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bokutosbabe · 19 days ago

Text

It Always Leads To You

( bllk boys as situationships )

a/n — girl whose never had a situationship writing about them? what could go wrong? (they progressively get longer lol)

content — some nsfw but not explicit, pining, GN! reader, some characters repeated, all characters are 18 or 18+

synopsis — what kind of situationship the bllk boys would be

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' and the heart i'm breaking is my own ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the... ' but you're best friends! '

you'd rather spend money on a hotel than stay at home 24/7 for the next week. how could you walk into your house when you knew he'd be there, chatting with you family as if nothing had changed?

maybe you should've pretended you had to work.

that would have saved you the grief of having to see, who was supposed to be, your best friend. how could you face him when the last thing you two talked about was being a couple and that...not going as planned.

well, maybe that wasn't the last thing you two talked about with each other. however, does defiling your families bathroom really count as 'talking'? ( most awkward easter ever afterwards ) you didn't really think so.

whatever, he was a pro-soccer player now, he may not even be at home this christmas. you'd just have to put up with his family, who you'd always loved, and then you could go home and avoid the situation until the next big holiday.

but of course, when you stepped into your childhood home you realized that you'd never get that lucky. there he was, just as handsome as ever, sitting on your families couch.

in your eyes, he looked like he belonged with your family more than you, but you supposed he earned that. he came home every holiday, unlike you who continuously came up with different reasons to stay as far away as possible.

if you left now, maybe no one would know you'd even shown up-

" woah, y/n! it's you! " or...maybe not. " i haven't seen you in forever, what have you been up to? " the voice that plagued your every waking thought crashed its way into your ears.

your best friend ( could you even call him that anymore? were you still his best friend? ) got up from his spot on the couch to come wrap his arms around you in a hug that felt more like home than home did.

" i've missed you, ya know? " he whispered in your ear, hands caressing your back in what felt like much more than what a 'friends' hug would be.

just a week. you could survive and coexist with him for a week. your resolve to never sleep with him set in stone now.

you just wished your resolve wouldn't have crumbled only two days later while your family was downstairs watching christmas movies.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ REO MIKAGE, isagi yoichi, AIKU OLIVER, rensuke kunigami, TOBITO KARASU

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the ' you cannot date them '

you’re a good person... or at least, you want to believe that. But how can you when your best friend sits in front of you now, talking about their ex?

she’s raving about how much she misses him, how everything fell apart at the worst time, how she’s still holding onto the hope that maybe they can fix things.

you try to smile and nod, pretending that you’re not dying inside. how can you even look her in the eye when he’s blowing up your phone right now? when you know exactly how he feels about you?

“it’s just so messed up, right?” she laughs nervously, like this is all just a bad breakup, nothing that can’t be smoothed over. “i’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do anymore.”

she doesn’t know that you already did something. You already did the one thing that could ruin everything. the one thing that she told you you could never do.

your phone continuously buzzing while she's talking, hoping she wouldn't notice you reach for it to silence it while she takes a sip of her drink.

your phone vibrates again, and you try not to look at it. you’re not sure if you’re worried that she’ll see, or that you’ll see what he’s saying. you’re scared of both.

him <3 ; are we still on for tonight? can’t wait to see you.

that familiar ache forms in your chest, and you can feel the betrayal to your friend, the confusion about your own feelings, but worse—there’s nothing you can do about it. you keep smiling, even though it feels like your heart’s sinking with every word your friend says.

" god, if you don't want to listen to me, just say so. " your friend says coldly. " i would have turned off my phone if it was you crying right now. "

" sorry, it's just my mom...talking about some new present she wants to get my brother. " you apologized. "oh, okay. is your brother a cutie?" you didn't even have a brother, showed how much she knew about you.

“whatever, what should i do?" your friend asks, her eyes bright with hope (or maybe delusion). "do you think I should text him? do you think we could still fix things?”

you want so badly to tell her the truth.

you want to be honest, to say what she needs to hear so that she doesn’t get her hopes up.

you want to tell her that he is already texting you, that maybe you are the reason he won’t talk to her.

but instead, you bite your lip and offer a shrug. "i don't know, honestly. maybe he needs time to figure out what he wants too."

"he doesn't need time. he needs me." she mused, staring at you like your answer was just the stupidest thing she'd heard all day. "no wonder you've never dated anyone, who'd like a ditz like you?"

The whole time, your phone is buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, like a constant reminder of your lie.

you; see you tonight :)

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ OTOYA EITA, ikki niko, RANZE KURONA, reo mikage, RYUSEI SHIDO

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧the... ' you'll never be first '

he's leaving soon, and you feel like you're dying.

you’d known for a long time that ‘casually’ seeing a pro soccer player would only lead to being left alone, especially someone like him—someone whose work always came first, and whose heart was as unreachable as the trophies he collected.

he’d said it more times than you could count: “love doesn’t come before soccer. It never will.” and you’d laughed, maybe even agreed at some point, understanding it was just the way things were.

so why does it feel like you’re drowning now, with him leaving just around the corner.

it doesn’t make sense. you’d known the deal from the start.

still, here you are—sitting in his bed, in the quiet of his room, the familiar hum of the city outside reminding you of how little time you really have left with him.

his suitcase is by the door, already half-packed, his jersey draped over the chair where he’d left it, as if he couldn't get out of here fast enough.

you’re almost sick to your stomach at the thought of him walking out that door in just a few days, never looking back.

you’ve spent enough time with him to know that when he leaves, he doesn’t look back. he doesn't look back at stadiums once he walks out, and he wouldn't look back at you either.

"it’s only a few months," he’d said, trying to make you feel better when the topic of him leaving first got brought up. “i’ll be back before you know it.”

but that’s not the point.

it’s never been the point.

you know he’ll be busy with games, traveling, sponsors,...women, all the things that make him too far to reach.

and yet, here you are, sitting in his bed, heart pounding, overwhelmed with the thought of it all ending. you thought you could handle this.

you thought you could be just another notch in his belt. but the truth is, you’ve been fooling yourself. you care too much. you’ve fallen for him, hard, and the worst part is—he doesn’t even realize it.

or maybe he does. maybe he’s known all along, and you were too scared to admit it.

the sound of his voice pulls you from your thoughts.

"hey, you okay?"

you glance over at him, watching him fiddle with his phone, one hand propped up on the headboard. his eyes meet yours, something in them that almost makes you believe he could stay. maybe, you're enough of a reason for him to stay where he is now.

but he won’t. you know that. his life is bigger than you. bigger than this city, this bed, and every memory you’ve shared together.

you nod, forcing a smile, trying to keep the strange bitterness from slipping into your voice.

"yeah, just thinking."

"don’t think too much." his lips curl up into that calming grin that’s made you feel better on several occasions. how could something that used to calm you make you feel like your heart was in your throat? “you’ll drive yourself crazy.”

it’s easy for him to say that. he’s used to moving on. he’s used to leaving. you? you're used to him being here.

his fingers tap absently against the screen of his phone. you can see the notifications lighting up—his agent, a few teammates, probably his parents, all reminding you of the inevitable: he’s leaving soon.

you want to scream. you want to ask him why he doesn’t care. why it’s so easy for him to slip away from everyone who loves him.

but instead, you pull your knees to your chest and keep your eyes fixed on him, as if the longer you look, you could magically gain telepathy to make him want to stay with you.

"how’s your flight looking?" you ask, hoping his answer would be that he cancelled it.

"all set."

and you can't breathe.

the casualness in his voice is what stings the most. the way he talks about leaving as if it’s just another day at the office, another game to be played.

he doesn’t get how you feel. maybe he can’t. maybe he’s just too busy not feeling anything.

The silence is deafening.

"do you... do you ever wish you could just stay?"

It’s a question you didn’t mean to ask, but it escapes before you can stop it.

You wish you could take it back the second it leaves your lips.

he looks up at you, and for the briefest moment, his eyes soften. for one second, he looks like he is completely and utterly yours.

he sets his phone down, sliding it onto the bedside table, then turns his full attention to you.

"i told you, didn’t i? love doesn’t come before soccer."

The words hit you like a train, but it’s not the truth that hurts—it’s the way he says it, like it’s not up for debate. as if it’s always been this way, and it always will be.

why can't he just try? just try to come home every so often...to you.

you feel like a fool. as if you've put your heart on display for him just to not even glance your way.

you know where you stand, even if it’s tearing you apart.

he doesn’t lie to you, doesn’t promise you things he can’t give, and maybe that's why you fell for him in the first place—he was the first person who didn’t play games with you.

"i’m gonna miss you," you say quietly, knowing that admitting it aloud makes it even worse.

his eyes flicker with something, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. he shifts, pulling his knees up to match yours, as if to say he’s close, but still so far. he rests his head back against the headboard.

and for a moment, you almost forget he’s leaving. you forget about the suitcase by the door. you forget about the plane ticket he has. you forget that in just a few days he wont be yours anymore.

"i’ll miss you too," he says softly.

but that’s it. that’s all he says. it’s not a promise, not a declaration. just another passing remark to fill the silence.

he doesn't mean it. it's more of a kindness thing for him to say it back.

you can feel the weight of everything unsaid.

you realize—he doesn’t know how much you care. He can’t understand you.

he’s never been asked to stay.

you’re not even sure you’d want him to. you can’t ask him to change his life for you. and you couldn't keep up with the lifestyle he lives.

the idea of him walking away—of losing him to something bigger, to something you’ll never be able to keep—feels like it will break you.

so you just lie down on his bed, for the last time, you tell yourself.

'after tonight, he'll be free of me'

after tonight, you'd walk out that door and not look back.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ITOSHI RIN, nagi seishiro, SAE ITOSHI, isagi yoichi, RENSUKE KUNIGAMI

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' to leave the warmest bed i've ever known ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

[ + your faves ! ]

again, i've never experienced this, so i hope the research i've done (looking up different types of situationships) has done it justice!

likes, comments, and reblogs appreciated!

#★ · airybcbyy #airy posts #airy writes for blue lock #bllk x reader #situationships #isagi yoichi x reader #rin itoshi x reader #sae itoshi x reader #kenyu yukimiya x reader #nagi seishiro #nagi x reader #mikage reo x reader #ranze kurona x reader #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader fluff #bllk #blue lock

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toruro · 1 year ago

Text

— ✧ back to december

a part of flower me with love ... an hhu unit x flowers collection !

genre: smut (18+ / mdni), fluff, angst (resolved!), best friends to strangers to lovers

description: it's been four months and twenty-two days since you've last talked to mingyu, however your mother still thinks you two are friends. you don't have the heart to tell her what really happened, and now you think it's time for you to move on. (un?)fortunately for you though, mingyu seems to have other plans.

inspired by back to december by taylor swift!

tags: miscommunication, unrequited love (not fr though), big dick mingyu, sex in a car >_<, riding, fingering, pet names (angel, pretty), creampie :3

w/c: 4.3k

a/n: happy birthday @gyuswhore!!! this fic is for em but if not em and ur reading it i hope u enjoy too. this is like 2/3 plot and 1/3 smut if anyone cares

Normality is bliss.

That’s what you used to tell yourself. That’s what you used to believe.

Normality was bright mornings, crisp air, slow walking down the main street, inhaling the ambrosial scent of freshly roasted coffee beans, and slipping under the fairy lights that hang over the door. It was the warm sound of the overhead bell ringing, permeating laughter in the cafe from all customers, and daisies in a pot by the entrance.

Normality was Mingyu. His bright laugh as you approach the counter, sweet voice as he playfully asks you what drink you’d like, to which you roll your eyes and respond with, “You already know, don’t you?” It was the chuckle he would let out, the wink he flashed at you, murmuring the words, “It’s on the house” (because with Mingyu, it was always on the house), the thanks you give him before stepping back.

Normality was the latte he handed you, rough yet ginger fingers brushing over your palm as he warned you, “Careful, it’s hot,” and the giggle you let out when you stepped back and asked how his morning was going. It was Mingyu telling you nothing special happened yet. It was Mingyu suggesting that you two hang out at the field after he’s done with work. It was you grinning and agreeing in an instant, but only under the condition that he picks you up after your class.

Normality was bliss until four months and twenty-two days ago.

Now, normality hurts like a bitch.

Your mother glances at you from the corner of her vision as you rummage through the fridge. “What’re you looking for?”

“Some bread,” you murmur. “Was really craving a tomato sandwich … Damn, we’re seriously out of white bread?” you ask, giving up with a sigh as you close the door and face her.

She shrugs. “If it’s not in the fridge then I guess so. We’re low on produce too actually … I’d be surprised if you find tomatoes in there too,” she says. You purse your lip, shuffling through the different rows of cabinets to find something to throw together to take for lunch as your mother continues to speak. “You think you could stop by the grocery store after class today and pick up some stuff?”

“Yeah sure,” you reply casually.

“Ah, I wish Mingyu still stopped by with the groceries,” your mother says, and the sudden mention of his name has you halting your movements as you reach for a croissant, before you inhale deeply and go back to doing your own thing.

“Yeah,” you say quietly, clearing your throat after the word comes out horsley.

“You know why he stopped doing that?”

You try not to think about how you still haven’t told your mother that you and Mingyu don’t talk anymore.

“Uhh, I guess uni’s been getting to be a lot of work,” you tell her. “We’re both taking way harder classes so, uh, I guess he doesn’t have the time.”

“Hmm, yeah makes sense. You’re always swamped up in that room of yours ‘cause of work too … haven’t seen you two hang out in a while actually.”

You chew on your lip, staring down at your little bag for lunch and the croissant that sits inside. You wonder if you’ll even have the appetite to eat anything today after this conversation.

“We’re just busy. It’s harder to talk now.” It’s not entirely a lie. Grabbing the bag and picking up your backpack, you turn to face your mother who’s scrolling on her phone. “I’m gonna go now. My first class is starting soon.”

Now, normality is huffing as you get into your car, wishing you had a coffee next to you, but being too full of cowardice to head over to the cafe.

(“Go to a different cafe!” is what common sense would tell you, but common sense doesn’t listen to a love that has been betrayed. No other latte tastes the same, but you know that’s only because no other latte has been made by Mingyu.)

You pick up groceries on the way home.

Now, normality is staring at the daisies that are on display as you walk through the front doors of the store and reminiscing. It’s wondering what once was, and what could have been, if you decided to keep your silly feelings to yourself.

Normality is regretting. Regretting ever opening your mouth and telling Mingyu four months and twenty-two days ago that you loved him, and that you had loved him for not one, not two, not five, but ten damn years, because that was when you two met, and you always loved Kim Mingyu, but you should have known that not once did he love you back. Not how you would’ve wanted anyways.

Normality is wondering. Wondering if Mingyu would still be dropping off groceries if you hadn’t told him that you loved him, if he hadn’t told you he didn’t know what to tell you. Wondering if he thinks of you now. Wondering if he has any regrets. Wondering if he’s okay, but you lost the chance to know the answer to that question four months and twenty-two days ago. Wondering if—

Tomatoes. You need to buy the tomatoes, and the bread, some green beans, spinach, bell pepper, and more cheese, milk, maybe some butter, and—what was it that your mother told you to get? Oh, some strawberries.

You need to get all of these things, but there were no daisies on the list, so how did a bouquet full of them end up in your cart? You tell yourself you picked them up because they’re on sale, but you know the real reason is because you miss Mingyu.

Directing your attention back to the list you were sent on your phone, you hum lowly to yourself as you push your cart through the aisles. Checking items off your notes app, you exist with just yourself, your tomatoes, and fresh daisies as you try and finish these groceries before it gets too late into the evening.

Staring at your screen, you almost don’t notice that the dairy aisle isn’t empty until you bump into someone. “Sorry,” you mutter quickly, “I—” The words get caught in your throat when you see just exactly who you’ve hit.

Averting your gaze quickly, you wonder if Mingyu will respond, but you choose to scurry away quickly instead, because as cowardly as it sounds, you’re not sure if you’re ready to hear his voice again.

You’re not sure why your heart beats so fast when you escape into another aisle. Maybe it’s because you couldn’t read the look on his face for the brief second that your eyes met.

(Ten years of being best friends and you somehow don’t know what he’s thinking. Can four months and twenty-two days really change a person that much? Or did you never know Kim Mingyu in the first place?)

When you get home, your mother asks you where you got the daisies from. You tell her Mingyu gave them to you, because you want to convince her that you two are still best friends, and maybe—just maybe—you’re trying to convince yourself of it too.

You decide to buy a latte five days later. Mingyu never worked the evening shifts, so you’re confident you’ll get one of the other’s as the barista if you walk in past 6pm. Seokmin’s always nice. He doesn’t make the latte’s as sweet as you like—more specifically, as sweet as Mingyu made them—but he’s kind and always cheery.

When you walk in today, the pot by the door is empty. There are no more daisies, and you wonder if this is what has become of normality.

Your eyes glaze over the familiar setting, breathing in the sweet, rusty smell of coffee, and you smile watching all the cafe-goers laugh along with each other in their seats. All is going well, and you’re telling yourself that maybe this new normal isn’t too bad. That you’ve lived with it for four months and twenty-seven days, and so you can live with it longer and—

Your heart plummets when you see who's working the register today.

Maybe you really never knew Kim Mingyu, because you swore he hated the evening shifts, but here he is with a neatly tied apron, smiling while he talks to some girl across the counter. And his toothy grin is so bright and you aren’t sure if you’re seeing things correctly because everything sound has turned to a white rush in your ears and your vision blurs because you are once again awarded the painful reminder that you are in love with Kim Mingyu.

You thought your heart broke right in two back in December, but you hear it crack in this moment and realize that this was the final blow.

There are tears in your eyes, and you don’t know how long you stand there, until you hear your name. Seokmin is calling for you, and when you look up there’s no girl at the counter and it’s just Mingyu and Seokmin staring at you.

And you wonder briefly if you should be glad that Mingyu looks concerned but you don’t have time to dwell on the fact because Seokmin calls for you again—“Hey, are you okay? You—you’re crying”—and fuck, you’ve just humiliated yourself, so with fat tears hitting the dark wood ground you turn on your heel and rush out the door.

You keep thinking and wondering and regretting and you hate it all because regret has become normality, but regret is not a bliss.

You walk down the street, and you keep walking and walking and walking until you realize you forgot where you parked the car but none of that matters because all you’re thinking about is Mingyu’s smile, and how he doesn’t smile at you anymore. And so you walk faster and cry a bit harder until you’re so far down the street you don’t even know where you are anymore but it doesn’t matter because you don’t know who you’ve become.

And there’s footsteps thudding behind you—are you going to get kidnapped now? Fuck, you’ve already had the most horrendous sequence of events that could possibly happen to you in the span of five minutes, and now it’s going to get worse? If this goddamn kidnapper could just target you any other day, then maybe you wouldn’t whip around with tearful eyes, shouting into the dark: “Please don’t kidnap me! I’ll go with you any other day but—Mingyu!?”

His tall figure is hunched over, hands over his thighs as he heaves for breath, craning his neck to look up at you. “Kidnap you? Why in the world would I kidnap you?” he asks through harsh breaths. “Fuck, you walk so fast,” he groans, finally standing up as you furiously wipe your tears away in an attempt to actually make sense of this situation.

“I—” You want to reply, but then it hits you that this is the first time Mingyu has spoken to you in four months and twenty-seven days, and the thought is dizzying. “I don’t know,” you tell him, because you really don’t know. You don’t know a damn thing.

Mingyu looks at you with a look that you, once again, can’t seem to read. “Sorry, I—I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” you tell him, and anyone would be able to see through the lie but you’re hoping that Mingyu doesn’t pry any further. He doesn’t move, nor does he say anything. “You can, uh, go back now,” you add, rubbing the back of your neck as you stare at the ground. “I’m okay.”

“You—you were crying.”

Opening your mouth to protest, you realize you can’t refute him now. Not when it was so painfully obvious. You choose silence instead, hoping that your apprehension will be enough to drive him away, although it only seems to egg Mingyu on.

You don’t expect the words he blurts out after a few moments of thickness.

“You don’t know how much I wish I could go back to December and change things.”

“Please don’t lie to me Mingyu,” you tell him, and he can just hear from the way you say his name that you are desperately pleading with him. When you finally look up at him with glossy eyes, he wonders how in the world he let things get this far.

“I’m not lying, I—I wouldn’t lie about this.”

“What do you mean by this, Mingyu? What is this?” You cover your face and begin to sob, but not without gasping out words between heavy breaths. “Please don’t do this to me, not again.”

And when you uncover your face and look at him again, he’s got some bewildered look on his face, and you can’t tell what he’s going to say next.

“The girl,” Mingyu starts to say. “That’s my cousin. She was visiting me at work and—”

“It’s not about the girl, Mingyu!” And that’s a bit of a lie because some part of it is about the girl but it’s mainly about you and it’s mainly about Mingyu—mainly about the two of you.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and speaks. “Sorry, I—you’re right.”

Silence once more, before you calm your breaths and shake your head. “You should head back, Mingyu.”

“No I—wait, I just—I’m not lying. I regret everything I did in December.”

“Ming—”

“No, please listen to me. I regret not telling you how I actually felt, but I was so confused,” he tells you, repeating your name. “I was confused and fucking terrified because if things didn’t work out for some reason, then I would’ve lost my best friend but—but I was fucking stupid and lost you anyways. And you know, I wanted to reach out. I wanted to talk to you so bad but then like last week, when I saw you in the grocery store, and—daisies.”

“Daisies?” You furrow your brows.

“Daisies. You had a bouquet of them in your cart,” Mingyu tells you, taking a step forward. “And I know how much you love daisies. Your favorite flowers in the world. I saw them in your cart and thought to myself, fuck, I missed my chance, because I thought you had them for someone else and—”

“They weren’t,” you blurt out. “I-I even told my mom you got me them,” you add bashfully, “because she doesn’t know we stopped … yeah.”

There’s a silence that sits between you two, but you’re starting to realize that silence has become normality and you are no longer content with that.

“Mingyu, do you love me?”

He doesn’t hesitate to respond. “More than you love daisies.”

You laugh through your drying tears. You laugh so hard it makes you cry no longer because of pain but because of happiness, and you shake your head and throw your arms around him. “Kim Mingyu, that is a bold statement.”

“What can I say?” he grins. “I’m a bold man.”

“Where was that bold man for the past four months and twenty-seven days?” you snort.

Mingyu raises a brow. “You’ve been counting?” For a moment your expression falls but then he shakes his head and smiles. “Don’t worry—I’ve been too.”

You two are quick to head back, Mingyu begging Seokmin to hold the first alone for the weekend before taking the wheel of your car and driving you both to your favorite field of daisies.

“Are we going to have sex for the first time in your car?” Mingyu asks with a chuckle, climbing into the backseat from one end while you pile in from the other.

Giggling, you meet his lips for a kiss as soon as the door shuts behind him, arms winding around his thick neck to bring him close. “The way you said that insinuates there we’ll be having more sex after this,” you tell him with a smile before diving back into another tongue twisting kiss.

“Hell yeah,” Mingyu groans against your tongue as you adjust to situate yourself over his lap, hips pressing dangerously close to his. “Gonna fuck you every day if I can. If you can handle that,” he adds.

You roll your eyes, pulling back to help yourself out of the cardigan and shirt you’re wearing. “What makes you think I can’t handle it?”

He only flashes you a toothy grin and quickly glances down at his groin area before winking at you. “You’ll see.”

“Kim Mingyu, you are a little shit,” you conclude despite the way your tummy churns at his insinuation, throwing off your shirt as Mingyu helps you out of a bra.

“I’m not little, that’s for sure … fuck, you’ve got the prettiest tits in the world,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around your torso to pull you closer so he can plant his lips on the soft flesh. His mouth is warm, tongue tracing constellations over our skin before enclosing one of your nipples with his lips.

Slowly, his tongue traces circles around the stiffened nipple, teeth grazing over it ever so gently before biting down with slight force. “Ah!” you moan out, head thrown back as your hands travel up his neck and into his hair, fisting the thick, dark locks. “‘m sensitive, ‘gyu,” you tell him, shaky-breathed as he pulls his mouth off your tits with a slip popping sound.

“Sorry,” he says with a lazy smile. “Your tits are so nice,” Mingyu murmurs, bringing a hand up to squeeze over your other breast, tweaking the nipple in one hand as your hands begin to play with the hem of his tight fit shirt. “Fuck, can’t believe we didn’t fuck earlier. You know how much time we could’ve saved?” he says, pulling away just for a moment to peel the shirt off his body, revealing his firm, thick torso.

“I wonder whose fault that is?” You roll your eyes.

Mingyu frowns in response. “Don’t remind me … angel, take off your pants. Wanna finger you.”

He doesn’t have to tell you twice, because in an instant your hands are at the waistband of your pants as heat rises to your cheeks upon hearing his words. Just the thought of Mingyu’s thick, longer fingers inside your aching cunt is enough for it to pulse around nothing as you throw your pants to the side and shove your panties to reveal your core.

“Atta girl,” he murmurs under his breath as you readjust yourself over his lap so that he can have better access between your legs. Slowly, he brings one hand up to your exposed cunt, bringing his middle finger to circle around your gaping hole. “Shit, you’re so wet, angel … so wet for me.”

“Just for you ‘gyu, just for you” you gasp out when he sinks one finger in, rough pads rubbing against your warm, gummy walls.

Now Mingyu occasionally entertains the outrageous idea that he’s well composed, but he’d be a fool to deny that, even though he can turn you to mush in the palm of his hand, you also have him wrapped around your little finger.

You only have to beg him once or twice for a second finger before he’s giving in, wanting nothing more than to spoil you until you can’t even remember what you were asking for in the first place. And naturally, when you finally tell him that you’re ready for more—ready for his cock—he can’t help but grin and comply.

“You think you’re ready?” he asks, slipping his fingers out and shoving them into your mouth so you can taste yourself.

“You think I’m not?” you mumble around his fingers. You pout a little and Mingyu chuckles, leaning in to give you a wet and sloppy kiss before lifting his hips a little.

“You’ll see angel … help me take this all off,” he tells you, and you’re quick to grab at his waistband and yank his pants and boxers down at the same time.

“What are you talking ab—oh.” The words dry on your tongue when you see his cock spring out, from underneath his boxers, the thickness slapping against Mingyu’s abdomen.

It’s fat and long and veiny in all the right places, heavy balls resting at the base of it, the reddish-pink tip smeared all over with his shiny, translucent white precum.

“Yeah,” Mingyu says with yet another chuckle, watching your face as you gaze down at his cock in awe.

“I-is it gonna fit?” you ask incredulously, eyes glancing back and forth between the smirk on Mingyu’s lips and the long length of his cock. Mingyu just shrugs and smooths his hands over your hips, your stomach, and then your neck, pulling you into a deep kiss.

Your stomach flutters, cunt growing more and more needy and wet as the seconds tick by, and the way Mingyu’s tongue flicks against yours only heightens the feeling. When he pulls away, he settles his hands over your waist and directs you right over his cock, and something in you swells with pure arousal with the next words he says.

“Don’t worry angel, I’ll make it fit. You trust me?”

“Yeah,” you breath out, steadying your position as Mingyu uses one hand to guide his heavy length so that the tip points upwards and presses right against you.

“Fuck yeah,” he hisses, and you moan as you feel him sliding against your folds in a slippery, sticky mess. “old onto me, yeah angel? If you want to stop just—”

“Say the word,” you finish for him, placing your hands on Mingyu’s bare shoulders as an attempt to steady yourself, breath hitching as his length pushes into your entrance. “Oh shit, ‘gyu!" you cry out as you begin to sink down on him.

Tears pricking at the corners of your eyes—you can’t even fathom how, even after all his prep, Mingyu still feels like he’s nearly splitting you in half.

“Fuck, pretty—you’re so fucking tight,” Mingyu grunts, helping you nearly impale yourself on his cock. “Fucking fitting inside you so well,” he praises as he bottoms out inside of you, letting your forehead fall to his shoulder as you take deep breath.

Mingyu knows he’s big—knows it’s hard to fit him inside of you—and he’s feels so fucking lucky that he has you—so willing to take all that he’s giving—sucking him in and whining for more. He waits a few moments, only listening to the way your heavy breaths start to grow lighter, until you’re whimpering a soft, “‘gyu.”

He wastes no time in jerking his hips upward, shifting inside of you and battering the inside of your soft walls. You bite down on his shoulder as you push your hips down to meet his thrusts, choking back soft sobs as you feel his cock kiss your cervix with each movement.

“Holy shit,” Mingyu grunts as you begin to bounce on his lap, his length slipping out of you halfway before being plunged right back in with a sopping mess growing on his thighs.

You whine loudly at the overwhelming pleasure that takes over your body, lifting your head up so you could look at Mingyu with your mouth agape and hair stuck all over your burning face, a sheer layer of sweat starting to envelope both your bodies.

Soon, both of your movements begin to grow erratic and sloppy, hips jamming into each other so hard you’d be surprised if you even have the ability to walk tomorrow. You now know why Mingyu was concerned about fucking every day.

“You g’na cum soon pretty? Cum all over my cock? I can feel it angel, can feel your pretty cunt squeezing me.”

“Fuck, Mingyu,” you manage to gasp out, “Yeah, ’m gonna cum—feels so good, so full, so—fuck!”

Mingyu’s cock pulses inside of you and that’s when every detail seems to be heightened to a thousand—as your orgasm racks through you, you seem to feel every curve, every vein, dragging in and out of you to such detail that it has your eyes rolling to the back of your head as you scream out his name.

Mingyu watches you fall apart, surrendering to bliss, and the way your hips are sporadically swiveling over his, your pussy’s wetness coating and creaming his cock has him going into a frenzy. Frantically, he begins to snap his hips faster up into you, your soft moans of overstimulation pushing him to his end faster than he can ever imagine. Watching the way he slides in and out of you is enough to have him cumming, shooting his hot, sticky load inside your warm cunt.

Riding out the last of his orgasm with soft rolls of his hips, Mingyu sighs contently at the feeling of you milking him dry, the both of you looking down at the wet, dirty mess you’ve made where the two of you connect, his cock still throbbing inside of you.

Both of you finally look up at the same time, grinning at each other, and you flop forward resting your head on his chest as he slowly combs his fingers through your hair, other hand running up and down your back.

“Why’d you start working the evening shifts?” you ask Mingyu after your breath has finally leveled. “I thought you hated those.”

“I did, but you stopped coming in the mornings, and I figured it was because of me. I hoped that maybe you would start coming in the evenings so I asked my boss to change my regular shifts just in case.”

“Oh wow, you really do love me.”

“I already told you I do! Even more than you love daisies, remember?”

#svt smut #seventeen imagines #seventeen smut #mingyu x reader #mingyu smut #mingyu fluff #mingyu angst #svt fluff #svt angst #kim mingyu x reader #kim mingyu smut #kim mingyu fluff #kim mingyu angst #📝 writing

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girlgenius1111 · 2 months ago

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throw it all away

part 1 of 2 if no one is noticing any changes, there must not be a problem. but then, someone does notice. and there is a problem. that just isn't a reality you really feel like accepting. [putellas!reader]... alexia realizes you're struggling. how does she help you with something she doesn't understand? tw: this is a fic about r struggling with an ED. proceed with caution.

—

“You’ve lost weight.”

It wasn’t said with an impressed nod or smile. It wasn’t said like a benchmark you’d met. It wasn’t said like it was a good thing.

Somehow, you knew it wouldn’t be.

Instead, the physio’s voice was gentle, concerned. He spoke to you like he knew how you got here, but he couldn’t. How could he know?

No one noticed. Not your teammates, not your friends. Not Spain’s physios. Not even your sister.

And that’s what you wanted.

“Okay…” You said, like you didn‘t understand why he’d brought this up.

“Not a little weight. Enough that I’m concerned.” His eyes were squinted a little, like he was trying to see right through you. Still, you maintained your composure, kept your face blank.

“Well, I didn’t have much of an off season. It’s been pretty nonstop even since the end of the league season. I’m just in shape.”

He shook his head, now looking almost pityingly at you. “That’s what the issue is? You’re sure?”

You did what you’d been doing for months: you lied.

“Yep. Can’t think of anything else it could be.” Your tone was light, even as the weight of the unspoken words settled heavily on your chest.

“We have to be careful with these things, you understand. We’ll change up your meal plan, and see how you are in a week. You’ll be on light training anyway, like the rest of the girls coming back. If it’s a matter of being overworked, we’ll get you back healthy in no time.”

He didn’t say what would happen if things didn’t go back to normal; if this wasn’t just being overworked. He didn’t need to. He was giving you a chance to correct this yourself before he has to involve the doctors and the coaches. And your sister. He was giving you a chance to fix this before it became a much, much bigger deal.

As you left the medical room, you wished more than anything that this was a chance you could take, but you knew that it wasn’t.

—

You knew the physio had opened his mouth a week later when he came out during a water break to pull Alexia, Irene, and Pere aside. He spoke to them quietly for a few minutes, all three of them furtively looking over at you every so often. You knew what you were in for when you got home; probably a very angry Alexia. Angry that you were jeopardizing your career and your health, throwing all your hard work away. For Alexia, football was the most important thing in the world. Sometimes it felt like it was more important than you, and you knew that she wouldn’t understand this. She would see what you were going through as a weakness, something you needed to quickly resolve, and get back to the most important thing.

It was just that you weren’t capable of handling Angry Alexia right now. Not when you already felt kind of faint from training on an empty stomach, horribly grumpy because you were fucking hungry, and honestly still in denial that anything was wrong. It would lead to a whole blow up fight you didn’t want to get into, and as such, you weren’t looking forward to going home. Alexia surprised you.

She’d started off angry, moving to stomp over, grab you, and haul you home so she could yell, when Irene grabbed her wrist and encouraged her to just listen for a second.

“This is going to ruin her season.” Alexia seethed. “Does she not realize that she’s hurting the team?”

Irene regarded her incredulously for a moment, having to remind herself that the other woman’s brain just worked differently than hers. “Ale, she’s hurting herself. Whatever she’s doing isn’t a selfish decision she’s making. She’s sick.”

Your sister grew quiet, chewing on her lip as she thought through Irene’s words.

“You can’t yell, Ale. You can’t be mad at her. She needs help, and she isn’t going to want to accept it. You have to be careful with this, gentle and patient and kind. Okay?” Irene said, staring hard at her co captain.

“Yeah.” Alexia said quietly. “Pedro, do you know why… or how?”

Pedro shook his head, worry clouding his face. “I asked her about it a week ago, and she pretended she had no idea what I was talking about. I told her she had a week to get back on track, but she didn’t. I don’t know how, or why. Those are both questions for your sister.”

Alexia nodded, her gaze stuck on where you were stretching, just inside the gym tent. “Pere, can we go? I need to talk to her, and I know there needs to be a conversation with everyone, but she’ll just feel cornered if that’s where we start. I want to take her home to talk.”

Pere agreed immediately, telling Alexia to take as much time as she needed, and reach out to the club for any help they could provide at all. Irene walked with the blonde in the direction of the tent, her arm slung across Alexia’s shoulders.

“She isn’t going to want to talk to me.” Alexia murmured. “She hates talking about her feelings, especially with me.”

Irene frowned. “You’re her sister. She trusts you more than she trusts anyone. Just stay calm and don’t get angry. I know when you worry you tend to get angry, but try not to let that happen. It won’t help.”

Alexia nodded, having arrived at the entryway of the gym. Irene patted her on the back, telling her to call if she needed help, before she headed inside. She called you over, receiving a few odd looks from her teammates at the strange tone of her voice.

Your sister could see how terrified you looked, even from all the way across the gym. Her heart clenched at the brave face you were trying to put on; it didn’t hide how scared you were.

“Yeah?” You said, trying to act casual as you walked over to your sister, even though you felt kind of dizzy, and your head was pounding with a headache, not to mention the anxiety that was coursing through your veins.

“We’re going home, we need to talk.” Her tone wasn’t clipped or sharp like you expected it to be. Her face wasn’t set with anger, her hands weren’t clenched into fists at her side. She looked strangely… calm.

“Talk? About what?” You questioned, feeling defensive even if your sister wasn’t mad.

“We’ll talk about it when we’re home. Let’s go.” With that, she led you out of the tent, back towards the main building. You stumbled slightly, the dizziness and nerves combining to make you a bit unsteady.

Your sister steadied you, both her hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

If you’d had any hopes that Alexia didn’t know what was going on, those disappeared. Her eyes flitted over you, her grip strong, as if she was worried you’d collapse or something.

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Your voice was shaking, for a reason you weren’t quite sure of.

Alexia softened, surprising you as she wrapped her arms around you tightly, pulling you into a hug. It was nice, comforting, and you sank into it, taking just a moment to allow yourself to be weak.

It wasn’t comforting for your sister. Suddenly, all she could feel was the bones of your spine, more pronounced than they should be. It was a noticeable difference, and she knew that it likely felt more dramatic than it really was, considering the information the physio had given her, that this wasn’t that bad yet, that it was fixable. Still, your sister wanted to cry at how small you seemed against her.

More than that, she wanted to cry that she hadn’t noticed this happening.

—

You kept waiting for her to blow up. All the way to the locker room and to the car, all the way home, but she didn’t. She watched you carefully out of the corner of her eye, she carried your bag for you, and she insisted you drink an entire water bottle on the drive home. Alexia was worried, more than she was upset, and that was beginning to terrify you.

She didn’t even really talk upon arriving home. She just set your bag down, looking around for Olga like the brunette would have all the answers to fix this.

“Go shower, we can talk after, okay?” Alexia said over her shoulder, disappearing in the direction of the office Olga worked out of during the day.

As you headed up the stairs, you wondered if the screen still slid out from your window as easily as it used to, when sneaking out was a bit of a habit.

You wondered if your body could even take the jump down to the ground underneath your window. You wondered whether you even cared, if it meant that you’d get away from this conversation, escape the walls closing in around you.

—

Downstairs, Alexia was pacing a hole in the rug spread across the office floor. Olga was watching her march back and forth, waiting for her girlfriend to talk herself out, which she didn’t seem anywhere close to doing.

“How could I miss this? Do I not pay enough attention? Is this my fault? Have I pushed her too hard? How long has this been going on? How did no one notice before now? What if-”

Olga stood, grabbing her girlfriend’s hands and putting her movements to a stop. “Amor, take a second. Relax. None of these questions need to be answered right now.”

Alexia leaned almost imperceptibly into her girlfriend’s touch, desperate for anyone to tell her what to do here.

“We need to talk to her. That’s where we start, and that is going to be hard, Ale. She probably doesn’t want to hear anything we have to say about this, and she might lash out, but you have to remember how much she must be hurting right now. You have to be patient, okay?”

Alexia nodded her jaw tightening as her resolve strengthened. She’d be the most patient person in the world, if that’s what you needed. She’d do anything you needed her to, but the possibility that this wasn’t something that she could fix for you was terrifying her. She just wanted to help.

—

When you came back downstairs after your shower, you knew you were in for an intervention. Ale and Olga were sitting on the couch next to each other, speaking in hushed tones. You approached them warily, sitting in the armchair across from the couch.

Your sister took a deep breath, her eyes scanning over the piece of paper on the sofa next to her. It was a few notes that Pedro had given her, a few reminders she had for herself, and a few that Olga had added.

Don’t get angry. She needs help, she doesn’t need your anger.

Don’t push too hard, but don’t let her off with excuses.

Be firm, but be kind.

Don’t threaten to tell Mami, because she’ll just run.

“I’m not mad.” Alexia started. Now that you were sure she wasn’t going to yell at you, you realized how much easier that would have been. You hated the concern on her face, the worry in her eyes. “You were looking at me earlier like I’d be mad at you, but I’m not mad.”

“Why would you be mad?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest. Playing dumb always infuriated your sister, yet this time, she didn’t take the bait.

“I talked to Pedro and Pere earlier. Pedro has some concerns, about you.” Your sister paused, looking at her girlfriend next to her, as if for reassurance. Olga nodded encouragingly, and Alexia straightened up. “I think you know what these concerns are, hermana.”

“I don’t.” You said quickly. “And I don’t appreciate you talking about me behind my back.”

“You do.” Alexia said, still annoyingly calmly.

“I really don’t, Alexia.”

“Pequeña, please. I know that you aren’t okay. You don’t have to lie to me about that.”

You wilted a little, eyes anywhere but on your sister, but she leaned forward, seeing an opportunity; a fracture in your walls.

“I want you to be okay. I want you to get better, healthier.” Alexia said gently, her eyes flickering to the piece of paper in front of her every so often. It was a mix of her handwriting and Olga’s, though you couldn’t make out what it said.

“I am better. I am healthier, Ale.” You argued weakly, finally looking at your sister. You half believed yourself, half knew that you were very far from healthy, the two conflicting sides waging war in your head. Would it be easier to admit defeat? To break down and let your sister fix you? You found that you didn’t really want to be fixed.

“Hermanita, this isn’t okay. You can’t keep going like this. It’s not safe.”

You shook your head defiantly, a single tear tracking down your cheek. “Alexia, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry.”

You didn’t think about the times you’ve cried yourself to sleep after having no choice but to eat a full dinner. You didn’t think about the way everything is just a touch more exhausting, now. You couldn’t think about that, you wouldn’t. You were fine. Why couldn’t Alexia see that?

She just stared at you, blinking rapidly. Fighting back tears, you realized with a start. Her hand gripped Olga’s tightly, and you couldn’t fight the wave of guilt that hit you like a truck. She was worried, and you knew she should be. Somewhere deep inside, you knew. And that was the most terrifying part.

“Cariño, I am so worried. You aren’t okay, I don’t understand how you can’t see that. You are an athlete, you know you need to fuel your body in the right way. You know this isn’t normal. Can’t you admit that?”

You shifted uncomfortably in your seat, for the first time showing even a hint of emotion. It wasn’t anger, or sadness. It was fear.

“I have it under control, Ale. I promise you, it’s under control.” Your voice wobbled, no confidence at all behind your words. Alexia shut her eyes tightly for a minute before blinking then open and looking at you in a much more intense way.

“I don’t believe you.”

You stood up, feeling a flare of anger surge through you. “I don’t care what you believe.” Moving to walk out the front door, though not sure where you were going, you froze at the sound of Alexia’s voice behind you.

“You can leave, but we’re still going to have this conversation. I can wait, but the sooner we talk, the sooner you’ll be allowed back at training, and back on the team sheet.”

You whirled around, hands balling into fists at your sides. “Since when am I off the team sheet?!”

“Since today.” Alexia didn’t raise her voice to match yours, and she didn’t stand either. She remained sitting next to Olga, both of them looking at you so sympathetically, it made you want to sprint out of the house that instant.

“How could you do that?”

Alexia almost flinched at the genuinely betrayed tone of your voice, but she just shook her head.

“I didn’t do anything, pequeña. The physios and Pere made this decision themselves, based off the information they have.” She replied, nodding towards the chair across from her again. “The only way you’re being allowed anywhere near training is if you talk.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” You snapped, throwing yourself down in the chair.

“Well, we have to. I won’t watch you hurt yourself like this without saying anything.”

You flinched like she’d struck you. “I am not hurting myself, Alexia. I have it under control, it’s not dangerous, it’s not anything. It’s fine.”

“You are hurting yourself. I don’t know how, but I know that you are. Whatever you are doing to make sure your body doesn’t gain weight is hurting you!”

"You're being ridiculous, Alexia. Completely ridiculous." You spat back.

Nothing Alexia was saying was working. You remained just as defiant, just as frustrated. Nostrils flaring, hands clenched into fists, you refused to back down.

Olga squeezed her girlfriend's hand, the blonde falling silent as she did so.

“Pequeña, listen to me. We both love you so much. You are my sister, maybe not by blood, but in all the ways that count. And when you care about someone, it’s so hard to watch them go through something like this.”

Olga’s voice was soft and gentle and somehow, the most threatening thing you’d heard. It was the way she looked at you, the way she spoke; like she knew what she was about to say would challenge you.

“If this was anyone else doing what you’re doing, you’d have something to say. If this was a friend or a teammate, and you saw them doing this, you’d do something. Am I wrong?”

You found that you couldn’t lie, so you just shook your head.

“Give yourself that same kindness. Give yourself that same love and care. You would get someone else help if they needed it, no matter what. Can you let us help you?”

Another tear ran down your cheek, your lip trembling as you fought to hold back your sobs. Only Olga’s hand in hers kept Alexia from leaping over the coffee table and pulling you into a hug.

“I’m scared. I don’t want to.” You said finally. Your eyes fixed on Olga, refusing to look over at your sister and see the disappointment you knew was simmering.

“But you need to. And you know you need to.” Olga said carefully. She watched as an array of emotions flashed across your face, until you finally landed on… resigned.

“I… I don’t know where to start.”

“That’s okay!” Alexia jumped in. “You don’t need to know. We can take it one step at a time. We’ll get through this, hermanita, I promise.”

The way Alexia was talking made your stomach twist. There was no ‘we’ here. Alexia didn’t close her eyes when she got dressed in the morning, didn’t turn her back to the mirror before she showered. She didn’t have to come up with excuses to go to the bathroom after a big meal, she didn’t know exactly how to move her food around her plate to look like she’d eaten more than she had. Alexia loved you, and you had no doubt that this was hurting her, but there was no comparison to what you’d been putting yourself through. Alexia couldn’t fix this for you, couldn’t even really fix it with you. It was something you had to entirely be committed to, recovery, something that would take strength from the deepest parts of you. Alexia couldn’t promise that you’d get through it. It wasn’t up to her.

You didn’t say any of that to your sister. What good would that have done? Instead, you dropped your head into your hands, and tried to breathe. You still couldn’t quite believe this was happening, and a part of you wished you’d wake up and it would all be some horrible dream, and no one would actually know. Another part of you, though, felt like sobbing in relief that someone had finally noticed.

Unbeknownst to you, Alexia and Olga were having a silent conversation. Alexia wanted to drag you into the kitchen and make you eat lunch, since she was absolutely sure that you hadn’t had breakfast. She wanted to talk, and talk some more, and find you a therapist, and call her Mami and tell her what was going on. She wanted to do every little thing she could think of, because she was sure if she tried hard enough, she could control this enough for you to be okay.

Olga knew better. She looked at you and could tell that you were barely restraining yourself from curling up into a ball and crying. She knew trying to make you eat a full meal in the way Alexia intended to right now would push you too hard. She knew that you needed time and space to process and breathe. The brunette could see how easily you’d be overwhelmed here, and it was this knowledge that had her firmly telling Alexia what she was to do.

“Go upstairs and shower. I’ve got her.” She whispered, kissing Alexia’s cheek softly.

Her girlfriend looked at her in confusion, both of them exchanging a few glances before Alexia gave in.

“Please try to get her to eat something.” The blonde whispered back, standing and beginning to head upstairs. She paused at your chair, opening her mouth to say something before thinking better of it. Instead, she just kissed the crown of your head and headed upstairs.

Only once Olga heard the shower turn on upstairs did she finally move, walking around the coffee table and crouching in front of you.

“Nena?” She called softly.

You looked up apprehensively.

“What do you need right now? You tell me, and that’s what we’ll do.”

Control. Olga was giving you control, but you didn’t know what to do with it. You felt overwhelmingly lost, not even sure if you could put one foot in front of the other without someone telling you how to.

“I… don’t know.” You replied, shrugging your shoulders.

“That’s okay.” Olga assured you. “We don’t have to talk any more today, but I’d like you to try to eat something. It doesn’t have to be big, or a whole meal, but something. Is there anything you’d like?”

No, there wasn’t, you wanted to snap. That was part of the problem. Instead of snapping, though, you found yourself thinking. “Protein shake?” You requested shakily.

Olga nodded, smiling proudly at you. “Protein shake and a piece of toast, I think.”

You found yourself agreeing, somehow, rising from your chair and following Olga into the kitchen. You tried to think of what would be worse; eating or talking. Both seemed like pretty abysmal choices, but Olga set your small meal down in front of you, and you knew there wasn’t really a choice. As quickly as it had been handed over to you, you felt the control slipping out of your grasp. The shower turned off upstairs, and you reached for the glass, bracing yourself for everything you were about to feel, and everything Alexia was probably about to say.

—

back in my two parter era. let me know what you all think :)

#woso imagine #woso x reader #barcelona femeni x reader #alexia putellas x platonic reader #putellas!reader #alexia putellas imagine #alexia putellas x reader #woso fanfics #woso one shot

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munsster · 5 months ago

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road trip (trope bingo)

A/N: thought i might try this format out. also introducing a new face to my tumblr repertoire. i’ve written marvel before, just never on this site. enjoy!! (gif creds: @bubbarnes)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

Summary: You think Bucky is shallow for rejecting a pretty stranger in North Dakota. Little do you know. 1.6k words

Warnings: fluff, dummies not talking about their feelings, pet names (doll), slight angst but resolved, perhaps mutual pinging, a really good hug, playful bullying, cursing

"Ooh, she's cute."

You've been doing this for over an hour. He's downed at least four coffees by now. And the worst part is you call it finding a suitable mate. But he's just not interested in the women you're scouting for him at a rest stop a few miles out from Fargo, North Dakota. He would've just left, gone and sat in the truck, but he'd feel bad leaving you rambling to yourself when you're the one paying for this meal.

"Come on, Buck, you're no fun," you huff, dropping your spoon into the thick mug now emptied of hot cocoa.

"You're right. Can we go now?" He starts to slide out of his seat when you scoff. He goes still like a deer in headlights. This should be fun.

"James Buchanan, you're telling me none of the lovely ladies in this diner tickle your fancy? Not even third barstool? She's tall, Buck, like... model tall," you suggest with your brows raised.

"I'm not... we're in North Dakota, you think that's what I'm lookin' for?"

"Just one date! You wouldn't take her on one, single date? The little bar across the street seems sensible, why not?"

"Um—"

"Tell meee," you whine, leaning over the sticky, vinyl tablecloth with a pout.

He shrugs. "Not my type."

"Bullshit. She's everybody's type. She's my type, Bucky. Are you blind or just plain stupid?"

"I'm not interested."

You pull a face like you're offended on her behalf. Bucky rolls his eyes and wishes you'd drop it.

"Oh, I get it," you say. Leaned back, arms stretched across the length of the seat, you huff and glare at him. "You think you're too good for her, huh? Just 'cause she's a North Dakota ten, and you're a Brooklyn eight, you think that makes you better, don't you?"

"What? An eight?" he mumbles, shaking his head.

"Ugh, you men gross me out sometimes. Massive egos, teensy little brains," you say, slapping a twenty on the table and standing with a vicious squint. "Well, let me learn you something, James"—you loom over him and poke your pointer finger at his chest—"you're shallow, and you're no better than her. You prob'ly couldn't take her out if you wanted to. Goodnight."

You huff and walk away, but he chuckles and calls after you: "It's noon, doll." Flipping him off, you march out into the parking lot. He considers the woman for a moment. You called him a Brooklyn eight. She's pretty, he'll admit, but he wasn't lying when he said he wasn't interested. Bucky's seen the far stretches of the Earth, which means he's seen women of all forms. Accountants and soldiers from all over, all professions, all languages. All beautiful. But nothing intrigues him quite as much as you do.

...

"Did you ask her out, or are you choosing to remain a coward?" You've got your boots propped on the dashboard, the truck bumbling eighty down the highway. An emery board swipes back and forth at your middle fingernail as you snap your bubblegum.

"Come on, doll, play nice. We're leavin' anyway, didn't want to hurt her feelings," he grumbles.

"Tough. Doesn't make you any less of a pussy, Barnes."

You flick the nail file at his cheek and drop your feet heavily on the hot car mat. You called him a Brooklyn eight. You cringe at the remembrance while Bucky revels in it. He even grinned stupid all the way back to the parking lot. To himself, but still. He hates how deep under his skin you are. He hates how he likes the itch.

His tongue twists with all the things he could have said. He should have said. But he grips the steering wheel tight and drives till you cross the border into Minnesota.

"Wanna go anywhere before Wisconsin? They've got... lakes here," he shyly suggests, voice soft, hoping you'll just ignore him and turn up the radio. He doesn't think you'll ever ignore him, even if he did prefer it.

"Only if I could push you into one of them."

"Listen, kid—"

"Kid? That's great, Bucky. It's getting dark, why don't we just find a motel." You cross your arms. The cold is getting to you. Even in a down jacket and two pairs of pants. It gets like that up north.

He does what you tell him because the last thing he needs is for you to hold another grudge against him. This one's quaint, so he gets the last double available, chuckling nervously when the older woman at the front desk mistakes you for a married couple.

"Sure you don't want a single, honey? Not gettin' any kids outta separate beds—"

"Nope—thanks, miss—that's—double is fine, double's perfect, thanks," he huffs. You chuckle.

She gives a rolling, belly laugh, head tossed back as she croaks, "Won't file any noise complaints against youse! Have a fun night."

"Geez, she was great," you sigh, still smiling from the ridiculous interaction. You flop face down onto the bed closest to the window, rattling the ice from the crevices in your boots. It crunches to the floor and you wriggle out of your coat as Bucky locks himself into the pale yellow bathroom.

He starts mumbling from the other side of the door, so you sit up and toe your boots onto the floor with a thud. Digging your fingertips into the edge of the hastily tucked sheets, you stare at a wine stain in the middle of the beige carpet. At least it smells nice in here. Even if half the lights are out, and cable doesn't come through clear enough to watch.

You find yourself, cheek pressed to the door, eyes wide as you listen through the flimsy wood.

"I don't think so, Steve. No, listen, it's like... beyond repair. She wouldn't take an apology even if I knew what i was sorry for—no—she's way too good for me, I can't do that to her."

Still moping over women found in North Dakota's lowest rated diners? That's highly unlike him. But even Bucky's a wildcard six-thousand miles into a roadtrip. You press closer, chewing your lip and closing your eyes.

"No, no, everything—this stuff's easier for you, pal, you don't get it, 'kay? I'm just saying... I mean, even a stranger thought we were married"—What—"has to mean something, right? Even strangers are realizing... there's something... there. I just don't want to accidentally—no, I know, not like that, I mean...well, I like her a lot and I don't want it to scare her—"

You back up slightly, hands held in front of you like surrender. Not out of fear, but realization. That's why he didn't ask her out. Or even fish for her number. Because—

You hit the floor with a thump.

"Steve. I gotta go."

The door whips open and floods the room with warm light. You scramble to your feet.

"Were you... I was just talking to... Did you hear any of that?"

You shake your head. He shoves his hands into the shallow pockets of his jeans.

"Okay," he says with a nod, "good." He blows hot air out of his mouth and runs a swift hand through his hair. But he doesn't meet your eyes. Like a little kid so terrified of fibbing that he'd rather swim deeper into the abyss than float to the surface. Can't catch his damn breath around here.

"So..."

"Goodnight, Bucky!" you chirp, turning on your heel with a whoosh of air. And he stops you in your tracks, hand on your bicep. You don't turn back around, stuck staring at the foot of your bed.

"Doll," he whispers, roped up by fear and a pinch of self-pity. Attending his own funeral with a sick smile on his face. "Just how much did you hear."

You spin on the balls of your feet, going hot in the face, fueled by the electricity at his fingertips. "A lot."

"Oh."

You nod and try your best non-psychotic smile. "Sorry."

"No, no... don't be," he says, trying his own. So you're just a couple of smirking idiots at a stalemate in a stale motel room. A couple of idiots with feelings for each other. Unresolved feelings. Unspoken, too.

"I actually—could I?" You point behind him into the cramped bathroom, and he lets go of you like it's his last move before you put him in check. Before he has to hand you the game. Though, he'd do that in a heartbeat. Every game of his is yours. "Thanks."

"No problem." He shuts his eyes when you close the door with a calculated tenderness. Like you don't want to frazzle his poor heart.

But then why would you open the door again? Why would you wrap your arms around his waist and nuzzle into his back? Why would you make it all so much worse and spread your fingers over his abdomen, taking a deep breath when he runs his hand down your forearm and turns to face you. Then you melt with his strong arms holding you thisclose.

"Like you a lot, too, Barnes. You're just a big dunce a lot of the time. But that's like... half the draw or whatever," you mumble into his shoulder. And you've never been this close, and he thinks he could pass out. Become a chalk outline in a dusty motel in Minnesota. But if it happened like this, he'd be okay with that statistic.

marvel masterlist

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfic #marvel fanfic #marvel #x reader #fluff #tropes #road trip #bucky barnes x fem!reader #x fem!reader #bucky barnes trope bingo

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astroismypassion · 3 months ago

Text

Composite and Synastry chart real life observations by @astroismypassion

Credit to my Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

🔴 Moon square Jupiter in Synastry chart: I just didn’t enjoy that one as much. Especially if you have positive Moon Jupiter aspect in your individual Natal chart (sextile, trine), you are likely to not like this as much. Positive is that you can be much more realistic than usual and you have a very realistic grasp on who the person is. You don’t idealize them, put them on the pedestal. Negatives: there are a few actually, you probably live at a distance from each other or even whenever this person is in your home, you could feel like they are at times in a different place mentally, only physically present with you, but the mind is somewhere else. Likely not hanging out as much in each other’s home, usually out in the city exploring new places. A LOT of rationalizing of feelings happening. There is present the feeling of “false hope”. If this is a crush, person can do something really sweet, but in your mind you’re like “can’t have up hopes up”, because usually it’s just a kind gesture or they are being nice and friendly. You feel like exaggerating emotions or being overly dramatic is something that isn’t “allowed” or well accepted in this connection. Hence again rationalising emotions, feelings and gut reactions is likely to happen. Jupiter person feels like how Moon person expresses their feelings is just not one of the ideal traits they are searching for in the long run. This can also happen that Jupiter person might not want to move in with the Moon person. Jupiter person wanting to keep their own place or living on their own.

🔴 Mars sextile Mercury in Synastry chart: Mars person is usually more communicative. Mars person can also start majority of conflicts with Mercury person. Mars person might not like Mercury’s friends, on a few, if it’s positive aspects (sextile, trine). Mars person feels like Mercury person doesn’t communicate enough and not regularly enough with them. Mars person feels like they need to rationalize behaviour or reactions, which results in “walking on eggshells” with the Mercury person. Usually both like to resolve disagreement on the spot, right away and usually very quick resolution.

🔴 Mars trine Moon in Synastry chart: Mars person encourages Moon person to express their emotions more. Moon can feel peaceful when Mars person is arguing. Moon person react emotionally when Mars person is angry or voices disagreement. Likely working out together or just very active when visiting each other’s home. Both Mars and Moon person are very encouraging of each other to be expressive of needs and wishes directly and openly. Be mindful of unexpected pregnancies, you two are likely more fertile together than with other people!

🔴 Mercury in the 8th house in the Composite chart: Be mindful of the power of words in this connection. Because sometimes you may hurt each other with words so deeply that the wounds won’t heal. Positives: you encourage each other a lot of speak up your mind and the other person always wants to know what the other is thinking. Negatives: there can be outbreaks of anger, crying, accusations or an emotional breakdown at some point. But the thing is that this can be a positive as well, because you will feel like it’s “cleansing”, that you are not only letting go the argument with your person, but also previous past hurts, because you realize that those past feelings that you had as a past version of yourself don’t resonate with you anymore and that they are not relatable to you anymore. So like I said strong cleansing energy with this one, but it is on both ends happening, not just one person. Basically how the other person thinks helps to shape a newer, better version of yourself, you mature a lot. Try not to be too serious all the time, but also not to push their limits. More humour, joy is needed in conversations.

🔴 Venus in the 8th house in the Composite chart: The bond you have with this person really touches you on the inside. If it’s romantic, feelings for this person can scare you a little bit, because it can catch you off guard, when you are the least looking for a romantic connection or when you gave up. But when you cool off a little bit and become yourself again, you are likely to find this connection very positive and uplifting. Beware of placing too high of expectations on your person. If the connection is too intense at certain moments, try to keep your individuality and ground yourself, the person won’t go anywhere. You “melt” into each other, if you aren’t afraid to give up control, you experience what others often miss out.

🔴 Sun in the 8th house in Composite chart: Likely to earn a lot of money together. Probably feel like it was a fated even that you got to know each other. While in this connection you are likely to discover interest in your own life that you will grow very passionate about. Likely to experience career change, a move or start learning about a new topic while in this connection. Your old parts of personality that don’t serve you anymore will be replaced with new ones. Again, a better version of yourself.

🔴 Moon in the 7th house in the Composite chart: Trust here is usually very easy, unless the Moon is aspected by malefic planets. It’a very important that both feel emotionally content, because any divergence from that, the other person starts feeling really bad about themselves too. But if one person is jovial, happy and bright, the other person is likely to mirror back and feel that just as well.

🔴 Venus square Saturn in Synastry chart: Saturn person is willing to take on all responsibility for Venus person, but Saturn person demands and expects respect for it. Venus person likes that they can rely on Saturn person, Venus person can still be dissatisfied with the connection. Saturn person has hard time letting go and Venus person has a hard time relaxing Saturn person. Venus person can benefit from this (if they allow Saturn person to help them relax), since they can become for confident. What you really want is honest affection, but you just end up getting security.

🔴 Venus square Uranus in Synastry chart: Feelings can quickly develop, but you will still have doubts, if the connection is manageable to be long-term or you will doubt whether you will be in each other’s life for years, even if just friends. There is this feeling present that everything can quickly change and end quickly as well. Uranus person can’t really appreciate affection Venus person gives. But instead rather they appreciating affection, they feel trapped in the connection, restricted and like they need even more freedom. Uranus person can also be in a very non-commital era of their life. When Uranus person shows themselves as they are, that is freedom loving, Venus person feels hurt, under-appreciated, but also rejected or ignored. Venus person dislikes unpredictability of Uranus person, instead Venus person needs more warmth and sensitivity.

🔴 Sun in the 6th house in the Composite chart: Both could feel like you didn’t enter the connection voluntarily or wholeheartedly. Could end up feeling used, restricted in one way or another. You could be staying together for practical reasons. Might even stay together out of feeling obligated or because leaving your person could end up making you feel guilty.

🔴 Moon in the 3rd house in the Composite chart: Communication will always be determined by your feelings for each other. You both agree on how to do things. Make sure not to take advantage of your person’s weaknesses in arguments. Both feel immediately hurt if a misunderstanding happens.

🔴 Pluto square Mars in Synastry chart: Both are afraid that you will miss out on something, if you don’t commit to this connection and get involved with each other, either platonically or romantically. Pluto person is very set and focused on their own ambitions, long-term goals and can see Mars person as not as driven, ambitious as they are. Mars person can come across as a bit primitive to the Pluto person. Both are stubborn to make their goals a reality, even when those goals are clashing. Sex is like glue here, because it’s the only thing you both enjoy and agree on. Both need to learn compromise. It’s like Mars person wants to “conquer” Pluto person, but Pluto person can’t be conquered or doesn’t want to be conquered.

🔴 Mars sextile Mars in Synastry chart: There isn’t any competition between you two. Both take great initiative, so this is better for a long-term connection.

🔴 Venus opposition Mars in Synastry chart: If this is romantic, probably both don’t like traditional gender roles and you rebel against that. Venus person can be more vulnerable, feminine than Mars person. Especially, if Venus person is a man and Mars person a woman, Venus person cannot do the same things as they did with previous women. Mars person wants less vulnerable, sensitive partner, but instead desires a partner who takes initiative and works a lot. Venus person want vulnerability and harmony, Mars person wants strength and passion. Venus person also can’t appreciate Mars person’s strength and independence.

🔴 Sun in the 5th house in the Composite chart: Both accept each other as you are and give a great deal of independence and freedom to each other. You have a life outside of this connection and you don’t put pressure onto each other. But too much freedom can quickly turn into lack of interest in this connection.

🔴 Moon in the 4th house in the Composite chart: You are likely to be overprotective of this connection. And if someone say something about your connection you won’t take it lightly. You want to be in your own bubble and want to avoid being irritated by the outside world.

🔴 Moon in the 6th house in the Composite chart: You could feel like there is some sort of emotional neglect happening in this connection. One person can also think that they are giving more than the other. This is actually one placement that thrives when there is a bit of friction, because you will understand each other better after.

🔴 Moon opposite Mars in Composite chart: A lot of letting your bad mood out on each other out of frustration or being dissatisfied with yourself. You may not always be able to give comfort to each other. You may also not share your life with your person, because you think your own interests would suffer.

🔴 Moon square Pluto in Composite chart: You will need to learn how to respect your partner’s feelings. And to not jump to conclusions too quickly and learn how to see an issue from an emotional distance. Avoid needing to know every single secret of your person. Or making up expectations from your own feeling of insecurity that no one can fulfil.

🔴 Moon in the 5th house in the Composite chart: Both can be too moody, changeable and inconsistent to overcome challenges together. Also can be easily offended because of an exaggerated pride in this connection. You could have troubles committing to this person, because you might have a feeling that you might be missing something.

🔴 Sun in the 9th house in Composite chart: You may want to outshine each other with your achievements. You may struggle with closeness or you just don’t want to admit your weaknesses. You also get a lot of opportunities to create a future together.

Credit to my Tumblr blog @astroismypassion

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flawseer · 2 months ago

Note

In your last ask, you mentioned misgivings with Book 10's ending, and especially how it pertains to Winter. I absolutely agree, and I know why, but I wanna hear your thoughts on it, too: What's up with Book 10?

The following is a (very long) examination of my personal feelings with regards to the WoF second story arc finale. While it is based on what is in the text, this analysis will be interpretive and fill in blanks with my own thoughts. Keep that in mind.

Hahhhh... okay. Since mentioning it in my last post I’ve gotten several requests to talk about my feelings regarding the second arc finale. There’s probably no way around it then.

If you haven’t read that last post (it was admittedly very long, and so will this one be), I talked briefly about why I didn’t like that part of the story. I have to warn you now, this will likely be the most negative and dour post in the history of this blog. In a few parts it will sound like I hate Wings of Fire, and I want to say now, while I still have the chance, that I don’t. I love this series, thinking about its setting and characters brings me joy.

I also—very emphatically—want to make it clear that I have no ill will against Tui T. Sutherland. I’ve looked around other people’s stuff a bit and there are a huge number of posts wishing violence upon her or threatening her for doing things to her series that people don’t agree with. That is NOT what I am doing here, shit like that is NOT okay! While I will be critical of her choices, I still respect her effort of bringing this vibrant, wonderful world of dragons to all of us.

Also, obligatory last disclaimer: If you liked the finale, that is okay. You are valid for feeling that way. I’m here to share my point of view, not to demand people agree with everything I say. Just be warned that you most likely won’t enjoy what I have to say. If you don’t think you can handle that kind of criticism, this is your guilt-free opportunity to stop reading.

Otherwise, let's get into it.

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, depression, disease, and extreme acts of violence.

In defense of the finale

Before I start to systematically disassemble this narrative and get lost in a quagmire of negativity, let’s talk a bit about the circumstances that brought forth this part of the story. The plot of this arc was a mess from the moment animus magic was unshackled from the restrictions it had in the first arc, and from then on there was no longer any conceivable way to end this story in a clean way. Sutherland had created an invincible, unbeatable, omnipotent villain; he could read minds, see the future with perfect clarity, and anything he could imagine he could conjure into existence at any time with no cost to himself and no drawbacks. She was likely wracking her brain about how to resolve this impossible conundrum. What we got wasn’t good, but I believe nothing could have been. The foundation was rotting and by the fifth book it couldn’t bear the weight of the plot anymore.

The thing about animus magic in arc 2 is that it is so potent, so all-powerful, and so free of restraint that everyone who uses it also HAS to be a simpleton, or they would be able to break the plot immediately and become god. From the moment Darkstalker broke out of that mountain, he could have said “Any and all spells that are cast with the intention to harm me, interfere with my plans, or do something I don’t consent to will not work, from now on until forever”, and he would have instantly won. The strawberry would have fizzled out. The Darkstalker-blocking earrings would not have been created, and no one could have saved the Icewings. On the flipside, Turtle or Anemone could have said “I enchant the concept of animus magic itself to no longer obey Darkstalker”, and his threat would have been neutered. Point is, powers as potent and easy to use as this really need limitations, or they will quickly eat your plot alive.

I don’t envy the situation Sutherland was in at the time at all. If you’re an author, that kind of thing is a nightmare. It really is no wonder she decided to blow up animus magic for good in her next arc, even if I would have preferred it to get more healthy restrictions instead of killing it outright.

The Darkstalker age regression thing

Everyone has talked this part to death already, but if I am to write a thorough analysis of my feelings regarding this finale, I’m going to have to talk about it as well. I’m sorry if I end up repeating a lot of things you’ve already heard.

This final fate of Darkstalker, to have his memories wiped and be reset to an infant, is really uncomfortable. As far as I am aware, though correct me if I’m wrong, Sutherland said in an interview that she didn’t want Darkstalker to die because, in her view, he did not deserve to. We can debate here about the philosophical question of whether anyone is truly deserving of death, and the merits of “justice” and “punishment”, but in general, Wings of Fire did not seem to have any issues killing off its villains prior if they committed suitably terrible acts. That makes this moment stand out as noteworthy.

Who is Darkstalker then--and if we assume villains can be “deserving” and “not deserving” of death--what about him speaks in his favor, or against? The guy had a pretty crappy childhood, coming from a broken home (there is that inadequate parent theme again). He genuinely loved his sister and felt protective of her, and whenever he liked someone he wanted them to be happy and feel affirmed. The thing that Queen Diamond does to his mother is awful and he is justified in hating her for it. He is also portrayed as rather sympathetic in Moon Rising. When he asks Moon to find his scroll for him and not to leave him, he is not manipulating her, he is sincerely begging for her help. He is stuck somewhere underground, trapped in darkness, in a space so tiny that he can’t move. He remains that way for months, lonely and sad. If you just focus on these aspects, it’s easy to understand why he has so many fans who want him to see healthy and happy.

On the flipside, while he is dedicated to the happiness of his friends, he doesn’t always go for the most ethical way to achieve it. He tries to brainwash said friends without their consent whenever they exhibit behaviors he doesn’t like, or when he thinks he knows better and wants to “fix” them. He has very little regard for other people’s autonomy, lies to his loved ones with alarming frequency, and is unhealthily attached to the idea of power. Those things are certainly not good, but they are his character flaws. These are his demons; everyone has them and they make him a person. If this was all there was to it, he might still be a villain, but I’d argue he’d not be wholly irredeemable.

But there are things about him that take him beyond the pale. Things that go beyond the realm of just being misunderstood, or easily excusable.

He is possessive. He wants Clearsight and Fathom for himself, and for them to listen to him primarily. When Indigo makes it clear she doesn’t like him and cautions Fathom against trusting him, he deceives his friends and traps Indigo in a wood carving, just so he can isolate Fathom from his support network and manipulate him easier. He alters Clearsight’s mind to make her more agreeable and stop her from holding him accountable for his actions; while he thinks he loves her, he only loves an idealized version of her that is wholly devoted to and unquestioning of him. This is why, when he later forcibly overwrites Fierceteeth’s existence to recreate her (which is another horrific thing), he tries to excise the parts he finds undesirable to create a perfect version of his lover. But this caricature he has created in his head is not and can never be Clearsight, which frustrates his attempts.

He is vengeful. Not against people who have actually wronged him, like Queen Diamond. That would be questionable, but understandable. What makes this unacceptable is his frequent targeting of innocent people who just happen to be related to the person who wronged him in some esoteric way. He enchants a secret murder knife that kills random Icewings regardless of who they are or what they think about the Queen, just because the one who took his mother from him happened to share their tribe. He hates Turtle and wishes death upon him in Moon Rising just because he is a green Seawing, like Fathom was. And then there is the big one: He tries to kill all the Icewings who are alive in the present day, where Queen Diamond is long dead and none of them have ever even met her. Even his mother, who suffered from Diamond’s actions the most and has the most reason to hate her, is horrified and calls him out on that one.

And lastly, he is sadistic. He revels in torturing those he hates. He forces his father to disembowel himself, while the latter is fully aware and powerless to resist AND the man’s traumatized daughter is watching. Later he sends a magical plague to kill every single living Icewing sans one.

It should be noted that Darkstalker possesses virtually infinite magical power; whatever he declares, with very few exceptions, will happen. Even if he wanted them dead, he had the power to prevent unnecessary suffering. He could have said “Arctic, fall dead instantaneously”, or “Every Icewing will fall asleep and pass away peacefully,” but he didn’t. He wanted them to feel pain and pass away in the most wretched, agonizing ways he could imagine.

So what he chose to do instead is—and I want you to picture this for a moment—Darkstalker sat down, calmly, and said “Henceforth every living Icewing, excepting Prince Winter and those of hybrid blood, will fall ill with an incurable disease. This disease will cause heavy internal bleeding and make its victims cough up blood and waste away for a few days, followed by certain death.”

This spell does not discriminate with regards to who its victims are. The book glosses over the implications, but imagine the ramifications. Young children are notoriously frail, how many newborns got infected and died because of this? How many families were torn apart because they couldn’t get the magic earrings fast enough? Or accidentally got one earring less than there were family members and had to decide who has to die?

Most of the Icewings were physically cured by the earrings, but an experience like that sticks with you for the rest of your life. Somewhere surely, a dragonet watched as his mother put the earring on him and then slowly wasted away because she didn’t have one for herself.

It’s really easy to overlook how horrific this spell is because it isn’t shown or dwelt on. But the trauma, grief, and suffering it caused must have been immeasurable.

And none of those victims have ever even met the person Darkstalker wanted to get revenge on. None of those deaths meant anything to anyone.

The attempted death toll and scale of the calamity here puts even Scarlet to shame. The ones who come closest to it were Queen Battlewinner and Morrowseer with their attempted Rainwing extermination. All three of those died for what they did. Gives you some food for thought for sure.

Peacemaker’s burden

Despite just airing all of his dirty laundry and declaring him an irredeemable villain, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for Darkstalker still. His story is really sad. He was a child born with an amount of power that nobody should possess, and it corrupted him to the point where it destroyed his life before it began. His parents were always fighting and no matter how good his intentions were, he was unable to understand why he couldn’t hold on to his friends and relationship. He kept making mistakes, then made bigger mistakes to fix those, until his hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop anymore. My belief is that, after he wakes up in the present and realizes Clearsight is dead, he loses his reason for living and becomes completely lost in his grief.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would have been appropriate for him to die. If not to punish him, then to finally grant him reprieve from all that rage and pain, and let him rest. I think that would have been a dignified end.

But instead he got turned into a baby. ... And then they decided to magically erase his father’s blood from him? I don’t know what it is, but something about that Icewing erasure makes my skin crawl?

The thing that turns this baby twist from weird into highly unsettling is the context. Darkstalker’s mind is erased, then modified into a new person via animus magic. This is the technique a lot of this arc’s villains used to victimize Hailstorm, Queen Ruby, Peril, Kinkajou, Fierceteeth, and Winter. The same technique is now used again, by the heroes, which is a dangerous thing to have your protagonists do if you want them to remain morally upright.

It is also very reckless, because in almost all of these instances, animus mind alteration has been shown to be very unreliable. The spells seem to wear down over time and are susceptible to partial breaking upon encountering certain strong stimuli. Hailstorm—while trapped as Pyrite—seems to retain trace amounts of his former memories, which is why Pyrite is subconsciously drawn to Winter and clings to him all the time. Ruby is able to ignore half of her conditioning because her familial love for her son partially overpowers the magic. Qibli is just straight up able to reason his way out of it.

The thing to note here is that spells of this nature require a very meticulous approach; you can’t half-ass your reprogramming or the victim will just think their way past it. If you alter someone’s mind, the wording of the spell must be ironclad, lest you risk it wearing down over time and even break.

Luckily we have nothing to fear in that regard, because the spell that created Peacemaker was written by a Rainwing with a total of four days of literacy training. No one better mention the name Clearsight to the new baby Nightwing, or next month is going to be rather interesting.

But that’s just speculation on my part. Let’s assume that, somehow, this spell isn’t as unstable as all the others. Somehow Kinkajou threaded all the needles, and masterfully dodged every conceivable pitfall to pen the perfect incantation, despite having been illiterate just a few weeks prior. This one is built to last and Darkstalker is sealed away really thoroughly, for good.

That is still absolutely terrible and morally dubious, because now you have Peacemaker, who for all intents and purposes is a COMPLETELY innocent little kid, saddled with this huge burden of being the certifiable reincarnation of a genocidal ancient wizard. He’s gonna grow up thinking things like “Mommy gets real quiet whenever the topic of the Icewing tragedy is brought up,” and “Why does Auntie Moon look at me like that? One time she accidentally called me a weird name, who is Darkstalker?” “What is this ‘Clearsight’ name my mind-reading friends from the village found in Mommy’s mind?”

In a village that will be full of mind-readers soon, eventually the secret will come out, and Peacemaker is going to learn what was done to him. A huge, messy load of undeserved baggage was forced onto this completely separate, innocent entity. He will be devastated. Whether he then chooses to forgive them for this remains to be seen. To be honest, he would be well within his right not to, and turn resentful.

Poor kid.

Qibli’s callousness

I love Qibli, he is one of my favorite characters. This happens to be his book, and the fact that I fundamentally dislike half of it makes me rather sad. If anything, I hope this tells you that I’m not just hating on it for my personal amusement. I really wanted to like this. I tried to, and I couldn’t.

Qibli is really weird in this one, to be honest. He is suddenly made to be co-dependent on Moonwatcher, fawning over her every third paragraph, saying how much he loves her, how he is an incomplete and dysfunctional wreck without her, how it physically pains him to be apart from her, oh if only the stars would grant his wish and split the mountains apart so that he may fly to his princess, his muse, his goddess of ebony wit. It gets so old.

And it’s not Qibli. He never acted this clingy towards Moonwatcher. It’s more intense than even Winter gets about Moon, and Winter was actually depicted with a crush on her in book 6. Qibli was always just a supportive element, eager to befriend Moon but never desperate, like he is going to keel over if he is separated from his true love five minutes longer. These very frequent love declarations feel so forced coming out of him. It strikes me like it was just written in service of the love triangle. Maybe if we make him confess his love every four seconds readers will overlook the fact that they had no proper romantic build-up.

You might rightly accuse me of bias. I have previously admitted I am fond of Qibli/Winter as a romantic pairing, on the surface this seems like I am just not happy with my pet ship being blocked by Moonwatcher. But I assure you, I am actually pretty flexible and accommodating even towards pairings that contradict my preferences. I have no issues with Winter/Moonwatcher, for example, because the possibility was properly established and they have good romantic chemistry in Winter Turning. In theory, I would have no problem with Qibli/Moonwatcher either if it was ever set up as an interesting romantic dynamic. But to me, it seems like Qibli is written as a good, supportive friend to Moon for four books, only to pivot hard into “Moon moon moon moon moon moon swoon” at the last second, and it just reads to me as obnoxious.

I got distracted. This section is called “Qibli’s callousness”, and I haven’t even talked about the main part.

Qibli and Winter have excellent chemstry together, whether you read it as romantic or platonic—both of these interpretations have merit and are set up. They’re always the highlight of any scene they’re in. Throughout the story arc you get the impression that these two really get on each other’s nerves, but they bond and grow into really strong friends who bicker a lot but have each other’s backs when it counts.

Then there is a scene where Qibli casually tells Winter that he wouldn’t object if someone wanted to mind-control away some of Winter’s more objectionable traits.

This is genuinely a terrible thing to say to your friend. Like, it crosses a line and ceases to be harmless banter; you’re just telling them that there is something you hate about them so much that you wish they were someone else. Winter actually WAS mind-controlled earlier and felt (and proably still feels) guilty about having attacked Qibli in that state. And now Qibli says “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if someone did that to you again! Hue hue!”

It is awful, BUT I don’t necessarily object to Qibli saying this here. Qibli is in the middle of his character arc at this moment, so he is expected to be flawed. He is making a mistake by thoughtlessly telling Winter this horrid thing, and it seems like a believable continuation of his current character track. This is a reasonable development as long as the plot acknowledges that it’s a mistake.

Spoilers: The plot doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a mistake. Qibli never has a scene after where he reflects upon what he said and apologizes to Winter. When Darkstalker has Qibli trapped in his mountain jail and mind-wipes Qibli’s grandfather into a toddler (hey, wait a minute), Qibli gets visibly disturbed. Like, this is so off-putting to him that he gets queasy and Darkstalker hastily changes the spell. That could have been a great way to bring this back. Like in the epilogue, have Qibli track down Winter and tell him about disturbing baby grandpa theater and how he realized that wiping people’s minds is actually messed up and should have never said that to him.

But he doesn’t. He just lets Winter go, allowing him to believe he is broken and needs magical intervention to be tolerable. It leaves me to think that maybe he’s still okay with it, and fantasizing about rewriting his friend’s mind. Great.

Moonwatcher’s character death

You will find as this goes on that, I get the impression that the second half of this book takes all of the wonderful, endearing characters I have learned to love throughout the story and replaces them with really mean, or stupid, or otherwise inaccurate caricatures.

Moonwatcher’s relationship with Darkstalker gets plenty of setup and development in Moon Rising. You get the sense that these two could be great friends if their circumstances were a little different. It does a great job at making you think maybe Darkstalker is just misunderstood; maybe Moon should free him from his predicament.

Then at the end of Escaping Peril comes the emotional gut punch. Darkstalker actually IS a villain. He callously admits to Moonwatcher that he used his magic to make his own father gruesomely disembowel himself. Moonwatcher is horrified and disgusted that he would do that. There is no circumstance in which something like that would ever be okay. She ends the scene awash in tears because the person she thought was her friend is a murderer and a sadist. This is good, that is a natural reaction to what she was just told.

A few hours from there, in Talons of Power, Turtle finds Moon again and she is completely cool with Darkstalker walking free, despite crying her eyes out after feeling so betrayed earlier. That may seem strange, but this is still good because later, Darkstalker’s mind control plot is discovered. This scene was obviously written to set that up, Moon is mind-controlled into forgetting that Darkstalker could do something that morally reprehensible, and thus forgives him. This is also completely in line with his characterization in Legends: Darkstalker. It’s a kind of stunt he would pull to get Clearsight to shut up about him slipping into villainy.

In my earlier post I alluded to a moment where Moon is set to narrative auto-pilot and says something so rampantly off-kilter that it does irreversible, permanent damage to her character. It happens here, in the second half of book 10. Qibli gives Moon the Darkstalker protection earring, and Moon, somehow, says “I’m not being mind-controlled, Darkstalker really is my friend.”

I get what the plot tries to do here. It’s taking this concept of mind-control and adding a nuance, in an attempt to flesh out Darkstalker and give his character depth. He is ready to control everyone in the world, but for Moon, who is his best friend in this era, he wants her to remain herself. Perhaps this is his attempt at attonement for playing with Clearsight’s mind and driving her away from him. It is very touching in a way, viewed in isolation.

Unfortunately, it does not work with the full context of all the books. Because Moon is in auto-pilot mode right now, her main character trait is “Darkstalker=Friend,” so naturally she would speak in support of him. But this revelation has devastating retroactive consequences. The earlier scene that was written with Moon under mind-control is now altered into her having been in her right mind! She is completely okay with Darkstalker’s admittance to cold-blooded torture and evisceration, within hours of being so shocked by it that it made her cry and ready to denounce him. That is such a quick turnaround it’s giving me whiplash. And what’s more it turns Moon from a principled, upstanding girl into a sociopath who casually accepts gruesome torture and murder if it is committed by someone she likes.

Did Sutherland forget about the scene two books ago, where Darkstalker’s actions were so inconceivably horrid for Moon to learn of that she started crying? It baffles me that this made it into the final version. Her saying she was never mind-controlled makes Moon come off as so awful. This torture-excusing lunatic is not the same kind-hearted and insightful character I followed in all the other books.

Kinkajou’s character derailment

The world is a sad place when I have to question the way Kinjajou is written. Fortunately she is mostly fine, despite her having the biggest excuse to act out-of-character since she’s the victim of a mind-altering spell. Her only real moment of “what!?” comes at the end.

I already talked about her role in casting the spell that regresses Darkstalker into an infant. But I didn’t mention how her being the source of it is questionable in itself.

The clue is in the first paragraph of this section: She herself has experienced the effects of invasive mind-alteration. She was cursed by Anemone in the previous book to be in love with Turtle, and kind of half-struggles kind of not with it, it’s really strange. Turtle is appropriately horrified and acts like really awful things are happening, but then it’s mostly played lightly for some reason. My assumption is that Sutherland introduced this plot point, but then realized how uncomfortable this premise really is and tried to downplay it until the story got to a point where it could get done away with.

But I think the takeaway is still supposed to be that this was a horrid thing to do (which it absolutely is), and that Kinkajou will have to spend a lot of time trying to untangle her real emotions from the fake ones the spell created.

The point is: Kinkajou knows first-hand how awful it is to do something like that to another person. Ideally she should never even conceive of the idea to cast a spell like that, but if we’re really set on this Darkstalker baby thing and it has to happen, she should at least be a bit hesitant about it. And afterwards she should struggle with the guilt of having resorted to it. Not celebrate it and be proud, like it’s funny.

The assassination of Winter’s future

Now we come to the part I’ve alluded to previously; the part where all of these threads converge to utterly destroy one character and drive him to the brink of ruin. Let’s talk about Winter.

Prince Winter is the son of Tundra and Prince Narwhal, hatching in the same clutch as his sister Icicle. He spent his formative years being unfavorably compared to said sister—who easily took to traits that Icewing royalty considers desirable—whereas Winter struggled greatly to embody those same ideals. He was just a little too kind, too merciful, too gentle. As a result he often had to endure abuse from his parents, who made him feel like he was defective.

Because he was young and didn’t have any other frame of reference, he embraced this abusive narrative and began to drive himself with a vigor unreasonable for someone of his age. He scraped and cloyed for every bit of credit he could get, obsessing over advancing up the circle rankings in an attempt to “purge” the wrongness out of himself. To make his parents as proud of him as they were of Icicle.

This never worked. He was always seen as the runt, poised to embarrass the family name. Whatever he did, no matter how hard he strived, there was always something he could have done better.

The only real source of love and affirmation in his life was his older brother, Hailstorm. Where everyone else only saw what Winter wasn’t, Hailstorm embraced his brother despite of his “failings” and was openly affectionate with him. When Winter was with him, it was okay to not think about rankings all the time, and just be himself for a bit. I assume Hailstorm fulfilled a similar role for Icicle as well, which is why both of them love him dearly, and Icicle destroys her own life to bring him back.

Winter also has a fascination with scavengers, possibly because they are small and perceived as useless, like he himself is. He likely feels a kinship with them and observes them being craftier and more adept than everyone else sees them. This is therapeutic for him, to see that a thing can have merit even if no one wants to see it.

One day, he and Hailstorm sneak into Skywing territory so Winter can catch a scavenger as a pet. This excursion turns hostile when they are discovered by a roaming Skywing troop and faced with the prospect of capture, possibly execution. In a gambit to save Winter from this fate, Hailstorm mirrors the words of his parents, calling Winter pathetic and useless, so the Skywings will not think of him as a threat and show mercy. His act succeeds in convincing the Skywings, but it also convinces Winter, who does not understand Hailstorm only said these things to save his life. He returns home—believing his brother hated him all along—to face the wrath of his furious family for losing them “the desirable son”.

For all of his life, these themes have repeated themselves and haunted him. “I was born wrong and defective,” “I am unlovable,” “No one wants me.”

A few months after the war ends, Winter is one of the five Icewings enrolled in the newly founded Jade Mountain Academy. Shortly after departing, he unexpectedly returns home, having successfully rescued his older brother and bringing him back. He is made to believe that this erases his mistakes, his mother even pays him a backhanded compliment, an uncharacteristically “nice” gesture. He is promoted to the top of the rankings, finally his parents are proud of him.

But of course it is all a trick. The “adoration” afforded to him was all a ploy. Secretly, his parents abused power and tradition to arrange for Winter’s death. They force him into a lethal trial they intentionally rigged against him, all to finally erase that stain on their family’s honor.

Winter finally realizes the true nature of his parents’ opinion of him. Even when he succeeds, and does everything right, he is still defective, unlovable, and unwanted. He will never be anything else to his family. And so he leaves his homeland, pretending he is dead, resigned to live in hiding forever.

During this time, while at the brink of despair, Winter is able to draw strength from one source: His new friends from the academy. He vocalizes that, for all the abuse he suffered at the hands of his birth family, he fervently believes that THEY would never do anything like that to him. They chose to stuck with him, even when he was awful, and told him he was not hopeless. He was not a mistake; he could be deserving of love.

So naturally, he returns to them; they accept him readily, are willing to be his new surrogate family. When he almost burns to death at a later point, they fear and weep for him. When Qibli sets out to confront his own abusive family, Winter, despite being mind-controlled into a placid potato at the time, feels concerned enough for his friend’s safety to insist to come along (returning the favor of them accompanying him in his time of need in book 7). When Darkstalker’s mind control forces Winter to attack Qibli, he is shown ashamed and guilty of it once the control wears off again.

They bicker and struggle, and make mistakes, they break up but always come back together again. Time and time again the one thing that is always reinforced: When the cards are down, Winter loves his friends, and they love him. They would never intentionally hurt each other, or give up on each other.

I want you to keep in mind how wholesome, and loving, and mutually supportive this ramshackle band of misfits has been portrayed to this point... Because we’re moving on to the arc 2 finale, and it will do everything it can to corrupt all of it and consign Winter to a life of misery.

We arrive at aforementioned scene, where Moonwatcher receives her earring. Just a little bit prior, Winter had learned that Darkstalker unleashed a magical plague onto his people in an attempt to wipe them out. Now here is Moonwatcher, revealing that she is not under any spell, and has aligned herself with this guy willingly, speaking fondly of him as if he was a dear friend who never did any wrong. Winter takes this badly and accidentally breaks a vase; the narrative lingers on this moment and really tries to sell us on how unreasonable Winter’s reaction is, how he is overreacting, but let’s examine that interpretation for a moment.

Moonwatcher doesn’t yet know about the attempted Icewing genocide, but she DOES know about Darkstalker being okay with casting spells to inflict immeasurable torture upon those he hates. WE know that she knows this, so her stance here is already suspect. Yet she goes on to praise Darkstalker and refer to him as a friend. Look at this from Winter’s perspective. This “friend” of Moonwatcher just tried to kill his entire tribe, and he actually succeeded in killing his aunt, Queen Glacier, a person Winter greatly respects. Winter is currently unable to return to his homeland for fear of being branded a traitor. Even if he could return, he knows his obstinate and spiteful family would prevent him from attending the funeral, meaning he is not even afforded the basic dignity of saying farewell to his aunt. The aunt whom Darkstalker murdered by making her vomit her own blood until she withered away in her bed. And here is Moon, absolving the person who did this to Glacier from his appalling actions, despite knowing full well what Darkstalker is capable of and choosing to look away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can forgive the grieving, emotionally overwhelmed boy for shattering a little pottery after hearing his trusted friend—who held his hand when he was dying—say that the guy who makes people disembowel themselves and wipes out entire countries may be misunderstood and not so bad. I think I would have a similar reaction. In fact, I would never want to talk to her ever again.

There is no way I can read this scene in which Moon doesn’t come off as either an absolute lunatic, or critically stupid and callous. In fact, based on her earlier behavior I half-expect her to get over the news of the attempted Icewing massacre in a couple hours, saying “Eh, it’s kinda bad, but you just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, you know? I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Then there is the part where Qibli makes his off-color comment about how Winter’s brain could really use a good wash. I already went into how it could have worked but didn’t. But with the timing here, we’ve already had Moon spit on their friendship, so as Winter’s other closest friend, it naturally follows that Qibli also craps on his feelings.

Consider the context: Winter comes from an abusive household where his parents forcibly tried to change him away from who he was to purge the “wrongness” from him. When they betray him and he narrowly escapes their attempt on his life, he re-affirms his belief in his friends, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t treat him like that gives him the strength he needs to keep going. But now, Qibli asserts that Winter DOES need to be altered, thereby AGREEING with Winter’s abusive parents, rendering Winter’s affirmation from book 7 erroneous. Qibli WOULD treat him like that if it made Winter less “intolerable”.

Neither Moonwatcher nor Qibli ever make an attempt to repair this rift. Winter is left betrayed and alone.

Stuff happens, and the forces of the Nightwings and Icewings come to blows over Jade Mountain. With his two closest friends having written him off and his support network eroded, Winter relapses into thinking he is worthless, seeks validation in unquestioning patriotism, and realigns himself with his abusive family by throwing himself into the battle. Nobody wants him to, in fact his parents still hate him for it, but whatever. His father dies and his mother blames him for it.

Meanwhile Turtle, Anemone, and Qibli are cooking up a solution to the battle problem. They have the idea to make everyone’s minds connect in a huge empathy wave for a few moments, which I think is a pretty interesting idea for what it’s worth. But then they teleport both armies back to their homes, and the spell sweeps Winter up with them, taking him out of the rest of the finale and bringing him to the Ice Kingdom. The characters say “whoops” but aren’t further concerned with the situation. It’s all a big laugh.

Let me remind you that Winter is currently considered not welcome on Icewing territory. His family, whom he was sent back with, is extremely abusive and vindictive. His friends know this. Said parents have previously arranged for him to be killed, and are still on record as wanting him dead. His friends KNOW this. And now he is alone with them and a gaggle of other royal Icewings who all are extremely pissed off at him for ruining their sacred trial site.

It is very possible that he is being torn apart and mauled by an enraged mob right now. He could be forced into captivity and flayed. Maybe the interim regent is sentencing him to death and getting the rope ready. There is a million different horrible things that could be happening to Winter right now, while he is trapped alone with people who hate him, things his friends would be reasonably able to anticipate. And nobody is doing anything to get him out of there, to suggest bringing him back, even though it would only take a single spoken sentence to do so! They aren’t even concerned!

Then the climax happens, strawberry thing and all, and we get the coup de grâce. After all is said and done, the group decides that Winter is untrustworthy, and that they must protect the secret of Darkstalker’s fate from him, because they fear if he knew he would kill Peacemaker.

Moon, who read Winter’s mind in book 6 and reached out to him about how the “ruthless Icewing warrior” persona in his head is a facade and how she sees he has a gentle and good heart... Moon, who in book 7 finds out about Winter’s secret deal to kill Glory and STILL trusts him, who calls out his bullshit to his face because she KNOWS how kind-hearted Winter is and that he would never resort to murder... Moon who, again, held his hand while he was dying... thinks that the dragon she has reminded of his compassionate nature time and time again would kill an innocent child.

This is disgusting. Moon believing that is so far off the mark with regards to anything this group has embodied or done for any of the last 4 books, that my only conclusion can be that these are different characters. Maybe the Nightwing library collapsed on top of original Moon, and when Darkstalker magiced her back to health she came back wrong or something. I don’t know.

So after all of this, Winter is left alone. He somehow escaped from the Ice Kingdom; luckily there is a timeskip so we can just gloss over the horrible situation he was put in by his friends. He thinks about Jade Mountain. He reflects on everything that happened, how his parents never really loved him... How they hated him so much they tried to kill him... How he despaired, but found solace in his friends who loved him for who he was.... How those friends then betrayed him too and magiced him away... How they didn’t care about what happened to him... And he decides he is done. He won’t bother going back. A few people, probably Sunny, reach out to tell him he is welcome back, but he says “it wouldn’t be fair to other Icewings if an exile took up a bed”. The decision isn’t hard to make, after all there is nothing left for him there. Everyone has written him off, moved on and left him behind.

Kinkajou visits sometimes, tries to stay in touch, but that’s just how she is. Maybe the others sent her to check on whether he’s going to become troublesome. They don’t trust him. Better to keep an eye on him, he might kill the baby.

With nowhere else to go, Winter moves to Sanctuary, a place for rejects like him. I picture him standing there, at the edge of a cliff staring blankly into the distance. He is completely alone; no one wants to go near him or talk to him beyond the bare necessities. He could probably make new friends with the Talons of Peace if he tried, but there is no point. Why should someone like him have friends? It wouldn’t work. They’d just decide he is too inconvenient to be around. Sooner or later they would just tell him to leave anyway. It's better not to try, so he doesn't get hurt again.

And slowly it dawns on him. His parents had been right all along. It was never them, or the others, it was him. He is the problem. The Icewings said it, Qibli said it, Moonwatcher said it. There is just something fundamentally wrong with him.

He is defective. He is unlovable. Nobody wants him. He will never be anything, or have anyone. And so he stands at the cliff, looking over the broken vase fragments of his life... This is who he is. Prince Winter. A mistake.

And quietly, where no one knows or cares, he does the only thing he has left to do... he begins to weep.

As it is written, the tale of Winter is the story of a boy who is told he is wrong for being alive. He closes his ears and tries to keep walking forward, desperate to prove that he is not an error, that he has merit. But this book comes out and it unmistakably says that he doesn’t. He is nothing, and he deserves to have nothing.

And I just cannot accept that.

Why did this have to happen?

I think that the author was really struggling with the ending of this book. I’ve said before how much of a corner she wrote herself into with such an invincible villain. I think she came up with the strawberry idea as a solution to this problem. But as she was writing it, the characters kept fighting her. It was not a natural solution, not a decision the characters—as they were established—would ever make.

So concessions had to be made to force the issue. Established traits had to be bent slightly to make this plot work. The farther she went, the worse it got. The concessions piled up and turned into contrivances. Eventually the characters were no longer acting like themselves. Their bonds got stretched too far and some snapped. It’s a very tragic pitfall that occurs with long-running series.

I think Sutherland must have also been tired. Writing an entire book is a monumental task, and writing 6 connected ones even moreso. She also comes out with these things really quickly. Maybe she was burnt out? Maybe she wanted to be done and her attention lapsed. Maybe that’s why she forgot that Moon knew about the disemboweling. It seems reasonable to believe when you consider that the next story arc would make a relatively clean break from the problems of this arc, especially with regards to the magic system.

But I don’t know what ultimately happened, so I can only speculate. I reiterate, I bear no ill will against Sutherland for writing this. Even if I kind of hate everything about this finale, and very vocally wish it would be different, I don’t want this examination to generate (or reawaken) any hatred towards her, or to attack her personally. I understand the pain of an artist who gets trapped with something for too long and has to find the means, any means, to see it through to the end. I criticize the story, but I could never hate anyone for that.

But for me, I do not consider this half of the book as part of the story. The characters act too unnaturally for it to have happened. So to me, it didn’t. We don’t know what happened, maybe Darkstalker is still out there. Maybe they dealt with him. Maybe what actually happened is my crappy and self-indulgent rewrite of the ending which I will never show to anyone because it would be really embarrassing.

But whatever actually ended up happening, I am sure Winter never ended up at that cliff, pondering how worthless and meaningless his life was. He is currently at Jade Mountain, surrounded by friends who love him, and bickering with Qibli about the correct solution to their advanced calculus assignment that is due tomorrow.

Is there anything left to say?

Probably.

I didn’t talk about Anemone yet. You know, in the epilogue she enchants herself a bracelet that makes her “not be so mean all the time”. I find that creepy. To me it reads as Anemone voluntarily brainwashing herself with magic to erase her negative traits instead of growing past them naturally because she finds them undesirable and wants to work to change for the better. I would ordinarily assume that this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m just reading the scene wrong. But no, we just got through a part where the heroes brainwashing someone is treated as an unequivocal good and worthy of celebration, so I think my reading may actually be spot on. Why are we letting the little kid alter her own brain without supervision? Hello? Tsunami? Someone intervene maybe? This cannot be healthy.

Turtle stands out to me as the one bright spot in all of this. He (and Peril, but she’s mostly out of focus) remain as the only main characters of this arc who don’t have any mind-boggling out-of-character moments or sudden streaks of uncharacteristic callousness. I really like the part where Qibli goes to free Turtle from his captivity and plans to give him an earful about the comically unhelpful messages he’s been sending him. But when Turtle asks if what he did was helpful, Qibli sees how beaten down and exhausted Turtle is, and wordlessly drops his frustration to tell him “Yeah, they were helpful.” That is the true Qibli shining through for a moment, showing that he cares about the well-being of his friends.

Do I hate the pairing of Qibli/Moonwatcher? No. Well, I DO hate how it happened in the book, and how the story tried to assassinate Winter’s character to resolve the love triangle and make it happen. I don’t hate it on principle though. If you are a fan of Qibli/Moonwatcher and want to write fanfics about it, please do! I absolutely encourage you to do that! Maybe you can fix this mess and turn it into something that’s actually properly handled!

Mightyclaws keeps the power that Darkstalker granted him past the finale. That means all the spells that Darkstalker cast are technically still active. Does that mean the Icewings have to wear earrings for the rest of their lives? Do they get sick again if they take them off? Is Peril forever cursed to think of Darkstalker as a cool old uncle and has to somehow reconcile how everyone else thinks of him? How did the Nightwings relinquishing their powers work, do they have to wear the earrings forever too now?

And there is one more thing to mention.

My confession

You may have already intuited this, if you’ve been following the content of my blog. It is very heavily skewed towards the first and second arcs of the series. I would now like to confess something.

When I read the second half of book 10, I found it so disillusioning, Winter’s fate so upsetting... that I put down the series then and there. And I haven’t picked it back up since.

That’s right, I have not read arc 3. I don’t know if that makes me a fake fan. I know pretty much everything that happens in it, the controversial twist at the end, Pyrrhia coming back into the story later, Snowfall getting brainwashed by a piece of jewelry until she cares about a plot that had nothing to do with her or the fate of the Icewings, etc..

It’s not out of malice, or because it’s a new continent. The opposite in fact; I would have greatly prefered a clean break with a new setting—Bug-themed dragons in a slightly more contemporary, developed environment sounds fascinating and full of potential. I don’t hate Pantala or the new characters.

I just... I can’t really do this again. I can’t handle the thought of Pyrrhia coming back post-Darkstalker, with Winter showing up and talking to these guys again like nothing happened, seeming like a different person, joking around with them like his entire character wasn’t dragged through a mountain of manure to make the plot bend a certain way. I think as long as this is the ending that the story is continuing from, seeing that would just make me miserable.

Maybe I will just stay in the parts of the story that I fell in love with. And imagine a version of reality in which Pantala is allowed to exist on its own, where Swordtail was the fourth POV character of arc 3, where Queen Wasp stayed the villain throughout, and Snowfall got her own legends book about how she reformed Icewing society and fixed all the shit that poisoned Winter’s life, so future generations don’t have to suffer through the same stuff he did.

~~~~~

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading this far. I think this is everything I ever thought about the finale of the second story arc, so now I never have to talk about it again. Writing this was difficult. I found it crushing at times. This will probably stand as the only overtly negative post I have ever made on this blog. I love Wings of Fire, and I want to celebrate it. To add to it, not tear it down.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, or painful, or frustrating, or soul-crushing to read through. I’ll see you later, hopefully with a more constructive post.

#wings of fire #dragon #wof #digital art #wof art #flawseer art #flawseer talk #flawseer reply #wof winter #long post #long winded

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