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scribeofmorpheus · 13 days ago

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Dragon Age Veilguard: Love, Wisdom and Pride

A very long Dragon Age post!

Warnings for: Veilguard Spoilers, Solavellan spoilers.

Okay, so I will preface this by saying that this ‘analysis’ primarily focuses on Solas’ arc; both romanced and unromanced. It isn’t intended to be a romanticised analysis, though it is very much enamoured with how a romanced Solas and his relationship with Lavellan foils (and informs my reading/reception of) that of Solas and Mythal’s relationship in Veilguard. There is a relationship I will address that I feel does parallel Solas and Mythal! Scroll down to “Reading Between the Lines” if you wanna skip my little intro below. Spoilers follow.

Truth be told, I wasn’t ever expecting much in terms of actually getting a sequel to Inquisition. The game dev market went through a tumultuous reshuffle before the remake madness breathed life back into many studios. Bioware game sequels (Mass Effect Andromeda) were underwhelming and not as fleshed out since the EA acquisition. I absolutely believe Bioware would have been shunted had Mass Effect Legendary Edition not been so successful. EA’s reputation was always lacklustre and underhanded, but laying off or losing several head writers attached to Bioware with almost two decades of work under their belts was the biggest red flag. Trevor Morris not being asked to return in exchange for a ‘bigger name’ was also a grave warning that returning to the atmosphere, ambience and world of Thedas that we knew was getting further and further away from a plausible reality. And on top of that, there’s the fact Solas was never intended as a romance interest during early development of Inquisition.

Solavellan seemed doomed!

Despite this, I still held out hope for a sequel, but I feared we’d always be in permanent Solavellan/developmental hell. Heck, I’m still waiting for a Beyond Good and Evil sequel—the game released in 2003! So, actually witnessing people play Veilguard, seeing reactions to it, seeing memes and gifs and essay pieces (like this one), it’s like my community has awoken again, and I never thought I’d see the day. Yet I am not blind to the fact we were robbed of so much potential. I knew thing’s wouldn’t live up to re-emerging expectations when Dragon Age: Dreadwolf was rebranded to Veilguard—the shift seemed to imply less of a primary focus on Solas (and apparently, according to the artbook, the early concept art proves this implication correct).

Things seemed even more dire when the devs revealed there was no tapestry mechanic. I had only one hope: that with the Inquisitor’s confirmed return, we’d get at least some form of catharsis for our Inquisitors (Lavellans and otherwise), if we couldn’t get the conclusions to so many storylines present in each of our worldstates. My main fear was that they’d go the clichéd Ultimate Sacrifice route (which happens anyway, but in a way that makes thematic sense given the stakes and heavily blighted worldstate).

Suffice it to say, there was a lot of evidence that Veilguard would disappoint me in the end. But it hasn’t. It hasn’t lived up to the many expectations and marks of excellence that the Dragon Age world built itself into with the first three entries, that’s for sure, but I am also just so deprived of conclusions, of endings (whether it be because TV doesn’t exist in a sustainable format anymore or that comicbook movies are made with a sequel in mind, never letting anything just “Exit Stage Left” gracefully; or the fact we live in a regurgitating content cycle with late-stage-capitalism where anything remotely profitable gets turned into a caricature of itself: Squid Game, Star Wars, etc.). The cycle is so exhaustive that I am actually at a point where I can say I am content with the ending we were given (on a Solas/Solavellan front), Veilguard gave me relief, and beautiful, achy pain to boot. Though I would absolutely be disappointed by both the "non-romanced Solas" endings, given that Solas winds up either "dying alone, forever" or turns to Tyranny.

Now onto the actual review of that Solavellan ending, Mythal and themes of Love!

Note: I have only gotten the ‘best’ ending in my first playthrough, but I also thought the consequences of not maxing factions would be more… dire? Another note, pls, if your romanced Inky swore to stop Solas, how does that ending differ, if at all? Let me know, I’m dying here!

Sidenote: I’m working on writing another review about my views on the ‘sanitised’ worldstate, the new companions (and why I think Varric was the wrong choice to have as an advisor in the game, given that the Inquisitor or Morrigan would have been more impactful; and not to mention that Cole or Briala should have been companions), removal of the tapestry and what it means for the future of stories in Thedas (The Story We Lost is such a poignant compilation of the sheer volumes of lost lore and depth that I honestly think I won’t go as in-depth on that review as this one), and why I think Veilguard is my final entry into Dragon Age.

Reading Between the Lines: What Pride Hath Wrought

One thing is for sure, Trick Weekes flourishes when writing within the ambiguities and complexities of meaning. This makes every word uttered by Solas so great to dissect, he's a god of lies not because he 'lies' but because he's so careful with how he phrases things, what he holds back, and what he reveals.

For instance, the famous Trespasser exchange where Solas mocks his own follies with sarcasm by saying:

“What is the old Dalish curse? May the Dread Wolf Take you.”

Then a softer, more saddened and beaten-down Lavellan replies:

“And so he did.”

This irks him. Because he then realises in that moment that he absolutely did take advantage, but for some reason he frames it around sex rather than power because that’s easier to address than the latter. And he rejects the notion, even though he brought up the expression he knows to mean nothing close to a sexual inuendo for being ‘taken’, and yet he has the gall to try and derail the conversation by pivoting and saying:

“I would not lay with you under false pretences.”

When I first had this dialogue exchange, I was baffled, because did this mean that there was another meaning to ‘Dread Wolf take you’ that Dalish clans lost through the years, or was it more of a self-deprecating joke Solas had with himself because he, the Dread Wolf, romanced (took) a Dalish Inquisitor (away from her people’s beliefs, histories, past), and he found irony in the saying?

On the surface, “wouldn’t lay with you under false pretences” could simply mean “we didn’t sleep together” or “we did sleep together, but I wasn’t taking advantage as the Dread Wolf, I was simply Solas in your presence”. But I have recently thought of a more… ambiguous reading. Lay could have been used in a milder, more vulnerable way; to mean to be at peace, to be completely vulnerable, as if to sleep. In that sense, the phrasing becomes: “I could not be at peace with you because I was living a half-truth”.

I absolutely think the moment he feels he is truly beyond hope is when we see his expression of abject horror as Lavellan shouts: “I would have had you trust me!”. He realises then that he did fuck up, he did take the choice away from her because he thought he knew better, him and his pride led to a decision that hurt someone close to him, and he could finally see how wrong he was, how alike the entire situation became to Mythal’s treatment of him. Especially if Lavellan asks to go with him. Because he can see that despite the hurt, the lies and the betrayal on his part, Lavellan still wishing to join him draws too close to his first regret: following Mythal.

Whether he likes it or not, Solas’ love which could burn like a bonfire was directed at a powerful woman—a Herald, an Inquisitor—and inspite of her greatness of character, it still shaped her into someone willing to follow him on his dinanshiral out of love, much like he left the Fade and took physical form for Mythal. So now whenever I hear Lavellan shout “Var lath vir suledin”, Solas replying with “I wish it could, Vhenan,” changes drastically with the Mythal reveal, knowing he always walks away from the Inquisitor in Trespasser.

“I wish it could, Vhenan” sounds heavily like: “You would regret me, as I regret Mythal, and I cannot bear for that to happen us.” More poetically, it could read as: “I wish our love could overcome a duty that has lasted an incomprehensible amount of time, I wish I could change my nature, but then I’d be twisted into a demon, like the spirit of Wisdom in the Dales; and yet again, I would become your regret.” These two readings are very, very romantic. Realistically, given what we know of his kinship with Felassan, and how they were comrades and friends for centuries (“A story unfinished. His back turned!”), and given what we know of the complexity of Mythal’s will that presides over the creation of his very being, and yet he was still able to muster the strength to kill a fragment of her to fulfil his mission, “I wish it could” was most probably a lament: “Do not ask me to hurt one of the two women I’ve loved on this journey, because if it ever came to it…” he would.

Knowing what I know of Solas, of how he was able to convince himself that Varric’s death (avoidable as it was) was just another necessary step, that it was just another sacrifice, another loss that would be worth something only if he completed his ritual, I have no doubt that Solas would also be able to rationalise hurting Lavellan (which is why in his mind, turning away from her, breaking her heart, leaving with no explanation and aiding her in Trespasser so she could live whatever few years remained in “relative peace” is actually an act of preserving that love). I partially think the reason he reveals the truth in Trespasser (especially for a romanced Lavellan) is in the hopes his ‘truths’ will push her away. But on a deeper note, I think he also thinks of it as some twisted form of repaying her for loving him to the point that he could have almost forgotten what it was to be the Dread Wolf, to just be with her as Solas, that night at Crestwood. Maybe his harsh truths would push her to the point where she’d give up her love for Solas, now that she knew he was the Dread Wolf, freeing her from the shackles of their love. He’s very self-flagellating, all about self-sacrifice for the ultimate goal, the ends always justify the means, he will endure any pain and punishment as long as Arlathan returns in the end.

What is his love of a mortal compared to the despair and loss of an entire empire? Solas views himself as selfish for falling for her, and that nearly broke him, if he was selfish enough to leave the dream of Arlathan behind for her, what would that do to his spirit then?

In his way of thinking, perhaps telling the Inquisitor the truth is a way out, a rationale they can use to justify stopping him or to make it easier to hate him as the Dread Wolf rather than love him as Solas (someone he hasn’t been in so long).

‘Masking’ as the Dread Wolf

During Trespasser, the Inquisitor has every right to despise Solas after all they’ve learned, and I think he half reveals the truth as a tactic so the Inquisitor can have an excuse to hate him, to be driven to anger and have less pull over his choices, once they learn the truth. Solas is particularly skilled at making other’s play the role that makes his own choices seem inevitable, he orchestrates a lot of events to play out in a manner where it's easier for him to talk himself into bringing down the veil.

He goads Elgar’nan to anger easily. He inspires the spirits to fight for him to the death as a necessary distraction during the war. He absolutely allows the Inquisitor to speak to him one last time so he can offer insight, yes, but also so he can easily frame his actions as just and inevitable. But, Oh boy does he get in for a shock if the Inquisitor shows empathy towards him, it scares him because he’s become accustomed to being seen only as the Dread Wolf. To be understood? That gives way to remorse. And remorse gives way to doubt. And he cannot doubt his purpose, twisted as it is, it is all he has left of his former self. Without it he would most likely change into something different. Someone he doesn’t recognise.

This fear intensifies more so if a romanced Lavellan asks to go with him, and in that case, he takes command and distances himself away (rejecting the help of someone close to him; the chance for a possible betrayal; the chance at another Felassan or Mythal [x]; the chance to twist Lavellan outside of her purpose, in this case, the purpose would be love/empathy) but not without showing remorse at having sacrificed yet another relationship for his crusade.

“Ir abelas.”

Sorrow for what cannot be is at the heart of why the Solavellan romance is so powerful, especially because even though both Solas and Lavellan love each other passionately, love alone cannot be enough when faced with regrets. Love would ultimately be stifled. Corrupted into something else over time. And so, for Solas, having loved and lost tragically is better than having loved and corrupted.

He will not do to Lavellan what was done to him, even if it is her choice, because she knows so little, her naivete cannot close the distance of a millenia’s old sea, and it would hurt him immensely to take advantage of her kind heart [x].

By leaving, he keeps her heart pure. And the yearning! Knowing the love is there, but on its own it cannot be invulnerable to corruption, so it is better to lose it than twist it. Ugh! Him leaving Lavellan is the ultimate show of love! IT IS A WISE DECISION. A rare glimpse into pure wisdom. Which is why he kneels beside Lavellan in Trespasser, he does not “Stand Tall” in the face of Wisdom’s heart. He kneels beside her. And when he stands tall again, he is Solas once more, filled with regret, and once through the eluvian, he returns to masking as the Dread Wolf.

Sidenote: It’s especially confounding that Veilguard allows Rook to push the Inquisitor to save or stop him after you’ve reached act 2 despite your world state choice (I think this was done in case they feared the Inquisitor wouldn’t stand by Solas after everything he was revealed to be responsible for in Veilguard, however it doesn’t work because the Inquisitor wasn’t an advisor, Rook never told them what they learned from the wolf statues, so having a stranger hold the ability to make Lavellan keep her promise or not rings hollow). Personally, I wish the Inquisitor’s presence had more weight in the non-Solavellan endings, too. I wish the Inquisitor could end up being the last friend/former love that Solas destroys (if you don’t collect the wolf statues) which then prompts Rook to fight him because Solas’ last tie to empathy failed to redeem him, that the Inquisitor falling is the last straw and Solas snaps, choosing to be a villain in the hopes of being stopped because he can’t stop himself, and not the ‘I am a God’ ending they gave us. Same for if your Inquisitor vows to stop him. I also wish the Inquisitor was the one to do the wolf statue missions. Would have been a nice secondary protagonist mission like the switching perspectives between Kratos and Atreus in GOW: Ragnarök (the old guard and the new; Inquisitor and Rook). I would have loved if they dedicated more dialogue to Inquisition days too, which is why I think Cole should have been a companion (if he wasn’t recruited, he could simply be a compassion spirit that ‘follows’ the greatest pain in the Fade that yearns to be healed, giving a compassionate viewpoint to Solas’ folly; recruited Spirit Cole could have a greater connection to Solas than even Varric, seeing as Cole was most likely a literal representation of Solas rewriting his own history by preventing a spirit from becoming too ‘real’; Human Cole would have a deeper connection to the world of Thedas, and could have been a great tool to prove how change was inevitable, not always a bad thing, and inevitably out of even Solas’ control. But alas, we live with what we are given! Even Imshael could have served in this role! Spirit/Demon of choice and it wasn’t incorporated into the game that supposedly asks you to make the greatest world-changing choice ever; redeem the Dread Wolf or end the age of the Evanuris entirely?!

Now onto the next segment: I want to talk about Solas’ regrets and how I read the ‘love story’ between Solas and Mythal, and why Lavellan (and what she represented) wasn’t enough to get through to him (and that’s a very believable thing, that’s what makes their love both tragic and epic!).

The High Price of Redemption

A romanced Lavellan has the most agency to see through his guises, if she resolves to save him, but even she cannot undo the shackles that still bind him to Mythal—the binds that twisted Wisdom so far from its purpose it became Pride, even when he burned (Mythal) from his face. (Likewise, A close friend Inquisitor who promises to save him is most likely a parallel to Felassan, again, they cannot undo the shackles of regret either.) I fully believe the vallaslin had a deeper magic than simply marking one as being committed/devoted to an Evanuris, I think it linked them magically, and since Solas was the first to burn the vallaslin away, he probably wasn’t as good at severing the link on himself as he was for other elvhen, so maybe a part of Mythal’s will still lingers in him, twisting him to Pride still.

In Veilguard’s final confrontation, I love the intention of showing how Lavellan approaches Solas slowly, as she doesn’t know who she’ll be faced with up those steps, Dread Wolf or Solas. But when she speaks to him, trying to get him to change his mind yet again, forgiving him for his wrongs, we are reassured that Wisdom hasn’t been completely consumed by Pride despite everything we’ve witnessed in the game because he bows his head at her in reverence as he apologises.

He shows humility towards her. He elevates her and her enduring love as worthy of his respect, but he does not consider himself worthy of hers. Thus, Lavellan pries open the door to acceptance but his heart is still not enough. Which is why love alone cannot turn the tide. He’s too broken to accept it. He doesn’t think he deserves it, so the only way out is through; to continue the ritual, to prove he was right. The shackles persist. Varric’s death weighs on his conscience now more than ever. Possibly members of Rook’s team too if they died on his crusade. But he is vulnerable enough for Morrigan to approach, and now Rook can use Mythal’s essence to make the final push. The only way he could be with Lavellan, the only way he could atone for the past and shed the weight of his armour (his crushing duty to the Elvhenan) is as Wisdom, fully restored, unbound by mistakes.

“Ar lasa mala revas.” He could only find absolution once Mythal (the angered and more brash essence of Mythal, the one unchanged by Flemeth and all the human women’s lives she’s been shaped by, but the closest iteration to that of Mythal in Arlathan, the version that he perceives as having every right to be angry at him for turning his back on her, for not going that last final stretch with her and subsequently, not being by her side when she died) severed the final connection: facing his regrets, showing humility and apologizing, while not taking away the blame but sharing it.

What is Benevolence without Wisdom if not Hubris?

We know Elgar’nan was twisted to Tyranny during the war, and I saw a post somewhere where someone wondered what led to his corruption, and what he was before (leadership/command). Likewise, Mythal was not above corruption.

So far, I’ve seen a lot of takes on Solas’ ties to Mythal, the power dynamic of being a student/disciple enamoured (could be romantic) with the benevolence of Mythal, but not how Mythal’s purpose was possibly also twisted towards hubris the moment she asked Wisdom to turn physical and build weapons from its knowledge, twisting it to Pride. Without Elgar’nan’s tyranny to rally against after the war with the Titans, Mythal would most likely turn a similar route, seeing her ruling as “necessary” for the people: “If not me then who?”. And that is a very short stop and quick drop to “I am your all-powerful ruler, I liberated you, and only I can guide the way”. Benevolence twisted by hubris can easily turn to Tyranny too, only one more subtle, a kind of cultish indoctrination compared to violent subjugation. If Solas had not turned his back on Mythal when she chose to be Evanuris (a god over her people) then they most likely would have made the worst (best) pair in the Evanuris. Pride is the Seventh Deadliest Sin. But imagine Pride next to Godhood?! That is frightening. So, when Solas burns the vallaslin, walks away and works against the Evanuris, I believe that he also inadvertently stops Mythal from becoming a corrupted version of herself. The sorrow at having lost her closest confidant and “love” grounds her, keeps her saintly in Solas’ mind, and in some ways, perhaps saves the Elvhen empire from a worse fate than him erecting the veil to begin with. But neither of them ever consider this. And I think that sort of self-blindness perfectly encapsulates how flawed both Mythal and Solas are. Now onto love.

Solas and Mythal – a Love too complex to simply classify as mortal ‘Love��.

There’s no doubt Mythal and Solas shared a deep bond, one that definitely had love in it, when we hear Mythal calling him ‘love’, without the possessive ‘my’ in front of it, it’s easy to misconstrue what type of love they share. A small nitpick, but like a thorn, it applies sometimes just enough pressure to change a perspective. Not calling Solas “My love” but instead choosing to simply use “love” works within those wonderful ambiguities/complexities that Weekes thrives in.

If one started out as a spirit, it’s safe to say concepts like familial bonds, romantic bonds, and blood ties mean little to nothing. There is no one type of love and there is every kind of love all at once. It is only once physical bodies are introduced, that physical touch, the ability to stab someone in the back, to kiss out of affection, to hug out of empathy, to strike out of anger, that love now becomes this twisted thing too. There are no spirits of love because spirits always possessed love, but there are demons of Desire (Gluttony) and of Rage (love denied).

I believe, from GDL’s acting skills, his soft whisper, his almost submissive smallness in the breadth of Mythal’s already soft voice, that Solas was in love with Mythal, devoted as a student, beguiled by her benevolence, content even in her shadow, and possibly star-struck. He was in love with someone who doesn’t have the possibility to love him back the same, it is not in her nature to love those beneath her in the same intensity that those who look up to her do. It’s like a priest being in love with God. The priest can devote themselves, sacrifice everything, but a God will always love their flock equally, but they can still play favourites.

Benevolence cannot be enamoured with Wisdom because to be truly benevolent they must possess Wisdom but there is also Pride to be had in walking beside benevolence, but they can never be on equal footing. Likewise, Solas’ love is not reciprocated entirely by Mythal, but she does love him back in her own way. While Mythal is definetly Solas’ first love, layered and complex, it is also strangled by regrets and twisted by uneven scales of power. It would never be a nurturing love, only a consuming kind.

When he speaks of Mythal during the Solavellan ending, he calls her his “oldest friend”, much like what Mythal says, (paraphrasing) “would you have me be angry at my oldest companion whose experienced so much with me”. Because friendship is perhaps the easiest way to describe their companionship. They went through many iterations, one certainly holding romantic tensions (specifically from younger Solas), but ultimately, with that much time shared, kinship/friendship becomes the easiest to surmise. You can love your friends, fall in love with them, fall out of love with them, only to love them again, be disappointed in them, etc.

Media today is flushed with romance as a linchpin for driving a hero to make dire choices, and that has warped our perception of how a platonic/non-romance-based relationship can be all-consuming, and sometimes more impassioned than strict romance. But, to make it easier for people to understand Solas’ motivations, it's easier to see their love in the light Taash sees it (an unreliable, somewhat “still juvenile” narrator, in that they are still growing into themselves and their culture and the world): “They were doing it”.

However, Bellara, a companion whose entire companion story is linked to her strong, deeply character-driving relationship with her brother (platonic love) refutes that reading by saying (paraphrasing here): “We don’t know if their ‘love’ is the same type of love we tend to think of in a masculine and feminine relationship.”

Felassan’s letter after the Mythal Dragon fight alludes to Solas having been in love with Mythal, but nothing about how she felt. This is why I consider the Solas/Mythal relationship to be more of a one-sided romantic love, but a requited ‘love’ relationship for them both.

A parallel I find so compelling: Solas and Mythal vs Briala and Celene. Solas and Briala both hold deep emotions for people in great power with the ability to end a tyrannical cycle of subjugation, enslavement and classism, yet for both of these ruler’s charisma and well-meaning intent, they often are swayed to side with tyranny. For Mythal, that was Elgarnan, the Evanuris who made all the other’s worse tyrants; as well as her own hubris for believing her presence alone could dampen the ravenous hunger for power that the rest of the Evanuris held at the small prospect of leading the Elvhen in a time of confusion (being a North Star is hard when all the other lights around you aim to blind the flock into submission). For Celene, this is more about the nuances of retaining favour, pull and power over other noble families, their backing (be it financial, political or simply cut-throat), and their support so she can be the ‘lesser of two evils’ compared to Gaspard’s warmongering personality and Florianne simply being a puppet with no backbone. Both Briala and Solas are turned to pawns despite their immense strength and compassion for their respective elven plights; Briala is rendered a fangless lion (for lack of a better metaphor) if she is reunited with Celene, whereas if she is chosen to puppet Gaspard, there’s every likelihood her story could parallel a ‘power-mad’ Solas if he’d been tethered to Rage (at betrayal) and not Regret (at having not rejected Mythal when she asked him to take a physical body) throughout his tenure as the Dread Wolf.

Solas and Lavellan – a Heart that was never intended to be Given/Taken

Now I will compare the lack of possessives in front of Mythal’s “love” to Solas declaring Lavellan as ‘Vhenan’ and then ‘Ar lath, ma Vhenan’ vs ‘Ar lath ma vhenan'; again, the coma is the thorn, the pause that shapes the quiet unsaid things we can deduce. In the Trespasser cutscene DGL puts the pause after “Ar lath”, even though the subtitles construct the sentence with Vhenan as a proper noun since it’s a nickname often used by Solas: “Ar lath ma, Vhenan”. But I believe Solas actually says “Ar lath, ma Vhenan”.

With “Ar lath, ma Vhenan” the stressor is after the pause, so the line reads: “I love [you], my heart.” And with “Ar lath ma, Vhenan” it makes even less structural sense but can be inferred to mean: “I love you, Heart”.

The possessiveness of “My” is what definitively differentiates the love Solas feels for Lavellan as one more of the romantic side, it is a love of yearning and desire and a wish to have one last good thing that is pure and incorruptible. The one thing he had left to give. His heart. But that does not mean his heart is enough! The rest of him is still bound to the love of Mythal that was twisted through the ages. That changed him. And given how Pride often comes before a fall, I absolutely understand why Solas is actually very brash and ill-considering when he’s romancing Lavellan (“The kiss was ill-considered”/”It would be kinder in the long run”/”I wanted to show you what you mean to me”). He's on a precarious cliff during Inquisition. His first plan failed. He's allowed ancient elvhen magic to fall into a blighted Tevinter magister's hands. Literally everything the Inquisition did could have been for nought if the Mark had fallen to the wrong person. Things could have easily fallen apart for Solas too, so why not indulge in something trifling and fleeting? Execpt it wasn't trifling. Nor was it fleeting. And when he saw that the fall could potentially not happen, that the Inquisitor could do it, save Thedas and retrieve the orb, he was struck by the gravity of his brashness, of letting impulses control him instead of acting according to a plan. But it was too late. They'd both fallen for each other.

Solas didn’t expect to form entanglements within the Inquisition. He was committed. He was angry at the world, “walking through a sea of tranquil”, called flat-ear by the Dalish that later chased him from their village when he proved he was the Dread Wolf. He was despised by people who looked like him. Spirits were constantly being abused and turned into demons. People erected monuments to heroes who slew demons. Mages were caged. Elves were subjugated. The empire fell. Humans razed the lands with their wars and petty squabbles of succession. The darkspawn tainted the land. The dwarves would never dream. Solas awoke to the worst possible fate; in his eyes, it was all his fault.

So when he kisses Lavellan in the Fade, impulsively, he isn’t kissing her there because it is less ‘real’ than if they kissed while she was awake, it makes it so much more real. He’s kissing her in the space where he is most himself. Where he can shed the body he was forced to build and trap himself within, the body of Pride. He is acting on the impulses of an enlivened Wisdom spirit that does not consider tomorrow, for the first time in a long time. It isn’t a long game with Lavellan, like so much of his life has been about always thinking to the future, always considering the outcome, machinating, scheming, the wiles and woes of every trickster god in mythology. It’s being in the moment with her that is all-consuming. It lowers his guard, leaves him vulnerable, and when she enquires about the Fade or spirits or histories, he gets to be useful as pure Wisdom again.

Lavellan challenging him when he first shows animosity or irritation towards the Dalish (a prideful act), and then him being taken aback when she explains that maybe the Dalish could be shown another way (making him consider her words, being given a morsel of wisdom back, reminding him of his old self), these are all small moments where Solas can begin to see springs of hope in the broken world. And that’s terrifying. It means he’s destroying not just himself, but the memory of Mythal and Arlathan too, all for the love of a woman who fell for an apostate.

The best, most genuine unmasking of Solas for me is during Wicked Hearts, when he’s tipsy on wine, has no inhibitions, and revels in the intrigue, the gossip, the dancing, the music (something we now know is important enough to have an entire music room in the Lighthouse), the sex! He is at his most relaxed, and then he asks Lavellan to dance, not caring about how it would look for the “Inquisitor’s serving man, Solas” to be intimate in a fucking Orlesian palace with the Herald of Andraste, right after stopping an assassination attempt! He finds comfort in the world of Thedas at that moment. Something he rarely shows so outright.

When he takes Lavellan to Crestwood to confess, I believe removing her vallaslin wasn’t entirely just for her, it wasn’t just to free her from slave markings or to simply reveal a form of a truth he wanted to tell her, it was to resolve himself of what his first purpose was supposed to be, what she distracted him from. Removing the vallaslin had been something he’d done for the slaves of Arlathan, it was what earned him the mantle of Dread Wolf. When he removes Lavellan’s vallaslin, he resets.

Thedas cannot allow Wisdom to truly exist without fear of corruption to Pride, Thedas the world he was responsible for shaping, literally the Maker of the Veil, and he falls for a woman Heralded as Andraste’s Chosen One, Mythal’s incarnation in the South. The irony. The cruel, cruel irony. The Inquisition is tied to his past, every Andrastian he meets, every Dalish person with vallaslin on their face, every slave or city elf. Tevinter worshiping the dragons that still have the essences of the Old Gods. His heart alone cannot withstand all of the punishing, gruelling, oppressive weight that is Thedas. Even for Lavellan. So he frames their romance as this tragic, short-lived tale that was beautiful but ultimately destined to end. He expects it to pass for her, she’s mortal after all. But he also leaves his heart with her, literally giving her power over the last uncorrupted part of himself. Think Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann at the end of World’s End, but metaphorically. He gives her his heart to safe keep as he goes on a journey that could corrupt a heart, turn it cold and bitter, destroy it.

Ar lasa mala revas. You are free.

He frees his heart.

Lets it go.

Twice!

So only once he is relinquished of his regrets, once Mythal does the same for him, only then is there “Nothing left except their love”. Because Lavellan still held his heart there was still something left after. Something beyond despair and regret and loss. He had given his heart to her to safekeep. And she did. Lavellan returns his heart to him when he is freed. What Mythal had to break so Solas could heal right again (like a bone), Lavellan casts a splint around so it can be set and heal properly. This is the difference between Mythal’s love and Lavellan’s. Both Mythal’s love and forgiveness broke him, but Lavellan’s love gives him the strength to Stand Tall one last time.

Solas, before Pride alone, as Wisdom (perhaps Solas always meant both Standing Tall and Wisdom, for Wisdom can grant one pride to stand tall for what they believe in), finds contentment with the rare and marvellous spirit that endured (his Vhenan). Wisdom endured because of humanity, something benevolence is beyond.

Bellanaris

When Lavellan offers to go with him, to continue on the dinanshiral that she already considers herself a part of, Solas is legitimately taken aback. His expression is soft yet full of disbelief and awe. He actually stops walking a few frames before Lavellan says this, as if hoping Lavellan would say something to him!

And then she basically proposes to him! “Bellanaris!” I absolutely adore the fact that Lavellan promises them eternity. A vow as sacred as a death right, as protected as an ancient, elvhen, undisturbed burial ground in the face of Orlesian colonialisation. They endured and now they will have an eternity. For once, we have an elvish tale that is not a curse, it is a love story with reunion at its core, where both elves reclaim something precious that was denied them.

Lastly, i am absolutely frothing at the mouth that Solas and Lavellan primarily speak in elvish! And even more feral at the fact Solas does not try to talk her out of joining him (because this sweet talker very well could!). He simply tells her where he is going is terrible. And she shuts that shit down immediately. No repeat of Trespasser. She's standing beside him, the South has all but fallen, whatever ties yet survive are strained, and she has fought the good fight for 8 years. I think the Inquisitor was about ready to leave Thedas behind.

The last decisions Solas makes are of his own volition. Entering the Fade for atonement. Stepping into the Fade with Lavellan (It was confirmed by Weekes that Lavellan’s presence in the Fade prison would fundamentally change it in a way we haven’t seen!). Thanking Rook for giving him one last shot at getting happiness. All his own!

This is the look of a man finally reunited with his wife! So much emotion in ONE frame. God! There’s never been a character like him. A love story like theirs! I’m so happy I got to see this ending. Full circle!

P.S. If you read this far, woah nelly! That’s crayyzeee, so here are some more great pieces: Why it was important for Lavellan to kneel for Solas as he knelt for her in Trespasser in the Solavellan ending [x], and here’s a great deep-dive on Solas as a spirit of Wisdom [x].

#dav #dav spoilers #solas #solas x lavellan #solavellan #mythal #datv spoilers #dragon age veilguard #veilguard spoilers #dragon age #dragon age veilguard spoilers #the dread wolf finally took her #his war has ended #their love may endure for eternity

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heartpascal · 1 year ago

Text

is it freedom?

▹— spiderverse (future) found family x platonic!reader

▹— summary: after losing everything, you struggle to accept the one thing you needed all along.

▹— a/n: ok i have been enabled by exactly two (2!) people. (thank you both) SO dare i start a spiderverse series??? IF YALL WANT MORE OF THIS… I WILL DO IT. this is really just a set up thing idk but i feel like arachnid has potential for further parts and ACTUAL found family!! also haven’t tagged people on my general taglist bc idk if you guys want to be tagged in ALL works or just all pedro works :(

▹— warnings: slight across the spiderverse spoilers, not really found family yet, injuries, blood, treating own injuries, stitches, fighting (canon-typical violence yall), dead parents (mentioned a LOT), a whole lot of angst (it’s a spider-person so what do we expect), reader has a whole lot of bad thoughts, loneliness, isolation

masterlist PART TWO

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

Had you known what this, this thing, would lead to, you would have never started it. Not that you had done so purposely, at least to begin with, more so happening as an event of pure chance. You were in the right place at the right time, and since then, you had been addicted.

But if you could go back, look at yourself just a year younger than you are now, tell that kid what would come if you went through with saving a life for the first time, you wondered. It was a question that scratched deep in your brain, sending you off balance the more you thought about it; would you have still done it? Would you have saved that person’s life, knowing it would lead to your own falling apart?

You would like to think yes. In fact, you know that back then, when your eyes were bright at the prospect of helping people, when you still marvelled at the world like it was good, you would have been certain that it would be worth it. Why should that person die, just to save you? It’s a harrowing realisation. A conclusion that makes your fingers tremble, your voice shake. Now, you’re not sure you would do it. You don’t think you could bear to face that decision knowing what you know of the world around you now.

It’s something cruel, really, that the spider that bit you gave you these powers, and nothing to go back and fix your mistakes. Your perceived victories. Your losses.

But the worst has already happened, and the only one left to die is you, so you carry on. You don the suit every day, you sew up your own injuries on the top floor of the abandoned offices that you’ve claimed as your own. Each day, you wake when you choose, you sleep when you want to, and you work yourself down to your very bones with nobody to object.

The hollow feeling in your gut is a pain you have no choice to ignore, to smother with assurances that this is freedom. What else could it be? You do whatever you so please, you spend your time swinging through the streets of New York rather than doing schoolwork at home, you eat all the junk you could ever have wanted.

It’s freedom. It has to be.

You tell yourself that you don’t miss the home part of having to do schoolwork, promise your heart that you don’t miss home-cooked meals as opposed to greasy food that leaves you unsatisfied. You swear that you like having nobody to tell you what to do. There’s no other choice, after all.

And each day, when you spend a little bit longer out on the streets, getting yourself into needless fights that the police could certainly handle, you tell yourself it’s because you’re protecting the city. You convince yourself that it’s not because of having an unending rage to satiate, or a permanent feeling of breathlessness when you leave police to handle anything, as if you could relive the moment your father, the captain, was left to handle something he couldn’t.

So, you’re almost relieved by the appearance of something… strange. Something dangerous. This is what you live for — this is your job.

You crouch against the wall, fingers splayed and suit itching where you had crudely sewn it back together across your ribs at an almost too-close call. You hold your breath, you watch. The lenses over your eyes shield your sensitive sight from the harshest colours of this new opponent, who looks almost… unreal. Too different to be a part of reality. He yells out, seemingly glitching? A distorted scream of what is apparently pain, accompanied by flashes of colour that are unfamiliar to you.

“Well, that doesn’t look good.” You comment, eyebrows raised beneath your mask, and the strange looking guy snaps his head towards you, long hair slapping across the goggles over his eyes. He bares his teeth at you, something almost resembling a grin marring his face.

“Spider-man!” He yells triumphantly, cackling as he wipes the hair away from his face, tendrils unfurling from behind his back and lifting him into the air.

“Not quite!” You call back, dodging below the metallic arm that shoots towards where your head was, crumbling through the wall. You try to think back to the jokes you used to tell to rile up whoever you were facing, but find your mind is blank. Instead, all you can think of is questions. “Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

The man follows you as you spring from wall to wall, heading towards the center of the building where it tunnels up for about forty floors, balconies overlooking the fountain below. “A new spider, eh? Well I’ll take you down just as easily as I have the other!” He tells you, though you’re immediately suspicious of his statement. You’re the only Spider-related hero around, and even if you weren’t, you doubt this guy could squash a worm, let alone you.

“Sure thing, man.” You say, sighing, already exhausted by the repetitiveness that comes with every fight. Your opponents always say they’ll beat you, kill you, squish you, take you down, and yet you always get back up at the end of the fight, and they always remain defeated. When you started doing this, you never would have thought you’d get so tired from winning all the time.

And yet here you are, slipping further and further up the building with the octopus-looking guy chasing after you, metal arms crumbling walls and bannisters on his way up. He falters once more, another one of those glitch-like movements sending him down a few floors, but he’s quick to recover. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

You crouch down on one balcony, somewhere around the thirty mark floor-wise, peering down at the guy as he shakes lingering pain from his body. He charges upwards, aiming to reach you quickly with an almost predatory smirk on his face. Before he can even get close to you, however, you’re back on the move, setting a trap for him that he doesn’t even seem to notice.

It’s only when a group of late workers emerge on what you’re pretty sure is the twenty-first floor that you become more anxious about this fight. You don’t like when civilians are involved.

There’s about a dozen of them crowding the balcony, looking up to where you’re facing off with octopus-man above, some having begun to descend the stairs to the next floor before catching on to your presence. You try not to draw attention to them, but their pointing and whispering sets the Spidey-sense off, ringing loudly between your ears, almost deafening in its intensity. Maybe you underestimated this guy. The flash of a camera sends the last hope of him not noticing down the drain, and he grins at you as he switches targets, climbing down towards them with some semblance of caution.

You’re much faster than he is, dropping down and using a web to catch yourself rather than having to climb. It’s hard to stop yourself from yelling at them, cursing them out for being so damn foolish — who in their right mind would stick around a very dangerous fight to take pictures?

Instead, you choose to yell, “Get out! Go, go, go.” And usher them down the stairs, but it’s not difficult to realise that this guy is going to get to them before they manage to descend to the bottom. You shouldn’t be surprised, really. Nothing is ever as simple as it could be, not for you.

The split second decision to drop down and form a net-like web low enough to catch the workers worked out for you in the end, as you swung back up and pushed the workers off of the balcony and stairway just as the octopus man was reaching them. He cursed at you, refocusing his efforts on you as you vaguely noted the workers clambering down after their screaming had stopped. Honestly — did people really have so little faith in you? Had you ever sent anybody to their death before?

“You are just as pesky of an insect as Spider-man!” He growled out, teeth gritted, and came after you with renewed force. He kind of reminded you of that doctor you faced not long after getting your powers, but this guy looked completely different. The doctor you faced — aptly named Doc Ock — had turned himself into some form of a mutant, he had reinforced tentacles which sprouted from his back. Was this guy some kind of copy cat? Maybe he was just delusional.

“I don’t know who Spider-man is, man!” You shout to him as you ascend the building again, trying to figure out the best way to take this guy down. His tentacles seem electronic, so surely you could disable whatever machinery resides on his back?

“That’d be me.” A voice came from above you, two floors ahead of your position. Your head snapped towards it, seeing a man in a blue and red suit, framed by a burst of orange behind him. He didn’t linger up there long, instead moving to leap down to the guy who had turned his attention to the new guy. The closer you looked at this new guy, the more similarities you saw to yourself — his webs looked remarkably similar to your own, the pattern that went across his suit matched your own, even the wide white lenses that shielded your eyes on your mask. Who the hell was this guy?

The octopus man grinned widely, shaking greasy hair from his face. “Ah, finally! The real Spider-man. Got yourself a new protégé, I see.” He drawled, dodging this new guy’s hit straight off of the bat. You tried not to get annoyed at being referred to as a protégé, considering as far as you were aware, you were the only Spider-person around. Where was this guy when you were holding a bridge full of civilians together? Where was he when you took down villain after villain, never once failing to get the guy? No — you were the real Spider-man, if anyone.

“I don’t know who you are, man, but I’m handling this just fine.” You call to the guy, swinging down to rejoin the fight, webbing the villain’s metal tentacles to the wall behind him, before dropping down to kick him towards the wall.

“Oh, so you know how to send this guy back to his own dimension?” Spider-man asks you, eyebrows raised beneath his mask, and as if on cue, the guy glitches once more, ripping his arms away from the wall and just about catching himself on a balcony below before he could fall into your net.

You gape at the new guy, glancing back up to where the burst of orange remains opened, and is that a portal? Is this Spider-man from another dimension? Is that why you’ve never heard of him before? God, if your mother was alive, she’d kill to find out about this. Inter-dimensional travel was something she had spent her life researching. If you didn’t remain so bitter toward her even after her death, you might’ve been sad she wasn’t alive to see this.

But you were bitter, and it made the experience all the worse.

Because you’re pretty sure that that bitterness takes the place of grief within you. It’s hard to understand why you crave to feel that pain, that grief, as opposed to the aching resentment that floods you with the thought of her. It’s such a sharp contrast to thinking of your father, your kind father, the man who threw himself into a battle he couldn’t have hoped to survive, just on the off chance he could save somebody. You hope you take after him.

“Wait— you’re from another dimension?” You question anyway, eyes flickering between the battle and the looming portal above. In fact, you’re so distracted by finding out about that tidbit of information that you miss octopus man aim a tentacle for you, and it snatches you around the ankle. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—!”

The man waves you around like some kind of rag doll, and you try not to be too bitter about being caught off guard. You should probably learn that getting caught up in your little pity party always ends up badly, always distracts you from that renowned Spidey-sense. You formulate a plan in your mind when the drip of blood around your ankle draws your attention back to the battle at hand.

You web the wall opposite and hold on tight, pausing the movements and letting the dizziness that had come over you fade away. The man growls out in annoyance, and gets closer to cut the webs with another tentacle, which is exactly what you planned for. The tension from the webs launches you towards him when you let go, and in his surprise, the metal tentacle releases you. You wrap around him, and start webbing up the machinery embedded in his back as Spider-man distracts most of the tentacles, keeping them from pulling you off.

His tentacles start faltering, clearly not obeying his movements, and you wrap them up where they emerge from his back, continuing along until the movement is so limited that he has to use them all to clutch onto the nearest balcony.

You crawl up the tentacles in the very same spidery manner that you’re known for, and crouch, watching the octopus man struggle as Spider-man observes from the balcony opposite. “You wanna finish this one off, Spider-man?” You ask, unable to hide any bitterness from your tone at his mostly unhelpful actions throughout the battle.

“Hey, not bad!” He praises, and it annoys you. You’re good at what you do — for the most part. You manage without help constantly, and that’s the way you prefer it. “You’d make a good addition to the Spider Society!”

Now, you don’t know what the Spider Society is. But honestly? You don’t care. You don’t need help, and you prefer working alone, and you certainly don’t like feeling patronised.

“Whatever, man. Just send him back to whatever dimension he came from.” You tell the guy, and drop down as you hear sirens outside, landing on your injured ankle and just about stopping yourself from cursing. Through all the adrenaline and fighting, you’d forgotten about the way the metal had ripped into your skin, drawn blood. It’s just be another place you’d have to sew up your suit with itchy, uneven stitching. “Officers,” You greet as they open the doors, guns drawn, radios murmuring. “All taken care of. Civilians okay?”

“Shaken up, but fine.” The leading police officer says, immediately relaxing and holstering his weapon. You wish it reassured you that the police trusted you now, but it didn’t. Nonetheless, the other officers follow suit. “Thank you, Arachnid.”

The name your world has bestowed upon you has yet to grow on you, but you nod your head regardless, and salute them as you make your way out, swinging across the city, trying to put the existence of the multiverse and inter-dimensional travel out of your mind. Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy when you have a busted ankle to fix up.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

You’re halfway through stitching up your suit, having already sewn your skin back together with as much skill as you possessed in the matter — which was, not much. But the bleeding has stopped, and your stupidly slow healing will take care of it within a few days. You know that the itchy stitches on your suit will just irritate the injury, and though you wouldn’t lose anything if your identity was revealed, it doesn’t feel right to go out into the city with any part of you on show.

No, you wear the suit for a reason. You keep every part of yourself covered because nobody can know it’s you underneath the suit. Not because you had anything to lose, no, you had already lost everything. It was because then you could never make a mistake, you would have to be absolutely perfect, flawless, to make up for the fact that it was you underneath the layer.

So, you settle with a sewn suit that will itch and make the stitches on your ankle sting.

However, when there’s a burst of orange across the room, you have no choice but to forgo the suit, to simply drop the needle and thread and hover your fingers over your web shooters. You wait, nervously, for some other villain to appear. You’re not sure if Spider-man appearing would be better or worse.

But when a foot steps through the portal, it’s nobody familiar. In fact, it’s a suit you have never seen before, made up of dark blues and bright reds, sharp edges and long claws. It’s… unnerving, and considering the silence coming from the person wearing it, you’re not entirely certain of what they’re here for.

A moment later and another person steps through, a woman, with bright yellow lenses across her eyes that filter her irises into an amber. She steps forward, standing beside the person who had stepped through first, and if she hadn’t showed up, you would’ve been tempted to attack. With that being said, you remain on edge, but there’s something… comforting about her presence. Like her presence softens the man’s jagged edges.

She says your name, and then adds, “Arachnid.”

You furrow your brows and curse as you glance back at the suit so crudely laid out on the floor. Still, it doesn’t explain how she knows your name. Was it an inter-dimensional thing?

“Spider-man told us about your work in capturing Doc Ock earlier.” She tells you, as if that explains their presence. You did what you were supposed to do, which was take out the bad guys. “We’re here to offer you a place in the Spider Society.”

You can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of good cop, bad cop thing. She presents an offer which doesn’t sound too bad, and then her sharp-edged companion presents all the drawbacks and the catches. They don’t seem like the type to take no for an answer, either way. You still don’t even know what this Spider Society was! Was it some kind of multi-dimensional cult?

“I already told Spider-man that I wasn’t interested in joining whatever cult you’ve got going on.” You practically hiss, though you didn’t exactly tell him in such blatant words. You were more dismissive earlier, so you’d have to be clear now.

“It’s not a cult,” The man speaks, voice harsh and sharp much like the blades that branch from his forearms. “We work to protect the multiverse from anomalies that threaten to destroy it.”

The woman glances at him in a way that you translate as being vaguely annoyed, like he wasn’t approaching you in the way she had wanted him to. “He means to say that it’s a big job, and we need all the help we can get.” She says, softer, but only in comparison to the man’s harshness. “Listen, kid, you’re good at what you do. We need that kind of talent.”

“You’ll have to find it somewhere else.” You say firmly, because why would you want to leave your universe? This was a lot to think about when you had only learned of the multiverse existing mere hours ago. Regardless, you weren’t about to abandon your city just to go across the multiverse to help other heroes who couldn’t keep a leash on their own villains.

The two of them shared a look, a mere glance, before the woman heaved a sigh. “Look,” She sighed, heavily, like whatever she was about to say was something she didn’t want to be voicing. “Before you make your choice, you should know, your Green Goblin is currently terrorising another universe.”

You couldn’t work out if this was some kind of recruitment tactic, or something. That just wasn’t possible. You had put Gwen Stacy in the highest security prison after all antidotes to her goblin-tech failed. She was stuck in there — permanently. There was no way she had gotten out, let alone gotten out to another universe.

…Right?

It’s hard not to think of the memories at the mention of her—Green Goblin, not Gwen Stacy. Never Gwen Stacy. You wonder if this is where your fear comes from, the terrifying fact that you are remembered only for your mistakes. Because before she was the Green Goblin, she was Gwen. She was everything to you. She was the sun you orbited, the stars that charted your path. And it hurts, it hurts that you can only remember the blood and the dust and the destruction when you think of her.

People aren’t born as monsters, are they?

Like the spider that bit you, that invertebrate that so many fear, it was born the way it was. It was born with those fang-lined maws, with those eight legs and dozens of eyes. It was made into the monster it became, artificially crafted to deliver a venom that changed you forever. But it wasn’t born that way.

Surely, Gwen wasn’t either. She was kind. You remember that about her. You can remember her soft hands that used to hold your own, the loud laughter that always ended in a snort when she laughed at her own jokes, the gentle eyes that stared into your very soul. But those eyes are the very same ones that let her see through your mask, let her see exactly where to hit you to make it hurt. Was that what she was born as? Or is that what she was made into? A killer. A monster.

“Show me.” You say, because what else could you possibly respond? If what they’re saying is true, if the Green Goblin is loose once more, then people will die.

You can’t let her get fresh blood on her hands. Not when somewhere, deep inside your chest, so far down it’s almost unreachable, you have hope for her. You have an innate desire to look for the best in her, even when the Gwen you knew was the first life that the Green Goblin took.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

If there’s one thing you’ve taken from being Arachnid, it’s to expect the unexpected. And you go through the orange portal after Jessica Drew and Miguel O’Hara with that exact mindset about you, staring at where an orange watch-like device is wrapped around your wrist.

It’s in your nature to be suspicious, and these people weren’t an exception to that.

In fact, their presence only heightened that behaviour. After all, what were you to expect from two Spider people, who supposedly came to you for your help?

You weren’t blind, you saw the aged lines of their faces the moment you got close enough to see them clearly, away from the dim lighting of the building. They were adults, adults who had clearly been doing this type of thing a lot longer than you had. You, who was barely bordering on adult, who had fought enough battles already to last a lifetime — so why would they need you?

It didn’t feel right.

And when this Miguel person summoned Lyla the moment you walked through the portal, it felt all the more wrong. She was a hologram of some kind, much higher tech than the kind of thing you saw on your earth. But then again, you had never really been in high tech labs back in your earth. Still, it unsettled you. “Lyla, get me the location of Green Goblin, Earth 5011.” He commanded, and they argued in hushed voices for a moment, before a wider hologram appeared, stamped at Earth 3899.

“How did she get to another universe?” You ask, then, because it doesn’t make sense, and you’re shaking underneath the thin material of your suit. You’re hyper aware of each drag of stitching against the wound on your leg, each patch of fabric you had sewn on in hopes of the suit lasting you just a little longer, because you didn’t have the resource to produce a new one.

“It’s an anomaly.” Jessica Drew tells you, her tone softer than you’d heard it, as if she was attempting to reassure you in some way.

It didn’t help. But how could it? The last time you had faced Gwen Stacy—Green Goblin— you had lost so much. It had been the beginning of the end of everything good in your life. The explosion she had caused at your mother’s laboratory was the very same one that killed her, the very same explosion that sent you and your dad miles apart all while living in the same home. And still, you found a way to hope that there was something to salvage within Gwen.

But not only had you lost your mother, and not long after — your father, you had also lost your closest friend. The one person you had confided in, who knew you from your surface to the deepest level, and she had used that against you the moment the Goblin had taken over.

It had taken everything in you to beat her, back then.

And that was on home turf! How did these people expect you to do that a second time, in a completely unfamiliar place?

“Specifics aren’t important right now. Jessica, you take Arachnid. Lyla, send another one of the teams.” Miguel instructed, dismissing your questions right off the bat. It was frustrating. They were leaving you completely in the dark, and sending you to fight the worst enemy you had ever faced, and they were sending you alongside others like you from different universes. It was like asking you to bare your soul in front of them, to reveal your secrets, your deepest regrets, everything that you wanted to stay buried.

You knew Green Goblin. You knew that’s exactly what she would do. She would undermine you, she would lay your life out in front of you like tiles on a scrabble board. In the end, none of it amounted to much.

Jessica Drew made her way out, glancing at you and nodding for you to follow along. Your moment of hesitation had drawn Miguel’s attention, and he called out to you after a moment of hesitation. “We’ve all faced one like it, kid. It’s easier with others.” He told you, though he held a pained expression on his face all the while. Instead of admitting to the way he had hit the nail right on the head, you simply nodded and followed after Spider-woman.

It was a whirlwind from there.

Meeting up with others. Travelling the length of the so-called Lobby to wherever it was that Jessica was taking you. When you finally arrived, she offered an empty glass box with a mannequin inside, bare. She gestured towards it like it should’ve been self explanatory, but soon realised she’d have to spell it out for you.

You shouldn’t have been so upset by the offer of a new suit.

But you were.

This suit was your life. You had nothing outside of it, not anymore. You couldn’t just throw it away, as if it meant nothing, as if every rip and patch and wonky stitch didn’t mean anything. These were proof that what you were doing was real, that it was worth something. Each stitch proved you had value. You weren’t about to throw all of that away, especially for whatever overly technical suit these people would provide.

You had everything you needed.

And so Jessica led you to the next destination: Earth 3899.

The moment you stepped through the portal, it was like you were hit with a wave of familiarity. And not in a positive, slightly nostalgic way, no— this was chaos. This was the state your world had been in when Green Goblin ran riot, unchecked. She had torn apart buildings, blown up parks, she had set New York City aflame. And she was doing exactly the same here.

It was more contained here than it had been on your earth, and you had to assume that was thanks to the Spider-man already on site, coordinating police, ambulance and fire responses to douse the fires as quickly as she set them. If only the police in your city had trusted you so much, back then.

“Where is she?” You ask, the moment you get close enough to speak to the resident Spider-man of the universe. He looks at you as if you’re familiar, but doesn’t comment, instead just pointing a finger toward a skyscraper just a short way ahead. You’re gone the moment he tells you where to go.

She had the uncanny ability to stay quiet. It had freaked you own back on your own earth, but it was even more terrifying here, where things were ever so slightly different.

“Arachnid.” Gwen’s voice called, and for a moment, you could forget. You could forget every horrible thing the Goblin had done, and you could remember your friend, your Gwen, who had called out to Arachnid more than once without knowing it was you behind the mask. Whether it was for a story or to provide information on your most recent opponent, the voice calling your alias was familiar. But then there was that crackle of laughter, an unnatural gurgle in the way it left her throat, and you turned to see the green-tinged pallor of her skin. “I was so hoping you’d show up.”

You didn’t know how much her appearance would effect you, until you were stuck to the side of the building, staring at what had once been your best friend. You’re so choked up that you can’t even formulate a response, because you want that to be Gwen so badly, but you know it isn’t. The more you look at her, the more Goblin you see, the more you know that the Gwen you love is never coming back.

“Nothing to say?” She asks, and then says your real name, the name she used to say down the crackle of a phone line, or across the school hallway, and she smiles. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“You should’ve stayed in prison, Gwen.” You say, your voice unsteady as you say her name aloud for the first time in what must be forever. She seems to relish in the tremble of your voice, and you have to curse yourself for being so stupid, for already showing the vulnerability she was so easily able to pick out.

The Green Goblin tutted at you, stood atop her glider, but the smile you saw didn’t belong to Gwen. “You’re pathetically predictable, you know. You’re like a moth to the flame.” She tells you, and you fear that she’s right, that you’re the same person you were back when you fought her, back when she almost won. She sighs, like something heavy is weighing upon her, but it turns wistful in the blink of an eye. “I’m just glad your dad isn’t here to see this. He’d be so disappointed.”

“Arachnid, focus.” Jessica’s voice interrupts, before you can spiral down that rabbit hole. How did Gwen even know about your father? She was in prison long before he died. It didn’t make sense.

“Maybe,” You say, that familiar tremble around your words. “He did always hope for the best for you.”

She bares her teeth at your words, the only visible reaction before her mask is slipping over the bottom of her face, stretching out up to pointed ears, all metallic and tinted a murky green. Then, she’s attacking.

It’s muscle memory, mostly, you think.

If you don’t think too hard about it, it could be like playing a game with a longtime friend from your childhood. You know the moves to make, you know how she’ll respond. It’s a constant push and pull, a balance which leaves only destruction behind, the path of the Green Goblin’s wrath tangible in each battle scene the two of you leave behind. You can’t beat her like this.

It’s her glitching that gives you a slight upper hand — and you send her careening off of her glider to the ground below.

Your heart squeezes suddenly in your chest as you watch her fall, her eyes wide in what could almost be perceived as fear. If you didn’t intervene, would she die? Would you have put an end to her story, once and for all, when you secretly hope there’s a cure out there for her? You can’t bear the thought of finding out, of watching her die, and so you foolishly dive after her.

A web to her midsection allows you to grip her before she hits the ground, and you set her down with a far more gentle hand than you would ever admit.

She says your name, then, a whispered version of it that sounds like Gwen. You think you can see her in those wide blue eyes, in that stare, and you approach with some caution. “Gwen,” You say, more of a question, “You with me?”

“I’m with you,” She answers, as you reach her side, as you resist the urge to pull off your mask. You’re so preoccupied staring at her expression that you don’t see the blade until it’s too late, your Spidey-sense failing you as you wallowed in your search for someone who was gone. “You sweet, predictable bug.” She spits then, twisting the blade she had sunk deep into your side, and you writhe, trying to move away from her.

“Arachnid!” Jessica Drew calls out, drawing the Green Goblin’s attention, allowing you to pull away from her slackened grasp. You leave the blade where it is, knowing your only slightly enhanced healing wouldn’t make up for the onslaught of blood that would pour from the wound. “I think that’s enough, Green Goblin.” Jessica says, riding a motorbike that you swore she didn’t have earlier. Nonetheless, she uses it to put even more space between you and your villain.

“You need a hand, kid?” A new voice asks, and a gloved hand reaches out for you where you had knelt against the tarmac. You look up, seeing a new Spider-man, but this one has his mask up, showing off his aged face and the bags underneath his eyes. You wave him off, staggering up to your feet, and clench your jaw as you stare at Green Goblin, watch as she pulls bombs from her waistband, barely the size of a chocolate bar, but capable of causing irreparable damage. “Get back to HQ, Arachnid, we can handle this.” Spider-man tells you, in what you suspect to be a fatherly voice, but you ignore him.

Time flies, slips out of your grasp, and you don’t know how long you and the others spend fighting Green Goblin, but she proves to be just as difficult of a foe for them to face as she was for you. Each time the three of you manage to get the drop on her, she slips away before she could be caught. It’s frustrating, and you can even see the way irritation thickens in the air, tangible.

Spider-man, or Peter, as Jessica had called him, is with you, focusing on trying to take Green Goblin down, whilst Jessica Drew is focused on damage control, blowing up Gwen’s bombs before they could hit their intended targets. You’re pretty sure the resident Spider-man is around here, too, pulling any lingering citizens out of harms way before Green Goblin could end them. You’d admit, it works better than you had done alone back on your own earth.

But it doesn’t work well enough, and more than one building is damaged almost beyond repair, and in the dust and rubble, Peter was distracted by the few citizens poking their heads out of the gaping hole in the side of their apartments. He didn’t see Green Goblin coming until it was too late, until she had thrown two of her bombs, one towards him, and one towards the already wrecked building.

Your throat dries up as you try to figure out what to do, who to go for, but in the end, you don’t have to choose.

Beams of glowing orange webs shoot into the bombs where they arc towards their victims, blowing them up and leaving both Peter and the civilians in the apartments without a scratch on any of them. Well, nothing that wasn’t already there before. You see him then, running alongside Jessica Drew, none other than Miguel O’Hara — who clearly didn’t think that the three of you were capable of handling Green Goblin.

“We’ve gotta end this.” Peter tells the three of you, glaring over at Green Goblin after coming so close to one of her bombs.

“You distract, I’ll go in.” You say, the only plan that makes sense. The only plan that’ll work. You wouldn’t be much use as a distraction, not with the blood still pooling around the blade hanging from your side, but you could beat her. You knew you could.

Peter nodded, and he, Jessica and Miguel went in one after another, landing hits on Green Goblin before she could even think to withdraw another bomb, or land a hit of her own, whilst you made your way behind her, swinging as high as you dared to go in your state. She was getting angry, you could tell, a distinct flush rushing up the back of her neck, a tell that Green Goblin shared with Gwen.

It was only when she was starting to turn the tide that you jumped down from your spot against the side of a building, looking for your opening.

She sent Jessica Drew tumbling off of her motorbike, which was your chance.

Green Goblin heard you only a moment before you were on her, not giving her a chance to make a countermove. Instead, you were curling your arms around her, as tight as you could, holding her hands away from her waistband. You gripped the blade in your side and yanked it out, holding it to her chest, breathing heavily through the pain as you bared your teeth at her, her face beside your own.

“Don’t make me kill you.” You say, and try not to hear the pleading in your own voice, the distinctive tone of a beg. You may have the upper hand on her, but as always, she had the power. “Don’t.” You repeat, because you can feel it in your bones that you would do it. If it was the choice between her or the hundreds that she would kill on this world, it would be those hundreds. There was no doubt about it, no questions to be asked.

You may have resented your mother, but she wasn’t the only one who died because of the Green Goblin. You wouldn’t let that happen again.

Perhaps she heard the plea in your voice, the giveaway that you weren’t bluffing, because she went still in your arms, still enough for the other Spiders to approach with some caution, eyes on her hands where you held them away from any weapons, using your forearm connected to the hand holding the blade to her chest to keep her left hand from grasping anything.

“I won’t be asking again.” You tell her, which is as much of a threat as you can muster. Or, more so, a promise.

As Miguel pushed you back with a firm hand, throwing a machine at Gwen’s feet, you think she understands. If the two of you are ever in that position again, there will be no hesitation about it. You will kill her.

“Good work, kid.” Peter says as Miguel and Jessica get to work with getting your Green Goblin through a portal to the HQ. He glanced down at where your hand is now pressing into your side, blood pouring steadily. In your other hand, you still hold the blade that had pierced your own skin, that would have killed Gwen Stacy had she not surrendered. He winces as if it’s him who got hurt, and guides you through the portal after the others. “C’mon, we’ll get you checked out. You not got enhanced healing?” He asks, though you suspect he doesn’t expect you to answer, and you’re glad.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

“I can do this myself, you know.” You sigh, wincing as a Spider-man — who apparently is also a doctor and works in the Spider Society’s infirmary — stitches up the wound on your midsection. It’s uncomfortable, though less painful that when you do it yourself. Still, it’s uncomfortable to accept help from these strangers.

“Ooh, shouldn’t say that to him.” Peter B. Parker laughs, one of the many Peter Parkers of the Society, but the same one who had fought Green Goblin with you. “He’ll lecture you on proper healthcare for days if you give him the opportunity!”

The Spider-doctor glares at Peter, or you assume he does, from the slight squint of the lenses of his mask. He kisses his teeth under the mask, tutting, muttering about “Spiders and their complete disregard for their health. Lucky you haven’t died ten times over from infections.” But he doesn’t say anything that requires a response from you, and he soon finished up the stitches. He goes to offer to fix up the injury on your ankle, but you’re up on your feet before he can even get the words out.

“Now, I gotta get back home to the wife, but Miguel wants to see you. He’ll take you home,” Peter tells you as he walks out of the infirmary by your side, but he stops you in the hallway with a hand on your shoulder, surprisingly gentle. “If that’s what you want.”

Your eyebrows furrowed before you could stop them, and the confusion over his words must’ve been written all over your face.

“Why wouldn’t I want that?” You ask, defensively.

Peter opens his mouth, but nothing escapes. Instead, it’s his expression that tells you everything he’s thinking. The crease between his brows screams pitying, or sympathetic. He’s talking about the way you live back on your earth, about the life you lead, Arachnid by day, and by night. With no room for you, no room for your secret identity. He’s thinking of the way you’ll be returning to a world with nobody awaiting you, with not a soul to look out for you, to stitch you up after a battle. Nobody but yourself, anyway.

You pull away from him, brows furrowing further, into an almost angered expression, and you don’t watch the way his hand falls away from your shoulder back to his side. He sighs when you turn away, scoffing as you make your way through the hallways of the Lobby towards where you think Miguel will be.

It’s overwhelming, all of these people. They all believe that they know you, that they know your circumstances, your story, but the truth is that they don’t. Nobody does, and that’s the way you prefer it. You don’t need a Society of Spiders surrounding you, breathing down your neck, telling you they’re sorry, or not trusting you to handle yourself in your own fights, because you can handle yourself. You’ve spent the last year of your life trying to prove that, trying to prove that you can do good things, that you’re worthy of the title Arachnid. You certainly shouldn’t need to prove that to a whole Society of people like you, most of which had been doing the job a lot longer.

You’re capable and you’re content.

You don’t need a life as your secret identity to be content, in fact, it’s better without one. You don’t have to tell so many lies, don’t have to worry about hurting the people you love, because there are none of them left. There’s nobody to hurt, and there’s nobody to lie to. Why would you want to change that?

The hallway ahead looks familiar, and you follow it until you enter a room where Miguel stands, looking at orange tinted screens on a platform halfway up the room. You enter with the absolute certainty that you want to return to your own earth, and you’re not going to let anybody stop you.

“I’m ready.” You tell him, expectantly.

He scoffs, saying nothing, still staring at the screens in front of him. For whatever reason, the reaction makes you angry — inexplicably so. You’re slinging up to the platform before you can have a second thought about it, and you’re pushing his shoulder so he’ll face you, so he’ll acknowledge you.

He stares at you, unimpressed.

“Send me back to my earth.” You press, brows furrowed beneath your mask, but you’re sure he can see the anger in the way your shoulders tense up.

“Sure,” Miguel said blankly, staring at you as if you’d suddenly change your mind or something. “But you know, there’s a lot more like her.” He added on when you said nothing, waiting for him to send you back to your world so you could give him back the stupid watch still wrapped around your wrist.

You stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “There are no more like her.” You respond, feeling that hot press on your chest. You don’t want to talk about Gwen Stacy anymore than you’re sure he’d like to talk about whatever he had gone through in his life. Hell, you don’t even want to think about her, but you know that nobody else you would ever have to face would hurt you in the way that she did. In the way that having to see her as an enemy, rather than your friend, had hurt. So, yeah, there was nobody like her, not for you.

Miguel seems ready to let you go for a moment, but then he’s shaking his head at you. “You have a place here. You can be with people like you. You don’t have to do this alone, anymore.” He says, and you think that is ironic, because you don’t see anybody else in here. To you, it seems like he is doing exactly that; doing the job alone. You can practically see the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I prefer being alone.” You tell him, and it has to be true. It has to be.

His jaw sets, acceptance, you think, and he nods. He glances past you, to where a portal was open on the floor below. Considering that you hadn’t seen him set up the portal, you’d wager that his AI Lyla must’ve listened in and done it for him. You pull the watch off of your wrist, relishing in the way your very atoms seem to sag with the weight of being in another dimension.

“Thanks.” You say, and drop down, landing on your sore ankle but not murmuring a word about the pain. You walk back to your world with your head held high, despite your tattered suit and multitude of wounds that would take days to stop hurting.

Miguel stares after you as the portal closes, eyebrows furrowed. He barely acknowledges Jessica Drew’s arrival in the room, already having known she had been lingering in the hallway, listening in. “Well, that went well.” She comments, glancing between where the portal had been and where Miguel stands, brooding. She knows how much pressure he puts on himself, and she knows that he cares about each and every Spider-person in the multiverse. It doesn’t take a Spider-sense to see the way in which you struggle. It’s a familiar struggle, sure, but there were so many Spiders across the multiverse who had a shoulder to lean on in their hardest times. Who did you have? There was no Aunt May for Arachnid, or Gwen Stacy, or Harry Osborne, or, well, anybody.

Jessica thinks that if anybody were to know exactly how that felt, it would be Miguel.

#heartpascal writes #across the spiderverse spoilers #atsv spoilers #spiderman atsv spoilers #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x you #miguel o’hara x platonic reader #jessica drew x platonic reader #peter b parker x platonic reader #peter b parker x reader #spiderverse x reader #spiderverse x platonic reader #spiderverse x you #spiderverse imagines #spiderverse one shot #spiderverse imagine #spiderverse angst #miguel o’hara angst #struggling idk how to tag with a new fandom shhh

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pepperf · 2 months ago

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Genuinely can't decide if the writers intended the Five and Lila relationship to be toxic, or if that's just their idea of romance - just like Rochester, Heathcliff, Darcy, and that dude from Twilight, right???

Okay, let's have a readmore. Note tags, ppl, and curate your experience.

Lila has a relatively sensible approach to relationships, which is consistent, despite her somewhat Machiavellian approach to getting what she wants out of them - she put Diego in his place about having realistic expectations back in s3. She's pretty clear about who she is and where her lines are drawn, and is "weirdly self-actualised", according to Klaus. And Five - romantically inexperienced, thinks everyone should do what he says at all times - tries to impose his notion of How This Should Go onto her, from nearly the start of their brief romance, but leaning hard into it once it starts going sour - which also checks out: he was alone for 45 years and his previous relationship was all in his head, giving him full control, so that's what he's used to. But I couldn't tell if they genuinely intended to show it as him being incredibly selfish in prioritising his feelings over her wishes, or if they honestly thought it was romantic. I mean, the barbed wire-style bracelet is a little on the nose, and there's some symbolism that I'll get into in a sec. Truthfully, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt - I think SB at least thought it was hot, judging by what he's said about identifying with Five, and about how he finally gets to have a romance. This seems to have been his pet project for the season, blergh.

It's that tedious old misogynist chestnut, that all women secretly want A Man to take control. It's frustrating, because they already established that Lila likes to be in charge, she wants to be free to make her own choices, she'd already had twenty-plus years of being told what to think and do. And yet she has to remind Five, who really ought to know her better by now, "You do not get to decide what I do with my life!" It's also very disconnected from reality. It's not actually fun or sexy to be gaslighted, to be lied to by some insecure asshole who thinks they know better about what's good for you, that they have a right to stick their nose into your personal relationships or keep you away from your kids. Not cool, Five, not cool. He's lucky she didn't kick him in the nuts on the way out. But another reason I think they didn't do this consciously is that Five doesn't seem to realise his assholery - there's no hint that he's regretting anything other than being dumped.

Lila was trapped for seven years in an intense, claustrophobic situation with Five - and if they'd continued to exist, she could have worked through the feelings that come out of that. Like Ritu said, of course there's going to be love there: they've spent seven years together, on the run. If nothing else, it would be a matter of survival - either you find a way to get along, or you kill each other. And they went in with a fair amount in common already (although being adopted by the Handler at age four is not at all the same as being recruited by her at age fifty-something). So I'm annoyed that Lila's whole arc this season is one of frustration about having to be the grown up in her relationship, taking a break to reassess, going off to do something a bit crazy and fun - and promptly getting stranded with someone considerably less emotionally competent.

Okay, I'm being somewhat harsh - Lila unexpectedly getting the timeout she wanted could've been a decent storyline, she could have some time to reflect, live the child-free life without consequences, and have some adventures (she actively enjoys danger!). And she and Five got to bond, that had lots of interesting potential, especially with their complicated history. But it tipped over from being a potential opportunity into an immensely over the top punishment for her impulsivity, and took them so far from where they'd started that there's a total emotional disconnect with the main story. Which is a fucking weird choice for one episode in such a short season, ngl.

And then, ugh, she's right back to dealing with the apocalypse, visibly thrown by a Diego who has unexpectedly thought about what she said and is trying to be a better husband, and dealing with a Five who has decided to get territorial. It's deeply uncomfortable, Five is gearing up to start trouble, so wrapped up in his own hurt feelings that he's functionally useless for the actual problem in front of them - leaving Lila to deal with the mess he creates, and then leverage said feelings to get him to put on his big boy pants and help. She still reaches out to him in the end, I think she knows him well enough by this point to understand what makes him tick...and she's having to be the sensible one up to the end of her existence. Can't she have someone who's willing to meet her halfway? The reflecting that Diego did, him making a start on making amends (given that it was only a few hours for him, that's about as much as they could squeeze in) was basically just wasted. They start to reconnect at the end, and mutually apologise for the damage they've done - but that's all they get, and it's a travesty.

Personally I think the whole storyline should have been cut, but if - if - they really felt it added something, they could have given it some time in the real world, see how this shaky new romance holds up against a serious relationship that's been massively fractured. In a different show, that might have been a fine story. But they don't do that. Whatever she might have wanted, Lila doesn't get time to even think about her choices. She gets to stop existing. (Or they could just have not gone there in the first place, god I hate love triangle plotlines, they do no favours for anyone involved!)

Given a continued existence in which to do so, I'm sure Five would have moved on pretty quickly. It's his first romance with a real person, he feels it intensely - but once the dust settled, he'd see that they were in very different emotional places (she wanted to get back to her family, the break from reality is way overdue to end - and he wanted to stay in their little bubble and leave all that behind). The actual romance part was actually pretty brief, and lacking in any deep communication - as Lila says, it wasn't real. They're playing house in an attempt to feel normal - in a greenhouse (a fragile structure, not a real home), eating strawberries (a treat more than real sustenance), like children...hey, maybe I'm wrong and the writers DID intend to do that, bc that's some choice visual metaphors. And they're playing roles: all their normal antagonism - what made them so fun and sparky in previous seasons, and even during the earlier part of their adventure! - disappears. Lila is a chameleon, taking on a character is her happy place - and this was how Five kept himself going, last time he was in this situation, so he's slipping back into that method of survival (although he's not as good as she is at separating reality from fiction). So while all that is totally understandable, it's insubstantial. If Five had the space to do some self-reflection, or if one of his more rational siblings (Luther maybe, or...um...or a friend, if he can make one...or maybe that dude in the Losers Department at the CIA...) sat down with him and explained that you need to treat a partner as an equal, maybe he could do better next time - or double down and keep being an asshole, that's also a strong possibility.

idk - I still don't honestly think the show intended it that way, unfortunately. I think they shoehorned the characters into the scenes they wanted, regardless of sense or even plot requirement. There are a LOT of badly-explained or badly-thought out moments in this season, and this whole mess just adds to the incoherency. Or maybe it's just a consequence of TV - you get multiple creative people involved, and the reasoning gets muddied, especially over time. Maybe it was SB's intention from the start, but he didn't inform the actors until the final season, so they've been playing it straight.

This show has an...interesting tendency to do something that you think is totally unacceptable and just gloss over it at the time, and then address it next season (like Luther apologising to Viktor), as if the writers all brought it up in their respective therapy sessions during the break, and worked through the issues - so maybe if they'd had another season, they would have gone into all that. Maybe. But we're clearly not going to get that, and they're all gone from existence so I can't headcanon that in this universe, they eventually sort it out. So I'm putting it down to one thing:

Break out the dodgy facial hair (I see you're ahead of me, Five) and let's get kicking babies!

#tua s4 #tua #the umbrella academy #five hargreeves #lila pitts #anti-fivela #pepper gets salty #there are currently 3 hours left on that poll but I don't think the result are gonna change #I would've posted this yesterday in fact but then I made myself go watch some of the scenes in question ��🤢🤢#and had some edits to make

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just-a-ghost00 · 4 months ago

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What they thought the last time they saw you?

Decks used : Threads of fate oracle & White Numen tarot. Warning : this reading might be triggering depending on the group you pick.

Group 1

Note : I had to redo this reading because of interferences. When you last met, their might have been other people trying to get your/their attention. I also had to do an unusual type of spread and pick the cards myself instead of shuffling because of these interfering energies. So the context in which you met may have been unusual for you or unpredicted. You or they could have had to change the way they proceed in order to get what you/they wanted.

The Creator, The Pillar, Compassion, Get wild | Knight of swords, 7 of cups rx, ace of swords, 10 of wands

The focus is put more on what they felt than what they thought. And I guess that says a lot about this person. They felt very excited and adventurous. There is a sense of novelty surrounding this meeting. Like this person is taking a new founding step in their journey and they are very optimistic about it. I feel like here we are talking about people that only recently met or whose connection is in the beginning stages. It's more like a crush / new encounter / fresh friendship energy. There might have been a wall or an important structure standing behind this person. Like something that litterally and metaphorically supported them. Right away I am picking up on a stage. Because the image depicted on the Pillar card it reminds me of Paris (Arc de Triomphe) and Italy/Roma (Arch of Titus). If there is maybe one thought that crossed their mind, it was that this moment with you was somewhat magical. They were very grateful, hopeful and beyond amazed by the amount of support and love they felt. It gave them wings and made them want to surpass themselves. But with this feeling of bliss also came a feeling of dread. They felt pressured. Pressured by time and space. Pressured by the passion, by the acts, the words, the people around them. They felt like they were not given a choice or given time to process what was going on. They felt pressured because they didn't know what to think and yet they were expected to have thoughts. They knew that you expected a lot from them and they felt like they were not in a position to honor their duty towards you, to give you proper thought and attention. To communicate clearly how they felt and what they hoped for. Things were going too fast too soon and as much as they loved being with you, they also regret how it went. I was drawn to the depiction of he knight of swords which I mistook for the queen. This knight looks very friendly and charming, and that to me felt unusual. So another thought that might have crossed this person's mind was that your friendliness was suspicious or didn't feel genuine. Maybe because they aren't used to such reactions from other people. They thought it hid something and it made them a little uncomfortable.

Group 2

Note : for this group I felt like picking more cards than the first. I interpret this as them having a lot on their plate. There were a lot of things they regret not doing or not saying. This is them showing that they still care. Then when I started interpreting I felt the urge to cover the cards. They didn't want to see the truth of what was happening.

Ancestors, Speak truth, Death, Sacred sexuality, Reflect | 5 of cups, The Sun, The Tower, The Hanged man, 8 of pentacles

They thought that they were losing something very precious and dear to their heart. And that it is almost impossible for them to get it back unless they work really hard on themselves. We're talking here about people who are in separation and/or in conflict. They realized that you were important to them when it was too late. They thought that had they told you the truth about their family, about their past, potentially about their children, things would have unfolded differently. They thought about telling you they missed you and that losing you would break their heart but they didn't. They were too shocked to speak up. For some people, we're talking about a deceased loved one. There might have been a hidden truth in the family regarding the passing of someone. Possibly a child. That feels like only a small portion of you though. For others, I'm picking up on someone not telling you about their sexual preferences. They didn't have the courage to tell you they couldn't love you the way you hoped because their sexual preferences were different than what you assumed. And as long as they don't regret who they are and what they love, they regret not telling you because they know they betrayed your trust. They thought they ruined your friendship. They though that a time apart from each other was necessary if they wanted to be able to come back into your life. That you would need time to heal and this could only be possible if they weren't a part of your life for a while.

Group 3

Note : for this group I felt the need to shift my position. I was sitting on the ground and I turned my back on the soread. This tells me that one of you has chosen to turn their back on the connection. There was only one card I didn't have to pick. Somehow I think it's relevant to the reading but I don't know what that means.

The Weaver, Soul work, Ancestors, Release | Queen of wands, King of cups, White Numen rx, Queen of cups

"I gave you all and yet you chose to turn your back on me". I heard that very clearly in my head looking at the spread. "There wasn't much to hesitate about. I was right there. It was pretty obvious. You shouldn't have had to pick, just to listen and pay attention". They thought that you were made for each other, destined to be together but you didn't see eye to eye with them on that matter. My skin feels very itchy right now. It's like it didn't feel right for this person to be ignored and chosen over someone else. There could have been several scenarios : some of you could have prefered your family over this person, others you chose another romantic partner over the one that was interested in you. They thought that by chosing a different path, you ruined all chances of this connection to bloom into something beautiful. They truly believed in the potential of what you shared, they were willing to put in the work and they don't understand why you couldn't see it. They're like "everything was written, all conditions were aligned for this to work and yet, you discarded it like it never mattered". For others I feel like you chose your status and career over the connection. They feel like your fame and success mattered more than their feelings or the happiness you could have built together. They thought this situation was unfair. That they have nothing to be blamed for because they know in their heart they did everything in their power to make it work, that they never caused you any wrong. They feel like they were never enough for you or that you didn't like them in the first place.

#just-a-ghost #pick a card #pac reading #spiritual pac #love pac #tarot reading #oracle reading

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syrena-del-mar · 10 months ago

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Dead Friend Forever Is More Than Just A 90s Slasher Film Imitation

Oh man, I went in thinking I would just get a whole lot of gore and murder, and instead I'm getting a buttload of social class distinction, parental issues, mental health crises, organized crime, and a highly-likely revenge plot line.

The thing about Dead Friend Forever is that it starts unassuming, almost like an copy of all other teen slashers from the 90s. A group of friends, up in a cabin and suspects to a potential murder, become hunted one-by-one. A cliche slasher plot if I ever heard one. Until it’s not. This show is taking up a very big corner of my brain, so I’m going to delve deeper into it.

If you haven't watched episode 6 yet, spoilers up ahead.

Pulling inspiration from 90s slasher re-inventor, Scream

The first four episodes really set up the expectation that DFF was going to be another slasher, seemingly particularly influenced by Scream (1996). Scream was a turning point for slasher movies, signaling a shift in from the movies of the 80s to that of the 90s. It was the first of many movies to allow for the characters to be self-aware of what genre they're working in, where the characters knew of the slasher-movie tropes and attempted to do everything right to survive. Scream is also the first slasher to truly humanize the killers, and I don't mean by making them empathetic, but rather the killers were human, so they made human mistakes. Prior to Scream, the antagonists in slasher films were usually this supernatural villain that was just murder-hungry. But in Scream, the killers are all just regular people and would often make mistakes on their way to kill the protagonists, like a normal human would. It's why Scream was scary, the killer could be anyone, it wasn't this supernatural being. And even when you're making the right choices to escape, you still end up dead.

In Dead Friend Forever, we're getting so many of the same tropes that Scream had subverted. The group is working understanding exactly what they're facing; Fluke warning to not pull out the stake inside Por, Top wanting to split up in the temple while Phee, Jin and Tan veto against it expressly stating it would be like the horror movies, White not wanting to be left behind in the cabin. They all know what they shouldn't be doing while there is a killer on the loose. Also, it's why there's these funny little moments of the killer in DFF (i.e. having to steal the motorcycle to get back to the cabin). I'm not completely convinced that there isn't any paranormal activity or at least some type hallucinogen-component at play, but the way the killer acts is very human-like. Not to mention the parallel of Barcode (arguably the most popular actor in the show) getting slashed in the first minute of the show, eerily similar to how in the opening scene of Scream, Drew Barrymore (the most well-known of the cast) gets killed immediately.

The Benefits of Series Format versus Movie Format

The series format is where I think Dead Friend Forever is really shining the most. @wen-kexing-apologist made an awesome post on the directorial direction this show is taking, particularly in how since the first four episodes we have very little context as to why the killings are occurring or even the state of everyone's relationship, we're freely able to form opinions on each character. Similarly, prior to getting to know what happened to Non, I also thought Tee was the better one of the group. But here we are, two episodes later and I find him to be the most detestable of the bunch (which says something, when Por and Top are competing in this category).

We're seeing and experiencing the absolute hell that this friend group had actively made (sans Jin and Fluke that suffer from the bystander effect) Non's life out to be. In a regular slasher movie, especially ones that model themselves after Scream, we find out why the Killer is doing what he's doing to the victims in the last quarter of the movie, but the emotional value is a little skewed. The little amount of time we spend learning about what the victims did to the Killer usually still leaves you feeling at least a smidge of pity for the victims and some joy that the Final Girl made it. Here, the mass consensus is that each and every one of them should die.

And it comes back to the luxury of spending several episodes in a flashback to what lead up to the killings after the game of cat-and-mouse has begun. We're introduced to Non as an outsider, where everyone, but Jin, has already formed a bad opinion of Non. They already have a brutal nickname for him (read @forkaround's awesome analysis on the term 'Greasy'). They already established that he's an outsider in the classroom, but they make an active point of only referring to him as 'Greasy' and Non just accepts it. We see the friend group frame him, causing him to spiral twice to point of suicide, proceed to prey on him into a money laundering scheme, get him caught in a criminal investigation, all while already undergoing mental health treatment. We're given that time to know and see the pain that Non is caused, the manipulation that he is put under, and ultimately the devastation that they've caused.

Dead Friends Forever is more than just another teen slasher, because it has time. And it's using its time wisely, giving us bits and pieces of information in the beginning before delving into something more sinister than the killer on the loose, the original five. Run-of-the-mill bullying has turned into framing, assault and other criminal activity, even murder. And yet, while Non is the one that has disappeared (or died), the other five have been able to make a life for themselves without suffering any of the consequences. It's showing exactly what they have done to deserve everything that is coming to them.

Final Thoughts

Man, Be on Cloud is truly blowing it out of the water with this show. I'm actually a bit sad that it's only barely starting to get the recognition that it deserves, because in my opinion, it's just that good, BUT I also understand why it's had a sleepy start. It's in an place, a BL in one sense, but not exactly a BL in any other. I've said it before, but no matter what you think of BOC as a management company, the stories that they tell are unique and they have the artists that are competent enough to deliver. Be on Cloud has, allegedly, allowed the writers take the reign on the show, even if this means messing with the couples, so even more chaos is going to occur. This is, frankly, exciting to see and experience the story as they want it to be told.

I said this when I first saw Barcode in KinnPorsche deliver that heartbreaking cry, that boy knows how to cry. He was a newbie and his stole that scene. Now this is his third show under his belt and his acting chops only continue to improve, I truly can't wait to see what more he is able to do here in Dead Friend Forever. I love that Sammon is also enjoying what Barcode has able to bring forth in Non and that all her worries have been eased. I truly think that Barcode is going to have an incredible career ahead of him, whether in music or in acting.

Ta, on the other hand, also deserves his share of accolades. I wasn't sure of how to read to Phee in the first four episodes, but with the information that episode 6 has given us? The picture has cleared significantly and now, having rewatched his scenes, everything makes sense on why he seemed to be conniving. Episode 6 had some of the strongest performances and yet the biggest gasp I made was in the last minute. The singular tear rolling down Phee's cheek after having to perform the two-finger method, to have Non throw up the pills, and holding him in his arms? Quite literally jaw-dropping.

Sammon has a strong repertoire of shows, so I have complete faith that she knows what she's doing for Dead Friend Forever. I hope this becomes as much of a cult favorite, much like Manner of Death and Triage.

Anyways if you need me, I'll probably be stuck thinking about PheeNon for the next week until episode 7 airs.

#dead friend forever #dead friend forever the series #dead friend forever meta #dff meta #dff the series #barcode tinnasit #ta nannakun #copper phuriwat #pheenon #be on cloud #pheejin #tabarcode #boc actors #thai bl #thai bl meta #bl meta #steph rambles

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hotdaemondtargaryen · 4 months ago

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TOM GLYNN-CARNEY INTERVIEWED FOR NERDIST MAGAZINE.

I'M TOLD YOU'RE ON HOLIDAY IN A REMOTE AREA, SO I HAVE TO ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTION: ARE YOU CURRENTLY VACATIONING IN BRAVOS?

"[Laughs] No."

"No, I’m not."

INTERVIEWER: I’m in [actual location] — which Nerdist can confirm is beautiful — withheld so Aemond Targaryen doesn’t find out.

DO YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHERE LARYS IS TAKING AEGON? IS IT REALLY BRAAVOS?

"Can’t disclose that information at this point, I don’t think."

"But wherever it is, it’s somewhere."

"Sorry, I just made that up. I don’t know."

DOES AEGON HAVE ANY DOUBTS ABOUT LARYS OR DOES HE FULLY TRUST HIM AT THIS POINT?

"He’s the best of a bad bunch in the Red Keep."

"I think there is a certain amount of trust that he has towards Larys just because there’s common ground."

"They’re both physically impaired now, and Larys has lived his entire life in that state."

"So there’s some sort of connectivity going on there, but also it seems like he does have Aegon’s best interests at heart at this point."

"I don’t think Aegon wants to look too much into that at the moment."

"He will find cracks in the woodwork."

"So yeah, he’s a lifeline at the moment."

"And he shall be used accordingly."

AT THIS POINT HOW DOES AEGON FEEL ABOUT HIS MOTHER ALICENT?

"That’s a good question."

"I think he feels there’s this undying love that he has for Alicent."

"Aegon, he’s her first born son, and yet there’s never been this kind of understanding or eye-to-eye that they’ve had."

"He knows she’s flawed, and she knows he’s flawed, and I think they expect a lot from each other that neither of them are able to give."

"But at this point, he’s not thinking that rationally."

"He likes to point the finger and he needs to find somebody to blame."

"He blames Aemond, of course."

"But also for it to get to this point, Alicent has sort of steered the ship in a certain way."

"So yeah, there’s a lot going on there."

"It’s quite a complex relationship."

I KNOW AS AN ACTOR YOU HAVE TO FIND AEGON'S HUMANITY, BUT DOES THE KING HIMSELF RECOGNIZE, IN ANY WAY, HE'S A MONSTER?

"I think he’s dancing with the idea of being loved and feared at the same time."

"I know I’ve said that in interviews before, but I think it’s a good way of putting it."

"Those two things don’t really go together."

"He’s trying to work out a way for his approach to being the king and to ruling."

"He’s trying to strike a balance where he remains effective, but also people listen to him."

"At the moment he hasn’t been listened to, which is kind of why he’s had to force himself into this position of being proactive in a way that he was not ready to do."

"So, no, I don’t think he thinks he’s a monster because I don’t think he is a monster."

"I think he’s somebody who’s very tortured and traumatized by his own making really."

"But I also think it makes somebody more dangerous when they don’t realize potential."

"I don’t think he does quite just yet."

CONSIDERING I KNOW HOW IMPORTANT AEGON IS TO THE STORY, I WAS VERY FRUSTRATED BY HOW LITTLE THE SHOW FEATURED YOU IN SEASON ONE. DID YOU KNOW BACK THEN JUST HOW BIG YOUR ROLE WOULD BE IN SEASON TWO?

"I was warned it was an introduction."

"Just in terms of the time jump."

"We couldn’t really have the older versions of our characters, myself and Helaena and Aemond and the likes, because of the time jump we were making."

"I understood season one was always more of an introduction to our versions of these characters, and season two would really lift off."

"And season three and onwards would just get tastier and tastier as time went on."

"So no, I didn’t feel shortchanged or let down or anything."

"I was always updated with the plan."

THE SHOW IS CHARTING IT'S OWN COURSE AND MAKING SOME BIG CHANGES TO THE DANCE OF THE DRAGONS. HAVE (SHOWRUNNER) RYAN CONDAL AND THE WRITERS GIVEN YOU A HEADS UP ON WHAT AWAITS AEGON IN SEASONS THREE AND FOUR?

"Yeah, I’ve spoken to Ryan and writers Sara Hess and David Hancock a lot about their ideas, about the trajectory that they want Aegon to go on."

"They have been quite… there’s been details, but not too detailed because of giving things away and not locking things in the writing room."

"It’s exciting to listen to and it’s exciting to understand where their thoughts are and include me in that as well, which is great."

"It feels very collaborative that they want to know my thoughts and the rest of the actors on their own characters journeys really."

"It’s great."

I THINK THIS IS REALLY SAYING SOMETHING ON A SHOW THIS WELL ACTED: YOUR PERFORMANCE THIS YEAR WAS A REVELATION FOR MANY AND HAS RIGHTFULLY EARNED VERY HIGH PRAISE. WHAT'S IT BEEN LIKE PERSONALLY HEARING THAT KIND OF RESPONSE TO YOUR WORK?

"It’s very kind."

"Thank you."

"To be honest, I try and stay away from all of the conversations about it."

"It feels like my work, for now anyway, has been done."

"And I want to sort of put it to bed and move on and not really dwell on it."

"I think if I get too engaged with what people are saying, and the noises people are making, I’ll get too in my head."

"That’s not really the way I like to work."

"But I’m really glad to hear that people are responding well and they’re seeing lots of different colors to Aegon that they didn’t anticipate."

"That was my job from the first day on set, to bring this character to life in a multidimensional, varied, color palette kind of way."

"And he’s an absolute gift to play."

"I think you’d do well to do a bad job of a character like Aegon."

"He’s a gift that keeps on giving."

YOU HAD TO DO A LOT THIS YEAR AS AEGON. WHAT IS MORE CHALLENGING AS A PERFORMER: THE BIG PHYSICAL, LOUD, EMOTIONAL SCENES FROM EARLIER IN THE SEASON OR THE QUIETER ONES AFTER AEGON'S INJURIES?

"Both for different reasons."

"I dunno, that’s like comparing badminton with tennis, two very different sports."

"In terms of stamina, probably the louder, more kind of theatrical scenes."

"They require a lot of focus and a lot of energy and usually emotional depth and agility."

"But saying that, when I’m in the bed, covered in all the prosthetics and stuff, that’s tiring in its own way and difficult to remain focused on the task at hand."

"So yeah, both have their own challenges, but I revel in both arenas."

MY LAST QUESTION, AND I WOULD NOT FORGIVE MYSELF IF I DIDN'T ASK THIS, WHAT HAPPENED TO AEGON'S TERRIBLE LITTLE MUSTACHE FROM FIRE & BLOOD?

"[Laughs] Good question."

"You know what? I had this conversation with Amanda Knight, the wonderful hair and makeup designer on the show."

"We spoke about this at the start, about whether we could bring that to life, because I remember seeing pictures of him."

And she was like, 'You know what? You might not want to sustain that for the amount of time that we do this show. So maybe let’s go clean shaven and see where we get from there.'

"But that’s not to say that it might not come at some point, even though he has had his face burned, it might be half a mustache, but we’ll see."

#house of the dragon #hotd #hotd s2 #tv shows #team green #aegon ii #king aegon ii targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #tom glynn carney #the greens #hotd aegon #hotd s2 spoilers #hotd spoilers #interview #aegon x larys #larys strong #hotd larys #aegon x alicent

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cherri-balms · 2 years ago

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popular girl reader x sal? maybe they’re seeing each other secretly and she’s kinda mean lol

OMG!! Thank you so much for sending in your request for me! This is my first request so I'm a little nervous, but I'm excited too! I'm kind of going for a very free-form style for the time being while I get used to getting back into the swing of things! ♥♥♥♥♥♥

I couldn't tell you why but I found this particular request very intriguing, I ended up taking a lot of creative liberty as I went going! I really hope you enjoy it!!! >v<

RAITING: G || EWC: 2K || READER GENDER: F ||

♥𝓢𝓪𝓵 𝓕𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓮𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓽𝓵𝔂 𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓹𝓸𝓹𝓾𝓵𝓪𝓻 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵♥

♥Getting Together♥

♥〉〉 This kind of reserved, mean exterior is nothing new to Sal, at least after having to deal with Travis picking on him for most of his high school life. So needless to say he's gotten a bit of practice in this department! ♥〉〉 The difference between you and Travis that Sal hadn't dealt with yet (and made it just a tad rougher to get to know you), was that Travis was very clearly a confused kid without a healthy way to deal with his problems at home. You, on the other hand, were a bit more complicated to read.

♥〉〉 It seemed like you had everything a teenager would want. Every guy seemed to want to be with you, and every girl wanted to be you. You had lots of friends, good grades, a beautiful figure, and the most envious trait:

♥〉〉 A beautiful face.

♥〉〉 He couldn't understand why someone like you felt the need to be so stand-offish toward everyone. Maybe you really were just as stuck up and entitled as some of his friends Larry say you are?

♥〉〉 All this together should've made him stop, to pull his hand away from the fire before he got burned... but the temptation of the potential warm comfort outweighed that logic.

♥〉〉 He really became a moth in your light. Sal wanted to get to know you with each interaction, but not the intimidating [y/n] everyone had put up on a pedestal. Rather, he found you to be a rather tricky puzzle he couldn't put down until he solved it once and for all.

♥〉〉 Sal wasn't surprised his hardest challenge was just being able to get your attention. This was the other big difference between you and Travis: Where Travis went out of his way to get a rise out of Sal, you either blew off any attempt he made or one of your friends was quick to take your attention back.

♥〉〉 All while giving him that "Who do you think you are talking to someone like her" look he was all too familiar with throughout his life. It was also something that made him envious of your good looks even more...

♥〉〉 After an intervention from his friend group he was all but ready to give up until he finally got his moment alone with you.

♥〉〉 It was late in the afternoon when all the clubs were letting out and the sports teams were finishing up with practice. Typically, Sal wasn't the kind of guy to stay after school preferring instead to continue his ghost investigation in Addison Appartments.

♥〉〉 But, art was his weakest subject. With Larry and Ash busy getting tutoring from Todd for their own academic struggles he had to take it upon himself into putting in more elbow grease to bring his grades up with the teacher. As the sun began to set earlier during daylight savings, the nearby coast's storm clouds had moved in over Nockfell, making their presence known with the loud warnings of thunder before the inevitable wind and rain.

♥〉〉 Before Sal could worry about getting home, his cell vibrated with a text from Larry letting him know he and Lisa were on their way in place of his dad.

♥〉〉 When he headed up to the front entrance to wait for Lisa and Larry, he didn't expect to see you sitting up against the wall alone, looking down at your phone.

♥〉〉 "[Y/N]? I didn't expect to see you here so late.." His start at conversation only got him a quick glance, your appearance illuminated in the spotlight your phone gave in the dim lighting of the school after hours. Alright so far, not so good it seemed...

♥〉〉 Waiting a few moments to see if you would respond, he tries again, "Are you waiting for your ride? I'm waiting on mine right now, can I sit with you?" Same as before, silence. This time though you had scooted over just enough to let him sit next to you. Hey! That's progress!

♥〉〉 "That was what I was waiting on. I only stayed this late because I was going to dinner with my friends after they finished tennis practice, but they cleared out early when the weather got bad and forgot me. Well..." you move a little closer to show Sal the texts you were just having between your friends, and what he read made his stomach churn.

♥〉〉 The messages revealed they hadn't forgotten to come get you at all, rather they left you there on purpose as a sick joke knowing you had no way home. Sal didn't even try to hide his frustration, not even able to read the rest of the texts.

♥〉〉 "Don't make such a big deal out of this Sally Face. They just wanted to inconvenience me a little, we do stuff like this all the time."

♥〉〉 Seeing this happen to you hit especially close to home, as his "friends" back in Jersey had teased and messed with him in similar ways. It wasn't until he met Larry, Todd, and Ashley that he got to see what it was like to have a proper support system.

♥〉〉 He could also see a little further into your attitude now, it was almost like treating others and being treated with cruelty was just an expectation...

♥〉〉 Sal knew he wasn't going to be able to change your entire outlook with one conversation, but the least he could do was show you that same compassion his friends first showed him as bright headlights soon flooded the room from outside.

♥〉〉 "I'm gonna ask Lisa if it's alright to drop you off home too, it's way too dangerous to walk home at night- let alone in a storm like this."

♥〉〉 "The hell you aren't." The sudden blunt rejection was most certainly not what he was expecting, but neither was the light tint of pink your cheeks held. "Like I'm gonna let you of all people put me in a debt, I'll get home just fine. But, here-"

♥〉〉 You took out a pen from your bag and started scribbling something down on his hand, something he couldn't quite read in the lack of proper light. "This is just so I can let you know I got home safe, alright? Don't be a weirdo about this later." You didn't waste a second after that to leave the building (and him dumbfounded)

♥〉〉 Stepping outside himself, Sal finally got a good look at what you had written down on his hand.

♥〉〉 It was a phone number! Your number! An odd, and honestly quite crude way of giving him your number but hey, he wasn't upset.

♥〉〉 Once he finally got home he shot you a text letting you know who he was and that he was safe, finding himself glued to the screen until he got a reply back.

♥〉〉 Eventually his nerves were put to ease when he got the reply, and for some unexplainable reason, it made his heart skip a beat when he read it:

♥〉〉 > Hey Sally, lyk I'm alive. Drenched, but alive. > Sorry for leaving so suddenly, thank you for keeping me company

♥〉〉 Maybe you really were just a normal girl after all ♡

♥Being Together♥

♥〉〉 Getting into a relationship wound up going quicker than expected after your first proper encounter!

♥〉〉 Sal was quick to realize that you were never intentionally trying to be mean to him, not even really as a front for your friends. Rather, none of your snide remarks had any weight to them at all; the definition of hot air.

♥〉〉 Because of this your relationship was never really intended to be a secret in the start, rather you were still getting used to genuine communication and tended to revert to your typical ways in public. While Sal understood, both of your social circles just thought it was business as usual.

♥〉〉 Even when you had started transitioning into more romantic forms of affection, Sal was already not one for PDA so even your social status aside he wasn't really ready to venture into heavy romantics immediately.

♥〉〉 Which was something you found oddly sweet about your growing bond with him, because as one would expect you had been on many, many dates before Sal. You both had a dynamic where you were able to show the other a foreign kind of relationship you weren't used to.

♥〉〉 The problem arises when you do secretly date on purpose...

♥〉〉 See, Sal is wildly known to be an awful liar, and even worse when it came to keeping secrets.

♥〉〉 Between him turning down hangouts with his group, checking his phone a lot more often, and just in general having a different air to him everyone could tell he was hiding something. Larry most of all had been suspecting Sal had a romantic partner behind his back before anyone else though.

♥〉〉 Furthermore, you had slowly begun drifting away from your old friend group. Not only that, but you'd been rejecting date offers a lot more frequently.

♥〉〉 It finally took one specific day of repeated bad luck for Larry to finally get frustrated enough to say something. with a combination of a failed math quiz, a minor argument with his mom earlier in the morning, and the god-awful bologna to eat Larry was especially not in the mood to put up with Sal's distance in the conversation.

♥〉〉 "Sal, with all due respect can you PLEASE just reveal your secret date or pay attention to the conversation."

♥〉〉 Proceed to the dead silent, blank stares from everyone at the table. Yeah everyone suspected it (and had a feeling Larry was going to bring it up first) but no one thought he was going to go nuclear with it.

♥〉〉 "Ugh- haha Larry- what are you talking about I'm not dating-"

♥〉〉 "Don't even try that Sally Face we all know a man in love when we see it."

♥〉〉 For once Sal was kind of glad he had a prosthetic face. It made it very easy to hide embarrassment in times like these. Either way, the cat was out of the bag and he figured he had to introduce you to his friends eventually, so maybe this was an open opportunity for them to get to know you!

♥〉〉 "Hmmm... How about instead of me telling you, I introduce you guys to her. Is that fair?" The promise of actually getting to meet Sal's girlfriend already piqued the group's interest by far, so they didn't fight him when he left to go retrieve you.

♥〉〉 When Sal came back with you, however...

♥〉〉 Jaws were on the floor, Ashley may have gotten milk up her nose preventing a spit take, and Larry...

♥〉〉 "Break up with her." "LARRY-"

♥〉〉 Unfortunately here is where your previous treatment of Sal is going to bite you in the ass. The gang had a difficult time accepting Travis already, as a friend, but you as Sal's girlfriend is going to take a lot of work convincing you aren't just taking advantage of his kindness.

♥〉〉 It's actually because of this Travis is the first one you were able to befriend within the group- and actually got pretty close with. While in different contexts, Travis believed your claim of being influenced by toxic people in your life and genuinely meant no ill will to Sal. Hell, even outside of Sal's group you two hung out quite frequently.

♥〉〉 No one by far is surprised, but the hardest member to sway over was Larry, but also obtaining his blessing was something important to both you and Sal.

♥〉〉 Time is the only thing that will get his approval. If you stick with Sal long enough to prove you're serious about dating him then he'll know you're genuinely making an effort. ♥

#🍓My one and only!#🍫Chocolat Chocolat you make me feel #Fluff #Sal Fisher x Reader #Sally Face x Reader #Sally Face #Sally Face Headcanons #🌹FIRST POST OUT IN THE WORLD AHHHHH!!!!♥♥

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sneppu · 2 months ago

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For Your Snirius/Snupin Consideration !!

I show up unannounced like a disheveled and unpaid intern interrupting a board meeting to pitch yet another unrequested idea, BUT:

Though I have made a wholeass post here describing ways in which Severus Snape is a little black shelter cat (real and true), I am here to talk about Snirius/snack (and snupin as well for that matter) and the alternate Raven Sneep approach (also extremely real and true).

Black Cat Sneep and Raven Sneep are very similar, but in my mind, they bring two distinct possibilities to the snirius/snupin table (both fun and good) The key difference is that Black Cat Sev has a more fiery and contentious relationship with Sirius/Lupin (the ye olde cat vs dog classic) but Raven Sneep has the potential for a more sympathetic relationship right from the start - a shared bonding over troubled home lives perhaps? because you see (and this is what this post has been building up towards all along, yes I ramble and never get to the point, big sorry.) there is one key interaction between Ravens and Wolves (yes, wolves and dogs are different but a canine is a canine is a canine and the grim is a very large boy, thus this applies to snirius as well as snupin.):

Ravens and Wolves share a Symbiotic relationship! Ravens have been known to create friendships and relationships with wolves! They will play together, and Ravens will lead wolves to prey so that they can have the leftovers - in fact, some joke that Ravens are "domesticating" wolves all over again.

Anyway, I'm saying that the implications are adorable, and so I see it like this: in the context where The Marauders are on the more horrible side of the spectrum? Black cat Sev makes sense - trust has already been broken before, and a level of enmity has already been established. The classic enemies to lovers type deal that we have come to expect from Sneep x marauder ships. but in aus where things go a different route before things get too bad? aus where things never went down that road to begin with? thats where Raven Sneep can truly shine! Those Aus where Severus is befriended by the marauders from the start to become a marauder alongside them work well with this especially.

These things are not rigid of course, a black cat flavored Sneep in an early friendship AU with the marauders can bring a lot to the table as well, making for delightfully sassy Sneep interactions; and for that matter, lategame Enemies to lovers Raven flavored Sneep has the potential to be truly devastating - nothing can hold a grudge better than a corvid, after all! and boy does Severus Snape have a LOT to be resentful for. (and if its Sirius x Severus x Remus?? thats when things can get REALLY interesting. I had a lovely conversation with someone last night and so Snirius/Snupin have been on my mind as of late.)

In the end, all flavors of Sneep are exquisite and good! There is always a perfect Sneep for every occasion, as per usual.

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mgu-h · 2 months ago

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I love when he gets talking and then just keeps talking lmao, like they just have to prompt him and he will deliver a little monologue, e.g.

I didn't hold [Checo] up, I just had to cool my tires a bit more, and that just seemed to allow Oscar to get ahead of Checo, so yeah, no, I did my part today as a team player, and to come away with a first and a fourth was not what we're expecting today, but obviously a great result for the team. It put us on top as a constructor, and first time in 10 years that that's been the case, so a happy day for us as a team, of course for Oscar with a race win is even better, and for me to get fourth, like from 15th I don't think we're expecting it, from even halfway to the race I probably wasn't expecting it, because I had Carlos behind, Checo was behind, Max was just behind, and I hadn't even done my pit stop yet, so I was like, oh god, I'm not in that race for the top, but the pace was amazing, and the car really came alive at the end of the hard stint, and even the whole time on the mediums, and kind of went exactly how we wanted it to go, and even better than that, so yeah, good day.

and

I struggled to get past Alex for a long time, and that's a common thing, I mean Alex just doesn't make mistakes, and the Williams is always quite slippery in the straights, so Alex made my life tough for a lot of laps, and Max was behind me that whole time, and put me under a lot of pressure, but I could make the moves when I needed to, on the rest of the field, whether that was on Max, or the guys further behind, Bearman, and that's always good fun, so yeah, it was a fun race, I say from my side coming through, and always not knowing what to expect, and what we could achieve, so it was always a fun race like this, but yeah, good points. Fastest lap to get ahead of Max was important for me to kind of make me a bit happier after yesterday.

and

[Andrea] was not happy after last night, I was super unlucky. This was one of the most unfair things that I think has happened in a long time. I went off the track, yes, but then there was the yellow flag, and you can't see the flag, so everyone was talking about the white flag and all this nonsense. What they can't see is my dash, which had the big yellow lights on. So a lot of people love talking nonsense and stuff like that, but I had to lift and that took away my chances. So it was a shame, but it kind of made my race exciting today. So we were not happy as a team after last night because we knew we could have had two cars up there, and when you look at where Oscar finished today, we knew we could have had two cars right at the top. And that's what we love to see. So there's more potential. I don't think we're very happy with the weekend because we want perfection, and this weekend was not perfect, but when you look at today and how we executed today, I think everyone should be very happy.

and

It's not for me to decide [about papaya rules]. So I just keep doing my part. You know, I was quick all weekend. I've been very quick. I'm doing a good job, I feel, and I'm executing things well. I feel like I've been a little bit unlucky. and unfortunate, but that's how our racing is sometimes. And yeah, of course, I'm going to be a bit upset about things and not the happiest guy. I'm never normally the happiest guy anyway, but we're slowly catching, but we need more. But I think that can still come. You know, it's still a good amount of races to go. There's still sprint races to go. We're working well as a team, you know, even from like the part of helping Oscar to get the win today, this plays a big part in it all.

he just has things to say lol and i love it. his shorter, cutely passive aggressive answer to laura about the complaints he made to the team about max was great too, that he was "not complaining, just stating facts" lol that max was overtaking under VSC, which he "thought wasn't allowed but maybe i'm wrong" like catty lando is peak lando and it's good to see him 🧡

#'I'm never normally the happiest guy' lando ilu #tbh i like where his head is after that race #i like him asserting that he's been quick and doing a good job #dismissing all the nonsense people were talking about his quali lap #hopeful for the future... yay #lando norris #azerbaijan gp 2024

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haddonfieldwhore · 1 year ago

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on your side - jey uso

jey uso x fem!reader

word count: 0.9k

warnings: scripted violence, blurs kayfabe + real life a bit

raw: september 18th 2023

tensions had been at an all time high backstage for the last few weeks, ever since cody brought jey uso to raw. you understood that he had hurt a lot of people, and you knew that you were one of the few people that didn’t have an issue with him being back on monday nights. you didn’t know jey very well, but you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. you and cody were two of the top baby faces on the roster, and you shared a common trait; you believed in second chances and seeing the good in people.

it didn’t take long before the judgment day was trying to recruit jey, which would be a dangerous combination if he said yes. they were already a powerful group, you couldn’t imagine if they added the talents of main event jey uso to their ranks.

you were walking around backstage looking for adam to talk about a potential match for you next week, when you turned a corner and almost bumped into jey.

“whoa - my bad,” he said, holding his hands up like he expected you to get mad at him.

“no worries,” you smiled. “good luck on your match tonight.” he looked you up and down, and you weren’t sure if he was checking you out or looking for any sign that you were going to attack him. he must have decided that you were being sincere, as he seemed to relax a little at your friendly demeanour.

“appreciate that,” he nodded.

“have you thought about what you’re going to to about the judgment day?” you asked, and he ran his hand over the lower half of his face, smoothing out his beard as he shook his head.

“i don’t know yet,” he admitted.

“whatever you decide, make the right choice for you,” you said, and he nodded, obviously a lot on his mind. you stared walking away, not wanting to take up too much of his time since his match was starting soon.

“hey,” he called after you, and you turned back. “thanks. you’re cool,” he said, offering a hand for you to fist bump him. you smiled, tapping your knuckles against his before walking away to find adam.

•••

maybe it was because you were curious to see what decision he had come to in regards to the judgment day. or maybe you secretly wanted to cheer him on, but you had decided to hang out in gorilla to watch jeys match against drew. it was nearing the end of the match, and it had been a pretty even fight, when damian, finn, and dominik came out, surrounding the ring. you sighed, just hoping that jey took your advice and didn’t let them get in his head and distract him from the match that was currently going on.

jey was thrown into the corner, and the judgment day cheered him on, jey eventually standing up and giving priest a fist bump before super kicking all three of them, making his decision clear. unfortunately he turned around and walked straight into a claymore from mcintyre, and drew pinned him for the three count. jey was still laid out in the ring as drew jumped over the ropes, and started walking up the ramp.

you watched as a humiliated judgment day surrounded jey. they started kicking and hitting him relentlessly, jey having no chance on his own against the three of them as they picked him up and continued their attack. drew seemed to consider turning back to help him, but never did, and you decided you couldn’t watch this anymore. you ran out to the ring, sliding under the bottom rope and pulling dominik off of jey first, and he went to swing at you until he realized that he couldn’t hit you. you superkicked him, and he rolled out of the ring. you managed to pull the other two off of jey, who they had let fall down to the mat, a crumpled heap on the canvas. they backed off as you stood between the fallen uso and the judgment day.

“this isn’t over,” finn spat, and you stepped eye to eye with him.

“yeah, i think it is.”

“we’ll see about that when mami gets back!” dominik yelled. you didn’t have time to reply as cody’s music hit, and the american nightmare ran out to the ring, running past drew and getting in the ring. finn and damian attacked him, now having an opponent they could fight back against, but you pulled finn off of cody, and managed to get him to back off out of the ring, joining dominik who was backing up the ramp in retreat. cody clotheslined damian over the top rope, the taller man landing on his feet before you and cody helped jey up.

jey looked at you, suprised that you had come out to to his aid, but more than that he was grateful. you looked at cody, who gave you a nod, and you returned it.

“are you okay?” you asked jey, and he nodded, finally able to catch his breath.

“you ain’t had to do that for me. you got a target on your back now.”

“i wasn’t just gonna let it happen. and if anyone wants to come for me, i’ll be ready,” you assured him. you knew as soon as she was medically cleared, rhea would be after you, but you had the advantage of knowing she was coming after you.

“thank you,” jey insisted, and you smiled.

“what are friends for?”

jey looked surprised, but cracked a smile, wincing slightly as cody raised his arm. he may have lost the match, and made a few more enemies, but he had gained an ally, and jey considered that a win.

#jey uso #jey uso x reader #jey uso fic #jey uso imagine #wwe #wwe fic #wwe raw #wrestling imagine #wrestling imagines #wrestling fic #wrestling #wwe x reader

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ikilledyvette · 2 months ago

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(Part II of my seriously condensed 9-1-1 fic is here! Hope people enjoy, even though it's all a bit rushed!)

Part I

Sunday afternoon, Father’s Day. It’s always a hard day for Bobby, but usually, working helps him get through it. Today has been ... worse, and not just for him. Bobby finds Eddie on the couch, staring blankly into nothing. Bobby sits down beside him, a silent invitation to talk. Eddie doesn’t always take him up on it.

Today, Eddie says, “He hasn’t called,” and Bobby reminds him the day isn’t over yet. Eddie asks, “What if he doesn’t call?” and Bobby reminds him about tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

“Every day you’re both alive is another chance to make things right,” Bobby says. “Don’t give up on tomorrow just yet, Eddie.”

Buck comes by then, and Eddie takes off to give the two some space. Buck says, “So, I had dinner with my parents the other night.” Bobby asks how it went, and Buck says, “Yeah, not great. They had, uh. A lot to say about me, you know. Going through a gay phase, or something. Wanting attention. Getting too old for, I don’t know. Making stuff up, I guess.”

Bobby nods. Cautiously, he says, “Sounds to me like they still don’t know you very well.”

Buck huffs a quiet laugh. “Yeah. Thing is, everything they said ... it’s all stuff I’ve thought too, you know? Like, I’ve always done stupid things to get people’s attention. Their attention, Tommy’s. Yours. And if ... if what I’m feeling, who I am, is ... is real ... how could I have not known before, right? And I, I do know how I feel about Tommy—I like him so much, Bobby, you don’t even know—”

Bobby knows. Everyone knows. Buck’s joy is not subtle; it shines through him, a thing to behold.

“—but sometimes I still—” Buck breaks off and sighs. “Well, maybe that’s why I reacted so badly last night. Cause sometimes, I worry they’re right.”

“They’re not,” Bobby says immediately.

“How do you know that?”

And Bobby hesitates, not sure Buck is going to want to hear this right now. But still, he says, “Because I know you, kid.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, smiling a little. “You do. Bobby, I’m. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do. Cause that night we talked about Tommy? You didn’t ask me to, to explain myself, or suggest maybe I wasn’t thinking things through. You didn’t need me to prove anything. You just accepted it, Tommy and me. You accepted me.” Buck shakes his head. “I told this to Maddie once, but sometimes it’s easier to lash out at the person you know is always going to forgive you. My parents, that’s not them, never will be. But you, uh. You’re safe.”

Bobby swallows a little at that. He wants to be that person for Buck—but Bobby know he isn’t, can’t be. He’s the reason his family is dead; he’s the reason so many people are dead.

“I know I hurt you,” Bobby says. “If I hadn’t left the way I did, Gerrard would never have been captain, and—”

“You think this is about Gerrard? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you thought.” But Buck’s voice is teasing, lessening the sting. “Yeah, I mean, working under Gerrard was ... rough, for a lot reasons. But that’s not ... Hen was the one mad at you for that.”

Bobby is aware. Hen had forgiven him pretty quickly, but her attitude towards Bobby on his first day back had been ... cool, to say the least. Bobby understands why, had prepared himself for Hen’s anger, potentially Chimney’s, too. They both went through a lot, working under Gerrard the first time around. Bobby had expected them to be upset.

He’s not sure why he hadn’t expected Buck to be.

“I’m not mad about Gerrard,” Buck tells him. “I’m mad that you lied. You—you were saying goodbye all day, only we didn’t know, I didn’t know. And you just—you were just going to leave?”

“I didn’t want—”

“You didn’t want us to change your mind,” Buck says, now visibly upset. “You—you said goodbye, Bobby. I didn’t realize it then, what you were doing, but—if you were gone, if you left, and I could have done something to stop it, stop you from, from—"

And Bobby realizes suddenly that Buck isn’t just talking about Bobby quitting.

“Hey,” Bobby says. “Listen. I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

“For how long?” Buck asks, and it’s not mockery this time. It’s pleading. Anxious. Young. For as much Buck has been through, for as much progress he’s made over the last seven years, Bobby is struck every now and then by how young Buck still is.

“That’s not up to me,” Bobby says and points up, skyward, at the man upstairs. “And listen, Buck, I won’t deny I was ... I was in a pretty dark place a couple of months ago. I should’ve been more honest about that. But I’m here, and I mean to stay here as long as I can. Okay? I’m not going anywhere without a fight, I promise.”

Buck inhales, a deep, shuddery breath, and Bobby hugs him, and Buck hugs Bobby back.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says again. “I think, maybe. I think I’ve just been really scared.”

Bobby hugs him a little tighter and says, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, kid.”

Footsteps on the stairs interrupt them a few minutes later. “Not to break up this long overdue moment,” Chimney says, “but Buck, you’ve got another visitor.”

Buck turns with a little dread, expecting his parents and not sure he’s ready to face them just yet—but it’s Maddie. This time, it’s Bobby and Chimney who disappear downstairs to give the Buckley siblings some space.

Maddie tells Buck that their parents are flying home. “I told them to go,” she says. “And not to come back.”

“Chimney told you,” Buck realizes, resigned and more than a little annoyed.

“Of course, he did,” Maddie says. She’s slightly exasperated but mostly worried. “Why didn’t you?”

She thinks he’ll say something about not wanting to ruin Maddie’s relationship with their parents or Jee Yun’s relationships with her grandparents, and Buck does lead with that. But mostly, Buck’s ashamed of how he petty it was, bringing up Daniel. “I didn’t want you to think that I, I resented him,” he says. “I really don’t, Maddie. He was just a kid, and he never got the chance to grow up and, and I wish I could’ve given him that chance. I wish I could’ve met the person he would’ve become.”

“I know,” Maddie tells him, and reminds him that it’s not his fault; it was never his responsibility to save Daniel. Buck says he doesn’t blame their mom for slapping him after what he said, and Maddie, steely, says, “Well, I do. For that, and also for how they talked to you—no, it’s not okay. What if Jee grows up and realizes she likes both boys and girls someday? I don't want Mom talking to her like that. Do you?"

Buck recoils a little, and Maddie nods. “Would you be okay if Mom ever hit Jee Yun?” she asks. “Even if she said something terrible? Even if she deserved it?”

“She could never deserve it,” Buck says, knowing what Maddie’s doing but unable to keep quiet, not when his sister looks so upset, not with the ghost of Doug so heavy in the air. He hates to think of how many times Doug must have told Maddie that she was to blame for everything he did to her. “But Maddie, I don’t think Mom or Dad would ever—”

“Maybe not,” Maddie says, “but that doesn’t make them safe. They screw up, and they always feel bad about it, but they never really apologize. They never put in the work. They just ... make excuses and expect that we’ll forgive them, but I think I’m done with that now. I’m done with relationships where it’s only my responsibility to try harder, to smooth things over, to say the right thing, to always forgive. Maybe someday, if Mom and Dad actually work on themselves, but for right now ..." Maddie shakes her head. "Enough is enough.”

Buck gets that, he does. But he admits he isn’t sure he’s ready to cut off his parents yet, isn’t sure he wants too. He still wants to keep trying, and Maddie says that’s okay. What matters is, they still have each other. And she won’t try to change his mind if he doesn’t try to change hers.

Buck offers her a pinky swear. Maddie smiles and hooks her finger around his.

Meanwhile, downstairs, a phone rings.

“Christopher?” Eddie says, and takes a few steps, turning away from everyone.

It is Christopher. He calls to wish his dad a happy Father’s Day, but also to say he loves him, and while he’s not quite ready to come home yet, he still wants to come home, and maybe soon.

“I miss you,” Christopher tells him. “I don’t want to miss you anymore. But you have to stop lying to me.”

“I can do that,” Eddie promises.

“And go back to therapy.”

Eddie laughs. “Already on top of that one, bud. Maybe ... we could go together, sometime, when you come home?”

“Yeah,” Christopher says. “I’d like that. I love you, Dad.”

“Love you too, Chris,” Eddie says. He hangs up, takes a breath before turning around, and announces, “Christopher called!" as if everyone—including Maddie and Buck, leaning over the balcony—weren’t badly pretending not to eavesdrop.

Everyone cheers and rushes Eddie.

“What did I tell you?” Bobby asks him. “What did I tell you?” Hen asks, too, and Eddie says, “Yeah, yeah,” to both of them, with wet eyes and a shaky, hopeful smile.

“This calls for champagne!” Chimney announces. “But since we’re all on duty ... cheap coffee and leftover Ding Dong, Gerrard is Gone cake it is!”

—All in all, it’s the best Father’s Day the 118 has had in a long, long time.

(And that's it! Apologies, fellow Tommy fans, that he didn’t make it into Part 2—but you know. If Tommy’s at the fire house, who’s flying the plane? Actually, Tommy’s too busy babysitting Jee Yun, and—to both Buck and Chimney’s horror—introducing her to all the worst Star Wars movies. She loves them.)

Tag List @lavenderleahy @v88sy

#911 fanfic #my fics #team as family #buckley siblings #bucktommy #bobby nash is buck's dad #definitely not working out my complicated feelings about family redemption stories

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gamergirl-niffler · 1 year ago

Note

As everyone has been making requests, I think it's time for me to make one too! I kindly request some headcanons featuring either Douma or Dabi (I'll let you choose!) and a female reader who is initially very shy, but it turns out she possesses remarkable combat skills 💋

Of course, you had to squeeze into my inbox!

BUT OKAY! FINE!

Dabi & Douma x Shy fem!reader with remarkable combat skills

Douma

🧊 "D-Douma-dono? Are you sure?” you ask quietly.

🧊 Douma honestly finds you charming! You are cute, small and oh so shy, and, of course, pretty!

🧊 You are just a demon but there is so much more to you!

🧊 So of course he took you under his wings to take care of you.

🧊 "T-Thank you so much, Douma-dono!” you always thank him no matter what.

🧊 Your shyness is beyond him. He could never understand why you always hide behind him or stammer while addressing him or other Upper Moons.

🧊 You always act careful and quiet around him, blushing and mumbling more to yourself than to him.

🧊 It changed when he took you for a little walk in a moonlight, and the two of you came across a demon slayer who was a bit too sure of his skills.

🧊 Douma didn't even pull out his fans when you suddenly jumped into action.

🧊 He was honestly in deep shock, seeing what skillful demon you really are!

🧊 You moved like a beautiful dancer and your Blood Demon Art was just as magnificent to the point it actually took his breath away.

🧊 Pretty soon, you stand there, covered in slayer's blood.

🧊 "My my my! Look at you! Such a potential! Y/N, I would never expect such a thing from you! Wonderful!” He praised you while you seemed to return to your old self.

🧊 "Douma-dono! That's... That's nothing-really," you stammered as he approached you. "I-I just did what I had to."

🧊 Douma chuckled, cupping your cheeks. "And it was beautiful. You have a chance to even join the upper ranks!”

🧊 You just blinked, looking up at your master and suddenly your face went fully red as you couldn't handle all the praises.

🧊 Douma still finds it cute, he is going to use it a lot against you in near future.

Kremator (jk! iykyk!)

Dabi

🔥 He finds you annoying.

🔥 You're supposed to be a villain? That's some kind of bad joke to him.

🔥 For him, you are just a mess, let's not forget, an annoying mess to be honest.

🔥 Each time you interact with him, you are blushing, babbling to the point of talking nonsense and stuttering, stumbling over your own words.

🔥 When Dabi snaps at you to finally make some sense, it only gets worse!

🔥 So he simply turns on his hill to walk away. He isn't in the mood to deal with that.

🔥 Others tell him that "she are just shy" as if it would change anything. Get a grip on yourself!

🔥 It all changes during one of the fights against heroes the two of you were part of.

🔥 Dabi is doing fine on his but others... They kinda fall behind.

🔥 Then you step in and actually are useful for once!

🔥 The sight of you going against a hero twice your size like it would be nothing is something he never expected to see!

🔥 Always so quiet, yet now you are not only using your quirk but some combat abilities he would never even think you possess.

🔥 You are moving so quickly and smoothly like it would be your second nature.

🔥 And just like that, the hero is down and you stand in front of him like always, just with a slightly worried look. "D-Dabi... Are you o-okay?"

🔥 Dabi chuckles and then pats your head, making you freeze and go red. "Good job, guess you aren't that useless. Good girl."

🔥 There you go again, stumbling over words as you try to thank him. "I... I j-just," you blush deeply. "I-it's nothing r-really," shaking your head you hide face in your palms in a poor attempt of covering your now fully red face.

🔥 It was kinda... Cute? You acted like a bunny.

🔥 "Let's go now. I am curious about what else you can do," he says.

🔥 You nod eagerly and without a word follow him.

#Demon slayer #my hero acedamia #Dabi #Douma #douma x reader #douma x you #douma headcanons #kny douma #douma kny #dabi headcanons #mha dabi #bnha dabi #demon slayer headcanons #mha headcanons #bnha headcannons #kny headcanons #toya todoroki #toya todoroki x reader

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babytarttdoodoo · 1 year ago

Note

hi! prompt for Roy and Jamie (as a ship or platonic is up to you!) if it interests you, could I request Roy getting protective over somebody hitting on and making Jamie uncomfortable at a bar?

I’m finding that Roy is a lot of fun to write. The man has presence. (There a LOT of *fruity* language in this one.)

Written as early relationship Roy/Jamie. Thank you for the prompt and hope you enjoy!

(Prompt Fill Masterpost)

—

“Excuse me!”

Jamie turned around at the shout and grip on his arm, half a smile on his face from laughing with the bartender as he ordered.

A young woman was grinning at him excitedly, bouncing a little when his attention focused on her. She fluffed her hair with the hand that wasn’t squeezing his bicep.

“Alright, darling?” Jamie gave her a quick once over, expecting a request for a selfie if she happened to be into football.

“Are you Jamie? From Lust Conquers All?”

Ah.

He chuckled a bit and nodded, giving her his best photoshoot smile. You have to be nice to the fans, after all.

“Yep, guilty!”

“I fucking knew it!” she crowed, pressing in closer. Jamie felt the edge of the bar dig into his back. “I told my friends it was you!”

“Oh, you out with your mates, then?” Jamie glanced behind her, trying to spot a group that might be waiting to pull her back away. No one stood out and she ignored his question completely.

“It was a total fix, you getting voted off! You were well more fit than Danthony. He barely got his kit off.”

Right. Okay, then.

“Nah, he were a nice enough lad, actually.” Jamie told her, keeping it friendly and gently trying to pull his arm away. “Listen, d’you want a photo or…?”

“Don’t you think I look like Amy?”

“Eh…” She did, a bit, if Jamie really thought about it. It might have just been the blonde hair and hoop earrings, though. And that didn’t detract from it being a fucking weird question.

“Need a tray for your drinks, mate?” Jamie turned back to the bartender at the (very welcome) interruption and felt the woman’s hand shift from his arm to his chest with the movement.

He grit his teeth and gave the guy setting out his round a tight smile and nod as her polished fingernails scraped the skin exposed by his mostly open shirt.

“Shit, you didn’t let yourself go after the show, did you?” she asked, staring at his bared muscles and seemingly oblivious to any concept of personal space. “Buy me a drink?”

“Oh, er, no thanks.”

“Come off it.” She pouted at him and squeezed in closer, standing practically between his legs. “You can’t tell me I’m not your type.”

Jamie swallowed hard, glancing around now for his own friends. But the team were sequestered away in the VIP section, waiting on him returning with their orders.

“Look, sweetheart, I’m sure you’re lovely, but I’m currently spoken for.”

“Didn’t stop you on the show.”

“Fucking hell.” Jamie had to laugh. This whole thing was ridiculous. Even at the height of his prickiest moments, he’d known when to take a hint - apparently that memo was not universally received.

There was no room to move away from her, either. The club was heaving with people enjoying their Friday night and the crowd around the bar penned him in on all sides. A jostle from the group behind them had the woman pressed right up against his front.

She grinned, taking his incredulity and the sudden contact as a good sign.

“Oi, Tartt.” Oh shit.

The movement in the crowd had not, apparently, been caused by inebriated partiers trying to get closer to the bar. Rather, it had been Roy Fucking Kent pushing his way through to find out what was taking so long.

If panic at the thought of potentially causing a scene had been playing at the edges of Jamie’s mind, the idea of Roy seeing some random woman plastered all over him in a dark club dialled it up to a full-blown catastrophe.

This Thing™ between them was still fresh and new (and a bit lovely). He wasn’t sure it could weather presumed infidelity and a tabloid shitshow just yet.

Roy was frowning, no surprises there. His dark eyes went from Jamie’s face, to the new attachment on his chest, and back again. “Who the fuck is this?”

She bristled at the dismissive tone. “Who are you? His dad?”

Jamie winced. Ouch.

And the thing was, he wasn’t scared of Roy’s reaction. He hadn’t been properly scared of Roy for years. But, objectively, he knew that the man before him cut a pretty intimidating figure when he wanted to.

Dressed all in black under the strobing lights of a nightclub, he looked like a solid shadow with anger issues. Crossing his arms and raising his voice to be heard was all it took for a good metre radius to clear out around him, defying the laws of both physics and London nightlife.

Jamie was suddenly struck by the memory of Roy striding into a club, headbutting Colin, and giving them all a telling off. He’d been scary in that moment, and Jamie knew he’d had to admit to himself that night that his Kent crush was not as dead and buried as he’d hoped.

“Get the fuck off of him, you nutty arsemonger.”

Between her shock at the colourful insult and the extra room to manoeuvre, Jamie managed to extricate himself without much further fuss and snatched up the ready tray of drinks to use as a barrier.

“You can’t talk to me like that!” she seethed, cheeks flushed and hands gone to fists at her sides, her grip on Jamie forgotten.

“I can do a hell of a lot worse,” Roy growled. “Bugger off, before I call security.”

Sensing defeat, and perhaps the phone cameras no doubt being whipped out around them, the woman gave Jamie one last leering, disappointed look before stalking off in the opposite direction of Roy.

Jamie slumped in relief until he caught his (boyfriend?)’s gaze. Roy’s face was unreadable. He just stared at Jamie for a moment longer, then turned away.

“Come on, then. Been waiting fucking ages.”

Suddenly unsure if he’d been right to dismiss fear so quickly, Jamie followed along behind him, focusing on not spilling anything while his mind whirred incessantly.

They rounded the curtain that separated the VIP room from the rest of the venue and a cheer went up at the sight of a fresh round. Jamie set his burden down quickly, accepting the thanks of his teammates while constantly glancing over to the corner where Roy had settled to brood.

Grabbing their drinks, he made his way over and cautiously sat beside him.

“... Roy?”

“Are you alright?” Well, that wasn’t what Jamie had expected. Especially since the words sounded like they’d been dragged from Roy’s throat by force. “Be fucking honest.”

“Erm, yeah, yeah I’m fine. Thanks.” Jamie licked his lips nervously. “Why?”

Roy shut his eyes tight and sighed heavily. “Jesus Christ. Because you just had some tart’s hands all over you and she clearly wouldn’t take ‘no’ for a fucking answer.”

“Oh.” Jamie shrugged and looked down at his glass, tapping his thumbnails against the rim. “Used to it, ain’t I? Are you alright? Cause, being honest, I don’t know if you’re angry at me or not and it’s kind of freaking me out.”

His fidgeting stilled when Roy’s hand found his knee and squeezed.

“I’m not angry at you, Jamie.”

At the much softer tone, Jamie risked looking at him again and found Roy watching him with a pinched expression.

“I am wondering why you didn’t just tell her to piss off sooner.”

“It weren’t like I encouraged her!” Jamie protested.

“I’m not saying you did. Believe it or not, I have had my share of mental fans having a grope over the years.” Jamie fought down a flush of outrage and jealousy at that. “You don’t have to be fucking nice to them, though. You, fuck, you shouldn’t be ‘used to it’.”

Unable to resist, Jamie leaned in and kissed away Roy’s scowl.

“You’re sweet.” he murmured, smiling at the gruff protest he got in response. “No, you are. Deal with it.”

With a sigh, he leaned into Roy’s side and organised his thoughts.

“After I did that reality show, most of my brand deals and that just… went away.” He felt Roy shift beside him but the grip on his knee stayed steady, so much nicer than the hand on him earlier had been. “I got trashed online for acting like a prick and no one wanted to touch me. Not even City. Fuck, I had to beg Ted for another chance here.”

Roy knew most of this, of course. He even had a clearer idea now of why exactly Jamie had risked his football career for Lust Conquers All.

“I just. Everything’s better now. Life is fucking mint. But I know that all it takes is one shitty tweet about me being an arsehole or a dodgy video taken out of context and, boom. It’s viral and I’m untouchable again.”

“Fuuuuuuuuck.” The quiet exhalation made Jamie huff a laugh. Roy took a swig of his beer before speaking again. “First of all, we’re not going to let anything like that happen. And by ‘we’ I mean that entire gaggle of idiots, plus me, plus Keeley and Beard and Rebecca and Higgins and, fuck, even Nate these days.

“Someone says shit about you, all of Richmond will be up in arms to fight them about it, alright?”

He waited for Jamie to nod in acknowledgement before continuing,

“And second - I never had to deal with all this shit. The worst I’ve had is the press camped outside my house after some messy breakup or fight on the pitch. I don’t know how you lads do it with all the tweeting and posting and blogging you’re supposed to keep up with. It’s fucking exhausting just hearing about it.”

(Jamie very maturely refrained from making the obvious jokes about how ancient Roy sounded.)

“So if me doing shit like that -” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the bar. “Ever makes things worse for you, then I’m fucking sorry and you need to tell me.”

That was… genuinely very touching. Jamie snuggled in closer, throat tight.

“And finally,” Roy went on, pressing a kiss to head on his shoulder. “Your consent fucking matters, Jamie. If someone makes you uncomfortable, be as much of a prick as you like and damn the consequences.”

Jamie laughed again and shifted away to grin properly at Roy. “Is that you giving me blanket permission, coach?”

In response, Roy just gave him the middle finger, face hilariously deadpan. It really shouldn’t have made Jamie melt like it did.

He leaned in again, feeling safe in the relative privacy of their booth, and kissed Roy slow and deep. They were both breathing hard when he broke away and smirked.

“Maybe next time we go out, I’ll get to be the one prying some MILF off of you. Then you’ll find out exactly how much of a prick I can be.”

#this got serious sorry #my fic #fic prompts #jamie tartt #roy kent #ted lasso

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fangirlanxiety74 · 4 months ago

Note

TELL ME ABOUT TED. Headcanons you have for him, anything... Can be silly or serious.

Someone... SOMEONE'S ASKING ME ABOUT MY HEADCANONS?! IT'S BEEN YEARS SINCE SOMEONE'S ASKED ME ABOUT MY HEADCANONS!! HOLD ON, I MADE A DOCUMENT!! /ref/hj

In actuality, I did genuinely make a google doc. But it's not ready to be shared yet, so I'll share the highlights.

First off, the game manual lies. He is NOT 44. He's 33 at OLDEST. I kind of consider him more like 29/30. Just barely.

He grew up in South Carolina hehe, farm boy

Bisexual disaster but I think this is kinda just obvious.

He is the oldest between him and his 5 siblings!!! And adding onto this, he is SUCH a good older brother. I don't care if everyone else disagrees, he could be the worst man alive but the one good thing someone could say was that he took care of his siblings.

If you know Ayano from Kagerou Project, I think he's a lot like her when he's younger. Like 8/9 years old. He tried so hard to protect them all from their parents and keep them happy. He'd sacrifice so much for them, it's why he kinda,, went into the extreme of being so,, entitled as a grown up. Ykwim???

Just imagine. With the ice caves, moving without thinking to save the others before himself? His brain subconsciously doing what he knows best; sacrificing what he has for others.

Selflessness as a core trait for Ted, please.

Another thing relating to his siblings: He knows how to do ballet!! And he's REALLY good at it. He actually has a lot of fun doing it. One of his sisters wanted to, but she was too afraid to take lessons alone, so he went along with her in secret. Didn't get caught for years. (She stopped lessons once he got forced out of them)

He talks a little like a New-Yorker, or at the very least, that transAtlantic accent (yk like from the old movies?) to try and play off as that kind of guy like Great Gatsby.

His actual accent is Southern. Sometimes it slips out when he's like, extremely flustered/angry, but it's such a rare thing.

He can't stand the sound of someone crying, it immediately makes him angry. Take that, and yk, Ellen or Benny constantly crying... Yeaaaah. (This is also due to his siblings).

This is obvious, he forces himself into doing a lot of masculine things that he doesn't like to appear older/wiser/better, insert whatever word you wanna use that translates to "I am insecure about myself" lol

Okay this last one is really important to me and like. It. Needs its own special paragraph. He is a creative person in his soul. He loves to learn, he loves to write, he loves to read and dance and sing and draw and he has such a huge imagination and love for creativity. You can see it in his psychodrama with how it plays out like a full-blown Grimms Fairytale, the monster he imagined that no one else could see, the line in the radio drama "Am I the last storyteller, telling the last story...?"

He's a storyteller. He has so much to say and share, and he would've done something creative with his life if he had the option, but the abuse he faced and the societal expectations placed on him forced him to,, give it all up. Made him realize he could never have that. Which is why, at least in the game, AM chose him. Ted had so much potential to create, and just... gave it up. For seemingly nothing. Why wouldn't that make AM mad, who can't create, can't even imagine or wonder?

AKA Theatre Kid Ted canon, let it be known

I have like, also. I have a somewhat-AU of Omori for the ihnm cast, and Ted takes the role of Basil. I think Dream Basil vs RW Basil fit a lot of what he is as a kid vs an adult, or at least aspects of both due.

I also have a Hadestown AU of him with my self-insert where he takes the role of Eurydiceeee.... Like. Guys, Hadestown fans, hear me out. Ted singing "Flowers." AM singing "Hey Little Songbird" to Ted. PLEASE HEAR ME CAN YOU HEAR ME??? ARE YOU LISTENING??? /J

There's so much more I can say but this is getting so long I will definitely share more if people want nfjkdc bUT THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!!

#ihnmaims #i have no mouth and i must scream #ted ihnmaims #sara speaks :3 #ihnmaims ted #the grip this man has on me ffs #i think about him so much it's unhealthy #i need to like #kill him

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incorrecttowerofgodquotes · 5 months ago

Note

learning that Ehwa is best girl to you is interesting - I don't disagree but this is a great excuse to ask for some Ehwa propoganda

so.

justify yourself

You don’t know what you’ve wrought upon yourself

Part 1: Personality

Ehwa hits the great mix between confident and strong as well as naïve and compensating. Due to her status as the only Yeon daughter for the next eighty years, Ehwa obviously has a lot of burdens placed on her, something we see early on in the season. The struggles of trying to live up to her family’s expectations plus the complex she has about her “defective” powers means she puts on the front of a noble and strong headed woman so that her weaknesses can be covered up.

However, the thing is, Ehwa is never actually cruel. In Trustworthy room, the only people she tells off is Prince and Viole, and even then, she still attempts to get to know Viole. As the arcs progress, Ehwa gets nicer and nicer due to her emotional needs being met thanks to S&S. By Hell Train, she’s simply just a good person, meanwhile even now Endorsi still struggles with her temper and Yuri recently just committed genocide (not to say this makes them bad characters though).

I also really love Ehwa’s childish side. We know that Ehwa entered the tower at only age 14, and that her previous life in the Yeon family gave her very little support (aside from her “Mama”). Just like Khun, Ehwa is a person whose childhood was stolen from her, and thus her emotional growth was stunted. As she becomes closer with S&S, she stops maintaining appearances and starts acting more like a girl her age. It becomes especially pronounced when she meets Rak, as she really loves reptiles, and starts following him around.

Part 2: Powerset

While there are many cool abilities in ToG, one of my favs is the Yeon flame. The idea of a living flame existing inside someone, and the fact that it could take control when the user is put under enough stress is super cool.

This is shown to great effect in Ehwa’s fight against Angel, when her childhood trauma and current emotional disturbance causes the Yeon Flame to take front seat in controlling the body while Ehwa dissociates or something. She went from struggling against Angel, to no diffing her in an insane boost of power, especially since said power allows her to fly, something stated to be very difficult for Regulars as it requires extreme shinsu control. SIU himself even said that when Ehwa masters her power, she’ll have abilities that can put even Ran to shame (y’know, one of the most talented Khun family members)

Also, unlike some other powers, Ehwa’s undergoes development. At the beginning, Ehwa suffers from power incontinence, having it leak out when her emotional state becomes turbulent and uncontrollable when using it. When Horyang and Viole, the rocks of team S&S are gone, Ehwa starts worrying about hurting her other teammates. However, instead of being able to learn to control her powers from this fear, she instead learns due to her desire to protect them, allowing her to take out the parasite Beta had. Finally, when up against Angel, all the turbulent emotions she feels leads to an explosive rise in power, but only for a few minutes.

Ehwa still has a ways to go in mastering her power, and the moment when she’s able to utilize her full potential while being in control will certainly be an amazing scene

Part 3: Development

Ehwa starts off as very alone and without confidence in herself. This stems from an incident in her childhood, when she was about 4 or 5, when she accidentally burned one of her maids alive. The people around her, instead of consoling her, praised her for her talent, which led to a complex about her powers. She feels the need to be useful to her family and live up to their expectations, but she’s also afraid of hurting people close to her.

During Trustworthy Room, she starts off as very prickly due to the pressure she feels about passing the test. Yet even so, she still remains naïve in that she takes a drink from Prince as well as hoping to become good-natured acquaintances with Viole. Ultimately, she doesn’t get to do much and is then left with a team she had no real say in, but she still sticks with them anyways.

By the 21st floor, Ehwa has sort of gotten used to her position in S&S. She’s still very hotheaded, and tends to blow up when either Wangnan or Viole are involved. However, then we get a look at her deeper insecurities when she talks with Arkraptor. Ehwa calls herself defective, unable to control her own power and needing to rely on Viole to stop herself. The 10 Families promote division amongst themselves, so for Ehwa, relying on others is extremely difficult. But even so, Arkraptor consoles her by saying that whatever her trouble's are, they aren't any worse than what everyone else is going through. Her power incontinence is just a hurdle she can overcome, and until that happens, its perfectly fine for her to rely on Viole and her other teammates.

After the Flower of Zigena, Ehwa is left in a depressive state over the actions her family has taken. I pointed it out in a separate post, but Ehwa doesn't look like she's surprised her family was corrupt, but more that she was trying to avert her eyes from the truth. It’s only when Hwaryun points this out to her that Ehwa declares that she will accept the 10 Families mistakes and then fix them (Fun fact she never wears the Yeon flower and gems in her hair after this).

This is also when her relationship with Viole changes. At first, she saw him as just a bad person, which makes sense, he is part of a terrorist organization targeting her family after all. However, it’s through getting to know him and the sins that her family has committed that Ehwa realizes why someone like Viole is necessary. Her feelings evolve from just a simple crush to a genuine admiration of his courage and charity.

While Ehwa doesn’t have much focus during Workshop battle, we still see her growth in learning to control her powers in order to protect her friends. There’s also a nice line of set up from Quaetro about her powers that will be the basis for her character development in Hell Train. “Who would listen to someone who’s afraid of herself?”

In Hell Train, Ehwa is pitted against Angel, an illegitimate child of the 10 Families. Angel received no love in her childhood, not even from her mother, and was eventually given away because she had some talent. This contrasts with Ehwa, who was born with loads of talent and received a lot of doting as a kid. However, the doting Ehwa received ultimately ended up harming her due to the callous nature in which they praised and pushed their expectations on her.

During the beginning of their fight, Ehwa can barely stop Angel. As she’s running away, all she can think about is how so many people failed to teach her anything about her flame. She can’t believe that she was flame itself from the moment she was born, because to her, the destructive flame she possess is in conflict with her own kind nature.

It’s only when Angel kills Hongjo, someone who had been kind to Ehwa up until then and even attempted to protect her, that Ehwa comes to the realization of what those words really mean. Her rage overtakes her to the point that the Yeon flame has to take control, in the process losing her own self. As a defeated Angel watches Ehwa continue to use her flame, as the audience we’re meant to feel fear and sadness that Ehwa is losing herself like this. It’s no coincidence that this moment comes about in front of Bam, who had just previously lost his mind to the Thorn.

Ehwa is only able to regain her sense of self when Bero Bero crashes into and starts yelling at her. Bero tells her she needs to take responsibility for her power, responsibility that no one else in her family will take. As these words sink in, Ehwa is reminded of her “Mama”, a loving maternal figure who told her the same thing.

Ehwa’s character growth stops about here, mostly due to her exiting the story, however we still see her through the Name Hunt Station arc. At the beginning, Ehwa is removed from Team Sweet and Sour and placed with Bam, Wangnan recognizing her skill and believing she can keep herself alive as she stays with Bam. Ehwa is incensed by this, even running up to Bam and telling him to make Wangnan change his mind, and when Bam says otherwise it shocks her. Ehwa wants to stay with everyone, but due to the difference in abilities she can’t. She now has to take responsibility for protecting herself first and foremost.

This is her mentality when going into the fight against Karaka vs Yuri. She still wants to continue despite being badly injured cause if she didn’t, it meant she left Team S&S for nothing. However, she ends up getting put into a hostage situation, and at that moment instead of thinking about her own well being, she thinks about how to save Bam. She ultimately sacrifices herself, but she does so with a smile, telling Bam that it will be okay. She went from distrusting Viole due to his FUG ties to implicitly trusting Bam to keep moving on to protect more people.

As sweet as this moment is, it’s also the greatest tragedy to happen to Ehwa. Her removal from Team S&S and then her loss at NHS, makes it so that Prince and Arkraptor die, and she remains completely unaware. The family that accepted her as she was became broken all without her knowing. If Ehwa had been with them, there’s no doubt in my mind that at least one of them would have survived, her Yeon flame wouldn’t allow for anything else. Instead, her absence sealed their fates. The responsibility she had towards protecting them is now destroyed.

When Ehwa finally reenters the story, I have no doubt that her arc will focus heavily on the fallout of losing Prince and Arkraptor.

It’s also interesting that she was kidnapped by Revolution, the group whose goal it is to reform the Ten Great Families. If we wanna get wild, Ehwa might become the new Yeon Family Head candidate.

That’s about all I have to say aside from gushing about how pretty she is, but I’ll let that happen during the S2 anime.

#tower of god #tog #tog ehwa #ehwa yeon #yeon yihwa

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