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#i heard that there was a controversy once because people kept saying they were too gay (rabbit has make up and wolf wear pink)
snippit-crickit · 2 years
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old art i still like- my edition of wolf and rabbit from the soviet cartoon nu pogodi/wilk i zając that most people from the former eastern bloc would watch as a kid, including myself all things aside i think their designs are neat, they basically were soviet tom and jerry
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A'ight, what is it about Anne Brontë and Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I keep seeing stuff about how Anne is the unproblematic Brontë sister and that's what kept me away from her books lol
*kracks knuckles* All right. So, remember how the Brontë sisters wrote three novels simultaneously? Charlotte wrote The Professor, Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne wrote Agnes Grey. The two latter got picked up by publishers, but The Professor was rejected, so Charlotte finished up Jane Eyre and sent it to a publisher, who accepted it immediately and had it published before Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey got printed. All three of them wrote under pen names (Charlotte was Currer Bell, Anne was Acton Bell, and Emily was Ellis Bell), because they knew their novels were, say, a little controversial, and that if it was known they were women, their characters would be judged and immediately associated to their works. So needless to say, they were VERY supportive of each other, because they knew no one else would. (Their father was also supportive, but they published their novels without telling him at first but once they did, he was very encouraging, thankfully.)
It's easy to see why Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights would be considered controversial in their day (they still kind of are today given the Discourse(tm), lol). Agnes Grey, while it didn't do as well as JE and WH, was criticized for being a little too... let's say, honest about a governess' day-to-day life, when Anne wrote it drawing from her own experiences as a governess. The thing with Anne is that people find her stuff a little moralizing, but it was in her best interest to present Agnes as virtuous given how she made little secret of how poorly governesses could be treated, since it wasn't that rare they'd be accused of profiting from the families they were employed by, when there were abuse cases more often than not.
Then The Tenant of Wildfell Hall came out, and that's when criticism started to fly. May Sinclair (an early 20th century suffragist) would later write that the scene where Helen (the main character of the novel) slams her door to her husband's face had a reveberation that was heard throughout England. It's the story (in case you don't mind getting spoiled for a 150-year-old book) of a lady who marries a Victorian fuckboy called Huntington, ends up in an abusive household where her only comfort is her son, and once she realizes that her husband is becoming a bad influence on her child, she leaves him and manages to hide in a house that her brother is willing to rent to her, while she tries to earn a small living by painting. And people lost their shit, because according to them, Helen was a bad woman for leaving her husband, even though she did it to, you know, get her son out of a toxic environment. If Charlotte criticized anything about the novel, it's that she thought some aspects of Huntington were depicted too graphically, but they mostly had to do with his alcoholism and his adultery (this is important: those critcisms have nothing to do with Helen, or how Tenant is shade thrown at Charlotte and Emily's works). That might have been because Anne got some inspiration for Huntington from Branwell, their brother, who was also an alcoholic and got fired from his job as a tutor for having an affair with the lady of the house. Charlotte was pretty fed up with Branwell at that point, and while Emily was the one who got along with him best, they had some pretty big fights because she was in no way a pushover (so the belief that Charlotte and Emily idolized Branwell while Anne was the only one who saw through his BS is also, incidentally, BS).
So, why did Charlotte stop Tenant from being re-printed after Anne's death? Simply put, the criticism against it was getting worse, and people were defaming Anne's character because of it. Charlotte had had her own share of troubles with Jane Eyre - she dedicated the second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray (of Vanity Fair and Barry Lyndon fame) because he was her favorite author, without knowing his wife was institutionalized after suffering from severe post-partum depression. And that led, of course, to people speculating that Jane Eyre was semi-autobiographical, and that Charlotte was Thackeray's mistress. (I mean, it *is* semi-autobiographical, but Thackeray had nothing to do with it.) So she was understandably a little on edge, and while she edited Agnes Grey for a reprinting after Anne's death (given there were a lot of spelling mistakes and the like in the first printing), she asked for Tenant to not be reprinted to protect her sister's memory.
So no, Charlotte did not block Tenant from being as well-known as Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre because she was "jealous", or because she was mad that Anne was "throwing shade" at her and at Emily. She was protecting her sister's reputation, because she wasn't even alive anymore to speak for herself and mount any kind of defense, and that was while Charlotte's own reputation was under fire, after she had lost the two people who had supported her the most - Emily died in 1848, and Anne in 1849. To try to pit these sisters against each other, when two of them died far too young and the surviving one had to pick up the pieces and defend them against public opinion - it is simply distasteful, and it needs to stop.
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ronancebyler · 4 months
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Ronance headcanons?
oh my goodness of course i do hehehehe (if you cant tell I love them)
i am ignoring the canon plot and using the bits that are convenient to me because I do what I want
Before Robin realized she liked Nancy, she truly didn't understand the deep level of fury she felt against Jonathan. It made no sense because they were friends and she had so much fun with him! Except whenever him and Nancy were together suddenly she had the urge to rip her hair out
Nancy figured her feelings out before Robin did. I know this is controversial and I do agree Robin fell first Nancy fell harder. However, I think the fear of falling for someone who she loves and cares for very much who if Nancy finds out Robin could lose her both from being a lesbian and for being in love with her, just manifests in denial. This is also compounded by the fact that she's convinced she likes Vickie who conveniently is out of reach and (presumed) straight, so if Vickie wasn't into her she wouldn't be risking as much since she's not planning to confess in the first place
Nancy on the other hand very quickly figured it out. After losing Barb, her fear manifested less in denial and more as an overdrive of all her emotions because if she doesn't figure it out quickly she might lose Robin before she could even say a word, so the moment she falls she figured it out then and there. She doesn't want another situation where she didn't tell a person she loves how much they mean to her
that night she had a panic attack that was BRUTAL like she sobbed for hours realizing she's probably going to have to choose between being true to herself and a relationship with her parents. she already knew she liked girls, she figured it out after barb's death, but liking someone new felt so tangible. robin heard her crying and didn't ask, just sat with her for the rest of the night tracing her thumb in circles on her palm
A fluffier one: Nancy plans to confess but Robin does it before she does on accident. Like she's just talking about journalism and how much she enjoys investigative journalism and Robin is just like "I'm in love with you." My assumption is that Robin had already come out to her beforehand but she was just horrified. Nancy was shocked but then was like "you beat me to it <3"
Nancy had not come out to Robin yet, she was planning to do it with her confession, and she had already talked to Eddie (platonic soulmates edancy lover till I die) and talked to Steve so she was prepared but Robin was just FLABBERGASTED
this girl has the most godawful gaydar known to mankind so despite nancy staring at her with heart eyes on a daily basis she was in shock
hAND KISSES I WILL NOT STOP WITH THE NANCY GIVING HAND KISSES HC
wrist kisses too her favorite thing to do is hold robin's fingers or pulse against her lips and just feel her warmth
robin is really warm, unreasonably so, and nancy is really cold
they both love shoving their noses into each others neck and just breathing in each others smells
robin loves rubbing the fact that she's dating nancy fucking wheeler into people's faces
"you're better at me then this???? well I pulled nancy wheeler stevie!! and I actually kept her unlike you so shut up"
her and eddie are constantly at war at who her favorite person is
"you already have stevie this is MY emotional support comphet fruit"
robin hangs over her shoulders while she writes and just reads her words
there was a solid bit of time that robin thought eddie and nancy were together. she accidentally asked them and triggered the longest giggle battle she has ever seen seen
bisexual nancy or lesbian nancy, she's filled with so much comphet
fully convinced that romantic feelings for guys and platonic feelings for girls felt the same
sometimes she feels guilty and feels like she's 'replacing' barb but the feeling lessens by the day
robin gets anxiety attacks every once in a while and nancy knowing exactly what to do when it happens really calms her down. like it reminds her that the person she loves is the most capable ever
robin loves nuzzling herself into nancy's stomach because cold and nice
poor, poor steve. the amount of rants he's heard from both sides
"nancy is so amazing and cool!" "robin is so pretty when she talks <3"
Mostly Robin for obvious reasons but jfc it's concerning at this point
that poor man needs to start charging per hour at this point
I will never shut up if I keep going so I'll cut it off right here.
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cursed-elo-images · 11 months
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My Thoughts on Hugh McDowell
Oookay so I’m two days late with this, but I want to make this post today anyway because there was something that inspired me to do so in the first place… Consider this a tribute to Hugh McDowell in text form!
Content warning: mentions of death, cancer and addiction, so anyone that is uncomfortable with these topics should be warned. If anyone wishes to skip past this point for what ever reason, please do so.
Two days ago, in 2018, which was roughly five years ago, Hugh McDowell sadly passed away from cancer. Sometimes, I don’t even know what to think about his death—he was so full of energy that I just cannot believe he’s…gone. He is one of my favorite members of this band, and he means so much to me.
As I have mentioned before, I didn’t get into the fandom until 2023, but I did start liking the music since early 2020. I loved the classical sound of this specific flavor of rock music, and Hugh and the rest of the string trio carried that. Once I got into the fandom, it made me realize just how interesting the people behind this music were. But since this post is specifically about Hugh, so I’m just going to talk about him in this post.
Hugh McDowell. Hugh McDowell! HUGH MCDOWELL!!! Oh how I love this man so much. I love how creative he is and that he doesn’t play the cello conventionally. No—he throws it up into the air, spins it, dances with it, and sometimes even plays it like a guitar! How cool is that!? I for one did not expect a cellist to behave like that!
And his sense of fashion, too. I love all of his very flamboyant suits, like the pink/purple one in the RockPalast concert, the cream colored one with the pink dress shirt from the RockPalast interview—and many more suits. Also I love his long hair. He’s so good at parting it, and controversial opinion incoming: while I like it to a lesser degree, the hairstyle he has in 1975 that was slightly shorter with short bangs was actually pretty good too! And his moustache—I can’t get enough of it. To a lesser extent I like his beard now too—it doesn’t really scare me like it used to. But when he only had a moustache 🤌🤌🤌also I do like his clean shaven look from late 1974 as well.
Can we talk about his personality too? This man was so full of ENERGY!!! The fact that he broke down his (or was it Bev’s?) locked hotel door will never not be funny to me. Not to mention eating parts of a tree. I once heard how he accidentally smashed his cello into bits and pieces and freaked out and was like “uhhh everyone in the audience can keep these pieces of my cello as a souvenir! 😅” How he nonchalantly kept a pet snake on the plane which scared everyone but him.
Moving on, let’s talk about his soft side— yes, Hugh McDowell’s soft side!!! He absolutely loved books, and practically read them all the time. However, I do not know what he read about: the history of classical music? Snakes? Who knows! But what we do know is that he loved to read a lot! He was also super good friends with Melvyn Gale—best friends even. He also loved his pet snake, whose name was Cleo, dearly—the two were inseparable. He even cried when he had to give her up—that’s dedication right there.
Okay, so all I’m going to say is: I am aware that he isn’t perfect. No one is. We all have our moments. Just as long as we try our best to be the best we can be, then we will go into the right direction. It absolutely breaks my heart to hear about his alcohol addiction. I do not know if he did get over it (I hope) but if I’m being honest, I know this may sound cliche and even ridiculous, but I wish I could have helped him. What I mean by this is that I wish and hope he had someone to help him regarding that. It is heavy on my heart, that if I could have helped him, I would. I really would. Still, I am glad that he had a life filled with fun and cellos, but I can’t ignore this situation…
Overall: I love this person. He is really amazing, and I wish to have him back. So this month I like to remember what an amazing ELO member he was and I love thinking of all the funny things he did.
He’s just so interesting…
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pleb-the-original · 2 years
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Day 18: Reverse
(I knew from the start that this prompt was absolutely gonna be about the reverse of the common fallen angel: the ascended demon. The hardest part was coming up with a good premise behind them, although I managed to stumble into another catalog entry. Also before you ask, Treefoil got away with talking to them because they’re the child of a demon and a fae so technically they don’t count as a demon. Hopefully I can get a bit more of these knocked out at a time with the extra break time I have now.) Goodness gracious! My apologies, it's just that you startled me. I mean I knew I was supposed to come down here but I didn’t expect all this. Am-am I even allowed to talk to you right now? Really? Which one? Fortuna? Wasn’t expecting her. Oh no, it's just that I’ve heard that most people go to Loki in order to contact any of us in heaven. But how? We aren’t even allowed to talk to demons. Ohhhh, clever. Anyways, why exactly have you come to all this trouble just for me? An interview? Well if it gets more of them to see the light, figuratively and literally, then I’ll oblige. My name is Cori and I am an ascended demon. Don’t worry, none of the rumors are true, we all joined the light willingly. I myself did so quite enthusiastically. I used to be a fortune demon, specifically one invoking the power of the four leaf clover. You might be able to find me in Lady Luck’s records, but I would prefer you not to mention that old name. Wait, really? What a coincidence! So then you must understand the intricacies of the job then. Well, I went a little overboard. I knew we were only supposed to grant good luck to those that did the rituals and had the charms necessary to do so, but I just granted fortune indiscriminately. All I wanted was for people to be happy, even for just a moment. Lady Luck didn’t appreciate that too much. I should be surprised but considering what I’ve heard of her latest controversies I doubt she was mad at me for ruining the balance. It was definitely an ego thing. I think my frequent trips up here was how I was scouted by the angels. Now, we’re not exactly permitted to tell anyone how the angels initially contact you but I was. Over time we kept meeting and discussing. They convinced me that the best way to keep granting happiness to humans was to become one of them. Which makes sense, what happiness can really be spread from my old home which was full of pain and suffering? Soon enough, I packed up everything and they fully converted me. They chose Coriander to remind me to nurture my generosity like a garden. Now I’m truly happy. What’s life like in heaven? Well it's certainly different. It encompasses all of us ascended demons but most angels tend to look at us differently. I think they’re in awe of our virtue or something. I even got adopted into an angelic family and they’re the kindest people I’ve ever met. I think that’s the most I can say really. They tend to have us on a bit of a closer watch considering our past. Personally, I think it's a little unfair but we’ve been working on pushing past that with Clara spearholding. It was nice sharing my story anyhow, and I hope it brings hope to others lost like me.(Well that was…weird. Did you guys set me up to this or something? You just HAD to give the clover based Ashen who also has a side gig in luck the ascended demon that used to be the exact same. Very funny. Don’t worry, she convinced me of jack shit. I prefer using my luck to trick people into hard falls from grace once my colleagues get their hands on them. Still an interesting perspective for the Catalog. I get why this was necessary, but next time get me a job that doesn’t hold up a weird mirror. -Treefoil.) 
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felassan · 4 years
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“I was trying to chart out the arc of [Jack’s] romance, which for much of the development - it was actually very late that it became a male/female-only romance,” Brian Kindregan tells me. Kindregan was the lead writer for Jack. “She was essentially pansexual for most of the development of that romance.”
“Mass Effect had been pretty heavily and really unfairly criticized in the US by Fox News, which at the time... maybe more people in the world thought that there was a connection between reality and what gets discussed on Fox News,” Kindregan continues. “The development team of Mass Effect 2 was a pretty progressive, open-minded team, but I think there was a concern at pretty high levels that if [the first] Mass Effect, which only had one gay relationship, Liara - which on paper was technically not a gay relationship because she was from a mono-gendered species - I think there was a concern that if that had drawn fire, that Mass Effect 2 had to be a little bit careful.”
Interestingly enough, Courtenay Taylor - who played Jack in Mass Effect 2 - also expressed that she was originally supposed to be a pansexual character. In a recent chat, Taylor said:
“It’s funny to me because my understanding was always that she was pansexual. So I don’t know if that’s just something I inferred from the character or something that she said that maybe got cut. I was surprised there wasn’t a female romance possible because that was my understanding. I think it was the time, you know? That was, what - 2008/2009? The industry has changed exponentially since then, and BioWare was leading the charge on that. I don’t know if it came down to a budget constraint or maybe someone being like ‘this is too obvious’ because everyone was like ‘of course she’s a lesbian.’ But my sense was always that she was [pansexual] and it just didn’t get followed through. Of course, the community modded it immediately so you can have it your way.”
As Jack’s writer, Kindregan explains that he didn’t necessarily agree with the decision to change her sexuality. He understands why it happened, and says “it wasn’t like some anti-gay person high up on the Mass Effect 2 team saying, ‘we’re not going to have that’.” Instead, it had to do with the firestorm of controversy that Mass Effect had received back in 2007, and attempting to minimize the amount of critique that would be directed towards the community by outlets like Fox News again. “The short version is, a lot of us were asked pretty late to focus the relationships on a more traditional kind of vector,” Kindregan says.
“I’ve definitely heard a lot from people who were surprised that Jack turned out to not be open to that,” he continues. “I understand why. I would say that there were a lot of seeds planted in her conversations that certainly implied that she was pansexual - she once specifically references being part of a thrupple. She says there was a guy and a woman she was running with that invited her into their robberies and into their bed. She definitely references those things. That was explicitly to start sending the message that yes, this is a character who is pansexual. In the eleventh hour revision of cleaning that up, she’d already been partially recorded with voiceover. Not all of that could be changed.
“I would say even with the things I could change, and I don’t know if this was the right decision or not, I still saw her as a character with an edge,” Kindregan says. “Not edgy, but with an edge of not following traditional norms. I think I might have, even during the revision process, kept some of that stuff in there with a sense of like yeah, this is a person who’s been around and done a lot of things, went off the farm and down to Paris.”
Ultimately, though, Jack became a romance option that was exclusively available for male Shepard, despite the fact that both her writer and actor agree that she was originally supposed to be pansexual. 2010 was only three years after the infamous Fox News Mass Effect debacle, and so BioWare was reluctant to follow through on some of the ideas that were specifically put in place early in development.
[on Samara] [She] expresses that she has feelings for you but ultimately turns you down - Kindregan compares it to someone saying, sure, I’ll be with you, but I’m in love with this other person and I’ll ditch you for them if they come calling.
“I’ve worked with lesbian developers who have come up to me and said like, ‘Why is Jack not into me?’” Kindregan says. “And I have to say ‘I’m so sorry, it’s partially my fault.’ But I still stand by the thing of keeping her with a more varied background. Maybe someday Jack will be portrayed as pan.”
[source]
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letterstotheflre · 3 years
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my drug is my baby
summary: sirius is glad he was patient enough with you and takes part of what he has been craving most
warnings: daddy kink, a smidge of religious references, dacryphilia, overstimulation, fingering and oral sex (fem receiver), innocence/corruption kink
word count: 3.2k
a/n: i kinda hate this now but i think it’s because i read it too many times, idk || i think it's a universal experience to not being able to cum from your own fingers... right?? and we all know that sirius has a crying kink... also i think it’s so hot when they make you thank them for letting you cum, sue me!!
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Sirius Black liked to believe he was a patient man when he needed to be.
He was known for being reckless, always jumping into the next adventure without much thought, ready to follow James wherever he went. Most of the time he spoke without thinking, especially if he knew his comments would make his parents red with rage. Sometimes he didn’t even mean what he said, he just spewed whatever progressive or controversial opinion he had in hopes of making his mother’s heart stop beating.
He revelled in making rash decisions, somehow always ending up being benefited by them. He never gave much thought to anything: always doing his homework last minute yet somehow still getting top marks, taking some jokes too far, never taking into consideration other people’s safety unless they were close friends.
Some may call him selfish, but he liked not having to put too much thought into every single action. He spent most of his childhood walking on eggshells, afraid of saying the wrong thing and being punished or worse, Regulus taking the beating for him. But now that he finally escaped the Black family, he enjoyed the freedom that came with leaving Grimmauld Place.
He enjoyed breaking rules and creating chaos. It made him feel mighty, knowing he had the power to make all of those choices, still coming out on top, and see how they affected certain people. Most applauded him, revered him for being so spontaneous and adventurous; others couldn’t stand him, complaining about his mean jabs and sometimes harmful pranks.
Yet he knew how to wait for the things he deemed important or worthy. He knew that it was best to wait for Euphemia’s cherry pie to cool down before eating it, to wait for three days after the full moon to make a werewolf joke to Remus, to wait a few hours after James lost a Quidditch match to suggest a quick trip to The Three Broomsticks. And he knew it was best to wait for you.
Good things come to those who wait, that was his mantra. Of course, most of his restraint when it came to you was because he cared deeply about you and your comfort, but his conscience also drove him to keep his hands to himself. Every time his hands were about to go under your skirt, every time he heard your breathy moans when he kissed your neck, every time you looked at him with pouty lips begging for a kiss and his fingers craved to squeeze your neck, he took a step back. He felt so guilty for tainting something that in his mind was so pure, so he just held you close and peppered your face with kisses until you giggled.
But the thought of you being so untouched and how bashful you looked when he teased you or someone made a sexual comment made him want to ruin your innocence. Something inside him craved to see you tainted, to have you writhing under him as he rolled his hips against yours while you clutched his shoulders. He wanted to take that holiness you had and turn it into something so sinful that there was no way for you to ask for redemption.
And when you opened the door and took the first step, who was he to deny you?
He dragged everything out. Since the day when he taught you how to touch yourself, he wanted to make you wait for every sexual act that followed. He wanted to see how long it would take for you to beg him for some relief.
So today during a lecture when you looked at him with glazed over eyes and begged him to help you relieve the strange ache you felt in your stomach since you woke, he decided to be benevolent and give you some relief. He swiftly moved his hand under your skirt (thanking God that most of your closet consisted of that particular piece of clothing and dresses) and pushed aside your underwear before his fingers made way between your dripping folds. He didn’t enter you, just played with your clit until you had to bite the back of your hand to muffle your moans.
But when you whispered a small “thank you, daddy” and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, the only thing he wanted to do was take you back to his room and press you to the bed until your legs shook and tears ran down your cheeks. His eyes quickly scanned the classroom to make sure no one saw or heard anything, shoulders tense because of your words. All he could see were students with their own glassy eyes as they listened to whatever the professor was talking about. Fucking tease, Sirius thought.
And now, as he watched you on your knees and clutching his leg, lips pouty and cheek nuzzling his jean covered thigh, he was thankful for being patient enough.
“Please, Sirius, they’re back,” you said. He knew exactly what you were talking about, but played dumb as one hand petted your hair. “What’s back, baby?”
“The tingles,” you explained.
“And you need me to fix it, hm?” A small taunt was evident in his tone. “Your hands aren’t enough anymore, right bunny?”
Your cheeks warmed up at the implication, nevertheless, you shook your head. You still managed to make yourself cum, but the way Sirius could play with your clit like an experienced musician and how his big hands moved your hips along his jean covered leg would never compare to your dainty digits. The thought of his big fingers inside of you was enough to increase the tingles, and your hands pressed down on your stomach trying to soothe the pain.
“Please, Sirius, it hurts so bad,” you whimpered.
“Use your words, angel. Be good,” he said. You looked up at him with watery eyes, your mind already slipping and not letting you form too many coherent thoughts. “Please, daddy,” you sniffled.
He kept petting your head. “What do you want, angel?” He asked, looking almost bored with the situation as he listened to your pleads. “Anything,” you whined.
He shook his head, mocking disappointment. “You know you have to ask for what you want, puppy.” Even though he wasn’t angry, honestly a little amused at your desperation, his voice was stern, trying to engrave his rules in your fuzzy brain.
Your hands squeezed his leg, “I need you… down there.”
“You need to be clearer.''
You closed your eyes. You hated being so crass, but Sirius certainly had no qualms about it. “I need you… in my pussy,” you got out. But it wasn’t enough, not for Sirius who longed to ruin every aspect of your innocence. “What do you want, baby? D’ya want my fingers or my tongue?”
“Both,” you whined. Bingo, he thought with a dark smirk that would’ve sent shivers down your spine if you weren’t absolutely drenching and desperate for his touch. “Up you get, puppy,” he said, “lay on the bed f’me.”
You got on the bed right next to him, your head laying on one of your fluffy pillows. Your dress rode up a bit with your movements, but it didn’t really matter, and you pressed your legs together trying to relieve some of the tension while you waited for Sirius to do something. He simply watched you, taking in the image of you wriggling in place and toying with the rings he bought you for your birthday.
You felt a soft touch on your calves, and it gave you a fluttering feeling in your stomach. Sirius’s hands were moving slowly up your legs, nudging them apart without needing much force since you complied immediately. You were about to burst, ready to scream at him to just get on with it, but decided to keep quiet.
One of his hands made its way to the edge of your dress, swiftly going under it and his fingers slightly grazing your clothed pussy. Your hips bucked at the soft touch, but then just as quickly as it came it was gone. “No, come back!” you implored, reaching for Sirius’s wrist but being too slow.
Sirius arched one eyebrow, “What was that?”
“I’m sorry!” you cried out, “M’sorry, I just need you so bad. It hurts.” But Sirius remained where he was, arms now crossed over his chest as he looked at you. His eyes were full of disappointment and you wanted to cry, “What’s gotten into you today? You were so demanding in class before, so bratty, I don’t think you deserve it at all.” He was stretching the truth, you were by far the least bratty person he had ever been with, but he couldn’t help himself when he saw how much his words affected you.
A few tears fell at his words, “No, no, m’not bratty. I’m a good girl, daddy. I promise I’ll be so so good, your best girl! I won’t ask for anything more, m’sorry.'' You were saying anything you could to convince him that you were still his good girl, his angel.
Your lips were quivering and your chest was heaving with sobs you tried to keep inside; babbling apologies and trying to convince him that you would never act like this again, and he finally took pity on you. His hands gripped your ankles and opened your legs so he could lay comfortably between them. He could see a dark patch on your lavender underwear, and he huffed out a laugh with a slightly amused shake of his head. “I forgive you, bunny, but you’ll have to take everything that I give you. D’you think you can do that f’me?”
You nodded eagerly, choking a small ‘thank you’ as you tried to control your breath. He grabbed the ends of your dress and bunched it up over your waist, not bothering to take it off. He licked a strip over your underwear and the combination of his warm tongue with the friction of the cotton cloth was enough to make you mewl.
Sirius could not deny that he had been craving to taste you once more after he licked your fingers clean that day, and now only getting a smidge of your taste from what seeped through your underwear drove him insane. He needed to taste you completely, so he quickly pulled them off and pocketed them in the back of his jeans.
He used his fingers to spread your folds wide open, staring hungrily at all the slick that had gathered. “Oh puppy, look at the mess you’ve already made,” he crooned. “Y’re dripping, d’ya really need me this bad?”
“Yes, so so bad. Please, daddy.” He was so close, his warm breath hitting your wet folds and making you tremble in anticipation.
You watched, using your elbows to raise yourself a little, as he slowly started to take his rings off. “Hold ‘em for me, bunny, don’t want them to get dirty,” he said as he slid his chunky rings into your fingers. The metal dangled a little because of the size difference, so you closed your hands to keep them from falling.
Finally, his tongue made contact with your clit and you sighed in relief. It was followed by a moan when he started to suck on it, making sure to swirl his tongue all around before slurping. He looked like a starved man that finally came into contact with some sweet fruit, moving his head around your pussy to have you gushing on him. The ache in your tummy was slowly decreasing, now replaced with a nice fluttering feeling.
Your whines and moans echoed through his ears, resembling the most beautiful angel choir he had ever heard. He pulled away for a moment, “I’ve been waiting to taste you for days, puppy. S’better than I remembered.”
The more he pushed his tongue inside you, the more your legs shook. You involuntarily closed them, your pillowy thighs acting as earmuffs around Sirius’s head. He let them rest there for a few seconds before pushing them open once more, adding more fervour to his movements, eager to drink your sweet ambrosia.
Your closed fists went to his head, and you opened them a little to grip his hair, trying to ground yourself. “Gonna cum, daddy, can I?” You breathed out. Sirius just hummed, sending vibrations that were enough to make you let go. You tried to close your legs once more, but his shoulders prevented you from doing so. You felt like you were floating, your brain shutting off for a few seconds before returning to earth.
But Sirius didn’t stop moving his tongue, one of his fingers circling your hole before entering you slowly. Just one of his fingers felt like two of yours, even though you knew it wasn’t an accurate comparison. The stretch this time burned more than when you touched yourself, and you whined while shaking your head. “Too much, s’too much.”
Sirius paused for a moment so he could press your legs to your chest with one hand while the other kept moving in and out of you. The sudden switch in position made you gasp, but not as much as when Sirius thrust his fingers hard. “Are you dumb? I told you you had to take everything I gave you. D’you want to make me mad again?”
More tears fell when he curled his fingers, expertly finding that spongy spot inside you that pumped white heat through your veins. The way they twisted resembled a musician fiddling with a harp, your needy whines accompanying them like the main act. “No no, I can take it” you gasped, drowning in bliss as his fingers kept hitting the perfect spots.
You were already so close, Sirius giving you no respite as he quickly pushed his fingers. Your hand gripped his arm, fingertips digging the ink-covered skin. “C-close,” you whined, eyes rolling back and mouth open as you felt the tension ready to break.
“Going to make more of a mess, angel?” he grumbled, and you tried to nod as much as you could in your constricted position. Sirius chuckled, “Dirty little thing. Go on, I’ve got you.”
You whimpered brokenly as he pulled another orgasm from you. It felt like his fingertips were scrapping your insides to drag it out, and your feet dangled in the air as you swung them while trying to grab his wrist to stop him from moving.
Sirius couldn’t tear his eyes from you, with your pretty tears dripping down your cheeks and your chest heaving with small sobs from how good you felt. For him, all for him and only ever for him, because no one had ever touched you like he has and no one else ever would. “You look so pretty like this,” he cooed. “God I love your tears, baby, look how hard you make me.”
Your eyes moved down his body—when had he taken off his shirt? His tattoos splayed over his toned muscles made you clench around his fingers. You adored the small drawings that covered most of his body, they looked so beautiful on him and you just wanted to cry even more at how pretty your boyfriend was. When your eyes moved lower, following his previous instruction, you could see there was already a bulge in his pants that you knew was his cock, and your mouth watered at the thought of it just resting against his stomach like it did the first time you sucked him.
“I wanna feel you,” you cried while stretching your hands to touch him. He let you, your soft palms going over his chest and grabbing his shoulders so you could pull him down. “Kissie,” you breathed, letting his lips hover over yours for a second before kissing you hard and messily. His tongue played with yours and it only added more fuel to the fire inside you.
A moan broke you apart when his fingers resumed their pace, “P-please, no more” you babbled, the stimulation too much to bear.
“How are you gonna take my cock if you can’t take my fingers, hm?” He asked and you whined, his fingers burying themselves up to his knuckles and making your eyes roll back once more. Your mouth was dry from being constantly open, whimpers and moans constantly escaping from the open cavity. “Come on, one more, I know you have it in you. My good girl aren’t you?”
The squelching sounds were so dirty and they rang through your ears,  yet even through your fuzzy mind you could discern the important words, “Y-your good girl,” you managed to get out with a smile, glad to be praised by him.
His other hand pressed down on your legs even more, and now you could see the way the digits moved in and out of you, a slight sheen coating the skin every time they came out. “God, you were right, bunny, you are tight,” he grunted, “I don’t think I’ll ever fit, m’gonna break you.”
At that, your eyes widened. “No no, you’ll fit, daddy!” But he just chuckled at your desperation, “M’gonna break you in half, angel. Do you want that? Do you want me to split you open?”
A small chant of ’yes’ and ‘please’ echoed through the room. You could feel another wave coming, ready to wash over you as your toes curled in anticipation. It was like you were dangling on the edge, your hands holding on for dear life as you tried to hold on, and your moans grew louder and louder with every thrust Sirius gave.
Your clenching walls around his digits were warning enough for him, and he kept his eyes on your form as you struggled to keep it at bay, waiting for his permission. He watched as your ring clad fingers scrambled to the sheets, gripping them tightly as your head moved from side to side. “That’s it, bunny, let go f’me” and with one harsh thrust, you slackened the hold you had on your release and finally let go.
If you felt like you were still on your body you would’ve screamed. A white heat engulfed you as your vision grew hazy, your hips raising of their own accord and aiding Sirius in dragging your orgasm out. You looked so beautiful like this, a sweaty sheen on your skin and now tangled up hair sticking to your forehead. Sirius leant down, tongue cleaning the fallen tears before they dried, and you couldn’t help the moan that escaped you.
He grabbed your face, squishing your spit covered cheeks. “What do you say, angel?”
With a shuddering breath, you looked into his stormy eyes as he cleaned your release from his fingers with his tongue. “Thank you, daddy.”
You tried to lower your legs, but Sirius kept them in place. You stared at him, confused, yet he was staring at your puffy cunt, all shiny and stretched out for him. A smirk covered his lips as he finally looked at you, “I think y’re finally ready for m’cock, angel.”
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thepictureofsdr · 3 years
Text
lucie is incredibly specific about who can proofread her writing. every family member, every friend, has at one point attempted to edit a rough draft, only to be met with a deep sigh and a request to never try again.
due to this it was no surprise that everyone chuckled when alastair offered to take a look at the draft that had been the cause of lucies complaining for the past hour. everyone who heard the offer had once in the past been in alastairs position, offering to help and only receiving a “you didn’t edit this you just read it,” “you’re too nice for this” “this is just bullying” “i said proofread not erase literally everything” in exchange. no one fit lucies standards, no one could reach the perfect mix of criticism and complimentary, helpfulness and bluntness.
so it was a bit of a shock when alastair returned a day later with the edited draft and handed it to lucie only for her to open it, start crying, and promptly drag alastair out of the room. those who remained sat in shock before whispering about what alastair possibly could’ve done to achieve that sort of reaction from the veteran author. they all knew alastair was a kind hearted person who enjoyed helping others, but they also knew how high his literary standards were, being well versed in the literature of multiple languages, and they all remembered how blunt and harsh he could be when getting to the point.
just as they were about to worry themselves into a frenzy and begin to prepare for damage control, lucie burst back into the room with alastair in tow, and in a matter of seconds proceeded to walk up to the merry thieves who were all sat together on the couch, kick each of their shins with all the force in her body, then promptly throw herself into the lap of her father and say “i’ll never doubt you again da, carstairs really are the only people worth knowing.”
she went on to explain that alastair was the best editor she had ever met, having handed back a manuscript filled with helpful critiques and bits of praise, suggestions, corrected grammar and inserted transition words or even full sentences with the understanding of how desperately rushed a first draft is. he managed to helpful while getting to the point, complimentary where needed and blunt when necessary. she could finally get some proper work done. and the kicking the thieves was incredibly necessary as it was their “stupid annoying teenage boy high horse rivalry” that had kept alastair and his editing skills out of her life for so long.
from then on alastair was her permanent editor, the only person who actively wanted to do it and even enjoyed the process. he was the only to ever read her unfinished work, and he was as honoured as much as lucie trusted him. he took the role seriously, never revealing the details of her writing prematurely, to the point where this was the only secret he EVER kept from thomas. because of that it soon turned into a game of who could steal a manuscript from alastair. matthew got extremely close by enlisting james to distract alastair with a literature discussion but he quickly caught on after james spilled 4 controversial, CLEARLY incorrect opinions in a row. for her 25th birthday, alastair gifted lucie a custom safe meant to hold her writing, and told her that he had bought himself a matching one so her work would be secure no matter what. he almost passed out from how hard she hugged him.
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mandoalorian · 4 years
Text
Borrowed Time [Din Djarin x F!Reader]
ੈ♡˳‧₊*: • Chapter 1: The Plea ✩࿐ ˚.✧
Summary: You are the princess of Mandalore, held hostage on your own planet by Moff Gideon and his army of Imperial troopers. Left with no choice, you send out a distress signal; a plea for protection— and who comes? None other than Din Djarin, a foundling of The Death Watch. He, by creed, is your sworn enemy. And where you have asked for his protection, he has been told by his mentor that he must marry you and gain the ability to restore Mandalore to its former glory.
Word Count: 1800>
Warnings: canon typical violence
Series Masterlist ** reblogs appreciated!
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You were just a child; small and naïve. The screams of anguish and pain that came from outside the palace walls were enough to still traumatize you all these years later. You were the heir to the Mandalorian throne; the daughter of the late Satine Kryze. Her sister, Bo-Katan, had been caring for you since your mother was killed by the treacherous Darth Maul, ally of The Death Watch. After many failed attempts of taking over Mandalore, The Death Watch became part of Maul's Shadow Collective and successfully took control of your sacred home planet. They were responsible for the destruction of your home, the killing of your people and the brutal assassination of your own mother— and you swore that if you were to ever come into contact with a Child of the Watch, they wouldn't live to see the dawn of a new day. To say you held a grudge on that specific Mandalorian tribe was an understatement. If it wasn't for them, your family would still be alive. Your planet would be under Mandalorian reign, free from Imperialism and war.
But now, almost fifteen years later, you were faced with a new problem. A new enemy.
"You have something I want." Moff Gideon snarled, his lips curling upwards into a smirk. His tongue dripped with venom as his dark eyes settled into you.
Your blood boiled as you faced off with the man; an Imperial officer who clearly had more motive than just serving the Empire. You clenched your fingers into a tight fist and took a deep breath, you had to stay calm. Acting irrationally and letting your anger consume you was not the way of Mandalore. You were not a fighter.
"I have nothing. The beskar is long gone— scattered amongst the galaxy for foundlings to utilize. You can't have it," You shot back, folding your arms over your chest. Negotiation was usually your forté but today you were having none of it. "We have nothing here. Nothing you could possibly want."
Moff Gideon chuckled, circling around you. Of course, there was one thing… but surely not. What would a simple ISB officer want with an ancient Mandalorian weapon?
"The darksaber," He affirmed, and your greatest fears had been realised. "Where is it?"
You swallowed, shaking your head profusely. "I have no idea what you're talking about." you lied. Stay calm. Stay calm.
"You are the princess of Mandalore, are you not? Your mother was Duchess Satine Kryze. You were a child born out of wedlock… never knew your own father…" he chuckled as he noticed the way fear flicked in your eyes. He may have had access to the Imperial Security Bureau but how could he possibly know so much? There was definitely more to Moff Gideon than met the eye. "Yes dear, assume that I know everything. I suppose you aren't the first controversial thing to come out of the Mandalorian culture." Moff Gideon made a sweeping gesture with his gloved hand and two of his flame troopers stormed past you, entering the secret underground lair of your palace.
The lair was where you kept everything of significance. Every memory, every piece of history. Your collection of Mandalorian armour, your mother's keepsakes from her time in power, your personal supply of beskar, and of course, the darksaber.
"You and your people have already taken everything from me," you spat, a helpless tear falling down your cheek. "What more could you want?"
Before he could reply, you heard the troopers' modulated voice through Gideon's commlink. "Sir, we've located the weapon."
Gideon grinned and pushed past you, his crimson trimmed cape brushing against your body as he entered the lair. You couldn't even formulate words. Your blood ran cold and there was nothing you could do to stop the Moff. The Imps were raiding your palace and they were taking everything from you, showing absolute no remorse. When Gideon returned, he was wielding the darksaber. He held the fizzling blade to your neck and your whole body stiffened.
"I won't kill you." He said after a few anxiety induced moments.
"Then you are not worthy." you protested. Moff Gideon cocked his head but you did not regret your words. He could strike you down in this moment and it would all be over. He had the power. "Those who wield the darksaber are the rightful rulers of Mandalore," you had no doubt he already knew this, but it didn't stop you from speaking your many thoughts out loud as you desperately tried to comprehend what was going on. If Moff Gideon wielded the darksaber it meant that you had to forgo your title of princess. "You are the Manda'lor now." you confirmed, feeling completely and utterly exasperated. The kingdom was his. You were worn out— you had cried one too many tears. There had been so much bloodshed and you couldn't help but feel responsible. This was your moment of weakness.
"I know that," he scoffed. "But nobody is to know that I took the darksaber. This remains a secret between you and me. Understood?" The Imperial Officer ignited the saber once more and impaled the two flame troopers who had helped him raid your secret lair. "Who would've thought killing could be so fun?" He chuckled as the bodies fell to the floor. The screams of your people became louder, ringing like bells in your ears as you closed your eyes. You could only hope that some managed to flee and leave the planet.
"You're a monster." you gritted out.
"Is that any way to speak to your ruler? Now, I still have things to do… people to see. From this day forward I declare Mandalore under Imperial reign, and you my dear… you are still the princess. I can't kill you because you may be the last of the Kryze bloodline— I need you, here, ruling my kingdom," Gideon turned off the saber and attached it to his belt. "Until we meet again." he smirked before spinning around on his heel and exiting the palace.
You ran to the bay window of your bedroom and pushed it open, clambering out onto the balcony. You gazed upon the horizon as his ship departed the docking bay. The cold air took your breath away and tears glazed your eyes as you watched stormtroopers raid your town, killing anybody who dared to stand in their way. Bodies were piling up. So much death and destruction. You reached up to your chest and pulled out your mythosaur pendant; the one you had inherited from your mother before she died, and let your thumb graze the details of the pure silver beskar.
You felt like a failure. You'd failed your mother, you'd failed Bo-Katan, and you'd failed the Mandalorian creed. You swore from that moment on that Moff Gideon's decision to keep you alive would be the biggest mistake of his life. You were the princess of Mandalore and you would gain control of your planet once more.
One year later, and you were still filled with deep-seated anguish. You hadn't seen Moff Gideon since that dreaded night where his troops raided and took over your home planet of Mandalore. All you could do was smile and put on a brave face— but you were walking on a fine line and every day was becoming more and more and unbearable. More death and decay. You were losing hope. You wanted to fight this yourself, just like your mother had raised you, but you knew that you were no match against an army of Imperials. So you sent out a distress call to any living Mandalorians. You lived in a vast galaxy and you knew you couldn't be alone. There had to be someone who could help you. There had to be someone out there.
The Armorer was forging a new pauldron for Din Djarin when the call reached her. Upon hearing your voice, she dropped everything, her tools and the beskar clinking as they fell to the ground. She raced to accept your plea for help, noting down every ounce of information that you provided her with.
"The princess of Mandalore lives." she gasped, turning to Din.
"The princess?" Din asked, furrowing his eyebrows together in bewilderment. Despite his face being masked by a helmet, the Armorer was Din's mentor and she had known him long enough to sense when he was confused. "I thought she died during the great purge… I thought that-"
"Mandalore was under Imperial reign?" The Armorer cut him off. "It is. But the princess somehow lives."
"As an Imperial?" Din beckoned further.
"As a hostage to the Empire." The Armorer revealed, shaking her head in disbelief as she tried to process everything you told her.
"What did she say?" Din questioned. The Armorer pondered for a second before looking up at the bounty hunter and placing her hands on either side of his broad shoulders.
"She requires help— protection, if you will. She wishes to form a rebellion against the Empire and restore Mandalore to its former glory."
"There's no way," Din huffed. "She must have a death wish."
"I know… everything about this is unusual. But the last time a Kryze sent out a distress call was after the death of Duchess Satine. It sounds serious. And she is the Manda'lor therefore we must do as she wishes." The Armorer informed Din coldly.
"And what is that?"
"As a Child of the Watch I am sending you out to Mandalore to protect the princess."
"Me?" Din gasped, his voice rising an octave as he pointed his own fingers into his chest. "No no no. I live here, on Nevarro. I'm a member of the Guild. I can't leave that all behind. What if it's a trap set up by the Imps?...And I have Grogu now."
"Sometimes there are sacrifices you must make as a Mandalorian, you know this," The Armorer said matter-of-factly. Din hated that she was right. "The Princess of Mandalore needs you. I'm afraid you don't have a choice."
"And when I get to Mandalore, what do I do?" Din sighed.
"You marry her, of course. Before Clan Kryze, we were the ones who ruled Mandalore. Our tribe are the rightful leaders of that planet and to have one of our Children of the Watch marry into the monarchy would mean you could not only restore Mandalore to the Mandalorians, but you could restore it to the old way, the right way. The way of tradition and the way it used to be. It would change the galaxy forever."
Din blinked momentarily and looked to his feet. Marriage? To a princess? There was no point in arguing with the Armorer because Din knew that deep down, she was right, and he could not deny her. The creed had brought him in and gave him everything. They provided him with a family when he'd lost his own, and if marrying a princess was what he had to do to respect his honour, then so be it.
"This is the way." The Armorer chanted, picking up her tools and walking back over to her work station.
She was right. "This is the way."
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n1kolaiz · 3 years
Text
"You want to know what death is? I'll tell you. Death is the loss of life. Despite everything doctors like me attempt... a patient's life can still fall through our fingers. You think death lies in the apex of science? Anyone with such little regard for life will die by my hand."
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Character Analysis: Yosano Akiko
Age: 25 || Ability: Thou Shalt Not Die
BSD CHAPTER CHAPTER 65-66 SPOILERS
table of contents:
1. Author counterpart.
2. Yosano's history.
3. 'Angel of Death' defined.
4. Yosano and Atsushi.
YOSANO BRAINROT!*(#&!*@#($
1. Author counterpart.
Having been given the “Sho Ho” at birth, Yosano Akiko’s counterpart—the real-life author—was known for her zealous take on both feminism and pacifism.
Side note: Once again, to avoid confusion, I will use the name Sho Ho in reference to the real-life author, and Yosano in reference to the BSD character.
Sho Ho's writings were pretty much out-of-the-ordinary in her time, and despite being suppressed by the social norms of gender hierarchy, she sought to reform society’s view on the cultural perspectives of women and their sexuality (She expressed her love for a woman in one of her poems, but many still argued on whether she identified herself as queer or not.)
"Thou Shalt Not Die," Yosano's ability, is actually named after one of Sho Ho's most famous, controversial poems. She wrote it for her brother, who was a soldier in the war between Russia and Japan (1904-1905). In her poem, she expressed her general distaste for war and how her brother was a part of it.
O my young brother, I cry for you Don't you understand you must not die! You who were born the last of all Command a special store of parents' love
Would parents place a blade in children's hands
Teaching them to murder other men Teaching them to kill and then to die? Have you so learned and grown to twenty-four?
- excerpt from Sho Ho's poem, "Kimi Shinitamou Koto Nakare"
Her words were blunt enough to inflict guilt on her brother's conscience, as she wasn't afraid to express her disapproval over how her brother took part in the typical violent bloodshed and manslaughter of war. Such opinions perturbed the authorities, and her work was eventually banned from the public for a period of time. Later on, it was used as an anti-war statement.
2. Yosano's history.
Now, as for the character in BSD, Yosano is seen to be generally strong-willed, and later on, we see that she is terrifyingly compassionately ambitious in the way she treats her patients. She treasured life itself, and hated the thought of losing a patient.
Yosano had developed her relations with Mori Ougai back in the Great War, when she was just 11 years old. Her ability was a great benefactor in saving lives. Realistically speaking, she was used for her ability to heal injured soldiers and diminish the effect of any casualty acquired.
Initially, she wasn't aware of this, until one of her close friends pointed it out by subtly accusing Mori of manipulating her to participate in the War under the close-to false pretence of 'saving lives.'
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As much as her ability did save lives, it also forced soldiers to return to the frontlines and suffer injuries over and over again. The soldiers were never given the opportunity to return to their families because of her ability. This obliged them to carry on in the war without any excuse, inserting them into a vicious cycle they had no escape out of.
Metaphorically speaking, Yosano's hatred for Mori sort of mirrors Sho Ho's disdain for war and fighting, don't you think? The way Kafka materialised Yosano's past was quite interesting because he used chapters 65 and 66 to explain Yosano's dislike for Mori, reflecting how Sho Ho used her poem to explain why she condemned the idea of war and how her brother was part of it.
Before the effect of her ability was fully understood, however, every soldier praised and thanked her for what an angel she was. One of the soldiers she had befriended and gotten close to even kept a tally of the number of times she had saved him. He was the one who gifted her the butterfly hairpin she wore all the time.
The weight of the truth that her ability was a curse rather than a blessing fully dawned on her when her soldier friend ultimately committed suicide, because the fact of being indefinitely trapped in the throes of war agonised him until his spirit gave out. This drove Yosano to loathe her ability, or rather, how it was used.
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In the time she participated in the War, Yosano was given the alias 'angel of death' due to the control she retained over the battlefield, but I thought that perhaps Kafka had a reason behind giving her this title, so I did my research.
3. 'Angel of Death' defined.
Side note: I wouldn't want to disrespect any culture or religion, so if my citations are inaccurate and/or disrespectful, do feel free to correct me/let me know! I did research out of pure curiosity, and I don't intend to twist the significance of any of the interpretations.
I had to grow up learning about the basics of religious stuff, so it's kind of nice to study something out of the box, and very much against my father's rigid belief system :D
ARCHANGEL ARIEL
(archangel: an angel of higher rank)
I came across the few characteristics of angels/goddesses and their roles, and the one which really caught my attention was the female archangel, Ariel, the angel of nature.
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[ source ]
In Hebrew, the name Ariel means 'altar' or 'lioness of God,' and her role is to heal. In addition to that, she is also recognised as a helper to another one of the seven main archangels, Raphael, whose role is to provide physical and emotional healing, too.
She is the protecter of the environment and the animals therein, and is bestowed with the duty to oversee the order of heavenly bodies as well as earth's natural resources. She assures the sustenance of food, water, shelter, and supplies of human beings, much like how a nurse is to a patient I suppose.
In relation to Yosano, I think this part is pretty self-explanatory, or perhaps this is blown out of proportion HA, so take this as a suggestion rather than a fact, because I'd like to believe that Kafka had a reason for giving Yosano a title as such.
In the past, I've come across the angel of death only to perceive it as a female grim reaper of some sort, so it was pretty cool to find that the word 'angel' and 'death' made up a title of a someone like Ariel, one of the purest forms of humility and compassion.
GREEK GODDESS PANAKEIA
For my beloved (wannabe/or not) students of Greek mythology (much like myself, let's make a cult!), you've probably heard of Panakeia, the goddess of healing. Medicine finds most of its vital significance in Greek history, and in its mythology, Panakeia is actually known for her ability to heal any kind of sickness.
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[ source ]
Her name means 'panacea,' which is actually defined as a remedy for all diseases. Terminal diseases and injuries lead to death, right? This would bring us back to Yosano's ability to nullify any injury's effects on a person, keeping them from death itself.
Now, we know that in order for Yosano's ability to work, her patient, or victim, has to be in a near-death condition in order for her treatment to take effect. This can't exactly fit into the description of resurrection, but it can be described as some sort of rebirth.
GREEK GODDESS PERSEPHONE
So another goddess which reminds me of Sho Ho/Yosano, is Persephone, the goddess of spring and rebirth. Before Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone to take her to live with him, Persephone lived a happy life.
Hades, with his nature of darkness and the like, was captivated by how pure Persephone was, and stole her away from her former life to live in an environment which differed sharply from her natural aura of purity.
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[ source ]
Remember when Yosano's friend left a note behind before he killed himself? The note said nothing except for, "You are too righteous." Take that as you will, but figuratively speaking, you could say Mori takes the role of Hades in the story, while Yosano can be portrayed as Persephone.
Sho Ho can also be a parallel of Persephone, in that she had to adapt to the realities of war and disharmony, while Persephone had to adapt to the raw darkness of the underworld with Hades.
Sho Ho stood against society's norms and decided to reform it, making her one of the most well-known feministic pacifist in history, while Persephone managed to escape from the underworld to return to her former position, earning the title the 'Bringer of Life,' or the 'Destroyer of Death.'
Furthermore, the way Sho Ho's anti-war poem took its effect later on, reflects the way Persephone restored balance in the world after returning from the underworld.
4. Yosano and Atsushi.
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chapter 66; Yosano: "It's my fault that those close to me died... Is there some place where it's okay for me to live?"
chapter 8; Atsushi: "If I have any chance of saving them all, of returning them home safely, would that mean it's okay for me to keep on living?"
I couldn't help but think of Dazai and Atsushi back when I was reading through these panels. Ranpo (my beloved), along with Fukuzawa, accepted Yosano as she was, despite how her ability was a cause of despair and misfortune.
Ranpo looked past her mistakes and the entirety of how dark her past was to welcome her into the Armed Detective Agency. Dazai, on the other hand, knew who Atsushi was and what his ability had made him do before anyone else, and still decided to provide a safe place for Atsushi to find his sense of belonging, journeying with him as he learned to use his ability properly.
For more info about Dazai and Atsushi's dynamic, you can check out the analysis I did for Dazai :D
Atsushi desired to save people to prove his right to live, while Yosano made her wish to achieve the recovery of all her patients the reason for her existence.
Others would prefer to accuse both Yosano and Atsushi of having a saviour complex, but the reason why they pursued to save people with utmost dedication, stems from the nature of what their past was like. You know the saying 'from broken to beautiful?' Yeah, it's something like that.
The way their pasts were written out gave them a desire to change, which was, I daresay, initiated by the people who took them in: Ranpo and Dazai. Their abilities were demonised because of how they were used, but once they broke from their abilities' effect over their lives, they honed their skills to control them for the right cause instead.
In a less cynical point of view, I believe both Yosano and Atsushi stood for what was right, and wanted nothing but to achieve peace and harmony in whatever way they could, even if it meant risking their own lives to save others.
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So yeah, that's it for my rants today. Thank you for reading, and if you have anything to add, go ahead! I'm open to discussions ;)
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madara-fate · 3 years
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If Kishimoto really wants people to believe that Sasuke loves Sakura and that they have such a good marriage then he's doing a piss poor job at it. You don't see people arguing if Minato loved Kushina or not or if Dan loved Tsunade or not. You don't. The fact that there are so many people arguing whether Sasuke loves Sakura or not, and many people believing he doesn't is just proof that Kishimoto failed somewhere or else there wouldn't be this much controversy surrounding this matter. It's either Kishimoto implying Sasuke does not love her, either Kishimoto intending to portray his idea of a good realtionship/loving husband through SS and failing miserably. Sasuke did not look happy when he saw Sakura in Gaiden first time after 10 years of absence. He couldn't even bother to send a letter to her and Sarada to let them know he was alright and thinking about them during this period. And no, please don't come at me with that bullshit excuse that he didn't keep in contact because he wanted to keep the secrecy of his mission and did not want any private information to leak and that's why he was only keeping in contact with the Hokage or whatever. No one says that if he ever bothered to write them he had to go into details about his mission. He could've just told them he's alright, that he misses them and hopes they're fine and that would've been great too and wouldn't have compromised his mission in any way. The man has space time abilities for fuck's sake. He could've easily teleported to see them and then go back to his business. In my opinion Kishimoto wrote SS in this ambiguous way to appease both the SS haters and the SS shippers. He knew SS fans were going to be happy with whatever he threw at them even if it was the absolute bottom of the barrel and he knew the antis were gonna have a good time using Gaiden to further tear the ship apart. This man is either terrible at writing romance either a huge troll who enjoys pitying his readers against each other. Or maybe both. And I assure you, I don't even hate SS, despite what I have written so far, nor do I ship something else. And Sasuke is also my favorite character. I'm indifferent to this pairing and maybe that's why I can have a more objective opinion on it than its shippers or its haters since I'm not biased due to personal feelings of either distaste or love for it. SS can be seen in both a good and a bad light, but to be honest the balance is more inclined towards the bad light.
This is just more of the stuff that I've heard plenty of times before. I'll firstly preface this by saying that I'm very highly critical of Gaiden because it included pointless drama for the sake of pointless drama. It's execution was horrendous to say the least, but I'll always still appreciate the message that Kishi was trying to relay. However, I will always take issue with those who defend the notion that Sasuke doesn't love Sakura. Hence, the following.
You don't see people arguing if Minato loved Kushina or not or if Dan loved Tsunade or not. You don't. The fact that there are so many people arguing whether Sasuke loves Sakura or not, and many people believing he doesn't is just proof that Kishimoto failed somewhere or else there wouldn't be this much controversy surrounding this matter.
Minato wasn't drowning in hatred due to a supernatural phenomenon which cause him to push away love in favour of the darkness. Dan wasn't made to undertake a preposterously long mission while intending to keep everything about it confidential. Why on earth do people think they can just compare any random relationships to SS's and go "well look at this couple! Why couldn't SS have been more like them?". Well here's your answer - Because their situations were nothing alike. But why do people constantly believe that those relationships are the only models for what a loving relationship can be? The struggles that Sasuke and Sakura faced during Gaiden were not due to issues with each other, but rather, they were shown facing hurdles which they overcame together. They were perfectly happy with each other, and not once did their dedication to one another ever falter during Sasuke's mission. Just because the couple faced hard times does not mean their bond is any weaker. On the contrary, the fact they they faced those hard times together and came out of them just as strong if not stronger than before, is a testament to the strength of the relationship.
You wanna know what I don't see? I don't see people questioning Neji and Hinata's relationship despite Neji trying to kill her during the Chuunin Exams. I don't see people questioning Hiashi's feelings towards Hinata despite essentially disowning her because he deemed her to be a failure. I don't see people questioning Gaara being the Kazekage despite him previously being feared as a killing machine who slaughtered many innocent people, by the very same villagers who now respect him as their leader. I don't see people questioning why Kabuto was trusted to become the head of the Orphanage and taking care of the future of the village, despite being a notorious war criminal. No, but of course people will question SS right? Despite them just being another example of the same theme.
It's either Kishimoto implying Sasuke does not love her, either Kishimoto intending to portray his idea of a good relationship/loving husband through SS and failing miserably.
Kishi flat out said, that the love between the Uchiha family is the real deal. He's not implying anything, and if he truly failed at depicting this, then SS wouldn't have consistently proven to be the most popular canonised pairing for years following the manga's ending.
Sasuke did not look happy when he saw Sakura in Gaiden first time after 10 years of absence.
And you think that's indicative that he doesn't love her? Are you serious? The entire time, Sasuke was very clearly shown to be aggravated because people who weren't supposed to be at his and Naruto's secret meeting place kept showing up. He didn't look happy when first meeting Naruto either, despite not seeing him for just as long. So what? You think that means he doesn't care about Naruto either? He was aggravated that Sarada was there because she was supposed to be in the village safe from all this, he was annoyed with Naruto for allowing the kids to follow him in the first place, and yeah, he didn't jump for joy when seeing Sakura because again, she was meant to be watching over Sarada in the village. One of the biggest incentives for his secrecy was to keep Sarada safe, and everything that was happening then, was the opposite of that.
He couldn't even bother to send a letter to her and Sarada to let them know he was alright and thinking about them during this period. And no, please don't come at me with that bullshit excuse that he didn't keep in contact because he wanted to keep the secrecy of his mission and did not want any private information to leak and that's why he was only keeping in contact with the Hokage or whatever. No one says that if he ever bothered to write them he had to go into details about his mission. He could've just told them he's alright, that he misses them and hopes they're fine and that would've been great too and wouldn't have compromised his mission in any way.
You can call it a "bullshit excuse" all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the reason that was given. But it's like people just refuse to acknowledge the fact that Sasuke admitted that he had made a big mistake, and refused to allow Sakura to apologise because he knew that he was the one at fault:
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I mean what? Do people think that Sasuke has to be perfect or something? Is he not a human who makes mistakes just like everyone else? Sasuke knew that he took his secrecy too far, he hadn't anticipated the adverse affects his absence would have on Sarada, and he apologised for his mistake. Why? Because he cares, for goodness sake it's not hard to comprehend. I seriously would have never thought that people would actually question whether or not he loves his family. Why would Kishi promote a loveless marriage in his manga aimed at young boys? It just boggles the mind. If Sasuke didn't care about them, he wouldn't have thought he did anything wrong by his lack of contact with his daughter. I emphasise with his daughter because Sakura was still somewhat in contact with Sasuke as she was kept informed of what he was doing.
In my opinion Kishimoto wrote SS in this ambiguous way to appease both the SS haters and the SS shippers.
Why would Kishi care about appeasing the same fans who harassed him so badly following the manga's conclusion, that his editior had to respond in broken English and basically tell those entitled children that the story doesn't belong to them? I'll reiterate that there's nothing "ambiguous" about their relationship, nor is Kishi implying anything. Gaiden made it crystal clear, that the love between the Uchiha family is the real deal, there's nothing ambiguous about that statement, there's nothing ambiguous about Sasuke giving Sakura the forehead poke, and there's nothing ambiguous about Sasuke flat out clarifying that his heart is connected to Sakura's.
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hunterartemis · 4 years
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Media Bias (Avengers X Alien!Reader)
It was a request from anonymous reader and since I have limited experience with tagging, I am going to quote the person’s request here:
“ Hi can you please do Avengers x reader where the reader is like Starfire from og teen titans (but the reader is green and the blasts are blue) and the Avengers go on a talk show and the host is being very mean to her. Thanks”
So, dear anonymous. I hope you enjoy!“
Words: a whopping 4100
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Y/n, open the door” I heard Sam thudding away on my door as I buried myself in the layers of blanket and put the air condition humid enough to cause a mini monsoon.
“Go away Wilson and leave me alone--” I bellowed on top of my voice.
“Y/n it’s been more than 7 hrs, you got to come out... whatever happened in the morning you gotta let it go--”
“I don’t wanna let it go... I am a national embarrassment--”
You must be thinking, what is the situation you’ve been dragged into. Let me pause there and rewind 17 hours back to give you a complete understanding which lead to this complete mess.
People think our story ended and sealed with Thanos never got to see what we go through in the New York penthouse. With the ongoing Pandemic on board, people are desperate to see us even more, as if it is the new Thanos and we are to defeat it. There is no greater sense of helplessness than playing the puppet of courage without doing anything. So whoever wrote that “after the defeat of big bad, the heroes rejoice” was a big idiot.
And thus, I found myself awake after hours, sitting alongside the broad glass panel that showed the completely stopped-in-time, shining in the dark cityscape of once bustling New York. A fleeting sense of desolation plagued me as I remember my own world in the verge of extinction. My breath almost stopped in the great worry of my fellow living being in this planet; the one who saved me from destitution--
 “y/n, is that you?”A calm and concerned paternal voice broke the train of my thought. I sharply looked behind my shoulder to see a disheveled figure of man standing in the dark. By the tousled curls and the slouched hem of the sweatpants, I knew was Bruce.
“Urh, you startled me!” I said with a dismissive voice. I felt almost embarrassed to realize what I was thinking moments ago. I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself.
“It’s you who startled me y/n, what are you doing up so late?” Bruce said with a groggy voice rubbing his eyes rather irritatingly. “We have an important event to attend tomorrow first thing in the morning” he slowly moved towards from the shadowy part of the room to the path of dimmed light from the glass panel and spared a long glance at my face. The way he looked at me sometimes irritated me, because it was an inalienable fact that he fell into the same category of humans who express an unhealthy obsession with my kind: a scientist.
“It’s not like I enjoy staying up like you Lowly Human...I am as stressed for tomorrow as you are!” I tore my face from his ken to express my displeasure. In reply, he sighed disappointedly, which sounded patronizing in my already agitated mind.
“I wish you’d stop insulting my specie whenever you get upset...” he gently put his hand in my shoulder, but soon he withdrew and stepped back. “And what is that god-awful smell?”
Any female whether she is human or not is very sensitive to criticism, especially about how she appears, thus Bruce’s comment was not only offensive but hurtful as well. I could not restrain my anger and annoyance anymore, and I stood up sharply to face him “I just happen to wet myself in the rain yesterday at my detour downtown and it turns out it has too much sulphuric acid and it is peeling my skin away... right before when I am about to go up close on television.”  My hand subconsciously moved up to my cheek, where flakes were forming in my otherwise jade smooth skin. “And you are telling me to stop insulting your specie... I will when you unicellular cretins will stop ruining your own environment—“ I folded my arms defensively, gazing away from Bruce’s face “--as if I don’t get ridiculed enough for my chrorophyllic skintone, and now I am shedding like a common reptile.”
“Alright alright I am sorry...” Bruce threw up his arms defensively, and his small paces back and forth showed his discomfort more than anything, “do you want something for your skin, CeraVe or something? I can fetch you some ice if you want?”
His apologetic gesture made my whole effort defeated; but my pride disrupted me from being apologetic “Forget it... as if those human manures would work on my skin—“ I heaved a sigh and looked at him again “must we do the thing? I mean I am not the only alien that set foot on earth in this decade, why must I be walked around like a showdog in front of all the people?”
For some moments Bruce did not answer me. I almost thought he was ignoring me, but then I realised that he must be contemplating on every word he wanted to say and every word that was running through his brilliant mind. Out of anyone in the team, Bruce was the visual hole, the less than heroic material: even with the Hulk. And for this, the society made sure that he would be self conscious for the rest of his life for his other identity. My annoyance almost melted to sympathy when I heard him speak in a rather frustrated voice.
“Y/N, I know that you are stressed about this and frankly I hate this stuff too, but this is very important for the people: for your people as well as ours. Not all things that come from the space are benign and people need reassurance that you are not hostile. I hate this too, but it is for the greater good!”
“Greater good, greater good... it is always for the greater good!”  The same old daily whining of lofty agenda made me sick “I am sick and tired of these Brucie, I don’t want to do this anymore... I am tired about people asking me weird questions and cretins posing as scientists trying to push probes on me the first chances they get-- I wish I could just disappear with the portal that brought me in this cursed place!“
Bruce came closer and grabbed my shoulders gently “Don’t say that y/n... otherwise we wouldn’t have the means to counterattack all those aliens—“ my silence might have given him the cue that he wasn’t doing a very good job at convincing. His wavering eyes fixed on my face once again as he spoke “okay, here is a deal: how about it is the last time you appear in public, hm? Once you satisfy them that you are part of the team, I swear people will leave you alone... they left the Hulk alone too once they understood that he is one of the good guys!”
“No but...“
“No ifs and buts... go, and have some sleep. Let me look in the lab if we have some squalanes and peptide solutions lying around—“ he said with a paternal affection and disappeared into the dark passage which lead to his room
“Thanks Brucie you are the best—“
I couldn’t help but to smile a little. Humans!
...
“This is a bad idea I am telling you--“ I told Bruce with an hushed tone as the makeup artist went on with a puff on my face for the millionth times. The rest of my team was behind me, getting the same attentions to their dismay. I could tell Bucky was downright uncomfortable as his makeup artist had a hard time getting not distracted by his bionic arm; and Wanda was downright glaring at the man who kept flicking the brush on her nose.
“relax y/n, you are smart and you are friendly, you are going to ace this and trust me people are going to love you--“ Bruce said with gritted teeth to make sure no one could tell what he was saying. He almost flinched as some of the powder made into his nose and the makeup artist followed him up with a q-tip.
“My face is itchy...“ I whispered again, trying not to gouge my face out with my nails as the powder sat on the flaky part of the cheek. If this wasn’t a studio I would have scratched my face like a lunatic and ended up as someone who was attacked by a bear in the mountains. And I was glad that I was standing beside Bruce who knew how not to go overboard with the things. Clint would have brushed them off, Wanda and Bucky would have panicked, and Sam’s gestures no matter how genuine would have made me laugh.
“Wanda already told the makeup artist to spray you with Squalane, your face isn’t half as bad as it were yesterday night“ Bruce then went on politely gesturing the makeup artist to spray the stuff Bruce brought from the lab in a clear bottle, and the look on the Makeup Artist’s face was between annoyance and bursting into tears.
“Brucie...“ “I don’t wanna mess it up--“ I said nervously as we walked into the couch and settled with the others.
“Trust me you won’t... “ Bruce graciously consoled me.
The cameraman cued and we were all gestured to look into the main camera as the lights in front of us adjusted accordingly. Within all hustle and bustle, the host walked in like a royalty, and by the looks of his face and those following him with makeup and refreshment, he had a really bad morning.
“We will go on air in 3, 2 and 1”
“Good Morning America, this is your host Justin Fallon and welcome to another episode of The Early Show. Today we have with us some really special guests. You might know them from News, the murals, the comics and the Merchs please welcome our own global superheroes: The Avengers. Welcome to our show” the host said with an uncomfortable friendliness and turned towards us.
"Thanks for having us with you" Sam answered graciously, with a little awkwardness. I could understand why; it was always Tony, Steve and Natasha who spoke in public. After such a terrible loss, he is struggling to fill up their shoes for the sake of our public image. He had been wrapped up into a pretty bad controversy recently for succeeding as Captain America and it had a pretty bad toll on him—to the point his speech kind of went from cheerful to composed in an unnatural way.
 "It’s been way too long since our morning couch looked so colorful and it surely brightens up the day.” The host said with an obligatory politeness. Although the term was innocent enough but it seemed not so—I instantly froze up and million things started flying inside my head: was I looking good enough, is my patches showing under the layers of power and squalane. Turns out it was not me alone. From the corner of my eye I could sense the tension behind me from Clint and Bucky and I know it was different than mine. The host must have wanted the old team, and looked like he was stuck with the mediocre leftovers.
“Thank you...“ Sam replied.
“So here you guys are after averting the big wipeout crisis, in the quiet and chilling, so how does it feel to be in the pensive from being hyperactive all the time?“
“Well, at first it did feel kind of boring and lack luster, but slowly we are adjusting to it. With the ongoing Pandemic crisis I think we just have to adjust to the situation. In a way, I think we are all helping each other by staying inside and recuperating.” Sam answered diplomatically.
“That’s so nice” the interviewer said quite curtly and then changing the topic he sharply turned to Doctor Banner “I know of all you people Dr. Banner will find this Lockdown Leisure slightly more comforting, isn’t that so Doctor Banner?”
Wait, what was that? Was that even normal? Sam was sitting in the front and after him Bucky, then Wanda and then Bruce. Should not he come gradually? Breathe... maybe I am reading too much into this. Keep a friendly face, don’t think too much... the entire nation is watching... this is the one time I have to do things right! It’s for me, my team who housed me and my people.
I had to give props to Bruce for managing things calmly despite his claims about public speaking. He politely replied “Well theoretically it should be but it’s not like causes of anger cannot exist within the so called peaceful environment if you think about it, but I am glad you showed your concern” and like a pro, reached out to the glass in front of him to sip some water—like some real celebs in talk shows.
“Isn’t that true! So Solaris, how does it feel to be surrounded by the icons of the earth?”
I wasn’t really ready for the sudden attention. For a second I blanked out completely and gaped my mouth like a complete idiot. My stupefied face must have been quite prominent because the host tried to laugh it off lightly to divert the attention. I am still wrapping my head around the fact how some humans work so beautifully under so much attention—If I could choose between blasting off alien armies and speaking in talk shows, I will take the aliens instead.
“I..I--It’s quite fun... there is never a dull moment with them--“ I manage to utter, and thankfully it wasn’t a gurgling sound from a deep abyss.
“The thing is, being the most newest member, you sort of have a mystery around you, the kind of a Blue Comet sort--“
“Oh thank you— “ great going me, like a real talk show celeb—keep it up!
“So why don’t we break that down... Solaris, is that true that you came from a whole another galaxy which is not Milky Way?” the Talk show host asked, reading from a small piece of card.
Finally, something I can talk about all day: stars, planets and galaxy. I will have to slay this, I chanted inside and replied after drawing a breath “Yes that’s true. I am from Planet Auriga from Pleiades system. Our Sun is Alcyone, the second brightest star right after Aldebaran. You people call our system Taurus Constellation--” 
“--so much astrophysics, take notes kids they might ask you at the NASA interview.“ the talk show host interrupted. It annoyed me greatly because I could finish the words I worked so hard to speak confidently. So that’s how Bruce must feel all the time when people interrupted him when he explains things. However the host went on as if nothing happened “For a near human creature in this planet, do you identify more with the Professor X’s troop or with the Avengers?”
Near human creature? My race is literally the most Superior in all of galaxy.
“I don’t really understand what you mean...” I said as politely as I could manage.
“I mean isn’t it hard to fit in when you are the only alien in the group--“
The flippant remark was rude and I tried not to wrap my head around it. I recalled Bruce’s words to keep cool and maintain a neutral face replied : “I mean I am not the only one, Thor is also not of the earth and he is a darling to be around. Alien or not I think I have learned a lot about myself and the ways of earth by spending time with this wonderful people?“
I could hear the audience clapping and cheering with my reply. A surge of pride swept across my chest and I smiled slightly at the audience.
“How sweet--“ the host said, keeping with the cheerful mood “as the outer world people are coming into the planets, we think a lot of things are shifting, do you find it hard to cope into the earth from where you come from--“
Finally, a thoughtful question, I made a solid eye contact with the host and replied “No, the atmosphere is pretty much the same in Auriga, but I think humans can do a lot better taking care of the environment. I know for a fact that millions of planets and their lifeforms were extinct because of excesses I see on earth.”
The thoughtfulness of the host was only for so long “The girl’s been around... if you know what I mean—“ he commented with a little wink, and from the audience’s laugh I knew he didn’t mean something polite or mildly positive. After the laughter subsided, he turned again to me “I dig the midnight blue hair... it is so contradictory and yet it works“ he complimented “because you know scale and hair are not something we see very often in our planet--“ 
Excuse me, what was that supposed to mean?
“--so tell me are the lapis cascades all natural? I mean they are not dyed at all?”
“No they are not... the special keratin bond that reflect the blue pigment of the natural light but they are actually transparent—“ I added objectively.
“So that means in the right lighting you don’t need to mow the bush—“ the host said with a curved smile on his lips, and the audience went on laughing in the same manner they did moments ago.
Even under the blowing airconditioner, I started t feel really warm around my neck “I really don’t know what you mean; you are making any sense at all! Do you guys need special light to mow the bush, do you do in the solstices or during the eclipses—“  this time I didn’t hide the fact that I was annoyed.
“--she is really really funny you guys--“ the host again smiled and acted like I was a stone wall and my reaction didn’t register in his mind at all. “So you are saying you don’t mow your bush at all?“
“I live in a New York Penthouse, there is no bush--“ honestly if this wasn’t a dumb talk show, I would have taught this impudent human a lesson.
The host looked a little uncomfortable as our eye contact lasted for several seconds. He cleared his throat and went on “Okay you guys, she just clarified that there is no bush, so let’s move on to your...your look... I am so fascinated by it, it’s so reptile chic--“
What’s your fascination with cold blooded animals? Are you asking to die like one?
“Um, thanks...?!”
“So how do you manage to maintain this--“
That was honestly the last straw. This host is impolite and rude and he leeches off the discomfort of his talk show host. When this realisation hit, all my self-control and self preservation went out of the window. The vacuum was replaced by the sheer annoyance towards the host who deliberately mistreated us since the beginning.
“Do you think that’s how I live, maintaining my skin and mowing the bush--“ my pitch rose from my previous composed tone “I mean what kind of questions are these?“
The host was still wearing his phony smile on his face, but I could see the colour slightly draining off his face “No I was just asking, because the audience wants to know--“
“I think the audience is smart enough to understand that they cannot get the green skin on natural blue hair, so can you move on to a more sensible question?“ I answered heatedly and defensively at the same time, and as I spoke I felt the aura of tension shifting from discomfort to sheer panic.
“Y/n... don’t do this--” I heard Bucky whisper very faintly from above.
“Solaris, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t always get a green-skin hottie on the morning couch, don’t be offended!” he said while he gestured covertly to cut the camera on the other side. I have to give this man an applause , I could tell he had busted all his courage but he kept the face of nonchalance too good to be true—no wonder he sat on this chair for so long.
“What’s your obsession with the skin colour?—“ I said heatedly as I stood up from my seat “Don’t you dare cut the camera... don’t you dare! Do you think you humans are the epitome of beauty from which point everyone in the galaxy should confirm? I am sick of this... Everyone, I am so sorry for your wasted time but no more of this!”
“Solaris--“ this time it was Sam’s voice that implored me from the sides. For a split second I felt bad for him, because as Captain America, he would have to take the heat from the public. But I was at the point of no return. If I back out now, I would be called a pushover and I would have to endure that image for the rest of my life in the earth.
“You know what, as you are so obsessed with my looks, I would love to show you another thing of mine that is blue--”
Blast
So long story short, Solaris goes to a morning talk show, Solaris encounters a rude host and Solaris blasts him with her Blue Sun Beam. Biggest disaster ever!
The thudding outside the door would not stop, and honestly their over attention was getting on my nerves “honestly, why don’t you go away... what are you, my royal nanny?”
“Very funny Solaris... now come out and get some food--” this time it was Bucky who spoke. Although he was the shortest to reply, but it made me well up. He had the shittiest history amongst all of us: hunted, betrayed, manipulated and now sidelined—how can I see my problems bigger than him.
 “How can I... I ruined everything, all the reputation you built throughout the year, I blew it up within 3 minutes, how can I show my face to you guys! I was supposed to be the superior being--“
A moment of silence followed. But then the old familiar calm voice spoke from the other side
“y/n... It’s not about superior or inferior, you were just very very honest with your feeling! sometimes it’s good for the public, sometimes it is not. I mean look at me--I have struggling with my anger all my life and god knows the stuff I have wrecked in Hulk state. It’s okay to make a mistake... no one blames you!”
“Ha ha right...“ I replied sarcastically, feeling mad about how well Bruce understood my situation.
“Honestly, the way you acted today... Tony would have been proud!”
I could not hold myself anymore. All the feeling that has been plaguing me until now: embarrassment, guilt, confusion, sadness... all came down like a thundering rain with that one statement. I rushed and slammed the door open and jumped on Bruce to embrace him into a tight hug. At first I could tell Bruce was taken aback, but soon his firm arms snaked under my back to hold me tightly.
“I am so sorry... I ruined you all--“ I hid my face in Bruce’s shoulder. Suddenly I felt a gentle pat on my back, I straightened up and looked, it was Sam. His awkward cautionary expression was gone and he looked cherry as the old days “As Captain America, I cannot condone your behaviour, but as Sam... well, that jerk deserved it--“ he reached for his pocket and took out his cellphone “and hundred thousand people in New York agree with you“
I looked at him with a curious expression as he gave me his phone. When I looked at it, it was a tabloid video that had the clip of me blasting the host and it had—
“Stars in galaxies!... 100K likes?” I exclaimed
“And look down, there are comments too--” Bucky scrolled down from behind my shoulder to descend to the white space.
That jerk deserves it, he was literally harassing her...You go Solaris #MeToo
Solaris is so cool, I wish I was as cool as her.
Ugh, I hate that morning show host, if I was in her place I would have thrown him off the stark tower, #SunQueen
Racists never change, and We stan our color positive hero #SolarisRocks
Humans...
...
Okay, that took a lot of time because at first I didn’t know how to work on the request, then I had to go back and forth and rewrite most of it two times because I wasn’t convinced it was good. So I sincerely hope it’s good because I am freaked out as hell.
I also gave reader a name because she is inspired by an alien character in TeenTitans called “Starfire”. So I call her Solaris, and was constantly reminded of Solar of Mamamoo (TMI)
I don’t hate on Fallon, I just used his name because it is recognisable by American public and I also had to see a lot of Jimmy Fallon’s show to write about the Talk Show plot. I was also greatly inspired by Naomi Campbell, RDJ and Nicki Minaj’s interviews.
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foolgobi65 · 3 years
Text
varshadhara
one.
Sita has been married a year when there is news of a drought, cloudless skies that refuse to darken and dust that does not become soil. 20 villages chose a single representative to beg for aid from the Emperor himself, and Sita’s husband is drawn when he finally enters their bedroom that night.
“They are dying,” he says quietly, a confession that even later Sita is never sure he meant for her to hear. His eyes close as he begins to remove the ornaments that mark him the eldest, the favorite son, heir to all his father has conquered. Sita, seated on the bed, watches as her husband looks down at the ruby necklace whose clasp he has just undone and calculates how many meals he could buy with what lies so easily in his palms.
“Years,” she confirms, hands playing with the edge of her cotton upper cloth for want of something to do. Her voice startles them both, somehow too loud and too soft for the strange hush that has fallen on the palace so many hours after sunset. “But only because the jewelry you wear is more precious in this city for having been yours.”
He looks up, curiosity a glint in his eye and hands at the heavy earrings the Emperor insists on for court. He seems glad to see her. “Would it help?”
“Yes,” she says, ignoring the way her heart clenches to hear the hope in his voice, “for now. But what about in a year, should the drought continue?”
Her husband glances at the chest which keeps his gold, the fruit of a generation’s worth of tribute from kingdoms that span the earth.
“What a tragedy,” he drawls, fingers slowly teasing out the crown from the wonderful tangles of his hair, “to lose all these heavy jewels in pursuit of my duty as king.”
Sita startles into laughter and reaches out to take her husband’s burden, ignoring the surprise that flickers briefly across his features. He is always so surprised and then so grateful for what to Sita are the smallest morsels of tolerance. She does not think about why this might upset her. “And as my Lord’s faithful wife,” she says cheerfully in response, “I suppose it would be my duty to donate my ornaments as well.”
Both of them linger on Sita’s wrists, the ones she keeps nearly bare save the one golden bangle around each that at least proves her a wife. They smile: tragic indeed.
“My father has proclaimed that the drought stricken will not pay tribute,” Sita hears hours later, low in the moments before she finally closes her eyes, “but there must be something more we can do to help.”
She could live like this, she thinks, at the moment she slips over the edge between the worlds of life and dreams. Sita is content. This could be enough.
----
two.
By now all of Ayodhya must know that Janaki, foundling daughter of the Videhan king, was not expected to marry -- the year that she has spent in the blessed state so far has been tumultuous, to say the least. She grew up a goddess, but more than that she grew up sheltered from palace politics and finds herself embroiled in more than one controversy due to her own ineptitude.
Her sisters, each of them younger than Sita, were married to her husband’s three brothers before they became women true and so are kept as maidens in the palaces of their individual mother in laws: far from their eldest sister who lives, as is traditional, in the rooms of her husband.
What would they say, Sita wonders, if they knew their sister to be equally virginal only weeks before the first anniversary of her wedding?
Sita sets the ceremonial platter on top of a stool and kneels, gently picking up the woolen blanket covering her husband as he sleeps on the floor. The difference in temperature, they have both realized, is usually enough for him to wake and so it is today when his eyes open. Together they fold not only the blanket that covered him but the two others that make what serves as his mattress on the ground, one of her husband’s many concessions to his ungrateful, accidental wife.
“I was never supposed to be married,” she had whispered the night of their consummation, tears streaming down her face and tone as possibly close to a shriek while knowing that servants listened at the door. “I know nothing of how to manage a royal household, much less satisfy a husband!”
The black rimming her eyes must have mixed with her tears, leaving Sita a fright. The combined talents of Ayodhya’s finest ladies-in-waiting ruined by the anxieties of a girl utterly unsuited to serve as their canvas. Sita’s husband, a man who wielded enough power at 16 to force each of Sita’s baying, blood-lusting suitors -- some of them thrice her husband’s age -- to their knees in supplication, had barely walked into the room when confronted with the sight.
“I did not need the protection of a husband,” Sita had said then, back turned. “I would have died before any of those lechers disguised as failed suitors tried to touch me.” She choked back a sob. “It would have been better for us all if I had.” Years later her husband confesses that sometimes he still hears her like this in the moments before he falls asleep, even when they have spent more years than not tangled as one in bed. Sita never tells him how close it all was in the end, how tightly she was gripping the knife when someone heard that a young anchorite had not only lifted, but broken the Great God’s bow. But on her wedding night, when Sita opened her eyes it was to the sight of her husband, his own blade drawn. She flinched, but he only raised his own palm and ran the edge against skin to draw blood.
“A woman,” he said in answer to her unvoiced question, “is supposed to bleed on her first night. The washerwoman will be paid handsomely for her knowledge in the morning.”
Sita flushed, shoulders straightening of their own accord at the implication.
“And as a virgin bride myself, I will bleed as any other” she said, hands fisted at her side in brief, overwhelming rage. “My reputation does not need you to shed blood on my behalf.”
Her husband had only nodded, moving towards the side of the bed opposite to where Sita sat in order to smear his palm once, twice, thrice until he seemed satisfied with his handiwork.
A million questions ran through Sita’s mind. “I hope your sleep is restful,” was all her husband said in response, grabbing a blanket from the foot of what was to be their marital bed and arranging himself on the floor.
Nearly a year since, Sita’s knowledge as to the running of households has not increased, nor, she suspects, has her knowledge regarding the satisfaction of her husband. He keeps long hours, spending as much time away from his wife as possible. The people of Ayodhya, used to the years that might have passed between visits from their woman-drunk sovereign, are enthralled by the near constant access to their Crown Prince, and this during the years when it is acceptable, nay even appropriate to be devoted to naught but one’s own pleasure.
The women of the palace, caught between their desire to honor their collective son and their need to denigrate his strange, uncouth wife, stay silent.
----
three.
“In Mithila,” Sita’s husband begins, breaking their easy silence that has fallen over this morning meal, “what would you do in times of drought?”
Sita startles, the palm frond she was using to keep away insects as her husband ate, slipping to the ground. Though they can now speak of many things, they have never spoken of Mithila -- it is encouraged for new brides to sink themselves fully into the environs of their new, forever home. In this, at least, she is like every wife before her: the ways of her past can have no place in her present. Every day she must attempt to forget who she once was.
“I am only a girl,” Sita answers carefully, eyes lowered as she was told women do. “Such a question may be better answered by my Father, or one of the preceptors versed in these matters.”
There is a silence, but Sita, unable to lift her eyes to her husband’s face, cannot tell if he has accepted her falsehood. The Raghuvanshis, she has been told time and time again, are a line of honor. They do not lie.
“Did you think--” she hears, and then a sigh. “I know who you are, my lady. Are we not friends, at the very least?”
Sita clenches her jaw, picking up the palm fronds once more. She is no longer afraid of her husband, at least not as she was at first. But he cannot want the answers he seeks, not truly. “I am a princess of Ayodhya,” she says, as she has to herself every morning since she woke up next to her husband’s blood on the bed and his body on their floor. “I am your wife, sanctified by the Lord’s Bow and the sacrament of the Holy Fire.”
“Yes,” her husband agrees. Sita cannot help but note that his tone is gentle. “And in Videha, you are considered a Goddess too.”
He says it so easily, as if Sita does not live balanced on the sword-edge between damned and divine. For a moment, she lets herself imagine what it would be like to be known.
There is a story known in Videha, of a drought so ferocious that a King long without child was forced to seed his own lands with the merit of his good deeds. Of the four days of labor that resulted in a baby girl, delivered from the womb of the Eternal Mother Earth. A child covered in an afterbirth of soil where there had only ever been useless dirt.
And yet this too is known: children are the only dead who are buried, their bodies believed too beloved to be consecrated to the fire and burned beyond reckoning. Instead they are covered in wool and laid to rest in the lap of Mother Earth alongside a plea for Death to be gentle.
Sometimes these children are wanted. Many times, the bodies buried are the ones who are not.
This is all that is known: when the King knelt to deliver the child, what had previously been blue sky broke into the first of that year’s monsoon, nearly a decade since the last.
Foundlings left to die do not wear the garb of royalty. Goddesses do not wed.
What would you call me, Crown Prince?
“I am a princess of Ayodhya,” she says, the words suddenly heavy, like stones in her mouth. Her silence protects her sisters from the taint of Sita’s own uncertainty, and Ayodhya has no need for Gods not its own. She waves away an insect that attempts to rest atop her husband’s left ear and resigns herself to her fate: “I am your wedded wife.”
“They are dying,” he says softly, but he speaks to himself. Sita thinks of the easy way they can speak now sometimes; at nights before they retire, or over a morning meal. Her husband is right -- they are friends, if nothing else, and she owes him more than this. Viciously Sita tamps down on the guilt she feels roiling her stomach, rebelling against a stance that suddenly feels like betrayal.
----
Four.
“It is strange,” Mother Kaushalya remarks, as always, “that you were never taught the ways of Royal Women. Is this how girls are raised in Videha?”
Mother Kaushalya, who has only known the Kosala for which she is named, has latched onto the strangeness of Sita’s far-off homeland as a possible explanation for the ways in which Sita grates mountain-rough against the silk of the Imperial Palace. It is useless of course, since a slight against Videha must inherently touch Sita’s sisters, who in the last year have already developed a reputation for grace, gentility, and an overflowing well of kindness towards all blessed with their presence.
Mother Kaushalya, according to the servant-slaves Sita eavesdrops on, has been heard quarreling with Mother Sumitra, begging for “at least one of your darling girls, my Lady, for you know that it can only be selfishness to keep them both when your elder sister has none!”
Sita, tugging awkwardly at the overwrought necklaces she must wear when in Mother Kaushalya’s presence, can only agree. She, more than anyone, knows what she lacks. There have been rumors recently that all three of Dasharatha’s Chief Queens have made a petition to the Emperor to find a new princess worthy of the Crown Prince’s hand.
Sita can only hope that when the time comes, her husband will allow her access to the Imperial Library, or at least will deem it proper to have one wife devoted to the worship of the Gods: philosophy and piety are so easily confused, after all. The best life she can now demand is one where she recedes into the background of the Imperial Palace, unneeded and unknown by all. Never will Sita oversee the workings of a kingdom in the manner she was raised, nor will she sit atop an altar and listen to those petitioners who make pilgrimage to weep at her feet.
Some days, Sita does not even know if she is a woman at all, if these mothers and wives are capable of knowing and carrying the grief of a nation inside their fragile bodies. Every night she dreams of the drought ravaging the villages near the outskirts of Kosala, of how once a year Sita was carried by 50 men to the fields of Videha so that she might press her feet into the soil that made her womb and call forth the rains that heralded her birth.
But then she too dreams of this: a mother weeping, swollen with child like other mothers who have knelt in front of Sita. A mother who delivers a daughter in the ordinary way and buries her alive.
“Goddesses,” the Sage Parashurama had said the year after Sita was installed in the palace of Mithila, “are not meant for marriage. Videha is fortunate that after the reign of Janaka it will be guided by the light of the Divine.”
He paused then, as they all do. “And if the Lady were not a goddess, well --”
They never finish the sentence. The threat is implied.
Sita cannot be meant for love, not in the way of women who are meant for marriage. How can she, when she was meant to sit atop a dais as the physical embodiment of a force of nature, just as easily as inside the hearts of believers? How can she, when she lives her life in the fear that she will be caught out and banished, back into the grave she was meant to die in?
Women are meant for friendship. Women are meant for love.
“My apologies Mother Kaushalya,” Sita says, shaking her head and trying to convince herself that she does not rage against the fate that stretches fallow before her, “I was not raised to be much of a girl at all.”
The real trouble, Sita thinks later, is that despite everything she has somehow found herself liking her husband anyway.
---
five.
“My Lady,” a servant twitters three weeks after the Emperor promises debt relief to the drought-stricken. “My Lady, your Lord husband has need of you!”
Sita looks up from the flowers she is carelessly attempting to string together in a garland, perhaps to festoon a doorway, perhaps to drape around one of the many idols of Surya, the progenitor of her husband’s race. They have not spoken in the week since he asked her about Videha and she refused to answer. “He does?”
“He does,” the servant responds with some relish, ready Sita is sure to reap the rewards of being the bearer of such premium gossip the moment Sita’s back is turned. Sita’s husband has never before indicated such a preference for her company. “He asked that I bring you to him, and not in the garb of royalty.”
“And you are sure that this is my husband?” It is not altogether seemly for Sita to be expressing such doubt that her husband might be asking for her, especially when such a request -- even to appear in plainclothes -- is not unusual for those young and in love, seeking respite from the rhythms of the palace by traveling outside its gates. But really, her husband?
The servant, a girl perhaps only a few years older than Sita’s 16, only raises an eyebrow and widens her grin. “Should I call for one of your maids to help you dress?”
“No,” Sita responds absently, lost in the contemplation of what game her husband could possibly be playing. “Did he say if he had any preference as to what I wear?”
“He did not, my Lady, but if I may I think you had better choose something blue if you have it. The color sets nicely against your skin. Silver jewelry instead of gold, if you have that too. ”
Sita does, buried at the bottom of a trunk of clothes she had carried with her from home. But before that --
“Here,” Sita undoes the clasp of the pearl necklace sent to her by some princeling attempting to curry favor with the crown. There is no true harm in people knowing she has left the palace in her husband’s company, but she is off-center enough to want this a secret as long as she can buy it so. “For your silence, until we return.”
In the time it takes Sita to strip out of silk and re-knot her old lower cloth of coarse blue cotton she has thought of a hundred different potential scenarios. Had she been alone, she might have had to slouch out of her own rooms with her head down so that she might prevent recognition -- in the company of a servant, Sita is passed over as one as well and strolls quite comfortably into the sunshine, following a path she has never taken until they find her husband leaning against the wall of one of the palace’s more minor stables.
“My lady,” he says, seeming to shake himself out of some sort of stupor and leveraging himself fully upright. “Antara,” he says then, turning to face the servant he had charged with fetching Sita, “you have my gratitude.” He leans down to pick up something wrapped in cloth before walking to Antara with a winning smile while pressing the package into her arms.
Sita knows something of her husband, but not like this. She is charmed.
“I came across the mangoes your sister likes when I was making my way back from one of the border kingdoms,” her husband says to Antara. “Tell her that I look forward to hearing more about her adventures when she is feeling well enough to take visitors.”
Antara’s eyes gleam and grow misty. “Oh,” she says, lips trembling as she folds her hands around the parcel and takes her leave, “and we have only just gotten her head to shrink back to its usual size after the last time!”
Alone at last, Sita’s husband’s earlier flash of ease vanish into the ether. Sita tries not to take offense at being more a stranger to him than the woman he sent to fetch his wife. “My lady,” he says again, but cannot seem to say anything more. Sita, feeling the awkwardness of the last week’s silence and her own slight guilt besides, takes pity.
“The girl?”
Sita is rewarded with a smile of her own, small but sincere. “Bedridden, but wonderfully vivacious still. There are bouts of illness where she is worse off than usual, but she believes me nothing more than a particular playmate and I try to see her when I can. The parcel has medicine a far-off physician swore had done a similar patient some good, but Antara would never accept unless I passed it to her like this.”
Sita blinks. “But you are her sovereign!”
Her husband shrugs. “I am her sister’s friend, and I find that everyone is entitled to some amount of pride. It is difficult to accept that you cannot help the one you love best alone.”
She nods, satisfied as she has been in the past with the knowledge that at least she is not married to a stupid man, And, she supposes, not a cruel one either. “How old is the girl?”
His smile widens slightly in apparent reminiscence. “She will be seven in two months' time.”
“Does she have a doll?”
“One,” Sita’s husband says slowly, brow slightly furrowed, “but bedraggled.”
Sita may not know how to comport herself as wife nor princess, but once she was a Goddess who heard the entreaties of those who cared for their beloved ill. Still, she remains a sister. This, Sita knows how to do. “If you approve, I will make her a new one that you can take with you. I used to make dolls for my sisters out of dried grass and cloth when we were children.”
For a moment, her husband looks stunned before he manages to school his features into something like equanimity once more. Still, he slips and there is something helpless about the way he is suddenly looking at her. “You are kind,” he says, but low in a tone that makes it clear that he is not truly speaking to Sita so much as about her to himself. “I am always glad for that.”
Sita blushes, unsure about how to respond to a compliment not exactly meant for her ears. It is not something she ever expected to hear from anyone in Ayodhya, much less the husband she condemns to spend his days wandering the countryside and his nights at rest alone on his own stone floor. “Why did you call me?” she decides to ask instead.
Again, her husband shakes his head as if rising from a reverie. His usual self-confidence suddenly melts into trepidation. What could he possibly want that discomfits him so?
“At the Kosalan border,” he says slowly, eyes focused on some point behind Sita’s shoulders, “there are a few villages that, at some point in the last few years, welcomed some families from afar.”
There is something about the way he speaks that begins to knot Sita’s stomach. She has the beginnings of an inkling, but nothing so concrete that she can speak it aloud. She nods for him to continue.
“Neighbors share stories in times of plenty as well as times of scarcity. These last few months there have been stories about former droughts, experienced by foreign kingdoms.”
Ah. Of course.
“This is not Videha,” Sita says, but she speaks almost as if she is in a dream. She cannot deny her divinity, not without inviting further scrutiny of her orphanhood. But neither has she ever truly believed that it is her feet that coaxed the rains to Mithila. Her father sowed the fields with the merit of his good deeds. Her father found a babe in the trough. Coincidence does not imply correlation.
What would happen if the stories were wrong? If Sita walked the lands but the sky remained a bright, barren blue? In some faint corner of her heart, she feels resentment towards her husband for having made her think of this at all.
“Yes,” her husband agrees, “I told them so. But they insist I bring you to meet them if only to speak as their princess.” He winces slightly, eyes shifting desolate to the dirt. “Hope sometimes means the difference between death or life in these instances, and at this moment I have nothing else to offer.”
Helpless, Sita thinks again. Her husband, Crown Prince of Dasaratha’s empire that extends further and exacts more in tribute than any before, stands helpless before his wife. They are friends, he had said, and even before that, he is the one who has always been kind. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but no words find themselves on the tip of her tongue.
Her husband, eyes still averted, nods as if he has understood. “It was foolish to ask, I know, and perhaps you even think me cruel. You do not speak of who you were in Videha, and I should not ask this of you as my wife.” His jaw sets. “I will take you back to the palace.”
What would happen if the stories were true? If, as in her dreams, Sita walked the lands here in Kosala and the skies still split?
“How will we go?” she asks quietly, unable to force her voice firm. The words leave her mouth unbidden, but she knows they are right nonetheless. “How long will it take?”
She can almost hear her husband’s neck snap as his eyes rise from their study of the ground to gaze at her with all the intensity of the vicious sun. If before he was stunned, now he can only be described as pole-axed. His face is suddenly host to so many overwrought emotions at once that it is rendered as illegible as the times when he forces it blank. She has never seen him so, but that is not unusual. She had not seen him even wearing the smile he gave Antara.
This, she wonders, if anyone anywhere has witnessed ever before. She wonders, even as in her heart she knows the truth: they haven’t. None but Sita.
“Will you really come?” His voice is almost plaintive, like a child asking something he already knows he cannot have. But what does the most powerful man in the world know of want?
“I will,” Sita says, head spinning with a thousand questions, a thousand fears, a thousand hopes. She bites her lip, suddenly overwhelmed by her own uncertainty. “I cannot promise --” again, she loses her voice before she can finish the sentence that would throw her status into such uncertainty.
“I know,” her husband says, answering her unasked question. “I always knew. It would not matter to me either way.” He too seems to break off, struggling to find the proper words. He takes a step forward, and then another, and then one more until he stands in front of Sita, close enough that if he reached out he could clutch at her wrists. “Janaki,” he says, voice dripping with an honest earnesty that suddenly reminds Sita that if she feels herself a girl in Ayodhya then her husband too is a young boy, aged artificially by the weight he is always carrying on his shoulders.
“Janaki,” her husband says again, and Sita takes a breath. He is very handsome up close this friend of hers, the man who is her husband. “You will always be safe with me.” He smiles slightly, and Sita feels the corners of her own lips curling in sympathetic response. “As you say, you are now my wedded wife. There is nothing anyone could say about you that will change that. You can be more, but from now on you will never be less.”
For years Sita was old as well. More than anything else, she was lonely. She is lonely still.
What would you call me, Crown Prince?
My wife.
“I will try,” she vows, refusing to think about what it will do to the villagers for whom the drought continues after she walks the distance of their land. For once, she knows what will happen: she will remain her husband’s wife. In many ways, this is more the moment of her marriage than the one in which he tied the sacred thread around her neck than the one in which he broke the bow of the Great God.
“I will,” she says again, and Sita is unsure if she is promising to be wife, princess, or Goddess. All three, perhaps. “For them,” she swallows and throws all caution to the wind. “For you, I promise I will at least try.”
---
+1
Sita walks for hours, hair falling out of the twist she had pulled it into after dismounting from the saddle she had shared with her husband traveling by horseback to the place that still believed there lived a goddess that could quench dry land.
She walks and walks, walks and walks and walks until her feet begin to crack and then bleed after such long exposure to the harshness of dead earth. Then, she walks some more. Thirst left her an hour ago, but now she struggles against exhaustion. Every step threatens to pull her down into the dust, and she knows, knew, that this would happen. She knew that she would prove their faith false, and leave them worse for having met her. She knew, and yet --
She had hoped, still.
There are no living goddesses who walk the land like Sita to call forth the rain. It is a ritual that has its roots in her father Janaka’s sacrifice, seeding the earth with the merit of his good deeds. Once, she had asked him what he felt when he had been plowing alone in the moments before he manifested a miracle.
“I suppose I should tell you that I prayed,” he had said thoughtfully, hand coming up to stroke absently at his beard, “but I did not. My people were suffering, and there is nothing even an intelligent man can do to mitigate the effects of a decade of drought. I was supposed to be thinking of all the good I had done, so as to imbue the ground with that goodness. But more than anything, every moment I was there I wanted it to rain -- more than anything I had ever wanted before. I felt like I would have done anything then, given anything, if only it would rain. By the end, I knew it would. It had to.”
In Videha, Sita had walked as ritual. She had lived in times of plenty.
In Kosala, there is a drought. She has seen with her own eyes the shrunken bodies of villagers who have no food. Whose voices are raspy with thirst. Together they had collected all the water they had left and had Sita sit, cross-legged before them as they washed away the dust of the road. Sita’s husband has promised that she will be his wife even if she proves a woman after all, but suddenly she knows why the rain fell. Her father too had known; in his own way, he had even tried to tell her.
In Kosala, Sita wants. She is a woman, and in this moment she wants as she never has before. She wants it to rain, more than anyone ever has wanted anything anywhere. More even than her father must have wanted because she wants not only for herself and her people but for her husband as well. Perhaps for him most of all, whom she has seen wrack his mind for weeks. Who has defied what convention or good sense would tell him and instead placed his faith in his wild wife, bringing her to the outskirts of his kingdom in hope of a miracle. Far from the palace, Sita knows herself. She knows what she wants. She knows now, with blinding certainty, what will be.
She wants to be loved, and she wants to love in turn. She wants it to rain, and so it will.
She walks until her body fails, certain in her knowledge that the rain will come. It has to. She trips, and suddenly she hears the gasps of the crowd that has kept vigil at the sides as they did in the time of her father before her. She trips, she falls, and just as she loses consciousness she hears the impossible roll of thunder on a cloudless day.
Sita hits the ground, and it begins to rain in Kosala.
---
coda. (2, 3, 4)
It is late when Sita wakes, eyes opening to the ceiling of a small hut as the raindrops patter against the roof. Outside she can hear shouts of glee, the beat of drums, the exultant songs of villagers who know that they can soothe their hoarse throats with water.
“Was it always like that?” Sita looks down to the foot of her bed where her husband kneels, hands gently rubbing ointment into her wounds before wrapping them with strips of his upper cloth. She hums in question, uncertain of what he means. “When you would walk in Videha,” her husband clarifies, eyes never leaving his self-appointed task, “was it like it was today?”
She could say yes, and imply that this is what goddesses do. Raghuvanshis do not lie. “No,” she says, and marvels at what a struggle it is to even speak. “Never.”
He nods, as if this was the only answer he expected. “Then it really was you,” he says softly, and suddenly Sita notices his hands are shaking as he winds the last of the cloth around her left foot. “You walked, and the gods answered your call.”
“Yes,” Sita says in a whisper. It is a thought too large to bear. He must have questions, she knows, and she owes her husband an explanation. She wants to tell him everything she remembers, everything she now understands, but in this moment there is nothing she can bring herself to say.
Finally, he looks away from her feet, shifting so that it is easier for Sita to look and see his red eyes.
“You cried,” Sita says inanely, stupid again but now in shock.
Her husband laughs, the sound just on the verge of being a sob. “It rained.”
He looks away.
“Before I found your pulse, I thought you had died.”
---
They leave in the morning once more on horseback, Sita clutching her husband’s waist and content to expose her aching, bandaged feet to the elements having long lost her shoes. The villagers offer breakfast, but Sita and her husband communicate wordlessly like she has seen other married couples do, and say together that they must respectfully decline. It will take another cycle for the crops to truly flourish, and there is more food than anyone can eat at home.
For a moment, Sita is jarred at the realization that Ayodhya is what she means when she thinks now of “home.” Mithila, of course, is home always -- but it is different now. Sita’s father called down the rain in Videha, but it was Sita alone who split the sky for her home last night.
After about an hour her husband brings the horse to a halt and jumps down, walking until they reach a lush orchard. Sita swings her right leg around and falls into his arms. For a moment she feels him lower her before he remembers that she cannot walk and shifts his grip, left arm grasping under her knees as Sita wraps her arms around his neck.
“You like jamun fruits, no? You keep them in our bedroom sometimes.”
Yes, Sita does. “Do you?”
Her husband shrugs. “I like these jamun fruits.”
“And where are we?”
“The crown plants orchards at places along the main roads so that travelers might find some respite.” He smiles, looking up at one of the trees. “This is the one with the best jamun fruits in Kosala. And this,” he lowers Sita to the ground underneath the tree and she lets go obligingly, “is the best tree of the orchard.”
It is a romantic claim to make, that there is a single tree that produces the best fruit in the land, but Sita’s husband does not say it as one might when repeating a fancy. Intrigued despite herself, she asks: “How do you know?”
He palms the bark, fingers searching for something that he finds in a particular divot. “A few years ago a squadron of warriors tested the fruit of every tree. This was the one they liked best.”
Sita is skeptical. “And you believe them?”
“Well,” her husband amends, that same mischief he had shown Antara in his eyes, “this is certainly the one I liked best, and the rest agreed as well. It might not be to your taste, given that you are a woman of refined taste in this sphere and I merely a man who prefers mangos.”
“We shall see,” Sita laughs, bedraggled and thirsty and tired. Still, she feels like she has never laughed like this before. In her past she has certainly felt joy and found laughter, but in her happiness now she floats. She had always felt so heavy before. “Let me have my breakfast, and I will be the judge of that.”
Her husband is graceful in victory -- it is not perfectly the season, but Sita swears she has never tasted so sweet a fruit.
---
“Her feet are bandaged,” Kaikeyi observes when the cacophony that accompanies their return to the palace dies down to a dull roar. It is an easy thing to notice when Sita is being carried in her husband’s arms. Kaikeyi was always the quickest of Dasaratha’s queens and proves herself to be the one best informed when her beautiful face twists in withering disgust. “You cannot possibly think that your wife ended the drought by walking.”
Sita cannot tell if the emphasis is on the words “your wife” or “walking.” Both, she thinks, offend the very marrow of an Ayodhyan sensibility that has spent half a year shoving gold at pandits to fund a sacrifice that will finally please Indra.
This is what Sita, married into a family that does not lie, plans to say: “We are glad to see the rain.”
This is what her husband, whose words at 18 already carry more weight in this family than those of his father, says instead: “She did. I saw it with my own eyes.”
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vbee-miya · 4 years
Text
[Don’t Try To Bother]
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✥︎ oikawa torū x gn! reader || m.list
genre: angst || type: short fanfic
warnings: mentions of an unhealthy relationship, manipulation, looking down on one’s self worth, slight language, maybe considered dark content. though i’m not too sure.
w/c: 1k (1070)
a/n: i’m not all that good at angst and this just proves it. also i put the warnings up for the story, however i’d like to make it clear that i don’t recommend/promote these types of relationships. this was solely for the purpose of trying to practice writing angst, based off my real life experiences. also i do not view oikawa as someone doing such thing he just happened to be someone I wanted to write I am sorry in advanced.
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You hated him. You hated everything he said and everything he did.
He knew you had a crush on him, but yet he acted like he didn’t. He manipulated you through words thinking you were something like a friend to him, but when you tried to ask him for help he pretended he didn’t care.
No, no not pretend. He didn’t care.
You were blind to see what he was doing. You kept making up petty lies saying that people act differently around you, so why should you think any differently about him?
Once you try talking to him, he wouldn’t care or answer. However the second you ignored him, he was quick to get your attention. You didn’t mind getting left on read or on delivered by him, because you made petty lies that he was busy and it’s okay.
He couldn’t stand you ignoring him, and when you found that out you thought it was cute at first how a guy like him would be sensitive enough to care to get only your attention. But because of your blindness and ignorance on what a healthy relationship is supposed to seem like, the manipulation started.
He’d started paying attention to you more often than he would’ve. Which made you think he was slowly ready to give a shot at a relationship with you. However what you didn’t know was that he was just twisting his words and he meant nothing he said.
He constantly played with your emotions. He made sure that you only cried for him and not about anything else. He couldn’t care less about your social life, but if it was about him he made sure to ‘comfort’ you saying how he wouldn’t do such a thing.
You always heard your friends say things about him, but you ignored them and tried to prove to them that he was actually a good person. That he was just misunderstood. Just because he had a pretty face didn’t mean he was that bad.
The point that you were trying to make started making less and less sense. You made excuses on why this is why that.
Come to think about it there was never really a time when you both had any heart felt conversations. The only time you both really talked to each other was you agreeing to everything he said. Whether it was a controversial opinion of his or an opinion about a certain movie preference. The only words that came out of your mouth was, “No he’s got a point.” “No he’s correct.” “I agree with him.”
Looking back was all complete bullshit. He never loved you. He never cared about you though his actions said otherwise. It seemed like he cared about you. He was always trying to help you out with favors you had, but he never once tried helping you through things emotionally.
He made petty excuses when you tried asking for favors dealing with your emotions. He said he cared about you, but he also said he didn’t have time for you. It didn’t make any sense.
The more you tried to pull your feelings from him away the more he’d try to pull you back in. You didn’t know what to think or what to do. You weren’t stupid to realize his confession towards you was real so you politely declined, but you were stupid enough to stay as friends.
You eventually become friends with his friends. You’d think having known him for that many years, his friends would at least know who you were. Though that was completely false. No one in his friend group knew who you were. However they all treated you with common human decency and didn’t view you as anything more than a normal human being who deserves respect.
It was comforting you know? But also how ironic. You didn’t care for his friends. The people who treated you with welcoming arms and respect. Rather you were still living the dream life in your head and found yourself falling back at stage one with him.
You knew that everything he did was all fake to you. But you kept making stupid excuses here and there. The reality of him was far different than the one in your head. You had to start realizing that before you make the same mistake. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. However if he were to fool you again would it really be the shame on both of you?
The second time you tried talking to him, trying to maintain a better relationship with him he was completely different before. He never once would apologize to you, but this time he would. He would ask you about your feelings and would try helping you get through it.
This was definitely out of the blue, but you really thought he actually did change. You thought this time he actually cared. However this was just another trick up his sleeve. It was all just an act for the public eye to see because since now his friends knew who you were he wanted them to think he was treating you right.
He started opening up about struggles he was having. You didn’t want to leave or ignore him. Despite how confusing this situation felt, you wanted out of his life. But it seemed that you fell a bit too deep into his life that you weren’t quite sure how to get out. He made sure that was the case and he would keep asking you to help him with issues that no one else knew, but you.
You wanted to tell him you just weren’t feeling comfortable with being around him, but you didn’t want to come off as some bitch who left someone because they were scared to help them out. But that wasn’t the case. You did care, however you wanted to leave him because it was more so a gut feeling.
It took some time to finally leave him and cut him out away from your life. You were glad you did but you also felt anger building up. Were you really that ignorant to realize that everything you said was always ignored by him? Sometimes you wondered how life would be like if you had addressed the situation more up front and straight forward. Would it have made any difference?
Probably not. What mattered was he wouldn’t have the chance to bother you again.
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evanescentreverie · 4 years
Text
Perform (SVT Hoshi)
I love it when you perform
The first time you saw him was on stage, his whole being poured into his dancing. The way he moved his feet to the beat, the way his arms never missed the perfect angles they needed to be in but most importantly, you saw how much he poured his emotions into dancing. For you, it was absolutely ethereal and you felt lucky to even be standing on the same stage as he.
You knew at that moment, you fell in love with his passion.
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
"I really admire Hoshi from Seventeen. I just really enjoy it when I see him dance."
You watched yourself as you muttered those words. You saw how your cheeks turned a slight pink, how your fellow members told the interviewer the things that you would rather keep to yourself. You saw how you turned into a bashful girl in front of the camera, shying away from the spotlight.
"Is there anything you'd like to say to Hoshi?" The emcee had asked you. You cringed when you saw how nervous you were being.
You remembered taking a deep breath before answering, "Hoshi-sunbaenim, I really hope you continue to dance your heart out because you inspire me, as well as the others, to do what they desire to do." You gave a small smile at the end as you bowed, waving at the camera once you stood up straight.
You threw your phone on your bed as you felt your cheeks heat up, heart pounding in your chest, "Oh gosh, what if he sees this?"
You walk towards your bed, jumping in it and taking your phone to scroll in Twitter. Immediately, you saw that Hoshi was trending and you somehow had a feeling as to why. You sighed before shutting it off, reminding yourself that it wasn't wise to look at the tweets. Realizing you weren't going to be able to sleep, you stood up from your bed and headed towards the door, ready for another night of polishing your dancing skills.
"Let's just hope he doesn't see that."
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
"Thank you so much for your love and support Carats! Horanghae!"
You couldn't believe your eyes, your inspiration was right in front of you and within arm's reach. You were sure that your eyes were starry, admiration clearly showed on your face. You were happy for them, you were happy that they have won. Their song was something you listened to multiple times a day, even going as far as learning the dance (Hoshi's part of course). So, to see him right in front of you, close to doing an encore, was something unbelievable.
The groups on the stage slowly dispersed, allowing Seventeen to perform fully on stage. As you passed by them, you took a glance at Hoshi, only to see that he was already looking at you. Your cheeks flushed as you bowed respectfully, Hoshi bowing in return as he smiled his signature smile at you.
He was the first to look away as you exited the stage. You felt dizzy, feeling as if the scene in front of you was unreal. You held your cheeks, fanning yourself to cool down your face. You saw your members worrying about you, causing you to smile and wave off their concern.
You walked to the bathroom, thankful that it was empty as you took a moment to calm yourself. 'That was too much.' You closed your eyes, taking a deep breath before looking at the mirror. You couldn't stop your smile, heart feeling giddy as you remembered the interaction. 'I can't believe Hoshi looked at me.' You giggled to yourself. You swore that if people were to look at you right now, they would believe that you were going crazy. Maybe you were but that only meant you were extremely happy.
Once you were sure that you were calm, you exited the bathroom. What greeted you as you did, however, was the very person that caused your pounding heart.
Your eyes widened as he approached you, waving at you with a smile on his face. You froze on spot, unknowing of what to do in this situation. Do you wave? Do you smile? Do you greet him? Your thoughts ran a hundred miles per hour, mind malfunctioning at the very sight of him approaching you. He stood near you, his smile never leaving as he reached out his hands, a signal for you to shake it.
"Nice to meet you! I'm Hoshi!" You looked at his hands, clenching your fist as it was feeling very clammy. You wiped the sweat off of your hands as you nervously reached out for his hands.
"Hoshi-sunbaenim! It's... It's a p-pleasure." You mentally kicked yourself for stuttering, cheeks feeling red as you removed your hold from his.
He chuckled at your form, "I saw your video and I really want to say that I appreciate your words. It really meant a lot to us as a group but most importantly, me as a dancer." He looked at your eyes, a small genuine smile present on his lips. "So, thank you."
You felt your brain shut down at the sight of his smile. You could hear your heart loudly pounding against your chest, your stomach feeling a sense of anxiousness.
"I-I-I..." You looked down, hands fiddling with the hem of your skirt. "Thank you for inspiring me, Hoshi-sunbaenim."
You heard him chuckle, "You know, you're not a bad dancer yourself. You're the main dancer of your group right?"
You could only nod, mouth unable to form any words.
"I can definitely see why. You have this aura when you dance that mesmerizes the viewer." You gaped at him, mind not believing his praise. You felt your whole body fill with happiness, the sudden praise serving as a newfound passion in you.
You gave him a bright smile, eyes teary from the surge of emotions. "To hear that from you," You paused as you pursed your lip, trying to contain the amount of happiness that resides in you. "It really means a lot to me Hoshi-sunbaenim."
The conversation stopped as Hoshi stared at you, causing you to feel a sense a feeling of self-consciousness. Seeing this, Hoshi's grin returned, "Hey! we should hang out sometime! You know, to give you a couple of pointers."
It was then that your brain short-circuited, cheeks warming at his sudden invitation. You could only stare at him in shock as he waited for an answer. A few minutes passed and Hoshi's expression switched to that of concern, waving his hands in front of you.
"(Y/n)?"
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
"I like you (Y/n)."
Very rarely does Hoshi's expression turns serious and right now was one of those moments. At first, you thought that he was joking, seeing as you were closer now than before. You could even consider each other as best friends so seeing him confess to you was something that you didn't expect any more. Sure you had a crush on him the first few times you met but you realized that the friendship the two of you had was priceless and quickly brushed the feelings aside.
"What?" You gaped at his statement, still finding his sudden confession hard to believe.
"I like you, (Y/n). I have been liking you for a while now." He looked away, "It's okay if you don't like me back but know that I do."
Your heart pounded against your chest, lips pursed as you thought of a reply. The more you think about it, the more you didn't have to. You smiled as you held his cheeks, forcing him to look at you directly.
"You idiot," You gave him a warm smile, "but you're my idiot. I like you too."
You saw how his face slowly changed into a happy one, maybe even going as far as elated. "You do?!" His whole being exuded happiness, from his shaking shoulders to his large grin, you knew he was extremely happy.
You laughed at the change in his demeanor, admiring the way he releases his happiness "I do. I like you more than you know."
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
"You will break up with him or there will be consequences."
You remembered the CEO's words as she yelled at you, demanding you to remove Hoshi from your life. She had found out from an unknown photographer that send pictures of the two of you strolling on a late-night once.
Your lips quivered at the thought of leaving him but you had to. You still had a lot to do, a lot to show, and a lot of promises to keep.
There was also the fact that he had so much more to lose than you. So you had to leave him, to keep the both of you safe.
You allowed yourself to cry, feeling as if you had to be strong in front of him. "I'm sorry, Soonyoung."
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
"I'm tired of this. Let's break up."
Often, you wonder about a life different than what you have. If things would have turned out differently. If the two of you had very different jobs and if you two weren't bound by a contract.
You stared at him as he cried, cried as you held it desperately inside of you. You didn't have the right to cry with him, you didn't have the right to show how absolutely devastated you were. You kept your face stoic and your eyes cold, expression void of any sort of emotions.
You rarely saw him like this. In fact, it was the first time you saw him weep like this. He held your hand tightly as he kneeled in front of you, head buried in your palms as he begged for you to stay. Your heart broke at the sounds of his cries, used to hearing his melodic laugh.
"Let's talk this through, okay? Please," He looked up at you and it took every willpower you've got to hold back your emotions. "I need you, (Y/n)." His voice broke at every word as tears spilled from his eyes. You removed your hands from his hold as you took a deep breath.
"There's nothing to talk about. I just don't love you anymore." You heard him sob as you felt your heart drop. With one more glare, you spoke once more. "Don't call me, Don't contact me. Just... leave me alone."
With that, you walked away, the tears you've been holding back finally letting themself drop. You held in a sob before entering a taxi. The moment you've entered, you choked out a sob, your emotions spilling as you failed to hold it in. You hid your face in your hands as you sobbed, your body trembling at the overwhelming sadness you felt.
'I'm sorry it had to turn out this way.'
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
The crowd buzzed as you look for your seat with your friend. You hid your face as much as you could, not wanting to be recognized by this large crowd. It would cause a lot of controversies, after all.
"Um," You lowered your mask as you tapped the shoulder of your friend beside you, the girl immediately turning to you.
"Yes?"
You gave her a sheepish smile, "Do you mind if you bring my album with you for them to sign?"
She glanced at you with a confused expression, "Why? Do you not want to meet them?"
"I do but with what happened, I'm not sure I have the courage to do so." You chuckled sadly. She gave you a knowing look before nodding, "Alright, give me your album and I promise to return it after."
You shot her a grateful smile, "Thank you so much."
She smiled before nodding, standing up to get in line. You raised your mask back to its original place and watched as she waited, the line moving at a steady pace. You watched as she approached each member before finally reaching him. Your heart beat nervously, wondering what his reaction would be.
I love it when you perform
You saw how his eyes widened, how his head shot up immediately to look at the person in front of him. You saw how his expression saddened when he realized it wasn't you. You saw him look around the crowd, making you alert of his scanning.
You lowered your hat in order to avoid being seen, biting your lips in anxiety. You counted a few seconds before returning your gaze towards him, smiling sadly when you see his visible disappointment.  You knew that you had made the right choice and you knew in your heart that things were better this way.
He returned his attention back at the album, a bittersweet smile now placed on his lips. You watched as he wrote something before handing back the album. As your friend reached the final member, she walked towards you and handed your album back.
You once again muttered your thanks, smiling as she told you it was nothing. You opened the album, turning to the page. You held your breath as you read the message, holding back your tears as you did.
I love it more when you cheer me on, (Y/n).
Your heart ached the more you saw it, your hands tracing the familiar handwriting. You slowly looked back at his form, a sad smile now etched into your face. A few minutes later, you stood up from your seat and left, muttering your silent goodbye.
"I really love it when you perform, Soonyoung."
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
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puckyeahobx · 4 years
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blow all my friendships to sit in hell with you
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a/n: WEE WOO WEE WOO RAFE CAMERON WOOBIFICATION INCOMING. this is my favorite thing that i have ever written. enjoy (NOT MY GIF)
summary: y/n and rafe are in love at Midsummer’s and then someone (cough topper cough) tries to come around and start trouble. protective!rafe jumps in and it is sexy
warnings: nsfw duh
word count: 4.8k
It’s not that you weren’t excited about going to Midsummer’s. You were, truly. Ever since you had moved to the island, you had looked forward to the party every summer. There was something about getting done up in a pretty dress and whimsical accessories that almost made you forget how much of an outsider you felt amongst the other Kooks. 
You had only moved to Figure Eight about halfway through high school, so by then everyone had already made their cliques. At that point it didn’t matter that your parents had money, no one took notice. It also didn’t help that everything about you proved that you weren’t a preppy douchebag. So, instead of getting wasted out of your mind in someone’s basement, you spent a lot of your time at the beach. Here is where you met the Pogues, and thank God you did because without them, you weren’t really sure where you would have ended up. If it weren’t for running into the boys: JJ, Pope, and John B around the docks, you would have never met Kie. And if you had never met Kie, you would have never met Sarah. And if you had never met Sarah….well, your life would look drastically different, to say the least. 
The Cameron family was somewhat of an Outer Banks institution. Everyone knew them, and depending on which side of the cut you were on, you either loved them or you hated them. Well, you either loved or hated Ward, that is. And even if you didn’t love him, you probably feared him, which was all in the same to him. The Ward kids were a little more controversial from person to person, though. Sarah had a reputation that didn’t really fit the sweet, loyal girl she was, but even with her reputation no one ever really had any reason to dislike her that wasn’t directly related to her father. Wheezie, the youngest, was often forgotten about, but it seemed like she liked it that way. Then there was Rafe. The oldest of the Ward kin, and by far the most contentious. He was like Ward in the way that he was either feared or hated, but unlike Ward, there weren't a lot of people willing to say they loved him.
However, “a lot of people” weren’t you.
You weren’t really sure when you changed teams on the Rafe Cameron front, but you imagine it was at some point in the summer before your junior year when you started hanging out with Sarah regularly. Rafe was older than you, and not around a whole lot, but he was around enough. You saw how he argued with his dad and how drastically different Ward acted around Sarah and how he acted around Rafe. You saw how empty he looked when he wasn’t around Topper or Kelce. The Rafe you saw from your spot on the living room sofa that summer was not the Rafe you had heard the urban legends about. He was preoccupied - it always seemed like he was thinking about what he was going to have to do next to make sure he kept being worthy enough. You try to remind yourself of all of the things you had heard about him, but then he’d help Wheezie with the newest secret project or offer help to Ward at every turn, and what was legend and what was the boy before you became complete opposites. 
It was embarrassing, truly, how smitten you had become with him that summer. You found yourself sticking up for him in conversations with Sarah and Kie, sometimes even with the Pogues who had age-old reasons for hating him. Almost everyone thought you were just being naive, being new to the island and all, but Kie saw right through you. She saw the way you watched him enter and exit rooms, how eager you were to help him with docking the boat. Everywhere he was, you just happened to turn up at. Again, it was a little embarrassing, but there was just something about him that made your feet forget that they had a mind of their own. The word magnetism comes to mind. It took him a couple of months to notice, aka well into your senior year, but eventually he caught on and started playing the game right along with you. You were typically an impatient person, but you’re glad you paid the long game with this one. It’s how you ended up on his arm three Midsummer’s in a row.
So, again. It’s not that you weren’t excited about going to Midsummer’s. Afterall, you were in the prettiest dress you had ever seen (you had flowers in your hair for God’s sake) and your amazing boyfriend on your arm. It was destined to be a good night. Everything was aligned and it was going to be perfect. But, then again, perfect doesn’t usually last long in the Outer Banks. 
You and Rafe had done the rounds to all of the most important club members, per Ward’s request, and you were about to throw a fit if you didn’t leave soon. All you wanted was to go back to one of your guys’ houses and have a night in with some netflix and your sweatpants. You didn’t even care about how damn cliche it was. It was just that exhausting pretending to like 25 consecutive rich white people. But Rafe was not interested. He knew how happy it made Ward that he was there making connections and participating in all of the traditions of Kook life. Regardless of what you felt about Ward and how he treated your boyfriend, you didn’t say anything. If it made Rafe happy, that was all you cared about.
But that didn’t mean you weren’t going to put up a fight. 
You two were sitting at one of the tables draped in white linen, the fairy lights encircling them being the only sources of light three hours into the party. He was people watching, laughing and talking with people who walk by, his hand on your thigh as a sense of comfort. You were always the one thing that could ground him when he started to fly off the handle like he could still do from time to time. 
“Rafe,” You whispered as you leaned into his neck more so than his ear. You wanted him to feel your breath against the sensitive spot behind his ear. 
He shivered for just a second before he fought it off with a cough, turning to you with a forced smile, “Yes, Y/N?”
You made your best puppy dog face and looked up at him, your chin on his shoulderas you wrapped your arms around his middle, “I want to go home.”
He laughed a little at your dramatics and put an arm around your shoulders, pulling you tighter so he could kiss your forehead. “We’ll leave soon,” he whispered into your hair.
You tried whispering into his neck again, desperate for him to give into temptation. “I want to leave now,” You pressed the gentlest of kisses just below his earlobe, “Please?”
He shifted in his seat and sat up a little straighter, coughing as he pulled away from you enough to get your lips off him. “Just like, 30 more minutes. I don’t want Dad to think I’m ditching.”
It was your turn to pull away as you sat back in your chair and crossed your arms across your chest, fully pouting at his loyalty and devotion to the Cameron institution. You didn’t say anything, instead opting for a loud huff and your nose turning up to the sky, refusing to look at him any longer. 
However, since you were so busy refusing to look up at him you didn’t notice him lean back in closer to you where it was his turn to whisper against your neck and in your ear, “I’ll make it worth the wait, I promise, Baby.”
There was no mistaking the hitch in your breath as you sunk back into your chair and into his chest, a blush creeping all the way from your exposed chest to the tips of your cheek bones. The immediate reactions you had to his voice never failed to amuse him, so you weren’t surprised to hear him laugh in spite of you. At this, you threw a weak punch at his shoulder that only made him laugh harder. 
“Come on, dance with me,” He finished off his laughter as he stood up and held his hand out for you, “Not nearly enough people have seen how smokin’ you look tonight.”
Taking his hand you couldn’t help but smile, but still managing to roll your eyes at the cheesy remark, “I think you paraded me around to everyone at this party about three times over, Rafe.”
He led you over to the makeshift dance floor where it was just you guys and three other couples who all looked to be above the age of 80. His hands on your waist and yours around his neck he smiled down at you with the smile that was reserved just for you, “It will never be enough people.”
“You’re ridiculous, Rafe Cameron,” You leaned up to kiss his smiling lips, never able to resist him for long.
“And you’re beautiful, Y/F/N Y/L/N.”
But before you could finally kiss - something you somehow haven’t done yet and were getting desperate for - you were interrupted by the most obnoxious person you have ever had the displeasure of knowing. 
“Well, well, well. What do we have here? Lady and the Tramp? Rafe, you’re Lady of course. Haven’t seen your balls in awhile, huh bud?”
You had hated Topper ever since you had first met him, but he had only gotten worse since High School ended and he found out what everyone else had known for years: that he was completely useless. 
Rafe immediately moved so he was standing in front of you slightly, every muscle in his body tensed completely, but neither of you said anything. 
Topper chuckled to himself as he crossed his arms over his puffed-out chest. He had a habit of getting overly confident once he got more than three whiskey’s deep. “Oh so you just have nothing to say, pal? Not enough that she has your balls in a fucking vice grip, she took your tonuge too...what a shame. You always had a way with words.” His smile was as menacing as it could be on a trust fund baby, but it still wasn’t great. 
“Is that all?” Rafe said, sounding surprisingly calm. His muscles and jaw were unyielding, though. His grip on your hand flexed with every word he said as if he was slipping fast and desperate to have something to keep him from falling over that ledge. 
Topper scoffed dramatically, “What? I can’t joke around with my best friend anymore? Or, my former best friend, I guess. Ever since that pogue-slut started sucking your dick you never give your real friends the time of day anymore.”
You flinched at the horrible things he was saying about you, but it was no match to the way Rafe was all but blowing fire out of his nostrils. “If I were you, Top, I’d turn your ass around and leave her the fuck alone.”
“I’m just trying to be there for you, bro. You’re not yourself anymore! This bitch has you completely brainwashed! The Rafe I know would have spit in the face of the pussywhipped cuck you’ve turned out to be.” He paused and then looked over Rafe’s shoulder at you, giving you a quick up and down. “Must be some pretty good pussy if you’re able to turn the King of Kildare county into your personal bitch.”
Rafe’s hand suddenly left yours and he laughed to himself, “You’re a funny guy, Top.”
“No, I'm serious, man. Let me have a piece of that. I’ll decide if she was worth ruining your reputation for.”
Rafe looked down and laughed for a second before looking directly in Topper’s eyes, “Go to fucking hell.”
Before he even got the last word out of his mouth, his iron fist had made impact straight into Topper’s jaw. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was just because of the power behind Rafe’s punch, but he was on the ground immediately, muttering gibberish to himself as his mouth flooded with blood. 
“Rafe!” You screamed as you pulled him back just as looked like he was about to go in for another round. 
He fought against your grips to get closer to him, wanting one last word. “You ever talk about me or my girl again and you’ll have a lot more to worry about than a bruised jaw. You got that?”
You didn’t wait for Topper’s response as you started to drag Rafe away towards the front of the house where his Jeep was parked. People were starting to stare and you wanted to get out of there before Ward caught wind of what had happened. 
The half walk/half speed run to the car was a silent one. You didn’t know where to even begin and you could tell Rafe was embarrassed of acting out like that. He hadn’t done anything like that in over a year and he had been so proud of himself for turning over a new leaf for you. 
Once you got into the car you both sighed in relief. It was then finally that he turned to you, his voice trembling just the slightest bit from residual adrenaline and the shame creeping up from the pit of his stomach to the tip of his spine. “Baby, I’m- I’m so sorry. But I, I just couldn’t help it. He was saying such fucked up shit about you. Calling you all of those things and talking about fucking you- I was going to be sick. I had I to do something baby, I’m so fucking sorry-”
He was caught off by the intoxicating crush of your lips against his. You grabbed his face in yours hands and kissed him harder than you had in a long time. It took him almost no time at all to melt into you, grabbing onto your waist as best as he could across the middle console. You were out of breath and positively drunk on each other when you finally pulled away, the most ridiculous smile plastered on your face. When you opened your eyes you saw that same smile mirrored on his perfect face, his eyes hooded as he laughed a little between pants.
“I know I uh, shouldn’t enable violent behavior,” you paused, still trying to catch your breath, “But that was one of the hottest things I have ever seen in my life.”
He swallowed, keeping his eyes locked on yours as his goofy smile turned into a smirk, “I’ll always fight for you, Princess. You know that.” 
You whined just the slightest bit at the pet name before putting on your seatbelt. “Home. Now.” Afraid of what you would do if you looked at that shit eating grin for another second, you looked straight ahead out the windshield. 
“Yes ma’am.” You heard him chuckle as he put the car in drive and head off toward his house, his hand on your leg seemingly inching up higher and higher with every mile traveled. 
By the time you got back to his house, you were about three seconds away from jumping him in the wide open space of the Cameron residence’s driveway, but luckily your boyfriend had a little bit more restraint as he took your hand and directed you to the guest house that he had been living in for the last year and a half (it was all a part of Ward’s idea to give Rafe more responsibility, but all it had really done was give your sex life completely free reign, which you greatly appreciated).
Once you got into the front door, he all but slammed you against the door in order to shut it. “Damn if I had known me throwing punches at losers got you so hot I’d head down to the country club more often,” He whispered against your lips.
You moaned the slightest bit as his lips trailed down to your neck while he lifted you up, wrapping your legs around his waist and pinning you against the door. “It wasn’t about the punch-” A pause, “Ok it was sort of about the punch. But it was- it was more about you defending my honor or whatever. And you look so fucking sexy when you’re mad.”
His lips found his way back to yours, but first he smiled and whispered again, “I’ll always defend your honor, Baby. You’re my girl.”
And with that, you were back to making out sloppily as he carried you down the hall to his bedroom that, at this point, was pretty much your shared bedroom. He not-so-gently dropped you on the bed before reaching down and yanking his shoes and socks off when he went for his belt and dress pants. Your hand immediately flew up and swatted his away. “Let me do it.”
He groaned and ran his fingers through your hair as he looked down at you undoing his belt, your eyes fixed on his innocently. Once his belt was undone you wasted no time reaching a hand inside and feeling him up just the way he liked. You got up on your knees without removing your hand from its careful ministrations so you could kiss up his neck to his lips, “Thank you for being my knight in shining armor.”
Clearly not able to take much more teasing, he, a little gentler this time, pushed you back against the bed, this time coming with you. Since he was so much taller and broader than you, being underneath him was sometimes overwhelming but in a sexy, intoxicating way that you never got used to. He whispered against your neck, “If this dress isn’t off your body in about three seconds I’m going to fucking scream.”
You pushed him off of you and laughed before sitting up just enough to clumsily slip the dress off your head while he, equally as graceful, flung off his dress pants and shirt. He sat back on his knees for a moment and drank the sight of you in, face flushed, mouth agape, and completely, totally in love with you. “This never gets old. You’re...you’re perfect.”
That familiar blush and pit in your stomach that came with these intimate moments with him snuck up at you as you whispered a “Thank you”, a shy smile playing across your cheeks. 
He returned the smile and leaned back over you, reigniting the fire from before as soon as his lips touched yours. 
His hands were everywhere, everywhere, everywhere as you gasped beneath him with yours gripping his hair like a lifeline. From your chest to your ass he was caressing and stroking you as if you could disappear from him at any moment. When a hand finally reached into your underwear and he realized how turned on you already were he all but growled against your lips, “You’re always so ready for me...you have no idea what you do to me, baby…”
All you could muster up was a whimper as he hooked his fingers around the sides of your underwear and tore them down your legs. Wasting no time, attached his lips to you and started eating you out in the only way he could, which is to say it was perfect. He knew exactly when and where to use his fingers, and when and where to apply pressure with his tongue. It was amazing truly how it came so naturally to him. He was up to two fingers pumping inside of you when he moved his head up your body to kiss you, knowing what you needed to finish. 
“Are you gonna cum for me, baby? I can feel it, I know you want to,” he whispered against your neck as he sucked and nipped at all of your favorite spots,  “You’re so good for me always, go ahead. I’ll count you down. 5.”
You really could feel it starting to build up, but you wanted to hold back for just the right moment. 
“4.”
Holding back seemed to be getting harder and harder, his fingers angled further up against you and his thumb found its way to the nerve ending that his tongue had to abandon to get to your neck. 
“Such a good girl. 3.”
You were full blown whining and rocking against him, desperate for the feeling only he could bring you. 
“2. Almost there, Princess.”
With a final squeal, you grabbed onto his arm and held it steady as you ground yourself against him, eyes squeezed shut. 
“1.”
Before he had even finished the word, you were there. Your vision was white and your whole body was under the control of something primal and hot. He coaxed you through your orgasm with his fingers and the sweet encouragements falling off his tongue and into your ear.
When you opened your eyes finally you saw him looking down at you positively beaming with pride. Getting you off was his one greatest joy in life, which was good because, come to think of it, it was yours too. 
“Fuck.” Was all you could sigh out as you looked up at him, your chest heaving.
He leaned down to kiss you again and chuckled against your lips, “I was just about to, God. You’re so impatient.”
Not finding him particularly funny at the moment - you had much more pressing things to take care of - you broke the kiss to push his boxers down his legs and grab a hold of him, stroking him a few times before lining him up against where you needed it most. You were just about to slide him in when he pushed your hand away and paused. “You know I love you, right?”
Momentarily breaking out of your primal haze, your body softened against the bed and you reached up to grab his face, “Of course I do, Baby. I love you too.”
Another pause from him where he averted his eyes before speaking again, “I would do anything for you,” he looked back at you, “I mean it. Anything.”
“I know,” you whispered back, trying to show that you understood his urgency. 
“You’re like- You’re seriously the best thing that has ever happened to me so when Top started saying all of that disgusting shit about you and how you ruined my life I just- I just lost it, I guess.”
Your fingers found the back of his neck where you threaded them through his hair, trying to ground him. “You did the right thing, protecting me. He was drunk...who knows would have happened? He deserved it.”
He scoffed and shook his head, agreeing with you. “Yeah he fucking did. When he started talking about fucking you, I could have killed him. He’s lucky all he got was a sucker punch.”
“He’s the worst person on the island, it was about time someone put him in his place. You’re a good man, Rafe Cameron.”
He looked down at you again and smiled ever so slightly, “Yeah?”
Nodding your head and biting your lip to hold back a goofy grin you reassured him further: “The best.”
Closing the gap between you guys once more, he leaned down to capture your lips with that smile still plastered across his cheeks. As soon as your lips touched, though, that goofy mood was gone. He lined himself up against you and slid in slow and steady, making sure you both got to savor this moment. It was no shock that such a tall man would be so well endowed, but you still were never used to how good he felt like this and you were starting to think you never would be. 
You both gasped and moaned when he finally started moving, his head lulling back as he held onto your hips with both of his big hands, pinning you down to the mattress hard (as if you would ever, in a million years go anywhere). 
Another thing you didn’t think you would ever get used to is how into dirty talking he was. The man could go on and on and it made everything that much more powerful. 
“You feel so good, Baby Girl.”
“Yeah, fucking scream, Princess. I want to know how good I’m making you feel.”
“You like it when I fuck you like that, huh? Say it.”
You were always more than willing to indulge his desires considering how hot they made you and much more confident they made him. Rafe was your first and only, but you couldn’t imagine that you were missing out on much. He had to be the best fuck you could ever hope for.
Before long you felt that knot start to loosen in the very base of your stomach, your breath trying desperately to keep up. “Baby, I-I’m-”
He continued to pound into you relentlessly, “Me too, sweetheart. Just hold off for a little longer. I want us to cum together.”
You whimper and grab onto the headboard behind you, trying to ground yourself to something before you lose it completely. 
His thrusts quickly became sloppy and out of rhythm and his thumb once again found your clit, signaling that it was about time for both of you to give in.
“Please,” you begged, barely above a whisper as you strained against the headboard. 
That was enough to do him in and you followed after all but a half second later. Both of you started mumbling all kinds of gibberish about how much you loved the other and how hot that was, but neither of you were really present enough to pay attention. 
Rafe fell on the bed on the other side of you and immediately wrapped you up against him, pulling the covers over the both of you. Your head was resting on his chest and you could hear his heart struggle to regulate itself. 
“What do you think my dad will say?” He whispered sadly after a couple of minutes of running his fingers all along your side as you drew shapes into his chest. 
You lifted your head just enough to look up at his worried face. “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Rafe.”
“I embarrassed the whole family because I lost my temper...he’s not going to be happy about that.”
Setting your hands under your chin’s place on his chest, you rolled onto your stomach to look at him longer and harder, “You lost your temper because some drunk psycho was insulting your girlfriend and calling you a pussy-whipped bitch. I’m afraid to know what Ward would do in that situation. He’s probably thinking you were too nice.”
He chuckled slightly, making your whole body move with the laughter in his chest. “Yeah I guess that’s where I get my um….passion from….”
“Hm...I don’t know. I think you cultivated it yourself. You give Ward too much credit, you learned how to be a good, loyal person all on your own.” Confident in your assessment, you turned your head back against him and cuddled up for the night, exhaustion hitting you all at once with a giant yawn.
Rafe paused for a moment before leaning forward and kissing the crown of your head and smoothing your hair, “I think you had a little bit more to do with that than I did.” It was barely more than a whisper, you wondered if you were even meant to hear it. 
Another yawn, “Nah, you already were everything you are now. You just needed someone to give you permission to be it.”
You couldn’t see it, but he was smiling from ear to ear as your words sank into his skin. He was the first one to admit that when he met you, he didn’t deserve you. It was a guilt that had hung over him these past few years. Everything he did was to try and be the type of guy that deserved you, that was right for you. He knew you loved him for who he was then and who he is now, but hearing you say such kind things about the version of himself he hated the most just made the guilt ease up a bit because, hey, if he was good enough for you, then that was all that mattered.
“Goodnight, baby,” you mumbled against his chest as you nuzzled up against him, even though you couldn’t get much closer. 
He sighed with a smile on his sleepy face, “Goodnight, Princess.”
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