boyfriend. But knowing Y/n, this is probably a last ditch effort to find out what exactly is going on.

Seokjin sees Jungkook pass by, and flags him down. He makes hand motions to be inconspicuous and hopes he understands. The way Jungkook’s eyes widen at the sight of them, he immediately becomes hyper aware of his surroundings. Jungkook attempts to make himself as small as possible, and slithers on the sidelines. He sneaks up on the boys and tries to hide behind Seokjin and Yoongi. “Has anything happened?”

They all shake their head no and Jimin whispers,” They’ve been talking a little too calmly for the last 20 minutes. It’s a little worrying to be honest.”

They watch Y/N pull out her phone and show Yubin the screen. They immediately see a change in Yubin, her eased demeanor cracks looking at what Y/N shows her. “What do you think Y/N is showing Yubin?” Yoongi whispered. Jungkook has an idea of what it could be, “It might be the screenshots I showed Y/N.”

“Screenshots?” Seokjin asked

Jungkook nodded, “I meant it when I said I wasn’t anything with Yubin. I showed Y/N everything.”

Seokjin and Yoongi sighed in relief, Jimin was still hesitant. While he knows the history between them, that still doesn’t mean Jungkook was honest about their past relationship, if you could call it that. Taehyung had told Jimin not to be harsh with Jungkook. It’s not his fault Yubin was the way she was, and they’ve tried to call her out on her behavior without any success. Taehyung said while yes, Jungkook should have been honest about his past with Yubin, it wasn’t anything serious. They never had a relationship, and only had their first intimacy with each other based on mutual trust. Jimin didn’t want to budge.

“What do you know?” They all turn their attention to Yubin’s raised voice. “Should we do something?” Yoongi hissed. Jimin shook his and responded, “Only if they get a bit more aggressive.”

“Have you ever felt connected to someone to the point you’d do anything to stay with them? You don’t understand what I feel!”

Jungkook is starting to get nervous. Yubin has never been a physically violent person, verbally mean absolutely, but the way her hands are whitening at the sheer grip she has on the table says otherwise.

Seokjin has had his fair share of upset women in his life. Comes with the territory of being a T.A. and his mother’s friends trying to set him up with their children. All those instances could not have gotten him ready for this type of situation. Should Yubin lay a hand on Y/N he knows she’d defend herself, but if it got too out of hand he knows he’d have to step in as the oldest. He’s never had to get between Y/N and altercation and he hopes today isn’t that day.

“Leave us alone, they are mine. They are my friends, they are going to be with me as long as I can keep them.” Yubin abruptly stood up and sneered at Y/N. “Stay away from them.” In a split second Y/N’s head shifts to the side and a loud smack sounds through the cafe.

Instantly all four are out of their seats and go directly to their table. Before either of them could realize the guys were there a loud smack rang through once more. “Don’t you ever put your hands on me.”

Jungkook could see Yubin was absolutely seething. He and Yoongi pulled Y/N towards them along with her bag.

“What are you guys doing here?”

“We were looking for you because you hadn’t responded to our texts. We saw you were in here while we passed by and wanted to make sure you were okay.” Jimin responded.

“Well you found me and I’m going home.” Y/n tried rushing out. She could feel the stares of all the patrons. She grabs her bag from Yoongi and quickly makes her way out, ignoring the barista trying to check on her.

One by one the guys made their way out, each one apologizing to the baffled employees. Trying to make his way through, Jungkook is pulled back by Yubin. He pulls away, and rushes to catch up to the guys and Y/n. He can hear the quick clacking of Yubin trying to catch up to them. He wants, no he needs to speak with Y/n. He needs to make sure she’s okay.

“Y/-“

“Jungkook! Stop ignoring me!” Yubin screeches.

He keeps ignoring Yubin, and finally catches us to Y/n. Jimin looks behind him, and sees Yubin making her way towards them. Jimin motions his head towards her, “You have to get rid of her Jeon. If she gets close to us I’m going to go off on her.” Jimin pulls Y/n away from the commotion and whispers words of comfort.

Jungkook nods and turns to face Yubin. He decides to meet her halfway and instantly regrets it “Jungkook, stop walking away from me! Why do you keep ignoring me? I’ve been trying to talk to you and Joonie, but both of you don’t answer.” She crashes into him, and starts to breath heavily. “Did you see what she did to me? I was trying to talk to her, and she hit me!” she sobbed. She started to cling onto him more, and attempted to wrap his arms around her. “No, Yubin” he mumbled, “We’re done.”

“You’re done with her? Oh good, maybe you can talk with Joon, and we can get this situation figured out. Then may-“

“No,” he interrupts her, “Yubin, we’re done. Us being friends, I can’t do it anymore.” He gently gets her hands off his shirt, and pushes her away from him.

“What do you.. what do you mean done? We’ve been friends since kindergarten. We can’t stop being friends. What about Namjoon? Are you going to stop being his friend too?”

Jungkook shakes his head, “Joon is still my friend Yubin. I, we can’t be friends with you anymore. What you’re doing is not okay. It’s never been okay. Yes, the three of us have been friends for a long time, but you’re not who you used to be Binnie. I don’t know who you are anymore, and I don’t want to be friends with the person you are now.”

He could see Yubin go from heartbroken to completely livid. “Are you fucking kidding me!” she screamed “ I did this for you! For Namjoon!” She enunciated by slamming her fists to Jungkook’s chest. Yubin slowly started to sob heavily. She tried to explain her reasoning between her cries, but her words came out mumbled.

Jungkook didn’t know what to do. Should he help her calm down? Should he call one of her friends? Should he walk away? He decides to pull Yubin to the side, and wait for her to at least get back to breathing normally. He whispers to her how to control her breathing, and hopes that’s enough to calm her down. He waits a few more moments, and decides it’s time for him to leave.

As he starts to walk away Yubin pulls on his sleeve “Kookie please don’t leave.” For a tiny moment, Jungkook sees the Yubin he was friends with years ago. Jungkook removes Yubin’s hand from his shirt and starts the walk back to campus.

A/N: geez haven’t posted in a hot minute. Time passes by when you’re an adult lol. We’re almost to the end y’all! If you have any feedback pls let me know!

Tag list: @papamochiissad @smoljams @betysotelo18 @atomickokorox @xxxanimangxxx @icedoutmywristtitanic @lyndseygoregasmxo @beeeb05 @glossyrere @nanskidoodle

Masterlist

[bondsmagii]

This is definitely one of the… wilder stories here, but as always, I suppose people will believe what they will. 

This will unfortunately require some backstory, but I guess you could say the long and the short of it is that I played at being God, and it. Well. Kind of sucked, actually.

So, the backstory. I’ll try to keep it brief. I grew up in a small country village about forty-five minutes away from Belfast, Ireland. There wasn’t much going on there, as you could imagine – just a standard rural Irish town, where the most exciting thing that might happen in a week was old Farmer Joe getting a new tractor or something. Anyway, I’m not sure how many of you know about Ireland’s rather troubled past, but for the most part I missed all that. I was born around the time things were finally settling down, and while my earlier memories are filled with bomb scares and low-flying helicopters and gunshots in the night, the distant sound of shouting and the acrid smell of smoke burning a little too close for comfort, by the time I hit my teenage years most of it had wrapped up. Of course, there was the occasional scare here and there, and I’m not saying my friends and I didn’t go out looking for trouble once we were old enough, but it wasn’t the same. I’m not saying that out of a sense of, I don’t know, regret or annoyance or anything. Now I’m older, I’m not so enamoured by the idea of that much violence. I’m just saying it wasn’t really a patch on the kind of violence that used to happened there – the kind of violence that fascinated my friends and I so much. It sounds bad, but really we were just kids being kids. Little boys everywhere play at war games. It just so happened that the war we were playing had happened in our own country. It’s difficult not to be obsessed, when you see the reflection of history on the faces of every generation around you. Even slightly older siblings would know all about it – it wasn’t something you asked your grandfather, distant war stories over some vague European country that you’ve only seen on a map in your Geography classroom. This was our street corners, our high streets, the road outside the house. Here the grass verge at the side of the road where the bodies were dumped; there the lay-by where over a dozen people were blown to pieces. It was awful, but we were children. We were enamoured.

Anyway. The only violence we got really involved in was the summer rioting that happened yearly, like clockwork. It sounds like a joke, but that’s how it goes. You don’t need to know the details, but suffice to say in mid-July every year, the city would light up like we were back in the 1970s. Localised, of course, and still nowhere near as drastic as it used to be, but enough to get a taste. Petrol bombs. Police lines. Armoured cars. Water cannons. Unrestrained summer fun, you could say. But that’s for a bit later.

I’m a writer. I have been since I was four years old. Generally speaking I’m a horror writer, but I’ve branched into historical fiction a fair bit over the years. Living in Ireland, growing up how I did, it was inevitable that I would develop a fascination for Irish history. I was always a very curious child, my head in books, chasing up stories that would keep me awake at night. I never knew any boundaries. I would go after answers with military precision, asking questions, going places I shouldn’t. Dangerous for anyone, of course, but in a country like mine, where crossing the road could quite literally lead to your murder? It was reckless. I was reckless. But that’s the thing about being that age. You think you’re invincible. You think you can do anything.

I was about fourteen or fifteen, at the height of this obsession. I believe I was fifteen when I wrote this particular story, but it’s difficult to say. It was part of a series, and I was going back and forth on it and other projects for many years. Here we finally get to the point of the whole story: I had developed an obsession with Irish history, as I said, and specifically the more “modern” history – from 1916 onwards, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, all that. I was fascinated by the Irish struggle for freedom, and while age and hindsight has lessened my… enthusiasm for the violence, I do maintain a strong opinion towards the whole thing, which is not the point here so I won’t get into it. What I’m trying to say is that my stories reflected this enthusiasm, and were undoubtedly glorifying in nature, and also at that age I was more concerned with living the fantasy than doing the research, so it was all very self-indulgent. I’m sure anyone who wrote at that age knows what I mean.

My main character… well. I’m sure you know what to expect. He was—well. Me, really. In the way of all main characters at that age, and perhaps a little even as we get older, there’s a piece of us inside all our main characters. Sometimes a little piece, other times just a cooler and more badass version of yourself. Michael was that for me. I suppose that must is obvious; I wasn’t even trying to be subtle. My name is of course Miceál, which for those of you keeping track is the Irish form of Michael. I’m just grateful that I didn’t go as far as to give him my last name, too, but everything else was there. He looked like me, he held the same views and beliefs as me, he acted like me – or at least, he acted in the ways I liked to think I’d act, or how I imagined acting later that night in the shower, reliving the scenario again. He was the best kind of self-insert character, indulgent and fun and a good friend to me. I poured a lot of myself into him. I poured everything into him. He was a constant companion, something that became ever more important to me as my real life—well, went to shit. To put it mildly. I would sit in my room writing my stories, and Michael would go out there and fight the good fight, killing and bombing for good old Ireland, and then I’d shut my computer down and go to sleep feeling just a little better than otherwise.

I’m not afraid to say that I can be obsessive. I like to get into the heads of my characters; I like to know them as well as I know everything. Yes, Michael was me, but he was also a version of me who had done things I have never done. Sometimes I would try to imagine myself as him; wonder what it was like to see through his eyes. Wonder what a me who had done that would look like. Wonder what he would do in a situation. I asked myself that a few times; a lot of times. What would Michael do? I could have put that shit on a wristband. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I’ve always been a bit of a method writer like that. It was normal, until it wasn’t.

I first saw Michael on a hot July day, in Belfast. What we call the rioting season had come around; my friends and I were there to take advantage. Just at the sidelines, mind you – nobody wants to get a face full of water cannon, even on the hottest of days. Michael was in the thick of it though. Of course he was. I’d written him to be that way.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. At first I thought I must be seeing things, but the more I looked the more I realised he looked exactly like me. Only he was a little taller, a little fitter, and his hair looked different. His clothing was different, too; perhaps a couple of decades out of date, but looking at him I saw his clothing didn’t remain consistent. The changes were subtle – material, tone – but I noticed. Looking back, I assume it’s because I never did give a specific date for his story to occur in. Well, wherever he was from he was there now, throwing rocks with the best of them, skipping from stone to stone and hurling them at police lines with an easy swing that could only come from years of practise. When we had all finally cleaned out the area – soldiers coming, a helicopter, the kind of trouble you don’t want to toy with – I managed to catch up with him. He was talking to my friends. They noticed we were both there, but didn’t seem to realise we were two different people. The whole time we were all talking, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Michael. I tried, because I knew how obvious I was being, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t work him out. I couldn’t even trust that’s what I was seeing. And the whole time, Michael watched me back. I knew the look in his eyes. It was his smug little, I know something you don’t know look. Of course I knew it. I had made him like that. I had given him that look.

I didn’t see him for some time after that. Believe it or not, I put it out of my head. I mean, come on. It was probably some other guy that my friends knew. We were in Belfast enough, and Michael isn’t exactly an uncommon name. I put it out of my mind, but I was sure that sometimes, I saw him. I was sure I’d see him in Belfast, ducking down side streets or leaning in close conversation with someone I couldn’t make out. He was always watching me. Sometimes I’d feel eyes on me and know it was him, but when I looked around I wouldn’t spot him. On some occasions – and these were always the worst – I would feel his eyes behind my own. Like he was on the inside looking out, moving independently in there, a set of eyes swivelling around over my own. It happened most often when I was trying to write his story. As you can imagine, I was nervous to do so. The more I thought I saw him, the less I wanted to write, but I didn’t think that was a good idea either. I didn’t know what to do.

It was a sunny weekend just before school started back after summer that I finally resolved to do something about it. I didn’t even feel stupid as I booted up my old Windows 95 desktop and opened Word. Michael’s story was there, in 12-point font as I always wrote then, plenty of enthusiasm but a lot less technical skill. My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, and then I typed.

Hello?

Nothing, of course. I deleted the word, wondering what I had expected. Feeling a little stupid now, I tried to think about where to go with the story. It was difficult to write now I had some kind of real person to assign to it all – what were the ethics here? How could I—

I won’t get into that. It would be a philosophical essay all of its own. I sat for a while wondering what to write, and then it hit me that the story had changed. The words Michael had spoken, in the paragraph that I had left off – they were no longer the words I had written. I forget what the original words were now, but they were something relatively simple; some response to another character, and I remember that another name was mentioned in it – the name of Michael’s in-universe best friend, Eamon. Now that name was gone, and the rest of the text had changed, too. Now the writing read something different entirely.

I thought you wanted to know?

I lied earlier. I said that age and experience and perhaps some more emotional maturity had led me to turn away from the kind of violence that fascinated me so much then, and I have no doubt that under normal circumstances it would have done. I had somewhat of a speed run, however; I turned my back on it because

I’m getting ahead of myself.

I had often wondered what it would be like to do what Michael did, of course. To kill and risk death for a cause, to face down prison, torture, exile. I had wondered what it would be like to commit those acts; how easy or difficult it would be to pull a trigger or push a detonator. I liked to think, in my foolish, idealistic teenage mind, that if it came down to it I could. Of course, I was in the very privileged position to not have to actually answer that question.

Michael, on the other hand, knew. And Michael was, if not me, than a product of me. Could it be possible that he could show me?

I ignored the message for several days. I didn’t know what to think. Truth be told I thought I was going mad. School started again and I got so busy that I almost, almost forgot about it – and then I opened the document by mistake one day, got into reading it over, laughing at my brilliant comebacks, you know how it is. And there it was again.

I thought you wanted to know?

Yes, I remember thinking. It stunned me – I remember that. I didn’t want to mess with this kind of stuff – I’ve always been a huge believer in the paranormal, always been cautious when it comes to fucking with that kind of stuff. I believe that magic like this, it requires intent. It needs you to be sure. It knows how you feel, true in your heart. So even when I ignored it again, even when I deleted the words and re-wrote whatever the original had been, even as I didn’t reply… I knew in my heart that my question had been heard by something. I could feel Michael’s eyes on me again, though now I wondered if it was Michael’s eyes, or something else entirely. It felt like a weight. Have you ever been in an old, old place, where you can practically feel the people who lived and died there; reach out and touch them? It felt like that. Like the weight of history was pressing down on me. I didn’t fall asleep easily that night, but when I did sleep was dark and endless.

I don’t know how long I spent in that state. In reality it was only seven hours; I woke up with my alarm. In that time period, wherever I was – because I was not living – I seemed to witness a hundred different lives. Over the course of Michael’s story I had him do all kinds of things; live all kinds of situations. I deleted things, changed others, added things in. I wrote what would now be called alternate universes. In that night I experienced them all. I know how it feels now. I know how it feels to pull a trigger; to watch the spray of someone’s life splatter a wall or a windscreen or the screaming backseat passengers of a car. I know how it feels to push the button, the one that sends a charge surging down a wire or flickering out over my head in an invisible wave of death, notifying the bomb, detonating the explosives. I know how it feels to sit in a hotel bar across a border, listening to the news, sipping a drink and feeling my heart beat in my chest as I add more numbers to the tally, more blood to my hands. I know how it feels to be shot, to be beaten, to watch a friend die, to kill someone who used to be – who still is, despite everything – a friend. I know how it feels to cough blood into my hands, onto the ground; to grip a wound that won’t stop bleeding; the blinding flash of an explosive detonating too soon and how the whole world seems to roar and how there’s a difference between the thud and slap of wet mud hitting the ground and the warmer, denser rain of something that used to be human. For days, weeks, years – I walked in Michael’s shoes, I lived his life, I committed every act.

I felt his pain. His fear. This hellish world that he lived in, created to kill and die and lose and fear, over and over. To meet his God and to finally, finally ask – why?

And what could I say? Because I wanted to know?

Well. Now I do.

[headcanonsandcupcakes]

hola muh dude: so I hear your a maiko shipper? Possibly? Do you have any random Headcanons for them two?

Hey my friend!!! I am so sorry I am getting back to you late on this! I had so many thoughts going around my head regarding these two, that I had to take time to write what I really wanted on this :) Yes, I am a Maiko, Zutara, and Jinko shipper :) But Maiko will always be #1! Are you ready for a lengthy headcanon? Warning: It is also a little depressing :(

- The childhood crush between Zuko and Mai wasn’t one-sided. Zuko also took an affection to Mai, however, it wasn’t as intense of a crush like Mai had for Zuko.

- As they got older, the playing field became level. They had their first kiss together and also hung out with each other outside of Azula (although it was limited because she was threatening). Mai was also the reason why Zuko got into knives and swords. He saw her playing with a small one, and decided he wanted to like knives too, because she liked them. Eventually the interest progressed into swords :)

- Zuko was actually going to ask Mai to be his girlfriend the day after the Agni Kai. However, that never happened. 

- Mai attended the Agni Kai to support Zuko, as she knew he could beat the general. Once she saw that it was Ozai that would be dueling Zuko, she realized it was game over for Zuko. Even as the years passed, she never liked to think about that day. 

- Zuko was banished the day after the Agni Kai, and she never got to properly say goodbye. They kept in touch as best as they could via messenger hawk, but Mai noticed that Zuko drastically changed. It hurt her so much to know that he was going to a TON of pain and turmoil, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Being “friends” with Azula didn’t help matters either, as Mai had to hear horrible commentary about Zuko from Azula. It disgusted her that Azula didn’t even care about her own brother.

- Despite everything that was going on with Zuko, Mai was his shining light. Besides searching for the Avatar, Zuko would look forward to her letters, as that was his only happiness. This explains why he couldn’t get close to Song or Jin, and why it seemed like their relationship came out of nowhere, because they were regularly in contact (until Zuko and Iroh went on the run). Zuko felt a sense of loyalty to Mai, and didn’t want to hurt her by dating other girls. 

- Although Mai had a lack of passion for everything else, she was quite passionate in the bedroom. She is the one who was insistent on cheering up Zuko in “Nightmares and Daydreams”, by having sex, which Zuko graciously accepted. That time was not their first time, however, but rather their first time was during their Ember Island vacation (after ruining Chen’s house). To say the least, Zuko is very awkward, and Mai took charge of most of the activities that night (despite it both being their first time).

- Mai and Zuko dated for two years after the war ended, but took a break because Zuko was struggling with Fire Lord duties and felt that he couldn’t be a proper boyfriend to Mai. Mai rebounded fast, and started dating a councilman’s assistant. Zuko was jealous, but knew that he couldn’t give her what she needed and wanted. 

- Mai ended up dating this man for three years, and many of the nobles thought they were going to get engaged. During this time, Zuko didn’t date anyone and still was madly in love with Mai (this didn’t impress his advisors, who were in insistent on setting him up with someone for an heir). Additionally, although Mai was dating this other man, she still kept in touch with Zuko, and would even visit the palace to check up on him. 

- However, a day came where Mai broke up with the other man. She told Zuko it was because she didn’t see a future with him. Nothing happened between Zuko and Mai for 8 months, as they enjoyed just being friends and being in each others’ company. But, that didn’t last too much longer, as Zuko couldn’t stand to let her get away again. So, he asked her if she would like to try again with their relationship, in which Mai responded, “took you long enough, you’re the one that I want in my future.”

- Their second time dating was a huge success. They realized that the time apart, as well as maturing a little bit, really helped solidify their relationship. They still had their fights, sure, but it wasn’t as unstable as it was when they were teenagers. 

- They dated for a year, until Zuko proposed to Mai. He proposed by getting down on one knee, and presented her a knife that he welded himself. This was the first time he ever saw Mai cry, as she exclaimed, “Yes!”

- Their wedding was absolutely beautiful, and they enjoyed a nice honeymoon on a remote island near the Western Air Temple. They enjoyed married life for several years, and cringed at Uncle Iroh and Mai’s mother’s asks about children. Zuko made a decision a long time ago that he NEVER wanted children because of his childhood, and Mai supported his decision.

- When Mai finds out that she’s pregnant, she’s nervous on Zuko’s reaction (at this point, he was willing to give Tom Tom or Kiyki the throne). She hid it for a few weeks, until Zuko asked her why she was getting sick, eating weird things, and being much moodier than usual, that she confessed. His mind went blank for a moment, but tears automatically streamed on his face. He was already in love with their baby, and realized how stupid he looked for not wanting children.

- When he first felt the baby move in Mai’s belly, he started bawling his eyes out. He loved Mai being pregnant, and enjoyed catering to her every need. One of Mai’s favorite things that Zuko did for her when she was pregnant was that he would heat his hands and place them on her lower back. He also gave into every craving she had, including fire flakes with pickles and ice cream (this was a favorite request of hers). He also was a helicopter husband, as he wanted to ensure that her and the baby were always safe.

- When Mai was in labor, he broke the Fire Lord tradition of not being in the room. He wanted to be there for his wife and see the birth of his daughter. When their daughter was born, they gave her the name Izumi, meaning fountain, where it all started. He was afraid to hold Izumi, as he thought that his daughter would be afraid of his face. After some reassurance from Mai, he held her in his arms, where she looked at him with big golden eyes. He thanked Agni for this blissful moment, and the life he had. It was at this moment that he swore to Izumi that he would always love her, and would NEVER hurt her. 

- Zuko and Mai took to parenting rather well. They wanted to both be hands-on parents, and didn’t want nannies or wet nurses involved at all. Even though Mai always showed a blank canvas, Izumi and Zuko were the only ones that could make her smile and cry of happiness.

- A year and a half after Izumi was born, Mai started to get really bad headaches, to the point that she would have to be bedridden for the day when she would get them. Zuko got really worried, and insisted on Katara coming to the palace to see what the problem was, but Mai told him to back off. She was convinced that it was due to lack of sleep or stress. He did eventually write to Katara, much to Mai’s dismay, and Katara said she would come to visit as soon as she was able (she just had Bumi five months prior to Izumi’s birth, but he was a handful).

- One day, when Izumi was two years old, Mai fainted and had a seizure out in the gardens. Izumi was too young to understand what was going on, and cried for 20 mins until one of the guards found them. Zuko was informed of what happened to Mai during a budget meeting, where he left to the infirmary without saying a word.

- The Fire Sages confirmed that Mai had a death in her brain (cancer wasn’t really studied during their time, but essentially Mai had stage 3 brain cancer). Mai only lived for 6 more months after that. Zuko took time off from his Fire Lord duties (Uncle Iroh stepped in) to take care of Mai at her bedside. Aang, Katara, and Bumi moved into the palace full time to take care of Mai as well.

- Every night, once he put Izumi to bed, Zuko would fire bend in a feral manner. He was incredibly angry that life was dealing him this card, and was also very stressed, because of the pain his wife was going through and also trying to stay strong for their daughter (he had surpassed his Book One anger, that’s for sure). Uncle Iroh, Ursa, and Aang were the only ones keeping him from not going on a rampage, although they understood why he was feeling this way.

- During the last three weeks of Mai’s life, the Gaang came in to check on Zuko, as well as help with the care of Izumi. Zuko was distracted because he knew Mai’s time was coming soon, and wanted to be with her for every moment. However, they had a two year old daughter, and that two year old had needs. So, the Gaang stepped in to feed and put Izumi to bed when she couldn’t stand being at her mother’s bedside any longer (she’s a toddler, it happens).

- Katara tried her best to heal Mai, however, she was too far gone. On the last day of her life, she looked up at Zuko and Izumi with glassy eyes and rasped, “I love you”. Mai died a few hours after that. 

- Izumi was too young to understand what had happened to her mother, however, it didn’t make it easier for Zuko to tell his own daughter that her mother, his wife, the light that kept him going during his banishment, the one that always had faith in him, was no longer on this earth. Although he wanted to be sad and completely disengage from the world, he couldn’t because he needed to stay strong for his daughter. 

- However, Zuko was still numb after Mai passed. He didn’t eat or sleep for two weeks, and went through the motions of the day as if he wasn’t in his own body at all. Even with taking care of Izumi, he wasn’t really “there”. Katara took notice of this, and told Zuko that he needed to grieve. So, he grieved the only way he knew how: being incredibly destructive. He burned an entire wing of the palace that was abandoned for decades. He sat in the middle of the flames and cried for many hours. 

- Mai was buried near the fountain where it all started. Mai always said that she loved that fountain, so Zuko made the decision to bury her right there. For many years after her death, Zuko made it a point to visit her grave every day. Even if he was incredibly busy with Fire Lord duties, he would commit to seeing her and talking to her. The silence when he didn’t hear anything back was always so hard to hear. 

- Izumi doesn’t remember her mother at all, however, Zuko will always talk about Mai to ensure that her legacy is prominent. There are many times in Izumi’s life where he wished she was around to see how amazing of a person Izumi had become. Even when it has been 15 years since Mai’s death, Zuko still aches for her. Before he goes to sleep every night, he kisses the painting that they took together when they were teenagers and says, “goodnight my love”.

[simsadventures]

Baby Fever

Summary: You and Bucky desperately try for a baby. One day, a spirit comes to bless the union.

Warnings: myths, Deer Woman/Lady, enchanted forest, smut (MUST BE 18+ TO READ THIS STORY), fluff, swearing

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 2549 A/N: This little something was written for the best of the best, @waiting4inspiration​ and her Myths and Legends Challenge. There are many different explanation for the Deer Woman, a Native American myth, and I’ve chosen to only concentrate on the good characteristics (fertility, love, etc.). She is also believed to be luring cheating men to their deaths, but that’s not where I’m taking the story.

Hope you all will enjoy it, even if it’s a little different to what I normally do. Let me know! xx

Bucky Barnes Masterlist __ Masterlist

Baby Fever II

It was a stressful morning for you. You were currently sitting on the lid of the toilet, counting seconds before you heard your timer telling you that it was already a minute. You would’ve thought it was the longest minute you’ve ever experienced, but, truth be told, it was just one of many. This was the 7th pregnancy test you were taking, and you had the feeling, that just like the rest of them, this one would also be negative. But there still was a string of hope in your heart, and you decided to stick to that.

Bucky was behind the doors, probably waiting as nervously as you were for the results. You both have already been to the fertility doctors, and they told you that while everything was perfectly fine with your eggs, Bucky’s swimmers were not as active, despite his physique.

He knew it would be a chance after all those tests and experiments Hydra did on him, but until he met you, he never thought it would ever be an issue, having kids. He was the Winner Soldier, who would want children with someone like him?

You did. So so much.

And the longer it was that you couldn’t get pregnant, the more you wanted it. Ever since you met Bucky, you knew you’d want a family with him one day. There were other options, of course. But you just wanted to try a few more times before abandoning your dream of carrying a child on your own.

Bucky even suggested one night that maybe you should have a sperm-donor and that way it would work perfectly, but you dismissed this idea altogether. It was either with Bucky or not at all, you were dead-set on it.

When the timer buzzed, you got up on your shaky legs and walked towards the sink. You took a deep breath and turned the stick in your hand to see the result.

Your heart fell.

Only one fucking line, again. You sighed and felt tears streaming down your face again. At that moment, you could hear the door to the bathroom opening, and before you could do anything, Bucky was cradling you in his arms. The look of pure agony on his face at seeing you so upset because he couldn’t deliver. He hated this. He vowed to make you happy and to protect you, to give you all you’ve ever wanted.

But he obviously couldn’t give you this one thing, and it tore his heart apart. You were the last person he wanted to disappoint, but lately, it seemed it was the only thing he was doing.

Before he could overthink too much, you touched his cheek and made him look down at you.

“Stop. I can see your thoughts pretty clearly, and I’m telling you, stop it. It’s not your fault, I’m not putting any blame on you, and I’m sure, not disappointed with you, Bucky. I love you and that is why I want a family with you. If it doesn’t go this way, then we can adopt. I’m fine with that. More than fine actually. All I want is for us to be happy, and we obviously aren’t stressing about this so much. Let’s just stop trying, and maybe it will come one day.”

You smiled up at him, the tears now drying on your beautiful face, and Bucky couldn’t believe his won luck. There you were, the woman of his dreams letting him known of your undying love. He kissed you fiercely, passionately, trying to convey all the emotions he was feeling in this one kiss.

When you both felt like you needed air more than you needed to reassure each other, you pulled away, but only so slightly that your foreheads were touching.

“I love you, doll. More than anything, and I’ll give you a baby, one way or another,” he said in a hushed voice, still panting slightly from the lack of oxygen.

You giggled and kissed the top of his nose before you turned around and threw the stick to the garbage. No more of this nonsense, you decided, and a weight fell off your heart.

—-

Weeks after that, your life improved drastically. No longer hung over the whole pregnancy-thing, you and Bucky could finally fully enjoy sex again, and, oh boy, were you going at it.

The appetite was back and it no longer felt like a chore to neither of you. You felt as if you were back to the beginnings of your relationship, where Bucky would take you any time of a day, just because he felt like it, on any surface of the apartment. You usually woke up sore from the amount of sex you had the previous night, and the glow returned to your cheeks.

The whole team noticed that you both seemed much happier and your steps were lighter than two months ago, and despite not knowing what the cause was, they were all ecstatic for you.

Even after particularly draining mission in India, you two came back smiling at each other. Bucky felt like a teenager again, looking at you with amazement. Not once have you two talked about babies or pregnancy, or vitamins, or anything like that in the last two months, and you honestly did look that much happier now. So he wanted to take you somewhere to appreciate you properly.

Bucky knew that he couldn’t take you to a proper vacation, not with so many Hydra bases still standing, but a few day getaway wouldn’t do anyone any harm. And if you were still on the US soil, you could be with the team in a matter of a few hours, should they need you two.

There were so many options, and it took Bucky (well, and Steve and Sam, because let’s be honest, Bucky felt still a little better with the help of his two friends) a good few hours to actually settle on some destination. He even asked Tony if he didn’t own some kind of cottage somewhere in the woods, anywhere in the US, and when Tony gave him the list of places he could let Bucky and you use for the weekend, and he combined it with the places he actually liked, he finally picked something.

Great Lakes area.

Bucky knew you’ve been there only briefly once when your parents were still alive, and you had fond memories of the place.

And because you had no idea what he was preparing, he wanted to keep the moment of surprise till the two of you landed near Tony’s cottage. Or a villa. Or mansion, or whatever it was Tony actually had there.

—-

The day finally came, and Bucky only told you to pack something a little warmer, but that was it. You, always the curious one, tried to pry for information, but despite Bucky being the one to always tell you everything because he couldn’t resist your charm, this time he was like a fortress. He didn’t even let you look at the destination he put into the GPS in the quinjet.

You were sitting next to Bucky, pouting like a little child, not willing to talk to him because you just NEEDED to know where you were going.

“Relax, doll. We’ll be there soon enough, and you’ll see for yourself,” Bucky mumbled, leaning from his chair towards you to kiss your hair.

You let him, of course, and you huffed.

Bucky just laughed at your childish behaviour and continued to be his relaxed self, which only irked you more.

It was when you finally saw the vast water reservoir in front of you and saw that there were so many of them, that it all dawned on you. You looked at Bucky, who was already watching your reaction, and squealed loudly.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Well, I’m not sure what you think it is, but, probably? I know how much you enjoyed it here with your parents and I wanted to give you another great memory of this place. This time around, more sex will probably be involved.” Bucky said, laughing at you rolling your eyes at him playfully, still smiling.

When the plane finally landed on Tony’s property, you all but ran out of it to see the whole beauty of the place for yourself. Bucky walked behind you, both of your bags in his hands, and he had to stop and take it all in.

The sun was high up, the nature was awake and singing, and among all this, there you were. You looked like a vision, even in your jeans and sweater. Bucky dropped the bags and ran to you, lifting you off the ground in a bride style, and twirled you around.

The surprised and happy giggles that escaped your lips were music to his ears.

“You like the surprise, Y/N?”

You gave him a kiss for an answer and beamed at him.

When he let you down, you both strode towards the house in front of you, which, to Bucky’s surprise, was a really cozy cottage, and not some crazy high-tech mansion.

The second you looked around the place, you turned around to face Bucky with a smirk plastered on your face.

“How about we go for a little walk? You know, explore the nature here, maybe have a little quickie in the forest, or something, huh?”

Bucky laughed, but pecked your lips, and dragged you out of the house. The image of you pinned against a tree with him pounding into you was motivation enough. He could already feel his cock twitching with interest, and he couldn’t wait to find some secluded place to take you.

You were walking hand in hand, chatting about nothing in particular, just enjoying the closeness between the two of you, while you were getting deeper and deeper into the woods. The whole setting seemed to have changed, there being more and more broad-leaved trees around, with also the temperatures rising significantly, to the point where you had to take your sweater down, and Bucky his leather jacket.

But neither of you really paid attention to it. The only thing that was important at the moment was that you were far away from any peeping Toms in the area.

Bucky saw a tree he like in particular and didn’t waste a second by pushing you against it roughly, cradling your face in his hands and kissing you with fervour. You responded immediately by giving him full access to your mouth, submitting to him fully.

You moaned when he pinched your nipple through your shirt and got to work yourself. You undid his belt and his zipper, finding that he went commando.

You opened your eyes, staring at his already smirking face and raised an eyebrow at him.

“What? I knew I’d want you and it’s just easier this way,” he said, but his voice was muffled by his mouth attacking your neck, and his hands trying to get into your own pants. To his utter surprise, you had the exact same idea as him, and he found you bare under the pair of jeans.

He laughed heartily.

“You’re the one to act surprised, sweetheart. Damn, I even wished you wore a skirt so I could just push it up your thighs and take you straight away.”

“Patience is a virtue, Buck. It will be that much sweeter when you actually pull those pants off of me.”

He smirked and kneeled in front of you, peeling them off, and kissing the skin that was revealed to him by every tug by his hands.

You were wet already, and without the barrier of your panties, he could see the wetness marking your thighs, and he couldn’t wait. He stopped his movement at your ankles, and without a word, he licked your dripping pussy.

The sound that left your mouth was loud enough to wake up any sleeping animal in the woods, but you were far too gone to care. All you wanted was to feel Bucky’s wet tongue in you.

But he didn’t give you much. He just groaned into your core, sending shivers down your spine, and then he pulled away, despite your whines of protest.

“Don’t worry, love. Imma eat you out like never before when we get back, but right now, I just need to be inside you.”

As he said it, he finally freed you off the jeans and stood up, kissing you once again, and could feel his very hard member stroking through your folds.

You bucked your hips, driven purely by the need you felt in your core and the love you felt for Bucky.

He obeyed immediately, his cock catching in your entrance before he gave a hard thrust to be fully sheeted in you.

The gasps and moans were the only things that could be heard around you, and they were loud enough that you didn’t pay much attention to what was happening around you.

From behind one of the trees, a beautiful doe stepped out, her big brown eyes following the limited movements of your bodies against the tree.

You felt as if you were being watched, and when you opened your eyes, you could see her there, just standing, watching. There was something almost human about that doe, but before you could think about it too much, Bucky hit your g-spot precisely, and he had you crying out in pleasure.

Despite the loud noises, the doe was still there.

What you didn’t, and couldn’t know was that you were already on the territory of the Potawatomi tribe, and the deer standing there was not a regular deer.

It was the Deer Woman, the phantom of fertility and love, in which mainly the Native Americans believed, and which was, obviously, very much real.

She watched the two of you in her animal form, feeling the love and adoration you were feeling towards each other surround her and tell her all she needed to know about the two of you. She smiled inwardly, loving the strength of your emotions. She could also feel a specific loss deep inside you, and when she looked well enough, she could see the problem.

And as she was feeling rather generous, she wished the nature and the universe to bless you, to give you the strength to carry a child and send a wave of this blessing towards you.

It felt as if a warm wind hit your insides. It was comfortable, and you credited it to the pleasure you were feeling thanks to your husband.

You were gasping, chanting Bucky’s name over and over again until you climaxed around him, your walls pulsing vigorously trying to milk him of everything he had. And it didn’t take long before Bucky followed your suit, shooting this cum into your warm and ready womb.

When you opened your eyes again, the deer was gone. You smiled to yourself, and let the image of the animal watching you go, feeling a little ashamed that there actually was somebody there, peeping on the two of you.

You two quickly grabbed your clothes and walked briskly out of the woods, the quickie tiring you both.

Little did you know that this trip to the enchanted forest would change your lives forever, in exactly 9 months.

Disclaimer: some places are totally made up, like the “enchanted forest”, for example, but the tribe of Potawatomi is very much real, and it is in this tribe (among many others) that the myth of Deer Woman appears, and they are indeed, to a certain extent present settled around the Great Lakes area. Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page here :) xx

Bucky Taglist

@this-kitten-is-smitten​ @sebbbystaaan​ @paradisiacalsparks​ @crazybutconfidentaf​ @owlyannah​ @lassini​ @s-trawberryv-eins​ @reniescarlett​

Marvel Taglist

@voltage-my2dlove​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @lumar014​ @ptrs-prkrs​

Forever Tag:

@eileenalone​ @sasbb23​ @p8tn0lish​ @coffeebooksandfandom​ @waiting4inspiration​ @caswinchester2000​ @mogaruke​ @justthatfangirloverthere​ @mushyjellybeans​ @livsheph​

[pynkhues]

Hi ! I just wanted to say that I love your writing and I wanted to ask how you go about doing research for all your au's. Thanks!

Hi! Thank you so much, anon! And what a fun question! I could talk about researching all day, haha. My undergraduate degree is actually in history too, so research is something that’s sort of fundamental to my education in a lot of ways. 

To talk about researching is kind of hard though, because while the steps are more or less the same, the approach is really different depending on what it is that I’m writing. For instance, the answer’s pretty different if I’m writing a modern day au where I can shorthand certain things because my readers know what I’m talking about vs an historical au where I really have to think pretty deeply about everything if I want to submerge a reader in a storyworld. 

So I thought it might be fun to answer this question using my two biggest au’s as sorts of case studies! This is probably an extremely nerdy answer, I don’t know, haha, and it talks about both researching and incoporating research into the creative process while writing, so I hope that’s okay! 

Generally speaking, all my writing starts with a question: 

What’s the story that I want to tell? 

This is always a process that tends to vary for me, but I rarely actively ask the question to myself prior to getting ready to write it? Usually it ends up as me sort of thinking over a concept then getting to a point where I know I’m going to write it, and it’s only when I really start to think seriously about that that I ask myself that question. 

In both of these cases, it was pretty typical for me, haha: 

And well, then we get to the next question.

What background do I need to know to be able to tell that story? 

While this question might seem AU specific, it’s something that’s actually a step in everything I write. I was working on the second part of the Christmas fic today, which is technically canon divergent, but has made me think a lot about Beth and Rio’s canon cultural backgrounds. 

I’ve always liked the headcanon that Beth and Annie are Jewish, but disconnected from their heritage (Marks is a traditionally Jewish surname, Annie’s used some yiddish slang before), and Rio’s obviously Latino, but of Mexican heritage if we apply Manny’s background, and wears rosary beads on the show which indicate that he’s Catholic. I wanted to embrace both of those things, so I’ve tried to thread them through the story where it’s appropriate to do so. For instance, there's a scene of a Las Posadas celebration at Sainte Anne de Detroit which required a LOT of research on my part and hopefully reads well! 

The point is that those things felt important to me to include in a Christmas fic about Beth and Rio in the C&C ‘verse because the entire series is about their lives entwining and getting to know each other fully. I want to include detail that feels specific to what we know about them and embraces and (with any luck) deepens our connection to the characters in my fic. 

What I’m getting to in a really roundabout way is that once I have a story idea, I start to think about what I’m going to have to understand if I’m going to do the story justice.

In the case of the pornstar and pirate aus, this couldn’t look more different: 

Annnnnd so on, haha. 

As you can see, sometimes that background research is really clear and straight forward, as it was with the pornstar AU. I looked up how it worked, and because I knew that I wanted it to steer clear of the seedy and toxic parts of porn, I basically researched ideal environments and best practice, put those in place, and then focused on how to get Beth from her suburban home into a legitimate studio. 

The pirate AU was extremely different and much more of a mutable process. Without a clear sense of the era from the get-go, I had a much wider scope to explore when and where the story could take place, and when I realised that dating the story would inevitable force me to contend with parts of history I might not want to (i.e. the lead up to The Civil War), it let me re-shape a world around an era, but not feel entirely beholden to it. 

In that sense, the research process for both of them involved me choosing fantasy over reality – I negated certain realities to focus on the things I wanted to write (I highly doubt you will find a porn set anywhere near as ethical as Thank You Ma’am after all) – but if I can’t do that in fanfic, where can I? The aim still is for there to be enough that is real that you feel grounded in the story even if I’ve taken certain creative liberties for the sake of telling the story I want to tell.

That’s the beauty of research. Once you know enough about it, you can make informed choices about what you use to shape your storyworld, and make it feel authentic even as you’re fictionalising it.

The point of that though is that this background research is so fundamental to the DNA of the story itself, that it can’t even begin to exist without it.

Loose plotting

It’s usually around this point that I’ll put together a loose plot. This is generally pretty thin, but I’ll start to put pieces into a bit of an order. 

The pornstar au is, again, a really easy example of this. Three parts felt right for it, the shooting of the porno itself was always going to be in the final part, which gave me two chapters to get Beth there. I knew she was going to submit herself through an amateur talent callout which I’d discovered in my background research, so the question of it was more around why would someone like her sign up? Canon plot points help – Beth needs money! Fantasy kicks in again, haha – because she and Dean are finally divorcing.

On the other hand, the pirate au is pretty much unrecognisable from it’s first loose plot.

In it, I’d pencilled in Beth travelling on a ship with Dean and the children, pirates boarding, and Rio kidnapping Beth as collateral to help him escape. 

My loose plots change a lot and usually grow in detail, evolve and change shape as I start to ask myself why, and there are a lot of reasons why the pirate au changed so much, but I’ll get to that a bit later. 

The point is, once I have a loose plot, I’ll usually throw some more words down, see what I’ve got, and then get to the part of the research process I like to call: 

Question time

With background research done and a loose plot and some draft scenes written, I hit a much more specific part of the research process where I don’t need to know broadstroke background detail, I need to know the answers to really specific stuff. I usually write a list and try to do it all at once so that the writing process isn’t too much stop-start. I bullet point the answers in my creative doc then too, so the information is right there when I need it.

Again, the questions I asked of the pornstar au and pirate au were pretty different (although there were a few similarities, haha). Some of the questions I asked were: 

This is actually a case where the pirate au was, in a lot of ways, easier. History is well documented and fact checked after all, but current porn industry standards are, y’know. Not quite as transparent, haha. I’ve mentioned it before, but I actually started to fill out an amateur porn application (with a false identity of course, haha), so that I could see the full form and get a genuine sense of the questions they ask, which is hilarious, annnd brings us to sources. 

Sources

In researching, there are definitely things I’ll just Google, but I also like to utilise sources pretty widely. In particular, Google’s not really going to give you a great sense of what - say - the life of a pornstar’s like, but there are some great podcast series where performers talk about their lives in their own words. Similarly, Google searches are great for the cliffnotes of an answer, but don’t hold a candle to era-made drawings, letters and newspaper clippings. 

For the two, I’d probably say my sources looked something like this: 

How do the answers to these questions affect the story that I want to tell? 

Annnd of course, the answers to these questions frequently end up re-shaping and re-framing my story, both directly and indirectly. Originally for instance, I wasn’t going to have condoms at all in the pirate au, because I naively assumed they wouldn’t be invented yet in a loose 1800s-set fic, only to discover that some version of a condom has been around since Ancient Rome (it was made using the bladders of animals! Gross!). 

Other times it’s indirect. The idea for instance in the pirate au to have Beth realise the houses that the men had robbed through certain items they were wearing came really from looking a lot at antique store sites and image archives and seeing how much was custom made for families and individuals. That in turn made me think how for someone who’s ability to think on her feet and observe are her strengths, that could really come into play as a plot point. 

Re-Plotting and Writing

It’s usually around this point that everything comes together and I start to really map out a fic in a firmer, more meaningful way, and also just throw myself into the writing of it. I generally feel like I’ve got the tools at this point in the process, and start to talk to the story in a bit more of an informed way. 

It’s also really where I start asking myself why? and what does this mean for the next scenes? a lot. 

Jumping back to the original pirate au plot, this was really where it pivoted as drastically as it did. There were too many tropes in that premise that I didn’t like. I didn’t like that Beth had no agency in the act that connected her to Rio, I didn’t like the trope of the MOC kidnapping a ‘helpless’ white woman, I didn’t like that Beth would be taken from her children by force and how that would impact any connection her and Rio formed and ensure that a major part of the story would have to be devoted to Beth trying to get back to them.

Immediately that made it a case where Beth had to choose to go with Rio, but why would she leave her family? And why would Rio let this upperclass lady onboard his ship? So she snuck on. So she had to, because Dean lost everything again. Okay, but would Beth just leave the kids with Dean after he’d done that? No way, not with the implications of the time, so who would she leave them with? Annie or Ruby - no, I want Ruby on the pirate adventure. Annie. But what on earth could put Annie in a secure enough position that Beth would willingly entrust her children to her? 

Thus the subplot of Greg wanting to legitimise Ben was born! Which I doubly liked, because it kind of mirrors canon, haha. 

In that case, the research really helped me flesh out a story world that let me explore character storylines in a way that I wouldn’t always do, which is insanely fun to me, haha, so I forever am left hoping it’s fun to read too. 

But yes! In a nutshell, that’s my research process. :-)