#i’m SO sorry i got carried away but yeah this arc and one or two others (one in particular) are the only arcs that kiiinda set me off tbh

[mrs-dr-reid]

Betting on the Right Horse

Chapter One: A Goodbye Brings A Hello

Chapter Summary: Reader goes back to Horseshoe Ridge, Colorado after many years away for her uncle Jason Gideon’s funeral, and she learns that while she is the main beneficiary and inheritor of his horse ranch, she has shared ownership with Spencer Reid: her uncle’s protegée, and she’s PISSED.

Word Count: 4013

Chapter Warnings: Swearing, tw death/funerals, tw grief, tw food/eating/drinking, Spencer Reid being a little bit of an OOC asswagon (unless you're familiar with the dilaudid arc), Reader being a teensy bit entitled

A/N: Ayyyyy, welcome to my first slow burn AU series! A big shout out to all my fellow writers in the discord server I’m in for helping me outline this series and figure out the plot (and also letting me yell at them about this fic in general)!

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I honestly couldn’t believe it when I got the call. I was just getting home from work when a number I didn’t recognize showed up on my screen, and when I answered, it was my Uncle Jason’s friend Dave (who I vaguely remembered from when I was younger) telling me that he passed away the night prior due to heart failure. I almost dropped everything onto the floor of my apartment, because I hadn’t talked to Uncle Jason in a while, and now he’s gone and I’ll never get another chance.

Dave told me all of the details for Uncle Jason’s funeral, then offered his condolences before hanging up, and I had to go sit down and collect my thoughts and feelings. I practically grew up on Uncle Jason’s horse ranch, Sparrow Creek, and it was one of my favorite places in the whole world, especially the little town of Horseshoe Ridge, Colorado where it was located and all the people in it, and now I regret not going to visit as much once I went off to college.

I immediately called my boss and told her I’d be taking the next few days off to go to the funeral, even though it was VERY last minute. Thankfully, she was very understanding and told me to take as much time as I needed (something about a bereavement period, I honestly don’t know what she said after she told me it was okay for me to take off work because I couldn’t hear her over the blood rushing in my ears). After I hung up, I dragged my suitcase out of the hallway closet and started packing while simultaneously booking the first flight out to Colorado I could find on my laptop. I dug around in my closet and found my old riding boots, and was happy to discover that they still fit, so I stuck them in my suitcase just in case there was an opportunity to go riding while I was out there.

Once my suitcase and my carry-on bag were packed, I grabbed my keys, shut off my lights, and then headed back out to my car and to the airport, where I was thankfully able to get some work done on my laptop while waiting for my flight so I wasn’t atrociously behind once I got back. Once I landed at the Denver airport, I ordered an Uber to take me to the ranch, and after I was dropped off, a wave of nostalgia washed over me as I looked up at the wrought iron gate with the logo of a sparrow flying over a babbling brook branded into it.

A taller Asian man in a cowboy hat, worn-out jeans, scuffed-up boots, and a button-up shirt rolled up to his elbows saw me standing there as he walked by and called out, “Can I help you, Ma’am?”, so I snapped out of my reverie and said, “Oh! Yeah, sorry. I’m Y/N L/N, Jason Gideon’s niece. I’m here for the funeral this weekend?”, which made him say, “Wait, Y/N/N? It’s me, Matt!”, as he walked over to me. My jaw dropped open and I said, “Matt Simmons?! No way, how are you?”, as I let him pull me into a hug (I taught him how to ride equestrian style when we were kids).

He said, “I’m good! Gideon hired me as a ranch hand a few years ago, I got married a little bit after that, and we’ve got two boys with twin girls on the way,” which made my eyebrows fly up to my hairline before I said, “Wow. You’ve been busy,” making him chuckle and say, “Yeah, I guess I have. Anyways, I’m sorry for your loss. Gideon was a good man, and it was an honor working for him,” the conversation suddenly turning serious.

I let out a melancholy sigh and said, “Yeah, he was the best. A teensy bit eccentric, but I’m gonna miss him. I regret not coming to visit for so long now that he’s gone,” tears starting to well up in my eyes. Matt rubbed my arm comfortingly, then said, “Well, I should probably bring your stuff to your old room, then maybe I can give you a tour? A lot of stuff has changed since the last time you were in town,” so I wiped my eyes, put on the closest thing to a smile I could muster, and said, “Yeah, I’d like that,” before following him up the path to the ranch house.

Once my stuff was situated in the room I always stayed in when I came to visit (it hadn’t changed at all since I was here last), Matt showed me around the ranch and pointed out everything that had changed, and I had to admit it looked amazing. The stables had been extended within the last year to make room for more horses, a horseshoe of cabins had been added to the west side of the property to accommodate dude ranch guests, the training arena and paddock had doubled in size, and the stalls themselves had been updated to be a bit bigger and more comfortable for the horses.

We circled back to the stables just as another darker-skinned man (also in a cowboy hat) came trotting over to us on a beautiful Tovero Paint, and he said, “Hey, Matt! Who’s the lady?”, as he dismounted. Matt said, “Hey, Luke. This is Y/N L/N, Gideon’s niece. Y/N, this is Luke Alvez, one of the ranch hands, and this is Raven, one of our newer mares,” while gesturing to each of them. I stroked her nose and said, “She’s beautiful. Are all of the horses still named after birds?”, so Luke chuckled and replied, “Oh yeah, that’s never going to change. And I don’t know if you remember the town lawyer Hotch, but he just inherited his dad’s old ranch a couple of years ago, and his wife secretly named all of the horses after fictional lawyers,” which made me burst out laughing before I said, “Oh my god, really?!”

Matt let out a snort before he said, “Yup. And he only figured it out a month ago, because Emily’s horse misbehaved and she accidentally said, ‘Miss Elle Woods, you should be ashamed of yourself!’, in front of him,” which only made me laugh harder. Luke said, “At least we don’t name them after different types of pasta like Rossi does,” making me say, “Oh, I would constantly be hungry if I was over there,” earning nods of agreement from the men and a whinny from Raven. I turned to Matt and said, “Are Nelson and Chickadee still around? They were my favorites when I was younger,” so he nodded and said, “Yep. They mostly do trail rides for the less experienced riders nowadays, but they’re still here. Wanna go see them?”, which made a giant grin spread across my face before I said, “Yes!”, and Matt lead me to their stalls after we bid our goodbyes to Luke and Raven.

I approached Nelson first, and I said, “Hey, Big Guy! I’m not sure if you remember me, but I certainly remember you!”, while holding out my hand for him to sniff. He snorted happily and nuzzled against my hand once I started scratching his nose, and Matt said, “I think he remembers you,” which made me smile while I continued stroking him. Chickadee huffed indignantly from her stall, so I walked over to her and said, “Oh, I’d never forget about you, Pretty Girl!”, as she nuzzled my hand in a very self-satisfied manner.

Matt said, “There are a couple more horses that weren’t here last time if you wanted to meet them too,” which made me shoot him a look before I jokingly said, “I can’t believe you’d ever think I didn’t want to meet a new horse,” earning me a playful eye-roll from Matt before I was introduced to his horse, Robin the Clydesdale, and the rest of the trail horses: Puffin the Norwegian Fjord, Starling the Tennessee Walking Horse, Eagle the Off The Track Thoroughbred, and Falcon the Hanoverian. We exited the stables, and Matt said, “Well, you probably want to try and settle in before the funeral tomorrow, so I’m gonna get back to work,” so I nodded and said, “Yeah, yeah, definitely. See you tomorrow, and thanks again for the tour,” which made him tip his hat at me with a wink before walking off.

When I made it back to my room, I flopped onto the bed and had to take a breather. I tried to settle my mind by unpacking my bags and hanging my clothes up in the closet to get some of the wrinkles out (fingers crossed), but then I saw a picture of me at age 11 sitting on Nelson’s back and Uncle Jason holding the reigns and smiling up at me proudly, and tears instantly came to my eyes. I grabbed the picture frame off of the dresser, and I whispered, “I’m gonna miss you, Uncle Jason. I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch,” before setting it back down and getting out my phone to order dinner. I quickly figured out DoorDash wasn’t really a thing in Horseshoe Ridge, but thankfully I remembered that Uncle Jason kept a whole drawer of delivery menus next to the fridge. Once that was squared away, I got into my pajamas, ate my dinner once it arrived, and then called it a night.

At the funeral, I sat next to Matt and his family since I didn’t know anybody else there, and listened with tears in my eyes as Dave gave the eulogy. I was invited up to say a few words, so I kept it short and sweet (mostly to avoid crying in front of a room full of strangers) and said, “My Uncle Jason was one of the best people I’ve ever known. As Dave said, he was selfless, intelligent, and had one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever seen. He’ll be dearly missed, and I sincerely regret not coming to visit more often,” before nodding in thanks and sitting back down, Matt rubbing my shoulder encouragingly as I did so.

At the reception, I was making small talk with the perky blonde woman Luke introduced to me as his girlfriend Penelope when Matt came up to us and said, “Hey, Y/N/N! I wanted to introduce you to Dr. Spencer Reid. Spencer, this is Y/N L/N, Gideon’s niece,” and then I looked at who he’d gestured to, and my heart skipped a beat because I was looking at a man at least 6 inches taller than me in a well-tailored suit with wild brown curls, stubble decorating his jaw in a way that somehow didn’t look disheveled, and honey brown eyes that made me feel like I was going to melt into the floor. I was broken out of my reverie when the man said, “It’s nice to meet you, Y/N. Gideon talked about you a lot,” but he didn’t stick out a hand to shake.

I shrugged it off as some germaphobe thing, then I said, “It’s nice to meet you as well, Spencer. How did you know my uncle?”, and he replied, “He guest lectured at my university a lot, and I’d always wanted to be a cowboy growing up, so once I graduated, he took me under his wing and showed me the ins and outs of running a ranch. He even made me the foreman a couple of years back,” making me nod understandingly. A thought occurred to me, and I said, “I’m sorry, Matt said you were a doctor, but you don’t look that much older than me. Are you some kind of genius or something?”, which made him shove his hands into his pockets and say, “I have three Ph.D’s in mathematics, chemistry, and engineering. I also have an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and I can read 20,000 words per minute, so yes, I guess I’m what is considered to be a genius,” in a tone that could be easily interpreted as nonchalant or arrogant.

I decided to go with the first option and say, “Impressive. Anyways, it was really nice to meet you, but you’ll have to excuse me. I need a refill and a snack,” while holding up my nearly empty wine glass in a pointed way. The corner of his mouth quirked up, and he said, “Likewise,” before nodding and wandering off. I smiled in a confused manner as I watched him go, then said, “He’s… peculiar. I can see why Uncle Jason liked him,” which made Matt let out a snort and say, “He’s one of the only people who could beat him at chess. Besides you and Rossi, of course,” earning an eye roll and a playful shoulder shove from me.

After I’d obtained my second glass of wine (or maybe third? I’m not 100% sure), a tall dark-haired man approached me and said, “Miss L/N? Could I borrow a few minutes of your time?”, so I nodded and said, “Of course,” while quickly scouting out a place to set my glass. The man continued, “My name is Aaron Hotchner, but most people call me Hotch. I’m the town lawyer here in Horseshoe Ridge, and I worked very closely with your uncle for many years,” and held out a hand to shake. I fought to contain a snort when I remembered what Luke and Matt told me about the horses at his ranch, and I shook his hand while saying, “Nice to put a face to the name,” which made him crack a smile before saying, “I was wondering if you’d be able to come by my office tomorrow morning for the reading of your uncle’s will,” and a chill ran down my spine momentarily before I nodded curtly and said, “Yeah, absolutely,” hoping Hotch didn’t notice.

He eyed me with a touch of concern for a few seconds, then reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to me while saying “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Ten thirty. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to locate the partners in crime that are my wife and son,” before nodding and trotting into the other room, and I could barely hear him call, “Emily! Jack!”, as he disappeared. I tucked the card into my purse after looking it over for a moment, then wandered back to where Matt was sitting with his (very pregnant) wife, Kristy, and their two sons, David and Jake. I said, “I’m gonna head back to the ranch, okay?”, while gesturing towards the door of the funeral home, so Matt nodded and said, “Do you need a ride?”, which made me shake my head and say, “No, Luke gave me the keys for the truck because he’s riding back with Penelope. Thank you, though,” before smiling at him, extending a quick “nice to meet you” to Kristy and the boys, and leaving.

The next day, I arrived at Hotch’s office at the same time as Spencer, and I started to ask, “What are you do-...?”, but then it hit me and I smacked myself on the head before saying, “I’m such an idiot. Of course Uncle Jason would have left you something, you worked with him for how many years?”, which made Spencer chuckle slightly and say, “Five years, three months, and fourteen days. But who’s keeping track? And I totally get your confusion. You’ve known him your whole life, it makes barely any sense for me to be here,” relief flooding through my body that he wasn’t offended.

He opened the door to the building for me, and I went up to the front desk to talk to the receptionist. I said, “Hi, we’re here for a meeting with Hotch?”, so the woman typed something on her computer and said, “Yep, he’ll be ready for you in about fifteen minutes,” with a big smile on her face. I thanked her quietly, then sat down in the waiting room next to Spencer, and it was quiet for a while, him fiddling with his jacket sleeves and me tapping on my legs to the tune of “Sweet Caroline”.

I finally broke the silence and asked, “Where are you from?”, which startled him before he cleared his throat and said, “Vegas. I moved out here the second I turned eighteen, though. You?”, so I replied, “Boulder, about an hour west of here. I moved to Chicago for college, though, then got a full-time job a little while after I graduated, so I didn’t get the chance to come visit as often as I would have liked,” making him nod understandingly. He asked, “What was your major?”, and I said, “Finance with a hospitality minor. I’ve been an accountant for about four years now,” earning an impressed nod from him. I almost said something else, but the receptionist called out, “Dr. Reid and Miss L/N?”, so the two of us stood up, and she led us back to Hotch’s office.

The receptionist poked her head in the door and said, “Your ten-thirty is here, Hotch,” and I heard his deep voice reply, “Thank you, Elle. Send them in,” before she opened the door a bit more, smiled at us, then trotted back to the front desk, where I could vaguely hear the phone ringing. Hotch adjusted his reading glasses, then gestured for us to sit down, so I took a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk, Spencer following suit. Hotch folded his hands on his desk, then said, “Thank you both for coming. Shall we get started?”, making Spencer and I look at each other before looking back at Hotch and nodding our assent.

Hotch pulled a fairly small packet of paper out of a manilla envelope, then began to read out loud: “The last will and testament of Jason Benjamin Gideon. I, Jason Gideon, hereby bequeath Chickadee the Appaloosa horse to my beloved niece, Ms. Y/N M/N L/N, for she was always her favorite,” which made me smile, because Chickadee was, in fact, my favorite horse at Sparrow Creek. Hotch continued reading, “I also bequeath Nelson the American Quarter Horse to my protegée, Dr. Spencer Walter Tristan Reid, so that he may continue to work on his horse riding skills with a trusted partner,” and the corner of Spencer’s mouth quirked up at that sentiment.

Then Hotch got to the part I was most interested in; namely, who got the ranch. He read, “Now, the subject of my most beloved estate, Sparrow Creek, and its accompanying businesses and assets,” then he hesitated and looked up at the two of us with what I swear was nervousness in his eyes, but I disregarded it and leaned forward in my seat slightly. Hotch took a deep breath, then continued, “I, Jason Gideon, hereby leave Sparrow Creek and all equity involved to my beloved niece, Ms. Y/N M/N L/N, but only under these conditions,” which made me wrinkle my eyebrows and make eye contact with Spencer, who looked just as confused as I did.

Then Hotch said what was probably the worst thing I’ve heard since I was informed of Uncle Jason’s passing: “Ms. L/N must remain at Sparrow Creek full-time for an entire year, and work alongside Dr. Reid on a day-to-day basis to ensure the prosperity of the ranch. If these conditions are not met, Sparrow Creek and all its equity will pass in full to my protegée, Dr. Spencer Walter Tristan Reid,” and my jaw just about hit the floor in indignance. Hotch set the packet of paper on his desk and looked up at us without saying anything, and all I could hear was my own heartbeat pounding in my ear. Spencer said, “That’s it?”, and Hotch confirmed, “That’s it. Anything you need me to clarify?”, which made me stand up and storm out of his office, steam practically pouring out of my ears.

Once I made it outside, I started pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, and I’m sure it was quite the scene for any pedestrians who happened to be walking by. A stream of obscenities came out of my mouth in an enraged mutter as I attempted to calm myself down, but when Spencer emerged from the building, my rage boiled over and before he could finish saying, “What happened back there?”, I screamed, “What in the actual FUCK WAS HE THINKING?!?!”, which made him fall silent and stare at me like I’d just grown two extra heads.

I rambled, “My entire life, Uncle Jason told me that one day I’d be in charge of Sparrow Creek, and that it would be the greatest joy of his life to hand it down to someone who truly loved the family business. Now he decides that some random city boy he’s only known for five years gets the whole kit and caboodle if I screw the pooch?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!”, getting angrier and angrier until it exploded out of me and I kicked the first solid object I saw (which happened to be a metal trash can that made a loud reverberating sound like a gong when the reinforced toe of my boot made contact with it) before I continued pacing.

Spencer’s face hardened, and then he said, “Maybe he thought since you weren’t around enough, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. Maybe he was giving you one last chance to prove yourself, and he was making sure the ranch would pass on to someone who knew what they were doing in case you couldn’t take the heat,” which made me stop dead in my tracks, and slowly turn towards him while saying, “What the hell did you just say to me?”, a deadly chill in my voice that even scared me a little.

Spencer stiffened a little bit, then leaned forward slightly so he was all up in my face (asshole) and said, “Gideon put safeguards in place to make sure someone competent gets the ranch if you fuck up, Princess,” which made my nostrils flare before I snapped, “Don’t call me that,” and glared at him. After a momentary stare-down between the two of us, I rolled my eyes and said, “Whatever. I have to go, I gotta make a few calls before my flight back to Chicago tomorrow night,” while starting to walk back to the pick-up truck I borrowed from the ranch.

Spencer called out, “Awww, throwing in the towel before you even start the race, Princess?”, and the holier-than-thou tone of his voice made me want to punch his lights out, but I composed myself, plastered on a sickly sweet smile, then turned around to face him before saying, “Oh no. I hate to disappoint you, but I’m only going back to pack up my stuff, sublet my apartment, and put in a request for indefinite remote assignments from my accounting firm before renting a U-Haul and coming right back here. If you think for even one millisecond that I’m not gonna fight tooth and nail for something I’ve been waiting my entire life for? Then you better hold onto your ass with both hands, Einstein,” and if only I had a photographic memory to keep the way his smug smile dropped off his face in my brain forever.

I scrunched my nose at him the way the mean girls did in early 2000s movies, then said, “Better get a calendar and pen ready, Doc,” before sarcastically blowing him a kiss, climbing into the truck, and starting the drive back to the ranch. I caught a glimpse of him standing dumbfounded on the sidewalk in the rearview mirror, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, because I was going to make Dr. Spencer Reid regret ever underestimating me, and have a smile on my face the entire time I did so.

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[imrryr]

“post the last few lines of your WIP" meme, courtesy of @stealthnoodle. Anyone who wants to do this absolutely should! :)

So I can’t post the last few lines because this doc I’m working on today is a giant mess of completed scenes, unconnected paragraphs, and random sentences that I typed in the vain hope that I can fit them in somewhere later, but here are two as yet unconnected bits of a scene from a Mass Effect Femshep/Jack story I’ve been working on for the past 84 years.

For context, it takes place on the Citadel in a sliver of time just before Priority: Earth. Shepard, Jack, and Zaeed have joined a tournament at the Armax arena while the Normandy is being refitted. The hard part has been trying to keep a humorous tone while all sentient life in the galaxy is being methodically wiped out by the Reapers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

She’d never liked hospitals. Who did? Lots of judgmental doctors and nurses telling you where to go and what to do and who not to throw a shockwave at. Like sorry, but that fucking Cerberus trooper they had under guard fucking deserved it. Recognized that asshole from Grissom…

Anyway, this time she kept her hands firmly clasped behind her back and patiently ignored everyone who looked at her sideways until she found the door she was searching for.

And there was Zaeed, lying on a bed with his injured foot propped up on a pillow. Every free inch of his room, the wall, the tables, the chairs, was covered in bright flowers. The sight brought a big smile to her lips. It had to be Shepard’s doing.

He lay there, looking out the window and seemingly oblivious to the utter absurdity of his surroundings.

Unable to find a place to sit, Jack settled for the edge of the bed.

“Hey, careful,” he grumbled. He slid his foot, protected inside an enormous cast, as far away from Jack as possible.

She would’ve apologized, but eh...

Instead, Jack nodded in lieu of a greeting as she looked out on the Presidium. Hospitals still sucked, but she had to admit that Huerta Memorial had a pretty sweet view. The window made up one entire side of the room, and the gentle curving arc of the Presidium stretched out before her.

A minute passed. Things got quiet. She’d spoken to Zaeed alone a few times back in the good old suicide mission days. He’d wisely kept his mouth shut that first time she’d come on board – said nothing about her tattoos or what she chose to wear, and never once asked about any of the more prickly bits of her past life (i.e. any of it).

All taken together, it had elevated him to a spot on her ‘only kill if he gets in my way’ list.

When it was just the two of them, they tended to talk about… well, take a guess. It wasn’t horticulture. She frowned, scratching the back of her hand. Today was clearly proving to be a very strange day. “When’s the operation?”

Zaeed grumbled. “Tomorrow morning. Told them it’d better be over by nightfall. Don’t want to miss the match.”

“Really excited to see us lose, huh?”

“You’d better not. I’ve got fifty thousand credits on that match. Who’s replacing me anyway?”

“Some asari chick. Supposed to be famous on Thessia or something, I don’t know.”

“Huh. She any good?”

Jack shrugged. “If she isn’t, Shepard and I will just have to carry the weight ourselves. Nothing we haven’t done before.”

Zaeed grunted. “You’re real goddamn hilarious, you know that?”

(snip)

“Can I ask you something?”

His eyes – well, the good one at least – went wide as if that innocuous question alone had blown his mind.

Still, Jack pressed on. There wasn’t, after all, anyone else she could think to put the question to. “If you asked Shepard out, where would you take her?”

Surprisingly, the answer came without a second’s hesitation. “Easy. ‘This One’s House of Plentiful Amusements. It’s that new Hanar comedy club down on Zakeera Ward.’”

“A comedy club? Really?”  

“Yeah, I figure once I asked her out, she wouldn’t stop laughing for a good three or four hours. Might as well take her someplace appropriate, right?”

She let out a long breath. What was this, Give Sarcastic Advice to Jack Day? Gritting her teeth, she asked, “And what if it was me?”

“Uh…” he visibly swallowed, “No offense, but you’re not my type.”

Fuck you, Zaeed. “No, where would I take her out?”

“Oh.” His brow furrowed. “Don’t know? Someplace with a lot of goddamned explosions, I guess. Or, judging from a year of experience, just follow her around for a day and the explosions will come to you.”

Jack hummed in thought. True enough, she thought.

“You know,” he continued, “these painkillers must be really damned powerful, because I could swear that you’re asking me for relationship advice.”

Ugh. “Forget I said anything.”

Zaeed ignored her. “Everyone’s gone fucking respectable. Kasumi’s working on the Crucible, Garrus is a military advisor, and look at you, I bet you haven’t crashed a space-station into a moon in at least a month.”

Jack rolled her eyes. “No, but I’ve thought about it,” she said with a laugh. As far as the Citadel was concerned it might be an improvement. The trick would be finding a large enough moon.

“And me, I’m sittin’ here with my thumb up my ass.”

“It’s probably too late to be having a mid-life crisis, Zaeed.”

“It’s this goddamned bed,” he said, grunting as he tried to sit up. “Gives a man too much time to think. Damned nurse took away my omni-tool. He said ‘Towers of Hanoi‘ was going to give me an aneurysm.”

“Hmm. I’ll give Kasumi a call, maybe she can hook you up with something.”

He nodded, relieved. “Look,” he said, that good eye fixed on her. “I think you should do whatever keeps the team together. When Shepard puts something together, nothing in galaxy can stop it. Only way I see us winning this fucking war.” He stretched, adding in a yawn for good measure. “Besides, I’m hoping if Shepard lets me stick around long enough she’ll hook me up with a pension plan.”

Yeah, thanks, Zaeed. The sad thing was she could picture Shepard fighting the Alliance to set something like that up. A second suicide mission to rival the first.

“Haven’t had this much fun in years. Blowing shit up and feeling like a hero afterwards? Not used to that. Feels good, you know what I mean?”

Jack sighed. Yeah. It wasn’t the worst feeling in the world.

She could only think of one thing that would make it better.

[ishikawayukis]

Thank youu<3 I’ve been enjoying it, tho I’m slowly getting sadder now that it’s almost over lol

Ahora quiero ver ese video🧍🏽‍♀️JAJAJAJAJA but it’s okay that happens to me too, I’ll see if I can search it and find it LOL

No yeah Nolan’s story was pretty good I just didn’t want the details, the summary was enough and can be enough for many other flashbacks, pero pues, ¿quién soy yo para juzgar? JAJAJAJA I’m also very excited bc now I’m really curious about Sanji’s backstory AND Luffy’s family tree porque estos primeros episodios de Post-Enies Lobby arc me dejó confundida🧍🏽‍♀️ LMAO

SKIP SKYPIEA??? BUT THE COMEDY IS AMAZING?? Maybe it’s bc I watched it in 1.5x speed but I felt like that arc had a decent story and pace, great comedy and interesting enemies!! ALSO SAMEEEEE, I find weird watching things dubbed unless I did it when I was a child, that’s why I’m always team subtitles and lowkey side eye people who say it’s impossible to watch things with subtitles LMAO

They get carried away?? (sinceramente me tomé un buen tiempo tratando de pensar en la traducción y tampoco me acuerdo) but yes you’re right, I also feel like they take too much time sometimes lol ALSO JAJAJAJA when I saw kaku I got to confess I was like “why he kinda…” BUT IM GLAD IM NOT THE ONLY ONE JAJAJAJAJ, I felt pretty sad that he turned out to be a bad guy but it’s okay I believe he could’ve been good in other circumstances 😔🙏🏽

NI YO TENGO POR ESO ME LO HICE JAJAJAJAJAJA but thank you hehe<3 I hope that if you get it your healing process goes by smoothly!!

Y graciaaaas, espero que también pases un buen tiempo en estas fiestas, even tho the year or past years could’ve been pretty dull or overwhelming, I hope next year is full of (small or big) moments that make you smile or feel excited or happy about it even if it’s just for that moment c: *sending you a new year’s hug🫂 *

LO ENCONTRÉ entre la estúpida cantidad de videos guardados AJAJAJ si no funciona ahora lloraré pq la tecnología en serio me va a ganar, weno es este (literal no me deja insertar el link???? tumblr te odio, voy a dejar el link completo bien ridícula al final del ask)

i love knowing the backstories of the characters but unless they're the strawhats/strawhats adjacent they could reaaaaally speed it up or give us a shorter version LMAO pero también, quién soy yo para juzgar AJAJAJJ luffy's family tree is a disaster but also a mystery there is not a single normal person in that family and honestly? we love them for it

NO I KNOW like was it a bit slow? yeah but that's like, all of one piece LMAO the arc after ennies lobby, thriller bark is also very disliked and when i found that out i was soooo confused because it's one of my faves? it's so funny but it has so many important moments and people are like "nah you can skip it" NO YOU CAN'T justice for thriller bark.

SKHDGL no but i do think that being able to read things with subtitles it's a uuuuh trained ability in a way (y no es por ser hater pero todos sabemos q los gringos no ven cosas si no es en su idioma y cómo se van a acostumbrar a ver cosas con subtítulos así, pero hoy no es el día de hablar mierda contra los estado unidenses AJAJAJ)

LMAOO NOT THE WHY HE KINDA but yeah kaku in another universe i know you would've been my n°2 (only 2 because so sorry no one is surpassing sanji any time soon)

tu 🤝 yo: cero control sobre nuestros impulsos JAJAAJJ and god i hope so because the healing process for the last two i got was... something. truly the only thing that is making me debate if i wanna get another one or not (lo haré pero lloraré antes de AJJAJ)

y si lloró 🥺🥺 no but i wish the same for you, hopefully it'll be a calm year for our minds, sending a bigger hug your way <333

literal peleando pa poder mostrarte el video más estúpido AJAJAJ

[twilightofthe]

What was your opinion of the Clovis arc? People I know either love it or hate it, no in between. I generally liked it but found it waayyy ooc.

Hey anon, thanks for the ask!!!!

AHSJFLSLALK OK SO UH. Wow. Clovis arc. Yiiiiiiikes ok so. I totally agree with you on the fandom divide and I also totally agree that everyone involved in it is rather OOC for my taste. That being said, that case of OOC is exactly why I personally do not like the arc that much at all.

(Please note that my following words are MY PERSONAL OPINIONS, and that anyone is free to disagree, in fact I welcome the discussion, and even if this is your favorite arc, please consider yourself welcome on my blog I hold nothing against those who might like it)

Part of me was gonna make a short and sweet point about how I don’t like that TCW has had both of its main female characters have unwanted kisses forced on them, and instead of teaching young girls watching to tell those kinds of people to fuck off and respect their bodies, we get: 1. Just let it happen, you both must kinda like each other anyway or 2. Stay still then sit back while your boyfriend beats him half to death

But actually turns out I wanted to spend all day writing an essay so now you get this. So far I’m gonna hit four points:

the show’s constant need for Vader foreshadowing sometimes tending to completely override Anakin’s current mindset and personality he should have at this point in the timeline as well as his preestablished characterization

the way TCW gave Anakin a giant dosage of toxic masculinity to try and please the pissy movie critics who didn’t like that he cried

the role of Padmé and how TCW tries to portray her as a “strong woman” by just having her constantly be irritated by and sometimes even look like she actively dislikes her husband while simultaneously have her act OOC so they can blame HER and her actions for Anakin’s reactions and anger and overall Fall

How I think this arc is not irredeemable and that with some fixes it could be done decently— decently, not well, because a lot of this arc’s problems are also due to preexisting writing choices throughout the show

(Ok whoops this turned into a half Clovis arc rant half entire TCW Anidala commentary)

So firstly I wanna start that yes, I am fully aware that TCW is meant to fill in the gaps between AOTC and ROTS and help explain why Anakin’s mindset in the final movie is what it is and justify his Fall. Of course we need to show some Vader foreshadowing throughout the series, and in some places it is executed very well, notably the Mortis arc, the Bad Batch arc, the Wrong Jedi arc, as well as others that I can’t cite off the top of my head currently because I might have a mild touch of heat exhaustion wooo I need to get off the beach.

But it also has some rather hamfisted Vader foreshadowing stuff too. Like, y’all know the fandom joke where it’s like “Anakin: *Accidentally Leaves The Toilet Seat Up*. The Background Music: *BLASTS the Imperial March*” but like, they actually really do that. Like the time where they have Anakin take out a terrorist about to blow up an entire ship full of people and then play the Imperial March afterwards and imply he’s a “cold-blooded killer” just to defend the moral purity of the two people who were gonna stand there and let the ship blow in the name of idealism.

I’m getting off topic but yeah, sometimes the show’s Vader foreshadowing makes sense, sometimes it’s pretty forced, and the Clovis arc DEFINITELY leans towards the forced side, and when they try to force more of Darth Vader into Anakin at a point where he shouldn’t quite be there yet, it screws with his entire character.

This is particularly shown in the majority of the show’s takes on Anakin’s relationship with Padmé. Namely, they tend to forget nearly the entirety of AOTC with the exception of the Tusken murder scene, then forget even more of ROTS up until the point where Anakin strangles her on Mustafar. Basically, they take the truth that it was Anakin’s unhealthy attachment to Padmé that sparked his Fall, but then they decide to run with it where almost every single interaction he has with her in the damn show is him being a toxic overbearing dick to her and her acting like she mildly tolerates him at most and definitely doesnt respect him as like, I guess a way of showing what happened on Mustafar is in character for them???? Ugh, I’ll explain further.

So with Anakin’s aggressive possessiveness towards her. We know Anakin has possession and attachment issues. We know he’s a clingy needy whiny anxious mess who’s constantly afraid of losing or driving away the few people he has pinned his entire happiness on. We know he leans unhealthily on Padmé to provide the majority of his emotional support. We know he’s convinced himself he can’t live without her. But never, NEVER is it seen in the movies where his possessiveness turns into outward aggression towards her or this douchey pushiness. Never does he treat her like his property, like she belongs to him.

Not until Mustafar.

Not until he’s raving, half out of his mind with the warring emotions over the atrocities he’s just committed, until he’s begging her to understand where he was coming from, begging her and the child to stay with him and justify his decision, until he sees Obi Wan and sees her backing away from him, leaving him, and he PANICS because oh no no no you can’t abandon me, I need you, doN’T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME. And he lashes out and tries to force her to stay, punish her for leaving and doubting him, and he puts that hand around her throat.

And that is supposed to be when we know he’s crossed the line, when we’re supposed to be horrified, where we know he’s lost himself, because he has NEVER ACTED LIKE THAT BEFORE.

Now how does Anakin act before? In the movies? He’s deferential to Padmé in almost every other scene they’re in together.

In AOTC, yeah he stares at her a bit creepily from a distance, he says awkward things and does goofy stuff to impress her, but he does Not get in her face. The few times he does invade her space, she flat out tells him: stand back. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t say that. Don’t interrupt me. And Anakin always, always backs off, respects her wishes. He follows her lead and lets her call the shots both on Naboo when he’s supposed to be protecting her and when she organizes the Geonosis rescue and once they arrive where she flat out tells him “I’m a Senator, I’ll handle this, just back me up”, and he’s all but just “ok yes queen”.

But they aren’t married then. Fine, take ROTS. It’s a movie all about Anakin’s issues but even then, when he’s worried about Padmé dying, he tells her he’s worried and that he can’t lose her, but he still keeps a distance. He doesn’t constantly hover and loom over her. If anything, Padmé, both in ROTS and AOTC is always the one to approach Anakin and close the distance when there’s conflict. When Anakin is upset, he averts his eyes and distances himself, tries to draw in on himself and brood silently, and we’ve seen it in Palpatine sometimes (of course with bad motives but he still does), but Obi Wan and Padmé both especially needing to be the ones to come over, turn his face to them and be like “hey, look at me, I care about you, what’s wrong”. Padmé SAYS in ROTS when he’s feeling specifically conflicted about losing Padmé, “don’t shut me out” and has to come over to him because he’s retreated into a corner of the room to scowl angstily out the window. Anakin does NOT get overbearing and possessive of her or get in her face, not once in the films.

In the fucking show? The Clovis arc, while perhaps the worst offender, isn’t even close to being the first time Anakin has been overly pushy and aggressive with Padmé, or acting like she’s something he owns, From that time in the Senate Hostage ep where he’s bugging her about ditching work and all but acting like incels texting like “awww but babe my dick hurts :(”, from the FIRST Clovis disaster ep where he’s childishly trying to screw up Padmé’s mission, to the Clovis arc in season 6

And this is where they just roll right in with their “oh so Anakin’s an overbearing, entitled douche” bit with the interaction he has with Pads and he’s trying to talk her out of taking the Clovis assignment and he says something along the lines of “as your husband, I demand you don’t do this”.

Hwat. The Fuck.

What kind of caveman-esque, 1800’s-ass man of the house whom my wife must obediently serve kinda entitled-ass BULLSHIT?!?!?!?

Like, I’m sorry, I really am, but that is just completely out of left field and not like Anakin at all. I mean to the point that when he’s an evil Sith Lord trying to talk her into taking over the galaxy with him, EVEN THEN he does not include “Padmé you must join me because I’m your husband and you do as I say” sort of domineering assholerly.

Anakin does not push Padmé around. He does not TRY to assert authority over her or try and force her to do shit. Not only because she doesn’t put up with that kinda shit for a second, but because Anakin respects Padmé; he will treat her with respect. He always has, and sometimes like in this arc it really doesn’t feel like he does.

Now of course Padmé’s response to the “I own you” declaration is “fuck you, asshole, I do what I want” and doubling down on her decision, and then decides to go even harder on the mission if only to spite her douche husband (and we’ll get to Padmé’s characterization in a bit) which is a very different kind of Anidala conversation we see in the show as opposed to the movies (also discussed later).

Now, the reason for Anakin’s overbearing douchery ties directly into an overarching problem in TCW— honestly, one of the very few issues I have with this show, but the problem is that it touches nearly the entire thing —and that is they almost completely reworked Anakin’s personality to be more hyper-masculine alpha male.

This is a topic I’ve discussed on my blog before, but the gist is that in the movies, Anakin was not the typical male heroic protagonist and DEFINITELY not what people expected from Future Darth Vader The Masked Brutish Male Power Fantasy. He was awkward, he was shy, he was soft spoken, he was clumsy around the girl he liked, he was very openly romantic, he liked frolicking in fields and candlelit dinners and snuggling. Two of the most important people in his life were soft, feminine women and he openly loved them very dearly and very gently— and he deferred to them when he felt it was right, as I’ve mentioned before. He CRIED when he was upset and was messy and emotional. And fanboys hated this with a burning passion. They couldn’t project their power fantasy onto this!!!! The Anakin critics were a HUGE part of the mob who crucified the prequels to the point of chasing both Anakin actors practically out of the movie industry in general.

The Clone Wars writers were obviously petrified of this happening again. So their solution, as has always been Star Wars’s solution to hateful fans being upset about an innocent character, is to completely rework them, hide or retcon all the undesirable qualities, and act like everything was all fixed. Now don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of TCW Anakin that I adore. As I’ve also mentioned before, they got his humor, his cleverness, his eagerness to do the right thing, to help people, his relationship with Obi Wan and Ahsoka and his men, they got that all perfectly. But the rest??? TCW’s solution to the criticism of Movie!Anakin was to turn him into an agressive, dominant, violent shadow of everything “soft” he was in the movie

Now, he speaks loudly and more deeply. Now, he’s cocky and overconfident and while yes he was arrogant in the movies, now it’s dialed up to like an 11. He never cries, never even THINKS to show a negative emotion that’s not Manly Rage And Aggression(TM). And then there’s the way he is around the women in his life. No more awkwardness or shyness, now he makes jokes about being a “ladies man” and does whatever the fuck flirting he does with Miraj Scintel even though the Anakin from the movies would have needed like every scrap of his self control just to look at her without insta-murdering her face. And then there’s how he is with Ahsoka and Padmé. He is muuuuch more of a loud brash dudebro around them who pushes his weight and is kind of controlling and their solution is just to have the both of them be Strong Women(TM) who Fight Back whenever he tries it too hard with them.

With Ahsoka, it’s not too bad because it’s a brand new dynamic and she’s a rather agressive firecracker personality herself when we first meet her, so the constant Snips n’ Skyguy snipefest works for them. For Padmé? It just means that in far too many episodes they’re in there’s a point where Anakin says something Eh and Padmé gets mildly irritated to actually annoyed with him for it and she’ll talk down to him and then there’s an argument between them because he’s bullheaded and she’s a Strong Woman. Why do I consider these out of character?

In the movies, despite the flaws, Anidala is a couple who actually tries to communicate. Anakin feels open to speak about his troubles to Padmé and her to him (for the most part, she definitely has a savior complex and a tendency to squash her own shit so she can help deal with both Anakin’s and the galaxy’s at large) when they’re worried or concerned about something and they want to talk it out, so they’ll talk it out!

The problem with Anidala isn’t that they don’t communicate, it’s that they try but also only do it by halves because they hate fighting. They’ll talk, Anakin will say something that Padmé might disagree with— the fascism discussion in the Naboo field in AOTC, the question of whether the Republic is just or not in TPM —and she’ll try and correct him if she feels he’ll listen, but if he doubles down, she’ll go “ok you know what, agree to disagree, let’s not fight” and she subtly changes the subject because she hates fighting with him. If Pads says something Ani doesn’t like— telling Obi Wan about them in ROTS, some emotional advice she tries to give in both movies —he’ll flat out shut down and be like “I don’t want to talk about this, let’s drop it” and then seek out cuddles or affection as a distraction.

And that brings us back to the Clovis arc. The scene where the “as your husband” line occurs. Anakin is trying to talk Padmé out of doing this not because he’s jealous. Maybe he was jealous the first time he met Clovis and saw Padmé being all cute n’ fond with her old flame, but this time it seems almost entirely because last time ended in catastrophe and he’s genuinely worried for Padmé and feels she’s not thinking wisely, that she’s putting herself in danger.

However, Anakin is deciding to voice these concerns in Possessive Dudebro Pushing because of the aforementioned misguided Vader Foreshadowing and Toxic Masculinity. Padmé? Is not even CONSIDERING what he has to say, is just breezing on through and shutting him down at every turn and generally acting like he’s a dumbass who doesn’t have a clue about anything.

Now, it is very in character for Padmé Amidala to be all “I’m right, you’re wrong, fuck you don’t get in my way”. HOWEVER, they aren’t framing this as solely Padmé having a goal and bulldozing her way through the situation. That’s not how they frame this.

They frame this as: Padmé is embarrassed that she misjudged the situation wrong the last time and embarrassed even further that Anakin had to step in and get her out of trouble— which he brings up —and probably remembers that he made fun of her while he did it—

(Timing out to say that THAT scene was also OOC; they once more wanted a Vader parallel what with Anakin’s silhouette when he opens her cell door and the way Padmé’s sleeping pose is identical to Leia’s in ANH. But Anakin basically steps in and gives her this condescending-ass “awww the little wife’s gotten in over her head like I SAID she would, good thing I’m here to rescue her!” bit that’s really just MEAN. It’s not like him and Obi Wan’s/Ahsoka’s teasing snark whenever they have to pull each out of trouble, he’s just kicking her while she’s already down. Really, Anakin’s reaction should have been a lot less humorous and a lot more pissy; she didn’t listen to him, didn’t trust him, and ended up in danger because of it. It’d be a surly and upset “I told you so”, not an amused one.)

—and now it seems much more like Padmé is solely taking this assignment to spite Anakin for being a dick and to pettily prove that she knows what she’s doing rather than any sense or urge to do the right thing. And....... childish pettiness????? Is not Padmé. And yet, she has the entire immature “don’t tell me what to DO, Anakin” attitude this whole arc that amounts to WAY more than just the normal response she would have to his overcontrolling dickishness

And once again, it’s because she, like everyone else in the episode, seems to think the problem Anakin has is that he’s jealous of Clovis. He’s not, not really. He’s insecure, yes, but he also knows Clovis is a bag of dicks as well, and trusts that Padmé knows she’s better than that. His problem isn’t fears he’ll lose Padmé, it is entirely that Padmé isn’t listening to his concerns, doesn’t trust him, is going into a situation they both know is unwise, and he is frustrated he’s not in a position where he can look out for her since he feels she’s not looking out for herself. And, he’s not entirely wrong. Padmé IS being reckless and kind of irrational solely to prove a point. He just goes about it pretty much entirely the wrong way, which is what you can really say is the cause and effect formula for any problem Anakin Skywalker encounters and subsequently makes worse.

And then there’s That Scene. The one where Clovis tries to force a kiss on Padmé and Anakin freaks and almost kills him for it. I’ll start off by quoting another Tumblr user on that very scene by saying in regards to Clovis: “that bitch deserved that”. The almost murder? Maybe not that far, but the initial hitting for disrespecting someone’s “no”? Yep, that was deserved.

My first criticism is that Anakin shouldn’t have even had time to attack him because why the fuck wasn’t Padmé instantly kneeing him in the balls?!?! Like Padmé is not prone to violence immediately, no, but she can will and does defend herself immediately when she needs to— her right punch knocked someone tf out once when she was pissed —and she already gave him a warning that his advances were not welcomed.

Now, I am absolutely not victim blaming. I am NOT saying it is the fault of a woman (I’d be a hypocrite if I did and that’s all I’ll say on THAT), or of anyone when faced with sexual harassment, if they don’t fight back for whatever reason, no matter how capable of doing so they may be. What I’m saying is that considering her previous behavior and personality and the fact that the show NEVER goes deep enough into explaining heavy stuff like why victims might freeze or NOT fight back when faced with harassment, I feel like showing her not attempting to defend herself at all is kinda strange.

Now, Padmé’s utter passiveness to the situation aside, we’re going back into toxic masculinity and misunderstood interpretations of how Anakin displays possession. While I’ll repeat that Clovis deserved consequences for the forced kiss, Anakin going full caveman defending his property jealous rage just. Doesn’t feel right to me. Again, I think Anakin would probs hit him and put the fear of living god into him, maybe even I’d buy the attempted murder if they framed it as Anakin doing it because he hates those who force their will on others and disrespect women, but the whole that’s MY wife and you’re touching her shite just once more feels alpha male aggressive ridiculousness. Like again, I understand Anakin is possessive of Padmé, but not like this. I’m sorry, but I just cannot see that, him fighting over her like she’s a scrap of meat.

Like, I completely think she’s in the right tho to put them on a break after he does it though. That’s well within her right.

But then onto the FINAL part where after Clovis goofs and fucks them all over and then dies, she forgives him and blames herself for everything and apologizes. And like, that part I do see as in canon and character for her and for Anakin. He doesn’t like to admit his mistakes, her mistakes weigh on her and when she fails to fix or save someone, she falls into depression and upset and self-blame.

But the fact that Clovis died because Anakin dropped him? Anakin Skywalker, who scaled an entire elevator shaft carrying two people over his back who combined probs weighed more than Padmé and Clovis. Anakin Skywalker, who’s used the Force to lift tons of debris, who’s used it to hold back explosions, Anakin Skywalker, MOST POWERFUL FORCE USER IN HISTORY WHO TENDS TO RELY ON BRUTE STRENGTH FOR MOST SHIT ANYWAY. That Anakin couldn’t pull two people over a ledge?!?!?!?!? This has always bothered me.

Like to be honest; I feel this entire episode could have been so fixable too. Like keep Anakin’s obsessive worry over Padmé making a mistake, keep the best part of the arc which is his talk with Obi Wan where Obi Wan tries to connect with him and explain that he’s not alone, all Jedi have emotional struggles and have loved, if perhaps he wants to TALK to someone about it, Obi Wan is here for him, like that? That’s okay!

Just ugh ffs, get rid of the nasty Anakin treating Padmé like a naughty dog who won’t obey him and the Padmé purposely acting unwisely to spite Anakin plot. Have the entire conflict be both of them being upset that the other doesn’t trust them, doesn’t believe in their advice, keep Padmé’s speech about how marriages NEED trust and compromise to survive, take all of Anakin’s aggression towards Padmé and transfer it to aggression towards Clovis, like make the conflict him menacing the guy if he hurts Padmé again just because he’s being overprotective and “if you won’t look out for yourself I will” and Anakin getting constantly checked for not being able to control his emotions, Padmé can tell him off for being overprotective instead of overaggressive and his possessiveness can instead show through him arguing that he needs to keep her safe at all costs. THAT can be the argument.

And if they want the Vader foreshadowing? Like real, in-character Vader foreshadowing??? Tbh, drop the Clovis beatdown, drop the machoness towards Padmé, and just have Anakin blatantly DROP the douchebag at the end of the episode instead of his hand slipping. Make him choose to ACTIVELY kill Clovis. Like THAT, Anakin taking the law into his own hands and deciding that he knows best and this guy is dangerous and has fucked up one too many times, there being an opportunity where there’s an chance to save Clovis when they’re alone without Pads, “be a Jedi, Padmé wouldn’t want this, do the right thing” Clovis might say, and we can see Anakin’s face considering, and then he just “Long Live The King”s him and lets him fall and die, THAT is an in-character Vader foreshadowing.

Then at the end of the episode, we can have Anakin lie to her, say Clovis slipped, say it was too late, and Padmé can believe him, thank him for trying. Then there’s the same thing where Padmé apologizes, and we can have a callback to the convo about trust and she adds that she’s sorry that she didn’t trust him, and when she says that, we zoom in on Anakin’s guilty face.

There. That’s how I’d fix these episodes

And THERE, I think I’ve complained about everything, I am SO sorry for the gigantic ass post and response, I’ll add a read more once I’m on my laptop and not on the beach on mobile.

But yeah anon, I hope that satisfies your question xD

Once again, I welcome discussion if y’all either agree with me or if you have any differing opinions, I know my takes are far from hot for several people and I’m curious to see what others think!

[butwhyduh]

"There is only one bed" "Exes forced to work together" and "Accidentally cuddling in sleep" with homeboy Dickie please <3

There were certain members of the Titans who said Dick’s superpower was being friends with his exes. Not very many of them had ill feelings for him after breakup despite everything that happened in their relationship. You tried to be like them. Kori could laugh at his jokes while he dated Barbara. Zatanna would often give him an open mouth kiss when she saw him and yet had no interest in dating him again.

But you weren’t like that. You didn’t know how to act around him. Possibly because you didn’t exactly break up normally, or at all. He just disappeared. It had been for a mission but still. He could have called or talked to you afterwards. That’s why you were mad. It was inconsiderate, you thought as you ignored the tiny voice that told you that you couldn’t be normal around him because you still liked him.

And currently you were dying because you had teamed up with Dick on a mission. Both of your skill sets matched for the mission’s needs and so this is how you ended up at the front counter of a Swiss hotel high in the mountain trying to get 2 hotel rooms instead of one. Or even just another bed.

“Madame, I apologize but there is no other room at this hotel. We are very sorry for the mix up but this is all we have. The nearest hotel is 30 kilometers north so I have very little I can do. Again, I apologize,” said the man. “It is the busy season.”

You sighed. “That’s fine. I’m tired. It’ll be fine,” you said grabbing the keys a little rougher than necessary. Dick looked at the man apologetically before following you.

The hotel was actually really nice. Very traditional with red ornamental patterned rugs and golden brown beaded board halfway up the wall. A gold chandelier hung in the front entry. A bellboy carried your bags up to the room and let you in.

The room was just as nice but tiny. Barely had enough room for the bed and a small table with 2 chairs and a tv stand. A little closet sat behind door and the tiny window with covered in thick curtains.

You tossed your bag in the closet without a care and pulled off your shoes. You groaned and stretched your toes before flopping on the bed.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Dick said grabbing a pillow.

“No just get in bed. There isn’t enough floor to sleep on. It’ll kill your back to sleep weird,” you said with a yawn. Dick stood awkwardly. You hadn’t thought about it but you were probably his only awkward ex and he didn’t know what to do about it.

“You sure? I don’t wanna be in your space,” Dick said tentatively laying down the pillow. You patted the mattress.

“You could sleep in the room beside me and I think you’d still be in my face with how tiny these rooms are,” you said and he chuckled.

“Yeah, this hotel is probably like 500 years old or something,” he said laying down. He was on his edge of the bed and you on yours. “Did I ever tell you that we toured out here when I was a kid in the circus?”

You turned to look at him. “No you haven’t. What was it like?”

“It was cold but fun. My mom got mad when I tried to do flips barefoot in the snow,” he said with a laugh. “I was probably 6. She thought I was going to get deathly sick from the cold.”

“That sounds exactly like something a mom would say,” you said with a smile.

“I also remember one of the sword swallowers tried to learn the language to speak to all the pretty women that came to the shows but he learned Swedish instead,” Dick said and you both laughed.

“I bet that didn’t go well.”

“He got lucky and the first woman he talked to spoke Swedish! It was pretty funny,” Dick said with a yawn. “We should probably get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” you said and the pillow felt like heaven. Your eyelids felt heavy and before you knew it, you were asleep. Hours later you woke to light hitting your eyes through the curtains so you snuggled closer to get it out of your eyes. Arms that wrapped around you tightened a little and you felt a humming noise that threatened to put you back to sleep.

Hot breath against your cheek made you move again. This time you woke up to take in your surroundings. A collarbone. Arms around your back. Legs tangled in your own. You hadn’t taken anyone home last night. Who was that? You blinked before realizing that you were in Dick’s arms.

You pulled back a little and he whined in his sleep and held you tighter. His touch was warm and comforting and you almost wanted to be lulled back to sleep with him. But Dick wasn’t your boyfriend and you needed to move. You shifted again and he opened his eyes to look at you in surprise.

“Oh,” he said. You both froze. “Sorry,” Dick muttered before moving his hands away slowly. His didn’t scoot away from you.

You looked at him and the way he looked at you stopped you from moving. It was raw and unfiltered in the mornin light and he clearly wasn’t over you. He looked down at your lips before looking back at your eyes.

“Morning,” you said softly. You looked down as he licked his lips. They looked soft and shiny. You slid your hand to his arm. Almost painfully slow, Dick scooted closer to where your lips were almost touching. You inhaled a little faster than normal.

“Can I,” he said already hold his head slightly turned. You leaned up to meet his lips. Dick’s hands went back around to grip your waist. The kiss started out tentative but didn’t take long to deepen. He tasted the same as you remember and his touch was familiar and comforting.

After a little bit of you both laying on your sides, Dick laid back and pulled you on top of him. You straddled his hips and kissed him hard. Dick made a moan against your lips and gripped your thighs. You rubbed down against him. You could feel him grow hard in his thin sleep pants. Dick pulled back to breathe.

“Fuck baby,” he panted. You huffed out a laugh. “What?” He asked and you grinned.

“Still has the same weaknesses, I see,” you whispered and he chuckled before shrugging. You ground down on him and he inhaled quickly.

“Yeah but so do you,” he said before flipping you over and pinning your hands above your head. You gasped into a moan as he nipped at the spot behind your ear. Dick smirked against your skin. “Yep the same spot.”

“Hmmm using it against me,” you asked and he nodded.

“Always take advantage of weaknesses. That how I was taught,” Dick said. He bent and sucked hard on the spot and you pulled at his hands, wanting to put your hands in his hair. Dick kissed down your neck to your collar and nipped at your collarbone. You made a keening sound.

“Not fair Grayson, not fair,” you said breathlessly and he chuckled.

“I could always stop,” Dick said, his breath was hot on your skin. You groaned and he chuckled. Dick slid his hands under your shirt and pulled back to slide it off. His fingers traced a new scar that you had gotten since the last time you had been together.

“Two Face,” you commented and he nodded before kissing the arcing curvature of lighter skin. You pulled at his shirt and he pulled it off too. He had some more scars too. A pair of red healing marks on his forearm that looked like claws you touched with your thumb.

“Killer Croc,” he said before kissing the valley between your breasts. You hummed in agreement before realizing what he said.

“Killer Croc? You got very lucky,” you said and he pulled back a little.

“Yeah. I mean, it got mad infected and I was out for 2 weeks but yeah, he could have ripped my arm off,” Dick said. He ran his hand along the waistband of your sleep shorts. You inhaled quickly.

“You’re too casual for a man that almost died,” you said.

“Yeah, I know,” Dick answered sliding his hand in your shorts to play in your folds. Your eyes closed and you forgot all about scars and Killer Croc as he fingered you.

“Condoms?” You gasped. He grinned as he kissed along the column of your neck.

“One minute,” Dick said getting up. You watched him move around the room. His boner extremely obvious in his sleep pants. He came back with a few attached together.

“3?”

“Let’s start with one and go from there,” he smirked and you laughed. That was Dick for you. Cheeky no matter what. He pushed down his pants and rolled it on as you slid out of your panties and shorts. Dick stared down at your wet pussy. He already knew from fingering you but he certainly wasn’t complaining about the sight.

Dick climbed back over you and kissed you soundly. “Ready?” He asked and you nodded. Dick slowly thrust in and you made a soft sound. He started moving and found a good pace. It was great for missionary but it wasn’t like either of you didn’t have the ability to be a little more flexible in positions.

“I want to try something,” you whispered in his ear and he looked at you with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Go on,” Dick said excitedly. You pushed him off of you and he eagerly complied. You stood up and bent at the waist and wrapped your arms around the back of your knees with your legs closed giving Dick one hell of a show.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered. Dick moved behind you. “Like this?” He asked and you nodded. Dick slowly slid in with his hands on your hips making all kinds of little noises. “You look fucking amazing baby. Truly.”

You let Dick move for a while in this position. He alternated between holding your hips and grabbing your ass to slightly spread it to watch better. It was possible he’d never been that horny in his life. It felt amazing on your part but there was something you wanted to try without telling him.

You slowly moved your hands to the floor and put your weight on one leg. And with a smirk, you lifted one leg up and Dick inhaled deeply as you lifted it up to his shoulder. He held your leg and moaned loudly. His hips stopped and he was panting.

“Fuck, you almost made me cum right then,” he groaned. His hips started moving and all of took was a little shake of your ass for him to cum despite himself. “Fuck,” he groaned while burying himself deep. As soon as he was done, he pulled out and helped you stand up. You noted a little dusting of pink in his cheeks and ears.

“I’ll get you back. Lay down,” he said and you nodded and laid on the bed. It was no time at all that he had his lips wrapped around your clit and fingers in your core as your grabbed his hair in pleasure.

“Fuck! Dick! Fuck!” You cried, completely ignoring the fact that it was 7 am and you were in a hotel. He seemed to be hell bent on making up for the fact that he came first. Your thighs shook and you weren’t even sure but you probably screamed when you came. Dick peppered kisses up your body with a smirk as you heaved in breaths.

“Like that,” he said wryly, pulling you into his arms.

“You already know that,” you answered. He ran a finger along your arm and kissed your hair.

“So this...” he started but trailed off.

“Yeah...”

“Do you wanna... try again? Us?” He asked.

“Maybe,” you said biting your lip.

“Give it a shot?” He asked hopeful. You sat in silence for a second.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Yeah?” He said with a smile.

“Yeah,” you answered shyly. He grinned and kissed you again. He rolled on top of you.

“Since I fucked up the first round, I should make it up to you,” he said playfully. You rolled your eyes with a smile.

“If. You. Can,” you whispered in his ear. By the end of the morning, the hotel security had come to knock on your door to quiet down.

[eri-cheri]

Now that we have reached the last chapter of the year. It is time to do a 2020 roll call of what I like to call, “State of the Shippers”:

1. IzuOcha. Status: Placated.

-IzuOcha’s could celebrate several cute tidbits throughout the year. Mini moments as they say.

Anime Highlights: The OVA’s came in clutch with moments for shippers all around and IzuOcha is no exception. We got a cute tidbit where Izuku and Ochako bumped into each other and were flustered.

Manga Highlights: Christmas kept on giving to this fandom as the AM doll Izuku gave Ochako made many appearances. A cute fist bump between the two was also exchanged and Mina was right there bouncing with y’all.

Heroes Rising: Izuku super man carried Ochako to safety. And was Angy she was injured. Fans could enjoy the small Lois Lane moment.

Troubling Signs?: Ochako said “I would like to be excluded from this narrative” when it comes to her feelings for Deku. She’s a hero damnit! So if they are in for something, probably won’t be while they are still in school.

II. DabiHawks. Status: Yikes.

- Dabi and Hawk’s very public breakup set this fandom in disarray but also kind of disayay?

Anime Highlights: None yet. This fandom was cruelly cock blocked by Bones. Sorry DabiHawks stans.

Manga Highlights: Where to begin, my goodness. With these fans, I guess the good and the bad is a plus in this homoerotic double agent relationship. We have the notion that Dabi may have known Hawks when they were kids, which may be a positive? Hori sure loves his childhood friends. Other than that. The GIRLS WERE FIGHTIN’. Hawks is now permanently scarred by Dabi and I don’t think it was kinky folks. Tokoyami inserted himself in the middle to White Knight Hawks, Dabi broke up with him via YT expose and overall, shippers could anguish in the absolute MESS that this ship endured this year. But I’m sure that’s part of the appeal. So...yay?

Heroes Rising: They were both in it.

Troubling Signs?: The entire relationship is a troubling sign which again, is part of the appeal. Maybe Hawks will cuddle up with Dabi’s father after the war. That’s troubling! Speaking of...

III. EndHawks. Status: Yearning and Burning.

-If there’s one thing Endeavor couldn’t stop worrying about, it was his hot (in more ways than one) new side piece who probably should have looked at the fine print when signing a contract to be a recurring guest star on “Keeping up with the Todoroki’s”.

Anime Highlights: A fateful meeting finally in high definition for all our eyes to see! Hawks’s unwavering support of his biggest hero was endearing to watch and their shenanigans together spurred the anime onlies to finally jump on the biggest May-December ship in the series.

Manga Highlights: Endeavor’s admiration and concern for Hawks seeped through the pages as we entered our most exciting arc in the manga yet. Fate split these two up yet entwined their downfall together. And that Fate’s name was Dabi...or should I say ⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️ or should I just say Touya!

Heroes Rising: “Don’t bite my head off, Endeavor.” Geez, can you flirt a little less loud Hawks?

Troubling Signs?: They say never meet your heroes and Hawks is in for a rude awakening. We shall see just how deep his admiration runs or if Endeavor’s past will split our dynamic duo up for good.

IV: TodoDeku. Status: “Precious”

-Shoto’s “Midoriya is in Danger” radar was highlighted in both manga and anime. 4th User’s quirk, who?

Anime Highlights: “Midoriya hasn’t returned yet.” “Where’s Midoriya?” “Midoriya! Grab my hand!” “Have some of my Soba Midoriya.” Shoto gets it. His emotional support friend is a danger magnet. TodoDeku’s also enjoyed tiny tidbits in the OVA such as a hand grabbing scene. Gotta hold tight to those crumbs.

Manga Highlights: Two Words. “Precious Friend.” Deku comes in w/o arms or legs fighting for Shoto and Shoto’s honor. These two spent the entire year worried sick about each other, and going against all odds to save each other. Precious Friends indeed. TDDK fans ate.

Heroes Rising: Shoto kicks some dog ass and then faints thinking of Deku (and Bakugo but shh. Let the shippers rejoice.) On the bright side, we have a 3rd movie coming featuring “The Three Musketeers” so shippers of TdDk can HOLD TIGHT to what’s to come.

Troubling Signs?: Shoto still doesn’t know about OFA and he’s gonna have LOTS of questions after this arc. Will Deku finally tell him? If not, it could make or break the ship.

V. TodoBaku. Status: “Shining through the city with a little funk and soul.”

-Who knew the greatest comedy duo we needed was Shoto and his hot headed “friend��� or not friend? It still remains unclear to Shoto. Regardless, these two had a fun year.

Anime Highlights: “I wanna see your cute face”, disco dancing, and more fun in the provisional license training. Plus the OVA added some cute moments between the two such as Bakugo staying behind to save Todoroki during a dangerous excercise and his adorable plan neatly animated for us. I’d say TodoBaku’s really were resurgent and energized this year!

Manga Highlights: Shoto, that is not how you properly Catch a Kacchan, I’m sorry. But at least you did it you mad lad. As with Deku, Shoto spent the year worried sick about Bakugo. While the anime let us have our fun, these two were suffering in the manga.

Heroes Rising: Again, Shoto put a dog down and then fainted with Bakugo on his mind (and Deku but we ignore that. Shush.) TodoBaku’s have the 3rd movie to look forward to which is bound to have some amazing content!

Troubling Signs?: They have a lot of trauma to deal with. And a lot of Deku to worry about. I also imagine Shoto will be hurt about being left out of the OFA secret. We shall see what 2021 has to offer.

VI. KiriMina. Status: Unbreakable.

-Changing your hairstyle to match the gal who inspired you in middle school? Sorry y’all but if Mina were a guy, I’d say that’s gay af.

Anime Highlights: We got that backstory Bois. Red Riot’s origin might as well make him be called Pink Riot. Again with Hori and the childhood friends though I wouldn’t exactly call them friends. They just went to the same middle school but Kirishima was highly influenced by Mina’s Chivalrous spirit! A ship is born!

Manga Highlights: The influence is mutual! Mina creates a move based on Kirishima’s unbreakable and we all let out a collective “awwww”. Also in the war arc, we got Kirishima making sure Mina’s chivalrous spirit shines through right into Gigantomachia’s mouth! KiriMina may just be the unsung MVP’s of this arc.

Heroes Rising: They were in it.

Troubling Signs?: I can’t think of a single one. KiriMina’s can enjoy a peaceful sailing.

VII: KiriBaku. Status: Crumb Collectors.

-2020 was an uneventful year for KiriBaku but Bones made sure there were crumbs aplenty! Thank God for OVA’s!

Anime Highlights: KiriBaku’s did thrive in one episode! Kirishima reflects on the sludge incident and evolves his quirk based on inspiring words from Bakugo! Hooray! KiriBaku’s can thrive in their blossoming friendship. The OVA also has Kirishima (and Kaminari but shh) once again following Bakugo’s lead when it comes to the training excercise. How can you not? He’s so manly!

Manga Highlights: Not gonna lie. There is nothing much here this year. I did find a teeny tiny flake in Aizawa’s flashback. Kirishima and Bakugo are sitting next to each other. Oh! And at the hot pot gathering, Bakugo sits next to Kirishima! Eat your crumbs KiriBaku’s! There’s always next year!

Heroes Rising: Kirishima hangs with a lazy Bakugo and delivers the most hilarious line in the whole movie. “Silly Bakugo, there won’t be villains here!” Hahah... Silly Bakugo. Oh you~ KiriBaku’s can inhale the fact that those two sure love to hover around each other!

Troubling Signs?: With great crumbs come little responsiblity. No trouble if there’s no content! 🤔

VIII: KamiJirou. Status: Singing their hearts out 🎶

-If there’s any ship that’s coming close to canonization, I think this is it, folks! “Think of the person most important to you!” Can’t argue with Midnight!

Anime Highlights: Kaminari does non stop encouraging of Jirou and her hobbies! He works super hard to learn guitar for her sake! We love a king who can encourage his queen!

Manga Highlights: Kaminari thinks of the most important person to him and surprise! It’s Jirou! All of the feels can commence.

Heroes Rising: They were in it!

Troubling Signs?: Kaminari does love his women. And men. Kaminari overall is a huge flirt. But Jirou appears to have his heart strings. ❤️

IX: BakuDeku. Status: Rising. 👑

-Alternative Statuses include Winning, Thriving, Soaring. It’s just been non stop content this year. 2020 is truly the year for BakuDeku. The shippers can rejoice.

Anime Highlights: Three words. Be. My. Cane. The OVA’s helped fan the flames of the BkDk hearts with a surprise! Deku tops! Not only that, we got a lovely shoulder tap of encouragement in the canon material. While in season 4, Deku’s primary focus was Eri. Bakugo and Deku still had their moments to be hella gay.

Manga Highlights: Where do I even begin? I guess we’ll just cut to the chase with Bakugo Katsuki: Rising. We finally saw Bakugo’s true feelings manifest for Deku and if getting stabbed for him isn’t the ultimate showing of love, then idk what is. BakuDeku’s rounded out the year with the Volume 29 cover AND the volume 29 cover drafts to eat at our heart strings. Overall, their relationship got the spotlight in the manga this year. And we’re bound to start 2021 with a dramatic confrontation. Hand holding seems to be the key with these two and it didn’t stop with Heroes Rising...speaking of.

Heroes Rising: The entire movie. Like....yeah. That’s it. [OP, your bias is showing. You have to be SPECIFIC.] {But random criticizer in my head, if I lay out the entire plot of the movie, my post will be too long} [OP....] UGHHHH Okay okay. The POPSICLE MELTING. THE HAND HOLDING. THE CHARACTER DESIGNS OF WHAT MIGHT AS WELL BE THEIR LOVE CHILDREN. Did I mention? “It’s fine if it’s you?” CAUSE YEAH. Oh and All Might randomly officiating their wedding in their heads like idk. Isn’t it just simpler if I say the whole movie??!

Troubling Signs?: Well these two’s relationship is extremely delicate and while it has non stop soared this year, Deku might not take too kindly to Bakugo almost dying for him. Will they stop pushing each other away? Time will tell.

That’s all for this year folks! Happy Shipping and good luck to everyone next year!

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Sorry but what exactly is up with the bad batch arc? I've heard people talk about the issues with echo's white skin but I haven't heard that many bad things about the arc itself? (ik you said you don't want to be negative on your blog so I would absolutely understand if you didn't answer this ask)

Oooooooooooh boy. Well I just had a long, long, LONG rant about it with someone, but I guess I’ve got an excuse to put all of my points onto a post and talk about it publicly now that I got an ask x) I’ll keep it under the cut so I don’t throw my salt in people’s face. I really don’t want to upset people who love that arc - it has redeeming qualities, but overall it pisses me off so much for so many reasons. So here:

The first issue is obviously two members of the Bad Batch (minus Echo) being being just about the furthest thing from maori no matter how much you're willing to stretch it. 

Like... yeah, nah. I wouldn’t even accept Crosshair and Tech (grey haired guy and goggles guy) as Jango’s natural biological sons, nevermind as his clones. 

The problem is that their different appearances are justified by them being described simply as clones with desirable mutations (i.e superpowers). But why the hell did the creators have to change their appearances for that to be a thing? How does that correlate? Sure, the concept of clones with different faces is interesting, except... no, no it’s not, and I’m gonna rant about it in a few secs. But basically it's like they thought giving them different faces would be a good substitute for having different personalities (another thing I’ll come back to). If they really wanted to have buff clones with super eyesight or whatnot they could have just done that, without making them lose what little melanin the lighting of the show had allowed the other Clones to keep. 

But the gigantic problem is... showing that the "regular" clones have VERY distinct identities despite their identical faces has been one of the themes of the show from episode 1. Literally, the first episode of TCW has Yoda taking time out of a mission with galactic stakes to tell the three clones he’s with (who tell him they’re all the same because they have the same faces) that they’re wrong, and that they’re very different in the Force, that their appearance doesn’t matter, that they’re all equally unique and important, and he lists all of their individual skills, strengths and weaknesses. 

And it’s not just me being bothered by that, here’s a post by @cacodaemonia​ saying the same thing. 

Introducing the Bad Batch as "unique" clones who are "different" and "not like their brothers" because they have different faces and skills completely breaks that theme of the show!! Because the entire point of the Clones in TCW is that their faces don't matter, they ARE unique! 

(Plus the Bad Batch’s character designs are so cliche and uninspired it’s just laughable to try and justify bleaching their freaking skin for the sake of visual diversity. 

This took like 10 seconds. I found the first guy by literally googling “soldier movies,” and the other two are Team Fortress characters that look a LOT like Wrecker and Crosshair. One is “Heavy” and one is “Sniper” lmao.

And behold:

The above picture is a Team Fortress reference that I found just by looking up “bad batch clone wars,” so I’m not the only person who sees it.) 

And the batchers don't even have personalities to justify calling them unique! They have no character traits beyond the most cliché american soldier tropes ever. We have a token loner sniper, a token "smart tech guy" who knows everything from xenoanthropology to biology to Separatist computers to sound waves to encryption, a token Badass Brooding Leader and a token “dumb muscle guy.”

I dare anyone to find more about their personalities than this: - Crosshair is the perpetually grumpy sniper who looks down on "regs,” - Wrecker likes to blow up stuff and doesn't like heights, - Hunter is the leader and is friends with Cody, - Tech is smart doesn't trust Echo. 

That’s it, that’s literally it. Four episodes about them and that's all we get. These character tropes are literally the least inventive ever. FFS, Hunter even has a freaking KNIFE! Not a vibroblade, mind you, like in kriffing Star Wars. A knife. Against metal droids. Why. They couldn’t make this more of an american-war-movies cliché fest if they tried. (And sure, he can feel electromagnetic waves so maybe it does make sense for him not to carry a vibroblade and maybe this is nitpicking, but he looks like a ripoff of a Predator character and it pisses me off).

Another thing is that when you introduce characters you have to make them likable - and them despising the normal Clones is a terrible way to do that! And they don't even grow from that because at the end of the 4 episodes arc they just see Rex as not bad "for a reg" and they see Echo as no longer a reg, and both of these things are infuriating! 

The worst thing imo is that Echo then becomes part of them (and irreparably loses his melanin in the process, uuuuuuuuugh) when there is nothing to justify this. 

The dialogue goes like this: 

ECHO: You coming? TECH: Not really our thing. CROSSHAIR: Accolades. WRECKER: Yeah, we're just in it for the thrill. Yo! HUNTER: You sure it's your thing? ECHO: What do you mean? HUNTER: Your path is different. Like ours. If you ever feel like you don't fit in with them, well, find us. (they leave) REX: Those are some of the finest troopers I've ever fought alongside. Echo. You and I go way back. If that's where you feel your place is, then that's where you belong.

Echo doesn't feel like he belongs anymore, okay, but why would he feel like he belongs with the assholes who up to the last five minutes of the mission thought he was probably a traitor, and also verbally expressed that he was not worth saving?? In all of the arc, Echo himself never voices that he feels he’s not ‘like the other Clones’ anymore and that he feels it’s a problem. His relationship with Rex immediately picks up where they left things off - the first thing he does upon being lucid again for the first in over a year is cracking a joke for Rex’s benefit. 

Why would Echo feel like he doesn’t belong in the 501st anymore, when we don't even see him interacting with anyone from his past life except for Rex and Anakin (who are both extremely very supportive of him)?? If there had been one scene of a “regular” Clone (ugh) looking at him with horror and disgust or something, or just Kix and Jesse cracking jokes with Echo awkwardly standing by the side not getting it, I could forgive the show trying to make it feel like he has an identity crisis, but this was so shallow!

The only thing that makes Echo and the Bad Batch’s experiences similar is that they *look* different. It’s so against the themes of the Clones I’m seething just from thinking about it. And what the hell? Echo ALREADY didn’t fit in. That was the WHOLE POINT of Domino Squad. They didn’t fit in because they thought they were better than anyone else because they had trouble getting along with their brothers, so obviously it had to be their brothers’ fault (ahem, Bad Batch?). And you know what happened? Domino Squad OVERCAME that. And Echo and Fives still didn’t “fit in” because their personalities were unique and creative, and they became ARC Troopers because Cody, Rex and the Jedi VALUED THEM FOR PRECISELY THAT. Echo having new and unique skills and a modified appearance is the most bs justification for him feeling like he doesn’t belong!! 

And that brings me to my biggest issue: Rex telling Echo the bad batch are some of the best troopers he's ever met. I'm sorry, based on WHAT? What Rex values above everything is loyalty and brotherhood, and the Bad Batch DOESN'T DISPLAY ANY OF THAT. We never see them even expressing concern for each other! Wrecker treats saving Cody’s life like a trivial issue, because it’s just ‘sO eAsY’ for him, and beyond that we never see them supporting each other or genuinely expressing affection for each other beyond boasting about each other’s skills... 

Sure they can destroy a lot of droids, but they're dismissive of Rex's brothers, and the entire Umbara arc and this arc showed what he thought of that. They keep saying things like "not bad for a reg,” don't show any trust in Rex's skills or experience (even though they can't have been fighting in the war for more than a year and a half when he’s been there from the beginning, and he outranks all of them), they are essentially guerilla fighters which has only minimal value in a galactic war, and they never grow beyond their views of what regs are, and can and can’t do. 

None of that should make them good troopers in Rex's book. Going back to Echo not fitting in, remember who taught the Domino Squad the importance of seeing all of your brothers as important and equally valuable? Shaak Ti, true, but more importantly? 99! The guy the Bad Batch are named after. He did have value and was important and was no less of a trooper than his brothers, even though his mutations made him LESS powerful, not more. (And btw, just from a writing standpoint, the batchers don’t have any weaknesses, which is shit.) Cody and Rex mourned 99 as a true soldier even though it wasn’t his sacrifice that brought them victory (which would have implied that he had value as a soldier and a brother because he saved them, as opposed to him having that value intrinsically), because that’s what a fine trooper is to them. A BROTHER first a foremost, someone altruistic, brave and loyal. The Bad Batch distort the meaning of 99's character with their behavior. They’re not altruistic, their bravery is mitigated by the fact that they’re freaking invincible, so of course they take risks (again, see Wrecker saving Cody without a care because it’s easy to him, as opposed to Rex being ready to run into a burning ship about to explode because his brother is in there, and having to be physically dragged away). The Bad Batch denigrate their brothers for being less skilled, thinking their own abilities make them unique somehow, when 99 could barely fight and was still the one who taught Hevy about being a good soldier. 

And again the batchers don't grow from that. Which is all the more frustrating because the original ending didn’t have Echo joining them, from what I remember of the unfinished episodes, and the arc actually ended with them receiving their medals in front of regular troopers who cheer for them, as opposed to them smugly ostracizing themselves and dismissing the ceremony as trivial and meaningless. (original ending vs s7 ending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab1eCfzKamw) 

It’s so annoying. Do you know what characters never had an entire arc dedicated to them and still have far more personality and more interesting designs and more symbolic weight?? 

Jesse, for starters. Kix. Dogma. Cut. Slick. Keeli. Ponds. Rys, Jek and Thire. Commander Doom. Commander Fox. Wolffe. Hevy. Hardcase. 

Cody was a more interesting character just in his RotS appearances. 

Waxer and Boil had one episode about them and then only two cameos plus Waxer’s death, and they’re still some of the most memorable, beloved Clones of the whole show. And Boil was grouchy and prejudiced like Crosshair, but he has so much growth that we could make a whole thread about it. 

I'd say the last problem with the Bad Batch is that it has cash grabbing money hungry vibes. Different faces are more marketable, cliché personalities are more toy-friendly, and it's basically a big ad for the Bad Batch series. And they throw Echo in the Batch at the end for bs reasons (again, it wasn’t in the original ep from what I remember) and they tease Cody in the show to make sure fans will still watch even if they notice the lack of soul. And less melanin sells more at Disney apparently. 

So that’s my whole pissed rant. 

[griffintail]

Hi, was wondering, whenever you can, if you can do Tommyinnit and reader headcannons as childhood friends and being streaming buddies. Thanks so much! -✨ anon

A/N: You sent it without the anonymous tag and I can’t remember if you were an Anon that revealed themselves-- Sorry.

Streaming Buddies

Pairings: Platonic! Tommy x F! Reader

Warnings: None :)

Hope you enjoy ♥

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tommy and (Y/N), literal steps away from each other.

Their parents use to have playdates all the time, hoping the two children would tire the other out, some days it just made it worse and they both somehow had more energy—!

When they both got older, they both wanted to go for their goals as streamers and YouTubers. They often gave each other tips and tricks that they did on their own streams, yet one thing they didn’t do, was go onto each other’s stream.

It was a bit unspoken that they wanted to do their own channels on their own, though when they both started gaining followers, their communities noticed how similar they were to each other. From there, it was a spoken joke.

        “There’s a kid that does his subtitles the same as mine?! That bitch!” (Y/N) slammed a hand on her desk while streaming, smiling mentally. “Fuck off! I’m not a child!”

        --

        “Someone does a lot of the same content as you? I’ll have you find, I do it better no matter what.” Tommy bragged.

(Y/N) hit him with a pillow for that one.

It was great to watch both of their communities try to figure out how they were so similar. They tended to have a good laugh when people would say they were copying the other.

When they both started talking to some of the others, they got them to play along with the joke.

        “You know, there’s this other child I know, you’d probably like to play with her,” Wilbur smirked.

        “I’m not a child!” Tommy protested. “And I don’t need to play with a woman.”

        --

        “God, you’re just annoying as Tommy.” Techno groaned as (Y/N) carried on with her ramblings.

        “Fuck off, I’m a delight. Probably better than this Tommy character.”

Tommy threw his empty coke can at her for that one, the pair having been hanging out when he got the clip sent to him.

They said they’d eventually tell everyone so they could actually play games together on stream but they wanted that shit to be dramatic.

Cue the DreamSMP.

(Y/N) was hiding off-camera on her phone, scrolling through Twitter, posting a stupid joke as Tommy was helping Wilbur establish a nation. Their parents were planning to have dinner together as they had gotten rather bored in the pandemic so she came over early to just chill with Tommy after the stream.

She hadn’t spoken to Dream yet, but Tommy was determined to get her in the SMP. He would have invited her instead of Tubbo, but they were keeping up the joke.

Then they were joking with Dream about L’Manberg having no woman and Tommy grinned.

        “You haven’t invited the woman that’s going to be in L’Manberg!” Tommy said, (Y/N) looking over at him confused.

        “Oh yeah, what woman is that? Your mom?”

        “Ha, ha. I’ll give you her username and you need to invite her!”

        “I don’t believe you; you don’t know how to talk to women.”

        “Then invite her bitch!”

        (Y/N)’s eyes went wide as she got a ping on Discord from the one and only Dream. Tommy glanced over, grinning. She pointed to come over and he nodded.

        “TommyInnit! My best bitch!” (Y/N) grinned as she came over, wrapping an arm around his shoulder.

Wilbur died with laughter as Tommy immediately started protesting while his chat went nuts.

Woman? In Tommy’s house?! And it was (Y/N)?! POG!

She started doing streams with him after that and the chats lived for the pure chaos and the bickering between the two best friends.

The DreamSMP never stood a chance with the two of them on and Twitch couldn’t handle it.

They both quickly climbed and enjoyed themselves with each day.

And with their stories, (Y/N) just wouldn’t let Tommy go off on his own.

        “Look, if you’re going to be a sad bitch, we’re going to be sad bitches together.” (Y/N) crossed her arms as he was telling her about his Exile Arc.

        “You’re so weird,” Tommy said.

        “That’s why I’m friends with you.”

        “Bitch!”

He could never stay mad at her long though, because what were buddies for?

[hermits-that-craft]

Homebound - Deya’s childinnit au

This oneshot is for the amazing @deyageka ‘s hotel arc childinnit au! Go check it out, please! This is long, 8 page or 2,641 words, long, please note!

Sam walked home that day, humming to himself. Really, he wasn’t going home per say - just to the small house that Puffy, Foolish and himself had built after they found Tommy. Sam was calm as he could be, he walked instead of using his trident in an attempt to calm himself down after how long the day was. Dream has pulled at his strings early in the morning, and Ranboo sent him on a wild goose chase the second he left the prison. 

Sam hoped that Ranboo’s alright, his message didn’t sound right, even in chat. Why would Ranboo need a totem?

Sam walked into the house, and felt mounting dread as lights didn’t turn on. They should have already been on, the only reason why they would be off is if Puffy had taken Tommy out, but she had sent him a message asking him to come home as soon as possible. They weren’t in danger, she had said, Tommy had just wanted him back.

“I’m back!” Sam called. He smiled as he hoped that the pair were just napping as he shut the door.

False hope can only last so long.

“Puffy!” He screamed, looking at the woman as she lied on the floor. Blood ran down her face, unconscious. Almost like she was dead.

Sam doesn’t remember much of what happened next. Of course, he knows what happened. 

Dream escaped, stealing Tommy. At least, thats the basics. He knows Ranboo was there, he knows that Ranboo was - is - possessed. He knows that Tommy woke up as he was teleported away. He knows that some of the toys that Tommy had were taken.

He knows that Puffy hasn’t woken up yet, even though it’s been three days.

Phil and Techno came around, Techno helping Sam track down Dream and the boys. Tubbo moved Micheal into Sam’s base, hoping that it would be safer. Quackity, Karl, Sapnap and George also joined the search party. The groups split up, scouring the land. Tubbo joins, looking through places he knows Ranboo frequents.

Sam has been banned from searching after Phil found him, half dead, in the snow. 

Ponk helps him heal, but it isn’t enough. Sam can’t - won’t, he’s too much of a coward - voice why he won’t rest. It’s his fault that Tommy’s gone. It’s his fault that Dream got out. He is - was - Tommy’s father, and his was - is - the warden. He failed his jobs. He let not only Tommy, but the entire server down by letting Dream out.

Dream was right, Sam can’t protect anyone, let alone Tommy.  This is his fault.

“Hey, Sam.” Ponk says softly, carrying in some warm soup. “You up to eat now? I’ll eat some too, it can be a real date.”

There’s kindness in Ponk’s eyes, love and sympathy and caring in the brown eyes. Sam doesn’t deserve it. Sam’s hurt too many people, Ponk shouldn’t-

“You’re thinking too hard.” Ponk smiles, handing Sam the soup. “Stop blaming yourself for Tommy’s kidnapping. You couldn’t have known.”

“He’s gone because my prison failed.” Sam whispers. “I failed everyone. I was supposed to be the warden, I was supposed to protect-”

Sam breaks, sobbing. He can’t keep being strong, he can’t keep up this facade. It’s dragging him down, pulling him under the water. Vines wrap around his throat, squeezing the life out of him. The void would be a kinder death, he’s falling apart and-

And Ponk wraps his arms around Sam, letting the creeper hybrid sob into his arms. He holds Sam together, as the world falls apart.

----

“Tommy, settle down.” Dream rolls his eye, not that Tommy can see under his mask. The child is still annoying, but he follows orders easily.

“I want Papa.” Tommy protests, clinging to the Sam Nook toy that Ranboo had stolen for him when Dream took him. “Where’s my Papa.”

“I’m right here.” Dream says, cooing at the child.

“No you’re not.” Tommy glares, tears forming in his tiny eyes. “I want my Papa and Big Q and Karl and Foo’ish and Mama Puff and Sap and George!”

George.

“Do you like George?” Dream asks quietly, shock filling his chest. He could have George back, his best friend.

“Yeah! He reads to me and is safe.” Tommy smiles, tapping the Sam Nook toy around. “Makes me sleepy, though.”

“How would you feel if I asked George to come around?” Dream offers, taking out his communicator.

“Will he?” Tommy looks up, happily. 

“I’m sure he’d love to.” Dream says, and Tommy cheers, throwing Sam Nook to the side as he gives Dream a hug. “But now you need to go to bed.”

Tommy whines, but doesn’t struggle as Dream picks him up. The small child - only two or three years old at most - yawns, snuggling in to sleep as Dream places him in the bed. Dream smiles from under his mask, shutting the door slightly as he leaves. Dream walks down the stairs, watching through the door as Ranboo tidies up the living room. 

Dream whispers to Georgenotfound: Would you like to come around, I haven’t seen you since I left prison. Dream whispers to Georgenotfound: You can bring Sapnap as well, I guess. But I’d like to catch up with you - and tommy’s missing you i guess :/ Georgenotfound whispers to Dream: What are your co’ords? I’ll come now. We can bring Sapnap once he’s calmed down.

Dream smiles, sending through the coordinates without a second thought. Of course George would agree to come around. George is his best friend, he’s Dreams other half. George - and Puffy, a traitorous part of his brain whispers - would do anything for him.

Ranboo stops cleaning for a moment, looking up the stairs. Dream frowns, following his line of sight. No one is there, but he notices the small sobs that emit from the higher floor. Tommy. The child must be crying, maybe a nightmare. He’s too young to remember L’Manburg, the disks or the wars. He only remembers some people, after all.

Sam is one of them. Tubbo was not. A child's mind is a strange place.

Dream walks up the stairs, pausing outside Tommy’s room. He knocks before he enters, warning the boy. Dream turns on the light, not knowing what to expect. 

Tommy sits up in his bed, his eyes screwed shut as he sobs. Tommy hugs Sam Nook close, but no words fall from his lips. Dream sighs, scooping the boy up and gently rocking him. Tommy blinks his eyes open before he screws them shut, crying again. Dream frowns, sinking to the ground as he tries to settle the boy.

“Please stop crying.” Dream mumbles, rocking Tommy. He’s so small, so fragile. Dream can feel every shake of Tommy’s tine body as the child cries himself back to sleep. 

Dream sets the boy back into bed, tucking him in gently. He’ll wait with the boy until Ranboo is done, and then he’ll go to greet George.

----

“Dream sent me a message.” George says, casually leaning against the doorframe. “I have his coordinates.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Eret gasps, covering their mouth. Bad and Phil stand up, looking over George with carefully concealed confusion. “How long ago did you receive the message?”

“About fifteen minutes?” George frowns, checking the time. “Yeah, around fifteen minutes ago.”

“And you didn’t tell us until now?” Techno glares, an axe summoned into his hand.

“I couldn’t find you until now. Are you guys coming or what?”

“Have you told anyone else?” Phil asks, pulling his wings out of his cloak.

“Quackity, Karl and Sapnap are halfway there.” George says, walking towards the coordinates.

“Sam?”

“Doesn’t need the stress.” George says. “He’s too sick.”

“What’s the plan?” Bad asks quietly.

“Karl, Sapnap and Quackity stake the house out from a distance. I go in, distract Dream and Ranboo, and then grab Tommy and run.” George says.

“Where do we come in?” Techno asks.

“I dunno, we didn’t think that far ahead.” George shrugs. “Work it out when we get there.”

And with that, they walk.

----

Dream stands in the kitchen, watching the kettle boil as he waits for George to arrive. He’s boiled the kettle twice so far, waiting for his friend, but he doesn’t want the water to go cold before George can have some tea.

A knock sounds at the door, and Dream cautiously walks over, opening it. White clout glasses and brown hair appears, and Dream relaxes, opening his arms for a hug. George hesitates for a split second before he sinks into the hug. Dream doesn’t - wont - think about it. The hesitation.

“Hey.” Dream breaths, and George smiles. 

“Hey yourself. How are you?”

“Good. I’m a father now.” Dream smirks, and George pulls out from the hug. “Do you want some tea?”

“The gosip type or the good type?” George jokes, and Dream steps aside, showing George the kitchen bench, where two cups are laid.

“Guess.”

----

“Why did George hug him?” Techno whispers to Eret.

“They’re best friends, he’s keeping up the persona.” Eret replies. “Letting Dream’s guard down.”

“Will it work?”

“Well, we won’t know unless George either gets Tommy.” 

“Or he starts screaming.” Phil says darkly, his wings fluttering nervously behind him.

“Dream wouldn’t-” Bad shakes his head. “No, this Dream isn’t the same one who played with Sapnap as a kid. Dream would hurt George, wouldn’t he?”

----

“Is Tommy sleeping alright?” George asks, trying to sound casual. “Sam used to complain that he’d only ever sleep peacefully if I was there.”

It’s a lie, but George and Sam had both noticed that Tommy would sleep easily in George’s arms. Nightmares would still happen, but Tommy would calm down faster.

“He’s been having so many nightmares.” Dream admits. “He also cries a lot, even during the day. I think he needs you around. Familiar faces and all that.”

“What about Ranboo?” George asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Ranboo hasn’t been Ranboo since I escaped.” George can hear the self centered smirk in his voice, the proud lilt of admitting that he’s controlling the teen. “I think Tommy can tell that. It doesn’t seem to bother him all that much, he’s seen my face and isn’t scared.”

George’s stomach drops at that, fear lacing his insides. There’s a reason Dream wears the mask. He doesn’t look safe to be around, he looks like if the void had a neon green eye and a glowing, neon green hole gaping where his mouth and nose should be. But George knows better than to mention that, only raising his eyebrows with surprise.

“I would have thought that would make him cry.” George jokes, lightly elbowing Dream. “Is he sleeping?”

“I hope so, do you want to check?” Dream cocks his head to the side, not too unlike a puppy. George nods, and let’s Dream walk him up the stairs. 

Now’s his chance.

---

Sapnap nervously paces, the treeline hiding him from Dream’s watchful gaze. He’s far enough away to see everything, but not be able to hear anything. It’s safer this way, watching from a distance. Karl and Quackity won’t get hurt if he’s caught, this way. He doesn’t trust the silence, and from the nervous looks on his fiancees’ faces, they don’t like not being able to hear either.

An ear piercing scream tears the silence in half as Karl makes eye contact with Sapnap.

“GEORGE!” Sapnap screams, running towards the house. Snow melts under his feet, he can’t contain his anger. “George!”

Sapnap slams open the door to the house, his hand melting the door handle. George lays on the ground, his glasses under Dream’s foot. Blood. There’s so much blood. Too much blood. George is curled around Tommy, who wails at the top of his lungs. George isn’t moving. Why isn’t George moving? Why isn’t he struggling.

Duck.

Ranboo’s punch misses.

Sweep your opponents leg out from under them.

Ranboo falls to the ground, his head cracking painfully.

Keep your eyes on the room.

Blood pools under Ranboo’s head. Dream laughs.

Don’t let your guard down.

“Did you really think that George could take Tommy from me?”

Don’t let your opponent see any fear.

“I trusted you both. You’re my friends. I can’t believe you would betray me like this.”

Focus on the fight.

“I thought you cared about me, all I wanted was for us to be a family again.”

Dream stands on George, and Sapnap can hear the pained weaze that George breaths out. He’s still alive.

“Eyes on me, Snapnap.” Dream taunts, and Sapnap’s eyes jump back to his once-best friend. “You’ve got to work on that.”

Don’t make the first move.

“Not going to talk to me?”

Go on the defensive.

“That’s rude.”

Duck.

“Let’s dance.”

Duck. Sidestep. Block. Jab. Punch. Duck. Owch, was that his eye? Duck again, keep focusing. Get to the door. Duck. Open the door. Punch. Step outside. Block. Run backwards. Duck. Throw a punch

Sapnap is thrown through the air, landing with a scream on the ground. Snow melts around him, and he lets out a gasp of pain. There’s blood underneath him, staining the snow red. It’s pretty, almost.

Sapnap can see Phil and Techno fight Dream, out of the corners of his eyes. Eret and Bad run into the house, carrying out Ranboo, Tommy and George. They’re safe. Everyone is safe now. Sapnap did good.

“Stay awake Sap.” Karl says, and Sapnap forces his eyes open - when did they close - to see his fiancee’s. Quackity cradles his head in his lap, and Karl fumbles with his pockets. “Keep your eyes open, yeah, that’s good. Keep it up.”

Sapnap groans as Karl pours a healing potion directly onto his torso. It wont help much, there’s something in his back, but he can’t speak. It hurts too much.

“Open your eyes.” Quackity says, and Sapnap feels warm fingers on his cheek. “Open your eyes. BAD! BAD SAPNAP’S-”

----

Sam watches out the window of his room as birds flit around tree branches. Ponk had left the room half an hour ago, just after he served breakfast. Ponk hadn’t said much, simply kissing Sam’s forehead and telling him to relax.

Sam can’t relax. He shouldn’t be allowed to, pneumonia or not. Not while Puffy suffers, while Tommy suffers. 

“Hey Dad.” Quackity’s voice doesn’t surprise Sam, who sees his son every morning.

“Hey duckling.” Sam smiles. “How are you this morning?”

“Good. Sapnap and George are in a bad shape though. Bad kicked me out of their rooms.” Quackity laughs wetly, tears in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Sam says, opening his arms out for Quackity. The man smiles, but shakes his head, wiping away tears. 

“There’s something you need to see.” Quackity says, and apparently thats a cue for something, because Jack opens the door to his room.

Niki wheels Puffy into the room, the woman sitting on a wheelchair, her hair falling down over her shoulders. She’s still got a bandage on her head, but there is colour in her cheeks and a knowing smile on her face.

“Puffy.” Sam gasps, happy to see his friend better, if not up and running. Sam tries to stand, to give Puffy a hug, but Quackity just pushes him back into his bed.

“If you’re that happy to see me, you’ll need someone to hold you back with who Foolish has.” Puffy jokes, though her voice is hoarse.

Foolish walks into the room, gently holding a wiggling Tommy. Sam gasps, and true to Puffy’s prediction, it takes Quackity and Jack to stop Sam from getting out of his hospital bed. Foolish passes Tommy to Sam, and the man holds onto Tommy gently, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he’s here. He’s safe, finally.

“How-”

“We’ll explain later.” Quackity says. “Just relax for now. Everyone is safe.”

[whaleofatjme1920]

Dealing With People Who Don't Care (Ticci Toby X F!Reader)

Dealing With People Who Don't Care

[Ticci Toby X F!Reader]

[Warnings: slight language and calls to violence? Bullying, slight yandere behavior]

[AN: Requested from ѕρσσку яανισlι on Quotev! Idk if I'm ready to tell y'all that this was basically my first quarter of college.]

College wasn’t supposed to be like this, at least, that’s what you keep telling yourself. When you graduated from high school, you were told that petty drama and catty people were going to fade away because that was high school and this is college. Something new, something for young adults, and something you’d been looking forward to for far, far too long.

Truth be told, in high school, you didn’t really have any problems. You mostly got along with the people you did talk to and aside from a few arcs which you lovingly call ‘character development’, you generally kept your head down and to yourself which allowed you to stay off some of the cruller people’s radars. You were liked when it was necessary but ultimately stuck to yourself.

How did it all go so wrong?

When you first came in on orientation day, you’d met up with a group of girls and bonded on the train ride back to campus. There was a group chat made and you were a ready part of it. You felt nicely about your entire situation because these were nice girls, and they treated you like you held the sun and rose the moon. Is that what positive friendship was like?

For the first few weeks, everything with them was a bliss. Unfortunately, you were the only person from that group in your specific branch and major. This meant that you often spent most of your daylight hours alone or with yourself entirely. The other girls all had majors that were almost word for word the same, and that meant that they spent a lot of time together. Slowly, that had been growing closer and closer to each other and leaving you out.

It came in small doses at first, and you had chalked it up to your nature being so different from theirs. They were much more extroverted than you ever could have been. They were fire, and you were ice. But that did not mean that you were boring, or any less interesting, you were just quieter, preferring to take this just as softly. Wandering around the city with maybe one or two people, talking about the things that matter as opposed to getting wasted in a crowded apartment with fifty people who don’t even care about your wellbeing.

That’s what was different about you than them.

“Hey ladies,” you smile widely as you take your tray of food from the cafeteria to the table where all the girls sat. You notice that they’re all engrossed in conversation but quickly turn to greet you with smiles and waves.

“Hi, Reader! How has your day been?” Maria greets, her fingers gently tugging through her blonde hair. “Me and Georgina were just talking about you.”

Georgina nods and pats the seat next to her for you to sit down. “Yeah, what have you been up to?”

You take a seat next to the redhead and sip from your drink. “It was alright. With midterms coming up though… Little stressed,” you admit as the two girls sitting around you frown in response. “Lots of essays, some minor discussion posts, a group project but we’re just starting it early because it counts for like, 20 percent of our grade and is part of our final,” you say as you stab into your food.

“Oh? A group project?” Georgina asks with a raise of her eyebrow.

You nod. “It’s actually more like a partner project. I’m paired with this guy named Toby? But like, I haven’t seen him yet - he doesn’t show up to class,” you sigh.

“Maybe try emailing the professor,” Maria suggests. “But I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” she hums with a small smile, her hand reaching over and gripping yours warmly.

From there, the conversation that follows has you drifting away. By now, a third girl has joined the conversation and her name is Helena. Helena is also in the same class as you with the group project, but she isn’t as close to you as Georgina and Maria are. She greets you just as warmly but she turns the conversation in a direction you weren’t expecting.

Laughter rings out from the table.

“And that guy from last night?” Georgina giggles.

“He was insane!” Maria adds. “You have to come inside!” She mockingly says before bursting into another fit of giggles.

“And he dressed so weirdly,” Helena continues. “Ratty as all hell jacket and then followed us into the theatre? Asked to show us magic tricks-” she’s not even able to finish her words because she’s laughing much too hard.

You tilt your head slightly. “What happened last night?” You ask.

The girls pause for a moment. “Don’t worry about it,” Georgina says as she swats off your question. “You weren’t there.”

“This was last night?” You ask again.

They nod.

“Yeah, wasn’t anything special,” Maria attempts to shrug off before those three continue with their conversation and inside jokes.

You eat in silence, every now and then smiling and offering forced laughter as you think about what you did last night. You weren’t doing anything, in fact, your roommate went out on a date with her boyfriend and left you in the dorm all along. So, you finished your work a little early and started on some other things, then watched Netflix and fell asleep before midnight. You were free the entire night.

And they didn’t even think to invite you.

From there, you started to notice all the times they forgot about you and excluded you. It carried on in the sloughed off invites, the ‘sorry we can’t meet up for dinner,’ and generally just avoiding you. They had jokes they couldn’t share with you, and you were at their side, they acted like you weren’t even there until it faded into nothing.

Reader: Are you guys doing anything tonight?

Maria is typing…

Maria: no not tonight :(

Reader: oh okay! But if any of you want to come to Target with me or something..? Maria: sorry, I’m busy!

Georgina is typing…

Helena is typing…

After that, they’d left you on read, not even bothering to answer you. Later that night on snapchat, you saw the three of them wandering the city without you, laughing and having a good time.

Instead of talking to them right away, you focused on your classes and your work. And that meant finally tagging down toby.

You’d managed to finally get him in your sight after emailing your professor who struck some type of fear into him. You were able to meet him face to face at a little cafe somewhere off campus.

“Over h-here,” he calls out from near the window of the cafe, waving you towards the back.

You flash him a quick smile and let it fall before finally taking a seat across from him. You’re slightly surprised to see that there’s a cup of hot chocolate and a chocolate chip muffin is there waiting for you. “Oh, uh, thank you,” you say as you get comfortable.

“It’s n-nothing,” he says with a small smile. “I-I’m sorry for k-keeping you w-w-waiting all t-this time,” he continues in an apologetic tone. “T-Things with my f-family aren’t e-easy right n-now.”

Not wanting to push him, you nod and smile reassuringly. “It’s okay,” you relent. “So, this project..?”

“It’ll b-be a breeze,” he replies. “D-Don’t worry about i-it, yeah?” He picks up his own cup of hot chocolate to fight off the child of mid autumn and nods to you, his dark eyes scanning over your form. “I w-wanna know j-just who I’m w-working with.” He smirks slightly, the corners of his mouth pulling up like a know-it-all cat.

You look into your cup of hot chocolate and shrug. “Nothing too interesting,” you attempt to slide off.

Toby rolls his eyes. “Calling b-bull,” he snorts. “You l-look stressed. W-What’s on your m-m-mind?”

You sigh deeply and relax your body as you think back to the situation with those girls. “It’s nothing.”

Toby hums once more but does not push you. Deep down though, he knows something is wrong.

And that’s how it carries on. You and Toby meet every so often to work on your presentation and your paper together and your so called friends continually leave you in the dust. Before you know it, you’re spending more and more time with Toby than anyone else, and because of that, you don’t feel nearly as alone as you used to.

From Toby’s perspective, he would never tell you what he thought when he first saw you walk through those doors of the cafe to finally meet him in person.

When he first got that email in regards to him not showing up and worrying you, he’d rolled his eyes and pretended it didn’t matter. It was whatever, who cares? Apparently you. With a slight gripe in the back of his head, he looked you up on social media with the help of a friend named Ben and found all that he needed to know just by looking at your profile. He was almost ashamed to admit how enraptured with you he had become. That’s why he was so adamant you met him at a cafe, where he could spend time with just you.

When he saw you walking through the doors, his eyes scanned over every inch of you. You had a slight bounce in your walk despite it being so chilly.

He wondered if you wanted to be warmed up.

You looked so soft in his eyes, so sweet and so alluring. Just your looks alone was all he needed as water for a growing obsession.

Toby is addictive by nature. Seeing you was what allowed that addiction to take off. When he heard your voice? He felt like he was high.

He knew something was wrong with you when you sighed like that. It was a loaded sigh. Of course, after the two of you parted ways for the night and on good terms, he immediately dug into the lives of your so-called ‘friends.’ Let’s just say that damn near instantly, he did not like them.

Maria, a nursing major. He considered her an air head that wouldn’t get anywhere with substance, and saw that she was much more of a party girl than anything else.

Georgina, another nursing major. Also considered her a lost cause.

Helena, a medical assistant major. Toby considered her the worst one, but it didn’t come at first. He found that girl was vile in every sense. The things he’s overhead her saying about other people? Terrible. The things he’s overhead her saying about you? Absolutely unacceptable.

He noticed her whispers that cut like thorns wrapping around you from the shadows as he sat in class near her, but never next to her. He listened to the filth that poured from her mouth and was able to pick up the conversations from her phone like it was nothing.

And all of that? It lit a fire in him, a fire that would eventually burn her down and scorch her until she was nothing but ashes.

You’re about to head to class and present your final project with Toby. You look like a mess, and it’s not just from the lack of sleep because of your other class’s finals, but because you are absolutely emotionally drained and have nothing left to give. You’d finally formally broken up from those girls, but it did not come without tears.

Reader: hey guys, it’s been a little while, but I just wanted to get some things off of my chest before I call it. First and foremost, I want to thank you for the time we did spend together, but I don’t feel safe or happy anymore. These past few weeks have been nothing but straight ice and being left out and I’m just… I’m tired, for a lack of better words. I know that you don’t really want me around anymore, so I thought I’d just nip this one in the bud before it got out of hand or anything like that. I just - whatever, I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done to offend you.

Georgina is typing…

Georgina: Honestly don’t take this the wrong way but you legitimately brought this all onto yourself.

Georgina: you don’t really talk to us the way that we talk to each other

Reader: but you literally never gave me a chance???

Maria: shes right tho,,,,, like, you just always kept to yourself. You didnt really give us anything to go off of

Georgina: right??? And it’s not like she’d actually do any of the things we wanted to do either

Reader: I’m sorry but like, I offered for you guys to come do some things with me and I even asked for you to tell me when you guys were making plans - I would have gone out

Helena: does it even matter now though? You brought literally all of this onto yourself there’s no use for you to just beg us for you to come back lol. Just stop while you’re ahead

Helena: you were never really there to begin with tbh you just kinda existed

Maria: exactly that! Like im glad we’re getting stuff off our chest because omg did you get on my nerves. Always quiet and just watching??? Never saying anything??

Georgina: RIGHT It was like a literal ghost in the room LMFAO

Reader: are you fucking serious right now?

Reader: you’re going to act like this?

Maria: you brought it on yourself

Helena: it was bound to happen

Reader: I cannot believe you guys are acting like such assholes right now

Maria: you did it first though?????

Helena: ^^^^

Georgina: ^^^^

From there, the conversation had delved into them throwing all of their problems onto you. It honestly felt like projecting, but you had a class to go to and project to present and no time to cry.

You wiped your tears, got ready for the day and headed out to your building from out of your dorm. Soon, you would be on break and away from this place that’s driving you up a wall.

You walked across campus and plastered a faint smile on your face as you continued to move through the nippy air. You enjoyed seeing the leaves as they danced on the flowing air and eventually kissed the sidewalk. You could smell pumpkin spice and the remnants of November. What a beautiful season.

Waiting for you outside of Wendell’s Hall was Toby, hands in his pockets as he leaned up against the wall just beside the door.

“Were you waiting for me?” You ask with a small smile.

“Maybe,” he hums with a small smirk. “C-C’mon, it’s a little c-chilly out here,” he says as he gently shuffles you inside after opening the door for you. He watches you carefully as you walk through the halls and find the elevator to get to the sixth floor.

As the two of you wait for the doors to open, Toby checks you over.

“What?” You say with a small chuckle.

“J-Just checking,” Toby hums. “A-Are you okay?” He asks as the doors open. He nods for you to go in first, and then follows in directly after. He watches your finger press the button for six.

“Why?”

“You s-seem a l-little tense,” he says as he looks over you again, his eyes narrowing in on yours. “I-Is it the p-presentation?”

You hold your hand out and make a ‘so-so’ motion. “I guess,” you reply, attempting to shove off anything that might make you cry again. Your eyes are a little dark, and your skin is still soft from the saline, raw from you rubbing those pearls of water with your sleeves repeatedly.

“You w-wanna talk a-about it l-later?” He asks softly, his hand resting warmly on your shoulder as he brings you into his side.

You look up at him and smile. “We’ll see.”

When the doors open, you and Toby quickly make it to your class and are pleased to see there’s spots open and the two of you can sit together. Toby is quick to snag the seats for the both of you and his warm expression falls when he sees Helena waltzing into the room.

Helena sits a little ways from where you and Toby sit before she wiggles her fingers at you like a nonverbal smile before actually turning her lips up in a fake saccharine smile.

You shift uncomfortably and instead focus on your presentation. You feel a little nervous, mostly because Helena is here and this is also a big chunk of your grade. You’re academically passing with flying colors, but a hiccup like this could spell something bad. You breathe out deeply when you feel Toby’s hand resting on your shoulder, grounding you.

“We g-g-got this,” he says with a small smile, squeezing you lightly. “You w-wwanna get it out of the w-w-ay?”

“No,” you reply suddenly. “I just want to see how this goes.”

Toby nods and turns his attention to the other students that continue to walk through the door. “A-Anything for y-y-you,” he says softly.

You barely hear it, but you smile all the same.

Presentations pass in a pretty boring manner. Your professor seems pleased with everyone that presents, and she offers praise and saves the criticism for emails, but so far, it seems like everyone is doing well! You’re almost fully calm by the time you raise your hand to present but when Helena and her partner begin snickering, your heart sinks to your knees.

“Alright, you two are good to go,” your professor says with a warm, reassuring smile on her face after she pulls up your project on the overhead projector. “Giving the remote to Miss Reader, whenever you two are ready.” She holds the remote out to you and then whispers ‘you’re gonna do great’ before taking her seat in the front row.

You silently thank her for her reassurance and then turn your attention to Toby, who begins the presentation.

You make sure to speak clearly and concisely as you present your project, paying close attention to detail and everything that was outlined on the rubric. You watch your professor’s expression light up brighter and brighter as you carry on with your half of the presentation. It seems that she’s really pleased with the both of you, but especially you!

Your big hiccup comes when the questions part of your presentation comes up.

See, prior to this, the questions portion had been empty and pretty dead. But of course, because Helena is here, she’s dead set on making you flop.

When she starts firing questions, you and Toby answer them to the best of your abilities. Admittedly, you are more than mentally dead at this point. With every question that Helena digs into you, you feel your brain cells dying off at an even faster rate. The lights of the projector bore into you and make you dizzy. You’re just… exhausted.

Helena finally poses a question that makes your face heat up. “So?” She taunts, her eyes looking at you innocently. “I just wanna know,” she continues, her eyes flashing.

You should be able to answer this. It’s so simple and right there in your bank of knowledge you just can’t open the vault.

“Miss Reader..?” Your professor quietly asks, pulling you from your thoughts. “Are you able to-” You shake your head, feeling numb and cold all at the same time. “I’m sorry, no,” you whisper. It was one of the first things you learned in the class and one of the most important.

Your professor nods and mouths, ‘don’t worry,’ before turning to the rest of her class. “Alright then, you two are dismissed. Give them a round of applause for their work.”

The applause surrounds you but you do not feel it, and when you move back to your seat, you can’t help but feel embarrassed. The looks that you get from those around you are of pity and ‘she hasn’t learned anything this quarter, has she?’ It makes your face burn with embarrassment and you feel so unnaturally warm because of it. A rush of emotions comes over you when you see Helena’s shifty glances and hear her insipid giggles and you hurriedly get your things together and bolt out of the classroom.

Toby shoots up when you rush out and he’s not able to catch you. Instead, he sits in for the rest of the class to give you some space and anything else the professor may say. His glare is turned on Helena. When she flashes him that same sickly sweet, mocking smile, he sees red.

Class ends shortly after that, the professor clearly uncomfortable with whatever just happened with Helena and Toby is keeping his ire hidden until what comes after he deals with you. He’s got a few choice things in mind he’d like to do to Helena, mostly spinal disfigurement and popping bones from their joints and scattering them across the country, but he knows he has to play this as slimy as she did. He’s already conjuring up ways to academically cripple her.

Toby pushes those thoughts to the side before he makes his way to your dorm. He’s nodding to the guy at the front desk and running up the stairs to find you faster than his thoughts can even gather. He just wants to make sure you’re okay.

He walks through the hall of your floor before going over the room numbers. He’s only been in your dorm once - the two of you tend to spend time with each other outside of the campus. Twenty four hour McDonalds, out and about in the city, public parks, the two of you just like wandering. When he sees the numbers of your dorm, he internally sighs and knocks. “H-Hey, Reader? Y-You in t-t-there?” He asks as he knocks again.

From inside, you shuffle underneath your sheets. He’s here? You don’t answer.

“I j-just want to make s-sure you’re alright,” he continues in a soft voice. “If you n-need space though, I c-c-can go-” he barely makes the motion to move when you open the door just a crack.

You look up at Toby with dark, puffy eyes. You can’t bring yourself to say anything, but he can see that you’ve been through hell and back emotionally. You look like a mess, in less graceful words.

“Oh g-gods,” he murmurs as you push open the door just a bit more. “R-Reader,” he says softly as he takes you into his arms, his shoe gently pushing the door closed as you wrap your arms around his waist, taking in the scent of graphite and sandalwood as you sob into his chest. “What h-happened, s-sweetheart?” He asks softly as he rocks the two of you back and forth.

You continue to cry into his chest and grip onto the back of his hoodie as he gently maneuvers you to the side of your bed to let your tired body rest. “S-She’s so mean!” You cry as you continue to squeeze your eyes shut, still gripping Toby like he’s the only thing grounding you.

“What h-have they d-d-done to you?” He inquires in a tone just a little louder than a whisper. Internally, he knows he’ll make all three of those demons suffer and leave the school, by any means necessary. He just wants to hear it from you to know how hard he needs to fuck up their lives. Judging by this interaction alone? It’s monumental.

You then go into a painful detailing of everything those girls have ever made you feel, at one point even bringing up the chats you have saved on your phone. Your breathing begins to even, but Toby’s vision grows redder and redder.

He listens to everything you say as you recount your pain to him and he grits his teeth. Especially those chats - those are unforgivable.

You’re exhausted by the time you finally finish telling him everything they’ve made you feel and the things they’ve done to make you feel this way. You finish it with just a few more words. “They make me feel so small,” you admit through sniffles and broken breaths. “They just - they made me feel so left out and so insignificant,” you admit, still wiping away tears.

Toby holds you tighter before one of his hands reaches up to cup your cheek. “N-No! You’re n-not insignificant, you’re e-everything and m-more,” he begins to ramble. “Y-You’re s-s-so smart and p-put together and o-on top of i-it,” he continues, his thumb wiping away your residual tears.

“You’re just saying that-”

“I w-would never,” he cuts you off in a tone that’s more serious than he intended. “I m-mean everything I s-s-say and those g-girls suck. They d-don’t hold a candle to you,” he says as he cups your face.

“Toby…”

Toby hushes you by pressing a soft, almost scared he might spook you kiss to your lips as if he’s testing the waters. When you make no motion to fight him, he presses just a little more fervently before pulling away, leaving you with stars in your eyes. “I’ll handle e-e-everything, okay?” He promises softly, watching as the stars fade to exhaustion. “G-Get some r-r-rest,” he coos.

You allow him to lay you down as he moves the blankets to cover you before he gets up to turn off the lights. “You’re going to handle it?” You whisper as you allow sleep to veil over your body.

“Y-Yes, I’ll handle e-e-everything,” he promises again, flicking the lights off.

Toby fumbles through the dark for just a moment before slipping back into bed with you, allowing you to wrap around him like an octopus. He cradles you in his arms, his lips pressing to your forehead. “Sleepy t-time,” he mumbles as you cuddle into his chest.

You smile softly and feel your body go light, only anchored by Toby’s warm embrace.

[greensaplinggrace]

honestly THANK YOU for saying all that abt baghra bc i thought i was going crazy from not liking her??? bc i haven't read the books and only summaries of them on wiki and like. i dunno why ppl like her actually even in the show bc this guy, her son, is like "i wanna make the world better for us grisha" and she's just like "no." even tho he sees that she's MAKING HERSELF SICK from suppressing her powers! she's literally like in bed coughing in the flashback yet seem much healthier at the little palace. also like after everything, after her disapproval, after the fold, after centuries of waiting for the sun summoner.. he never abandons her. he makes sure she's cares for. he doesn't harm her. and i have to wonder if baghra has ever thanks him for that, for just not leaving her alone. like i dunno how im suppose ro believe aleks is a heartless villain when he still cares for his abusive mom like this. like has baghra even told her she loved him (honestly she reminds me of a classic emotionally unavailable asian parent but maybe that's just me). also im wondering if baghra ever told aleks that he had an aunt.. bc like.. now that u bring up her isolating him it's like hmmmm...

not at me being like alina... why do u trust the bitter old woman who literally beats u with a stick and verbally abuses u every chance she gets.. just bc she showed a bad painting... like.. pls use two braincells to see that who u figured out as his mother... is also using his protection..

like baghra could've upped and left with alina. but no. she stayed bc she knew she was safe under aleks's protection.

alsoim just impressed that after his first friend tried to drown him and harvest his bones... he didn't go into hiding???? he still wanted to make a safe heaven for grisha!!! HE STILL WANTED TO PROTECT GRISHA EVEN AFTER HIS GRISHA FRIEND TRIED TO KILL HIM FOR HIS FUCKEN BONES. like... this is the guy im suppose to believe is the villain???

honestly i feel like part of the reason why LB's plotlines seem so bad and disconnected (and sometimes outright racist but that's another rant) and why darkles is disproportionately more violent and villainous in the later books is bc she didn't expect the darkling to be so popular and wanted to stick with her guns of making him the villain. but also wanted the money from aleks's popularity. but like you can't have ur cake and eat it too.

Well thank you for sending this ask! It's very sweet and very passionate. I'm glad you liked my post! I didn't put as much thought into it as some of my others lol. I kind of just talked. But it was nice to be able to finally talk about some of the problems I have with both her character and the fandom/author's perception of her.

HERE is the post this is referring to, in case anyone's wondering.

👀👀 You've hit the nail on the head for so many things, here!

Baghra is extremely emotionally unavailable, basically to the point of neglect. She's also verbally and physically abusive, traits which I doubt were only reserved for her students and not her son. Baghra claims she would do anything to protect him, but I've known a lot of parents who have that mindset and yet still harm their children because they think it's "good for them".

Aleksander stays at Baghra's side for years, and even when they're opposing each other she's never too far away from him. Idk if you've read the books but he does eventually hurt her. And as much as I don't like Baghra, I think his actions were horrid. But I'm also honestly kind of surprised it took him so long lmao.

Yeah I mean, in terms of isolation, let's not forget that she never wanted to introduce him to his father, either. Baghra's sense of eternity clouds a lot of her judgments on relationships, which means she views most people as dust and therefore teaches her son to as well. The problem with that is that he's a growing child, and he needs those social and emotional attachments for healthy development.

I would bet quite a bit of money that Baghra has either never told him she loves him or she has told him so few times it's practically forgettable.

And everything becomes more complicated because so many of Baghra's actions are understandable because of her life and her history, but the impacts they have on the people around her, especially Aleksander, are permanently damaging. And the fact that that's never gone over in critical depth in the books or how it's glossed over in fandom is just very disconcerting. Like, acknowledging Baghra's failings doesn't mean we're excusing Aleksander's actions, it just means we're holding Baghra liable for her own. Which the fandom should be doing, considering she's the epitome of an abusive parental figure.

And Alina trusting Baghra over Aleksander is even more confusing! Especially in the show!! This is the woman who beat her and abused her and tortured her friends when they tiny little children (and who probably still does so now that they're adults). This is the woman who mocks you and harasses you and insults you on a regular basis. Why does Baghra revealing she's Aleksander's mother make Alina change her mind?! Like fuck, I'd just feel bad for Aleksander. No wonder he kept it a secret, I would too! And that painting is enough evidence?! Really?! A random painting shown to you by this abusive mentor that's been making your life hell. That's what you're going to betray your new lover over?

The friends trying to harvest his bones thing is a good point, too. I think Aleksander, especially show Aleksander, is incredibly idealistic. I think he cares too much for others - those he's deemed worth his care (a sentiment given to him by Baghra). Despite everything she's tried to teach him about hiding and abandoning others and never caring and never doing anything to help or reach out or connect with people, Aleksander still continues to do so. It's likely because he never got it from Baghra growing up, and so is desperate for those emotional needs to be fulfilled elsewhere.

His turning point, when Baghra tells him it was understandable that those kids tried to kill him because the world is such a hard place for them - that's crucial. And the reason it's possible as a motivating factor is because of that idealism and that desire to help and that desire to be everything his mother isn't. Baghra tells him this trauma he just experienced was because of the oppression of his people, and instead of following her lead and accepting that, going into hiding and abandoning everybody to their misery, he goes I can do something about that. I can make it so this never happens again. Which is usually how trauma like that combines with one's core personality traits at a young age, especially when there's none of the essential support systems in place to aid in recovery (ie, the role Baghra should have been filling but wasn't, because she decided to exacerbate the problem instead).

And yeah, one of my biggest problems with the ham-fisted "beating you over the head with a sledgehammer of evil deeds" look-how-bad-this-character-is! portrayal of the Darkling in the later books comes from the impression I get that Bardugo doesn't trust her readers. She's so desperate to have us hate this character and think him an irredeemable villain, not trusting any of her readers to engage critically with a morally gray character, that it feels quite a bit like condescending fucking bullshit. Which ew, I know how to engage with literature, thanks.

She really does seem to look down on a large part of her fandom, and imo, the infantilization of the female characters in her books seems to carry over to her impression of most of her female readers as well. Which is why the Darkling's character arc gets fucking destroyed. But he's still a good cash grab, of course, so she'll shake his dead corpse in front of the fandom for money every time she wants something from it.

Also! Another reason I think her plotlines feel disconnected (I'm sorry Bardugo I respect you as a person, but shit-) is because the writing in SaB is just bad. I mean, nevermind the absolutely nauseating implications of the way she portrays the Grisha as a persecuted group who's situation is never actually fully addressed as it should be, considering Grisha rights is what her main villain is fighting for (imo for a series called the Grishaverse, LB seems to be pretty anti Grisha), but her characters and story alone are just wrong for each other. They don't fit together.

And the ending is one of the main pieces of evidence in that regard! You can’t say the ending where Alina isn’t Grisha anymore is her “going back to where she started” when she’s always been Grisha. She just didn’t know she was Grisha because she denied that part of herself that she was born with.

Alina is reluctant to move forward or change, she struggles with adapting, and she’s very set on the things she’s grown attached to throughout her life. She also has some latent prejudices against the Grisha, and so denies the possibility of being Grisha for those reasons as well.

Alina’s lack of powers in the beginning of her life because she willfully doesn’t learn about them to avoid change versus her lack of powers at the end of the book when she’s accepted them and then they’re stripped away from her by outer forces are two entirely separate circumstances. You can’t make a parallel about lost powers and lack of Grisha status bringing her back to the start when she was always Grisha and she always had powers and she simply refused to come to terms with it because of personal reasons.

The first situation is an internal conflict that indicates a story about growth and a journey of self acceptance. Denying herself the opportunity to learn about her heritage and to find acceptance with a group of people like her because she’s tied to the past and because of the way she was raised is the setup for a narrative that tackles unlearning prejudice and learning how to connect with a part of her identity that was denied her and learning how to grow independent and self assured. It’s the setup for a different story entirely. The second situation is an external conflict that centers around the ‘corrupting influence of power’... for some reason.

In a world where Grisha do not have social, political, or economic power and they are hunted, centering your heroine’s journey of self acceptance and growth around an external conflict about... the corrupting influence of power (in a group of people that don’t actually have any power?!) just doesn’t work. It is literally impossible to connect the two stories Bardugo is trying to push in Shadow and Bone without seriously damaging the main character’s developmental arc.

The only way a narrative like this would work, claiming that she has gone back to where she started, is either a) if the Grisha weren’t actually a persecuted group and instead were apart of the upper class, or b) if the one bad connection between the two instances is acknowledged - that Alina denied a part of herself crucial to self acceptance and growing up, and that losing her powers at the end has also denied her. It is a tragedy, not a happy ending.

Alina suffered because she didn’t use her powers. She grew sick. It was bad for her. This was not a resistance to 'the corruption of power and the burden of greed', it was her suffering because she couldn’t fully accept herself.

Framing the ending as a return to the beginning can’t be done if you don’t address how bad the beginning was for your main character. You brought her back to a bad point in her life. You regressed her. This should be a low point in her arc. It should be a problem that’s solved so she can finish developing organically or it should be something that is acknowledged as a tragedy in it’s own right, for the future the world (the writing) denied her.

This is a ramble and it makes no sense and I’m really sorry, but my point is that Bardugo put the wrong characters in the wrong story. The character arc required for organic development doesn’t match the story and intended message at all. The narrative doesn’t fit the cast. She's got two clashing stories attempting to work in tandem and she ends up with both conflicting messages that fans still can’t comprehend in her writing and an ending that doesn’t suit her main character to such an impossible degree that it’s almost laughable.

So yeah, there's a few reasons why I think the story and the plot feels so bad and disconnected. I hope you don't mind me making this answer so long! 😅 I was not expecting to write this much.

[wiypt-writes]

Soft Landing

One Shot

Summary: Vacation get-aways don’t always let you escape the past, but maybe you can help bring Andy back to the present. Just be careful not to pick up too many bumps and bruises along the way… Pairing: Andy Barber x Reader

Warnings: Smut (NSFW, 18+) Angst, language!

A/N: So this is another entry for @imanuglywombat​ ‘s  “Is That Even A Sex Position” weekly challenge. This position is called “Louise”. See here for more information. This is my first time writing for Andy, and it appears I can’t even do a single smutty one shot for Lawyer daddy without inserting a fuck tonne of angst so…sorry!!!

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this story bar the reader and other mentioned OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

Tagged my permanent tag list.

Masterlist

*****

 You stirred in your bed, turning over and reaching out for your husband only to be met empty space, your fingers grasping at the cool sheets. Blinking, you propped yourself up on your forearms, squinting as your eyes grew accustomed to the low light in the hotel bedroom before you sat up, stretched a little and swung your legs out of bed.

You made your way out of the bedroom, poking your head into the next room down and, satisfied everything in there was as it should be, you made your way through to the living area of the suite and glanced around, spotting that the curtains covering the door leading to the balcony were blowing a little in the soft breeze.

You padded over to the door, pulled back the curtains a little more and you could just make out Andy’s frame, his broad, bare shoulders silhouetted against the early morning sun. Shoulders which carried a much heavier burden than when you had met almost six years previously.

You had been fresh out of law school back then, and he was not-so-fresh out of a break up with his wife. Neither of you had been looking for anything, but as is always the case, you always find the best things when you’re not searching.

Simply put, Andy Barber had swept you off your feet.

At almost 10 years his junior, the comments at first had been unkind but not unexpected. You’d been labelled “the rebound”, his “early midlife crisis”, a “convenient way to keep his dick warm whilst he got over Laurie.” But talk is cheap, as you had both proven when three years to the date you’d met he got down on one knee and you became relabelled his fiancée.

A year post that you relabelled again as his wife. And some twenty one months ago you’d relabelled once more as the mother of his child. A daughter he claimed looked just like you.

Ironically, you’d actually fallen pregnant on the last vacation you had taken. A family getaway to Mexico following Jacob’s acquittal when you’d all wrongly assumed the horrific dream was over, and you could finally wake up and get on with your lives.

You couldn’t have been more wrong.

In some sick twist of fate, you’d discovered you were pregnant the day of the accident that had claimed Jacob’s life, and later that of Laurie’s. The elation you and Andy had felt at the fact you were going to be parents together had been wrenched away from you in a single phone call from the police, and once more that shroud of dark despair had descended on your life turning the dream into a nightmare once more.

And for Andy the nightmares still continued, some two years post Jacob’s death and you knew without even seeing his face that was what had woken him and why he was now sat on the balcony of your stunning ocean view hotel suite in Cascais, Portugal instead of being in bed besides you.

“Hey.” You spoke softly as you slid the door open and he turned to look at you, his eyes carrying the familiar warmth that they always held for you, as you stepped into the balcony, taking care to leave the door open a crack just in case your daughter woke.

“Hey, Sweetheart.” He gave you a smile as you approached the sun-lounger he was perched on, facing out over the Atlantic, the first glimmer of the mid-June sun peeking over the horizon. “I didn’t wake you or Lia did I?”

Lia, or Halia to use her full name. Chosen by you and Andy for its meaning. A Hawaiian name for remembrance of a loved one. In this case the brother she would never meet.

“No, I checked in on her. She’s flat out.” You assured him, as he moved his legs, dropping them either side of the lounger allowing you to sit in between them, cross legged as you faced him. You studied him for a moment, cocking your head to one side as he gave you a gentle smile. “Get out of there, Bubs.” You gently reached up, tapping the side of his temple and he took a deep breath, his hand curling round yours, lacing your fingers together.

“Sorry, just got caught in a memory.” He offered as explanation. And to be fair, you didn’t need him to clarify any further. You knew, you always knew.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” He swallowed, so you didn’t press further. You respected his wishes, just like he did to yours.

“Do you want a hug?” You offered instead, and he gave a soft smile, opening his arms. You shifted onto your knees, scooting forwards a little, wrapping your arms around him as he pressed his face into your neck, taking a deep breath as your hand ran through his soft hair and down his neck in gentle, sweeping arcs. You sat in silence for a moment, the lapping of the waves against the shore the only noise you could hear as you held him close, feeling him nuzzle further into you.

“Thank you.” He mumbled against your skin and you pulled back a little, sitting back on your heels as you looked at him

“What for?”

“Everything.” He shrugged, his hand reaching up and tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, his eyes soft as he studied your face for a moment, his gaze flicking to your lips before it went further down and he arched an eyebrow. “And for wearing that.”

You chuckled a little as you glanced down at the pale blue silk slip, one of the thin straps had slipped down your shoulder slightly, your nipples pebbled against the thin fabric. “Well, someone bought it for me.” You looked back at him, smiling as you tugged your bottom lip in between your teeth.

“Yeah?” Andy’s eyes moved back to yours. “Anyone I know?”

“No, just someone very special to me.” You leaned forwards to press your lips to his.

“He’s a lucky man.” Andy whispered against your mouth

“I’m the lucky one.” You mumbled back. “And, whilst we’re on the subject, I would also like to thank you for what you’re wearing.” You grinned, your hands flat on his chest, smoothing down a little before they trailed back upwards, curling over his strong shoulders.

“I’m not.”

“Exactly.” You smirked, kissing him softly again.

Eventually the teasing pecks flowed into something much stronger, Andy’s arms curling round you, pulling you closer, domineering swipes of his tongue against yours set every single nerve in your body on edge. Your hand moved back down his chest, tracing his soft abs before you palmed his growing bulge through the sleep pants he was wearing, causing him to grunt a little.

Without a word, one of his hands trailed up the outside of your thigh, the other making its way along the inside of your opposite knee and you shifted a little, parting your legs, as his fingers delicately danced upwards to where you wanted him the most. When they softly parted your intimate lips he gave a little groan as he realised you were wearing no panties, and you swallowed as his fingers swirled in your slick, the pad of his thumb grazing your nub ever so gently.

“Always so ready for me.” He hummed.

“Yeah, it’s a curse.” You whispered back, as his spare hand slid the other strap of your slip down, his lips pressing a tender kiss to your shoulder as he pulled the front of the garment down, freeing your breasts. As he kissed his way along the swell of your cleavage, his tongue softly teased each taught nipple and your whimper caught in your throat, emerging as nothing but a soft squeak of delight. You felt his mouth curl up into a smile against your skin and you gently wrapped your hand around his wrist, halting his teasing fingers.

“Andy, I want you.” You whispered, your head falling back as you rocked your hips forwards against his hand as you held it in place. “Please.”

Andy didn’t reply, but with a grace unbefitting a man of his stature, he moved, kneeling up as he pulled his sleep pants down, his gorgeous cock springing free and slapping gently against the thin strip of hair that led down from his belly button. He drew his knees apart slightly as his hands grabbed your hips and he hauled you towards him, his lips pressing back to yours.

You positioned yourself over him, your knees hugging his torso as you lowered yourself down, both of you giving a groan as you took him in. Your feet remained by his knees, one hand sliding round his neck, fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, the other gripping at his forearm.

Andy rolled his hips upwards as you pressed your forehead to his, noses bumping together as he moved you gently, his rhythm slow and needy from the off. Large hands slid along your thighs, gently palming your ass before they slid up the back of your silk slip, coming to rest tenderly on your spine, holding you close. As he rocked upwards, you let your head fall back slowly and let out a soft sigh of delight as his lips caressed your throat, barely there kisses moved down your neck, that beard you loved so much scratching your skin as he went. Your grip on his arm and neck tightened a little, your nails softly grazing the nape of his neck as he once more lavished affection on your chest, and this time it was his turn to let out a soft groan into your skin. He loved when you touched him there, you’d often made a joke about how if he was a cat it would make him purr.

His mouth moved upwards again, tongue dipping into the hollow of your throat, tracing a path up to your jaw before his lips caught yours again, the kiss deep and needy, like he was at that moment. Your tongues danced lazily together, matching the slow, steady roll and rocking motion your hips were making. With a low grunt, Andy broke away, pulling back a little, his nose nudging your chin as he placed a soft kiss once more to your neck, his rhythm never changing as his hands pulled you even closer, pressing your chest into his.

“Baby, look at me.” His voice was a whisper, and it was a request not a demand, but a request you were more than happy to meet. Your eyes locked onto those deep, ocean blues which were blown with love and lust and you simply held his gaze as he continued to rock up into you, stroking that spot inside that drove you wild.

You could feel the burning, deep in the pit of your stomach, and your hips started to move a little more as you ground down against him, desperate for the friction against your clit and you let out a little cry as you found it, Andy bucking up a little deeper and faster, reading your body language perfectly, just like he always could.

Moving your hands, you cupped his face, the pads of your fingers tangling in his beard as he closed his eyes, those ridiculously long eyelashes fluttering against his flushed cheeks and you pushed down again, rotating your hips, watching with satisfaction as he tipped his head back, a groan flowing freely from his lips, the softly whispered “don’t stop” barely audible, his voice was that deep.

Seeing him so suppliant was something you would never get tired of, because you loved this beautiful, wonderful man with everything you had. You’d both been through so much, yet still made it through the other side as strong as ever, the ultimate sign of your love sleeping in the room inside as you gave yourselves to one another whilst the dawn continued to break over the ocean, tendrils of light purples, oranges and yellow snaring around the pair of you, enveloping you in their warmth, heating the very depth of your souls.

“I love you.” You pulled his face back to yours, kissing him once more, your lips resting against his as you told him again. “I love you.”

“I love you too, so fahkin’ much.” His Boston twang grew more pronounced as did the movements of his hips, his rolls turning into thrusts as you met him movement for movement, pushing down, rocking yourself against him. The burn you had been feeling was now boiling hot as it bubbled to the surface, and you knew that any moment now you were going to erupt into flames.

“Fuck, Andy, I need…”

“Take it, Honey, it’s all yours…” He surged upwards, his hands flat against your back, pulling you to him as you kissed him deeply, before you’re head tipped back as the world around you tilted on its axis, your stomach tightening as you clenched down around him, your release crashing over you like the waves on the shore below. Your entire body went rigid, his name on your lips became nothing but a choked, strangled moan as he continued to rut up into you, his face pressing into your neck as he chased his own bliss.

"Fuck, Sweetheart..." Andy growled as with one final thrust upwards, his body stiffened and he spilled himself inside you, his cock twitching as the aftershocks of your orgasm kept your walls clamping down on him. His head tipped back, eyes fluttering shut and his jaw clenched before he relaxed a little, chest sagging as his arms clutched you to him, as if he never wanted to let you go.

Which, if he didn't, that was perfectly fine by you.

You leaned forward gently, sliding your nose along his, your lips brushing together as he gave a soft smile. With a satisfied sigh he leaned back, taking you with him as he made to settle you down against the back of the lounger you were laying on. Only he didn't stop, he kept going, his eyes flying open with surprise as the back of the lounger collapsed and you were suddenly pitched forward as the other end tipped up sending Andy crashing backwards onto the balcony with a loud bang as the metal frame of the lounger hit the sandstone tiled surface, you still clutched securely to his chest.

There was a pause as the pair of you looked at each other in surprise before Andy's head fell back and he gave a huge bellow of laughter and you hastily clamped your hand over his mouth in an attempt to stifle the noise, trying to supress your own giggles. One of Andy's hand's moved from your back as you sat up a little, legs still straddling his waist, his softening cock still stuffed deep inside you. He curled his fingers around the wrist of the hand you had pressed over his mouth and he pulled it away, pressing a kiss to your palm,  his beard twitching as he continued to chuckle softly, his eyes crinkled at the corner.

"You okay?" He asked, his lips curling up into a smile and you nodded, running your hands through his hair as his fell to your hips.

“Yeah, I had a soft landing.” You teased, causing him to snort out another laugh. "All these years and you can still make the Earth move for me, Barber."

"Well, I aim to please." he quipped as you leaned down to press your lips to his.

"Is everything alright?" You head a voice say which stopped you mid kiss. Your eyes flew open, as did Andy's and the pair of you looked at one another, as Andy started to laugh again.

"Yeah, fine, just a little...mishap with the sun lounger." You called over to where the voice had come from, the next room down to yours.

"But thank you for asking." Andy added, polite as always.

"No problem!" The male voice shot back, before you heard the sliding of a door and the click of a lock as it shut.

"Reminds me of that time at my parents when we broke my old bed." You giggled and Andy snorted, his hands smoothing over your thighs.

"In my defence, that thing was almost as old as me.”

"Well that's a load of shit." You grinned, looking down at him, your hands sliding through his rumpled, fluffy hair. "I only got it when I was eighteen, and given that you're ten years older than me that would mean-"

"Yeah, okay, shut up." He mumbled as his hand reached round the back of your neck, pulling you back down to him.

[intheticklecloset]

Cool, Confident Libero (Haikyuu!!)

Primary Universe

Summary: An accident during practice leaves Noya all tangled up and nowhere to go when his teammates discover something new about him.

A/N: I wanted to write a fic where someone got stuck in the net. I also love the crap out of lee Noya, so...yeah that's pretty much it. Enjoy! ^^

Word Count: 1,762

~~~

“Nishinoya!”

The gym was a flurry of motion. Noya had been trying his quick set that he’d seen another team do, only he’d put too much momentum into his sideways jump and jumped too high at the same time, causing him to grab onto the top of the net to try and catch himself. Only rather than fall back down on the same side he’d tried to set from, he ended up flipping over the top of it, his legs flying in an arc over to the other side, hands grasping desperately at the webbing to try and stop himself. Meanwhile, his teammates on either side rushed forward to either try and catch him or steady the netting so it wouldn’t rip and make the situation even worse.

In the end, Noya’s arms got tangled up in the netting, and he dangled awkwardly from it on the opposite side from where he’d started.

“Noya! Are you okay?!” Suga cried.

Noya grunted, starting to drag the netting down with his weight. Before he could reply to everyone’s concerns, Kageyama reached out to steady him by grabbing onto his waist right at the same time that the libero slipped even further downwards, causing the first-year setter to catch him by the ribs instead.

“GYAH!!” Noya shrieked, instinctively kicking his legs out and nearly catching Kageyama in the stomach. “Dohohohohohon’t!”

Startled, Kageyama took a step back and merely stood there awkwardly as the others around him gradually helped Noya back down to the gym floor so that he was at least standing on his own two feet, even if the net was still keeping his arms bound above him in an unforgiving tangle of limbs and webbing.

“Are you okay?” Kageyama asked after a moment.

Noya groaned. “Yeah, but my pride probably broke every bone just now.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“Ah, n-no. Just…you caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

Even more so than flipping over the net? Kageyama thought, but said nothing more.

Suga pressed a hand to Noya’s lower back gently. “Are you okay, Noya?”

“F-Fine. Just embarrassed. That was a really lousy set.”

“Hang tight; we’ll get you out of this net. Is it hurting you?”

“Eh, just doesn’t feel super comfortable,” Noya replied, remaining nonchalant despite his awkward situation. “But it’s not chafing. I’ll be okay.”

Suga nodded, then moved to help Daichi and Ennoshita untangle him from the net’s grasp.

“Hey, Noya, your jersey came untucked,” Hinata said, stepping forward to grab at the fabric and try to pull it back down over the tiny sliver of the libero’s belly that was now showing. “I’ll fix it for—”

“Hi-Hinatahahaha!” Noya giggled, twisting out of the way. “Dohohon’t!”

“Hold still, Noya,” Daichi ordered, so focused on his task he didn’t realize what was actually going on.

Noya sputtered a couple of extra giggles, then made the mistake of making eye contact with the redheaded first-year. Hinata’s eyes were wide, shining, like he’d just seen the Tiny Giant play on TV for the first time and was inspired. The libero’s eyes widened right back.

“D-Don’t,” he pleaded. “Hinata—”

“Are you ticklish?” Hinata asked, and suddenly everyone’s attention had shifted.

Noya flushed bright red. He desperately wished Asahi were here to save him, but of course, this was the one time the ace had gotten a cold and stayed home.

“N-No-! I mean yes, but – but please don’t – not like this!” The libero sputtered, feeling the heat of his embarrassment on his cheeks and ears. His heart was racing, blood pumping through his veins. He tried to pull his arms down but they were still stuck tight.

“Noya,” Suga asked curiously, “are you ticklish? Really?”

“I wouldn’t have even thought about it,” Daichi added, still fussing with the net. “But I guess it makes sense. Lots of people are.”

They were all talking about it so casually. Noya was very, very aware of how exposed and helpless he was right now, especially with Hinata’s bright eyes on him and Kageyama’s wicked smirk backing him up.

“D-Don’t…please,” Noya begged, realizing what was about to happen and unable to stop it at all. Hinata poked his side to test the waters, grinning when the libero couldn’t help but smile and jerk out of the way. “Guys, please, I’m – I’m really ticklish, I can’t—”

Kageyama shoved the redhead out of the way, and for a split second Noya thought maybe the setter was taking pity on him. But in the next moment those hopes were shattered when he felt fingers pressing deep into his ribs. “Oh, yeah. This is payback time.”

“No! Nohohohohohoho, dohohohohohohon’t!” Noya squealed, bursting into high-pitched giggles despite himself. He couldn’t bring his arms down at all; this was not good. “Ahahahahahahaha! Plehehease, Kageyamahahahaha!”

“Hey, no fair!” Hinata whined, reaching under Kageyama to grab at Noya’s sides. “I wanted to tickle him first!”

“GYAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Nohohohohohohohoho!”

“Guys, stop tickling him! You’re making this harder for Ennoshita and I,” Daichi grumbled, still trying to free their poor teammate from his prison.

“Stahahahahahahahap! Daichi sahahahaid to stohohohohohop! Guys!”

“You didn’t show me mercy when I was stuck in that bus.” Kageyama smirked. “I’m just getting even, finally.”

“And I just really want to tickle you,” Hinata added, nearly bouncing around for how excited he was.

“Guys, plehehehehehease! Please, I cahahahahahan’t – AHAHAHAHAAAAAH!! HINATA NOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!”

Hinata had grabbed onto one of his thighs and begun squeezing there, but at the strong reaction he got he went for both at once. “Ooh, you’re really ticklish here!”

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” Noya tossed his head back and let out his loudest, screechiest laughter, wiggling and kicking against the net and his ticklers in a fit of desperation, and everyone in the gym took a moment to stare and smile at the scene unfolding before them. Noya was always an energetic, positive presence on the team. But no one had ever heard him laugh like this before. “STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAP IT PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE I CAHAHAHAHAN’T TAKE IT!! HINATAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

“I’m tickling you, too,” Kageyama muttered, but he was smiling, still drilling his fingers into Noya’s ribs.

Noya had never had both of his worst spots tickled at once before. Even Asahi never pushed him that far; the ace knew he couldn’t handle it. But Asahi wasn’t here. Noya was on his own. He could not have been more embarrassed by the sounds leaving his mouth, intermixed with pleas for mercy. He was the cool, confident libero. He didn’t beg.

Yet here he was.

“PLEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP!! DAICHIHEHEHEHEHE!!” Noya begged his captain to intervene. “MAHAHAHAHAHAKE THEM STOHOHOHOHOHOP IT, PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE!!”

But to everyone’s surprise, it was Kinoshita who came to Noya’s rescue. He grabbed Kageyama and Hinata by their jerseys and pulled them away. “That’s enough, you two. Let him breathe. Can’t you see he’s practically crying?”

The first-years looked, and sure enough, there were mirthful tears in the corners of Noya’s eyes. The libero gasped for breath, hanging limp from the net, barely able to stand up anymore. They both winced, then bowed in apology. “Sorry, Nishinoya.”

“J-Just…just get me out,” Noya mumbled, turning his face away from them, trying to hide in his own shoulder. He was so humiliated by the whole situation that when Daichi and Ennoshita finally got him free a few minutes later, he crossed his arms over his stomach and stared at the floor, refusing to meet any of their eyes.

There was silence in the gym for a long, long minute. Noya struggled to think of something to say, but what could he say? Everything was already out in the open; how ticklish he was, how fast it made him beg, how loud it made him scream. He flushed a deep red, hating every silent second that went by.

Finally Daichi spoke up. “Noya, are you—”

“That was awesome, Noya!” Hinata cried, interrupting their captain and bringing a loud energy back into the room that had been sorely lacking just moments before. Everyone stared at him, surprised – including Nishinoya.

“W-What?”

“You laugh so loud!” Hinata jumped up and down, beaming. “You get cooler and cooler every day!”

The libero was stunned. “I…w-what?”

“I mean, I’m not surprised,” Suga said, grinning. “Until Hinata showed up, Noya was always the most energetic one here. It makes sense he’d be just as loud and crazy when someone tickles him.”

“No kidding! It made me want to laugh just listening to him,” Tanaka added, chuckling a little for emphasis. “This is great! Why didn’t you tell us you were so ticklish, Noya?”

Noya blinked several times. He looked at each of his teammates in turn, stunned. “You…you don’t think it’s…lame?”

“Lame?!” At least half of the Karasuno boys exclaimed at once.

“Are you kidding?!”

“It’s the best!”

“Watching that was the best thing that’s happened to me this week!”

“Dude, your ticklish laugh is so much fun!”

And on it went, each of the boys weighing in their opinions, every one of them positive. Fun. Hilarious. Happy. Inspiring.

Inspiring?

Noya couldn’t believe his ears. “I…I thought for sure you’d all think I was a total loser for being so ticklish. But you…you think it’s inspiring?”

“Dude,” Tanaka said, coming over to wrap an arm around his shoulders, “if I heard you laugh like that before the start of every game, I’d never lose a single one of them.”

“Same here!”

“I know, right?”

“We should make this a tradition!”

“Hold on a second, guys,” Daichi said, raising his voice to be heard over everyone else. “Let’s not get carried away here. Noya,” he turned to the libero, “are you okay?”

Noya looked at him, then at Tanaka, then Hinata and Kageyama, and each of his teammates in turn. Suddenly it didn’t bother him so much that Asahi wasn’t here. These were his friends, too, and hearing all of their positive reviews of his insane sensitivity just made him feel like that much more of a cool, confident libero.

“Yeah,” he said at last, smiling. “Yeah, I think I am.”

“This is great!” Hinata cried, wrapping his arms around his middle and digging into his sides.

“ACK!! Hinata!”

Tanaka joined in, scribbling into his underarm.

“AIEE!! Tanaka, wahahahait-!”

Then Kinoshita stepped forward, then Suga, then Kageyama again, and before he knew it, Noya found himself tackled to the floor of the gym, the tickling and teasing of several of his teammates at once overriding any lingering anxiety he may have had about how incredibly ticklish he was. All he could do was screech, and writhe, and fight, and beg, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

[rainydaydream-gal18]

(Clone Wars) Fives x Reader: Gone

(Author’s Note:  Wow, okay, so this was a shelved project because when I started writing it, I saw something similar, so I scrapped this whole freaking fic.  Well, today I re-worked a few things and decided to share it...

-Months after Echo is pronounced dead, something blooms between you and your old friend-

Warnings:  Angst!  Some kissy kissy

Word Count: 1,509).

Link to Part 2

   There was a knock at the door to your quarters.  It was tentative, not at all like the loud bangs that usually signalled Fives’ presence on the other side.  Still, you knew it was him because he had commed you not too long before to announce his arrival on Coruscant.

   “Come in,” you called, quickly wiping your hands on your apron.

   The door slid open, and Fives entered wearing his full ARC trooper armor.  He was carrying a white box, the kind that usually contained baked goods.  You didn’t miss the way he paused at the doorway, brows raised as he took in the state of your apartment and you.  No doubt it was a change since the last time he’d been there.

   It was months since you found out that Echo was gone.  The loss had been difficult for both you and Fives.  Your apartment had fallen into disarray as you didn’t have the motivation to clean it.  Even mundane things like showering were difficult.  When Fives had last left you before a mission, you had been curled up on the couch with messy clothes and hair as well as a melancholic air about you.  He didn’t want to leave you again, but as always, duty called.  You insisted that you’d be alright, and that had been a few weeks ago.

   “Wow,” Fives said, lips turning up in a smile.  “The place looks great, and so do you.”

   “I figured it was time I got back on my feet,” you replied, setting the bowl of batter down.  “Decided to clean the place up before you got back.”

   “What’s cookin’?” he asked, nodding toward the bowl.

   “I was making a cake actually.  To celebrate your time on leave.”

   “You didn’t have to do that,” Fives said.  “But I won’t say ‘no’ to a slice or two.”

   “Or four.”

   He flashed you that stunning grin of his.  “You know me all too well, _________.  In the meantime, I actually brought some cookies from that bakery you like.”  He lifted the lid of the white box in his hands.

   “Oh, thank you,” you beamed, gladly snatching a cookie.  “That was sweet.”

   “Every time I pass by it, I think of that time me, you, and Echo went there for the first time.  Do you remember that guy?”

   “Who got so mad they didn’t get the right color icing on his pre-ordered cake that he threw it against the wall?”  You burst into laughter at the memory, Fives following.  You clutched your stomach as you tried to regain your composure.  “Those poor people behind the counter, though,” your voice quivered with the chuckle that threatened to spill out.  “I felt so bad.”  The sympathy was short-lived as you sputtered into another round of laughter.

   “It was pretty terrible,” Fives grinned.  “They sure do have good pastries, though.”

   “That, they do.”  You poured the cake batter into the pan.  Your hands had brushed against Fives’ as you transferred the pan to him, heart thudding faster as he slid the pan into the oven.

   Was it the laughs?  Was it the familiarity of his company?  There was, without a doubt, a change in the atmosphere after that.  Fives set the oven timer per your instruction and turned around to face you, resting his hip against the counter casually as he folded his arms across his armored chest.

   “Oh, did you want to get comfortable?” you asked.  “Or were you planning to go out with the guys tonight after this?”

   “Tomorrow night,” he said.  “I told them I had business to attend to this evening.”

   “Business?” you smiled.  “Well, I appreciate it.  But don’t feel like you have to stick around for me.  I’m doing alright.”

   “I also wanted to spend some time with you.”  He raised a brow.  “Is that allowed?”  The playful tone of his voice and expression made you chuckle.

   “As a matter of fact, it’s encouraged.” 

   “Good.  And you’re right, I’m going to get comfortable.”   Fives headed into the living area, beginning the process of removing his armor.  You ran a sponge across the counter to clean up some spilled batter.  “Want to watch a holomovie?”

   You nodded.  “Yeah, that sounds fun.”

   Not long after, the two of you were seated comfortably on the couch, the box of pastries opened up on the coffee table in front of you.  You were curled up in a blanket against his side with his arm draped across the back of the couch behind your head.  Every now and then, he’d turn to shoot you a smile or laugh at something on the screen.  About half an hour into the movie, you had to pause it and pull the cake out of the oven.  Fives volunteered to help you decorate it after the movie ended, but you shook your head with the knowledge that it was most likely a cover to sneak some of the icing ahead of time.

   Both of you returned to the couch, letting the holomovie play once more.  This time, you snuggled even closer to Fives.  He glanced your way for a moment before offering a smile and putting his arm around you.  The contact was so welcome.  It had been some time since you felt that way toward anyone, and even though you felt so safe and comfortable, it was unsettling.  What was this feeling?

   You’d spent the majority of the holomovie watching him instead, and somewhere towards the end, he seemed to pick up on it.  His gaze met yours curiously and held it for a minute or so before you finally acted.

   You leaned in and kissed him.  It was brief and left Fives a little stunned for a moment.  He seemed to get a hold of himself and react as you pulled away, chasing your lips with his own before they collided.  His hand came up to cup the back of your neck and draw you in even more.  The eagerness and the quiet strength with which he kissed you made you a little weak.

   The holovid had ended, leaving the room quiet except for the sound of your heavy breaths and kisses being exchanged.  So many feelings were swirling around in your chest; the thrill of each touch, the security you felt having his arms around you.  Something else was there- something that had been there all along, but was finally making itself known.

   It was love, you realized.  You loved Fives.  You always had love for him as one of your best friends, but since Echo’s departure, it had changed.  And judging by the way he wrapped his arms around you firmly, his kisses firm and needy, it seemed he felt the same.

   Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, a little guilty voice whispered notions of betrayal.  Shame began to burn in your gut as the whispers grew louder and more accusatory.

   How could you do this to Echo?  And with his best friend?  Even if it had been some time since he was gone...

   You abruptly broke the kiss, hand flying to your mouth.  Fives stared at you with lips still parted and arms wrapped around your form.

   “S-sorry, I…”  Your gaze fell to the floor.  “I was thinking about-”

   “It’s alright,” he murmured, hugging you to his broad chest.  “I know.”  You sighed into the contact, wrapping your arms around his torso as you took comfort. 

   “I’m sorry,” you said again, eyes squeezing shut.

   “Don’t worry about it.  It was my fault for kissing you back.  I was too blinded by what I wanted to realize that you’re still grieving.  We can pretend it never happened.”  There wasn’t a hint of disappointment in his voice, and his complete understanding sent your heart fluttering.  He was putting your needs above his own without complaint.  It made him all the more attractive to you.

   You lifted your head from his chest to look up at him.  “I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen, Fives.”

   His eyes locked with yours, confusion and yet a flicker of hope in their depths.  “What do you mean?”

   “I love you,” you confessed.  His eyes softened as he lifted a hand to brush his thumb along your cheekbone.  “This isn’t some impulsive thing to help me drown out my grief.  The truth is I love you.  And that’s why I feel terrible.”

   His other hand came up so that he was holding your face in his hands, gazing down at you so tenderly.  “That makes two of us,” he said.  “I love you too.”  The two of you embraced each other once more.  “I don’t think you should feel terrible.  I know Echo wouldn’t want that.  Either way, it’s okay.  We can wait.  When you’re ready for another kiss, just say the word.”

   “Okay,” you nodded against his shoulder, sniffling.

   The remainder of that evening was spent in his arms with another holomovie playing in the background, though neither of you paid any attention to it.  You were too busy holding each other and relishing in the company.

[whereallthewhumpgoes]

Bunny Rabbit

CW: A lot of fear, non-sexual noncon touch, aftermath of whump, brief mentions of animal cruelty and beating

Fun fact: I accidentally posted this on main. Yeah, that was a heart attack and a half, but it’s been deleted, and is now back in the pain corner where it belongs. This was supposed to be an explanation for how Rat got their hat, but because, as said, all my plot arcs turn into circles, it ended up contextualizing the Whumper’s Soiree drabble, so I’m just gonna @the-whumpers-soiree  (again, sorry, I know this is probably a pain in the ass) and see what comes of it. Happy whumping, everyone!

Rat sat atop Biggs’ bed, their knees curled into their chest, anxiety gnawing at their insides like a hungry little animal. Or maybe that was hunger. They weren’t quite sure. The only thought in their mind was please don’t let Jinx come in here, please don’t let Jinx find out he helped, please don’t find me, please don’t hurt me, please please please-

“Rat?”

They perked up at the sound of Biggs’ voice from the doorway. There was something in his hand, a large mass of white fluff that they couldn’t quite see clearly. Their first thought was a small dog, but that couldn’t be an animal. He was holding it too tight, and Biggs didn’t seem like the type to hurt animals. Not to them. Jinx, though, Jinx was different. Even though they worked closely together, even though they were “friends”, they were not the same. They could see it in their eyes, the way they carried themselves. Jinx kept Biggs controlled through fear, just like he did them. 

“I…I brought you something. I found it in Jinx’s lost and found.”

The lost and found room. Rat wasn’t allowed to go in there. Nobody was. They’d tried before, to get back something that Jinx had taken from one of the other prisoners, but they hadn’t gotten through the door. They’d both been beaten for it, and the person they’d tried to help was punished even worse after that. They were glad they hadn’t seen it, but at the same time, they wished they could’ve been around to help, or at least to swear at Jinx while he did it, to tell him what a monster he was. He was a monster. But Biggs wasn’t. Biggs was different. He was rough, but he was kind. He’d tried to help them. He had helped them, and-”

“Hang on, I’ll get that,” Biggs said.

A knock. Someone was knocking. Oh no.

They grabbed the fluffy thing Biggs had left on the bed next to them and scurried into a corner, making themself as small as they could. Don’t let him see me don’t let him see me don’t let him see me-

“There you are, Biggs. You had me worried for a minute there.” 

The sound of his voice made them want to scream, but they muffled their fear, trying to stay calm and quiet. 

“I couldn’t find you in any of the rooms. For a moment, I thought you’d left.”

“Why would I leave? I don’t have anywhere to go.”

He laughed, sharp and hollow. “Well, I guess you’re right about that.” He looked around Biggs, trying to see into the room behind him. “Now, where’s the little bastard I told you to deal with?”

“Back in their cell. With the others.”

Rat unfolded the ball of fuzz with trembling hands. A pair of eyes, a nose, two long dangly things that were supposed to look like ears. A rabbit. They’d seen a rabbit through the cell window once, but this wasn’t a real one. It was…what was it for? No time to find out. Biggs could only cover for them for so long. 

“Really? Because according to my head count, they’re not there.” He shot Biggs a look that he knew all too well, a look that meant if he did not comply, someone would suffer. “Tell me the truth, Biggs.” 

He stepped aside, letting Jinx into the room. In spite of their best efforts to hide, he noticed Rat almost immediately. 

“Hi there,” he cooed, holding out a hand to them. 

They flinched away from him, clutching the funny rabbit-shaped thing for dear life. They whimpered as he reached forward and grabbed their wrist, examining their bandaged fingers.

“Looks like you patched them up.” 

“You said to deal with them.”

“You knew what I meant, didn’t you?” 

He released them, shoving them back into the wall as he stomped over to Biggs. 

“I’m not mad. I promise, I’m not. I just - you know, I expected you to do what I said.”

“You never told me to hurt them.” 

“I didn’t want you to hurt them,” he hissed under his breath. “I wanted you to get rid of them. A defiant prisoner is no good to me. Now, listen.” He grabbed Biggs by the ear and pulled him down to his level. “Tomorrow night, there’s a party down by the docks. They’re going to give everyone blue glow sticks to put around their wrists. I want you to ask for a red one. Go out there, bring the whelp, give them over to one of the other people with a red glow stick, and find another person with a blue glow stick to bring back to me.” He grabbed Biggs by the jaw, gripping tight enough to hurt. “Is that clear enough?” 

He nodded, despite the tears in his eyes.

“Good.” 

With that, he released him and headed for the door.

[sonofthesaiyans]

Most USELESS AOT Character

I already said my piece on the alliance this week, and there’s a lot of reasons to hate it for the fact that we have the series’ original protagonists aligning with and forgiving the worst war criminals in the story, the ones who caused Eren to initiate his cataclysm upon the world. And I’m sure the reasons for why the alliance is so heavily mocked don’t there. 

But the dishonor of being the most useless member still goes to Gabi Braun. 

Literally the ONLY thing Gabi does for the goddamned alliance, something that only became “necessary” in part due to her own actions in provoking Eren. 

Yeah, Gabi shot Floch. Possibly the only character to have fewer fans, I might assume. But for someone who is the subject of all those tacky “FAZE” memes on Twitter and elsewhere, the little shit didn’t make it count in the ONE moment where she actually was justified in shooting a gun. 

Isayama was never shy about his malicious intentions or his many, many plot contrivances and this is just another instance of such. Gabi shot Floch in defense of the ship carrying the seaplane. Which may have bought the group time to escape, but her failure to land a fatal shot on the son of a bitch still resulted in him sabotaging the plane in his suicidal assault on the alliance, which in turn led to Hange Zoe senselessly sacrifcing herself for time the plane didn’t have anyway........Making this little bitch indirectly responsible for Hange’s death. ON TOP OF SASHA’S. 

I cannot comprehend why people enjoy Isayama’s writing, if a guy needs to produce that many coinciding moments between characters and subplots to move his worthless final arc forward, maybe he’s not what he’s cracked up to be. Gabi just very coincidentally hits Sasha after boarding the blimp shortly after their first encounter, she just HAPPENS to run into Sasha’s family, which is still an enormously offensive subplot by the way......she just HAPPENS to miss the second-worst Yeagerist when she’s never missed before......And boom, she’s got the blood of not one, but TWO of the show’s best girls on her hands. 

And it doesn’t get any better for Gabi after this, Falco is the one pulling all their weight between the two of them and Gabi is still the worst equipped to fight Eren or the Colossals under his command, because one fucking rifle ain’t got jackshit on people trained specifically to kill Titans, even less on the Ackermans who are practically bred for that purpose. Not to mention the other Titan Shifters, Falco included. 

So all of this buildup with Gabi and a very ill-advised “redemption” arc just so she could shoot the second biggest douchebag on the show and miss. We lost Sasha just so she could continually screw up repeatedly in her attempts to stop the Rumbling. 

Sorry, but shooting Floch is NOT enough to validate all the focus on Gabi. And it is nowhere near enough to redeem her of her crimes. At this stage, CONNIE FUCKING SPRINGER was more of an asset to the team than this little shit. Yeah, I went there. Quote me on that if you like. 

And let me be straight up with you people, even in a series about child soldiers, do you honestly take the image of a twelve-year old with a sniper rifle twice her size in her hand seriously? Are we supposed to rally to her side, is that supposed to be badass? 

There’s no debating how overpowered Gabi is when lined up with everyone who has years on her combat experience. There is no way she should have walked away so cleanly when she repeatedly threw herself in the path of death. 

And if you are still not convinced of how insulting her actual role in this story is, here’s a tidbit from those morons on CBR.com. https://www.cbr.com/attack-on-titan-gabi-best-sniper/ TOTALLY NOT A SASHA REPLACEMENT. Except even CBR thinks she is, and yeah. That seems to be the only reason she’s here. And I’m not fucking okay with that. There’s no valid reason why Sasha isn’t here for the final act. 

Instead of giving Sasha her all, Isayama gives it all to some nobody from out of nowhere who never even receives the Armored Titan she was banking on getting. That at least would be something but no, we just got a twelve-year old given bullshit excuse after bullshit excuse for why she shouldn’t die in a story where she causes a disproportionate number of problems for the main cast. 

She simply doesn’t do enough to make up for her most infamous action. And nobody is really willing to acknowledge her part in Hange’s own death. Girl who “never misses” until the moment where her skill, SASHA’S SKILL, needed to count for every shot. Literally. 

So sorry Hajime Isayama. but after all this time you spent building up Gabi as the ace in the hole, I’m NOT buying it. 

There is no Attack on Titan without Sasha or Hange. 

Also, we need an “anti snk 132″ tag. Someone please make one official.