#i'm feeling weirdly bad! like i'm almost fine as long as i don't really DO anything productive

[varjopeura]

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[writting-stuff-sometimes]

Play with fire Pt 2- LN4 X Fem reader

Pairing: Lando x Y/n Fewtrell

Warnings: physical Fight

Notes: Here's the second part, it gets messy but I'm almost done with part 3, so it won't be long for it to get better. As always, feedback is really appreciated, and receiving requests.

Thanks for the love.

Part 1

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It was the sixth month anniversary with Lando and you had planned to spend one whole week together in Mónaco. As part of the plan, he leased a villa and invited Max, Pietra, and a couple friends to Nice for the last days of the summer break. A few days later he lied and told them he was needed back at the MTC a week early but convinced them to stay back for the remaining days, and you lied to your parents saying you were spending that week with Leah, your bff.

It was day 3 of eating junk food, watching trash TV, and having sex 24/7. You had never been more in love with the man sleeping beside you. Your head on his chest, his soft snoring so relaxing you had no idea how you would be able to fall asleep without him every night.

"Hey mate, are you here?" Your brother's voice made your heart stop. Were you dreaming? "Bob!" Yup, it was your brother.

"Lan, baby" you moved him softly enough not to scare him.

"Yaaaawww" He yawned loudly "Hi bab-"You covered his mouth. His eyes stared at you confused.

"Max is here" You whispered.

"What?"

"Lando, are you here mate? Your car is in the garage" You could see his soul leave his body.

"What is he doing here?" you asked

"No idea!"

You heard a suitcase rolling down the hallway.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck" You started panicking.

"Shh, everything is going to be ok. Stay here" he kissed your lips and stood up, putting on his boxers and joggers. "Be right back" he whispered, and walked out, closing the door behind him. You stood up, put on your pajamas, and rushed to press your ear to the door.

"Hey Mate"

"Oh hey, I thought you were at the MTC"

"Oh, yeah, we finished early"

"It's Wednesday, I thought you were staying there the whole week"

"Yeah, nah, came back this morning"

"That must be a record"

"Yeah, great results"

"Sounds like it"

"What are you doing here?" Lando was trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, but damn was he a bad actor.

"Oh, I messaged you yesterday, P, wasn't feeling well so we decided to return early. You didn't get it?"

"I...I don't even know where I left my phone"

"Oook" Your brother stared at Lando trying to figure out why he was behaving weirdly.

"So, I'm hungry. Do you want to go eat something? Do you want to go get some pizza?" Lando tried to get Max away from the house so you had enough time to figure out a plan. As much as he had been waiting and begging for you to come clean, this was not how he would like to do it.

"Nah, thanks. Actually, P is downstairs sleeping in the car. Plus, I'm not sure if I'm tired from the drive or if I've caught whatever she has; I feel weird, so I'm just taking a quick shower, and I'll spend the night over at her hotel in case she needs something."

"Oh, ok, yeah, that sounds good" You and Lando could finally breathe.

"Are you ok mate? You look flustered"

"Yeah, nah, I'm just tired, it's been quite a week"

"Yeah, I imagine. I'm going to take a quick shower and will be out of here so you can rest"

"Ok, fine, yes"

Your brother went to the guest room, Lando waited until Max's door was closed to go inside his.

"Fuck, that was scary" You whispered still worried Max could hear you from across the hall. "And you're such a terrible actor"

"Hey, I'm not that bad"

"Yeah, you are" You hugged him, placing your head against his chest as his hands caressed your hair. The sound of the shower calming your rushing hearts.

"I have to admit tho" He pushed you away lightly so you were facing him. "This was kind of hot"

"What?"

"Yeah, like this rush, it makes me almost not want to tell him and see how much we can keep sneaking around"

"You're sick" You stared at him, a half smile on your face.

"This is what you've done to me, you've made me a sick, obsessed, unsatiable man" He made a fist with your hair and pulled you to join your lips in a wild kiss.

"Mate, do you have-" Your brother knocked on Lando's door but opened it immediately, a beautiful habit he's had since childhood.

You all stared at each other in shock.

It was a scene straight out of a comedy or a horror movie, depending on who you asked.

You could see your bother's mouth trying to voice his thoughts, but there were too many. The moment you saw his jaw clench you knew you had to speak before Lando did. You loved the man but even with all the PR training, he was the worst at this kind of situation.

"Max, listen" You started in a low voice, taking a step toward him without letting go of Lando's hand. Your bother just raised his hand, one finger up signaling you to wait. "Max, everything's fine, ok?"

"No" He said, his voice so low it was almost scary

"Yes" You tried to remain calm, and so did Lando but the thigh grip he had on your hand told you he was as nervous as you.

"You're fucking my little sister?" He finally voiced the loudest thought in his head, his eyes piercing holes into Lando's.

Not that you were sensitive to the word fuck, but this time it made your skin crawl, being used by your brother to describe what you and Lando had felt just wrong.

"Mate, wait" Lando mimicked your calm voice.

"I'm not your mate!" Your brother raised his voice and you squeezed Lando's hand as a silent request to remain calm. "Mates-don't-fuck- their-mates-sisters" You could see his arms tense, his fingers white from the tight fists.

"We're not fucking" He answered.

"Oh no? Then what's happening here?" He walked in the room pacing around in a frenetic way.

"Both your clothes everywhere, the bed a fucking mess, the condom box on the nightstand? Tell me Lando, what is it that I'm seeing?"

"Max, listen" Max's eyes fixed on your intertwined fingers.

"You shut up, wait until Mom and Dad know about this"

"Don't talk to her like that" Lando tried to defend you but you placed your hand on his chest trying to hold him back.

"I'm not a child anymore Max, I'm a grown-up"

"Oh please, you're a freaking child, and fucking Lando proves it"

"Whether you like it or not, I'm an adult now, and I get to choose who I date, no matter what you or our parents have to say about it"

"Date? You're dating him?"

"Yes" You answered confidently.

"Listen, mate, I love her, ok?" His voice in a calm yet confident tone that made your heart rush with love.

"I'm going to kill you"

"Max" You could read in his body language he was about to lose it.

"I'm going to kill you, Lando"

"Max, wait, please" You tried to place yourself between them but before you knew it your brother was pushing Lando against one of the walls, his forearm pressing his neck as he pushed him hard, Lando tried to push Max away without hurting him.

"Max, wait, what the fuck?" You tried to get close to them.

"Y/n, no, stand back" Lando yelled at you when he saw you were getting closer.

"You're a fucking morron" Your brother kept pushing Lando against the wall.

You rushed to the nightstand and took your phone from the charger ringing Pietra.

"Hello?" The calm sleepy voice on the other side of the line was the complete opposite of the scene right in front of you. You felt bad for bringing her into this, but you needed help to get your bother to calm down, and she was your best option.

"P, you need to get up here, please"

"Y/n? Where are you?"

"Lando's apartment, please, get up here now!" You hung up hoping she was on her way.

"Mate, listen to me, I swear to God, this is not what you think" Lando tried to use his calmest voice possible, trying just to cover himself from the fists being thrown around by your brother.

"Max, stop it! You're behaving like an animal, stop!" You tried to get your brother off your boyfriend but he kept pushing you back.

You heard the door panel beep and then the door opened.

"Over here!" you yelled trying to lead her to the master bedroom, not that the sound of stuff being thrown around wasn't going to lead her there anyway,

"What's happening?" She stared in shock at the scene in front of her "Max, stop it" She tried to approach the fighting men but they pushed her back too.

"Maximilian, you have to calm down, now!" P's voice actually worked, getting your brother to stand back.

"P, this is between Lando and me"

"No, it's not!" You yelled back at him.

"You shut up! Grab your things, you're coming with me right away"

"No"

"Y/n, I'm not playing!"

"Neither am I, I'm not leaving with you, Max"

"Aaaahhh" Your brother screamed and squatted down covering his head with his hands. Pietra was about to walk over to him but you stopped her, asking her to let you go first.

"Max" You said softly walking over to him. Slowly you placed your hand over his shoulder "Max, please you have to listen to us, please"

"Screw you two" He stood up, took P's hand, and walked out of the apartment slamming the front door.

You sighted in defeat, at least he wasn't punching Lando anymore, but it was so painful to see your brother so hurt.

"Baby" You walked over to Lando who was walking back to the bed, holding his ribcage "Are you ok?"

"Yes, I've had worst on track"

"Let me see" You held his face inspecting it, he had a couple of red bruises here and there, but most of the damage had been done to his chest and shoulders. You started shaking.

"Baby" You hugged him, falling to your knees in front of him, tears finally flooding your eyes.

"Shhh it's ok, it will all be ok" He hugged you tightly against his chest, he could feel slight pain but soothing you was more important.

He pulled you up and placed you on the bed, holding your thigh against him.

"It will be ok" he said softly against your hair.

"I know" You answered back between sobs.

"Well, the cat's out of the bag" Lando tried to joke the tension away.

"You think we should've told him sooner?"

"He might have reacted the same, so I'm afraid any time would've led to the same result"

You remained on the bed, with many questions in your heads. Now that Max knew you had to tell your parents, he would probably do everything he could to have them on his side. What was going to happen to Quadrant? Not that Lando didn't trust he could convince Max this wasn't a bad thing, but fear lingered there.

You stood from the bed and started picking up the mess the fight had left.

"Baby come here-"

"Lan, this helps me, let me just... if I can't fix the situation I can at least fix this"

He stood up and helped you clean.

After what felt like an hour or two your phone dinged.

Pi 🌸 Max is calm now, he has agreed to go back up and talk with you guys, we'll be up in a second, but please no PDA for now!

"Lan, they're coming back up, let's go sit in the living room"

"So he can break more stuff?" You stared at Lando "Sorry, no more jokes"

"And no hand holding or kissing, or hugging"

"Are you serious?"

"Just until we get him to listen to everything we have to say"

"Fine"

You waited for your brother in the living room, sitting on opposite sides of the sofa.

You heard the lock panel and your heart rushed. Your brother opened the door letting Pietra in first, she walked all the way next to the sofa but your brother remained at the door.

"Ok, I'm here, talk" His voice was a version you had never heard before.

"Max, we're sorry we didn't come forward about this sooner, I'm sorry, I just, I had no idea how to tell you" You spoke first.

A sarcastic snort left his body as he crossed his arms.

"Love" Pietra stared at him.

"Fine, continue" He rolled his eyes.

If only your brother knew he was responsible for this happening.

______________________________

Part 1

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Tag List: @wtrmlnsgr94, @ricsaigaslec, @ironmaiden1313, @formulas-bitch, @f1fantasys, @formulaal, @widow-cevans

[slashingdisneypasta]

Peter Hale x Younger!Mate!Reader || Drabble

Plot: **I forget how mates work in the Teen Wolf universe but for the good of the fic, we're going to do this in an AU where your mate is not your choice- you just Feel It, when you meet them, and Know. And you also have a little sixth sense, where you can tell when the other is in danger.**

Peter Hale is your mate, there's no question about that, but from the moment that you both realised that fact- he has made it clear that you are too young and sorry sweetheart, I'm not that evil.

But some time later he turns up at your house. He has no intentions of being there long, but will it be harder for him to leave then he thought?? After all, now its just the two of you. Just you, and him. Fuck.

Warnings: Age difference (Reader is 21-24, Peter is 35-38).

Of all the people who could've been on the other side of the door today, Peter Hale was probably the one possibility you thought would be the least likely. As soon as you see him, you straighten up your back; stand with more confidence. Even though you're really, really confused. How does he even know where you live?? Peter has never been here. And you've never been close enough to tell him.

"Wh-... " You look around. Did one of the other bring him?? Lydia??? Weirdly, you don't see anyone else. Just your devastatingly attractive, occasionally evil, quippy estranged mate. When your eyes land on him again, you cant help but notice something off about him. He looks a little nervous. A little worried. "... Is everything okay??" Your voice is gentle; soothing. You don't know how comforting that is to him, against his will.

"Hi." He starts, causing you to screw up your nose when he doesn't answer your question. "I uhh... I got your address from Styles."

"And he just... gave it to you?" You ask, dubious. Styles hates that you and Peter are mates, and one of the few things that Style appreciates about Peter is the distance he's kept from you all this time.

Peter shakes his head. "Well, no, he took some convincing, but- " His eyes flicker from your face to the rest of you for the first time- period. First time ever. But still, there's not a bit of lecherousness in his glance, just more concern. Now your lips form into a concerned frown. Why is he so anxious?? Thats not Peter-like at all. Even you know that and you barely know each other! "Uh, when I told him I was worried about you, he coughed up."

You blink. "Worried??... Why would you be worried about m- " OH fuck. Guilt rushes through you immediately. You completely forgot that that he could... that mates could sense when the other was scared. You were told it could be felt almost just as clearly as if you yourself were in the danger, if your mate was. And you were pretty damn scared, earlier.

Fuck.

Immediately your body goes cold and your eyes go round. "- I'm so sorry!! It was- I- My friend and I went into the city earlier, and she left early so I took the train back on my own, and there was this creep that sat next to me an-- It wasn't serious. I'm so so sorry."

Peter nods, the worried fog in his eyes clearing as he let out a sound- a sigh? Relief? He remains rooted to the spot, though, a crease in his eyebrows that still conveyed some level of concern. "What kind of creep? Are you alright??"

"He was just- um- " How do you describe the levels of discomfort you were in with this guy, and still convince him that you're fine? You're not, right now. In fact you were still pent up when you finally got home, safe and sound. You only forgot all about it when Peter turned up at your door. "Persistent. I'm okay. Thank you Peter."

The crease in Peter's eyebrows increases, furrowing and knitting together into a grimace of disbelief. What you would almost call a sneer pulls across his pretty face. "Really?? That felt... pretty bad, sweetheart."

You immediately ignore the twitter your heart gives when he calls you sweetheart. "Really. I'm not hurt, he didn't follow me home. I'll be fine."

"Hm." Peter clearly doesn't believe you. You don't know what to tell him!

... fortunately, you don't have to. After a moment, he rolls his eyes and rolls his shoulders, shaking off the grimace and the sneer and looking once again his usual, unique brand of nonchalant. "Fine, don't tell me. But hey, maybe I should give you my phone number. That way you can let me know whenever something like that happens, so I don't have to freak out cuz my heart's about to tear out of my chest while I'm just folding laundry."

"Oh. Yeah, probably a good ide- "

"You got a pen?"

And there he goes, you think with an indignant huff. He's brushing you off and trying to get away fast, like just being near you was a chore.

Giving a nod, you leave the doorway and head into your house. "You can come in!" You call back, searching for a pen and a notepad.

It hurt that Peter was like this with you all the time, but usually it was a vague unfortunate longing feeling somewhere deep inside you. Because, in the end, you didn't really know Peter. Just because he meant to be your mate, didn't mean you knew him (Just meant that you could. That you wanted to.). So truly, was it a huge loss that he didn't want anything to do with you? You tried to tell yourself that it wasn't. And besides, you sort of respected him for not wanting to 'prey' on you. That was good... A part of him not everyone saw.

Right this moment though you felt sad, and annoyed. Because for a moment there, he was really your mate. He was worried for you, he wasn't just shocked and upset like he'd probably try to convince you if you pressed him on it, he was worried. You could see it clear as day. Because one thing you could gather about Peter, was that when he wasn't wearing that semi-permanent poker face he had on again now as he wandered through your house behind you, peering at pictures on walls and books on your shelves, his face was more like a window directly to his soul. He couldn't hide anything. Thats probably why he invented the blasé attitude he'd patented now.

"... didn't know you were a reader." He pipes up, a definite note of interest in his tone. Not Talking is not a possibility for him- even with you. "What's- "

You give him a taste of his own medicine. "Yep."

Finally you find a pen and paper, stuffed in your food cupboard with a grocery list half done on the first page. You flip to the second page and turn around, handing the pad and the fine liner pen over to Peter.

You watch him carefully write in his phone number down for you, and feel very oddly about him being in your home right now. Morally debased Peter Hale, looking way too gorgeous in jeans and a designer t-shirt- your supposed mate- in your kitchen. Absolutely nuts.

When he's done, you cant help but asking if he wants a cup of tea? You want him to stay. You want him to be comfortable with this- with you.

But you wont force him if he cant. Even if it genuinely breaks your heart a little every time that you think about what could be, here.

"No- no, I cant." He says quickly, immediately, and you nod. Yeah. Yeah, you expected that. Okay. "Well... good seeing you, Y/N. I'll, uh, see you around inevitably."

"Probably, I'm in the pack you keep trying to take over."

A little grin flickers across his face. A little fake-ashamed, a little proud. "Exactly."

You don't know if thats a joke or not. Probably a bit of both, with him. From what you knew of him, he could never ignore the allure of being alpha for very long, despite any amount of good deeds he does.

Complicated man, he is.

Peter turns his back and starts on his way back the way he came, and you go to walk him out, and you're just thinking about what you're going to do with the rest of your day- how you definitely need a comforting cup of tea after all the fear and all the oddness and all the sad- when suddenly Peter turns back around. You nearly run into him. "Oh!- Peter- "

Before you even realise what happened, he draws you and in against him and seals your lips with his and swallows down your surprise. There's a passion in this sudden, shocking kiss that you've never felt before and it almost brings you to your knees. You kiss him back, parting your lips and meeting his tongue with a clipped moan, but you have to wrap your arms around his neck just to stay on your feet.

Being this close to him finally, you find you don't mind the rough stubble against your face one bit, and his cologne is expensive but good, and his nose rubbing against yours feels perfect.

When he pulls back he releases a wolfish growl into the small space between you both, frustrated and annoyed. "Shit, I wish I had a good excuse for that, but- " He shakes his head before pressing his forehead against yours. "Fuck me, I shouldn't have done that... "

"I'm a grown up, Peter- "

"See, Y/N, the fact that you have to say that, is not reassuring to me."

"Y/N??" You blink, eyes growing wide.

"Thats your name." He groans, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, but you've never said it before."

"Yes I hav- " He seems to decide arguing about that isn't worth the time, and shakes his head again. Probably because he definitely hasn't!- "Whatever. Point is, today I have reached a new low. And guess who's fault that is, sweetheart?"

Your mouth falls open with shock, despite the butterflies that fly around inside you at him calling you sweetheart again. "Not mine!- You could control yourself, its not that hard."

His intense blue eyes have a grin in them, now, making you insides feel warm and soft. Still, he sighs. "... any chance you can keep this a secret?"

Hmm... "... Only if you kiss me again." There's a lot to discuss, a lot to figure out; you know that. But the bottom line, the only thing you care about right now, is that you're a grown fucking adult- and you're still feeling the high from Peter's touch. You need it again. You think you're addicted.

Already!

A dark smirk slips across his handsome face. "Hm. You got a couch in this place sweetheart?"

[lucy90712]

Pedri angst leading up to asking gf to marry him

Work has been stressful recently but so have things at home. Life with Pedri has been so good he treats me like a queen and we are really happy together or at least I thought we were. For the past month or so he's been acting really weird sometimes he hides his phone from me and other times I've caught him quickly hiding things from me in his bedside table and then he acts like nothing is wrong. To start with I didn't think much of it but because it's persisted I've started to worry about it. Everyone I've told about the situation doesn't seem worried about it which is making me feel crazy they keep saying that there must be a reason as Pedri would never hurt me intentionally. Even my dad didn't immediately jump to all the bad things Pedri could be hiding he told me that everything would be fine which is so unlike him he always jumps to the worst case scenario then works backwards to the more realistic option. 

I've been trying so hard to just forget about it but it's not that easy when your boyfriend is clearly hiding something from you it's hard not to believe the worst even if I didn't think he'd cheat on me that's the first thing that enters my brain. However we are going on holiday together today which I have been a bit hesitant about with everything that's been going on but Pedri seems to be looking forward to it so maybe things will be better once we are away. He booked this holiday months and months ago as he wanted us to go to somewhere we can relax with not many people around which at the time sounded nice but now it worries me a little. 

Even though Pedri has been acting weirdly I'm hoping this holiday is what he needs as maybe he's just been stressed and some time away from everything will change the way he's been acting. Our flight was quite early so there would be less people in the airport so when my alarm went off I rolled out of bed still very sleepy while Pedri still looked stressed as he put things in his carry on bag and I almost wanted to go back to bed and not go to the airport as I can't deal with stressed Pedri alone for a week. He calmed down a bit once we had both finished packing and was actually quite affectionate he held my hand in the taxi and the entire way through the airport and he kept giving me kisses as we waited to board. It was so nice to have my boyfriend back I didn't realise how much I missed all of this affection from him until he was cuddling me and I nearly forgot about everything that's been going on for the past month. 

~~~~~~~~~~

The affection Pedri showed me in the airport didn't last too long once we arrived we unpacked and then just sat outside by the pool in the house we are staying at. I sat with a book which I got so engrossed with that I didn't realise Pedri had left but he left me a message saying he would be back in a few hours. I expected him to go and get some food for us but he came back empty handed. He's has done the same thing a few more times in the few days we have been here and each time he won't tell me what he's doing. Things are just like they were back home if not worse as he has barely spoke to me since we got here and it's just making me upset at this point. 

Everything has gotten so bad that I've decided I have to talk to Pedri and I want answers. I really didn't want to ruin the holiday by talking about this but I don't want to put up with it anymore I know Pedri will push back but I'm not going to let it go until he tells me the truth even if it's not what I want to hear. Even if I have to hear that he doesn't love me anymore and he's found someone else I just want to know as this weird phase we are in is hurting me just as much as knowing the truth might. 

Waking up this morning Pedri wasn't in bed next to me but a minute later he came back in the bedroom with breakfast for both of us which was a real surprise but a welcomed one. He handed me a tray with pancakes, strawberries and fresh orange juice on and kissed my cheek as he did so. He still wasn't quite himself as he wasn't as talkative as I'm used to him being but he acknowledged my existence at least which is really something. 

"What do you want to do today?" He asked 

"I don't know but I'd like to spend some time with you I've missed spending time together" I said

"We can do that and tonight I want to take you out to dinner" he said 

"I like the sound of that" I said leaning over to kiss him 

We both got ready and took a walk to the nearest little town to get some things for a picnic on the beach. Pedri held my hand the entire walk and he carried everything including all the food and beach supplies then he took over the set up while I just took in the view of the beach and a shirtless Pedri which was even better than the beach. Once everything was set up Pedri started feeding me strawberries which I very much enjoyed as I love strawberries and I had no idea he got them. It seems like his romantic side has come back all of a sudden but I'm not going to complain as I love this side of him and I missed him acting this way for the last month. As much as I love having my loving boyfriend back I still want to know what's been going on with him as he can't just hide things from me and expect me not to ask questions. I still want to enjoy today though so I don't want to say anything until after dinner as not to ruin the day. 

After spending most of the day on the beach swimming together and cuddling on the shore we walked back to the house so we could get ready for dinner. I let Pedri shower first as he doesn't take as long and I wanted to wash my hair. I decided to do an everything shower because I want to look good when we go out seeing as it's been a while since we e been on a date. By the time I got out the shower Pedri was already waiting for me in the living room but I still took my time choosing a dress and doing my hair and makeup. I never wear a ton of makeup or do anything too crazy with my hair so I stuck with that tonight but I still think I looked good with my hair in beach waves a light bit of makeup and red dress. Once I was ready I headed out to find Pedri who was sat on his phone waiting for me but as soon as he heard the sound of my heels on the floor he looked up and smiled. 

"Wow you look amazing so beautiful" he said 

"Thank you you look good too I love this look on you" I said admiring his white shirt that wasn't buttoned all the way and his black trousers 

"I almost don't want the rest of the world to see you look so beautiful but we have a reservation so we have to go" he said 

He gently kissed my cheek and we headed to the car we have been renting and rive to the nearest town which we could've walked to but I didn't ask questions. The restaurant was really nice it had slightly dimmed lighting but each table had candles and flowers on it which made it feel a bit more romantic and intimate. Our table was at the back of the restaurant with a view of the beach which was really nice. The food was amazing and the staff were lovely but they left us to it which I always appreciate as there are times we have had dates ruined by staff not leaving us alone. We actually had a really lovely time Pedri still seemed a little off but it seemed more like nerves than anything else so I didn't think too much off it. Pedri paid and said we had something else planned so we needed to go before the sun set fully which I thought was a bit strange but I trust him so I just let him drive to wherever we are going. 

It wasn't long before we arrived at the top of a small mountain which was really secluded but had a view of the sunset over the beach. The view was breathtaking the sky was filled with pinks and purples as the sun was going over the horizon and the waves on the beach were calm but they still crashed against the shore making a sound that he always found quite calming. I was so entranced by the view that I'd completely forgotten that Pedri was supposed to be with me until I turned around and saw him down on one knee holding a box with a ring in his hand. That's when it all started to make sense he's been planning this for a while which is why he's been so secretive and nervous as he's really not good at keeping secrets. All of it hit me like a ton of bricks and tears started falling down my face as I realised that this was really happening. 

"Y/n I have never met anyone as amazing and as beautiful as you and I've never loved anyone the way I love you so I can't imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else so will you make me the luckiest man alive and marry me" he said 

"Yes a million times yes" I said 

He slid the ring on my finger before standing up and kissing me. The ring was absolutely beautiful it didn't have a huge diamond on it or anything really flashy but that's exactly what I wanted in an engagement ring and I'm so happy Pedri thought about what I'd want not getting the fanciest ring known to man just because that's what people would expect him to do. 

"Do you like the ring?" He asked 

"I love it it is exactly what I have dreamed about and it fits perfectly" I said 

"I'm so glad you like it the boys weren't sure as it doesn't have a big diamond on it but I thought you'd prefer something more understated" he explained 

"You were right I love it but I love you a lot more I'd take any ring you gave me because it's from you" I said 

"I know I've been acting weirdly for the last couple weeks and I'm sorry about that I've just been so nervous about asking you to marry me and stressed about making it perfect because that's what you deserve but I promise things will go back to normal now" he said 

"Its ok I was worried maybe you didn't love me anymore but clearly that's not the case it all makes more sense now especially my dad not being suspicious about the way you were acting” I laughed 

“I asked for his blessing before I did anything so he’s been keeping this a secret for a while” he said 

“Well he sure did a good job and so did you on setting this all up I’ll never forget this day” I said 

He gave me another kiss and grabbed his phone which I didn’t see and showed me the video he had taken of the whole thing. Watching it back only made me happier as I got to see the smiles on our faces and the view behind us was beautiful and will make for some great pictures if we can get some from the video. We stayed up the top of the mountain for a while just soaking in the moment and enjoying our first moments as an engaged couple. It’s moments like these with Pedri that make me realise just how good life is and how I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together. 

[bellysoupset]

"Hold this," Max said, fishing out one of his many plastic bags from the glovebox and passing it to Vince. The man was leaning against Max's white pickup, more than a little pasty, with a green tinge to his complexion, his lips almost camouflaging against his skin so devoid the color they were.

"What is it for...?"

"Because you look fluorescent green," Max rolled his eyes, "puke bag."

"I'm not gonna be sick," Vince groaned, but got inside the car. He leaned back, closing his eyes and Max quickly circled the vehicle, getting inside as well.

"I beg to differ, you're one of those weird people who genuinely turn green," Max's was a little amused by how transparent Vince was, metaphorically speaking. The brunette kept his eyes closed, but frowned.

"So I've heard..." he gulped down when the car started moving and Max stole a glance at him, focusing on the drive. He hated the uncomfortable silence, Vince wasn't a quiet person and this was unnerving.

"Sooo... What's wrong, is it a bug?" Max poked his bicep and Vince sighed, opening his eyes, seeming a little annoyed Max didn't let him just sleep. The blonde shrugged to himself, Vince could be annoyed all he wanted, as long as he didn't pass out again.

When Max had barged in the classroom, the sight of Vince crumbling down to the ground had been more than a little frightening.

"No, I don't think so," Vince, in the present, said, staring out of the windshield. It took Max a second to realize he was keeping his eyes on the horizon, probably due to the nausea he was clearly feeling, even if denying it, "I didn't have time for breakfast this morning and has to skip-" he gulped down, pressing his lips in a line when a weak gag jolted him. Vince opened the bag in his lap, but didn't bring it up to his mouth, breathing slowly "skip lunch. I think it's just my blood sugar."

"You should keep some energy bars on you," Max scoffed, "aren't you an athlete? I thought your people lived on those."

"My people," Vince snorted, then groaned loudly as nausea caused his arms to get covered in goosebumps, "stop talking about food, please."

"Sorry," Max drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, feeling a stab of guilt. He was so bad at this, he had never taken care of anyone before and it showed. Hell, most days he could barely care for himself!

He also hoped Vince hadn't realized that Max didn't ask for his address, he had driven him and that friend of his home that one time at 3 AM and it was terribly embarrassing that he had memorized it.

They stopped at a red light and Max turned to look at Vince, immediately frowning, "You're shivering," he pointed out. All the windows were closed and the car felt rather stuffy, there was no way Vin was cold, "are you feverish?"

"No," Vince rubbed at at his forehead, "don't think so..? I just feel really cold..." He was pitiful to look at, white as milk and shuddering like he had just gotten out of a frozen lake. Without thinking, Max leaned in to feel his forehead, then realized what he was doing and froze with his hand mid air. Vince snorted, looking at him through his dark lashes, "you can check it, it's fine. I don't think it's a fever."

Max's ears burned and he wanted to die from embarrassment. Instead, he slammed his hand harshly against Vince's forehead, then pulled it back quickly, "yeah, you don't have a fever, you're freezing."

"Low blood sugar," Vince breathed out through his mouth as the car started moving once more, swallowing convulsively and fidgeting on his seat, "are we almost there?"

"Almost," Max sped up a little bit more, they weren't far out, "you're still feeling faint?"

Instead of answering him, Vince simply nodded, too busy taking slow breaths. He leaned forward, mouth hanging open over the bag, causing Max to cringe in sympathy.

"Almost there," he repeated, squeezing Vince's nape without thinking and leaving his hand there when the man didn't shrug him off immediately. Actually, Vince seemed weirdly welcoming of the touch, something that shouldn't surprise Max given Monacelli had been all over him when he was sick, but that did anyway.

As soon as he parked in front of Vince's place, the man shoved the door open and leaned out of it...Then fell.

"Shit, Vince!" Max cursed, jumping out of the car and running around it. Vince had fallen to his knees and he had an arm wrapped tightly around his stomach and was dry heaving on the grass, "shit-shitshitshit-" Max sunk to his knees, holding Vince's shoulder, "hey... So much for not gonna puke, uh?"

As if to answer him, Vince retched once more - silently, he was a really quiet puker - and a splash of bright yellow bile fell in the grass.

Max rubbed his hand up and down the man's back, sighing in a defeated manner. Vince coughed once more, than let out a string of little tiny burps that seemed completely out of place for a dude like him, and was left panting, an arm still around his stomach, his free hand coming to wipe his mouth.

"Sorry," Vince's voice was shot by the acid, raspy and barely above a whisper, "that was gross."

"I see puke weekly, you're fine," Max thumped his back in a lighthearted manner, "you're done?"

"Think... Think so," Vince nodded and the blonde grabbed his arm, struggling to pull him up on his feet. The moment he did, Vin stumbled, but stayed standing with great effort.

"You're sure this is just not eating?" Max made sure he wasn't gonna fall, before grabbing Vince's bag and digging through it to find his keys.

"It's unlocked," Vince answered after a minute of searching, "I... Forgot to lock it."

"I know Doveport is pacific, but geez, Vince," Max frowned, pushing the door open. He had never been inside and it was striking the difference between Vince's place and his own.

Vince's tiny house was smaller than Max's place, everything cramped in one open floor. Nevertheless, it felt like a home. His living room area was a light beige and had a big brown couch, with a small TV rack dividing the "living room" from the "bedroom", a flat screen on top of it and a bunch of books under it. The coffee table was a little wobbly and Vin's fresh laundry was sitting in a bowl there, to be folded and stored away. His kitchen had barely any cabinets, instead everything was inside of jars in open shelves. His bedroom had a pink wall, a bunch of books and one of his football jerseys had been framed and put on a wall, covered in signatures.

"Okay, lie down-" Max guided Vince to the couch, but the man shook his head, pointing the bed.

"Couch's... too small," he stumbled in and finally fell on the bed with a relieved sigh, "thanks, Max, you don't-"

"Where's your food?" Max interrupted Vince before he could say the predictable you-don't-have-to-stay. He didn't wait for an answer, turning around and going through Vin's stuff in the kitchen.

He had almost no junk food, which again was the opposite of what Max expected. A bunch of spices and pastas in all sorts of shapes...

"Here," he found a box filled with energy bars next to his microwave and walked back to the bed area, sitting on the corner, "have a bite."

"No," Vince wrinkled his nose, "too queasy."

"You're queasy because there's nothing in your stomach," Max rolled his eyes, tearing the bar open and breaking a piece of it, "open up, c'mon."

Vince glared at him and Max sighed, lowering his hand. He was being too forceful, he knew that. It was just... Weird being around Vince when he was existing in this weird limbo of crushing on the guy, getting to know him and taking care of someone for the first time. He was both worried and overthinking it all.

"Help me out here, man," Max said quietly, "I don't know what to do."

Vince's shoulders moved down and he nodded, rubbing his face in a frustrated manner, "uhm... Energy bar is too rich," he said after a minute, making a disgusted face, "I have saltines in one of the jars."

"Alright!" Max leaped for them, going through all the jars. Part of him was enjoying the snooping around, he couldn't remember the last time he had been in someone's house... Well, except for his tinder dates, but those barely counted, "who needs that much pasta?" he whispered under his breath, then raised his eyebrows at the fancy set of pans inside the only cabinet. They were all baby blue and looked expensive as hell, "these are cute..."

"Max," Vince sounded amused, "saltines?"

Oh yeah. Max found them in the smallest jar, next to a metal tin filled with cookies, and he came back to the bed, holding five of the crackers as well as a Gatorade bottle.

"Here you go..." He fidgeted, watching as Vince started taking tiny bites, in between small sips of the electrolyte, "better?"

"It's been twenty seconds," Vince snorted, closing his eyes, "sit down, you're making me nervous."

"I'm making you nervous? You're the one who collapsed like a victorian lady," he rolled his eyes, crossing his arms, "are the crackers staying down?"

Vin shrugged, not moving a muscle and Max simply stared, since the man had his eyes closed. Vince occupied most of the double bed and he looked... Weird. Not just the paleness and slight shivering, there was something off that Max couldn't figure out what it was. His curls had escaped the low ponytail and were around his face, making him look oddly like an ancient statue...

"I like your place," Max paced around, like a caged tiger, "are you gonna nap?"

Vin opened his eyes, looking a little amused, "can anyone nap when you're yapping?"

"Oh fuck you!" Max cried out, his cheeks heating up, "I'm just checking if you're alive, forgive me for giving a shit-"

"You helped so much already," Vince interrupted his outcry, moving slightly on the bed, "but I think I'll just nap now, you should go Max."

"Okay..." He really didn't want to leave. Not only he didn't trust Vince to stay alive when he was still that white, but he simply didn't wanna leave this tiny, cozy house.

"My mom is gonna be here in five minutes," Vince warned him, yawning, "you should leave or she's gonna rope you into coming over for dinner, it'll be a whole thing."

Max didn't hate the idea of going to the Monacelli's place for dinner. Still, he let out a huff, "yeah, I should go," he moved around, fishing Vin's phone out of his bag abandoned on the couch and then back to the bed, shoving the device on the man's hand, "get my number, I want you to text me you're alive later."

Vince let out a sigh, before unlocking his phone and handing it back to Max, a clear message for him to do it himself. Once that was done, that was really no other reason for Daniels to stay around a minute longer, so he patted Vince's arm in an awkward way, "text me. I'm serious, or I'll text your mom. I got her number, this is a threat."

Vince scoffed, looking more than a little sleepy, "yeah yeah..." he yawned, "Max? Thank you. Really."

He sounded so earnest. Max nodded stiffly, he needed to get the hell out of there. Liking Vince was a landslide, not even a slippery slope.

"Yeah, no problem," he walked to the door, "but start eating breakfast, Monacelli."

[blossom-hwa]

memory lane | j.yh

I'm nearly two years late but in my defense I had this written for months already, I was just too lazy to create a graphic for it until now. anyway, this was sparked by the memory lane trip that dr. strange took in multiverse of madness - there are definitely spoilers (check the warnings below) and this story might be confusing if you haven't seen the dr. strange and spiderman movies so keep that in mind!

I made some changes to the plots of both movies, so bear this in mind - y/n instead of mingi (ned's counterpart) is the one with sorcery potential and later joins dr. strange at the sanctum, so y/n is the one who goes universe hopping with america chavez and ends up replaying memories they'd forgotten from when dr. strange erased all memories of spiderman (yunho). this story takes place after they've defeated wanda and returned to the sanctum. this should sum up the biggest changes, hope it helps :)

Pairing: Yunho x gender neutral!reader

Genre: angst (happy ending), Spiderman!au

Warnings: spoilers for the last Dr. Strange and Spiderman movies

Word Count: 5.3k

When you return to the Sanctum, armed with a name and the knowledge of a love you don't remember, you go searching for answers. 

Ateez Masterlist

When the dust has cleared at Mount Wungadore and they’ve all made it back to the Sanctum, it takes Strange a few hours to realize that there’s something wrong with his apprentice. Not just the exhaustion, not just the trauma of universe hopping and fighting the most powerful witch in all of the infinite number of universes in existence—that would be normal. This is something different. Something darker.

Something more broken.

“Dr. Strange,” you say later that night when it’s just the two of you, everyone else gone to bed. Flames crackle in the fireplace, glowing weirdly on your face. “Do you remember what happened with Spiderman?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Spiderman?” He knows you were there, remembers that’s how he became aware of your potential for sorcery, but you’ve never really talked about it.

“Yeah.”

He tells you what he remembers. A spell, rips in the universe, a vigilante who wouldn’t let the aberrations die. The mirror dimension, hanging over the Grand Canyon for way too fucking long, and a second spell to right the wrongs of the first.

You take it all in silence, not a single question asked until the end. “Do you remember what the second spell was?”

He looks at you. You don’t look back.

“No.”

“…Okay.”

He ends up leaving first, exhaustion pulling his eyelids down to the point he can barely keep them open as he climbs up the Sanctum’s stairs. He tells you to rest, and you nod, but he’s still not quite certain you heard.

You probably didn’t. Because in the morning when he wakes, you’re gone, only a text left on his phone to give any clue as to where you went.

Gone to visit a friend. I’ll be back. I’m fine.

Please don’t follow me.

. . . . .

Standing in front of the apartment door, an arm raised to knock, you feel like time has been frozen still.

“Memory Lane. Replay your significant memories, now at a discounted price! We remember, so you don’t forget.”

A boy in the spider-suit, face bloodied, eyes broken. A wavering smile on his lips that couldn’t disguise the tears rolling down his face. Hugging you and Mingi with arms so strong but trembling so much you could—you could almost feel them shaking around your shoulders. Eyes zeroing in on the wound on your head, a short gash that left the scar you could never for your life remember where it came from—

He saw it. And asked about it. And heard your babbled reassurances, instinctively steadying you on your bad leg (how did he know? How did he know if you never knew him?) as you and Mingi tried to speak, before saying the words you don’t remember.

“You’re going to forget who I am.”

You swallow hard, trying to reconcile the smiling boy you’d met during your third fight ever with the broken, bloodied man standing before you in that moment. They had the same suit—nearly. Not quite. But they had the same face. The same eyes.

And though you didn’t have a name then, now you do.

“I love you.”

“I love you, Yunho Jeong.”

You loved a boy whose name you don’t know. And he—

He loved you too.

Nausea rolls in your stomach. Your arm has begun to ache from holding it up for so long, but you can’t bring yourself to knock. What if he refuses to hear you? What if he doesn’t want you to remember, doesn’t want you to ask? What if he just isn’t home? You don’t know if you could find the courage to come back again. You can already feel the adrenaline high of the past few days beginning to fade, that initial burst of anger and courage (or was it foolishness? Right now you can’t quite tell) falling away to reveal your confused and broken core.

Your sight blurs, the four numbers marking Spiderman’s door (Yunho’s door, your brain corrects you, and it’s unsettling how easily the name seems to roll off the tongue of your mind though you know you never knew it until the trip down Memory Lane) swimming in your vision. One zero two four. You remember it from the day you walked him back, one of his arms slung around your shoulders, one leg broken and propped up by a cast of your own magic.

The moment had felt—familiar, you remember. Vaguely. At least in the way his tired laughs left his lips, in the way he joked about the villain who had left him in this state, in the way he thanked you as he lay on his bed, the magic cast fizzling out of sight, his reassurance that he’d be healed by morning. It had felt easy, somehow. Like you’d done this before, or something similar.

At the time, you’d brushed it off as Spiderman’s charisma with everybody. The times you interacted with him, watched him fend off villains and help the elderly cross the sidewalk in just two breaths showed you enough. That infectious laugh, the witty barbs, his charming easiness with every person he encountered, villain or no, weren’t special somethings reserved for you, which you reminded yourself in the moments you thought that might be true.

But maybe it was true. That trip down memory lane told you that you knew him even before you did. Knew Spiderman, knew him deeply, knew him well enough to know his name, Yunho Jeong—

Knew him enough that you could kiss him and tell him you loved him, twice, even without the promise of a response.

“Wait. Wait and tell me when you see me again.”

He’d promised. With a nod, and a smile, and words said before that you know from the memory but still don’t remember. He’d said it, sworn it—

“It’s okay. I’m gonna come and find you and—and I’ll explain everything. I’ll make you remember me.” A deep, rattling breath. “And it’ll be like none of this ever happened.”

Yet he never came to find you. For what reason, you don’t know. But you found him. Over and over, you found him—during fights, on trips to the bodega, several times in the Sanctum. And he never said anything.

The ache of a memory that is yours but isn’t thuds dully in your chest. You need to know if it was real. And it if was…

You need to know why he never returned.

Your knuckles rap the door sharply—once, twice, three times. Something clangs and there’s a loud curse in a voice you properly remember, not just know from your trip down memory lane.

Footsteps sound. Something clicks in the door. You have just one moment to prepare yourself before it swings open—

Yunho Jeong’s face stares at you, confused, kind, smiling. If you hadn’t been watching so carefully, you would’ve missed the millisecond of hope and panic that flashed across his eyes that confirms everything you’ve conjectured so far.

You’re not sure how to feel about it.

“Good morning?” He laughs a little, and he’s so good at acting—so damn good, did he take acting classes before? Not that you would’ve known since you only got that one significant memory before you shoved America Chavez on, but you want to grab his shoulders and shake him hard enough to tug those memories loose and plant them back in your own damn head—

“Yunho Jeong.” You take a step forward. “We have a lot to talk about.”

. . . . .

His eyes are guarded when he lets you in the door, but he lets you sit on the couch before he lets loose with a question, more of a statement, of his own. “You know my name.”

You probe his gaze carefully. For once, it flickers as you stare at him, a shard of that steady, easy confidence he’s always had (was there a time he didn’t have it? Were you there when that was the case?) chipped and dropped into somewhere unknown. He doesn’t flinch away, though, not like you originally expected him to.

Maybe it isn’t just paranoia and caution behind those guarded walls, your mind whispers. Maybe there’s a bit of hope, too.

The thought is too much for you to handle, so for all your original bravado you’re the one who looks away first. “I do.”

Spiderman’s—Yunho’s—voice nearly trembles with how carefully he measures his next word. “How?”

You take a deep breath. How do you even start?

“I recently took a…trip, of sorts, with Dr. Strange.” Not really—it was more so just with America, but Spiderman doesn’t know America and you probably shouldn’t be telling anyone about her until Dr. Strange gives the okay. “Went universe hopping. Mostly unintentionally.” Ignoring Spiderman’s—Yunho, Jesus fucking Christ—sharp intake of breath, you continue. “One of them had a curious feature called Memory Lane. For a price, it would replay your most significant memories.” You swallow. “I got a…free trial, of sorts.”

The silence that follows your statement hangs heavily in the air. Never, not once in the time you’ve known him (at least not the second time you knew him, if the first time even existed) did you think Yunho (it’s still strange how not strangely the name flows through your mind) could have let such a tension weigh the conversation—he’s always been so charismatic, so ready to smile and laugh and joke away any heaviness that came. Hell, even when he had a leg snapped into so many pieces only a cast of glowing golden threads was holding it together, he wore a smile on the way back. But in the face of your words, Yunho’s head has fallen, the strong shoulders tensed to snap, his clasped hands trembling underneath his chin…

He looks up, straight at you. His eyes have fragmented and the shards you see in them frightens you—that’s just not a look that belongs on Yunho’s face. He looks ten, twenty, thirty years older than he is (your age, he’d told you with the perfect amount of surprise and warmth on his face the day you’d told him, the first time you’d had more than a few minutes to get to know each other more), with the tortured memories of someone who’s lived through millennia. And, you realize with a pang, there’s a reason for that. Because if you forgot him, if Mingi forgot him, how many others did?

And if you meant so much to him in that life you don’t remember, how much has he had to keep to himself in order to keep you from knowing?

“What did you see?” he asks quietly, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles have turned white. “If it’s okay to tell me, of course.”

Tears bubble in the corners of your eyes. That gentleness, that consideration, feels so warm. So very warm and familiar.

“I was with you. And Mingi. We were hugging.” You swallow. “You looked…beat up, but you still asked about a wound on my head.”

Yunho’s gaze flutters in the direction you knew it’d go, just to the side of your right eyebrow. Your fingers itch to rise, to touch the scarred flesh that’s still there, but you hold your twitching hands still.

“And then you said we were going to forget who you were.”

He goes still at that, still as a statue. It’s funny—there have been a few times where you mused, internally of course, that Yunho’s face—just Spiderman at the time—could have been sculpted by one of the gods, should they exist. A beaming statue of a hero, waiting for thousands to thank and worship him. But now, as he stares at you with no expression on his face, stone still and truly a human statue if there ever was one…

You promise yourself never to make the statue comparison again, because the warm Yunho, the alive Yunho, is the only one you’d ever want to know.

Swallowing hard, you open your mouth. And close it. Not because you don’t know what to say, because you do—it’s just recounting a memory that isn’t yours, basically a scene from a movie, how hard could it be—but because when you try to speak, you can’t. Your voice is gone.

Yunho’s eyes are shiny. A little too shiny. And there’s a little too much hope in them, now, a hope that makes you want to dig yourself into a hole and have someone cover up the dirt behind you. Because—it’s not right, that hope, it’s not right because you know what Yunho wants isn’t what happened.

He speaks first. “You…remember?”

“I—” You dig your fingernails into your palms so hard it hurts. “I don’t.”

His face falls. Crumbles. And this time, unlike all the other times you didn’t understand before when he’d see you and you’d do something—anything—and his face would do something strange for a second before his easy smile came back up—

He doesn’t try to pull it back together.

“I—saw it.” Your mouth moves on autopilot, trying to patch up a situation you’re not sure you can but anything, anything to bring something back to Yunho’s face. Even the terrible hope was better than this. “I saw it—and—I can’t say I remember it, exactly, because I don’t, but it—it felt like it explained things.”

Yunho looks up. Just barely. But he does.

“You—I’m comfortable with you.” Once it’s out in the open, you realize how stupid it sounds, but you barge forward because who the fuck cares anymore. “And I know—I know a lot of people probably say that, but—even at that first fight, it was like…it was like I knew you a little. Somehow. Even though to my knowledge I had never seen you before.” You wince at how that must sound but Yunho doesn’t, his eyes now fixated more firmly on yours. “A lot of things felt…familiar. Just stuff like your laugh. Smile. The way we could banter and talk and I—just—fuck!” Your own vehemence startles you and you slap your palms to your eyes and to your surprise, you find tears meeting your skin.

Damn it, you really hadn’t intended to cry when you came here.

“Y/N?”

You swallow the lump in your throat, scrub at your eyes with the heels of your palms. “I’m sorry,” you say, and wow your voice sounds so much more ragged than you thought it was. “I’m sorry. I—it all sounds stupid. I don’t know how to explain it. I just know that…sometimes, being around you felt like déjà vu. In some weird way.” The lump in your throat seems bent on returning so you swallow hard again. “The memory that I saw. It made some things, like that, make sense. But other things didn’t.”

“…What didn’t?”

It takes everything left in you to meet Yunho’s gaze. The adrenaline rush of yesterday’s fight has finally faded away fully and you think you might collapse soon, but you force your voice to remain steady even as a stray tear makes it cold way down your cheek.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

. . . . .

For a long moment, Yunho doesn’t speak.

“I…was going to tell you,” he finally says. “I was. When you still had your job at the diner, I was going to go in and…tell you everything. Like I’d promised to. I was—” He laughs a little, broken and fragmented. “I was right outside. I could see you. Mingi was at the counter, too.”

There were many days like those. You’re not sure which one this was. “I didn’t see you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Yunho agrees. “But I saw you. And I saw your scar.”

This time, you can’t stop your hand from touching the warped skin on your forehead.

Yunho’s eyes track the movement. “I had a whole speech written out, you know.” That same broken, fragmented laugh from before. “It was on a piece of paper. I was going to read it to you two. But I saw your scar and…you were laughing. You looked so happy. I couldn’t ruin that.” He smiles a little, but it doesn’t reach his eyes at all. “When you knew I was Spiderman, all it did was cause you pain. And harm.”

You open your mouth to refute, but you can’t. Because you don’t remember anything. Not at all.

“Something happened to just about everyone I cared about who knew my secret.” Yunho’s voice drops. “So I thought it would be better if you didn’t know. It would be better if no one knew. Just the way it was after that day.”

“But—Yunho, I—” Words trip over your tongue and for a moment you still can’t speak, not for lack of thought but for too much. “We—you didn’t give us a choice. How did you know we wouldn’t—”

“You were at the battle.” Yunho’s words cut through your own like a knife and you almost flinch. “A battle I caused because I was an idiot. You don’t remember what happened, do you?”

Slowly, you shake your head.

“I went to Dr. Strange with a request. To wipe everyone’s memory of the fact that Yunho Jeong and Spiderman were one and the same. So many shit things had happened to me—and us—because of Mysterio’s stupid fucking video. College admissions, people taking potshots at us across the street…” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “He almost did. But I kept interrupting with exceptions. People I still wanted to remember me. You. Mingi. Aunt Mei. Happy. And that…that messed the spell up.”

You sit silent, quiet as Yunho tells you about the multiverse, about the other villains who knew him but whom he’d never faced—at least not in this world. He tells you about Aunt Mei, how Osborn had found her, how she’d pressed it into him that all of them needed help, not just to be sent back to their respective universes to die, and how he’d decided she was right.

She had been right, Yunho stresses. But she’d paid for it. With her life.

There, Yunho stops talking for a moment. Puts his hands over his face and breathes deeply once, twice. When he finally looks up, his eyes look redder.

“I’m sorry.” You wince as soon as you say the words, how flat they fall in the silence. But the thing is—you knew Mei. Somewhat. You remember her face, her smile, her burned cookies—you remember her, if not necessarily her nephew. She was a good woman, one of the kindest people you’d ever had the luck to meet. “I…remembered her. Somewhat. Probably not as much as I would have…before, but…”

“Yeah,” is all Yunho says. “Yeah.”

He continues. Two Spidermen, two Yunho Jeongs from separate universes. They looked nothing like him and apparently you summoned them with rings stolen from Dr. Strange himself (so maybe some things are best left not remembered, because if Dr. Strange doesn’t remember this you’re not sure you want him to). Back in their own worlds, they’d faced the villains he’d failed to corral here. They worked together and there was a fight at the Statue of Liberty and you and Mingi were tasked with keeping the unbroken spell safe from Norman Osborn and later, Dr. Strange, too.

You failed.

“Osborn freed the spell,” Yunho says, grief and fury etched in every line of his face. “Broke the casing with one of his stupid little toys. And so all these people—villains, friends, I don’t know—from other universes started coming into ours. Dr. Strange couldn’t contain them.”

You’re starting to feel a little faint. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah,” Yunho breathes. “There was only one way to fix it. Everyone had to forget Yunho Jeong.” His eyes bore into yours.

Forget feeling faint. You think you’re about to be sick. “Everyone.”

“Everyone,” he repeats. A little dark laugh falls from his lips. “No exceptions this time.”

For a long moment, you sit in silence. All of this information—your brain was already exhausted from universe hopping and dealing with a crazy, grief-driven witch, and you got maybe three hours of sleep last night before you found your way here—it’s so much. Almost too much. Maybe you should’ve waited to confront Yunho, should’ve given it a couple of days of thinking before coming here all tongue-tied and stupid—

“But—Yunho. You promised to tell us. You promised to tell me and Mingi.” You can feel your face scrunching up like you’re about to cry again and you don’t need that, don’t need that right now at fucking all. “You could’ve told us—you didn’t have to go through this alone—”

“Yes, I did,” Yunho snaps. “It was my fault. All of this was my fault—”

“No, it fucking wasn’t!” you retort. “It was Mysterio’s fault—hell, it was mine and Mingi’s for not protecting the stupid spell enough—”

“No, it was mine, for trying to change something that couldn’t have been changed!” he yells. “I got the villains into our universe because I couldn’t think of anything beyond our fucking college admissions! I did a fuck up job of keeping the villains in line! I got Mei killed, I got you and Mingi injured, I caused so much trouble for Dr. Strange because I wasn’t thinking—”

“You were a kid!” you yell back. “We all were! Barely fucking eighteen! Not even college students, not even legal adults! And—Yunho! I may not remember anything, but I do fucking know that we never would’ve been coerced or something into helping you. You wouldn’t have done that! If we were helping you in that fight, it was because we agreed to, because we wanted to!”

“It doesn’t matter!” Yunho snaps. “It doesn’t matter that you wanted to! Because in the end, this was a fight that I started and that I should have ended myself! Instead, I got a whole bunch of other people involved and people were injured for it, people—people died for it, Y/N.” His face crumples, and he turns away.

All the fight leaves your body. You reach towards him, slowly take his hands in yours. To your surprise, he doesn’t tug them away.

“I wasn’t going to get you and Mingi killed off because I wanted you back,” Yunho whispers. “My fights were going to be on my terms and only mine. I know you fight now, as Dr. Strange’s apprentice—don’t bring that up with me. Those fights are your choices and on your terms.” Teary eyes look into yours and you can barely fight the urge to brush the wetness away. “It kills me to watch it happen, but that’s your choice. And I can’t interfere with that.” He takes a deep breath. “But I can interfere with the stuff that shouldn’t happen because it’s my fault.”

The anger starts to rise up in you once more. “You didn’t give either of us a choice in deciding that—”

“Right before Aunt Mei died, she told me something.” Yunho’s hands tremble in yours. “She said, ‘With great power, there must also come great responsibility.’”

You swallow hard.

“I don’t think I ever understood until then,” he says quietly. “Sure, I’d always known I had power, and I tried to use it well by being the friendly neighborhood Spiderman, you know. Protecting the little guy while others fight the big battles. But the responsibility…my lack of that is what started this whole thing in the first place.” Yunho swallows. “When I saw you and Mingi in the diner, and I made that choice. That was my responsibility. I wasn’t going to purposefully involve anyone else in my fights, my issues. Not now. Not anymore.”

One of his hands releases itself from yours. It rises toward the puckered scar, brushes it with a gentle touch. His fingertips tremble against your skin. “Do you know how you got this?” he asks, whisper soft.

Slowly, you shake your head.

“One of Osborn’s…gadgets, sliced you.” Yunho takes a deep, shaky breath, and you grip his hand harder. “And because of that, you—you fell. Right off the statue.”

You couldn’t speak right now, not even if you tried.

“You fell.” The words seem to rip themselves from Yunho’s throat and he looks away, his free hand covering his face for one, two awful moments before he turns back to you. “You fell, and I tried to catch you but Osborn knocked me out of the way midair, and it—it was only a miracle that one of the other Spidermen caught you. A miracle,” he repeats, almost as though he still doesn’t believe it.

This time you do reach up to brush the tears from his eyes. The movement feels so remarkably natural that you have to wonder how many times you made the same motion in a time before.

“I saw you with the scar. And suddenly I was there, watching you fall with no way to stop it.” Yunho squeezes his eyes shut. “I couldn’t have that happen again. Not to you. Not to anyone.”

His eyes open, and between the tears, all you can see is the certainty of his choice weighing dark in his pupils.

“Not because of me.”

. . . . .

Silence falls in Yunho’s studio apartment. The sun has risen, slats of pale light filtering through his windows, illuminating his face. In the glow of morning, Yunho’s young face only looks older.

And suddenly you feel guilty. So very guilty. You came to his apartment unannounced with a name in one hand, news you were certain he wouldn’t like in the other, and caused him pain. That was it. You forced him to relive all these memories, made him explain things he perhaps wasn’t ready to speak of, and yelled at him for a choice you’re not sure you would’ve made differently had you been in the same situation.

“I’m sorry,” you croak, throat suddenly choked. You drop his hands and step back, desperately trying to swallow your tears. “I—I shouldn’t have come.” Yunho’s eyebrows furrow, but you refuse to look at him. “It wasn’t my place to demand answers of you and I shouldn’t have yelled—”

“Y/N.”

This time it’s his hands that take yours, large and warm and gentle. You look down at your joined fingers, then up at his face. If you had loved each other as much as your memory would have you believe, this must have been a common occurrence.

No wonder it feels so safe.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, and it’s the steadiness of his gaze that convinces you he speaks true. “You had questions, and no one else you knew had answers.”

“Even so.” You blink a tear away. “Even so, Yunho.”

“No.” He grips your hands more tightly. “Do you know how I felt after I saw you the first time after? When you showed up with Dr. Strange in the middle of fighting the drakon?” You open your mouth to respond, but he cuts you off. “I was terrified, obviously, but watching you…” Yunho looks down at your joined hands and you think he’s going to start crying again, but when he looks back up, there’s a smile on his face despite the faint tears in his eyes. “It was good to see you, Y/N. Just so…good.”

You look down at your hands. Back up at Yunho’s face. 

Eyes so soft with tears, so warm they could melt.

“I was happy to see you,” he says quietly, and for all his words are unbelievable you have to believe them because of the way he says them. “So happy. I mean—I’d made the decision. And I’d come to terms with that I probably would never see you again, or at least never be close with you again. But seeing you then, healthy and happy and just—you—”

A choked noise escapes your throat. Something like a laugh. Something like a sob.

“I thought I’d gotten over it, you know.” Yunho smiles and it’s beautiful and broken and brittle, echoes of joy bittersweet on his lips. “Thought that I’d be able to move on. And I did, in a way, but before I thought that I would forget it all. I thought that I could. But that moment just showed me that I’d really never be able to, and that I would be okay with it. Because seeing you like that—it was good, Y/N.” The smile grows. “Even now, seeing you in front of me like this…”

Oh. Oh, damn.

You’d thought that you were all cried out, but your eyes betray you once more. A headache is starting to build up in the back of your head but you force yourself to focus, to decipher Yunho’s words for what they are. “So—” You swallow. Try to speak. “Do—do you—”

“I still love you,” he says quietly. “Every time I see you, it feels like I’m a little more whole.”

Your face burns. “I—”

“You don’t have to say anything right now.” Yunho smiles, and even on his teary face he looks so handsome, so steady, and if it’s true that you were in love with him before it’s not difficult to understand why. “I know it’s a lot, and that you’ve only just begun to figure some things out. I’m not looking for an answer when I tell you this.” He takes a deep breath. “I just wanted you to know.”

For a moment, the two of you sit in silence. You look at your interlaced fingers, think about how natural it feels to have his hands in yours, to have come to him in this hour of answers and need. Briefly you think of Mingi, and it doesn’t surprise you to think that they could’ve been good friends too.

“I’m not…closed off. To anything.” You swallow hard, looking back up at Yunho. “Yet, at least. I can’t say I—that I love you, not now, but I do believe I loved you once, and I could be there again. Someday.”

Yunho’s eyes fill with tears again, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I just.” Tears of your own start to squeeze down your cheeks, past your lips and chin. “I don’t know if I will ever remember everything,” you finally warn, voice wobbly. “I think it’s more likely that I won’t. But if you’re willing, even then…”

“It’s okay.” Yunho’s smile is warm, and it’s what finally sends the rest of the tears spilling out of your eyes. “This is more than I ever could have hoped for in my life.”

“I want to remember,” you choke. “I want to remember, I want to so badly—”

“I do too,” he says, pulling you into his chest. His warm heartbeat thumps quietly against yours and you take comfort in its steady pace, one, two, one, two. “But even if you don’t, I want you to know that’s okay. And it always will be.”

“…How do you know?”

Yunho’s arms, warm around your body. His hold so gentle yet so firm, so safe and steady as he murmurs reassurances in your ear.

“Because,” he says, pulling away. You look up at him with your sticky, aching eyes, feel all of your trust in him only grow as he smiles.

“Because we can always make more memories of our own.”

If you enjoyed, please don’t forget to reblog and leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Thank you for reading and have a lovely day <3

[jolyneart]

This'll be a long-ish post about my The Locked Tomb themed MTG deck and how I made like 20 versions of it before I decided to build it (and how I'm still working on it).

(I want to do legit art for this card)

If you are part of the Venn diagram of these two interests, or you want to see my slow descent into madness ovear a year of trying to put cardboard together, check the spoilers below.

So, I haven't been playing Magic for too long (a bit over a year). Weirdly I have owned cards since original Ixalan, but I never bothered learning to play until a friend invited me to play commander. I just wanted them for the pretty pictures, I have always admired Magic artists and they have been a huge inspiration on my art career.

Anyways, not too long after I started to play, I got this idea into my head that I should do a Locked Tomb commander deck.

"That'd be fun!" I thought

Well

All of these are over a year old (and are not my only first attempts, but I'll talk about those later).

I had two main issues when starting to build this deck:

1- I have never been interested into deck-building before in a card game

2- I have no fucking idea of what I'm doing

The first commander I chose to lead this deck, that I still think thematically fits within TLT universe, is Ratadrabik of Urborg

This Rat of a man has given me so many headaches, I'm sure that now I'd be able to do make a half-decent deck with him in the lead, hell I do have a black/white aristocrats deck that he could command just fine.

But my issue was that I had no idea how to balance his legends theme and zombie kindred theme at the same time, in the same deck. I was just incapable. And all of my results, budget or not, were jank piles that did very little or exploded into an infinite combo with cards like Boromir, Warden of the Tower or Nazgul. It just didn't feel right and the Locked Tomb theme was barely holding on by a thread with the things I was putting in there. There were barely ANY skeletons in any of these! (this will keep happening)

Anyways, after giving up on Ratadrabik (which btw I think would make for a great Ianthe proxy) I moved on to find some other commander and color combination that'd enable something else that wasn't a pile of legendary creatures.

Queue in Varina, Lich Queen

It's a Zombie Wizard! She cares about zombies, those are kind of early skeletons! She raises the undead herself!

Well, I do think Varina is great, and in other world where I knew how to build decks back then, she might just have been my Harrow commander deck

I don't even think the decks I made for her were that bad at all, just extremely expensive. And also the zombie theme, while much better supported mechanically, I didn't feel really represented the kind of necromantic powers we see in the books at all.

Shoutout to Mikaeus, he'd make for a great Jod if anyone wants to make a deck about our lord and savior the undying emperor.

Ok, now I'm going to take a bit of a detour to talk about what I actually like playing in mtg (not just commander). I predictably really enjoy playing black and graveyard strategies, but also really love putting big idiot beaters into the field with those strategies .I know, groundbreaking. But it is what it is, two of my favourite decks do this in one way or another.

God's perfect deck, my Sauron deck, was my first precon, that has left the lands of preconstruction long ago and is my dearest possession. Is it my most powerful deck? nope. Is it unbeatable? Not really, I almost never win with this deck.

What BIG Sauron does is, in an extremely thematic way, become a problem for everyone at the table, do evil things, and have everyone beat me down for my reanimation crimes.

If you are interested, you can check out that deck here.

Anyways sorry, back to the locked tomb, SO I like the graveyard right? Wouldn't it be nice that there'd be a famous woman necromancers in mtg? What if she leaded the deck?

Well, the most that I can say is that there really can be too much of a good thing. I'm talking about swamps.

Initially I had these two running around in the Ratadrabik deck. I still stand by the idea of having these flip walkers be young Harrow/Gideon and flip them into their "First House" versions. The Gideon/Kiriona and Kytheon/Gideon thing still drives me insane.

I was too sad discarding them, so I grabbed the Lilly card and tried to make it work, I really tried, I put on a lot of effort and care. But it didn't work, it wasn't her, it was me.

I built a pretty generic aristocrat shell, but I think that type of archetype really benefits of having more colors to work with (specially white).

So, with three commanders locked in the tomb (I also tried a Gut rakdos deck but I'm not even going to talk about it), what was next? I spent months on these and still had nothing to show for it. Was I the problem? Was I cursed with bad deck dissease?

No, that cannot be. I'm building other decks while this is going on and those are doing just fine. Lae'zel//Master Chef, Gandalf Big Artifacts. The issue might be that the head of the deck is always caring for just the one thing, there was not much diversity. I kept making Necromancers but had no Cavaliers to back them up.

If there could just be a way to have two little guys up there in the command zone. Wait a minute...

So, this was truly a jank fest. Partner is an extremely strong mechanic in commander, and Tymna is specially strong as a card to have access early. So I decided to justify using these to make the biggest pile of nonsense happen.

Equipment? check. Initiative? check. Skeletons? check. Zombies? check. Graveyard? check. Lifegain? check.

While goldfishing I realized that while the commanders do a great job to sustain the rest of the deck, the ammount of themes and archetypes made this a pile of cards that I can barely call a deck. And worst of all, they enabled two pretty strong commanders, and that didn't feel that'd be satisfactory at all in actual play.

I even prepared proxies for these! Feel free to use them if you want.

Also, I tried the whole partner thing swapping out Tymna for Ikra Shidiqi. Bringing out another whole color didn't help with the theme soup I was working with.

So I wholy abandoned the idea of both partners, and maybe even making this deck.

Maybe my hopes and dreams of having a functional silly lesbians and skeletons deck were doomed (yuri) from the beginning.

Months pass, I built 3 or 4 other decks in the meantime that work, can compete and be fun, sometimes all at the same time if you'd believe it. I had completely lost faith in this deck idea.

All until one day, were I was checking out a pile of cards I had pulled from the recent MH3 set to put them into my binder. And then I see it. There he was, this fucking guy with a shovel(?), looking at me.

I read again his fairly big wall of text, what does this guy do again?

Oh, he does necromancy stuff? attacks? wait wait, he draws POWER from the GRAVEYARD?? in JUND?

He really saved it. Not only I feel this perfectly represents the dynamics of Cavalier is in charge of creating enough thanergy for their necromancer, but ALSO does the necromancer thing, and ALSO loves having like 10 power and beating down face. This was a message, the dream was still alive.

So, I make a list, I order cards, I scrounge cards from my other black decks. And there it is. It's real

The Locked Tomb Griddlehark Commander Deck

But... that's not how my list looks right now. Yeah I know this deck is cursed into being always changing I think. But, the main issue here was what I said before. It had to pull cards from multiple decks to sustain itself. And I learned quickly that I don't like having my baby, my Sauron, being not functional, and that keeping track of what cards are where and swapping them out constantly sucks tremendously.

So, I pulled back most of the cards to their original decks. What was left was a corpse, a beautiful incomplete deck. So I selected cards from my collection, lower powered ones, niche ones, weird ones, and put them in for their more powerful counterparts.

It's function is extremely simple, it fills it's graveyard quickly, ramps, and with Coram on the battlefield, you turn that self-mill into card advantage, the graveyard into a power source and bring back powerful creatures like the Resurrection Beasts (Eldrazi)

There also are skeletons in there, of course.

This deck needed to die many deaths to exist. But isn't that the theme?

I'll make sure to put up the new decklist on my moxfield whenever I get a few upgrades.

[stormoflina]

Regarding szobo and Trent’s friendship. I think it’s one of those situations when u are an introvert person and friendship dies down. Not saying they not friends anymore obviously are. However, compare his friendships with other people like Jude he publicly shows support to Jude and Jude does the same if not more to trent tbh😂 he comments on every single Trent’s post. Trent doesn’t mind being seen on camera with Jude hence england content and story reposts . Where as Trent doesn’t like szoboszlai posts anymore for long time or comment in months either. I know Jude trent are a lot closer friendship wise but I think Trent did see comments and now you can tell he doesn’t like being seen on camera with szobo anymore even when szobo tries so hard to walk with him/grab his attention Trent ignores it and doesn’t want to be in same picture frames either or in training too he always purposely makes sure he isn’t. I don’t think they are as close as some think they are in my opinion anymore. Like Trent publicly shows so much love to ramsdale madders Jude hendo ect where as with szobo he hasn’t since September

Ngl, reading this kinda broke my DomiTrent heart 💔

I will have to disagree on the part where you say Trent purposely tries to avoid being seen with Domi on camera / avoids him. If you look at the fancams and bts stuff, they are still very much glued together. Trent seems image- conscious, but I don't think to this level. Yeah, he's an introvert, but he also seems like a kind, nice person, so I don't think he would do this.

It's also important to highlight that obviously Trent is going to be different with all the people you have listed. They have known each other for years and are national teammates. That's such a significant part, sharing the same nationality, speaking the same language, having been brought up in the same culture. Domi is also very different, much more relaxed around his national teammates. We joke around a lot about how he is being a "beg" around Trent, because to the naked (and DomiTrent focused,lol) eye he's totally acting like that, but , okay hold on.

I think I'm about to get a bit defensive here 😭

So Trent's mother tongue being English, him still in his boyhood club, playing for England, those are such huge advantages that players like Dominik will never get. I think it just doesn't show, because he speaks fine English and moves around like a very, naturally confident person. But still, to someone who has followed the Hungarian NT for years, he is almost weirdly """"shy"""" in some of the lfc content. You can tell English is his least strongest language and that he knows he is basically a little nobody in Liverpool.

Okay, Hungarian tax over lol. So, I think if any of the 'they are being forcefully separated' stuff is true, in any shape or form, it's probably only the sm team making a choice to not throw them under the bus for engagement basically. They obviously get along well, most likely not life-long besties, they have only known each other for like what, 6 months? But I like seeing them together, and especially with comments like the one, where Dominik said he often feels lonely moving to England, then saying how Trent was the first one to ask him out to hang out? That's so sweet!

Sorry for the long answer, I think I just really feel for Dominik in this scenario you raised, because he is even posting his dog, who technically is not even his dog anymore, so I just feel bad for him 😭

[theveryconfusedartistsart-blog]

1. I think it's like...if they make 99 good memories. If they “fill up” their memory store and then leave or die...then yeah#They can't make any more good memories anymore. But at least they won't be able to make bad ones anymore?#Chara was all too happy with erasing the good in their life as long that meant the bad was erased too#And maybe it's the same with everyone else too... no-one can hurt each other if they're dead right?...they also can't do anything else#either...their lives can't get worse but can't get better either but again Chara doesn't care they'll destroy the good in the world if it#also destroys the bad. The humans were “the bad” the monsters were “the good” and Chara was all too willing to kill the monsters if that#meant humans would die. Yes they never hated monsters even at the end of geno Yes I believe Chara loved them once. But for Chara hatred and#fear has always came before love. And this letter...it leads me maybe to think that harming humanity starting a war destroying things was #always their main plan. Not just for revenge. But because they heard level of violence would make them invulnerable to pain. Because humans#can't hurt them or the monsters if they're all dead. They didn't want all the monsters to die too. But they're still... weirdly fine with it#They'd rather a world with both humans and monsters dead. Than a world with both humans and monsters alive.#I don't think I'm saying...“Mind changed! I am now a Chara offender” but after everything we've learnt...can we really blame me for being i#a bit of a Chara offence phase. Maybe what I'm saying is “Damn! Chara offence got legs” ...I still don't necessarily think nochoco was righ#but they were almost definitely a bit righter than me and most the fandom thought. That make sense?

2.#Oh...#he really did reach a cap of good memories didn't he?#not because his brain got too full#but because eventually they stopped meaning anything to him anymore#just like a word losing its meaning once you've said it over and over and over#It's the same with level of violence... Noelle and Frisk and Chara didn't exactly want to kill to start with (I mean Frisk and Chara#hey look! I did a thing#accepted it (unlike Noelle) but they weren't exactly having fun) but once you've made enough bad memories they stop mattering anymore. They#being “bad”. they stop hurting you. But the thing is. It's not only violence you commit that does this right?... suffering repeated violence#also makes it matter less right? It still desensitizes you? It still counts towards your “bad memory” cap it still makes it easier to make#sorry I hijacked your post#and to commit violence. Maybe that's why Chara starts off quite a bit more okay with violence than Asriel and Noelle is? In Utdr the#violence you commit against others is a form of self harm too (you know though it also hurts others of course) explicitly meant to#desensitize you to the pain it causes. Chara (and maybe Frisk) consider that worth it. Noelle doesn't but you can still force her into it.#But either way once you've experienced way way more than anyone really should you'll reach a “cap” you'll stop feeling both good and bad#memories. Empty like Flowey keeps saying. Numb like Noelle's coldness stat. Free of sentimentality like Chara always wanted.#Noelle's friend is “another enemy” (though not when she realises it's him she still has a long way to go). Asriel's dad is “that stupid#king“ Chara's royal subjects are all ”the enemy“ Angel I wanna hug all three of them already. I'm willing to get stabbed or shot or frozen#for them. We don't hear anything directly from Frisk but the poor kid ended up killing almost all their (potential) friends too. They can#join the very dangerous hug too.#(Okay Noelle would only freeze me if she was told to but...yeah)

3. #“no-one can hurt anyone if they're all dead” destroys the world#but after all...Chara already considered being “erased from existence” better than living an unhappy life so maybe it makes sense#“the only place humans and monsters can get along is in heaven”/ref#once everyone is dead they'll all be free angel of death style

4. #Is it just me...or is there a thing of like ...if I was going to make sure nothing could hurt me...I wouldn't be able to be  friends with#Chara anymore?#If I didn't let the bad memories go I wouldn't be able to make good memories anymore?#so I can't count how many times they rope me into stupid plans or laugh off my suffering or scare me#No matter what they do I still hope we're friends because I don't want to be alone#I dunno man ...I know I'm contradicting myself a little here but like... I'm thinking#And I'm trying to think about what could actually be canon rather than just what I'd prefer for once#Chara lived with Asriel for multiple years we can guess that pretty easily...I want to trust Asriel when he says those years were happy ones #Do I though? I... don't know. Angel I don't Know! Why can't I just ask Toby Fox? I know HE has all the answers!

#5. Also...I started to make a post about this a while back... Level of violence is just emotional invulnerability not magical power#and they are right that no-one can hurt each other if the world no longer exists#But the truth is...when a child is hurt enough. Hurt over and over. They'll look for any way to make it stop.#And so then when this child learns that committing violence can quantifiably make them nigh invulnerable to any kind of pain...well...oops?#hope you're not too attached to the people around you... Because Chara certainly wasn't too attached to consider it (mass murder) an option

6. #dreemurr siblings#Again that's what happened... Asriel experienced so much that he can't feel anything anymore#he's invulnerable now or whatever#but he needs to let his walls down again. He needs to let himself feel again. This is the only way forward.#(Plus unlike Chara he's not happy that he can't feel anymore)#little prince#Also his stats both say infinity rather than 99999999 because he doesn't like the idea of a number cap no matter how big it is#it almost feels like a sign of respect for Chara to mark his stats down like that#hey look! I did a thing#brotp: angels or demons?#though I guess they might just be humouring him while secretly thinking infinite stats is completely stupid and goes against everything the#stand for. If you look in the code it's not actually true... he has very high but not infinite stats. He still has to deal with his#beloathed number caps. So Chara's... just saying that but it's not anything special for Asriel himself. Almost all the stats they give are#sorry I hijacked your post#fake (just not Sans's). The one person they give something special for (with regards to stats) is Undyne. 99 atk. 99 def. Because they#really admire her. Because they consider her the strongest monster in existence (She reached the cap!) Chara shows more care for Undyne tha#any of their family. They mourn Undyne's death but not really Asriel's (neutral route). Chara stalls on killing her in the murder run.#brotp: the true hero#Their killing intent goes up for Toriel (their mum!) but down for Undyne

7. #what a strange child...#Chara's favourite number is literally related to their trauma lol#I mean the kid really just said#hey look! I did a thing#9 is my favourite number because the idea of a number cap reassures me that one day i'll have suffered so#much that nothing can hurt me anymore#my favourite number is 9 because I need to believe there is a limit to what I can suffer and I want to deliberately acheive that limit#quicker than humanly possible#my favourite number is 9 so every time I hurt I can make myself better by pretending I'm one step closer to that imaginary limit.#to the moment that everything breaks down and I no longer have to exist#yeah...#and the funny thing is that Asriel (who has had a relatively good life) hears this and gets almost scared that there's a number cap on his#good memories maybe he's picked up on how much they still want to die still want to “erase themselves from existence” (it's not like Chara#kept it a secret) and that's why Asriel KNOWS how little time he has to spend with Chara and how little memories he can make before they#dissapear again “.#maybe if I just don't count the days the time won't pass anymore maybe we can stay in the garden forever. Maybe we never#have to leave. Oh angel please don't let them leave me. DON'T LET THEM LEAVE ME”  but hey...maybe i'm just projecting! Who knows?” #(Also this whole thing reads like an eulogy even as he hopes they'll still be there years and years later like he's already mourning them.#Like he expects them to be gone any minute. Like he lives his life fearing that one day he'll wake up and they'll just be a rotting corpse#in the bed next to him. And everything he does is to please them and make them happy so that that won't happen)#Fun fact! If it ever comes out that Chara was lying about being suicidal I am gonna reach through the screen and murder them

8. #relevant to Asriel's letter#This is why Chara wants LOVE#to numb their pain both physical and mental#once you've seen the light fade from your mother's eyes broken bones don't hurt much anymore compared#nothing hurts anymore because there's nothing worse than that#the crazy thing is that because of that...Chara wants to see their loved ones die. They actively want to put themselves through that pain#until everything numbs. They want to hurt themselves and the world so badly that it reaches a quantity overload and just breaks.

(There you have it, many slightly contradictary slightly repetitive tag rambles, mostly made in one day)

You were right, these are vaguely insane ramblings and I respect all of it.

Here's to BFF and sibling bonds so strong that you end up literally dying with them and sharing each other's trauma.

[astralartefact]

Placeholder Name for Atarase's Media Diary

Entry 006 - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom <<Prev: Paper Mario TTYD Remake

Synopsis

Once and for all the truth behind the enigmatic Zelda of legend is revealed; We finally get to hear her side of the story - and even the art style won't hide her war crimes.

How much did I know before playing?

I wouldn't call myself a Zelda person, for some reason that's the big Nintendo one I'm just kind of "Sure!" about and yet weirdly enough I've played almost every Zelda. Yes, even both Oracles (twice) and Link's Crossbow Training! I'm pretty sure I've played more Zelda than a lot of people that you would call Zelda people! I don't know either!

Relevant to this one - I do tend to prefer the 3D ones, not really a Link to the Past kind of guy (and yet i've played a randomizer of it before - i don't know, maybe i need to figure something out here about myself, is this imposter syndrome? why won't i call myself a zelda guy??)

Did I like it more than I expected?

About as much as I expected! *thumbs up*

Since I liked it, here's what I hated about it

why is there no retry button on time trials, the menuing & transitions required for one retry take longer than actually loading in the power of technology, 15 year old me couldn't imagine

Speaking of the menuing, it is at a lot of points more troublesome than it feels like it should be, specifically menuing the echoes

the final dungeon was far too short, there was like one single puzzle room where you have to build something for Link but I guess the Final Boss slapped so Jury's still out. Some of the other bosses were kind of a little lame though :(

don't sue me but i don't like zelda's design in this one all that much i ended up using the pyjama for her outfit

I guess I am coming to the realization that I don't actually like the BotW approach to an open-world all that much (which this game also uses) It's not bad bad evil bad or anything - I don't know where in the "the game everyone and even their grandma loved is bad actually" Cycle we're at right now, I know people have turned on ToTK pretty quickly but this is not that - I think BotW, ToTK and this are totally fine in their approach, it's just not quite for me.

Basically, being able to go anywhere and unlock everything at the word go sounds nice but without any "forced" meaningful progression points what ends up happening is that I end up with a murky second act where I'm just going through the motions of "Yeah sure, let's do the stuff I didn't want to do first so I can get to the ending."

And when you can unlock op summons relatively easily from the get go there's also a lot of "Aha!" Moments lost when you can just brute force every puzzle with the Waterblock or the Magic Tile or that Yellow Thwomp Thing or an unholy combination of the three (at that point it feels cool again though actually) before even the half way point and the game doesn't really go out of its way to not let you basically just spam the same echoes to break every puzzle in very similar ways.

That being said you can still of course set yourself rules Nuzlocke style - you have agency over your own interactions with a product after all - and I think this game in particular is great for that.

What did this game make me think about?

Women, am I right. (zelda sweetie, i don't think the devs hate you, i just think they haven't thought all that much about you. i'm so sorry, i know that doesn't make it better. i love you <3)

Specific Impressions that will stick with me

The Final Boss is pretty good and I especially loved how long it was! I know for a fact a certain sect of the internet will complain about it, something something combat is just you standing around waiting for your mobs to do something, but I liked it!

Also, some of the ways Zelda can kill mobs without a sword are heinous in a way even the artstyle cannot hide:

grand scale arson in the middle of a forest

violently ripping off the heads of Dekubabas

the most efficient way to kill those jumping four-legged spider creatures is to grab them and then dive to drown them

hug the electric slime hug the electric slime hug the electric slime

etc...

Outstanding Audio

This is another one where I don't really have specific tracks to highlight, but I thought the Soundtrack was pretty good :3

The only ones that really jump to mind are the Link Mode versions of the Boss Tracks, they did something with those that they certainly didn't do with the normal Link Mode theme (that's the only piece of the ost that i'm kind of :/// about and i think that's just bc it plays so often)

also, the Void(?) OST really reminded me of Super Mario Galaxy

Favorite Character

This is going to be fun because I will argue against it later on, but I did like this game's interpretation of Zelda! I think they used her well.

I'm also always fond of Impa for some reason, but I am sad we didn't get a Dark Impa Mid Boss :((( I was so sure that was going to happen in Dark Hyrule Castle

Also VOLVAGIA IS FCKING BACK THAT WAS ALWAYS MY FAVORITE OoT BOSS btw in general i really liked how they did call backs, it felt like a very cohesive mix of a lot of games and not just the obvious choices

Favorite Arc/Story Line

I actually found most of them sweet :)

Favorite Set Piece

Maybe the Zora Performance or the escape sequence after the tutorial? Since aside from the Final Boss the Bosses were for the most part a little bit lackluster in presentation there weren't really big stand-out set pieces for me :/

Best Performance

Doesn't really apply, but just like with TTYD Remake the speaking noises were really pleasant to listen to, don't know what they're doing with those.

German Localization Notes

Pretty good! *Thumbs up*

--- ENTERING THE PRETENTIOUS SECTION OF THIS ENTRY ---

What about this game gives me Hope for the future of gaming?

I'm glad that games like Zelda keep this sort of more "Formulaic" Video Game alive when more and more things become more free form and "unscripted."

I'm somewhat of a Video Game Meta-Metaphysicist, I guess. (this section hasn't lived up to the section title in quite a while and i'm here to remedy that) (it's also not the right title, i think just meta-analyst is actually more right for what i mean, but that doesn't sound as pretentious and I think calling what i'm doing "thinking about the reason of meta stuff" is at the very least not wrong)

My favorite parts of video game series are always how reoccurring elements and structures are re-used, shared, opposed, that sort of thing - not in an asset-reuse sort of way god forbid ugggghhhh please spare me context-less software engineering talk, that's almost as bad as people talking about immersion as if it's objective - I just love to see how series staples, things that you come to expect from a tangibly related series of games are redone, how they are expressed this time when they were expressed another way that time and most importantly how that creates relationships between entries in video game series and how those relationships create additional meaning - that's the part I'm obsessed with.

Like how in Bravely Default, the letters that fall away from the subtitle are FF when BD is a clear successor to FF Four Heroes of Light, or how Bravely Default 2 doesn't really reuse Motifs from BD1 except for Wicked Flight in that one section of Edna's Theme (and also the first BD2 Asterisk Theme is a battle theme version of Eternity's Moment) I'm obsessed with shit like that ugh!!!

And Echoes of Wisdom has that a lot in very cute ways, I've already mentioned the return of Volvagia but the Ice Temple also had Yetis like the ones from Twilight Princess, I absolutely loved the way Dekus were used this time, it felt fresh and yet also just like I remember them, I loved that we had both River and Sea Zoras,... It shows an appreciation and veneration of the series' own history that is a little bit more internally meaningful than just "fanservice".

I hope in a world where 2B's ass cheeks can be sold off to whoever is willing to pay for them - even the guy that's blatantly ripping your work off while pretty much belittling your games entire point - revisiting the legacies of your games in interesting ways sticks around.

What about this game makes me scared for the future of gaming?

So this is finally the Zelda game where we play as the titular Zelda, huh. Surely there's nothing that that could tell us about how Society views Women and Girls, right...

I said I liked her in this game and I do. I do think the way she's depicted is pretty cool! I like and appreciate that she doesn't primarily swing a sword, that when she's doing that it is an external "Link Mode" and that her game is not just Zelda in the role of Female Link, I think that would have been a lot lazier and not in the spirit of Zelda as a character (even though I would also like to see female link and more importantly male zelda one of these days). (i actually also really liked the Link Mode from a gameplay perspective btw, i think it's pretty cool as a strategic element)

That being said, it is a little weird, isn't it. We have to wait how many years until the name in the title finally gets the sole playable character spotlight because apparently even that "Zelda as Link" quick swap premise was just too far-fetched, a fact that is certainly not helped by this game showing us that Zelda, the girl, can't just possibly swing a sword without some form of magical assistance. She has to summon creatures to do that for her. She has to use the Sidekick to be strong for her. She has to enter Link Mode for her to be able to do any of the stuff Link would do. Her frail little girl hands and feet just simply can't move as fast, jump as high and hit as hard as those of a boy hero.

And sure, we can handwave that away making up some Lore about how Link had Training and Zelda didn't - but Lore is made up, Zelda isn't a real girl we happen to watch a recording of, the writers wrote this, all of this shit is made up. The fact of the matter is that it took years on years for Zelda to finally be the Playable Character (listen it's my favorite but no i don't count spirit tracks) - and as much as I liked it, it's an almost overwhelmingly straightforward take on Zelda as a PC. In everything but mechanics this could have been released directly after A Link to the Past and nobody would have questioned a thing. By which I mean to say:

Why did it take so long to get here? You could have done this game years ago, years and years ago even, but you didn't - for some reason this was such a burdensome step for the devs to take it took this long to act upon something people have been asking for for years - and tbh that kind of makes me worried that this is going to be their one and only take on Zelda as a PC for a while, because again, as much as I liked it, looking at this as "another product of the usual Zelda formula" this was just really fucking basic, a regular ALttP Zelda with a neat little gimmick, but it's something that was apparently that big of an ask. The thing this game has shown more than anything else is that nothing about Zelda as a PC is all that "out there." So then where was she all this time?

The Ramble Section where I get to actually talk about what I thought about

I don't really have anything eloquent to ramble about this once, I'm just currently imagining if Zelda could have worked as the MC in Twilight Princess (pretty sure she could have. easily.) tp was btw my first actual Zelda game, but only since i don't count the oot demo from brawl and also not link's crossbow training. yes i did own crossbow training before twilight princess

Honestly, I liked BotW and TotK but for now I just want another dungeon crawl-centered 3D zelda :/ the dungeons are the best part and were also the parts that were sorely lacking from those two (the ones they did have didn't hit the same at all) - and honestly the weirder their themes the better... like the weird rail sand temple or the ice manor in tp (honestly all of the tp dungeons are exactly what i want out of a good dungeon theme) or the weird buddhist poem lotus water temple and the sandship from skyward sword... (btw that's my favorite 3D zelda, i didn't mind phi and i didn't even mind the motion controls also i really really really like zeldas design in that one it's so simple and so pretty q_q but it's second only to her hyrule warriors design that one is absolute fire do you guys remember they gave her the dominion rod??? i love her she's so pretty)

Like, I want a 3D Zelda with a Demon Train-Train Level, maybe even with a Spirit Tracks gimmick where you have to draw lines to tell the train where to go... that reminds me, as a child I used to design zelda dungeons (and their bosses ofc!) with the weirdest themes and gimmicks I could come up with... I vaguely remember thinking of a desert temple that was a giant pot with the gimmick of growing plants or something? i should do something like that again, those were the good times...

...

...let's face it, as it turns out i was a zelda guy all along.

[petitelepus]

Hello I hope you have an amazing day I would like to request a slave kny fanfic that is tengen and his wife's own you I hope this is ok hope you have an amazing week 💗

Summary: Tengen buys you and brings you to your new home.

Warnings: Slavery, A Little Blood, Bad Owners

A/N: Slave!AU, Demon Slaves, Gender Neutral Reader, Tengen Uzui, Makio, Suma, Hinatsuru

You had always been a good slave to your master, following their every order as best as you could, but yet your best efforts were meaningless to them.

"So, why are you giving them up?" The handsome man asked as he glanced at you, but you kept your eyes glued to the ground. You knew better than making eye contact with Masters or Mistresses.

"I don't know," Your current owner lied, "I guess it doesn't fit well with my life."

"Why is that?" The man asked and your owner frowned, "It keeps picking on its own hand. It's not nice."

That was true, but they didn't even think of the possibility that you were picking the back of your hand because of stress. Speaking of stress, your hand automatically moved to scratch the itch on the back of your hand, but your owner swatted your hand away.

"No!" They snapped, "Don't you know what no means!?"

"Ah-!" You gasped as you lowered your head, "I'm sorry…"

"Ugh," Your owner looked at you like you were trash before looking at the man before you, "So, you want it or not?"

"Yes," The man nodded, "I want it."

And that sealed your fate. You watched as the humans changed money and your ownership. As soon as you belonged to the handsome man, your previous owner waved at you.

"Good luck!" They laughed as they turned and walked away. You frowned as you glanced at your new owner, but to your shock, he smiled at you.

"Don't worry. You will feel good soon." He said, but with your past, you knew better than to trust anything he or human said. So you were wary of him when he took you to his place, ready to face any cruelty subjected towards you like in your previous home…

But to your shock, you were greeted by three gorgeous women.

"Oh, Tengen dear, who is this?" The three women asked as they surrounded you and you blinked, stunned as the women started to pet and care for you like you were some kind of precious being.

Tengen, the man who had purchased you smiled, "They are our new companion!"

"You mean you got us a Demon?" One woman asked and you almost immediately flinched, expecting refusal but you were met with compassion.

"They look so weak…" A woman frowned, and you expected to hear mean words or mockery, even violence at worst, but she didn't hit you like you had been hit in your earlier owner's care. You were honestly confused.

"Have they had anything to eat?" Another one asked and Tengen shook his head, "Not as far as I know of."

"We must feed the poor thing…" A woman hummed and you were stunned as the women kept petting you despite your ragged looks and dirty appearance.

"You can do as you want, they are here for you girls," Tengen smiled, and you… You somehow didn't feel as uneasy as you felt around your earlier owner or the one before them.

No, weirdly enough, you felt… Almost safe?

Maybe… Just maybe, you could trust these humans?

"What?"

You flinched, noticing that the woman with a red dress had spoken to you, yet you hadn't noticed her. A crime in your earlier homes that would get you punished.

"Ah, I'm sorry," You immediately bowed your head. The women shared looks and then smiled at you.

"We just asked what you would like to eat." The one wearing a blue dress said and the one in a red dress spoke, "You don't need to bow your head for us."

"I…" You were unfamiliar with this situation. You were always expected to grovel before your owners, not face them face to face. This was all so new to you.

So you raised your head to look at them and you were taken aback by their gentle smiles directed at you.

"What would you like to eat?" The one with long dark hair asked and you swallowed nervously, "Anything is fine…"

"Really?" The one in the blue dress blinked, "You can have anything you want if you just ask?"

"I-!" You swallowed nervously before looking at them with those big eyes of yours, "May I have some meat, Mistresses…?"

"Coming right up!" All three women smiled as they went to get you something to eat from the other room, most likely the kitchen. You were stunned by their kindness and the man who bought you seemed to notice this.

"Are you new to this?" He asked and you immediately bowed your head towards him, "Yes, Master, sir."

"You can just call me Tengen," The man nodded, "The women you met are my wives, Hinatsuru, Makio, and Suma. From this day onwards you will be their Demon."

"I understand," You nodded and the man smiled, "You don't need to be so formal with us. You're safe here."

"S…" You almost choked on your own breath, "Safe?"

"Yes," He nodded, "You are here to please my loving wives while I can't be here for them."

"What do you want me to do?" You asked carefully, fully ready to receive orders that would lead you to suffer or be abused, but instead, the man smiled, "I just want you to play with my wives."

"P- Play?"

"You see, I have to travel a lot due to my work and I don't want to ignore my beautiful wives." He nodded at you, "So I want you to play with them, keep them company, and so on while I'm gone."

"But…" You swallowed nervously, "I'm just a Demon…?"

"You're our Demon now and you will be treated as one," Tengen smiled, "With care and compassion."

You almost couldn't believe what you were hearing. During your long life, you had never met someone as emphatic as Tengen or his wives.

"But…" The man started and you looked at him, "Yes, Master?"

"I want you to guard my wives also. I know they are all strong, but it would take a huge load off my shoulders to have you look after their safety."

You blinked as you understood your role as their bodyguard. It was an honorable job and one you took seriously since these three women had shown you nothing but kindness the moment you stepped into their home.

"I promise you, Master," You knelt on one knee and bowed your head, "I will guard them with my life."

"Do look after yourself also!" Tengen laughed as he reached for you and to your confusion pulled you up. You looked at him and he smiled as he petted the top of your head, "You can't protect my wives if you're starved!"

"I…" You swallowed before nodding, "Yes Master."

"Meat is ready!" Came a woman's voice from the other room, but instead of rushing towards their voices, you glanced at your Master who smiled and nodded, "Go ahead and fill your stomach! We got some things to go through so you can live here comfortably."

"Yes," You nodded, "Thank you, Master."

Maybe you finally found your dream home.

[woodsfae]

B5 s02e20 The Long, Twilight Struggle Table of Contents • previous episode

Wow, we're almost to the end of another season! It's been a really good one, despite my own rocky start with its beginning. It's been interesting how my perspective has shifted enough along the way that I had change of minds about my change of minds of some characters. In The Gathering I loved Garibaldi, then came to dislike him for his sexism, police brutality, abuse of position, stalking Talia, being a shit about his ex, and general cop-ness, but the writing really brought me around on him! Weirdly, I now believe he can and will be better.

Almost the same for Londo. I didn't really like him at all, came to like him a little, then was to be SO disappointed in him that now I'm just fascinated to see how far his moral depravity and Sunk Cost Fallacy-ing will go.

And on to the episode!

Their CGI planet is really lovely and colorful, and does look quite 3d! And it's Centauri Prime (presumably). Must be a Londo episode!

This guy is petting the throne. wtf Refa. Very blunt about the fetishization of power that's going on here.

Londo: "Lord Refa, I have come a long way, and I am tired. Is there a reason I have been summoned here, now?" Refa: "Indeed there is, I have good news. The war which began six months is about to end. Sooner than any of us could have hoped. And you, Londo Mollari, will be the architect of our victory."

ope, the Centauri are about to do some crazy war crimes, I see!

Finally, a sexy transparent glass silhouette showering scene! I've been waiting for this since the show started. Classy of them to make it be Sheridan.

Friendly Draal Planet!!! I hoped to see him again! How delightful! What a bad omen, though.

Delenn is becoming just…transcendently beautiful. The lighting and camera shots, her expressions and grace, are all just astonishing. I am glad she gets to see her friend again. Maybe some of the other serene characters will pop up for a reunion. I'd love to see the little telepath girl who went to Minbari, Janice the Healer, and Thomas Jinxo the Seeker of the Grail again, and I think they'd all get along well (or at least interestingly) together.

Draal, appearing before Sheridan fresh out of his shower: "I've been watching you for quite some time, Captain. And I thought it was time that I introduce myself. My name, is Draal. How do you do." *Minbari bow* Sheridan, damp and be-robed: "Uh, fine. I'm fine." Draal, who has no idea how to talk to humans: "Good. You don't have any idea who I am, do you?" Sheridan, who did his research on B5 tysvm: "Unless there's another Draal who can do what you just did, you're the Minbari who took custody of the planet we're orbiting." Draal: "Ah, Captain, you do not take custody of the planet, the planet takes custody of you!."

This made me laugh really hard. The planet really did take custody of Draal. Near-total isolation, but youth. idk if I'd go for that.

Details…details…lmao Draal.

The Narn…cannot catch a fucking break. Contact with an entire sector of colonies, lost. They're losing, although their official stance is that they're holding their own. I wish them and their counter attack well! One all-out strike with the majority of their forces is a hardcore strategy! They could lose everything.

G'Sten: "If we make them pay, for every inch of space, we can wear them down, prolonging the war beyond their capacity to fight it. Centauri want a quick victory: they don't have the stomach for prolonging the war."

He also says there will always be enough ships to defend their homeworld, but dang that still feels really risky. I am so excited to see a little of G'Kar's family. His uncle! And he's so kind, warm, and loving. The exact opposite of the way they were described by Delenn and the Centauri in season one. They both call the Narn cold, strange, impossible to empathize with. I hate to see anti Narn propaganda! They have risen highly in my estimation and I am rooting for them so hard.

The Centauri are going to bomb Narn from orbit with banned weapons and wipe out much of the entire population. To "save Centauri lives." War crimes, as I thought.

Everything depends on Londo. It's too late to back out. Bringing the pressure and the logical fallacies down on him! He bends, obviously, and is going to reach out to Morden for help carrying out the sick plan.

Londo: "All right. I will bring my assoociates into this, but this is that last time. We are Centauri. If we are to sieze our destiny, we must do it ourselves. After this, no more." What'shisface" "After this there will be no need! Thank you. Cheer up. By the time you return to Babylon 5 the war will be over, and the Narns will be at our feet. This time, we will keep them there."

Exactly. The Narns will not stop resisting, they will eventually gain their freedom again, and there will be another and another. You can't build an empire without horrifically violating sentients' rights, and those sentients are always going to resist.

Love Delenn's outfit today. I hope Draal won't be an ass about her hair.

Aw, so nice, Londo gets to go watch the Centauri genociding the Narns, live and in HD safe on a warship. How thoughtful. May he choke on the sight.

Dr Franklin is a real and good friend and a great anti-fascist comrade. Gathering deets from his Narn patients to give G'Kar as up-to-date as information as he can, as quick as he can.

Draal Planet light hearted B Plot, yay! And Delenn is now experimenting with swearing She used the f-word even! Frag me, she's so great.

Delenn: "Draal? We're here." Draal: "Did you think I hadn't noticed, my old friend? You've changed. I like it."

I'm glad he's not racist to her! That makes two Minbari who have on-screen supported her: Lennier, and now her old mentor. I'm so glad!

But onto the meat of the visit. Draal has been using the planet's resources to gather information, including Sheridan's history and all the plotting Sheridan's been doing. Convenient, and awesome! Powerful allies are badly needed right now. Draal has been studying the universe and the planet, and he's ready for action! And I"m ready to see that action!

"In the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is a possibility of hope."

That's a great message, and good repetition of the same sentiment from earlier with G'Kar and G'Sten. I'm afraid G'Sten is going to die, but I hope he lives. The Narns have faced enough tragedy.

Shadow ships coming for G'Sten and his fleet, the evil shits! The CGI has definitely improved from last season to a degree, although it's extremely obvious with the shadow ships. but I love the effect! They are all cgi and thus fake-looking, which I think enhances how out of sync with the normal dimensional bounds they are. I'd be fucking unnerved if I saw something that fake looking in real life.

goodbye G'Sten. :/

There's people on the Draal Planet! Wow, they must be weird.

LOVE this for Delenn. She's needed friends really badly, too!

Zathras!! Is in league with Draal! Cool!! I didn't think we'd see the Space Werewolf again, but this should be fun! JMS's spreadsheets must have been wild.

Narn is in a BAD position. Centauri have Narn surrounded, there's massive destruction and death, and the Narn fleet has been neutralized. An impromptu re-enactment between Narn and Centauri on B5 is underway. Of course.

Narn looks mostly brown and orange from orbit. I wonder what it looked like before the Centauri ever arrived. Bombs underway, Londo watching on while looking sick. Hope he feels even sicker than he looks!

Ineffective response from Minbari and Earth, of course. An atrocity! They condemn it! Really hard! Finger wag! Don't do it again!

:(

G'Kar. What a horrible horrible place to be. Narn plans to surrender. I hope they can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but knowing this show, it will be even more grim for them and the universe by the end of the episode. Horrific.

G'Kar is reduced to asking Sheridan for political asylum. If they hand him over to the Centauri…! fuck! That's the kind of dystopian universe this is, too. I hope that won't happen, though.

Ugh. A speech by Londo. What an awful piece of propaganda.

Londo: "A little over five standard hours ago, the conflict which began with the Narn declaration of war, came to and end. The Narn regime has offered complete and unconditional surrender. The terms imposed by the Centauri Republic are as follows. One: the ruling body known as the Kha'ri will be disbanded, and its members subject will be subject to arrest and trial for the commission of war crimes against the Centauri." Sheridan: "Earth requests the right to send observers to these hearings." Londo: "That request is denied. Two: to prevent further acts of terror by the Narn against our people, the penalty for the murder of any Centauri by any Narn will be the execution of five hundred Narns. Including the Perpetrator's own family. Three: a provisional ruling council appointed by my government will take up the responsibility of re-building a more civilized Narn government, as a colony of the great Centauri Republic." Sheridan: "Is there anything else." Londo: "Yes. Just, one thing. Because the Narn homeworld is now a protectorate of the Centauri Republic, we reserve the right to determine who can speak for Narn. As a result, Ambassador G'Kar may no longer represent the Narn in any official capacity whatsoever. His appointment ambassador to Babylon 5 is hereby withdrawn. And as the only member of the Kha'ri still at large, Citizen G'Kar will return to Narn for trial."

"No," quoth Sheridan. Minbari supports Earth and Babylon 5 in this, although Delenn does call him Citizen G'Kar like Londo did. Fuck him, man. He's fully a bootlicker channeling his frustration at his guilt over all the war crimes against the non-Centauri. My least favorite fictional war criminal.

The framing and character work through this scene is WILD. G'Kar, sitting, slumped, not meeting anyone's eyes. Londo, speaking with clear enunciation, racist and imperialist language framed as the ethical, sensible decisions the Narn have forced them to make. G'Kar rising and speaking calmly before leaving when Londo loses his temper and demands, screaming, that G'Kar leave the council room.

G'Kar: "No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years…we will be free."

The Narn will not go quietly.

Centauri is celebrating, they are dancing in the streets on homeworld. Or so the propaganda news broadcast goes.

Sheridan has a very nice speech for G'Kar and offer of support of all his personal assets that can be put towards that aim.

G'Kar: "The last time I took someone's hand we were at war twenty-four hours later." *takes Sheridan's offered hand anyway*

Mad lad.

And now Sheridan's off to a super-secret meeting! Delenn presiding. She has gathered him allies to pledge to Sheridan. Ah, Sinclair's project! <3 Sinclair, good work, buddy. Kosh is there, too! Somehow I doubt he is there to swear TO Sheridan. Along with, benevolently, to help the ants win against the anteater, maybe.

This is an episode of speeches! G'Kar's was terrible and great. Sheridan's falls a little flat. His line has been drawn on the other side of a fascist empire re-enslaving an entire people.

Well. I can only hope for some great and wild successes on the other side of the season finale!

The balance of affection between G'Kar and G'Sten, and Delenn's joyful reunification with Draal and the hope that and Sinclair's rangers inspired were all a much-needed balance against the Narns' current plight, but this was still so heavy and dark. It went there, it did that! Man, the forces of the Light are just fucking crippled without the Narn and their previous resources. All destroyed, and mostly dead, to feed the appetite of the Centauri Empire.

next!

[aita-blorbos]

[AITA for not wanting to save some lady I met less than 6 hours ago who almost got me eaten by a huge snake?]

So I [18M] have been wandering for a long while looking for Giacomo [50M? i think?] to kill him for killing my grandfather. I end up on this one rustic island and get knocked out, this doctor saves me and gets me back on my feet. But I'm still pretty focused on the "killing Giacomo" thing, y'know?

So when I go to leave the village after promising the mayor I wouldn't go into the obviously super evil woods (To be fair I wasn't gonna until he said something) I see this blond chick with two bodyguards head towards the evil forest. I don't like to think I'm super nosy, but she seemed weird so I followed. I was gonna go that way anyway.

When I get to the forest, she's already super deep inside. I fight off bats and firecats (annoying) to go deeper into the woods. Things are creepy already, and then I hear some girlish scream. Cool (not).

I run over and bash a beast in the face and turns out Blondie [17F] is the only survivor of her and her bodyguards. We work together to kill the big ass monster trying to kill us BOTH now (plus its horns are pretty valuable if I sell 'em. Too bad Blondie got on my case about it...). She and I talk for a while, I say I'm gonna go, she says wait no come with me blah blah. I'm like, uh fine? But at least take the useful shit off your bodyguards and don't put it to waste! How'd they like it if you died because you didn't wanna take their old magnus? Girl's some kind of stupid, probably. She gives me a bad look but sends their souls off with a prayer (I mean, I feel a little bad...) and we keep going deeper into the forest cuz she says she needs to find something in here. Okay? So weird.

We get all the way to this spooky pond when her weird necklace starts glowing. It shoots a beam of light at the water and it becomes dark and starry. I'm a little freaked out, I'm about to leave because what the hell is she doing, but then a huge water dragon snake thing rips itself out from this tiny pond and attacks us. Cool.

We beat its ass and it drops a weird golden card. I pick it up (obviously?? It might be valuable!) and I get this really weird and awful feeling and these like... light projections of birds fly out from the card and into the sky in all directions. I drop it after she yells at me and I jump away from the water. She takes it (and somehow it doesn't get weird for her????? okay. cool. ugh.) and we're about to leave when Giacomo's empire soldiers drop from the fucking sky, kidnap Blondie, I try to help (I'm not the worst dude ever), I get knocked over the head with a gun and I'm out.

I wake up a few hours later and my head hurts and this bird is squeaking at me. It's Meemai, kinda cute, kind of an asshole. He jumps in my cloak as I get up and I ask my Guardian Spirit what I should do.

(TL;DR for people not from Mira, it's a spirit that helps me with stuff who only talks to me. Weirdly, Blondie also heard it. Whatever.)

The Spirit goes "Go save Blondie!" and I resist. That girl has been NOTHING but trouble! She got me knocked out, tossed around by TWO massive monsters, and now my Spirit wants to go save her? So what, she can get me into MORE trouble? I will be going to where she is being kept to kick Giacomo's ass, but I'm not gonna stick my neck out for some stranger.

AITA? My Spirit says I am, but my Spirit isn't the only person with an opinion in the world.

[colethekowla]

Dean, Sam, and Castiel come back home after a long hunt... They all are exhausted and immediately go to their beds to rest

Dean had been holding back his regression this whole hunting trip and finally has a chance to regress.

He grabs his pacifier, which was custom made to look like the Impala. And he grabbed his favorite doggie stuffie that always calmed him down whenever he was in a bad mood. He regresses very quickly and plays around with his stuffie until he falls asleep, his pacifer was still in mouth and stuffie in his arms.

Sam wakes up early to make everyone breakfast but to his surprise Castiel is already in the kitchen sitting there looking down

"Cas, what are you doing in here. You okay?"

Castiel jumps up and looks startled for a sec but replies with "yeah I'm fine"

"Are you sure you looked down in the dumps"

"Yeah I'm just thinking about some of the research we've been working on trying to find any answer at all"

"Alright well I'm going to make breakfast, would you like some?"

"Sure Sam, thank you"

Sam cooks and shortly before the food is done he tells Cas to wake Dean up and tell him breakfast is ready if he'd like some...

Castiel knocks on Dean's door but doesn't wait until he walks in the room to see a pacifer in Dean's mouth and his stuffie

Castiel looking shocked but doesn't say anything instead he thinks to himself why would Dean have a pacifer? He's only seen babies with pacifiers and couldn't think of any theory as to why Dean had a pacifer besides for maybe a deaging spell

Dean jumps out of bed so fast he almost falls on his head and throws the pacifer to the back of his pillow and his stuffie

"Uhh hey dude, you ever heard of knocking?"

"I did Dean... Are you feeling alright?"

"Huh yeah I'm fine dude. What did you need?"

"Breakfast is ready, but are you sure you're feeling alright?"

"Never better" he storms right past Castiel to go eat without saying another word

They had a very awkward breakfast and Sam was confused the whole time not knowing why they were looking at eachother so weirdly but he doesn't comment on their behavior

After breakfast...

Castiel asks Dean to go to Dean's room to talk alone, Dean agrees feeling anxious... Castiel closes the door and with a confused look goes

"What's going on with you? Did a witch get to you?"

"No Cas I'm fine"

"Dean... what's going on then? You had a pacifer and youve been acting super weird ever since I came in this room"

Dean uncontrollably shakes and tears come out of his eyes, he tried to stop but it wouldn't stop

"N-nothing" he looks away from Castiel

Castiel gently puts his hand on Dean's shoulder looking concerned "you can tell me Dean..."

Dean uncontrollably sobs and Castiel just sits next to Dean waiting for him to calm down knowing he could do nothing to help Dean right now until he told him the truth...

15 minutes later Dean calms down and says you can never tell anyone about this"

"Sure Dean, okay I won't"

"None of this you can tell anyone about"

"Okay"

"I don't even know how to say this but umm I guess here we are. I'm what you call an age regressor. I know you don't know what that means so I'll try to explain. It's basically where you think and act like a child and I can't usually control it for a long period of time it just happens and man I hate it so much it feels ridiculous"

Castiel looking slightly shocked yet confused

"Why would you think and act like a child? Is it a bad thing?"

"No it's not really a bad thing... apparently it's kinda common apparently there's communities for people like me and it's a coping mechanism cause of my messed up life"

"May I do some research about it? It'd get me off the other research I so desperately don't want to do"

"A-alright"

Castiel does his reseach about age regression and especially caregiving and realizes that's what Dean might need if he allows him. It was worth a shot, maybe it'd even brighten his mood since Dean always is upset

He goes back to Dean's room

"May I ask you something?"

"Have you heard of a caregiver?"

"Umm yeah, why?"

"Do you need that? Be honest please"

"Uh well I guess since you know everything else then um I guess yeah I've always wanted a caregiver"

"How about when it's just us two and you want to regress then I could help out"

"I-I actually?"

"Yeah Dean! You know how much I love seeing you happy"

"Alright uh yeah I guess we can do that, lets just take that part slow though I'm kinda already uncomfortable the way it is"

"Sure Dean" he shows a small smile

[kakushigotofanclub]

Can I ask you about your wips? I'm curious

Oh boy you're so going to regret asking me this but THANK YOU SO MUCH I have been DYING to babble about all my wips

Enjoy this weirdly organized and non-exhaustive "list"

-

The big one is Burning Bridges, which I have a whopping 25,000+ words written for already. Here's the summary:

After Muzan is defeated, Inosuke doesn’t know what to do with himself, feeling unable to either adapt to his new life or return to his old one. Restless and frustrated, when he comes across a chance to go back to demon slaying, he can’t refuse. But getting stuck in an alternate timeline in which Tanjiro became the Demon King was not exactly what Inosuke had in mind.

But, uh. I really don't know if I'm ever going to finish and post it, and tbh the main reason is kind of petty lol...like, a couple years ago I used to get tons of comments on ao3 and lately I just barely get any feedback anymore. I kinda don't want to post anything I've worked really hard on to avoid getting my feelings hurt. I'd be happy to talk about it, though, if anyone's interested.

-

Another multi-chapter fic I will never post but would love to ramble about is A Couple of Bad Ideas and a Shot in the Dark, which is a KnY rewrite that takes place in the MHA universe. Although, this one is abandoned because I got too invested in a side-plot and literally forgot what I was actually going to do with the story.

-

I've also got one called Smother, which I do fully intend on finishing and posting someday! I don't have an official summary for it but it's about Obanai living with the Rengokus right after he was rescued. Here's a piece from the scene where Kyojuro and Obanai meet for the first time:

“Hi! Why are your eyes two different colors? Where did you get your pet snake? Are snakes your favorite animal? My favorite animal is a cat. Or maybe a dog. Or an owl. I don't know, I can't pick! How old are you? I'm eleven years and five months and two weeks and six days old, which means I’m almost eleven and a half. What's your snake's name? Oh, and what's your name? My name is Rengoku Kyojuro. Do you have any-" "Kyojuro." The man who saved Obanai glared at a person that looked exactly like him except smaller and way more annoying. “Give it a rest. I don’t think he’s in the mood for making friends right now. Just shut up.”

-

I have another fic about Obanai and the Rengokus—modern au, no summary but I think the plot can be summed up in this excerpt and the fact that I headcanon Obanai with ARFID:

“No! I said I was going to take her to her favorite restaurant,” Obanai exhaled sharply. “So I’m going to take her to her favorite restaurant.” He hesitated, gaze cast downwards. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted your…help.” “Of course!” Kyojuro exclaimed enthusiastically. “With what, exactly?” Obanai crossed his arms, refusing to meet eyes with Kyojuro. His face was red and he mumbled his next words: “I have to be able to eat food from there without gagging or freaking out by next week.”

-

Then my reincarnation AU called Da Capo Al Fine, which I've posted a few excerpts from before—basically, everyone reincarnates a hundred years later and Tanjiro and Giyuu are the only ones who remember their past lives. Honestly this one I feel like would just be a pain to actually write the whole fic the way I have it in my head lol. I might write one-shots for it, though, idk.

-

That's. Not everything but I think I've probably talked for long enough now 😅

[scarecrowmax]

misc. tag game...

Thank you for the tag @the-cinnamontography-is-amazing <3

a band you don’t like that many others do:

not technically a band but taylor swift. i just never really liked her music and i find her so overplayed that it's actually gotten to the point i get annoyed when i hear it played.

a childhood memory that you remember vividly:

one day i came home from school after we got to visit the school library and i borrowed the bailey school kids book about cupids and so when i got home i laid down on my top bunk and read the whole book and finished just in time for dinner and i was so proud of myself for finishing it so fast until i remembered it was gonna be a full week before we got to go back to the library

least favorite animal and why:

i don't necessarily have a least favorite animal but i guess small dogs? i just find them weirdly unnerving and so often they're so loud and badly trained and not washed often enough so they smell and i just don't really like them

hot fandom take:

just because someone/something is popular in the fandom it doesn't mean it/they're good. sometimes people or concepts just suck either in general or for your experience and it's fine to not interact/block/not consume that content if it isn't doing it for you.

do you wear any jewelry, if so, what’s your favorite piece:

i wear a ring on each hand every day and i wear earrings and necklaces sometimes too. i love my rings, my hands feel naked without them honestly, but my current favorite piece is probably a necklace i made out of a broken ring. it was an adjustable one and one side snapped off so i snapped off the other side, added a jump ring through an open part of it and added a chain. it's a spider holding a skull. its super fun and very different to a lot of my other pieces.

a movie others liked but you didn’t:

i'm not really a fan of the original evil dead trilogy. like the concept is cool but the humor, the stop motion animation, and a lot of the deadite makeup is just not really my taste. i do love the 2013 movie though. big fan of that one.

three things you love about yourself:

i've learned to be just okay at things and still have fun doing them, i have really pretty eyes, the fact i make a lot of things be it food or crafts or fandom stuff i just like making things

a place you hope to visit in the future and why:

i'd love to visit somewhere outside the us sometime because i never have before

an actor that gets on your nerves and why:

there's several and honestly it's either their energy or they did some fucked up shit and im tired of people talking about them. im not gonna name names though.

things you’re excited for in the nearby future?:

i'm gonna see a band I really like on the 17th of next month and it's gonna be so great because it's a small venue so I'll almost assuredly have a great view. plus tickets with service fees were $17.50 a piece which rocks. im spending more on gas to see them than on tickets which i find funny.

least favorite ship in a fandom you’re in:

i have zero interest in naming names here, i'll keep that in my exclude tags lists on ao3

what’s the most toxic fandom you’ve been in?:

i don't think i'm actually in any. i don't interact with shit like that because i'm in fandoms to have fun and enjoy shit so i stay out of drama and will block people who suck and then forget they exist

list three things you find beautiful about life:

people care about each other even when we don't know each other, there's a million little joys to be found in life, you can meet someone and have a great time together at an event and never speak again but you'll remember them fondly and do it over and over again.

any dreams for the future?

uhhhh, not really? I've never been a big dreamer. i'm a day by day girlie from way back

how are you really feeling today?

not too bad, i was good earlier but i played a couple video games too long earlier and now my ability to focus my eyes is a little screwy and I've got a bit of a headache

tag you're it if you're up for it @rossmccallsqueen @fromcrossroadstoking @tvserie-s-world