#i truly loved this show. it was a highlight of my week for three months

[mephistopheleswasrobbed]

Extra stuff because it's the last episode and I refuse to compromise on screenshot quantity. (main post)

1

Even a fight of life and death won't stop them from keeping up their usual banter. It's also a nice callback to when Peach threw that wood plank at Home during their fight with the aunt, and Home didn't/couldn't catch it.

2

Neat little contrast between the Vimarnsukman heir that chose money over love and the one that chose love over money.

3

Another shot of Peach being there for Home before Home has to go face other people and officially say goodbye to his only blood-family member that didn't secretly hate him.

4

Pangpang is there, as usual, to document Home and Peach's moments diligently for their eventual wedding.

5

Pangpang's viewers are shipping again, but I'll leave this particular discussion between them without comment. (I'm with the third commenter, personally)

Now, we know Pangpang is fully on board with the shipping but dude, Peach, what's that face? (He's allergic to the acknowledgement of feelings so faced with the fact that people can see it even through a screen he goes -_-)

And while his first reaction could maaaybe be interpreted as exhasperation, this second one is definitley not. In fact this looks a lot like trying and failing not to smile, Mr. Peach.

6

The girls have got their own banter going. And the viewers approve.

7

No thoughts, just look at Home feeding Peach. With the new Cok Long sign in the background.

And look at them being touchy while singing karaoke. With both of their Cok Long signs in the background.

8

I'll leave you with some shots of the whole family, safe, alive, and together.

[sc0tters]

In The End | Mat Barzal

summary: ultimately in the end fate realised that you were simply better suited for the man in New York. At least this one had your heart.

request: yes/no

warnings: swearing, mentions of cheating.

word count: 1.59k

authors note: you guys probably haven’t been waiting for this one but the final part of this series is now here! Honestly it started off as a fun take on a request but I’m so glad that it bloomed into something more. We might not love Tito in this series, but he deserved the sorta ending he got.

part one | part two

What the fuck is going on y/n?

That was the last thing you had heard from Mat before he walked out of your apartment.

Two months had gone by and you had convinced yourself that this was for the best. Without Mat, it meant you had the time to truly focus on your relationship with Tito.

And that was going really well, Anthony and you spent three weeks in France where you found a ring in his suitcase.

Whilst no proposal came you were relieved to not have to turn him down. Time and time again you found your mind slipping back to Mat and you grew to hate yourself for it. How one night could make you so unhappy as you longed for the boy who wanted nothing to do with you.

But what you didn’t know was that Mat was longing for your message, your phone call, anything that showed him that you were done with Anthony. Yet as the posts came along highlighting the best moments from your trip he lost faith.

With weeks until the season was meant to start up again you thought that this was a battle that you were going to win “babe can you go get that?” Anthony called from the kitchen hearing his phone ring in the bedroom.

You thought nothing of it truly, so you stopped doing your makeup and went to his side of the bed to grab his phone “what the fuck?” You asked seeing Jenny🥰 appear as a FaceTime call.

Stupidly you answered with not a thought in your mind as you had more questions than answers “oh my god!” She shrieked seeing you appear on the screen instead of Anthony.

The girl was in nothing but some lingerie as she was forced to quickly find a robe to cover herself up. Anthony came back into your bedroom as you hadn’t responded to his messages of concern “baby?” His voice was nervous as he was met with the sight of your back.

You hadn’t realised that you were crying when you turned around to face him “h-how l-l-long?” You croaked out as you turned the phone around so that he could see what you had seeing.

His face dropped at the sight “I can explain-” Anthony reached out for you but you pulled away “answer my question?” The hockey player sighed as he watched her hang up the call.

If there was a moment that he knew that he was going to get caught then it would have been this one “we started in February.” Anthony confessed as he sat on the bed “and your ring?” Your lip quivered as his eyes widened.

Anthony let his head fall to his hands “for her.” In that very moment your sadness turned to anger “look I’m sorry-” the hockey player went to apologise but you cut him off “go find her.” You blurted out making his eyes go wide.

Your fingers ran through your hair “if you don’t love me anymore go be happy with her.” The logical part of your brain was only thinking about Mat.

The hockey player looked up at you “you’ve got someone too don’t you?” It was the fact that the spark that Anthony once lit in your eyes came up when you told him to go find her.

All you could do was nod as the boy got up to hug you “go get him.” Anthony smiled as you wrapped your arms around him giving him a squeeze “good luck.” Was the last thing you said to him before you left the apartment.

New York seemed to be on your side as the weather was warm but the cool breeze helped you as you ran through the city “pick up please!” You groaned as it went to voice note again.

Hey it’s Mat, I can’t come to the phone right now leave a message!

You grumbled something under your breath as you hung up feeling defeat slap you in the face as you sat on the sidewalk as your feet grew sore after you were met with nobody at Mat’s door.

It looked like you were an emotional girl who had just been dumped or something as your hands buried your face hiding it from the world.

You wanted to cry as cars whizzed past you “girl come with us!” Some random girls smiled at you as one of them held their hand out for you to grab.

They looked like they couldn’t have been any older than you so with their friendly faces you nodded getting up to face them “where are you going?” You asked wiping your eyes as you realised that your cheeks were wet “Still Partners over there!” The girl who helped you up explained as you could hear the sound of music coming from the bar.

So you followed them curious to know what caused the big crowd of people at the bar.

The soft sounds of a guitar played over the hum of the crowd “they’re really good.” You mumbled surprised when you were met with nods of agreement.

Your real shock of the night was when you finally got to see them, most of the members of the band were people you hadn’t met before. But of course there stood Mat, guitar in his hands and a look that was once nervous but then turned happy as he saw you.

Mat had this grin on his face as his eyes never left you “hi,” you mouthed sending him a salute as the boy responded with a nod trying to focus on what he was playing as your presence got rid of most of his nerves.

The hockey player practically jumped off the stage when their performance was done as he made a beeline for you as you stood by the bar “you did so good!” You smiled ordering him a beer to congratulate him.

Mat couldn’t believe that you were stood there in front of him “why are you here?” The Canadian wrapped his arms around your waist pulling you into a hug “I came looking for you.” Now that wasn’t exactly the reason why you were in the bar but as the girls you hung out with waved goodbye you couldn’t help but smile “f’me?” Mat repeated as though you spoke a foreign language.

You looked up at him as you nodded “Anthony and I broke up.” You awkwardly explained as your ego tried to hold onto the fact that he let a smirk form on his lips for a quick second before he let you two sit down.

In that very moment the boy let his hand run up your knee as he looked at you like you two were the only people in the packed out bar “how do you feel about it?” Mat didn’t know if you were there for some kind of comfort or instead for what he hoped you would eventually say, that you would be there for him.

Whilst a million answers seemed to come to your mind you couldn’t help but shrug “relieved, a little embarrassed even-” you raked your fingers through your hair as Mat cut you off shaking his head.

He wrapped his fingers around the freshly poured pint glass that they bartender had placed in front of him “did he do something stupid?” The Canadians question made you feel dumb “he fell in love with a girl in Vancouver.” Was all you needed to say for Mat to bring his hand to his mouth.

Although he was surprised, he couldn’t say that he was fully shocked. Anthony hadn’t mentioned you in their weekly calls since February “which is sort of comforting cause then I don’t feel bad admitting that I love you.” You were very much so the kind of girl who kept your cards close to your chest but in that very moment you wanted Mat to know exactly where your head was at.

Mat slowly nodded as he took in the information “I tried to tell myself that if I ignored you and just worked on Tito then I’d be able to ignore you.” The ramble that came from your lips seemed to be like a weight that was lifted off of your shoulders “but the truth is that I grew to resent myself for pushing you away.” At this point you hadn’t realised that tears were rolling down your cheeks for the second time tonight until Mat leaned over and brought his hand to your cheek.

His calloused finger wiped away from your cheek as Mat frowned “you never pushed me away.” He cooed slotting his legs between yours as he got himself as close as he could to you.

The Canadian tilted your head up as he was now stood “fucking love you baby.” Mat’s confession had a grin on your face that probably gave the Cheshire Cat a run for his money.

You made the next move as you pushed yourself up on the chair letting you peck his lips “hey I tell you I love you and that’s how you respond?” Mat playfully scoffed letting his hands land on either side of your stool locking you in.

A giggle left your lips as you leaned forward again this time meeting his request as your arms wrapped around his neck pulling him down with you. Your tongue ran over his lower lip as you seemed to be in control of it until Mat pulled away “that’s more like it my shining star.”

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime roundup, Pt. 1: Ongoing/returning shows and the trash heap

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it!

I wasn't expecting to watch nearly this much anime in just the past three months, but life completely failed at getting in the way. So here's everything I either watched or tried​ to watch for the Winter 2024 season, and a short review for each.

I'm not going to bother with trying to rank them, so instead they're sorted by category, as follows:

Continuing series from Fall 2023

Returning series

What I dropped

Mixed reactions

On hold

New series that are actually good

With this first entry, I'll be covering the first three, with the back half arriving in another couple of days. As with the 2023 rankings, the OP for each show is linked in the corresponding title.

Here we go.

Ongoing shows:

The Apothecary Diaries

Looking back at my 2023 rankings, I think my placement of The Apothecary Diaries’ first cour at #11 may have belied how much I love this show and believe it to truly be one of last year’s greats. If anything, it was hampered by its status as an ongoing show making it incomplete by nature, and I worried myself over the possibility of recency bias taking over my top ten (Frieren is in the same boat, so its top overall ranking should really highlight how damn good it is). Make no mistake, though: The Apothecary Diaries fucking rocks, and it continues to fucking rock. 

It’s largely more of the same, and that’s what you would want from another cour of this show. At the same time, though, more and more is uncovered about Maomao’s background and Jinshi’s status as the proverbial camera continues to pull back and the mysteries adorning the edges of the frame become clearer. I got a sense at the end of the Fall 2023 cour that the show was moving on from its episodic nature into something more serial and plot-driven, and I was mostly right: While several episodes of the Winter cour still revolve around various mysteries of the week, they all start to converge before you even realize it. It’s the same flywheel-effect approach to plot development that Kaguya-sama did so well: While so many of the events seem like one-off curiosities in the moment, these almost-imperceptible movements eventually barrel forward into an unexpected but perfectly logical momentum. The show teases out several plot threads that may not seem relevant at first, and it trusts you to be patient enough to see them play out.

I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that, along with the next entry on this list, The Apothecary Diaries is one of the best anime of the past five years. I had a feeling that this could end up being the case as 2023 came to a close, but I’m sure of it now. Watch this show.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Last year’s best anime continues apace into 2024 as we get an honest-to-goodness story arc: Frieren, who has been around too long to bother taking any magical governing bodies seriously, needs a certified mage in her party order to continue on the journey north. She decides to take the necessary exam to be certified as a First-Class Mage, a rarefied status in this world, and has Fern tag along to do the same in order to double their chances. 

And it’s still incredible! Great action, brilliant animation, wonderful character moments, and a beautiful score. It is still the top-rated anime ever on MyAnimeList, and by a significant margin. I’m not sure I agree, necessarily, but I can say with all sincerity that this has been a perfect season of television and my Fridays now feel empty without it. 

That’s all I’ve got on this one. What else do you want from me? I’ve already written nearly 2000 words about this show alone since it premiered. You’re asking me for more? I’ll kill you.

Shangri-La Frontier

If the low placement on my 2023 list was any indication, I was pretty fed up with Shangri-La Frontier by the end of its first cour, and the first couple episodes of 2024 being little more than plot set-up had me teetering on the edge of dropping it entirely. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t reel me back in once shit actually started happening and the plot really began to move forward.

Well, for a bit, at least. The height of the series so far has been the Wethermon arc, in which Sunraku teams up with his fellow shit-gamers, Pencilgon and Katzo, as they vie to be the first to take down a notoriously difficult unique boss. As the fight plays out, we get to see the feeling-out process of a tough action-RPG boss, rife with attack pattern memorization, skill timing, and buff stacking as the margin for error grows ever thinner. As always, the animation is on point, the soundtrack rules, and the action sequences are exhilarating.

But my major gripe with the series remains: There’s hardly any actual story here, even after 25 episodes. There are broad gestures towards a larger plot (“the truth of this world,” as the NPCs call it), but they are too vague to even resemble anything enticing. Everything in between the major fights is just set dressing, and there’s a lot of in between. There’s decent stuff in there, to be fair; the adorable rabbit NPCs are always a delight, and I love the commitment to depicting our top-level gamers as smug, preening shitheels. These are long walks for short drinks of water, though, and much of the main cast isn’t likable enough to make the downtime tolerable, to the point where watching the many set-up episodes feels like more of a grind than the actual grinding in the show. Even in the best fight sequences I still had moments where I found myself yelling “STOP TALKING ALREADY” at the screen. Internal monologues are a constant in battle shonen, I know, but if there’s any demographic whose internal monologues I want to hear the least, it’s gamers.

I kept watching this show despite myself, and six months later I’m still not sure how much I actually enjoy it. I haven’t seen any of the lousy VRMMO anime that people favorably compare it to, so at least it isn’t Sword Art Online. Yay, I guess? Yet here I am, still plugging away at a show I can’t strongly recommend to a lot of people. Shangri-La Frontier has turned me into a Steam reviewer.

Undead Unluck

The stakes continue to rise exponentially in one of last year’s more underrated shonen hits (or it would’ve been a hit if Disney gave a fuck about marketing the anime on its own platforms). The Union neutralizes a threat, gains a new Roundtable member, and then shit hits the fan.

The scope of this series goes into absolutely buckwild directions, and all I will say is that “Kimi no Todoke predicting the future” was not a piece of worldbuilding I would have ever expected. But at the same time, it never loses focus on the human element, which only gets more poignant as it goes on. There’s a really beautiful message in the last arc about how people can live on through the memories of others, well past their bodies dying, which hits nice and hard considering this season aired at the same time as Frieren.

This is a show that I tended to watch sporadically (because I just plain forget to open Hulu just to watch one show every week), and I would say that it was the ideal way to watch it, except the pacing issues from the first cour only got worse during a monumentally consequential sequence in the middle of the second. There was an episode that had, I shit you not, 90 seconds of new content in the first seven minutes of runtime, and at the exact point in the series where you’re salivating for something, anything new. In a season where so much goes on in just 24 episodes, I’m baffled that they felt the need to pad the runtime so much.

That’s the worst of it, though, and the momentum fortunately builds up from there and barrels downhill until the end. The story becomes incredibly meta, which was a very ballsy move for a Shonen Jump series that was still relatively early into its run. The gamble pays off, though, and the debut season ends on several incredibly strong episodes, and now I want more. I’ll be hopping on the manga soon.

It also struck me towards the end of the season just how goddamn cute everyone looks. For all of the spraying blood and grim marching towards Armageddon, it says a lot that I still wanna pinch everyone’s fat little cheeks.

Returning shows:

The Dangers in My Heart, season 2

The first season was absent in my 2023 rankings but I decided to pick it up while the second was still airing, and I’m so glad I did: The Dangers in My Heart is an almost-too-precious middle school romance that is endlessly endearing and bluntly honest (if a little exploitative) about what middle schoolers are actually like, warts and all. Insecurities are amplified, they struggle to figure out their identities, and mental and physical development run on different schedules from one kid to the next. And amidst all this raging hormonal nonsense, we have ourselves a lovely little romance story.

Kyotaro has (mostly) kicked his chuuni tendencies and realized that he’s madly in love with the beautiful, cheery Anna. He’s as aware as anyone of what a mismatched couple they’d be, though, and continues to self-sabotage any progress in the name of maintaining her good social standing. To pile onto his loner’s perspective of middle school politics, Kyotaro also gets a front-row seat to Anna’s part-time work as a model-slash-actress and he wonders if an underdeveloped shrimp like him should be seen anywhere near someone so obviously more mature. At the same time, though, he’s a growing boy, and we see lovely moments of progress as Kyotaro takes initiative both for her sake and to achieve what he wants. To both ameliorate and complicate these situations, Anna reciprocates his feelings towards her, and we creep ever closer towards what we want to see, in increasingly awkward and precious fashion.

So much of this anime is just gorgeous. Even setting aside the visuals and music (which are on point at all times), there are really lovely themes in here about insecurity, teenage perceptions of maturity, and self acceptance. On top of all of that, though, this is just a delightful slice-of-life romance story. You can probably guess where we’ve ended up by the end of the second season, but it’s the getting there that makes it all worth it. The manga is still running (and I plan to pick it up), so there’s clearly plenty more of the story to tell, but if this is where the anime ends, it ended perfectly.

Holy shit, though, did the first season really air at the same time as Skip and Loafer and Insomniacs After School? Dentists must have made a mint that season because every single one of these shows is so unrelentingly sweet that my teeth start to itch. Not that I’m complaining.

Mashle: Magic and Muscles, season 2

I honestly think I might’ve been too hard on Mashle in my 2023 rankings. I gave up on it a few episodes in when it’d initially aired, but I eventually came back to finish out the season and ended up having a pretty good time. I’ll cop to having forgotten that latter part when I mapped out those rankings, but that enjoyment quickly came back to me when I picked up season 2... even if the season begins with a ton of table setting.

Plenty of battle shonen take time to find their voice, both in manga and anime, and Mashle really seemed to hit its stride fairly quickly into the second season. Mash Burnedead’s lack of magical quality is no longer a secret, and now magical society has to find a way to deal with it, so the series’ initial stakes are raised and Mash HAS to become a top-level sorcerer lest he lose his life. Also, the bad guys are back. Unfortunately, just as I started to genuinely appreciate the ensemble cast, most of Mash’s friends took a backseat to the larger plot (Lemon is nowhere to be seen almost all season) as the villains raise the stakes with increasingly JoJo-esque magic abilities. There’s still plenty to like, though, and some of the new characters help. Props for having an openly nonbinary character play a major role.

The music is a real highlight here; a surprising amount of hip-hop paints the backdrops during dialogue, and any show with an OP by Creepy Nuts will immediately grab my attention. "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born" actually turned into a bona fide hit single, much like Oshi no Ko's "Idol" and Jujutsu Kaisen's "SPECIALZ," and I'd say it's well earned (seriously, it fucks, please click the link above). The animation has also started to really pick up where it felt like it kept falling short in the first season as well, and I found myself looking forward to action sequences more as the season went on.

And hey, it might’ve taken 21 episodes to get there, but I finally laughed at a cream puff gag!

Urusei Yatsura (2022), season 2

I really don’t have much to say other than it’s more Urusei Yatsura, and that’s just swell. We continue the modern adaptation of the classic gag manga as the OG anime babe and her piece-of-shit “darling” get caught up in yet more bizarre hijinks. Despite the 48-episode run being touted as an “Urusei Yatsura all-stars” cherry-pick from Rumiko Takahashi’s 34-volume opus, not all of the segments hit on the same level, but the stories that last entire or even multiple episodes have been killer. Lum and Ataru, despite their myriad flaws, genuinely do care for one another, and this series is at its best when those feelings get to shine through. Takahashi remains a legend for her expert balancing of comedy and heart, and while this particular adaptation doesn’t have the built-in benefit of 300+ chapters of familiarity, those moments still feel earned.

It’s Urusei Yatsura. It’s a classic for a reason. Watch it.

Dropped:

Gushing Over Magical Girls (dropped after one episode)

For the TL;DR version, consult the image above.

All I’d heard about this show going in was that the manga it’s based on was good and that there would be boobs. I wish I’d known more than that before watching, though, because if I’d known that said boobs would belong to middle schoolers, I wouldn’t have bothered with even the one episode I did end up watching.

I was drawn in by the initial premise, too: The protagonist, the conspicuously-named Utena (who looks enough like Bernadetta from Fire Emblem that I was immediately endeared to her), is an enormous fan of the magical girls who keep her city safe, so when an adorable maho shoujo mascot approaches her with an offer, she immediately takes him up on it. As her sinister-looking (and unnecessarily revealing) costume suggests, though, Utena doesn’t get to live out her magical girl dreams; she actually got roped into—and blackmailed into keeping—a role as a villainess. The magical girl team she idolizes quickly finds her, and to stave off their assault, Utena is forced to summon a monster to bind them. As they continue to struggle and squeal, Utena goes further with it by ripping their clothes and spanking their bare bottoms red, because it turns out that she’s actually into this stuff, sexually. The title, it turns out, is a double entendre.

Credit where it’s due for a clever concept: On paper, this is really goddamn funny! My issue is with the execution: I don’t really care to see someone’s sexual awakening if it involves repeated violations of consent, and much less so if I have to see nudity of ostensible middle schoolers (Japanese middle schools are the equivalent of seventh through ninth grade, meaning these girls are 15 at most). After 100 Girlfriends, I thought I could handle whatever trashy bullshit any anime could throw my way, but the longer I chewed on Gushing’s premiere, the worse it sat with me. I have no intentions of playing morality police here, but I can’t bring myself to watch any more of this than I already have. 

Early teenage sexuality is a very difficult subject matter to handle delicately, especially in a comedy milieu, and I can levy plenty of criticisms on that matter towards series I otherwise enjoyed, like Call of the Night and the aforementioned Dangers in My Heart. And although there appear to be some coming-of-age elements here, Gushing doesn’t seem interested in handling it without being exploitative. Maybe it gets better, but I don’t plan to find out for myself. 

I just feel like it’s a shame that in a season with some actual halfway decent LGBT representation, the breakout yuri hit is about middle schoolers performing dubiously-consensual BDSM on each other. And maybe that speaks to something for some sapphic viewers, and I have no intention of speaking over them, but I do know that this isn’t for me. I would’ve gone fucking feral over this show when I was like 13, but I haven’t been a 13-year-old boy for a long, long time. 

I may not have a leg to stand on here as someone who watches Mushoku Tensei (and frankly, that one’s on strike two with me), but I have to put my foot down somewhere. For me, that “somewhere” is borderline pornography involving 13-15 year olds. I try to meet media where it is, even the squicky stuff, but I cannot put myself at the level Gushing Over Magical Girls sets for itself. 

Sasaki and Peeps (dropped after eight episodes)

This show is frustrating to even process postmortem. After a mildly intriguing hour-long premiere that introduced a whole lot of concurrent concepts, Sasaki and Peeps somehow managed to not only continue heaping new ideas onto the pile, but also fumble every single one of them in a way that wasn’t even entertaining to watch.

Sasaki, a lonely 40-something salaryman of modest means, decides that instead of living vicariously through adorable animal photos on social media, he should pull the trigger and get a pet of his own. He settles on a reasonably-priced and suitably adorable fat little Java sparrow, who as it turns out speaks human language and is actually named Piercarlo the Starsage (Sasaki settles on calling him Pii-chan, or Peeps in English). The bird was reincarnated from another world, where he is able to take Sasaki at will, and the man realizes he can use the other world’s relative dearth of technology to his advantage and sets up an interdimensional trade full time so he can make coin on his own watch and help Peeps try the delicious beef he heard is the best food in Sasaki’s world. To the latter end, he also invests in a restaurant. Peeps also helps teach him magic, which Sasaki is forced to use in a pinch in the real world. He is quickly found out and gets roped into a secret government bureau of psychics, because the agent who caught him using ice magic decides he’d be a perfect complement to her water powers (think Kanne and Lawine from Frieren, but stupider). Sasaki now has to balance these multiple lives, which hardly ever interact with one another, as the stakes rise in Peeps’ world in the form of palace intrigue and in Sasaki’s world in the form of a growing threat of evil psychics or something. Also, there’s magical girls, because why the fuck not at this point.

If you actually managed to process all that and went “wow, that’s a lot, I wonder how they can tie all that together,” it brings me no pleasure to report that Sasaki and Peeps completely fails at that task. This is a work of fiction with entirely too many ideas, to the point where it feels like it has no ideas. There’s a saying in football that a team with two quarterbacks is a team with no quarterback, and Sasaki and Peeps has, like, six on its depth chart. You ever hear a band that managed to cram multiple genres in the same song and you get whiplash every time it switches up? Those are bands with a lot of influences, but no identity or vision to call their own, and that is Sasaki and Peeps to me: It is the Twenty One Pilots of anime. A lot of shit got thrown at the wall, and none of it stuck: This show, conceptually, is shit-stained drywall with a pile of turds adorning the moulding. 

For a show about a 40-year-old man, it gave me serious pause that there was not a single named adult woman in any of the episodes I watched, and I grew even more frustrated waiting for one to show up. Sasaki’s partner, Hoshizaki, seems to be a driven, professional young woman, but it turns out she’s a 16 year old high school student, for some reason. The daughter of the viscount doing business with Sasaki is a young girl who likes to tag along with him, and Sasaki’s neighbor is a latchkey high school girl who may or may not have a yandere-ish fixation on him. The magical girl we meet is also definitely a kid. The female psychics they face off against don’t appear to be older than teenagers, though the one who appears to grow fond of him turns out to be several hundred years old, which especially gave me pause because we all know that unfortunate trope and the type of person who hides behind it. Before progressing any further, I found out that the light novel series upon which this show is based was written by someone with the pen name “Buncololi,” which told me the rest of what I needed to know.

That part made me increasingly uncomfortable, and I became less and less convinced that this show was capable of sticking the landing as it continued to pile on new, contrived ideas. This was a waste of an excellent voice cast, but more than that, a waste of time.

Tales of Wedding Rings (dropped after nine episodes)

I can’t believe how much goddamn isekai I ended up watching this season. That Tales of Wedding Rings wasn’t the worst one (see above) was a minor miracle, because boy howdy was this one a dud.

Satou is just a normal high school boy, blah blah blah, his childhood friend he’s in love with is actually a princess from another world and she has to go back to fulfill a political marriage, he follows her into the portal to pull a Benjamin Braddock. But then, gasp, the palace is under attack, so the princess (her native name is Krystal, but growing up in Japan she was known as Hime, which means… princess) instead decides to marry Satou, bestowing upon him her kingdom’s ring, which gives him powers that he uses to fight back the demons. It turns out that her ring enables him to use one elemental affinity out of five, so of course now Satou has to collect the rings held by the other four kingdoms in order to become the Ring King and save the world, and to do so he has to also marry each corresponding princess.

This is basically Tolkien’s Rings of Power but as a harem isekai with bonus nudity. What I saw of the season was basically a MacGuffin hunt that had waifus of various fantasy races attached. Fine character designs for each, to be fair, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested.  It’s funny on paper that (to paraphrase Geoff Thew) our protagonist’s power level scales with the size of his harem, but Tales didn’t do enough to make me actually care what was happening. And I wanted to! There were elf titties and I didn’t care. That’s criminal.

What makes Tales especially difficult to watch is that this show is fuck ugly. The color palette is muddy and unappealing, everyone looks uncannily shiny, and there’s a smudgy Vaseline filter over everything. The action sequences are uninspiring, the animation is lousy, and every character looks terribly off-model unless they’re naked. Watch the OP I linked if you don't believe me; that's the best of it. The aural element isn’t much better; ecchi scenes are punctuated by a Cinemax-caliber smooth jazz score that I pray was chosen ironically, and most of the show’s humor consists of “an old guy is screeching.” And if you’re wasting Shigeru Chiba’s talents on that one lousy joke, you’ve fucked up catastrophically.

What completely pushed me out of wanting to see any more of this show, though, was how hard it doubled down on the worst elements of harem anime by having Protag-kun be a wishy-washy little ninny even though he’s openly declared his love for and is literally married to Hime/Krystal. And I wanted to care about her; the narrative made me want to care about her, and her jealousy of the other princesses is warranted, but alas, the harem demands bodies. To his credit, Satou recognizes her mixed emotions and makes extra time for her to make it clear that she’s forever number one in his heart, but every single time their shared romance and emotions actually push them towards consummating their (all caps for emphasis) MARRIAGE, the show goes Rent-a-Girlfriend on us and finds a cheap excuse to ruin the moment. No thanks, I’m out. Nothing else about this show is good enough to make me wade through that shit.

Honestly, the only thing that had me coming back after my Persona 3-induced hiatus was that I wanted to see the dragon girl, and that alone was almost worth it, but there really isn’t much of a draw otherwise. There were better isekai, better romances, better fantasy settings, and even better uncensored harem shenanigans this season. I might pick this back up as the second season approaches, but I’m not in any hurry.

[omegalomania]

hey gang what time is it its time for another joe trohman podcast. this actually came out like a month ago but i missed it until isa linked it to me and because i like doing these heres a highlights reel

the host says he appreciates that joe opened the book with the question of whether or not satan fucked his wife to which joe replies "well you know, when you have kids, sometimes you wonder that. you truly wonder what are these demons. i love my children btw they're phenomenal."

sometimes it does get tiring playing the same songs over and over. joe says that "thnks fr th mmrs" has a really good energy and tempo that keeps it exciting to play live

he talks about playing a really short iheartradio christmas show pre-pandemic and nobody in the crowd knew "sugar we're goin down" since they were only familiar with the more recent hits like "centuries" and "uma thurman" and joe said that it made him fall in love with sugar all over again in a weird way ldjfldkfd

he laments recently getting the chance to see wu-tang, nas, and busta rhymes at the hollywood bowl but he didn't go

his love language is giving gifts! he got his brother a custom drum set (which his mom attempted to throw out)

he reiterates that when writing the book he didn't want to be mean to any of his bandmates cause he likes them and thats not what the book is about! the host makes a joke: "like how you guys had that threesome with simple plan...i understand, you don't wanna get into that!" joe is offended that he clearly doesn't know how many guys are in simple plan. "there's more than three guys in there! the orgy was far larger than you give it credit!"

he doesnt remember any other names that the band could have been called but he does think fall out boy is a pretty terrible name for a band. "i can't believe i'm in a band called fall out boy."

discussions of the band origin and how joe funded it with his bar mitzvah money ("fall out boy, funded by judaism!") but when asked about financial gains from the band he says they all split everything evenly and it's one of the things that's helped them last this long

talking about scott ian and the damned things and he talks about how managing a supergroup is like herding cats because everyone is so busy with their respective groups. he says he'd LOVE to do a third damned things record though!

he talks about how weird it was to have this boy band aspect to them when they were at their peak pre-hiatus, because they were all hardcore kids and punk kids.

he recalls that around this time patrick asked their manager, with visible concern, "are we...the nsync to panic at the disco's backstreet boys?"

he's glad that they've outgrown that and kept pushing forward and looking forward, and by now they're no longer a boy band. "we're a man band!"

he thinks it's kind of neat to see the emo movement of the aughts become nostalgic and cool now ("it was not fucking cool when we were doing it [...] we stuck around for long enough to Not Be Lame"), but it's a big thing for fall out boy that they do not want to be a nostalgia act and they want to keep making new albums.

the host semi-jokingly says "so you and panic at the disco are not gonna go out on tour, is what you're saying." joe says "no" very flatly and i lose my shit.

he denies that fall out boy is working on any specific new music. he says they're just piecing things together organically and that no real album has coalesced. (note: this episode aired 11/12, ~2 weeks before the fob8 tribune ad)

he talks a bit about working with brian posehn on the axe and how much he loved doing it! he calls the whole story a metaphor for dealing with pain and trauma and the different ways there are to confront that stuff. he said the axe is coming out as a trade "soon" so people who don't have a subscription to heavy metal can read it

his first concert was tom petty and the heartbreakers when he was 10 or 11

he says the two things that matter most for a band's live show are the drummer and the singer. he then proceeds to be extremely sweet about patrick and andy.

"patrick, he's incredible, he's so gifted, and he's worked so hard with his voice lessons and figuring out how to sing from the diaphragm properly, and he really knows how to work through when he's sick and having real issues, so he's quite a trooper."

"and andy is just a great drummer. when he thinks he's had a bad day i'm like...yeah. sure. i don't think you know what that is."

he did not get laid in high school. first time was in a shared tour bus, listening to testament (a thrash metal band), when he was 19. (they never saw each other again)

since testament was the soundtrack the host asks if he ever gets a reaction whenever joe hears chuck billy (testament's lead vocalist). joe says without missing a beat, "when i see him i do, that's for sure."

he is an avid bowler. he has a wristguard and a spare ball and he used to take lessons. he calls it great stress relief!

[natashasbitxh]

To the anon asking you if they're a racoon for feeling the Shaynse, YES YOU'RE A RACCOON!!!!! (In Chance voice) 'cause that's how I feel about it, you can help it, it's just happens.

Now I have to said it I tried to watch sword af but I got stuck in the first video, so Idk if I would watch it completely, maybe if I get out of videos to see, I would end up watching the sword af videos completely.

Also I watched some of the old ones, the chicken video one, where that actually give a vibe to the characters from love is blind hahahaha. I think I started this journey this week to be honest. I really don't understand how it happened, I think I stopped watching smosh like last month and this Monday y started again and basically all the Smosh games videos that were uploaded, I don't remember how but I have the love is blind really as a huge video for me, it made me laugh like no other in the games videos, so I didn't look for the ship tag 'cause I didn't know how or what name it would have. And the one day before the theater video came I actually ended watching love is blind again, I went really crazy, the first time the plot twist was crazy hahahahaha and how everything is like: “oh we're straight but we figure it out”, it's so funny to me for some strange reason.

And now I'm here on Tumblr waiting for people to talk about it, thanks for recommending the teletubbies, I think I watched all the reunion by now, I watched the pumpkin live too and other's lives where they're in. My love for the lives it's just how soft they're, just that. Softness.

The theater kid video, my love for redacted and Sarah Christ would have been the otp for me, but Shaynse took it all, I read all the comment and it's crazy how some minutes of interactions take to see that it's a powerful dynamic what this two be having (which is not bad) is a good thing, even Shayne said in the Smosh mouth year episode where he keeps interrupting Chance because he keeps relating to him, for me it like they have more in common that they thing, that was my highlight of that video, there's a lot of moments I know, but I know you know, so I just feel like we don't need to process those ('cause I will go crazy for the fact that Shayne is so shy and actually gets nervous some times and stutters when trying to answer to Chance hahahaha this man is a treasure).

Going back to the theater video, I just feel Shayne nervousness in all that part, it's so funny hahahaha, I love how everyone is looking at them, like it's the first time they ever interacted hahahah Idk why but it's so funny. AND THE FACT THAT SOMEONE READ THAT FIC AND FIX IT TO ACTUALLY BE IN THE VIDEO, WHO EVER DID THAT, THANK YOU SO MUCH, that the real one, they really have to read that... I'm going insane.

I confess I been watching some videos twice or three times, (I'm going feral like a raccoon if you ask me hahaha) I really love that ask that anon send you.

I guess that's it, today I'll watch more videos if I see something I'll share them here. I hope we get more fun moments.

And my question is, what is your fav video where they're in? And why? Do you feel like they need a playlist soon? Share your thoughts, I'm always pleasant to read everything about what you see in them. Because the spark is there (as a good thing) they just need to shine a little bit more.

Honestly raccoon is a perfect way to describe it

If u don't like sword af that is totally fine!! Not for everybody and thats okay!

tbh that a little vague😭 but my first thought was the vid where they're on a team flipping the chicken? Cause they're great in that vid!

Oh that's so great that u got back into smosh! The love is blind ep truly is such an important vid for me! Rlly showed me how great the smoshblr community is 🫶 Yh they're hilarious in that vid too!! Shayne came to serve drama and he did JUST THAT!!

Thats great! Did u enjoy the reunions? There truly is gold in those and they deserve more love, I miss them!! (Although they do get a lot of love on certain areas of the internet) I rlly miss the improv style vids they used to do on smosh main, where they kept laughter in! I guess the love is blind vid felt a little bit like that, cause they're playing characters? Idk

Oh I LOVE them in lives, I eat it up everytime they're so sweet in those!

I just gotta say I LOVE redacted and Sarah christ too, and it was so fun to see a mutual's fanfic make it in the vid! Yh, I think the fanfic vid rlly did bring a few more ppl to shaynse nation and I think that's so fun!

Yes, they are actually quite similar!! AND YES THE NERVOUSNESS AND STUTTERING!! SOMEBODY PULL UP THE "DID I LOOK GOOD IN MY WEDDING DRESS" CLIP!!!

Yh, Shayne is like uncharacteristically nervous!! Kinda crazy and rare to see within a smosh vid! Can't stop thinking abt the journey the fanfic would've had to get thru to get there...thank you to the author🫡

oh I rewatch smosh vids all the time, especially ones theyre in! Ur not alone!!

Yes, share anymore thoughts u have! I hope we get more moments too!

ooo my fav vid..I'm gonna have to say two! First off, the love is blind vid because it's such a classic and is iconic! When that came out I literally went crazy, shaynse day lives in my hear forever! And I think they're so fun in that vid, they're both competitive so when they got coupled up they were genuinely trying so hard to match! But I also have to say a low key one I love is the smoshmouth ep where they talk abt past jobs, there's a lot of sweet moments in that! And the intro of "Chanse, thanks for being here" "Thanks for having me", is literally the cutest and most gentle thing ever!! And also since u mentioned them not rlly insulting each other, my mind has been blown because also in that intro Shayne is quick to say something like "There's no rules rlly." In a kinda defense of Chanse, I just think that's sweet!

I'd love to hear ur fav vid and why!

I'm curious abt what u mean by playlist? Like a music or a vid playlist? I actually have both of those! I've just not shared yet cause I created both of them on personal accounts, I may make new accounts so I can share them at some point but idk!

Thank you for sharing ur thoughts anon! Yes, their spark needs to be explored!

[byeskyebye]

--- 🌙 Once I had a 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 and it was a gas Soon turned out had 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙜𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 Seemed like the r̲e̲a̲l̲ thing only to find Mucho 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭, love's gone behind.

BIRTHNAME: Skylar Dolecki NICKNAMES: Skye, Scoobs, Blue, Bluberry DATE OF BIRTH | AGE: October 2nd, 1999 | Twenty-three years old [ 23 ] GENDER | PRONOUNS: Female | she / her BIRTH PLACE | HOMETOWN: Chicago, Illinois - United States of America CURRENT RESIDENCE | LIVING CONDITIONS: Chicago, Illinois | Two bedroom apartment that she shares with a roommate. CURRENT CAREER: Professional Wrestler currently contracted with All Elite Wrestling. HEIGHT | WEIGHT: Five feet and two inches tall, [5'2"] | One hundred and ten pounds, [110 lbs]. EYE COLOR | HAIR COLOR: Her eyes are a deep chocolate brown. | Though her hair is more of a darker brown, Skylar often adds a variety of softer brown highlights, especially during the summer months. Here lately, she's been experimenting with various blue streaks and extensions to add a pop of color that matches her gear. TATTOOS: Six, currently. The number '21' on the outside of her right wrist, a floral crescent moon on the inside of her right forearm, two initials on each thumb, cursive bite me above her right butt cheek, and a floral bouquet on her outer left thigh. PIERCINGS | RETIRED PIERCINGS: Right nostril piercing, double right ear piercings, and triple left ear piercings ( including a stud in her upper left cartilage ), and a navel piercing that is often adorned with a simple stud. ORIENTATION: Heterosexual RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single, recovering from a recent breakup. DRINK | SMOKE | DRUGS: Yes. | No. | No. HOBBIES: Sewing and knitting. PERSONALITY: Growing up, Skylar suffered from severe anxiety and panic attacks, mostly triggered by claustrophobia. An introvert by nature, the Chicago native is learning how to enjoy the career of her dreams which just so happens to place her in front of thousands of people on any given night. A career she loves with every ounce of her being, that is truly worth the extra effort it takes for her to step out of her comfort zone. Interviews aren't her strong point but she knows that it's part of her job, and while she'd rather let her in ring work do all of the talking for her -- Skylar is quickly becoming more comfortable expressing herself verbally. CHARACTER NOTES & CHANGES: Skylar recently went through a break up with Dante Martin, but the two have been on the mend the past few weeks. I will be acknowledging that Skylar is "healing" from a recent serious relationship ending, but I will not name Dante as her ex-boyfriend. This way, if someone would like to bring in Dante and portray him -- they will be free to do so without any baggage to carry with them from my plots and storylines. Her ex, for all intents and purposes for my portrayal will be an unnamed individual ( perhaps an initial or something of the sort will be stated at a later time ). For continuity of the group, Dante Martin and Skye Blue have only ever been friends and co-workers & anything romantic that has been seen on television is strictly for show and storyline purposes only. all plots are open. feel free to dm me if you're interested in plotting anything. i don't mind coming up with the plots as long as I know you're interested! if you're too shy to dm me first, then leave an emoji in the replies and I'll come invade your dms! 💙

[aaesthethiccc]

closing this account forever & deleting my tumblr app.

this was once my safe space & you are the only i let in here. it is because i trusted you. i know sometimes i used it to gaslight you to show you i have other people who care for me. well it is only because i wanted it to be you, not them. but this was my space to record and cherish my memories later in life too, which i will still create somewhere else.

i talked to vicious day before, and i felt good in knowing someone is there for u. last step for me to heal from this is also leaving this platform and removing everything forever.

it was a rocky start for you and me tirth. ngl in the starting when u told me u liked me i was weirded out cause we hardly knew each other ahah. but whenever i heard you laughin or even just talkin with you, i knew i felt different about you. and that only grew with time. i remember 6 months in, i never even learnt editing for my own stream highlights but i did so to make a video for u and that song i chose truly meant the words i felt. you might have liked me first, but i know in my heart i loved you more than you would ever realize. we spent so many days, so many nights together. i didnt want it all to be for nothing. i wanted at least meet you once & i had the money saved to meet u which i didnt wanna tell u till i booked my tickets.

i remember the first time i split with u, it was cause i caught your lie and u called me names. that time i knew i had to leave to protect my self respect. and the lying was something i hated. i could tell by the tone of ur voice or by the way u sounded. i remember this because on our last call i knew you sounded the same. your priorities have always been clear and i do not possess any patience for you to come around anymore. the most important week of the year for me, you chose to disappear. then even after i ignored it, you chose to still not be there for me. it wss your choice tirth. ik i would have been there for u if it was me on the other side.

i wasnt always the best to be around, i did my share of mistakes. i didnt know what it was like to love so deeply, and i didnt even realize you were never on the same page because with your words, you would always win me over. but yes those patterns repeated & i learnt a lot through them.

i still wish sometimes that our relationship was not this immature. i wish that we had a healthy relationship like i planned in the start. i wish we never lied to each other. i lied to you as well. i wasnt all innocent. when i needed your time, sometimes i made excuses. but i never lied to stay away from you, it was lil things like i really wanna tell u something after a boring day when there was nothing to share. ye i was a hopeless romantic, more hopeful and even more of a romantic ahahah. idk i never thought i could hold so much love for someone i never even met. it saddens me that i will never actually kiss you or be with you but this is the way its meant to be. i wish we took pauses in our fights, i wish i came to canada and we slept together ever night. i wish i got to feel the love i was feeling with you by my side.

throughout our journey i am sure i have hurt you, well i have felt the same hurt if not more. the hurt of being alone on my birthday. with everyone wishing me or sending me stuff but the man i love was ignoring me and playing cs. i wanted to believe your words when you came back. you told me you loved me but well it was confusing then and it is confusing now. how can someone love someone but not care for them? i think my love was very real towards you but yours was more of filling a void. i wish you fell in love with me like i fell in love with you.

i want you to know how deeply i have felt for you over these three years. and it hurts me the most to leave you & let you go even though this is not the ending i wanted. but sometimes the right decisions hurt. but they are the right ones.

i really enjoyed my time with you. most of it was me trying out new things for you. i wish you had gotten to see my excitement in things i enjoyed as well but sadly we could never find the perfect rhythm for the both of us which is okay. i hate that we fought so much, i wish we understood each other but i dont think so we are very different to do that. and yes when there is no effort put into communication and understanding then our boat will sink.

in our relationship, i learnt how much i could love a person. and trust me i have never felt this deeply about anyone. you were my heartworm. this is the reason tirth, i trusted your words completely, each time you told me you are ready to take responsibilities and grow and be with me, i trusted you completely. but those times when i didnt feel so secure, everything from our past always haunted me. all the unresolved issues, all the times you said we will talk and work through them but didnt. and the last day, it haunted me all at once again when you could so easily choose your friend when you could have waited just for two hours to go play with them. no matter if i was sleepy or no matter what i said, i just needed my person to be there for me on my big day.

i dont know if i will ever trust anyone again when they say they love me, i dont know how long it will take me to heal from this. but i know i cant start the next chapter of my life, re-reading this one. and i know in my heart that you arent ever going to love me or care for me or even be ready to move forward with yours. but i hope you do. i hope you find the strength to change. i hope you get off your ass and visit your family. we were going to meet this july you promised but we didnt. but i will pray that you meet your family this year instead. time goes by fast tirth. please dont let time pass you by. live. go live your life. find your passion again tirth. i know you can do it.

if you are hurting, i know you are alone there but dont go through it alone. call your family. time heals all wounds. i hope you surround yourself with good and positive energy. i send you my positive energy always even tho it wasnt always positive when i was with you always cribbing and crying over our past, but you can accept only good prayers from me for u.

i aint a victim of this relationship and you arent as well. so please dont focus on what has happened. cherish the good days and nights we spent together.

you remember the letter we were going to send in case something happens to one of us in the starting. well this is my letter to you. i know i am not with you now, and please dont try to be friends cause i am not like your exes, i cant be just friends with you or see u around without hurting. i tried but i guess i loved or just even love you so much. i dont know why despite you hurting me this much, i can never really hate you. but there is only so much hurt one can take. and sometimes it gets too much. it's unhealthy for both of us. i remember i use to get sick whenever i use to fight u, i never use to eat or sleep. i didnt play. my life would pause. i got control over myself but i still ended up with anxiety or panic attacks. there were many time i was so scared about my future, when i wasnt landing a job. when we decided to move back to india. things arent still great but they are better. i wish i could have been better in our relationship but please realise like you, i had my own problems. i have learnt to handle them better now. i also took my family to thailand recently. it was a trip i gifted them. and i am very proud of that.

i know this time when i called you, you got a panic attack, and seeing you like that, i felt the worst. i was talking all softly like it didnt affect me. i was numb for the longest time ngl. but it did affect me, especially cause i knew how it felt. this thing between us is very toxic.

i didn't want this to end. but it has to. i still dont know why you would go days without reaching out to me. each trip you go on, something happened to your phone, how am i to trust you. how am i to trust anything. i remember u dont even remember the important interviews, my flights or anything. you didn't remember or put any efforts to know what is going in my life. i dont think i have it in me to ever forget that. you werent the best boyfriend, i dont think so u even wanted to put that effort. why did you always get me back then? was this all a game to you? was i just something to use and throw. sometimes i wasnt even sure ur love was real, other times i thought you are living there alone, u are depressed and you dont know it, you need help and i wanted to do that. but how can i do that when i was hurting myself trying to be there for u. when things would be okay, suddenly u would stop even responding. i dont even know anymore and i dont want to. all was such a mental torture. i didnt have to always ask you to communicate. i always wanted more cause i didnt get even bare minimum for even 2 week continuously. i always had to tell you. i wanted someone who i didnt have to translate my entire soul to. someone who could just see through but for u i spoke it out loud and still was unheard. true love wants the best for the other person you know, i never felt that from your side. i didnt feel safe tirth. i wanted to feel safe with you but i didnt. i had so many doubts. i was so scared. i am feeling a lot of hurt writing this and have a really bad headache now so i will go sleep and rest. its like my head will burst out at any moment. the pain in my heart is too much to write any further but yes i will learn to forgive like always and i hope you get the strength to do the same. tbh it wont be tough for me to move on, i have done it before in jan and its not that without you i cant live. i am so content that i couldnt have done anything more, and i know for a fact that.. nevermind.. i just know, also i am happy on my own. i know i am the kind of person to even come and meet you after all this. i would have done it if i felt you meant your words. but i am not going to meet you. i am not going to salvage this relationship or even meet you as friends. i dont think you deserve it after everything you have put me through for your own selfishness and nothing else. enough is enough. i have had enough of this bs from you. i might sometimes feel pain but i am happy knowing i did everything i could have. i dont get my way of how i wanted this to end, you don't deserve a girl who would travel across the world to see your stupid face & stay with you against all odds. you, tirth, have lost me forever. thanks for the movies, shows & games. ig it would have never evolved to something greater than that.

anyway please go outside. please meet your family and your little niece. i wish they bring lots of joy into your world and it isnt dull anymore. i know as a kid, this isnt the future you probably planned for yourself, i hope you forgive urself. i hope u forget about the time wasted and focus on living every moment.

after this, if you feel like contacting me, dont. know that like before i will learn to be okay. i am at peace cause i know i did everything i could to be with you. i will never accept you in my life again because i will never ever trust your words tirth. i dont think you have got it in you to be with me or to love me wholeheartedly. u will always leave me or not communicate or do something that will hurt me cause u dont care enough to actually care for me. i know what i felt wasnt mutual. i am not a fool. i know i was just wasting time with you here tirth cause u will never man up with me. the way you acted, its cause you meant it. no external factors matter. and i know i wasnt ever asking for too much, i was asking the wrong person. cause i know i get happy with the smallest of things. i wont ever look back now, never see what you are doing and i mean it. i hope you can move past this and actually turn your life around. life is short tirth, live it. and go show some time to your family. it will really help you, i truly truly believe. each one of us in the world is experiencing life for the first time tirth. i hope you choose the right path and be the person you want to be.

i will always be somewhere heartbroken that this happened. like i said i always wanted to be with only one person, and i never doubted that for a sec before about it being you. but ik i cant be with someone ever who hurts me this much. sorry but i am out of chances & tries. i am tried of trying to communicate or translate my soul to you. all the goodluck to you. if you ever feel low, just look at the moon. you will feel the peace and calm i prayed for you. i cant imagine what kind of guy you have become honestly. you didnt even do efforts to meet your niece. i will pray that you are a better person one day.

remember: bad things happen not just to go through but to grow through.

take care & goodbye.

[imaginethathaikyuu]

kinktober - day one

akaashi keiji - friends to lovers 

kinktober faq kinktober prompt list  

NSFW warning featuring: fingering, dry humping, first time together, unprotected sex other tags: lots of exposition, too many words, years long pining, accidental almost confession, emotional real one, mentions of characters having previous partners, oblivious reader, hidden feelings, slight angst, oh no there’s only one bed!  fem reader

word count: 7380

-

Akaashi Keiji knows everything. 

At least, he seems to. 

You realized this only a month after knowing him. He turned around to you, the girl who sat behind him in biology, and gave you one look before saying, “You have no idea what this lesson is about, do you?” And you laughed, because it was so absurdly true, while Akaashi turned his desk around and introduced himself as your study partner. 

You still don’t know how he knew you were struggling. You thought you hid it well, but his eyes must have caught the poor grade on the quiz the teacher returned to you the week before, or the way you seemed to immediately sulk the moment you walked into the classroom. He could see everything you tried to hide - even things you couldn’t see yourself.

And he wouldn’t let you get away with anything but a stellar grade, so study sessions became routine for the two of you - a friendship was destined to bloom, and fast. 

He was too observant for his own good, which was something you learned while watching one of his volleyball practices. He had been inviting you to come watch after study sessions for awhile, but it took you a bit to work up the nerve to walk into the giant gymnasium filled with boys you didn’t know. 

As you watched him play, you saw his superpower: Akaashi’s eyes were everywhere at once. On the ball, on his teammates, on his opponents, on his own feet - he always knew where everyone was at any given moment, all while somehow managing to spare you a few knowing glances during the mess of the game.

You never knew how he did it, but you figured you didn’t have to know. It was because he was Akaashi, and that’s it. 

But you questioned why no one else seemed to notice it. His excellence was obvious to you, but even his closest friends seemed to gloss over it. 

Keiji stood out to you, while to others, he was just Akaashi. Quiet, reserved, sometimes as blunt as a hammer, Akaashi. 

He didn’t care, though. Akaashi thrived on being in the background - he didn’t need any of the attention or recognition you wished to give him. And maybe he loved his friends more because they left him be. 

Those friends of his, however, all shined just as bright as Keiji did, and were never shy about it. You look back at getting to know them all as a highlight of being in high school; despite never feeling like you belonged in their friend group, you were always happy to be with them. 

Keiji pushed you to get closer to the three boys, Tsukishima, Bokuto, and especially Kuroo, right from the first day you met them. They were playing a friendly volleyball game with a few other boys you never really met, and you quickly learned you had no reason to be nervous to meet them. 

It was easy to let go and goof off, because that’s all any of them were doing, anyway. 

Just because it seemed like fun to get under Kuroo’s skin, you decided to antagonize him a bit. “So, Nekoma’s mascot is a cat, correct?” 

Kuroo immediately grew defensive at your tone. “Yes - what do you have against cats?” 

“Nothing, nothing! I like to think of myself as pretty cat-like, actually.” 

“Show him your claws, Y/N,” Keiji chimed in. 

“They’re nimble, and sneaky... and lazy. Something that owls aren’t - just saying. Seems pretty fitting when comparing your team to ours, don’t you think?” 

“Akaashi, you better get your cat,” Kuroo grumbled, with a sly smirk that never seemed to leave his face. 

“She’s just a kitten,” Akaashi replied, winking at you and immediately taking your breath in a way you’d never felt before. “Not my kitten, though, so you’re on your own here, Kuroo.” 

That’s when the first wall came up. You didn’t notice it, not yet, or even realize why it had been built. But as soon as your heart sank to your stomach and erupted into butterflies all because of Keiji’s flirtatious gesture, that wall arose. 

And many would follow. 

On the walk home from that practice, you noticed every glance he sent you. Every time his shoulder touched yours, you felt it amplified. Your knuckles grazed his and you looked down at your hands - his much bigger than yours, your fingers raring to wrap around his. And they were going to, either out of curiosity or the blatant need to touch him or both, until he stuffed both of his hands into his pockets and away from your potential grasp. 

You shook your disappointment off and reminded yourself of what the two of you were: friends. Just friends. Friends only hold hands sometimes, and it’s not on walks home or during study sessions or any of the times you found yourself wanting to hold onto him. 

“Kuroo likes you,” Akaashi said out of nowhere. And you laughed. 

“You think so?” 

“I’m pretty sure.” He sounded distant, his gaze was head on. “Maybe you should give him a chance.” 

You laughed again and said, “Maybe,” even though you knew you’d never entertain the thought of going out with Kuroo. 

Not with Kuroo or anyone else, but you wouldn’t understand why for a long time. 

Two years of friendship had come and gone in almost an instant, but every day with Akaashi was memorable in that easy familiar way only he could offer. He truly was your comfort - everything you needed in a friend, Keiji had. Being so close to him was a blessing, you knew that. 

When the two of you ended up choosing the same university, you almost wanted to cry, because you knew nothing could quell your fears of what’s new better than Keiji’s all knowing familiarity. Having your best friend by your side during times of change would make everything easier.

But it was a different story entirely when you became roommates with him. The apartment you shared was small but homey; it had all the comfort you had in your friendship with him, and you thought nothing could be better than that. 

It was more than that, though. Months went by of seeing him every day, and it felt like that comfort was leaking through the floor every time you saw his bedhead or heard him singing in the shower or watched him pull another girl into his bedroom. 

It wasn’t like the latter was an often occurrence, but just the thought of him being with someone made your stomach turn. But it gave you the idea of seeking your own partners, which was something you hadn’t done in years, and it quickly spiraled into an unhealthy habit. 

You longed for familiarity, to be touched by someone you knew. You were desperate for comfortable vulnerability, and you never found that with a stranger in your bed. So, you decided to seek out someone familiar. And when the person in bed with you was an old friend, a realization dawned on you. Rather, it was offered to you. 

“What are you doing, Y/N?” Kuroo mumbled, and you did nothing but send him a questioning glare, one he scoffed at. 

The two of you had done nothing so far but send a few flirty texts and then sit on your bed; he hadn’t even kissed you yet. You weren’t sure how you felt about it - you weren’t sure if you even wanted him to kiss you. 

“I’m not the one you want here, idiot. So why am I the one you brought to your bed?” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” you replied honestly. “Are we going to -” 

“No, we aren’t. Are you really that dense?” 

“What?” 

“Look,” Kuroo said, standing up and pinching the bridge of his nose as if he was annoyed that he had to be saying this. And while you watched him, you noticed this was the first time you ever saw him without his signature grin or sly eyes. “If I was a shitty friend, I would have fucked you back in high school, alright? I mean, come on, I had the chance. But I care about Akaashi too much to ever do that with you, and I know you don’t actually want to fuck me.”

You stood up, too, facing him head on. “What does Akaashi have anything to do with fucking me, Kuroo?” 

“Everything, idiot. I know you probably think you’re good at hiding it, but everyone knows you’re as in love as you could possibly be with that smartass.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, because you didn’t, but Kuroo wasn’t having it. 

“Well you’re the only one you’ve convinced. And, for the record, this isn’t going to help you get over him.” 

Still, you didn’t get it. You couldn’t see it - you refused to. 

“You’re off limits, dude, Akaashi told us himself.” 

“Then why are you here?” 

His annoying grin was back. “To see how delusional you really are. And give you some advice. Just admit it to yourself - you’ll feel better, I promise.” 

Keiji was your best friend, and that was it. 

This wasn’t some story of years long pining and unrequited love. 

Was it? 

But you thought about it, for just a moment. You thought about being in love with him. 

And then you couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

You decided, right then and there, that what Kuroo said wasn’t true; admitting it to yourself didn’t make anything better. In a lot of ways, your friendship with Akaashi thrived on your special feelings for him, and it relied on those feelings staying secret to both of you. 

You couldn’t even finish the conversation with Kuroo. He swore not to tell, because you made him, and that was it. 

That’s when the second wall came up, then the third, then the fourth. You were trapped inside of them. Hiding, only hiding, and safe from anyone who could see you or your heart. 

You denied it still, even though Kuroo knew, just to convince yourself he didn’t. No one knew but you; the only one who knew the password to that door was you. You could be hidden, safe, and protected forever, because you made it that way. 

Keiji would never know, and everything would stay okay. 

Everything but you. And that security wouldn’t last, because a storm was brewing. 

But you were content. What you had with Keiji was always enough for you - you had enough. You saw him every day. You got to hear his laugh on the good days and hug him on the bad ones; you got to have coffee with him every morning and secret late night snacks too many midnights. Sleeping alone was fine. Not getting intimate moments was okay. What you had was enough. 

It seemed like the more you recognized your feelings for him, the more of Keiji you saw. You were still getting to know him after years of calling him your best friend; you were noticing his habits that you never saw before. He mumbles to himself while he cooks; he picks at his nails when he’s nervous; he overthinks everything, even the smallest decisions. 

The latter had always been obvious, but you had never realized it until you lived with him - until you really started to love him. 

Every day, you learned something new about him. And every day, you loved him more, in ways you didn’t even know you could. Ways that made it hard to love him from afar.

Months of your love growing during your first year of university seemed to go by too quickly, and soon spring break was fast approaching. A trip with old friends to a lake house was planned months in advance, and both you and Keiji were excited to see the three boys again. 

But when you arrived at the old looking house that evening you were met with knowing eyes and a sly grin that hadn’t changed since high school. 

“There are only four beds,” Kuroo announced, “and five of us.”

“That’s alright,”  Keiji started, but he was interrupted by Bokuto’s loud laugh. 

“Oh, I guess we’re sharing a bed, four eyes!” 

“I’ll suffocate you in your sleep,” Tsukishima said, meaning every word he said in a way that made Kuroo cackle. 

Keiji looked at you. “You don’t mind sharing with me, do you?” 

A million thoughts ran through your mind, but you only shook your head. You didn’t voice any of the concerns you had for yourself. 

“No problem.” 

He gave you a grin. “It’ll be like our high school sleepovers,” and then he took your bag and left to find your shared room. 

You remembered the last sleepover you had with him and your heart raced just thinking about it; you spent half of the night pretending to be asleep, and the other half watching Keiji’s sleeping face and wondering why laying next to him made you feel the way it did. 

This would be the exact same, except now you knew why your heart would be pounding. 

Kuroo was still laughing, but he was looking directly at you. “Are you sure it’s not a problem?” 

“Shut up, Kuroo.” 

He kept laughing, and it left Bokuto scratching his head. “What’s going on? Why are you mad, Y/N?” 

“Because Kuroo is an asshole -” 

“Hey now, I’m doing you a favor here!”

“...I still don’t get it.” 

“You never will, Bokuto,” Tsukishima commented. 

You decided to leave Kuroo laughing on his own - you shouldn’t let him get under your skin, because that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He was doing this on purpose. Maybe he thought he was helping you out, but he was only making things harder for you. 

You weren’t going to let him win. You were going to have fun on this trip while keeping our secret seeled, and nothing would stop you - not even Kuroo attempting to play matchmaker. 

The late arrival called for a quick dinner and a nighttime bonfire to kick off the vacation the right way; the boys were all too excited for the night and had gotten the fire started before you could even finish unpacking your bag. 

When you stepped outside, the cool air hit your skin and froze you all over - you expected low temperatures, but not that. 

“It’s cold!” you called out to the boys who were all sitting around the nearby campfire. 

“That’s why we have a fire, moron!” 

“It’s still cold,” you argued, even though you knew it was fruitless to fight with Kuroo.

“It’s alright, you’ll warm up,” Keiji told you. 

“Go warm her up, Akaashi!” 

You ignored Kuroo’s comment - you were not in a good place to be entertaining that thought, not when you’d be in bed with Keiji in just a few hours. 

Keiji seemed to ignore it, too. “Here, I saved you a seat.” He patted the vacant spot on the bench next to him, and you sat down. “You didn’t bring a jacket, did you?” 

“It’s inside,” you replied. “But I’m fine.” 

He didn’t even listen to your response, he was already pulling his hoodie off and giving it to you. 

“Are you sure?” you asked, holding it in your lap.

“Yes,” he replied. “It’ll keep you warm - you need it more than I do.” 

“How romantic,” Kuroo butted in, and it was only now that you noticed the beer in his hand - as well as the few empty cans next to him. 

Drunk Kuroo is always worse than Sober Kuroo, even though you could hardly believe he could ever get snarkier. It was like alcohol made him open his big mouth more, and it always made you nervous. Even though you knew he’d never say anything about your secret while anyone else was around, any time alcohol was involved made those chances go up.

“Just being nice,” Keiji said, obviously playing in to Kuroo’s banter. “I don’t see you offering her your jacket.” 

“Hey, I just don’t think you’d like it if I gave your girl my jacket, would you?” 

Keiji laughed at his slurred words and directed his reply at the group rather than to Kuroo, “He’s only had five beers and he’s already stuttering.” 

“We’ll see if he makes it to six before passing out,” you said, and while it made the others laugh, it seemed to rub Kuroo’s drunken fragile ego the wrong way. 

“I can handle my alcohol just fine, thank you.” 

Bokuto butted in, “Are you sure about that?” 

“You’ve been a lightweight since high school,” you added. 

Everyone laughed, Kuroo included. With his next words, he must have thought he was playing along with the joke. That you were all in on what he was about to say next. That they would have no repercussions, they would sting no ears. 

But when he said them, it sounded like a smack of thunder. 

“Yeah, and you’ve been hiding your feelings since high school - some things just never change, Y/N!” 

You could hardly hear Bokuto saying, “Feelings? For who?!”

“For Aka -”

“Kuroo.” 

You stood up. Keiji’s forgotten hoodie fell out of your lap and landed on the ground. Everything was quiet save for the fire cracking and the pounding of your heart. 

Your eyes said everything you needed to tell Kuroo. He stared right back at you, his face white as snow and his mouth hung open as he choked back his words. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. It was the calm before a fast approaching storm, one you couldn’t run away from. 

“You weren’t going to say Akaashi, were you? Surely not…” 

Kuroo turned his head to look at Bokuto, seeming to have no clue what to say. You kept staring as he shook his head, not having the courage to say anything else. 

“Pretty sure he was,” Tsukishima said.

“Oh. Shit.” 

You could have denied it - you didn’t. You could have been angry at Kuroo - you weren’t. You could have explained this away as him being drunk and talking out of his ass - you couldn’t. 

You didn’t dare turn to look at Keiji as you stormed toward the cabin. You refused to stay and let this situation become worse than it already was. 

You could hardly hear the words Keiji had for Kuroo, but they were something like, “Why the fuck did you do that?” and if you had been any less upset you would have been worried for how angry he sounded. 

You didn’t know what would happen next. If you thought about it, you were sure you’d fall apart, and that was the one thing you couldn’t let happen. You had to hold yourself together, you had to give this situation the benefit of the doubt. 

Maybe if you could just lie down and sleep before Keiji comes inside, you could wake up in the morning and everyone would act like nothing happened. Just because your secret is out doesn’t mean it was over - you could wait out this storm. 

That’s what you were doing when Keiji came into your shared bedroom. You lied in bed as Keiji slipped in, your back to him and the blanket pulled up to your chin. And, just like at those old sleepovers with him, you were pretending to be asleep.

You had to be good at pretending if you wanted to stay best friends with him. To be as close as you are, with the feelings that you keep for him, you learned how to hide from Keiji. And you had gotten good at it, too - at least, you liked to think so. You were sure he wouldn’t catch you awake. 

You tried not to think about what happened earlier. You tried not to dread what was coming if he knew you weren’t actually sleeping. 

Minutes passed and Akaashi stayed awake. Then, he looked over to you. 

“I know you’re awake.” 

Everything felt frozen, just for a moment, but you didn’t move. You kept your breathing deep and steady, you lied still. 

He reached a hand out to you, fisting your shirt into his palm. His thumb grazed your lower back, skin he exposed from grabbing your shirt. 

“Stop pretending. You’re bad at it.” 

It was like the world stopped spinning. Your world, anyway - the one you had made up in your head. The world where the only things Keiji didn’t know were all the things you were trying to hide from him; the world where, despite never being a good liar, you were good at lying to him. 

But that wasn’t the same world Keiji was living in.

“I know,” you replied, voice cracking through the words. 

You were sure he didn’t mean what he said in the way you felt it sting your chest, but it didn’t matter. Years of learning, hiding, pretending were all culminating in this moment, and if you weren’t careful you’d end up losing it all. 

His hand moved from your back to holding your side. “Will you look at me?” And you didn’t have a choice, because he was turning you to lay on your back, anyway. 

So you looked at him, because it’s what he asked you to do, and you felt the first crack in your poorly built foundation when you realized how close he was to you; then, he put his hand on your side and pulled you even closer.

It’s like he was looking through you. 

“I should tell you something,” he said, and you had some idea where he was going with this but you didn’t want to find out. No part of you wanted to hear what he was about to say. 

“You know… I already knew, Y/N.” 

There it was: the collapse. 

You couldn’t look at him anymore, so you closed your eyes and tried to keep pretending, even though you had nowhere left to hide. 

“Yeah.” The hand on your side was hot and heavy and hard; you hated how much you loved being touched by him, even right now when your made up world was ending. “I know.” 

“I’ve always known.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

You were so close to letting go, to breaking down in the pile of rubble. But you had built your house of lies on unsteady ground, after all; what else did you expect to happen other than this destruction? 

You wanted to cry. You didn’t. You couldn’t be angry at yourself or upset, because you saw this coming. After all, Keiji knows everything. He sees things you don’t even know are showing - he’s been able to read you like a book since before he even knew your name. 

Of course he knew. You were stupid to ever think he didn’t. 

He whispered your name, and then you felt him kiss your forehead. 

“I’m sorry,” you said again, meaning it with your whole heart even though you knew it wouldn’t change anything. 

“I should tell you something else,” he said, and it was quiet, like he was telling you a secret only you could know. He was treading carefully, choosing his words particularly - he didn’t do that often. You felt him bunching your shirt up in his fist again, you heard him sigh loudly. “I don’t even know how to say it.” 

The tears were finally slipping free as you began to understand what he was getting at, so you pulled back. You didn’t need him to pity you. 

“It’s fine,” you insisted, trying to push him away. He wouldn’t let you. “I know - I’ll get over it - you don’t have to tell me - I already know.” 

“No, you don’t - you don’t know, Y/N, please, just come here.” 

“Keiji -” 

“Let me show you.” He wasn’t speaking quietly anymore - this wasn’t a secret anymore. “I can’t explain it - let me show you, Y/N - please.” 

“Show me what?” 

“That I feel the same,” he said, pulling you back into his arms. 

For a second, you thought you misheard him.

And then, he kissed you. 

Soft, sweet, new lips were on yours, taking your breath as if he needed it to breathe himself, then breathing a new life into you that you never knew could be alive. It was like striking a match, flicking a lighter, starting a fire; you watched the rubble of your once hidden love burn, all at the hands of Keiji. 

At first you didn’t even know how to kiss him back. It was too much, too bright, too hot - and then, you couldn’t stop kissing him. You anchored your hands on the back of his neck and held him against you, silently begging him to let you take all that you wanted from him. 

You kissed him like you’d never get the chance to do this again, because you were sure you wouldn’t. This hardly felt real, let alone something that would ever happen more than once. So you savored it, you memorized this feeling so you could relive it in your dreams forever. 

A whimper reverberated through your throat and against Keiji’s lips and the feeling made him kiss you deeper, like he was searching for a way to get you to make that noise again. As the kiss got deeper, a natural progression came over your position; before you could realize it, Keiji was on top of you and lying between your legs. 

His touch was hotter than a flame and yet you couldn’t get enough of it. Every time his tongue brushed against yours, it took a part of you with it, and you were ready to give him all of you. 

And then, he stopped kissing you. 

He pulled back only slightly, and when you chased his lips he pulled back even more. You opened your eyes and stared up at him, at his blushed cheeks and pink lips and beautiful eyes. You could see the cogs in his mind turning and for a second it was like you were seeing a part of Keiji he’s never shown you before; the veil of his all knowing gaze was being dropped, only because he was letting it. 

Because all this time, Keiji was hiding, too - hiding in plain sight. You always thought he treated you the way he treated everyone else, that he knew everything about everyone, but it wasn’t true. He only knew all of your secrets because he took the time to find them. He only saw you for who you really were because he cared enough to know. And, unlike you, he was a good actor; good at pretending you weren’t special; good at building walls that would stay up until he was ready for them to come down. 

And with his next words, he made them shatter. 

“I love you.”  

You kept staring at him, trying to figure out if this nervous boy on top of you really was Keiji. 

“Really?” 

He nodded. 

“Say it again.” 

“I love you.” 

You brushed his hair out of his face and rested your hand on his cheek, still completely in awe of him, and this was all too much for you to believe. “Is this a prank?” 

He laughed at you, and his nerves seemed to melt away. 

“Damn, you caught me.” His forehead fell to rest on yours, your noses brushed. “No, it’s not a prank. I love you.” 

Somehow this intimacy felt all too foreign and way too familiar, all at once. It was overflowing, your heart was racing, it was hard to breathe, tears were falling from your eyes. 

“Say it again,” you whispered, begging him to assure you of this - to make you believe it. 

And he wiped your tears away as he told you, again, “I love you,” and the kiss he placed on your cheek seemed to make you weep even more. “And I should’ve told you sooner. I’m sorry, Y/N, I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” you replied immediately, “I love you, too - it’s okay.” 

“It’s not okay.” It was obvious, now, that this had been bothering Keiji for longer than you could ever know. “I just… wasn’t ready. Especially with volleyball, and then moving, and then starting university, I just - I never had enough of me to give to you. And you deserve all of me, not just what’s left of me at the end of the day - I don’t know. I’m just… sorry.” 

You didn’t know how to reply to that in a way that was good enough - all you could think to do was kiss him, because you finally could kiss him, so you did. And it was the same as your first: hot and sweet, familiar and foreign, intimate and overwhelming. 

And the more you kissed him, the more it stirred something up inside of you. He wasn’t holding back - not after holding back for years - and it was like he was trying to get any reaction he could out of you. You hooked your legs around his waist and pulled him closer than he’s ever been, and the way it felt to have him pressed up against you sent chills across your burning skin. 

You pulled back from the kiss just to take a breath. “Say it again,” you mumbled, because you weren’t tired of hearing those three words yet. A part of you still didn’t believe them.

Instead of saying them, though, he let his kisses trail down your jaw and onto your neck. You could feel the vibrations of his voice when he spoke, “Let me show you.” 

And you knew what he meant, but you teased him anyway, “How do you want to do that?”

His hips seemed to move on their own free will, thrusting against you as if he couldn’t stop them. And it proved that he was just as in over his head as you were; you liked that. You liked knowing you weren’t the only one in a daze. You liked having this effect on Keiji. 

“However you want,” he said through a dry throat. “We can do anything you want.” 

“I just want you,” you told him honestly. You had no other choice anymore - the truth was all you had left. 

“You have me,” he replied. “I’m yours - just let me show you.” 

Your next kiss was interrupted by his shirt coming off, then yours. You felt his bare skin against yours and you were sure this was enough, that you were content with just this. This feeling was all that you needed. 

“You’re pretty,” he whispered to you as his eyes scanned your bare body, and it left you shaking in anticipation as his lips made their way to your chest. “The prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” 

Your eyes couldn’t leave his face as your fingers carded through his hair; you felt his hands travel the length of your body, and every kiss he left on your skin felt like it was touching your heart - all you could do was watch. 

His hand moved lower, his fingers were teasing the edge of your shorts, but he hesitated to cross the barrier. You grabbed his wrist and pushed him across it, showing him that you couldn’t wait for this. 

That’s all Keiji needed to understand how far you were willing to go with him. His skilled fingers worked against you, slipping into your underwear and touching you exactly where you needed them to, and it was better than anything you could ever dream. 

And he did it like it was easy, like he’s spent years getting to know your body and he was doing what he knew would work. Like this was routine rather than your first time. 

This sure as hell felt like it was your first time doing this; you had never felt so sensitive or open or vulnerable. But you had never been touched by a man you wanted so much; you never thought you’d feel his fingers spreading you open or see him on top of you - this is something you’ve only done in daydreams, and now it was real. 

For the first time you were vulnerable and okay with it. You were letting him have all of you, and you trusted that he would treat you right. And he was. Maybe it was your love for him or the disbelief of the situation or both clouding your judgement, but you were convinced that his fingers felt better than your own. 

“Is this okay?” he asked in a whisper, and you replied with a moan that you couldn’t hold in anymore. He laughed, “Does that mean yes?” 

“Keiji, please don’t tease.” 

“I’m not teasing yet,” he replied with a few kisses along your jaw. You felt his fingers moving more, moving toward going inside, but he hesitated. “Y/N…” 

You were pulled out of your daze for just a second as you looked up at his furrowed brows and half lidded eyes; his face left you wondering what he was about to say next. 

“I really like the sounds you’re making,” he said, “but if anyone hears we’ll never hear the end of it.” 

You laughed, because you had completely forgotten that you and Keiji weren’t the only two people in the world - let alone this house. 

“Right,” you breathed out. 

“I’ll give you anything you ask for, but you…” 

Two of his fingers slid into you, and you held back a gasp. 

“...have to stay quiet. Can you do that for me?” 

You nodded, trying your best to take deep breaths rather than let your voice out. 

“Yeah?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” you replied, giving another nod. 

“Good,” he said. 

His fingers curled, and you covered your mouth with your palm. 

“Stay quiet,” he said, even though it felt like he was doing everything he could so you’d do the opposite. His fingers curling into you were begging for a reaction, and it was hard not to give him one. “Fuck, you’re so hot.” 

Keiji’s hips were moving again, thrusting against your leg like he just couldn’t help it. You wanted to give him more but you couldn’t - your hands were busy covering your mouth and holding onto the sheets for your life, and so all you could do was watch him grinding against you. 

“You’re one to talk,” you replied, making him laugh. 

Both of you looked down and watched; the curl of his fingers moved in time with his thrusts against you - every time they came forward, you felt his length sliding up your thigh. And when he pulled back, his fingers straightened out. 

You’d give anything to have more. “Keiji,” you started, but you just couldn’t get the words out. 

He said them for you as he pulled his fingers out, “Can I fuck you?” 

You had no other answer besides, “Please,” and you were ready to beg for it if that’s what it came to. 

He started to pull his boxers off, but again, he hesitated. The arm he was holding himself up with was trembling, his breathing was unsteady, his entire body seemed tense. Keiji was hanging on by a thread. 

“Are you sure you want this?” he asked.

You were taken aback. “Keiji…” 

“We don’t have to do this now - is it too soon? Are you sure you want me?” 

It was hard to listen to his voice when it sounded so honest. 

Your hands took place on either side of his face, ensuring he would look at you while you spoke to him. 

“Keiji… do you want this?” 

“More than anything,” he replied. 

“I can tell,” you joked, and he rolled his eyes at you. “I’ve wanted you for longer than I can remember - I don’t think it’s too soon. But we can wait if you want. There’s no pressure, okay?” 

“I don’t,” he said. “I can’t wait - I’m so hard it fucking hurts - I just don’t want you to -” 

“You think too much.” 

He laughed. “I know.” 

You let your hands travel down to his chest, hoping you got through to him. “Don’t overthink it. I want you to fuck me, Keiji,” and your hips thrusted against his as if to convince him of how badly you needed it. “Sooner rather than later.”

It seemed to be good enough, he seemed to believe you, because now he wasn’t hesitating to take off his shorts and yours. The view it gave you struck a burning desire like no other - now that you could see all of him, you couldn’t handle not having all of him. 

And he was raring to give himself to you, coaxing his cock inside of you until you took it all, and both of you felt like you were about to explode. 

“Oh, fuck,” he moaned, and the volume of his voice pulled you back down to the real world. 

“Stay quiet,” you reminded him, giggling because the tables had turned on him. 

“I know,” he said with a nod. “You just feel so good - you’re so fucking tight -  I can’t believe this is happening - oh, fuck, it’s too much.” 

“Move, Keiji,” you whined, bucking your hips up to try to feel anything, and he cursed under his breath when he pulled back to watch your desperate attempt at fucking yourself with his cock. 

“You can do it,” he teased, pulling his hips back a little more so you had more room to move. “Keep going - fuck me like that, kitten, don’t stop.” 

You were dying to feel him meeting your thrusts, because this wasn’t nearly enough, but you loved his teasing. 

“That’s it,” he said, “that’s my girl. Taking me so well, fuck, you’re perfect.” 

He couldn’t take it anymore, that was obvious as his thrusts started. He took a hold of your hips and held you in place so he could take you at his own pace, and he was everything you could ever need. 

Your love for him was spilling from your lips and he was doing everything he could to keep you saying it, bringing you higher with every passing second. Feeling him between your thighs and inside your walls was intoxicating. It was everything you hoped it would be, simply because it was Keiji. 

“I’m close,” you said as if he needed a warning - he could probably already tell. 

“Quiet, kitten,” he said to you, bringing your lips up to his for a kiss. “These sounds are for me - don’t want anyone else hearing what’s mine. Be a good girl for me.” 

“I’m trying,” you replied, and he cooed at your whining. 

“I know,” he mumbled, and just by the sound of his voice you could tell he was liking this. And he was going to make it harder for you when his hand trailed down your body so his fingers could circle your clit. 

He kissed you hard to stop any sound you were about to make and you were grateful for it. 

“I want you to cum for me,” he said, “and I don’t want you to make a sound when you do.” 

“Keiji -” 

His hips and fingers sped up. “I’m serious. Come on, kitten, be my good girl - make me proud and stay quiet while you’re cumming all over my cock. You can do it, I know you can.” 

Any trust he had in you staying quiet until the end was completely misplaced - you knew that when his hand clamped down over your mouth. You didn’t try to hold in your voice at all, and Keiji was having just as much trouble, burying his face into your neck to muffle his noises the best he could. 

It didn’t matter if anyone else could hear you; to you, nothing else mattered but Keiji. He was the only other person in your world, the only person your body would ever scream so loudly for. As long as it was him bringing you to this euphoria, you didn’t care who else knew about it. 

Let your friends give you hell for it, let Kuroo say I told you so - you’d deal with the embarrassment in the morning. That moment was worth it. 

The soft kisses he was leaving on your neck in the wake of hitting your peaks helped you float back down easily. It was like being woken up from a dream, one where the only thing you could remember was how pleasant it was. 

“You were not quiet,” Keiji laughed. You felt your cheeks swelling and heating up in embarrassment. 

“I couldn’t help it…” 

“It’s okay,” he replied. “You still made me proud.” 

He lied next to you and pulled you close, and you convinced yourself that you were going to be there in his arms forever. If you were, you’d have no complaints. 

A quiet moment passed, and you couldn’t stand the silence. “How was… that?” 

He pulled back to look at you with wide eyes, as if he didn’t expect you to ask. “What do you mean?” 

“Was it good? Did you like it? Was I -” 

“It was perfect,” he said, biting his lip and looking up at the ceiling as if his high hadn’t completely worn off. “It was everything. Don’t get all shy and insecure on me now that you know I love you back.”  

“Shut up,” you said with a laugh. “I’m just making sure.” 

“Do you need me to prove it to you again?” 

“Maybe.”

“I’ll make sure you stay quiet for me this time, then.” 

Whether or not the two of you were successful in your attempts to keep the noise down was up for debate, but by the end of the night, neither of you cared. 

And the next morning, when you forced yourself to leave Keiji and the warmth of the bed, you found Kuroo pacing outside of your door. 

“Y/N.” 

“Hey.” 

“I’m sorry - I’m so sorry - what I said last night was way out of line, and I don’t expect you to forgive me for it -”

“It’s fine, Kuroo,” you said, because it was. If you were being honest, after the night you had with Keiji you had completely forgotten about what Kuroo said. 

“It’s not fine,” he argued. “I shouldn’t have done that - you trusted me not to say anything about your feelings, and then I did. I fucked up - why aren’t you pissed right now?” 

Before you could start to think of a reply, the door behind you opened. Keiji’s bed head popped out. 

“Can you guys be quiet?” 

“Sorry,” Kuroo immediately replied. 

Then, Keiji turned to you. “Can you come back to bed? It’s cold.” 

You nodded, and Keiji went back inside, and the moment you looked at Kuroo’s face, you knew he’d figured things out. 

“Did you guys fuck?!” 

You had no response. Keiji, however, called out a simple, “Yeah,” leaving you covering your face in embarrassment. 

“Holy shit. I -” 

You went back into your bedroom before he could even finish his words, slamming the door in his face so he couldn’t finish his boasting. But you heard him say, “You’re welcome!” before finally trodding off, and you shook off your embarrassment as best as you could. 

The breakfast you needed minutes ago was long forgotten as you looked at the view in front of you of the boy who was yours. Keiji was waiting for you with sleepy eyes peeking up at you from soft sheets, a grin on his face, and his arms open. 

He didn’t have to say a word - you were in those arms in seconds. Both of you released a sigh of relief; Keiji was warm again, and you were being held by him again. 

“Finally.” 

“I was gone for, like, two minutes, tops.” 

“I don’t care,” he replied. “It was long enough that I got too cold without you here.”

You felt like you should have more to say, but you didn’t. 

You’d spent years hoping for a moment like this. It was as soft and golden and happy as you’d ever dreamed, and moments like those didn’t need words. You knew how Keiji felt, and despite all your attempts at hiding, Keiji knew how you felt, too. 

And in that moment, when the two of you were lying in the afterglow of intimacy from the night before, finally knowing is all that mattered. 

 - 

tune in tomorrow for kinktober day 2: royal 

[gimme-mor]

BETWEEN THE LINES: NIGHT COURT ELAIN & SPRING COURT FEYRE

*DISCLAIMER*

This is a really long post and based on my interpretation of the text.

This is strictly an analysis of Elain as a character because, in my opinion, there isn’t a lot of talk about Elain outside of ships and conversations about her character arc typically revolve around to whom she is paired, especially if that person is Azriel. She is her own character and gets the short end of the stick in the fandom because everyone is more concerned about who she’s shipped with rather than her as a character.

Also, anyone who is rude/condescending will automatically be blocked.

In ACOSF, SJM went out of her way on two occasions to highlight Elain not looking good in black. While it may be minor or insignificant to some, I think those instances were meant to show something about Elain specifically and what she may be going through in the Night Court. Elain has been a passive character for the most part, contributing to things in her own way earlier in the series. But after she was taken by the Cauldron, her safety has become everyone’s main concern and the other characters have slowly excluded her from courtly matters. In ACOWAR, this was understandable because she was traumatized and not fully present. However, as of ACOSF, Elain was still excluded from courtly matters with the other characters heavily relying upon Nesta, who made her reservations known, because they were on a time constraint and couldn’t afford to wait for Elain to reacquaint herself with her powers.

The fact that the other characters use the kidnapping situation to excuse their current actions toward Elain is eerily similar to the way Tamlin and Lucien used the Under the Mountain events to excuse Tamlin’s actions toward Feyre in ACOMAF. And the characters use Elain and Feyre’s safety to justify why neither of them should be involved. In my opinion, Elain in the Night Court resembles Feyre in the Spring Court because not only do they experience similar things, but both of them are (or were in Feyre’s case) in places that stunt their growth. Even though Night Court Elain isn’t exposed to all of the things that Spring Court Feyre was exposed to, the similarities in their experiences (and how those similarities might potentially impact Elain similarly to the way they impacted Feyre) shouldn’t be overlooked.

Being monitored

Feyre

I was too watched－too monitored and judged. Why should the bride of the High Lord learn to fight if peace had returned? That had been Ianthe’s reasoning when I’d made the mistake of mentioning it at dinner. Tamlin, to his credit, had seen both sides: I’d learn to protect myself...but the rumors would spread. (ACOMAF)

“Tamlin－Tamlin, I can’t...I can’t live my life with guards around me day and night. I can’t live with that...suffocation. Just let me help you－let me work with you.” (. . .) “I’m drowning,” I managed to say. “I am drowning. And the more you do this, the more guards...You might as well be shoving my head under the water.” (ACOMAF)

Elain

Nesta said, “The Trove. And what happened the last time I scried.” Feyre said, “We won’t allow any harm to come to Elain. Rhys warded her this morning, and we have eyes on her at all times.” “Eyes can be blinded,” Nesta said. “Not the ones under my command,” Azriel said with soft menace. Nesta met his stare, knowing he was the only one aside from Feyre who could truly understand her hesitation. He’d gone with Feyre into the heart of Hybern’s camp to save Elain－he knew the risk. “We won’t make the same mistake twice.” She believed him. “All right.” (ACOSF)

Trying to fit in

Feyre

I hated the bright dresses that had become my daily uniform, but didn’t have the heart to tell Tamlin－not when he’d bought so many, not when he looked so happy to see me wear them. Not when his words weren’t far from the truth. The day I put on my pants and tunics, the day I strapped weapons to myself like fine jewelry, it would send a message far and clear across the lands. So I wore the gowns, and let Alis arrange my hair－if only so it would buy these people a measure of peace and comfort. (ACOMAF)

I sometimes debated asking her to pray for me as well. To pray that I’d one day learn to love the dresses, and the parties, and my role as a blushing, pretty bride. (ACOMAF)

Elain

And he knew the cruelty of the Hewn City troubled her. But she hadn’t hesitated to come. When Feyre had offered to let her remain home, Elain had squared her shoulders and declared that she was a part of this court－and would do whatever she needed. (ACOSF)

So Elain had let her golden-brown hair down tonight, and pinned it back with twin combs of pearl. He’d never once in the two years he’d known her found Elain to be plain, but wearing black, no matter how much she claimed to be part of this court...It sucked the life from her. (ACOSF)

Pretending everything’s all right

Feyre

“Fine,” I breathed. I made myself look him in the eye, made myself smile. (ACOMAF)

Elain

“And you?” I made myself say. “Are you－all right?” Elain looked over a shoulder at me as we entered the foyer, then turned left－to the dining room. In the sitting room across the way, all conversation halted at the smell of food. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?” she asked, a smile lighting up her face. I’d seen those smiles before. On my own damn face. (ACOFAS)

Clothes not looking right on them

Feyre

I really, truly hated my wedding gown. It was a monstrosity of tulle and chiffon and gossamer, so unlike the loose gowns I usually wore: the bodice fitted, the neckline curved to plump my breasts, and the skirts...The skirts were a sparkling tent, practically floating in the balmy spring air (. . .) I might have dealt with it all if it weren’t for the puffy capped sleeves, so big I could almost see them glinting from the periphery of my vision. My hair had been curled, half up, half down, entwined with pearls and jewels and the Cauldron knew what, and it had taken all my self-control to keep from cringing at the mirror before descending the sweeping stairs into the main hall. (ACOMAF)

I again surveyed the room, my wedding gown hissing on the warm marble floors. I peered down at myself. You look ridiculous. (ACOMAF)

Elain

Elain in black was ridiculous. Yes, she was beautiful, but the color of her long-sleeved, modest gown leeched the brightness from her face. It wore her, rather than the other way around. (ACOSF)

Looking good in clothes that suit them and that fact being pointed out

Feyre

My high-waisted peach pants were loose and billowing, gathered at the ankles with velvet cuffs of bright gold. The long sleeves of the matching top were made of gossamer, also gathered at the wrists, and the top itself hung just to my navel, revealing a sliver of skin as I walked. Comfortable, easy to move in－to run. Feminine. Exotic. (ACOMAF)

But those claws now dug in－and my entire body, my heart, my lungs, my blood yielded to his grip, utterly at his command as he said, The fashion of the Night Court suits you. (ACOMAF)

Elain

Gone was the ill-suited black dress from the ball, replaced by a gown of amethyst velvet, her hair half-up and curling down to her waist. She glowed with good health. (ACOSF)

People not wanting them to be involved in things

Feyre

“I want to go.” “No.” I crossed my arms, tucking my tattooed hand under my right bicep, and spread my feet slightly further apart on the dirt floor of the stables. “It’s been three months. Nothing’s happened, and the village isn’t even five miles－” “No.” (ACOMAF)

“I could use my powers against Hybern.” “That’s out of the question,” Tamlin said, “especially as there will be no war against Hybern.” “Rhys says war is inevitable, and we’ll be hit hard.” Lucien said drily, “And Rhys knows everything?” “No－but...He was concerned. He thinks I can make a difference in any upcoming conflict.” Tamlin flexed his fingers－keeping those claws contained. “You have no training in battle or weaponry. And even if I started training you today, it’d be years before you could hold your own on an immortal battlefield.” He took a tight breath. “So despite what he thinks you might be able to do, Feyre, I’m not going to have you anywhere near a battlefield. Especially if it means revealing whatever powers you have to our enemies. You’d be fighting Hybern at your front, and have foes with friendly faces at your back.” “I don’t care－” “I care,” Tamlin snarled. Lucien whooshed out a breath. “I care if you die, if you’re hurt, if you will be in danger every moment for the rest of our lives. So there will be no training, and we’re going to keep this between us.” (ACOMAF)

Elain

“Nesta’s spine straightened. No one spoke, but their attention lingered on her like a film on her skin. ‘You will not go looking for it.’” (ACOSF)

“Then go off on adventures,” Nesta said. “Go drink and fuck strangers. But stay away from the Cauldron.” (. . .) “Keep out of this,” she hissed at her youngest sister. “I have no doubt you put these thoughts in her head, probably encouraging her to throw herself into harm’s way－” (ACOSF)

Amren said, “We do not have the time to wait for Nesta to decide. I say we approach Elain tomorrow. Better to have both of them working on it.” Azriel stiffened, an outright sign of temper from him as he said quietly, “There is an innate darkness to the Dread Trove that Elain should not be exposed to.” “But Nesta should?” Cassian growled. Everyone stared at him. He swallowed, offering an apologetic glance to Az, who shrugged it off. Amren drained her wine and said to Cassian, “Nesta has a week. One more week to find the Trove with her own methods. Then we seek out other routes.” She threw a nod toward Azriel. “Including Elain, who is more than capable of defending herself against the darkness of the Trove, if she chooses to. Don’t underestimate her.” (ACOSF)

“I think Eris is our ally, and will expect to dance with a lady of this court at the ball no matter what. I won’t let Feyre within five feet of him, Mor might kill him, and Amren is more likely to scare him off than win him over, so you and Elain are the only options.” “Elain doesn’t go near him,” Feyre said. (ACOSF)

Their safety being brought up when they want to be involved

Feyre

“Please. The recovery efforts are so slow. I could hunt for the villagers, get them food－” “It’s not safe,” Tamlin said, again nudging his stallion into a walk. The horse’s coat shone like a dark mirror, even in the shade of the stables. “Especially not for you.” He’d said that every time we had this argument; every time I begged him to let me go to the nearby village of High Fae to help rebuild what Amarantha had burned years ago (. . .) “People want to come back, they want a place to live－” “Those same people see you as a blessing－a marker of stability. If something happened to you…” (. . .)Tamlin said softly, “I can’t do what I need to if I’m worrying about whether you’re safe.” (ACOMAF)

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he murmured. “It’s fine,” I breathed. “I understand.” Not a lie, but not quite the truth. His fingers grazed lower, circling my belly button. “You are－you’re everything to me,” he said thickly. “I need...I need you to be all right. To know they can’t get to you－can’t hurt you anymore.” (ACOMAF)

“Tamlin got what I didn’t,” Lucien said softly, his breathing ragged. “We all heard your neck break. But you got to come back. And I doubt that he will ever forget that sound, either. And he will do everything in his power to protect you from that danger again, even if it means keeping secrets, even if it means sticking to rules you don’t like. In this, he will not bend. So don’t ask him to－not yet.” (ACOMAF)

“Did he let you take me today,” I said hoarsely, “so that I’d stop asking to help rebuild?” “No. I decided to take you myself. For that exact reason. They don’t want or need your help. Your presence is a distraction and a reminder of what they went through.” (. . .) “I know you wanted to help,” Lucien offered. “I’m sorry.” So was I. (ACOMAF)

Elain

“The last time we involved ourselves with the Cauldron, it abducted you,” Nesta countered, fighting her shaking. (ACOSF)

“Like calls to like,” Amren countered. “You were Made by the Cauldron. You may track other objects Made by it as well, as Briallyn can. And because you are Made by it, you are immune to the influence and power of the Trove. You might use them, yes, but they cannot be used upon you.” A glance to Elain. “Either of you.” Nesta swallowed. “I can’t.” But to let Elain involve herself, jeopardize her safety－ (ACOSF)

Nesta’s pulse pounded throughout her body. “Do you not remember the war? What we encountered? Do you not remember the Cauldron kidnapping you, bringing you into the heart of Hybern’s camp?” “I do,” Elain said coldly. (ACOSF)

If it was between her and Elain, there was no choice at all. She would always go first if it meant keeping Elain from harm. Even if she’d just hurt her sister more than she could stomach. (ACOSF)

Pushing back against what others want

Feyre

He hissed, “You have no idea how hard it is for him to even let you off the estate grounds. He’s under more pressure than you realize.” “I know exactly how much pressure he endures. And I didn’t realize I’d become a prisoner.” “You’re not－” He clenched his jaw. “That’s not how it is and you know it.” “He didn’t have any trouble letting me hunt and wander on my own when I was a mere human. When the borders were far less safe.” “He didn’t care for you the way he does now. And after what happened Under the Mountain…” The words clanged in my head, along my too-tense muscles. “He’s terrified. Terrified of seeing you in his enemies’ hands. And they know it, too－they know all they have to do to own him would be to get ahold of you.” “You think I don’t know that? But does he honestly expect me to spend the rest of my life in that manor, overseeing servants and wearing pretty clothes?” (ACOMAF)

Elain

Cassian shifted in his seat. “So we track down the Dread Trove－how?” Elain spoke from the doorway, having appeared so silently that they all twisted toward her, “Using me.” Nesta’s head went silent as Elain’s words finished sounding in the room. Feyre had twisted in her seat, face white with alarm. Nesta shot to her feet. “No.” Elain remained in the doorway, her face pale but her expression harder than Nesta had ever seen it. “You do not decide what I can and cannot do, Nesta.” (ACOSF)

“It nearly killed me. It trapped me like a bird in a cage.” Elain said, “Then I will find it. I might require some time to...reacquaint myself with my powers, but I could start today.” “Absolutely not,” Nesta spat, fingers curling at her sides. “Absolutely not.” “Why?” Elain demanded. “Shall I tend to my little garden forever?” When Nesta flinched, Elain said, “You can’t have it both ways. You cannot resent my decision to lead a small, quiet life while also refusing to let me do anything greater.” (ACOSF)

Being used as pawns against others

Feyre

“We need you to tell us everything,” Tamlin said. “The layout of the Night Court, who you saw, what weapons and powers they bore, what Rhys did, who he spoke to, any and every detail you can recall.” “I didn’t realize I was a spy.” Lucien shifted in his seat, but Tamlin said, “As much as I hate your bargain, you’ve been granted access into the Night Court. Outsiders rarely get to go in－and if they do, they rarely come out in one piece. And if they can function, their memories are usually...scrambled. Whatever Rhysand is hiding in there, he doesn’t want us knowing about it.” (ACOMAF)

Elain

Rhys angled his head at the not-quite question. “I trust in the fact that we currently have possession of the one thing he wants above all else. And as long as that remains, he’ll try to stay on our good side. But if that changes...His talent was wasted in the Spring Court. There was a reason he had that fox mask, you know.” His mouth tugged to the side. “If he got Elain away, back to Spring or wherever...do you believe, deep down, that he wouldn’t sell what he knows? Either for gain, or to ensure she stays safe?” “You let him hear everything tonight, though.” (. . .) I considered his question: Did I trust Lucien? “I don’t know, either,” I admitted, and sighed. “I don’t like that Elain is a pawn in this.” “I know. It’s never easy.” (ACOWAR)

Cassian glowered at Amren. “It’s not right to wield Elain as a threat to manipulate Nesta into scrying.” “There are harsher ways to convince Nesta, boy.” (ACOSF)

Although Elain and Feyre are surrounded by two different groups of people with varying levels of care for their wellbeing, they’re treated similarly which is hard to overlook. In Elain’s situation, Nesta, Azriel, and Feyre take on the “Tamlin role” (either undermining Elain’s attempts to contribute to things or preventing Elain from helping altogether) while everyone else takes on the “Lucien role” (validating the concerns of others while also enabling their behaviors, which doesn’t support Elain’s desire to be involved).

[carlyraejcpsen]

alright, i’ve tried to keep quiet because i truly believe in karma and wanted this rp to close through the admin’s own actions and not give them any opportunities to blame it on me instead. it also felt like beating a dead horse, because i was sure they’d close the rp after losing a huge proportion of their active members and the majority of their diversity. however, after seeing multiple people sharing their experiences today, they are still posting promo posts and starting their event. so yeah, here’s my experience with @thevillagerp​​

NOTE: i no longer have screenshots from my conversations with the admins, as i blocked them when i left the rp for the sake of my own mental health, but i did save the text in my drafts, so the messages below are copy pasted. i have not edited them in any way. They also deleted my original anonymous messages off of their blog.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: racism, very vague allusions to homophobia and transphobia

so i was a member of this roleplay for around two months. during my time there, it was startlingly obvious that white fcs were preferred and prioritised, both from the fact that they got more plots and interactions in general and from the fact that admins never promoted diversity on the main. even now, they repeatedly say they “would still love to receive some more male and non-binary apps” while ignoring that they currently have a ratio of 8 fcs of colour to 24 white fcs. their diversity rules at the time were that 1/3 of a mun’s characters had to be played by an fcoc. so people could easily just play one or two white characters.

a while ago, i sent an anonymous message to the main asking if they had considered perhaps changing this rule to be 2/3 characters instead of 1/3, since there were so few muses of colour in the roleplay (as i said before, they’ve since deleted this from their blog so i cannot provide a screenshot). they responded that they had been thinking of upping the character limit to four instead of three, with a rule that 2/4 must be played by an fcoc. i gave them the benefit of the doubt and the time to enact this change, but nothing happened.

so a few weeks later, i sent them this message on anonymous:

I was wondering if you had thought any more about the diversity rules here? I know you said before that you were considering increasing the character limit, but I noticed that hasn’t happened and I wanted to know if that was a change we’re going to see or if you would consider changing the rules in another way? I’m really disheartened by the lack of diversity in the roleplay

at the time there were 18 characters of colour out of a total of over 60. they responded (again, i’m sorry i don’t have the actual wording since they’ve deleted the messages) that they had thought about it and decided against upping the character limit, but instead would be having a weekly “poc acceptance day,” where they would only be accepting apps with fcs of colour. they also said they were doing this “now that the waitlist was mostly cleared,” which meant that the rp was mostly at capacity anyway, so they needed to look more at how to encourage their existing members to promote diversity, since there weren’t spaces open for new people to bring them in.

i responded with another anon expressing my disappointment and pointing out that they had done more to prevent having too many celebrity characters than too few muses of colour, as at the time they had a ban on celebrity muses. i wouldn’t usually suggest a ban on certain fcs, but as it was something they had done for celebrity characters, then i supposed it was a reasonable option.

they didn’t even respond to this message and instead posted on the main asking me to come off anon to discuss it. so i did, and i sent them the following dm:

i didn’t want to come off anon because i honestly feel really ostracised in this group and didn’t want to make it worse, but i don’t want to drop this issue and you aren’t comfortable addressing it publicly so here we are i guess. like i said in my previous message, i really don’t see how a “poc acceptance day” is going to make anywhere near enough of a difference. people will just wait for the opportunity to play their white characters. there are only 18 characters of colour in a roleplay with over 60 characters. that’s less than a third, which is obviously concerning. what’s even more concerning for me is that these characters are more often than not overlooked. i am often ghosted when plotting, or people don’t even reach out at all when i like plotting calls or intro posts. and then i have to watch characters like leo almost exclusively interact with white women (i’m sure that’s not the only example, but it is the first that comes to mind as he is one of the more active characters).

so this issue goes so much deeper than there just not being adequate representation in the rp. i really tried to help, i suggested making it a rule that 2/3 characters need to be poc in my original ask and you mentioned upping the character limit in response. i was worried that my concerns were being brushed aside, but i waited a while to give you the benefit of the doubt and the space to discuss the issue. so you can understand why it was really upsetting today to learn that the one thing you suggested was dropped and instead replaced with something that is barely scratching the surface of the problem. and i don’t know if it was your intention, but by saying that you were waiting for the waitlist to clear, it comes across as not wanting to receive any backlash from people who would want to join with only white characters. and even if people did want to join with faceclaims of colour, they can’t because the waitlist is cleared. like i suggested, you could change the rules so that 2 out of 3 characters must be people of colour. or, as was your proposed idea, up the character limit to four. you could also put a temporary ban on white faceclaims until the ratio evens out. as i mentioned, it’s really distressing that this was something you were willing to do for celebrity characters, but not to aid diversity.

i also just want to make it clear that these have been the only anons i’ve sent, i know you’ve been getting other ones, but those weren’t from me!!

( for context, they were receiving anons from someone else claiming that they felt left out in the rp ).

i had hoped that coming off anon would show them that this was a very real issue which was affecting their members, as well as giving them a space to discuss it privately instead of on the main. they responded with:

Hi Em, thank you for coming forward. We really, really appreciate it and we understand it’s not an easy thing to do. We also appreciate you flying the flag for diversity so strongly. We can always strive to be better, we are on the same page with you here.

Let us just explain our decision making. Firstly, just to address the waitlist, that was certainly not at all our intention when we brought it up. It was a logistical decision with 5+ applicants having already waited a week for acceptance and aware of their position on a waitlist.

When we decided against upping the character limit (and therefore the 2/4 POC character rule), we thought a POC acceptance day could be a good alternative course of action. In our eyes, this was something that would probably bring more POC characters to the group than the 2/4 rule because we knew there weren’t going to be many muns taking up an additional fourth character. This was a rule we’ve seen other groups enjoy success from so we wanted to try it out here. Plus, we think a day that explicitly highlights diversity every week would bring the message to the forefront of everyone’s minds. As we said, we’re going to monitor this over the next couple of weeks to see if it brings any improvement because we’d really like to have it as an ongoing rule.

The non-POC ban is actually a measure we’ve spoken about too and we are considering putting one in place should this fail. Thank you for raising your concerns, know that we’ve taken them very seriously and we hope that you’ll trust our judgement in trying this rule out first to see where it leads.

first of all, i don’t think i even have to mention the wording of “flying the flag for diversity.” but the real crux of the issue here is that they supposedly wanted me to come off anon to discuss the issue, but instead just explained their idea further and didn’t take anything i said on board. they didn’t even say a single word about how i told them i felt ostracised and regularly got ignored. i knew from speaking to other muns in the rp who played muses of colour (and just from looking at the dash) that they felt the same way too, but of course was only speaking from my own experience.

i thought long and hard about how to respond to this, as i was so disheartened by their unwillingness to listen to their members and the fact that they didn’t care that i felt left out. it felt like they had asked me to come off anon just so they knew who was messaging them and therefore put a target on my back, so honestly the thought of being on the dash or talking to the admins made me incredibly anxious. before i had a chance, however, they responded again with:

Hi hun, we’ve continued discussing this issue over the last couple of days and we wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to put in place a non-POC ban instead. Thank you again for holding a mirror up to the group. We do hope that this will recorrect the balance.

so i waited to see how things would play out. they posted about this new ban here and pinned the post to the top of the main:

[ IMAGE ID: a screenshot from thevillagehq of an admin update, which reads: in the interest of keeping the village a diverse space, we are currently only accepting applications for POCs. please note that any apps or reserves submitted to us for faceclaims that are not POCs will be deleted. we will lift this rule once we see fit.

thank you for your understanding and your efforts in making this group a brighter, more inclusive and diverse place for all. /END ID ]

this rule remained in place for around two weeks, during which time they made almost no effort to promote it. the above post was pinned to the main page, but that was the only mention of the ban anywhere on their page, they didn’t update the rules page or even put a note on the application page about it. during this two week period, the admins posted 10 promo posts, none of which suggested fcs or even mentioned the ban or diversity at all. the ban was then lifted suddenly when the pinned post was removed and the admins just went back to accepting apps with white fcs. the ratio had only evened out in those two weeks (from 18 out of 65 to 24/50) because of people going inactive or leaving, and there was nothing put into place to continue to promote diversity after the lift of the ban. in the three days after the ban was lifted, the admins posted over 10 promo posts, the same amount they had posted during the entirety of the ban. it was clear that they had no intention of actually making changes in their rp and had only done so because i refused to drop the issue.

again, i thought a lot about what i wanted to message them. i knew at this point that they didn’t want to make any real changes, but i still felt like i had to make it clear to them how disappointing their actions were. once again, i was messaged before i even had a chance, this time for bubbling.

as you can see in the above correspondence, i had told the admins point blank that i felt left out and ignored in the rp because of the characters i played (aubrey plaza, mj rodriguez and keiynan lonsdale fcs. all of my characters were queer and used either she/they or they/them pronouns). as a general rule, the only people who wanted to write with me and have interesting plots with me were people who played other muses of colour. the rp had a rule that you must reply to 3+ muns on every character, which i had been doing. i had only been back from my hiatus for a few days at this point and had responded to 6 different open starters the day prior. their message to me read:

Hi hun. There’s something we wanted to address to you directly. It’s been expressed to us by multiple members during these last few weeks that they have felt excluded by your character within the group, especially when it comes to the friend bubble that has formed between Mars, Bowie, Luvena, Asher and others. 

While we encourage the development of friendships and trust that this isn’t intentional, we have a zero tolerance for bubble roleplaying at The Village. We are aware that our three mun activity rules have been met by all parties involved, however, bubbling is usually a little more nuanced than that and it seems it has unfortunately begun to create a bit of a divide within the group. 

We have already issued individual warnings to a few people within the bubble, however with multiple members still expressing their concerns to us, we decided it would be better to address the group as a whole. We hope that by pointing this out to you, you will try and branch out to your fellow members a little more from now on - and try and be a little more inclusive when it comes to everyone else in the group. 

We take such matters very seriously as admins, and while we hope it won’t have to come to this, there will be consequential steps taken should we not see any changes in your interactions in the weeks to come.

as you can imagine, i was incredibly upset to receive this message after already telling them i didn’t get plots from many of their members and they had done nothing. even people who i had previously messaged continued to only write with the same few white characters. i don’t deny that we definitely had a friendship group between our characters, but there were multiple people in that roleplay, including the admins, who only cared about ship plots or plots with the same few muns. me and other people who received the same message had all previously told the admins that people aren’t plotting with us and gotten ignored, so receiving this message made it clear that they neither cared about us nor wanted us in their rp. and so i responded as below:

yeah i literally told you i felt left out because there are multiple people only writing with white characters and you never addressed it, so this message is honestly insulting. i have reached out to almost every new member, responded to multiple open starters and have tried to plot with as many people as possible. like i told you, i am often left on read or people don’t even message me at all. if people do message me, i am usually expected to put in all of the effort and if people aren’t interested in actually developing plots with me then i am obviously not going to force my characters on them. all of my characters are queer, non binary people of colour and the harsh truth of this roleplay is that people don’t care about them. i even wrote out a whole list of 20 detailed suggested connections in an attempt to get more plots and nothing came from that either. i’ve even gotten anonymous hate saying that offering to explain my characters’ pronouns was “patronising,” which i didn’t feel like i could approach you about because, when i told you about how i’m feeling excluded, you didn’t care.

so if i only have actual plots with the people who actually care about my characters, i make no apologies. i also don’t even have threads with half of the characters you named, asher being the only one, and have literally only just come off hiatus. so please explain how i am bubbling, because this really just feels targeted at this point.

you’ve made it endlessly clear that this rp isn’t a safe space for people who want to play diverse characters. the main was practically silent while you had a ban on white faceclaims, which you never actively promoted, and then you dropped that suddenly without putting anything else in place. you also deleted my initial anonymous messages asking about diversity as if you were trying to hide that there was ever an issue. you turned anonymous messages off, so that no one can safely criticise you. because i did that off anon and ever since it has felt like there is a massive target on my back. my characters have been “accidentally” on the activity checks multiple times despite me being on hiatus (people get a notification that they were tagged even if you remove their name from the list btw). plus when i asked for an extension on my hiatus, you said that you would allow it “just this once” which now makes me feel like i can’t come to you if i’m busy. right now, for example, i am in the middle of moving house, but i’m also stressed about trying to stay active because you have made yourselves completely unapproachable.

the ratio only evened out slightly because members left. then suddenly after the ban you’re posting multiple promo posts a day??? you couldn’t get more obvious. i came to you about diversity in good faith, hoping that it was something you were unaware of, but you have made it abundantly clear that you actively do not want to promote diversity in your roleplay, we are just here to be witnesses to your ship. there are multiple members who are actually bubbling who have been brought to your attention, but nothing has been done. leo continues to only write with the same three white and white passing characters. charlotte pretty much only appears to write with leo and post a vague “message me for plots” post that wasn’t even tagged. both of you only put effort into your ship threads with each other and the occasional text threads. even with something like group events: while i’ve been here, there’s been a pride event that neither of your characters were even in new york for (an event where i was the only one reaching out and posting multiple starters, by the way); there was no event last month, and this month all you’re talking about is this housewarming party.

i’m really disheartened that it’s come to this, but i can’t be here anymore. please post unfollows for all my characters. you’ve said multiple times that we should trust you as admins, but this message shows again that i simply can’t do that. from the disregard of trigger warnings, to the way you treated being held accountable for the lack of diversity, to how you respond to people asking for hiatuses, this isn’t a safe space. even if i stayed, the target you have placed on me is making it insufferable to just write my characters in peace.

the other muns who received the same bubbling message (copy pasted btw, we all got the same one word for word) all responded with their own concerns and criticisms in responses of a similar length to mine. none of us received a reply, our unfollows were just posted the next day without any further responses from the admins. a few of the other members who had written and plotted with us chose to leave as well, which the admins wrote off as us just dragging them with us as opposed to them being able to make their own decisions and being aware of the situation (which was incredibly obvious. no promotion of a white fc ban, suddenly being active on the main once they try to stealthily drop the ban, then the majority of their muses of colour leaving???)

i haven’t paid the rp much attention since i left, as i mentioned above i blocked the main and the majority of the members just for my own mental health. but from a quick scroll through today i can see that the only change in diversity rules is that now instead of your third character having to be a poc, it is now your second. however, you still only have to have 1 character out of 3 have a fc of colour. so very little has been done, but of course i’m not surprised in the slightist.

these admins don’t want diversity in their roleplay. if you play any character who isn’t a rich, white, cishet neurotypical, please avoid it at all costs. it’s not in any way a safe environment.

[emiewritesthings]

the story of our life (2) - jay halstead

jay halstead x fem!reader

part one

masterlist

series summary: in which jay finds an old video camera and him and y/n decide to document their life as it progresses

a/n: this is about a year too late, but i finally got around to writing a part two to this, i was overwhelmed by the support last time. hope you enjoy :)

31st december 2013

if there was one thing that y/n hated, it was making small talk with a bunch of her neighbours. she knew how mean that sounded, but it was the truth. it was the way they worded their questions to serve both as jabs for informations with a hint of an insult, whilst covering it up with the largest fake smile that they could muster up. it was something mrs franklin, the 45 year old, mother of 4 had gotten well practised at, as y/n had the displeasure of finding out.

"so, how's the job hunt going? i know after you dropped out of university it must have been quite a struggle to keep afloat? isn't that why you are still living here with your mom?" she sneered, as she sipped innocently on the cheap bottle of wine y/n's mom had personally assigned just for her consumption. y/n had to restrain herself from slapping the glass clean out of her hand as she remembered what her mother had instilled in her for the last week in preparation for this exact moment.

"oops, i think i hear my mom calling. enjoy your night, yeah?" she stay posed, as she flashed one more faux smile before striding away from the living room and into the kitchen where she grabbed whatever was closest and downed it as quick as she could, frowning at the permanent numbness that hollowed out her entire body.

her head was ringing from the chatter that filled the house, and that would most likely continue until the new year had been welcomed in. the laughter and smiles that were being thrown around didn't sit right with y/n, for what was another year if it was just going to be like the last two. her life had imploded in her hands leaving nothing but a body behind that had no choice but to survive.

"y/n!" someone called out from the other room, however before they had a chance to find her, y/n grabbed two beers from the fridge and shimmied out the back door. the sudden fan of cold december air on her face made her entire chest burn, but y/n liked it, at least it broke the monotony. even if it was just for a couple minutes.

avoiding eye contacts with everyone she passed, y/n found herself rounding her own house until she was stood in the driveway of the neighbouring one. a small smile etching itself on her face as her eyes were met with the old, rotten porch swing that was missing the woman that would be doing her crossword or simply sipping on a cup of coffee no matter the hour. a shiver ran down the woman's back, realising there would not be another moment that she got to see that again.

the house had stayed the same even after all these years, the same paint was chipping away and the wood door was still damaged from where a football had hit it repeatedly during the early years of their sons' lives. however unlike the busy chaos that had once been habituated in the abode, no lights could be seen, no life. just a dull darkness that highlighted how the house she once had known, the family, couldn't be any more different.

pushing past the knot in her stomach, y/n approached the gate to the back garden that was slightly ajar. as she investigated further, a small smile etched itself upon her lips as she was met with two white plastic garden chairs, in one sat pat halstead, whilst the other remained empty.

"well, well, i thought your mother would have chained you to your seat to stop you from pulling a fast one." pat teased, as his eyes strayed away from the dark sky to inspect the woman. patting the seat besides him, the twenty something year old collapsed down into it, before handing one of the cans over to the man, receiving a whispered 'thank you'.

"she got distracted by the mini quiches like an hour ago and i haven't seen her since. couldn't stay there much longer, celia and claire were debating whose husband was the biggest deadbeat." she sighed, as the pair clinked their cans together before they took a longing sip of the liquid, and slipped further down the slightly cracked plastic. her eyes were drawn upwards into the pre-midnight bleakness. however where the winter clouds usually suffocated it, there was a small breaking where two stars shone proudly above them.

"beautiful aren't they?" pat pointed out, clearly confirming y/n's thoughts that the two stars had been the same thing that had caught his interest when she first arrived. running a hand over the wiry beard he had grown over the last two years, his eyes began to water. "uh, sometimes i like to think it's liz and your old man up there, sure she would be chatting his ear off about you and your brother. as well as watching over our jay wherever he may be."

y/n was taken off guard by the older man's comments, but she tried to contain it. in the years she had known pat halstead, it was extremely rare that he voiced his honest opinion about anything. or at least one that wasn't followed by a sarcastic grumble or insult. but to talk about his wife and his son, as well as his best friend, with such emotion brought tears to y/n's eyes.

"you haven't heard from him have you?" she asked in a whisper, not knowing if she truly wanted the answer. the last communication she had with the youngest halstead had been throughout the last period of his mother's life until a little after the funeral, however after not receiving a reply once again and her life on a down spiral she surrendered.

"no, no i haven't," however y/n couldn't help notice that something didn't seem right. maybe it was the way that he shuffled in his chair, refusing to pull his eyes away from the sky to meet her own sad ones. however before she got the chance to confront him, he brought himself to his feet. "wait one moment, i have something for you." watching as he disappeared back into the house, y/n tried to figure out what was going on with him? maybe he wasn't sleeping again? it had been the same for months after the funeral, but she thought he was healing just slightly. she really hoped he had been.

a couple moments later, pat reemerged this time the thing he held in his hands had stolen every inch of y/n's focus. the metal lump that held a thousand memories was being cradled, similar to the way she had been holding it when he had handed it to pat. the sound of his wife's voice in the last clip was something that pat had severed for the last year and a half. it was the thing he would fall asleep to and the thing he would play when he woke up. his liz was still alive in the camera, she was still his liz.

"i thought- i thought you-." y/n couldn't muster up a single thought to vocalise as she was passed the camera. her eyes ran over each dint, scratch, stain that had been acquired over the years. every memory she severed had the image of the red flashing light in it, and yet the person in those videos was someone she no longer recognised.

"this is your life, and i know it feels like it's over, but you have so much to live for and if these videos don't show you that then i don't know what else will." in a rush of uncontrollable emotion, pat wrapped his arms around the daughter he never had and held her as she let out a quiet sob, unsure how to feel.

returning to their seats, pat held y/n's hand as they sat for what felt like days watching the sky deepen. as pat seemed to pray to the heavens that his liz was alright, y/n let her mind run ablaze with unresolved thoughts and emotions as she watched video after video.

it was moments before 2014 came along when her phone let out a painful shrill in search of attention. letting out a small groan, she pulled it from her back pocket, pausing the prom video to answer.

"hello?" she answered.

"y/n where are you? come on, the countdowns about to begin!" her mother yelled clearly unable to hear herself. sighing, looking over to pat who seemed to be hiding something in his eyes, she agreed before hanging up the phone.

"it's not too late for you to come with me you know..." she fluttered her eyes in a humorous attempt at convincing him. the deep chuckle that arose from pat's chest spoke enough for her to work out what was coming next.

"as much as i would love to chit chat with celia and clare over a mini quiche, i'm gonna have to decline." pushing herself off the chair, she leaned over to kiss his cheek softly, pulling away to see the small smile.

"happy new year, pat."

"happy new year, y/n."

--

the moment she reappeared in her house, she was pretty much been jostled around. somehow the camera that she had walked in with had disappeared from her gasp, and she had made her way to her mother's sight closest to the tv as the countdown clock appeared on the screen. the way her mother smiled at her was slightly unnerving, she knew the woman better than anyone in this world, and just like pat, she was hiding something.

"ten!" they began to chant.

"nine!"

"eight!"

"seven!" a drink was pushed into her hands, which she concerningly took without hesitation. she wasn't even sure who gave it her, but a drink was exactly what she needed right now.

"six!"

"five!"

"four!"

"three!"

"two!"

"one!" suddenly the tv screen was a picturesque screen of fireworks exploding around the country before the whole room erupted in a cheer.

"happy new year!" suddenly everyone was locking lips with their loved ones, friends and whoever was closest to them. however y/n tried to step back, and disappear into the crowd offering a couple of smiles until suddenly she hit something, or someone.

"shit, i'm sorry." she immediately gasped as the drink she was holding splashed against the dress she was wearing, however when she turned to look at her victim her mouth dried out.

there, stood in her living room was jay halstead, in the same uniform that she had last seen him stood in on her doorstep the day he left. what felt like the whole world silencing was actually just everyone in the room turning to look at the pair of them, smiling as they watched the reunion of the couple that never was. however they neither jay or y/n could pull there eyes away from their counterpart.

for a moment they were 17 again, teenagers that didn't know a thing about the world whilst experiencing it together. but this was different, for they were older now. jay's face was more mature, with stumble around his jaw that made him look more in his twenties. y/n's hair was much longer and ever so slightly darker, but jay remembered how the winter did that to her.

"hi." jay smiled, reaching forward to move stands of her hair behind her ears to avoid it from covering up those eyes that were far more fragmented than they had been before. but then again y/n saw the exact same distortion in his own, like half a heart that was on the edge of collapsing.

but at the sound of his voice, y/n fell face first into reality. she remembered every unanswered letter, the loss of hope when she laid in bed completely alone wondering if he was even still alive. she recalled the nights she would sleep on the hospital chair besides his dying mother praying to every god out there that he would be brought back in time to to say goodbye. but it didn't happen, she was left in a void and she didn't know if she would ever be able to get out.

"i-i need to go." she suddenly mumbled, quickly brushing past the army ranger and through the crowd. the awkward, confrontational silence that remained in the room was already enough to tip her over the edge, which only worsened when she saw the red flashing light. stood on the stairs filming the whole debacle was her little brother, who wasn't so little anymore. noticing the shift in mood, he awkwardly lowered it and offered her a sad smile, before she escaped out the door.

what are you doing, she thought, you finally get him back and you are trying to create distance between you two? that was just one of the many nags that bounced off each memory relaying in her mind. so this was what was wrong with pat, he must of known. he knew what was planned, and he said nothing. y/n couldn't blame him, there was no one in this city that would have predicted that she would just walk out like that, well maybe one but he had only just rejoined her life so she couldn't be sure.

her feet lead her to where her heart wanted to be, she cursed herself out for being so stupid as to wear a dress and not grab a jacket during her whole walk out. but the bite of the wind wore off the more blocks that passed until she reached the old creaky gate.

pushing against the metal, even in the pitch black she knew her way. the amount of times she had ended up late at night in this very place gave her that advantage. as she approached the engraved slab that she had helped pat pay for, a sob raked through her body.

"god i wish you could be here right now," crouching down, she leaned forward to run her cold fingertips over the 'ELIZABETH HALSTEAD' scripture. mrs halstead always knew what to say, in any situation. jay and y/n used to blame it on the abundance of dr phil episodes she had watched over the years. yet there was a depth to her words that made your problem feel shared rather than suffocating. "although i'm sure you would be cursing me out right about now for being such an idiot." she thought out loud, remembering what the woman had said when she had told her about the kiss she had shared with the older's son.

she had joked about how it took long enough and what she was going to wear to their wedding, neither of them considering the possibility that she wouldn't get chance for her theory to prosper.

"if that's true, then she must despise me right now." the sudden introduction to the deep voice nearly produced a scream from the woman that turned to see jay staring longingly at the gravestone. just as he brought his eyes to her's, she quickly turned back around, running her hands over her face wondering if he would disappear and all of this would have just been a dream. only it wasn't it was something much more chaotic, filled with resentment, love and the unknown.

"your mom loved you and will more than anything, i don't think she could despise you if she tired," she hummed through a sigh, as jay took a seat besides her. similar to how she had, he leaned forward to run his fingertips over the softened stone, muttering something that he hoped only his mother would hear.

"i really fucked up, y/n/n," hearing the crack rip through his voice, had y/n's head snapping over to him as his shoulders shook slightly as he wrestled with his sadness. "i wasn't here when she needed me most, i wasn't here when you needed me most. she was dying and i wasn't even there to tell her i loved her, what kind of son am i?" the torment that was present in jay's eyes as he turned to look at the only woman that was on the earth to love him ate at y/n's soul, as she found herself wrapping her arms around him, comforting him like he did after the death of her father.

"you a son that made his mother unconditionally proud. she never stopped telling one everyone at hospital about her boys." swiping tears away from under his eyes, ignorant to her own that burnt a trail down her skin.

"i'm not the same guy that left 5 years ago, what i've seen, what i've done-," jay let out a deep breath trying not to fall into the a box of memories he wish he could set alight and never have to face ever again. thankfully the feeling of y/n's fingers tracing nothing in particular against his back grounded him, reminding him that he had been reunited with his home, with his family, with his first and only love. "i got out of there, but that doesn't mean that the war in my mind isn't still on going."

y/n wished she had the answer, a solution, something to help him but she just didn't know what to say. instead she pulled him in tighter, feeling every tip in the think material of the uniform. a uniform that wasn't the jay she knew, but the jay that the army had created, but she knew underneath the camo was still the boy that held her when she feared the lightening outside, or the teenager that broke bryson ellis' nose after he spread rumours about their brief romantic encounter. he was her saviour, he always had been.

"your letters, i did get them. got each one of them in my bag, used to read them before i went to bed. i tried writing back, but i couldn't think of anything to say. i couldn't make anything better and i didn't want you to worry, but i realise that i only made everything worse. i'm just so sorry." pulling away, now it was jay's turn to hold her. in fact he pulled her so close that she was practically in his lap, embracing his body heat with open arms.

"everything's changed, jay," she mumbled, her forehead resting on his chest as she spoke softly. "your mom's gone, your dad's lost, and- and then you and me. last time we saw each other we kissed, we kissed. i- just, i don't know what's happening but i can't stop it." for a moment they both sat there, taking in just how much had changed since they had last been y/n and jay not y/n and jay.

with much care, jay placed his hands around her jay prompting her to look at him. the intense look in his eyes didn't falter for a minute, as he admired the swirls of colour in her's.

"i have been in love with you my entire life, and that is one thing that will never change." declaring his love for y/n y/l/n had always been something jay fantasised about, even as he was stood in a war zone, however never had he imagined it would be in a grave yard nearly an hour into the new year as they fought against the frost. but then again, he didn't care where he was in the world as long as he was by the side of his girl, his love, his y/n.

in a rash moment of euphoria, y/n grabbed his face and pushed his lips against his as if making her own statement to the universe. every ounce of her own soul fuelled itself into something so powerful that was out of the pair's hands. as jay moved his lips against her own, the meaning burnt their insides until they had no choice but to pull away to catch their breath.

with their foreheads touching, for the first time in what felt like 5 years a genuine grin was mirrored on the pairs lips.

"i'm in love with you too." y/n breathed out ruggedly, clearly catching jay by suprised as his eyes widened before the smile on his face got wider.

"wait really?" those had been the words he had wished to hear for every birthday since he was 11, now hearing them made everything a little more brighter. his heart was bumping so quickly, y/n could feel it against her own, yet she said nothing, too caught up in the moment.

"i think it was ignorant of me to think i wasn't years ago. you are it for me, jay halstead." she smiled leaning forward to press another kiss on his lips, this time though it felt as though she was putting the final period on the end of a chapter that neither of them wanted to experience again. for this was a new beginning, the beginning of the story of their lives, together.

[fatefulfaerie]

Domesticity

Zelink Week 2021 prompt #5/7 @zelinkweek2021

Word Count: 1,951

Incarnation: Breath of the Wild 2 (post)

Additional Prompts Followed: Hearts, Family

No Trigger Warnings

“Is one of us dying?”

The feast was definitely unsettling to Wendie, and although she was mostly joking, she couldn’t help but think that such a nice dinner at such a random time of the year was odd. Of course her dad was a great cook, but this was a step above, despite there being no family birthdays for at least three months and no holidays for five.

“No,” her mother said as she placed on the table a large bowl of goat-buttered mashed potatoes, one of Wendie’s favorite foods. She had said it with a slight motherly laugh and a warm smile. “No one is dying. We’re just having a family dinner.”

The mother, who went by the name Zelda, had aged gracefully over the past twenty years, blonde hair highlighted with streaks of white that her husband would often call angelic and ethereal when she would doubt her beauty. At the moment, her age-hued hair was swept into a single braid behind her head, messy yet secure.

“Our family dinners aren’t usually this elaborate,” Wendie observed. “You made mashed potatoes and seafood rice balls—which is Elyjah’s favorite food—grilled carrots, meat pie, mushroom skewers and you have an apple turnover on the counter for dessert!”

“Nothing gets past you,” her father said, putting a bowl of baked and salted radishes on the table. His blue eyes looked over to Zelda. “I think we raised them too smart.”

“Nonsense,” Zelda said, walking forward and using the rag that was just draped over her shoulder to wipe a smattering of flour off of Link’s forehead. “Where’s Elyjah?”

Wendie made a sound that sounded a lot like a lazy “I don’t know” while shrugging her shoulders where she sat at the table.

“He can just eat when he gets home,” Wendie reasoned. “There’s more than enough food.”

Wendie didn’t see her parents exchange glances, the seventeen-year old not caring in the slightest that her twin brother wasn’t here to ruin her first dibs on dinner.

“I’ll try and find him,” Zelda said with a sigh, Wendie looking back up at her parents. Link nodded as Zelda departed. Wendie once again questioned what was going on.

“Ly!” The father and daughter heard outside, Zelda from just the doorstep of their modest Hateno home calling out to the entirety of Hyrule. Link sat down across from his daughter, elbows on the table and arms folded into each other. The deep thought he was in concerned Wendie greatly. He wouldn’t even meet her glance. Was she in trouble?

“Okay, okay, I’m coming.”

Elyjah.

Of all the people to be in trouble, surely it was him. He had never gotten into anything truly bad but he was the biggest prankster in Hateno. The only shop he wasn’t banned from was the dye shop. The green-eyed troublemaker was here nonetheless and Wendie prepared herself for another fun show. Zelda moved to sit down next to Link at the table but Elyjah stopped as soon as he saw the table, mouth popped open and body frozen.

“Is someone dying?”

He had looked over to his sister when he asked the question.

“Yeah,” she said. “You.”

“What?” Elyjah asked, almost believing it.

“Wendie, that’s enough now,” Zelda said, before looking over to her son. “No one is dying. We would just like to talk to you both.”

Elyjah sat next to Wendie with the same bewildered look as her, trying to figure out what it was before their parents spit it out. It was like Hylia’s Day presents except they didn’t have a good feeling about this, especially when Link took Zelda’s hand and looked at their children, ready to address them.

And yet it was Zelda who started.

“Do you two remember the fairytale we used to tell you?” Zelda inquired, her voice shaky. “The bedtime story? Of the princess and the knight?”

Neither Elyjah nor Wendie had any clue of the relevance, but they both remembered the tale well.

“The one with the weird ending?” Wendie asked nonetheless. “Where he rescued her and then that was it?”

“Yeah,” Elyjah said. “Didn’t they just stare at each other in silence? After all they had been through, it seemed like there should have been more.”

Link dove his hand into his forehead.

“Zelda, you could have given them a better ending,” Link suggested.

Zelda scoffed and put her hands on her hips.

“It was a lesson in imagination,” she said. “And clearly none of you have any.”

“But that’s besides the point…” Link said, prompting Zelda in a different direction.

“Yes,” Zelda said, nodding at Link and returning her gaze to their children, confused as ever. And yet she smiled at them.

“You both have grown up so fast,” Zelda said. “We both love you very much and cannot believe that you have blossomed right before our eyes into adults.”

Zelda’s smile became sad and she bowed her head.

“You see it’s a lot easier to lie to children.”

Wendie’s brow furrowed.

“Lie…” she repeated from her mother.

When Zelda’s head tilted back up, green was glazed with waves of coming tears, making the emeralds that Link fell in love with a hundred years ago shine even brighter.

“That fairytale…” Zelda said. “The princess who used her sealing power to keep away Calamity Ganon and the knight who slept in a ruined Hyrule for a hundred years in order to recover from his injuries and save her…”

Zelda stopped herself. Twenty years of keeping it in and it seems it wanted to stay in. She wrestled with her conflicted heart, kept it at bay long enough for her to blurt it out.

“It’s true,” Zelda said, no weakness in her voice, no lie, no apprehension. “The knight and the princess really did fight the calamity, really did survive a century to see it through and then some. Once they tracked down the cause of the anomaly, destroying the true form of Ganon, they settled down in Hateno. They got married and eventually gave life to twins, a boy and a girl.” Zelda’s eyes were proud as she looked upon her children, although they glistened with tears. Her heart hurt to see their faces in shock, but the outspoken truth felt better than she could have imagined. She felt Link’s grip tighten around her fingers.

“You both have royal blood in you,” Zelda said. “Even though I stepped away from the throne in the search of a simpler, more fulfilling life, you both still have claim to the titles of Prince Elyjah and Princess Wendie. We wanted you to know in case that path would prove fulfilling for you and…well, now that you’re adults you have the right to know the truth.”

Wendie stood up and walked out of the house, her parents not daring to stop her. Elyjah, however, just sat in shock, piecing it all together in his mind. Link and Zelda both could see his green eyes working, much like his mother’s did when she went over schematics or theorized about plant life.

“The story,” he finally started, “everything you went through…the pressure…you wanted to protect us from that…you wanted to give us the childhood you never had…that neither of you had.”

Link nodded.

“That’s right.”

Elyjah pursed his lips and nodded. Sometimes he was just like his dad. He shrugged.

“Okay,” he said, replacing his empty plate with the one filled with the seafood rice balls meant for the whole family. “Cool,” he continued, or at least it sounded like the word “cool”, his mouth mostly filled with rice.

Link raised his eyebrows and looked over at Zelda.

“Apparently we’re…cool.” Link said the last word as if it were completely foreign.

“Not all of us,” Zelda reminded her husband. She started to stand up. “I’m gonna go talk to her.”

Yet Link placed a hand on her arm.

“I’ll go,” Link said. “You stay and enjoy the food.”

Link found his daughter on the banks of Firly Pond, knees hugged close to her chest and water lapping at her bare toes.

At first he waited with his hand on the bark of the near apple tree, pursing his lips. Sometimes he was thrust back in time twenty years, when he felt he had no idea how to be a dad. This was one of those moments.

Link saw in his mind’s eye Wendie’s big blue eyes staring up at him, stubby arms reaching for him. He smiled. She grew up so fast.

“I know you’re there,” he heard Wendie say. She didn’t turn her head away from the pond. “Did you come to give me a speech?”

Link walked towards her.

“Maybe.”

He sat down next to her and Wendie only gave him the smallest of glances.

“I feel like I don’t know my parents at all,” she finally said.

Link nodded.

“I understand.” He said. “I don’t agree, but I understand.”

Wendie looked over to his profile, trying to ascertain how he could be serious. The calamity was real and her parents fought it. Sheikah technology really could heal fatal wounds and the goddesses power really was wielded by a mortal, not to mention her own mother, who never seemed like a princess in the slightest. Her father was a knight in a kingdom that really did exist and she?

Well she was a princess. This whole time, she was a princess. The girl who was called the “ugly duckling” of the family as a child was a princess in peasant’s clothing. She almost wanted to go brag to the town, but that seemed petty for just a small ounce of appreciation from the people her age who used to tease her when they would play as children.

Her parents were legends and in comparison, what was she?

Definitely not a princess.

“You know us as what we became after everything we went through,” Link finally said, having taken the time to get his words together. “The people we were before…”

He hesitated.

“We were nothing more than what the kingdom wanted us to be…statues, legends, weapons…we were never fully ourselves, and we could never afford to be ourselves with an entire kingdom looking at us to save them from a calamity. The slivers that were left of us found a friendship in each other, one that grew into love in time. After everything was settled, we began to truly find ourselves, basking in the freedom to do so. It’s something that usually occurs in a fifteen year old but your mother and I were a hundred and twenty years old when we solved the identity crisis. She did not want to be royalty and I did not want to be a knight. When we finally did not need to be those things, we took our first breaths as Link and Zelda. We wanted our children to take those breaths from the very second they were born, and that is why we let you grow up before we told you the truth. We wanted royalty to be an option for you two, not a necessity. We wanted you to become yourselves, not tiny versions of us. I only hope we have…at least I think we have.”

Wendie smiled.

“You have,” she said. “If you want your daughter to have absolutely no idea what she wants to do with her life.”

Link brought his daughter closer by hugging her far shoulder, bringing her close enough to kiss the top of her head.

“That’s exactly what I want,” he said. It sounded strange but Link didn’t mean it as a bad thing. “Because finding out your passion for yourself is the most exciting thing in this entire wild land.”

[cellsshapedlikestars]

Hello!

I love all your work so much and I saw that you were going to be taking a break from your Bachelor universe so I wanted to throw some prompts your way to maybe help get some other creative juices flowing *waggles eyebrows*

1) switched at birth AU

2) Everyone already knows their dating AU

3) Law and Order (SVU AU)

4) you’ve got mail AU

Thank you anon, I'm glad you like my writing!

Now that I've finished my Bach fic, I've been at a bit of a loss what I want to do next. Maybe it's because I'm all out of new ideas, maybe it's because work has been absolutely hectic, but my creative brain is completely empty. So I figured, why not try to do one of these prompts?

Here's the thing: I have never seen SVU or You've Got Mail. And I'm pretty sure Switched at Birth is also a TV show I have never seen? When I saw "everyone already knows" my immediate thought was "oh! like in Friends!" but then I remembered I have absolutely read that fic somewhere?? Like someone already wrote that for Jonsa. (I tried to find it again but have had no luck.)

So I chose switched at birth as a concept - I'm not sure if you meant the TV show or not, but I just wrote whatever popped into my brain.

A warning: this turned out a bit more angsty than I intended, and isn't necessarily Jonsa? It is if you squint. A few other notes, Alayne is a completely separate person from Sansa, Lysa is not related to Catelyn, and Baelish never knew Catelyn either. Sorry if it's confusing and/or not at all what you were looking for!

.

.

Sansa feels as if the world has dropped out from beneath her.

They all sit in the drawing room of what she can only describe as a mansion (and she knows that next to her, Father is likely seething. This is the kind of money he aspires to, but will never be able to reach. He will never have a name. Father is a Baelish, he could never be a Stark.)

She stares at the family sitting opposite and her heart sticks in her throat at the sight of them – the mother, the three sons, they all have the same copper hair that she does and she swallows against the rising tears.

This is what she could have had, she thinks as she averts her eyes, but she only manages to catch sight of the family portrait above the mantel. A father, a mother, siblings. She could have had all of this, if not for the slip-up of an overworked, underpaid nurse sixteen years ago. She could have been Alayne Stark. Instead she is Sansa Baelish.

Switched at birth.

Alayne sits with her family (that should be Sansa's family), and she doesn't look as out of place as she should. Her dark hair matches Mr. Stark's – matches the other daughter, Arya. Alayne fits right in.

Sansa sits with Father (no, not her father; the man who raised her) on the opposite couch and wonders if her Mother (no, not her mother) had known, somehow. Is that why Mother had always been so cruel to her? Why she always seemed to hate Sansa for reasons she could never figure out? Perhaps Mother had known, somehow, that Sansa wasn't hers. Sansa remembers reading fairy stories of Changelings – how the mother would know, insist the child wasn't hers, how no one ever believed her. Is that why Mother threw herself off the roof all those years ago?

“Well this is fucking awkward,” the girl, Arya, mutters, and it breaks the silence as Mr. Stark sighs and presses a hand over his face and Mrs. Stark begins to scold her for her language and impropriety. Sansa watches Alayne laugh, and she feels more than ever like an intruder. She may share the Stark blood, but it seems as if Alayne and Arya are more alike than not. And by the way the brothers are trying to hide their own laughter, it seems Alayne fits in with all of them.

Perhaps it wasn't a mistake to switch them, Sansa thinks bitterly. Perhaps the Starks are better for having Alayne.

….

She is forced to get to know the Stark family, though she does not think she wants to. She doesn't want to look at their life and wish it could have been hers – wish that Ned Stark with his kind eyes and calm voice could have been her father. Wish that Catelyn Stark with her smiles and her freshly baked cookies could have been her mother. Wish that she could have been surrounded by siblings and dogs and even two strange psuedo-adopted-but-not-really brothers that she meets later on named Jon and Theon. The Stark household is chaotic and confusing and Sansa tells herself she would have hated growing up here.

….

She isn't surprised to find that she's not sad Father isn't her real father. In fact, there's a sort of joy inside her that when she turns eighteen, she can be free of him. He is still her legal guardian, the courts have decided, but she has less than two years before she is free and they aren't actually related and so she doesn't have to feel guilty about her dreams of leaving him.

It grows inside her as the weeks and months go by – a hatred she has never truly let herself feel before. She hates him, despises him. She always has.

Catelyn Stark is insistent on getting to know her because Sansa is her daughter, but Sansa can tell that Father has no real desire to get to know his own real daughter. He does not care about Alayne – no, what he cares about is ingratiating himself into the Stark family. She wonders if the Starks can see it like she can. She hopes not – she doesn't want them to think she's only coming to these weekly meetings for their money and their name.

In all honestly, she's not actually sure why she keeps coming to these meetings. All they do is remind her that the Starks will never truly be her family. All they do is highlight how much Father cares about social climbing. These meetings are painful and every week when she finally gets home and takes a shower and gets into her pajamas and climbs into bed, she sobs into her pillow for what could have been.

…

“You know the party's inside, right?”

Sansa startles out of her reverie and whirls around, heart pounding, to find Jon Snow standing behind her, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket.

It's Christmas and the snow is thick on the ground and she's shivering in the thin wrap that she came outside with, her coat in a closet where Mrs. Stark had taken it hours earlier.

“Are you allowed to be smoking?” she asks instead of answering and he laughs, pulling one out of the pack and placing it between his lips.

“I'm eighteen,” he shrugs, speaking around the cigarette dangling out of his mouth. His hands come up and he lights it, with one cupped around the end against the cold winter wind.

“I can't imagine Mrs. Stark approves of smoking,” she sniffs, then shakes her head no when Jon holds the pack out to her in offering. She watches his mouth twitch into a smile for a moment, like he knew she wouldn't take one, before putting the pack back in his coat pocket.

“Seems you don't approve, either.”

“Well, I am her daughter.” She says it and means it to be a joke, but the words come out soft and it wavers at the end.

Jon watches her for a moment, then unzips his coat and shrugs it off and holds it out to her and she stares at it blankly, her mind not processing the gesture. He shakes the coat, like he's insisting she take it and she finally does, slipping it on and then closing her eyes at the immediate warmth of it.

“I get it,” Jon says after a while, when he's halfway down to the filter, clouds of smoke drifting up into the night sky. “I mean, not exactly, I'm not sure there's anyone who can understand... you know-” he gestures at her. “But I get what's it's like - to be a Stark, but not. They practically raised me, but I'm not... I'll never actually be one of them.”

“I used to read fairytales,” she admits, turning her face from him because it's easier to talk into the dark, snow-covered landscape than him. “About secret princesses, and the king and queen were always so happy to have their daughter back. In the stories, there was never another princess who already took her place. Who fit in better.”

Alayne is a perfect Stark, she thinks. Over the months, she's seen it – how Alayne plays football and hockey with her brothers and sisters, makes jokes that Sansa would never. She's nothing like Sansa, who always preferred reading poetry to playing outside, with perfect manners and perfect posture. Cold and reserved. She wishes she were more like Alayne – more like a Stark.

She hears Jon sigh and take one last drag of the cigarette before he puts it out in the snow. “You're a lot like Cat, you know,” he says finally, and she feels something twist painfully in her chest. “And Bran. I mean, I don't know you that well, I guess, but...”

She shakes her head because he's wrong. She's nothing like any of the Starks (though she's not a Baelish, either). Jon sighs again, louder this time, with more annoyance.

“You are,” he insists, and she finally turns to face him again and opens her mouth to argue, but he gets there first. “You'd see it if you let yourself. If you actually tried. Cat's... Cat is trying so hard. You should see how she gets before you come over. Everyone is freaking out about it but you won't even try to get to know them. And I might not get how you feel, but Alayne? Have you even tried to talk to her?”

That painful twist in her chest tightens, it swoops down into her belly and up into her throat. “I am-”

“Like I said, I can't imagine how it feels, you know? And I'm sure it's a lot, and you're allowed to feel how you feel, but the Starks are... they want you here, I promise. But if you don't want to be, if you don't want them in your life, maybe this should all stop, cause it's hurting them and I think it's hurting you. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to force it if it's not what you want.”

Her mind is blank, she can't think of a single argument, though she wants to argue. She wants to say that Alayne hasn't tried talking to her, either. She wants to insist that she is trying, but... but she's not. Not really. She's holding herself at a distance, she's already decided she doesn't belong.

“What if they don't like me?” The words slip out of her, unbidden, her voice barely a whisper. It wavers in the dark. (Her deepest fear – that if she lets them get close to her, they'll decide she isn't worth it, that they don't want her.)

She's not sure what response she was expecting, but it's not for Jon to smile – he does, gives her a little half smile and raises his shoulders in a shrug. “I don't know you that well yet, but so far I like you just fine. And I'm not even a Stark.”

“You seem like a Stark,” she tells him, and watches something flicker across his face and she doesn't know him well enough yet to tell what it is.

“I'm not actually related,” he says, though she already knows this. “Not by blood or anything.” For a moment he brings his hand up to rub at the back of his neck and he suddenly won't look at her and she wonders if she said something wrong. “We should go back inside,” he seems to change the subject and she hesitates, but then he holds out his hand. After a moment, she takes it, and follows him back inside, out of the freezing night air and into the warmth of the house. In the distance, she can hear voices and laughter, she can smell the cinnamon and pine in the air.

She could get lost here, if she let herself.

“There you are,” Mrs. Stark looks up as they enter the kitchen, and Jon lets go of her hand. Mrs. Stark narrows her eyes at Jon, then looks at the back door, like she guesses what he was doing out there and doesn't approve.

“I'm uh...” Jon starts, looking between Mrs. Stark and her, “I should get back to the party.” Before he goes, he turns back to her and she remembers she's still in his coat and she hurriedly takes it off, feeling heat high up on her cheeks as she does. “Try,” he says, voice too low for Mrs. Stark to hear. Then he takes his coat and leaves the kitchen – leaves her in the kitchen. Alone. With Mrs. Stark.

“Are you having fun?” Mrs. Stark's voice is light, but there's something underneath, a hesitance.

“I am,” she says back, wondering if she should make some excuse and leave. Wondering if Mrs. Stark doesn't want to be here talking to her.

(Try.)

“I wanted to thank you for inviting me,” she blurts out, and Mrs. Stark looks at her sharply. “I had some of the pumpkin pie, it was really good.”

It's such a stupid, nonsense thing to say, but Mrs. Stark looks pleased.

“It's a family recipe,” Mrs. Stark says, and then – a bit of hesitation - “I could teach it to you, if you'd like.”

Sansa's breath catches in her throat and it takes her a moment to say, “I like baking.”

“So do I. I could never get Alayne or Arya into it.” Mrs. Stark says it with a fond smile and Sansa feels something break open inside of her and she realizes, she knows, that she wants this. She wants to know this family, she wants to be a part of it. She doesn't want to take Alayne's place, she never could, but she...

“You could teach me,” she whispers. “Sometime. I'd like that.”

“So would I,” Mrs St- her mother, says with a smile that lights up the room.

[anothertimdrakestan]

Batfam Reactions To Watching Avatar The Last Airbender

req: “Hi I was wondering if you could write the boys reactions to watching Avatar: The last airbender for the first time?” (anon)

YES! THIS IS TOO CUTE!

- long story short, Dami got hurt during patrol and to make sure he didn’t sneak out the entire family had to settle in for a movie night

- you made the epic recommendation to watch ATLA and yall basically binge watched it for a week while Dami healed, here are each of the boys reactions

Damian

- this mfer grumbled that it was stupid and gave Katara shit for being a bad waterbender at the beginning, especially the first episode

- he was hardcore crushing on her at the end specifically her fire nation outfit and that she learned how to blood bend, he’s a simp for powerful women what can i say

- during the first season he was pretty stoic and annoyed, blame it on the painkillers

- second season he was gettin’ into it, flinching with the epic fight scenes, calling himself the batfamily Toph, he let a rogue tear slip during leaves from the vine and no one noticed but you and Dick

- he got extra cuddles that night

- he lost his fucking shit during appas lost days- like full on screaming about appa and burrying his head in your chest while you quietly tell him appa will be okay

- he denies all of this too this day though (of course) but he loved it, and you’ll hear him humming leaves from the vine when he thinks his comm is off now on patrol

Cass

- she wasn’t really paying attention to the show at the beginning,  more soaking in the family bonding moment and spending each night sitting next to a different person to understand more about them

- she liked watching tim because he gets really into it but steph is also a fun watching buddy because her reactions are sooo intense it’s like watching a movie watch a movie

- a month after showing Cass she came up to you with all these epic fan canon ideas for the future or the past, talking about what the avatar state meant and spewing crazy little facts you thought no one noticed

- turns out it’s her comfort show now, she watches it to remind her of Jason’s shitty sex jokes, Dick’s screeches, you’re silent tears, Babs failed plot predictions, and everything else from the week were for one you were all just kids

Tim

- For some reason I just think Tim’s seen it before

- he’s your buddy for laughing at his sibling’s reactions when you both know what’s coming

- the giddy smile he gives you before Katara does the epic water frozen save on Azula or Aang yeets into the avatar state

- him and cass are your lore buddies, you’ve all got all these crazy awesome ideas about the plot and what-not

- Tim crushes on Zuko hardcore, like that scene where he throws off his robe Tim’s cheeks are completely flushed, eyes stuck to the screen and you’re dying laughing

- sometimes you’ll come into the batcave and tim will be working while ATLA plays in the background and you’ll both silently rewatch it together making little quips about a funny moment from when the family watched it together it’s all so wholesome

Steph:

- Steph is a Sokka simp and you can’t tell me otherwise

- she’d pass out when his hair is down and everyone would roll their eyes

- she’d buy a boomerang for patrol and bruce would give a hard no but you can find her throwing it at shrubbery when bruce is out

- She also thinks Tai Lee is adorable and deserves the world

- “EVERYONE SLEEPS ON THE NON BENDERS OKAY SUKI COULD GET IT”

- “steph you came into my room at 5am for this?”

- steph honestly just says the thoughts we all have, when watching she’s totally immersed and falls for all the jumps and scary moments- her and dick are constantly being told to shut up while you die laughing at their reactions

Jason:

- dick basically had to chain him to the couch to watch at the beginning, he’d claim he had better stuff to do but eventually he’d be the one dragging people to the couch for the next episode

- would develop a bromance with zuko in season three

- convinced he’s a firebender and plays with wayyy too many lighters for a week to bruce’s concern

- thinks Mai is hot as fuck but claims he wouldn’t date her “cuz bro code” with his new imaginary best friend

- Roy comes by actually asking if he can meet zuko that’s how much jason talks about him it’s so cute

Babs:

- she’d slip in and out of watching while doing research or helping bruce during patrol, so she’d always sit next to you while you refreshed her during the episodes she caught

- she’d think aang was adorable and would try to convince dami to shave his head and get an arrow tattoo cuz he’d be cute

- she’d be the one to bring everyone water and sandwiches from alfie when you’ve all been binging for hours

- everyone needs a babs when they do a 3 season binge in a week, everyone say thank you babs RIGHT NOW hehehe

Dick:

- he’d be the one who got everyone there and he’d love being surrounded by his family

- granted, it was painful at first, giving constant death glares to dami and jason when they tried to get up and trying to get you to reveal plot secrets while you giggle, but in the end he was loving it

- he’d be crying 24/7

- when Mai and Tai Lee attack Azula and give the speech about loving Zuko more than Mai feared Azula he’s be screeching “GO OFF QUEEN YEAH SIS” while everyone tells him to shut up

- he’s a cabbage man stan and I love him for it

- his favorite season was season 2 because he loves toph because she reminds him of his siblings and he likes bumi and is convinced he’ll be a bumi when he’s older even though everyone tells him he’s such an iroh

- Dick would look back fondly on that week, surrounded by family who wasn’t fighting and could each have their own personality highlighted while all being together, he’d forever be thankful you brought up the idea : )

Bruce:

- it was a tough week for bruce, he hadn’t actually been alone on patrol for a long time

- it made it all worth it when he got to tiredly plop onto the couch with his kids

- he wasn’t watching the show he was watching them, the way they were invested in the show but also still took the time to bond even if they didn’t quite know it

- he got the best sleep of his life that week, passed out on the couch while his kids cuddled him, his white noise was Tim screaming at Damian and Steph babbling about Sokka, it was truly perfect. They were his family : )

I hope you enjoyed!!! Love you!

[apiratewhopines]

Thanks again to @teamhook for the artwork and being the muse for this one! You wanted a movie fic and I did my best 🙂

Midnight

Chapter 7 — The Slipper

Summary: In which our heroine resets the clock

Chapter 7 on AO3 (That’s all folks!!)

“You’ll never know

How many dreams I dreamed about you”

-It’s Been a Long, Long Time, Bing Crosby

It was receiving the invitation to Arthur and Guinevere’s second wedding that did it. Emma’s fairy godfather stayed in touch after their weekend in the country, offering investment advice for her windfall and acting for all the world like her adopted brother. She knew he felt guilty for finding his happy ending at her expense. Despite her reassurances she messed up her chances hours before he came on the scene, maybe months if she were really honest.

Three months ago, she left the estate a little more scarred, a little less hopeful, and much more wealthy. She paid back the money stolen from Granny but couldn’t bring herself to buy a place in the city like she originally planned. Instead, she took the remainder and invested it per Arthur’s overbearing instruction. She doubled it in a week and tripled that figure by the end of the month.

She still wasn’t satisfied, though. Dreams of a certain blue-eyed man haunted her, his last words whispering through her mind like a mantra and a curse. So she found Neal’s trail again and spent the next couple of weeks looking for him in the shadows and muck. She found him mooching off his mother of all people.

All the hate, anger, and embarrassment she buried deeply at the end of their relationship dissipated the moment she saw him. Why had she given him so much real estate in her mind, allowed the ghost of him to rob her of her sanity and potential happiness?

It was with satisfaction at a job well done rather than his impeding downfall that she turned him over to the local authorities and headed back to the east coast.

By the time she arrived, she was richer and even more lonely.

She was listless and finding no reason to stay, Emma accepted Arthur’s latest proposition that she needed to see the world. Using his numerous estates as a guide, she flitted across the globe, experiencing all the world had to offer and looking. Always looking.

It took her longer than it should have to realize she wouldn’t find what she was missing in the new people she met or the natural wonders she explored. The whole time her mind and soul were calling out for a more familiar setting and a dearer face.

Lancelot was right. She was running scared, and the only thing it was going to get her was absolutely nothing.

The handsome, almost homewrecker had not attempted to reach out since their quiet conversation on the beach, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know what he was up to. After calling it quits, he realized the US hadn’t been the best place for him. He returned with great fanfare to France, where he took on the daily running of the family business. He was said to have the Midas touch, working with the locals to improve the processes and products they offered. His vineyard was becoming the trendiest tourist destination in the country.

Not even a month after his departure, the press reported on the fairytale romance of the champagne millionaire and his widowed neighbor, Belle French. The pair’s engagement announcement ran in every major newspaper in the world.

It was quick work, even for Lancelot du Lac. She couldn’t begrudge him, though. He was never truly a bad man, just a regular one who made bad decisions. She could certainly relate.

Cutting her trip short, she returned to the city where it all started, to a tiny loft apartment she rented on a month-by-month basis above Granny’s diner. There didn’t seem to be much point in seeing the world when the only world she was interested in was centered about four hours away.

The news of Killian was more challenging to come by than the other people involved in her charade, but that only made it more precious. A charity fundraiser here, a life saved there, the ever-present and never changing picture on the hospital website she checked so often it was now saved as her homepage. She thought glimpses and scraps were all she was entitled to at first. However, the longer she tried to resist his pull, the more she started to think maybe she did deserve a chance.

Maybe she wasn’t too late.

Staring at the thick cream-colored invitation with scrolling words waxing romance, dates, and times, she came to a decision and packed her bags.

—

—

It wasn’t hard to find the exact location of their meeting. It was burned into Emma’s memory. Their initial encounter cemented as one of those moments that seem routine when they happen but take root in your fate and grow, threading through every aspect of your life until all traces of happiness are tied to one serendipitous second in time.

After departing from Arthur’s estate in a chauffeured car all those months ago, she had returned to this spot and found her Bug right where she left it. Someone, probably the Prince Charming she was determined to break, had filled the tank with gas. So, she bid adieu to Arthur’s employee and drove off into the sunset all alone. Like she did everything.

Nothing had changed about the place in the intervening months. It was thirty minutes to midnight. The dark sky was clear, stars twinkling from space and the moon a tiny thumbnail above the evergreens. She would wait all night if she had to, but sooner or later, she would catch her quarry.

Emma Swan always got her man.

Unfortunately, she didn’t always get him on her first try. She waited for a couple hours the first night, but no black BMW could be seen cresting the hill. Admitting defeat, she went back to her hotel and vowed to try again.

She knew she could have sprung an unannounced visit on him at his job. After all, it wasn’t difficult to pick out his dark sedan in the parking lot when she cruised by the hospital several times a day. Nor would it have been difficult to track down his address and ambush him one evening when he returned home. The idea had a lot of appeal since his place lived in a variety of fantasies involving oversized shirts and pancakes.

Deep down, she knew after she had robbed him of his choice so many times in their brief acquaintance, it would be wrong to show up and act like nothing happened. She needed to allow him to invite her back in or send her away.

God, she hoped he invited her in.

It took three nights, but eventually, she saw headlights. Smoothing down the hem of her black tank top over her skinny jeans, she took a cleansing breath and stepped out into the middle of the road.

She had no doubt it was him, the cautious pace slicing through the night at exactly the same time as before. She could even tell the precise moment he spotted her in the bright lights of his high beams, the luxury car swerving slightly into the other lane. It was less than a minute later he rolled to a stop about ten feet away.

Then, nothing. The silence of a door not opening was deafening.

Maybe this was her answer.

She wished she could see past the glare and through the windshield. Look into his eyes at least once more and tell him everything she figured out over the past couple of months. The same things he had tried to say to her before he left.

Finally, a lifetime later, she heard the door open. She felt every footfall in the far reaches of her heart, each measured step in time with the rapid beating in her chest. She was lightheaded with longing, her eyes frantically trying to adjust between light and dark and make out Killian’s beloved form in the nighttime.

“Fancy meeting you here, Captain.”

There was another long pause and then he stepped into the narrow, car-sized area of light. He was even more handsome than she remembered. The static, professionally staged photo on the website never did him justice in the first place. “Emma, when did you get back?”

She heard the question for what it really was, ‘Emma, why are you here?’

Smiling past her nerves, she took a step closer. He looked like the proverbial deer in the highlights, like any sudden movement would cause him to turn tail and run. She did this to him. It was her fault her cocky Prince Charming looked spooked. “A couple of days ago. I need a ride to Misthaven. I’m late for an appointment.”

“An appointment? It’s almost midnight. I’m getting the strangest sense of deja vu.”

“You see, there’s a man. He’s actually the best thing that ever happened to me. But I felt like I didn’t deserve him, like I didn’t deserve anyone, really, so I ran. Several times. And even though I pushed him away and ruined everything, I need to let him know that he was never nothing. His feelings were never nothing. As a matter of fact, he’s come to mean everything to me, and I wanted to tell him I was sorry it took me so long to say it.”

Taking a step forward, he stood nearly toe to toe with her. His hair was sticking out at odd angles, his face twisted in thought, hands hanging in fists at his side. “Is that so?”

Reaching out, she placed her hands on his shoulders and she looked up into his eyes, whispering, “I’ve loved you since you let me have all the bites with whipped cream. I was just too scared to admit it.”

She waited when all she wanted to do was pull him closer and bury her face in his neck, inhale his intoxicating scent again and taste his skin. She had said what she needed to say, but it didn’t give her the right to waltz back into his life if that wasn’t what he wanted. “Killian, I—“

Her words were cut off by his abrupt kiss. He grabbed her like he was drowning and she was the only thing that could save him. His chest heaving and lips brutal in their quest. He hitched her up slightly, settling her against the hood of his car. He half leaned over her as he continued to explore every neglected inch of her mouth, every lonely corner of her soul. When he finally broke off his passionate embrace, his breathing was ragged and his voice harsh with emotion. “I have big plans for you and whipped cream, love.”

Laughter filled the inches between them, his forehead resting against hers. Peppering his face with soft kisses, her fingertips tracing the line of his jaw, she teased, “Prove it.”

—

The trail of clothes leading to the bedroom remained untouched for days. They survived the early days of their relationship on pancakes, whipped cream, and borrowed shirts.

Over the years, people asked her when she knew Killian Jones was the one. Her answer was always the same.

At the stroke of midnight.

Every night for the rest of their lives.

Note:

Midnight — Info about the movie

@teamhook @kmomof4 @jrob64 @stahlop @xarandomdreamx @xsajx @motherkatereloyshipper @klynn-stormz

[icedfae]

(—) ★ spotted!! NARI BARLOWE on the cover of this week’s most recent tabloid! many say that the 26 year old looks like BAE SUZY, but i don’t really see it. while  the PHOTOGRAPHER is known for being AFFABLE my inside sources say that they have a tendency to be MULISH i swear, every time i think of them, i hear the song HIGHLIGHTS BY MOTHICA  {she/her cisfemale}

pick me apart so you can see

basics

Name: Nari Barlowe (birth name Yun Nari) Age: Twenty-Six DOB: March 18, 1996 Gender: Cisfemale Sexuality: Bisexual Occupation: Freelance Photographer Parents: Su-Jin Barlowe (nee Yun) and Peter Barlowe (adoptive/step-father) Hometown: Tacoma, Washington

which of the parts to keep or to leave

biography

When Su-Jin was a teenager, she tried to keep her life on track as much as humanly possible. Her parents were strict and overprotective, often shielding their daughter from the outside world. Growing up as a first generation Korean American had it's difficulties for her, but Su-Jin tried to fit into her world as much as possible. It wasn't until she got to University that Su-Jin found a place to call home: the university's Asian Association. It was there that she met Nari's father. The two had a fling for a few years and during Su-Jin's final year at university, she found out she was pregnant and at first the two were estatic for the edition to their family. It would happen that her father would soon die in a car accident just months before graduation.

When Nari was two years old, her mother moved them to Tacoma to pursue a job that she was recommended for through her schooling. It was there at that job where she met Peter Barlowe. The two fell in love over the next year and before long, the two were married and Peter legally adopted Nari soon after. Peter knew how important it was to feel like you belonged, having been adopted himself.

Throughout her childhood, Nari found herself surrounded by people that didn't understand her. Much like her mother, Nari found herself struggling to fit in with those around her. It seemed no matter what she did, Nari struggled with the need to change herself to fit what others wanted from her.

So she started to show the world through her eyes. From the first moment that she took a photo, Nari was done for. It was the only way she felt that people could see the melancholy world view that she had. Before long, her photos took on a macabre feel. There wasn't a time where you couldn't find her behind a camera.

TW: DRUG ABUSE While not fitting in well with her peers in school, Nari decided to try and make a life in a bigger city where she wouldn't feel so invisible. New York City was an obvious choice when she got into NYU. It was there that she met her ex. They had run into each other at a party and the rest was history. If only they had been a decent influence on her. Drugs soon became a regular occurrence in their lives and it took Nari three years before enough became enough her. She soon packed her bags and made her way back to Washington.

It was actually her mother's idea for Nari to make her way to Hollywood, that her photography may take off there.

so i look just how you think i should be

things to note

Nari is a ray of sunshine most of the time because she feels as though it keeps people around. She truly believes that she's a burden otherwise. She doesn't want to bring anyone else down with her own problems.

She had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression when she was a young teenager and has been in therapy for years now.

Has a cat named Jellybean.

Her photography is more candid photos of people. She likes showing the differences of humanity, though she has been known to find a macabre setting for things.

Is also one of the most stubborn people you will meet. She doesn't like to be told that she's wrong and will refuse to admit defeat.

Spent her first few years in LA working at a coffee shop before her photography started blowing up a bit more.

Extremely superstitious of a person and believes in fate.

Really can hold a grudge when she needs to, though she hates being disliked for any reason.

Favorite color is yellow.

While she feels like part of her identity will never be known, thanks to the death of her father before she was born, she wouldn't trade her relationship with her dad for anything. She reckons she's closer to him than her mother.

Came from a very wholesome family. Has two younger siblings -- twenty-two and seventeen years old.

you want the hi-hi-highlights

connections

Little Sibling - They were born when Nari was four years old, just a year after their parents were married. There isn't a lot that Nari wouldn't do for them but their relationship is a little strained. During the formative years of her life, Nari tended to withdraw when something happened that she didn't particularly care for and that put a damper on the two of them. She loves them though and would do just about anything for them. Recently, she invited them to come out here to stay and would be fine with having an extra income to help out on rent if they wanted to stay.

Ex - Nari met this man when she was living in New York and going to NYU. At first, they were friends who kept running into each other at parties and would share a drink or two, maybe see each other around campus. Eventually it turned into them sleeping together and then eventually entering a serious relationship. Two years after they were together, Nari's mental health began to decline and he dismissed it, not understanding her point. An overdose later, Nari broke up with him and moved home before permanently relocating to LA.

Best Friend - When Nari moved to LA this person would have been someone that she latched onto immediately. An extremely loyal person, Nari probably is that anger hype friend for them but also the biggest cheerleader when something good happens.

Reoccurring Subject - I thought it would be fun if there's someone that keeps showing up in Nari's photos of just general life in the city and now she's afraid that she's lowkey stalking against her will. Probably pretty intrigued by this person but doesn't know exactly how to approach a conversation. She figures saying 'hey I keep accidentally taking your picture in public please don't sue me' isn't the best way to start a conversation. TAKEN BY ALANA BISHOP