#it just made me immeasurably sad

[vechter]

infinite crisis (2005) #7 // batman (1940) #681 // outsiders (2003) #21 // batman (1940) #438 // infinite crisis (2005) #6 // nightwing (1996) #99 // batman: urban legends (2021) #10 // teen titans (2016) #26 // nightwing (1996) #117 // nightwing (2011) #30 // nightwing (1996) #99 // nightwing (1996) #152 // nightwing (2016) annual #2 // nightwing (2011) #30

dick & bruce + LET YOUR FATHER DIE ENERGY DRINK, cecilia corrigan

[jester-junk]

I was so excited to watch the TV series Loki, he's my favourite character, Tom Hiddleston delivers a godlike (hue) performance portraying him, and now I've watched Season 1, am about to watch the second episode of Season 2 and... why does Sylvie SUCK so much?! How can her writing be this bad? (Did men try to write her? Would explain a lot...)

I was honestly looking forward to seeing a female Loki, I would've honestly been fine with our Loki finding love and acceptance, and I wouldn't care if it was another Variant or someone else entirely, but their whole interaction/relationship is both a cornucopia of red flags (which could be enjoyable, morally grey and all that, but it's not even well executed) and also incredibly bland and out of character. Loki doesn't feel like Loki. He just became this wet blanket, simping for Sylvie (who's always better, faster, smarter, and more popular) for no reason. And it's also way too fucking fast. Loki, the god of mischief, the one who can't trust and can't be trusted, does not fall for someone within two days. This feels like the self-insert fanfic of a 14-year-old.

And they always jump between how they're Loki but also how they're not and were the writers drunk or something?

The overall premise is interesting and I love the plot of exposing corrupt leadership as much as the next person, but the way they went about it feels so hollow and fake.

Honestly, a Mobius and Loki romance would've felt more authentic than whatever the fuck the writers did.

I still follow the premise of "ship and let ship". You enjoy the ship? More power to you, I won't stand in your way, but I just had to get out how disappointed I am. My expectations weren't high to begin with, but I certainly didn't expect... this.

[ccsainzleclerc5516]

Co Parents To Lovers Again (part 2)

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x reader

Warnings: fluff (smut in the next part)

part 1

It's been three days since the unfortunate misunderstanding with Charles and you haven't heard from him at all since.

You were overthinking the whole situation that happened on Sunday and couldn't come to any proper conclusion. At the same time, you were sad because he thought you would bring someone else into your bed, even though it wasn't your shared bed anymore, but you couldn't believe that he thought so little of you after all the years you'd spent together.

And yet on the other hand, you were thinking like any woman, you were glad that he was jealous and that the very thought of someone replacing him bothered him because that only meant he wasn't over you and that he still wanted to make things right between you two. Basically, you were torn between your brain and your heart once again and it was just a matter of what would prevail between the two this time.

Even though deep down you knew you couldn't fight yourself. You broke up over some disagreements that when you look at things more closely weren't worth destroying your relationship and your little family. You were both stubborn, he was a little too possessive, you were lacking in understanding, parenting, you spent most of your time alone with Lou and everything came together and exploded.

Now that you look back on the whole year you spent without him, you know that as hard as it is sometimes to be with him, it's ten times harder to be without him. You realize that you both made a rash decision, but then again maybe it had to happen only to make you realize how much you need each other in every way possible.

It's Wednesday night and while you're preparing tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch, Lou is sitting at the dining room table drawing. Soon your cooking is interrupted by the ringing of your phone on the kitchen island. A strange feeling comes over you as you wipe your hands on a dish towel and look at your phone only to see Charles' name on the screen.

You want to answer the phone, but you don't want the conversation to end in an argument so before you pick up the phone, you take a deep breath and try to calm down and strengthen your voice so it doesn't sound shaky.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's me." He says it in a completely normal, calm tone and you're grateful for that.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Umm, I'm leaving tomorrow for the race so I was wondering if you could put Lou on the facetime so I can see her since I won't be able to have her for the weekend?" He asks.

"Sure, just let me switch to facetime."

Once you did, Charles face appeared on the screen and he smiled when he saw yours too. You tried to hide the blush on your face and quickly walked over to Lou putting the phone in front of her.

"Baby, daddy wants to talk to you" You said setting the phone in front of her and leaving them alone to talk.

Since the kitchen and dining room were connected, you went back into the kitchen and could hear everything the two of them were saying. You didn't want to eavesdrop, but you kinda did.

"Hey, daddy!" Lou exclaimed excitedly.

"Mon ange, what are you doing?"

"I'm drawing and-and mommy is cooking" She says.

"Yeah? What are you drawing?"

"I'm drawing you in a red car. See" She says putting up the paper in front of the camera for him to see.

"Good job, baby. It looks great!"

"It's for you, I will give it to you when you come get me" She says forgetting that she won't be spending the weekend with him.

"Thank you, baby, but unfortunately we won't be together this weekend because papa has to work, but we'll see each other next week, okay?"

"Oh.." She pouts.

"Don't be sad, we'll see each other very soon, okay? I miss you so much and I'm thinking of you all the time."

Your heart is completely softened by his words and the immeasurable amount of love he has for your daughter.

"I miss you too, daddy"

"Okay, baby. I'll talk to you soon, I love you."

"Bye, I love you too." She says waving her hand as he blows her a kiss.

You watch her from afar and see how her mood immediately changed when she heard that she wouldn't be seeing him. Shaken by emotions, you move closer to her and squat down next to her.

"What's wrong, bug?" You ask her.

She doesn't look at you but frowns looking down at drawing on the paper in front of her.

"I miss papa" She says, hear eyes filled with tears.

"Can I tell you a little secret?" You say and she nods. "I miss papa too." You whisper making her look at you.

"Would you like to watch him race this weekend?"

"You mean on the TV?" She asks.

"No, I mean how about we go and see him?" You suggest and her eyes light up.

"Really?!"

"Would you like that?"

"Yes, yes! And I can give him this!" She says excitedly and you chuckle at how sweet she is.

"Then we have a deal. Now, finish up your drawing and go wash your hands because dinner is almost ready okay?"

"Okay, mommy. Thank you"

Nothing can compare to the happiness you feel when you see your daughter happy. Both you and Charles would do anything for her, and that's why you decided to quickly run upstairs to your bedroom, turn the hoodie right side out.

When a print of an F1 car was visible on the black hoodie, you took a picture of it and sent it to Charles without any additional explanation, because you knew that everything would be clear as a day to him once he saw it.

After just a few minutes, your phone vibrated in your hands.

'Been looking for it for a while now..' Charles' message said.

'I really fucked up this time, didn't I?' He added.

'You kinda did.' You replied.

'I'm so sorry, y/n..'

'You're lucky your daughter adores you so much and you better send a plane for the two of us so we can make it to the race on time.'

part 3

@charlesgirl16 @aleatorio1234 @teamnovalak @watermelonslut @diaryofarandomkid @sunny44 @tempo-rary-fix @ggaslyp1 @janeh22 @seonghwaexile @seasonswinter @itgirlofthecenturysposts @ricciardosredbull @amz824 @sarx164

[dexaroth]

it's kind of a fun move to make my very very personal blog also the one I post my drawings on

ive purposefully done it to not create that kind of environment where it's just an account posting art, a one-dimensional abstract thing that's so detached that if I were to post something like 'teehee I tried to off myself so I'm opening comms to pay the bills' it'd be met with utmost surprise bc it'd break the illusion yknow?

but sometimes I do want some drawings to not have context. to be as impersonal as a vintage figure whose sculptor has never been fully known or a golden locket with the picture of someone who you don't know anything about

I want both, to be honest. it's always been a struggle of the need of external validation but also to not want to taint everything with myself

I want to draw a pet portrait for someone and not have it be judged with all the ramblings and half-jokes about how everything sucks every now and then.

I want to draw a guy being mechanically separated for no reason and not have it show up besides someone's pet portrait and having to explain to the average person I don't even know why I like gore so much besides rendering it is fun

it's all like a cycle of making it clear who is behind the art for context but also sometimes wanting everything to speak for itself and wanting a sort of pure reaction to it

and it culminates into that overly familiar feeling.. of wanting to be consistent. to have a feel, a look that you can maybe hope someone will identify as yours.. and the question is always the same - for what? why? why does it matter?

if anything the first thing I'd ever say to someone who remotely showed interest in art and wanted to know my side of it is that nothing matters and everything is subjective and that there will always be people who see too much meaning where there isn't and people who miss the point entirely. and that diversity is just as good as quality and not a binary switch that you have to pick for the rest of your life. and that often by trying to achieve perfection you just end up dumping what gave your art a personal touch because it wasn't absolutely on par with the version of you that you so desperately want people to identify you with or the vibe you want to give off or whatever else

it's kind of a problem that also has different connotations depending on the way wherever you post works, too

on devart and I think insta too favorites and likes are the easiest way to show a kind of support that happens to streamline everything into images on a page instead of actually taking in most detail, the title or description or lack thereof, maybe even a message or line or music lyric intended to aid in the perception.. that ends up getting completely ignored because it takes extra effort to do. and it gets exponentially worse the more people you follow

then, well.. tumblr. because of the way the posts are organized and at least show captions it has a bit of a leg up, but then the sideblog stuff comes up. posts 95% of the time only give traction to the account that posted it, so a sideblog where you reblog your art is pretty much just a gallery for the convenience of whoever follows them. if you post on that sideblog however, then that facilitates no one visiting your main and just looking at the drawings, leading to the art-artist detachment as it is also plenty of extra steps and effort

then, independently, the path you choose is hard to undo. choose to be unknown and be bound to the façade you have to keep and not break your persona, or put all bits of yourself out to the public and there will forever be an image/ background version of you that will contextualize everything you do

try to turn around and choose to hide and it will put people off and affect how some will look at your new stuff now that you're less of a social butterfly because of the instinct of curiosity and wanting to know what happened , choose to show yourself and now you're too real and people don't want to associate with you because of the things you express or how it hits different knowing x and y or just not caring about you enough to be bothered to keep up with your life with sporadic drawings inbetween

it's all ironically about your own self-image and knowing others who know you

oh and it just hit me the financial side of things too. but that's too much for me rn and it's sort of a bonus to my point anyways

idk man. I feel like I'm having a stroke while an influencer tries to explain branding to me

[wastemanjohn]

i'm not at all bothered about people disliking john because entirely valid tbh and someone else's opinion changes nothing for me. i just think the militant anti john brigade - that is, those that make up textually unsupported and entirely leftfield reasons to dislike him - are really missing out.

the thing is, we've got an absolute buffet of an interesting and irreparably fucked up character here. we could debate the absolute Horrors of john winchester and his a+ parenting for days on end literally from the two seconds of screentime he had. because he does suck! it's totally fair to say that canon john is selfish, neglectful and at best emotionally abusive. now i'm defo no apologist (see username) - but he's also the furthest thing from a cardboard shitty abusive dad. there is serious context for the things he does and the way he thinks.

john's life was hell man. his own dad, for all he knew, abandoned him. he went to war young and almost certainly came back with ptsd. these things alone don't exactly make life easy but then your wife burns to death on a ceiling and you're left a widower and a single dad to a baby and a pre schooler before you're even thirty? then discover that it couldn't even be a plain old housefire but no - there is actual Evil out there and you and your children are not safe and never will be?

the desire for revenge is understandable. the desire to do stupid and paradoxically dangerous things to protect your children are understandable. right, good or healthy? no. but understandable. and that's what makes a good sympathetic character.

basically i think a lot of negative readings of john exaggerate the badness of his intentions and ignore his humanity. it's also understandable that john is not a beacon of emotional regulation. it's also understandable that he cant always balance being emotionally and physically there for his kids with Fighting The Horrors. pour alcohol misuse onto this dumpster fire and you're not getting a perfect person, or a perfect parent. you're getting a broken human who was focused only on keeping his kids safe, alive, protected, and able to protect themselves. sure, he had tunnel vision about it. he did it very badly. he controlled sam as the youngest and parentified dean as the oldest. he made sam feel misunderstood and smothered. he made dean feel completely responsible for the welfare of his brother and dependent on john's praise and approval as his second in command.

john fucked his kids up IMMEASURABLY. he thought he was doing the right thing.

also - remember young john? remember how he's softly spoken and loves his cars and adores his girlfriend and respects his fucking elders and, to quote mary, "believes in happy endings"? remember the doting dad we see for like a minute in the pilot? is that not meant to show us that, had his life not taken the turn it did - he would likely have been an entirely different person? how is the tragedy of that not also completely DELICIOUS??

so why homophobic john? why john who beat dean senseless regularly? why john who gave no shits and wanted his boys to be miserable? why these embellishments that make him someone else, someone with nothing good inside of him, when what canon gives us is so much better?

come on guys. the tragic messy sad angry selfish HUMAN john we got in the show is an absolute treat. why are we making him an irredeemable, unfeeling and uncomplicated asshole who doesn't give a shit about his boys. ya'll saw him spending a good 50% of his screen time crying about how much he loved them right? and sam and dean KNEW he loved them. they also knew, or in dean's case came to realise, that he was a terrible father in many ways. real life is messy and nuanced. families are messy and nuanced. and imo spn got this so right.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Unscripted Bracket — Round 5

Propaganda

Glenn Close (Dungeons & Daddies):

#Propaganda for Glenn Close: one of the other PCs mentions multiple times how hot he is #Actually several characters point it out but especially Henry #Also the only person in a podcast that has to put a disclaimer about not being a BDSM podcast to have had sex during the course of the show

Young hot rocker dilf

Loyal to his dead wife <3

Does in fact smoke weed

BARD!! HES A BARD. HE WAS LEAD GUITAR IN HIS BAND (that he was kicked out of)

His band was a Christmas cover band btw.

Literally the fandom had hot Glenn summer which consisted of drawing him being incredibly hot and sexy

Anti government (ofc)

Kind of cringefail (Disney adult) (was on dilfs of disneyland)

Young and sexy not your style? Then how about HIM AFTER YEARS LOCKED IN A TIME PRISON WITH A DAMN HANNIBAL MASK ??

Lost an eye and wears a fucking eyepatch

One incredibly buff arm

Has a pet rat named after his son <3

Immeasurable amounts of trauma in this man- becomes progressively more unhinged

OH OLD HUMAN BARD ISNT CUTTING IT? FINE

HE BECOMES A FUCKING DEMON

A COOL HOT ONE-EYED DEMON WHO WANTS TO KILL HIS DAD (also sexy)

HE CANONICALLY ENDS CHRISTIAN HELL VIA CHRISTMAS

IS ALSO WAY OVERLEVELED

Becomes a demon hunter for the rest of his existence

Also nonwhite !!! We are done with cringefail whiteboys !!!!!!!!!

I can’t put into words ok just know he is the best plz love him.

Okay but Glenn made a minivan cum by talking to her so

HE HAS A BOOK THAT HE MARKS X’S AND CHECKS FOR EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THAT DAY WAS A SUCCESS OR NOT. TO SEE IF HE DID GOOD THAT DAY. ITS ALMOST ENTIRELY X’S. HE WAS CUCKED OUT OF A SON. AND A DEAD WIFE. HE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO KILL HIS DAD IN REVENGE. There’s absolutely nothing going for him except his sex appeal in his life. Nobody he loved remembers him. He lost his eye. All he has is a pet rat and friends who admit they don’t really like him that much. He was kicked out of his own band. The band was named after him. He was kicked out of the Glenn Close trio. All he could do was deez nuts the big bad and be sexy. If nothing else, then pity him. Look in his eyes. Look at his heart and soul. He did not do the BDSM episode for this I’ll tell you what. Do this for my his sake. Do it for Nick Jr, who needs the prize money to pay for his rat snacks. Do it for his son. For Morgan. Ganbatte.

Glenn is the goofiest sexiest character there is and I will die on this hill! I will ride into battle for him! what Dndads created is truly unique and Glenn is a key part of that and for that he deserves to win. I said it before and I'll say it again - GLENN SWEEEEEP

Can we talk about how he says ‘baby’ casually? Like he just calls people that?? That’s HOT. THAT IS HOT!! He’s also bilingual and knows Japanese!!!! He’s a big dumb idiot with a lot of charisma!!!!!! HE WORKED AT A BDSM PLACE FOR TWO SEPARATE ONE SHOTS. HES SO SAD BUT PLAYS IT OFF LIKE HE’S CHILL ALL THE TIME!! HE DOESN’T THINK OF HIMSELF AS SINGLE BECAUSE HE DIDN’T DIVORCE HIS DEAD WIFE!!! He’s like.. the perfect guy. We need this win.

I’d also like to add the fact I made this. Which is the first 11 episodes edited to (almost) only have Glenn in them <3 which is a level of insanity I hope to reiterate. These took hours to make. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.

Mod Note: While I will still take "bad dads are sexy" propaganda and "bad dads aren't sexy" anti-propaganda, I kindly request no more discussion on whether or not he was a bad father. This is a sexypoll, not a parentingpoll. If you see a post you strongly disagree with, you can just not reblog it.

Mod Note 2: This tournament is about fictional podcast characters. Please do not vote for the real actress Glenn Close.

Amber Gris (The Adventure Zone: Ethersea):

Middle aged woman who punches sharks to death. My hero

If you love me you'll vote for amber gris I swear to everything holy on earth amen

Amber is butch, instant win

Amber Gris has a negative charisma modifier and she pissed her pants on purpose in order to trick a guard and knock him out. She tied up a dude. She once killed an evil magic shark (they're out for murder. not like real sharks) by punching it and then picked it up and smashed it into another shark, also killing it. She talks in a southern accent. She calls people guppy because it indicates a lack of respect. She has a big pair of magical green arms that come from her stomach. She got a fancy jacket and immediately ripped its sleeves off. She has a gay thing going on with one of the political leaders in the city. She gets in fights with people and doesnt do vulnerability and tries to lay low and not get in any social trouble she doesn't have to. She jumped through a portal into a new world because she could. She's now the god of said world, alone with only afformentioned political leader, who was previously possessed and she had to fight. She spends her time in a bar called the Cloaca. She calls people she doesn't like claspers, because it means shark penis. She and her friend, an old man named Uncle Joshy, sneak attack each other and yell VIBE CHECK! She tries to talk fancy to impress people and she's really bad at it (verily).

She’s everything and more. She’s irreverent. She punches sharks for a living. She becomes God. What more do you need in a butch.

amber gris propaganda: she is straightup the physical embodiment of "women want me, fish fear me." also she's an appalachian post apocalyptic sea captain. that's just objectively cool.

AMBER GRIS IS PUNCHES SHARKS AND IS (one of) THE MOST BADASS BLACK WOMEN PCS IN DND SHOWS IVE EVER SEEN. SHES INCREDIBLE AND A WIN FOR DYKES EVERYWHERE

amber's creator said she was based off of the type of working-class woman you commonly see in appalachia where "this is the sort of woman that you see walking past CVS, and you know that a truck could hit her and it would just split around her as she continued to go pick up whatever she had to do that day." and that's pretty hot

guys Amber becomes lesbian god of the new world with her childhood “”friend””

#amber gris is LITERALLY a middle-aged butch #she would win this entire tournament in a just world

Last time Amber got horny was when she killed that shark

"it was a savage bummer though, don't-- trust me, there's nothing that great about a history. You know? I got one. What did I do, killed a bunch of sharks? Last time I got horny, god and christ I can't even tell you-- well, it was when I killed that shark. But! Hey. We're all just kinda figuring it out."

Moonshine Cybin (Not Another D&D Podcast: Bahumia):

She's a hot elf with mushrooms growing on her. She has 1 level of barbarian. She's bisexual. She shapeshifted into a dragon and ate a god.

how tf does the post not mention Moonshine’s giant boobs her greatest asset

Moonshine has canonically gone down on a woman for a solid hour without asking for anything in return. Moonshine edged a dryad just by kissing them. Moonshine faced down someone being controlled to kill everyone in his path and told him if he still wanted to hurt her, she would take his blows as a friend. Moonshine makes jambalaya for her family and friends. Moonshine mispronounced someone’s name for a month and that woman still wanted to hook up with Moonshine. These are just a few of the reasons why Moonshine is sexy.

shes illiterate

canonically huffs dirty water from a bong

has big tatas

wears a belly chain with a demon trapped in it

almost became the queen of hell

ate a god

turned into a pregnant moose & gave birth

The woman she went down on for an hour asking nothing in return is still hung up on her, 200 years later. Moonshine is unmatched

To be clear the woman whose name Moonshine mispronounced for a month and then hooked up with is the same woman she went down on for an hour, and the same woman who is still flustered over her 200 years later. The rizz is unparalleled. She’s also incredibly kind and accepting of others, and goes out of her way to bolster her friends. The party always requests one big bed.

moonshine cybin is a druid who learned counterspell through sheer force of will. moonshine cybin turned one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse into a dolphin, flew him 60 feet up into the air, dropped him on the ground, and then spit spores into his face to kill him. moonshine cybin turned into a dragon and bit the head off of a double god. moonshine cybin was willing to confine herself to an eternal hell to save the world. moonshine cybin is a dragon rider. you know what you must do.

Amber and Moonshine Together

Look at them. They should not have to fight when they could be gay instead. Imagine the power they would have combined... Every lesbian in a hundred mile radius of the post would swoon. It may be an odd alliance, but from an Ethersea fan to Bahumia fans, i believe this will strengthen both our odds. I have always been insane about Amber Gris but through this poll I have also learned about Moonshine and come to love her too. Take my hand... We can do this together...

OKAY HEAR ME OUT MOONSHINE AND AMBER WOULD GET ALONG SO WELL

appalachian sapphic solidarity!

Art of Amber and Moonshine from @pirateknight.

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

Simon is sad.

Ice King is a joke.

Winter King is a threat.

So, I kinda love how much further we explore into the differences between Simon and Ice King and all the parts in between.

With the Crown, Simon's personality gets injected with boundless, reckless, thoughtless confidence - which appears to have its roots in Evergreen or specifically, Gunter's perception of Evergreen.

However, Simon also infused the Crown's influence with his weird quirks, his desperation for love, and his immeasurable grief.

In a different post, I wrote that the root of the Crown's curse latched onto Simon's love, which in its own way is his grief as well. These powerful emotions were decentralized so that even if Ice King couldn't quite understand the source of them, he felt them hard. And moreover, these emotions clouded his capacity to function.

So aaaaaall that infinite confidence tempered and sabotaged by Simon's sorrow, making Ice King into a joke. Oh, sure he's manipulative liar like the way he lied to Finn when he was trapped in the spirit world. But he's quite incompetent.

His intentions aren't any less selfish or destructive but he's just So Bad at the follow through. Absolutely dysfunctional. That makes him easier to laugh at even when he's doing stuff like slapping tape on PB's mouth as she's sleeping because he "breaks up with her" in the next minute.

Winter King wouldn't need tape. That's the difference. Winter King is frightening because he can in fact follow through on all of his selfish and destructive impulses. When he lies, he can get away with it because he's a *good liar*. He's charming without being sad. He's confident without being annoying.

Winter King has Evergreen's strengths and Simon's charisma and wields it with deadly intent because he also lacks Simon's conscience and Simon's fixation on love and connection - true love and connection that isn't something he made in a lab. The fact that Winter King can be satisfied with hollow dolls that resemble his loved ones is TELLING.

Winter King and Ice King are fundamentally separated by their levels of lucidity and competence. And that's pretty much it. Even Winter King's memories remain frosted over and nothing like the original Simon Petrikov's

Which leads me to the original Simon Petrikov. I truly enjoyed the way Simon is differentiated from Ice King and Winter King simply by showing his compassion - which both lacked. Simon immediately plead for Bubblegum's life whereas Winter King was like Nope.

That was so good. Just emphasizing how the Simon and Ice King aren't a 1 to 1 reflection or transformation. Or in other words, that Ice King is not entirely Simon and Simon isn't entirely Ice King.

Also the subtext of Simon secretly resenting Winter King, being unsure if he wanted to be just like this weirdo who just goes around calling himself radical. This chuunibyou motherfucker. He really wants to be that? Really?

But again! Simon's vindication at learning that the Crown can't be fought! Because also fighting is such hardwork and he spent a thousand or so years trying to do it, failing to do it. The way he almost whined at the Winter King, "but it's just so hard to fight the Crown", and he's just so tired. He's just too sad.

In the same way that Fionna wanted an easy, fun, no consequences adventure - Simon wants an easy, quiet, no consequences solution to all his depression. Simon doesn't want to be happy because happiness takes hardwork. All the shit that the Winter (Willpower) King was shilling? That's a lot of elbow grease.

Simon just wants to opt out of existence. Let the Crown take the wheel. He's done driving.

But therein lies... his curse. Winter King is euphoric because it came at the cost of the compassion that defines Simon Petrikov. Love and compassion is at the root of Simon's sorrow, but it's also the thing that keeps him here. Because Simon simply can't *not* help someone - even Fionna who has been a straight up dick to him this whole time.

Simon thinks that there's a "right way" to be cursed because he's holding onto the belief that he could stop existing and not hurt or harm anyone by choosing to do so. And this will keep him on the search. This will keep him as himself for another sad and hurting day, until he can find a way to run - flee without hurting anyone.

Spoiler: It's impossible.

[flamestar126]

It happened.

Again.

You ever just wanna be that nice, fun person.

Do something cool until someone up and comes fuck it up?

[aihaitahm]

Hello! Do you mind doing headcanons of dan heng, blade and jing yuan with a reincarnated s/o?? Like their s/o died in the past long ago in a war or something but got reincarnated again, the s/o doesn't remember them right away, thank you so much in advance ❤❤❤

hsr men and how they react to reuniting with reincarnated! s/o!

cw death, ooc? gn! reader, more in depth abt blade’s lore so i hope its correct !! been looking into it. kinda angst —> comfort.

sorry for the wait!! been busy but hope u like it:3

characters: dan heng, blade, jing yuan

dan heng

up to this day, he remembers the promises you both made, what you liked, disliked and everything about you. although reminiscing does not hurt him like it used to, it still makes him long for your presence.

the type to get dreams of you and when you tell him in his dreams that you will most certainly meet again, he is patient enough to wait. maybe it was foolish to rely on dreams but his desire to meet you and love you again is immeasurable.

time passed by and dan heng was still waiting, wearing the bracelet you always wore. he would always fiddle on it when he is worried. maybe he should stop waiting? but what if you appear when you stop waiting?

when himeko and welt came back from an expedition, they brought in a new member of the astral express. their name happened to be (name) and they happen to have similar features to the one dan heng has always remembered.

dan heng’s eyes widened as he realized his dreams were correct. you were correct. he continued to stare at you while doing your introduction. you looked ethereal, you looked timeless as if youve never aged the last time hes seen you and it was like youve always been alive.

you caught up on his staring after you introduced yourself to the astral express and vice versa. you somehow cant put a finger on why he does look familiar but you felt at ease just being with him.

“um… dan heng correct? we have the same bracelet, can i ask where did you get it from? also do i know you?”

“i got this from someone who i used to know and their name was also (name). they made it for me.”

blade

after sacrificing himself to become a blade, his memory of you was not the best however he still felt the same intensity of emotions he held whenever he remembers your name. he doesnt know if its a blessing or a curse.

despite being blade, some parts of him is still ren. and ren has intense feelings for you. blade for some reason remembers the last argument you both had before you died. you were concerned about him possessing and delving into more power which lead to him being defensive and arguing with you.

as much as blade likes remembering you, your touch, your love and you in general, he cant help but harbour some guilt and sadness. he’d prefer if he left your name alone in peace. even though he wants to get to know you again and apologize, what was the point if you were dead. if your lives werent meant to meet each other again in any universe? it would be best if he just forgets about you.

fast forward and his bad luck struck him or this is probably in elios’ script but he was now arrested by the cloud knights of xianzhou alliance. it wasnt much of big of a deal to be honest but while in his cell, one of the cloud knights didnt have a helmet on, guarding his room.

he caught a glimpse of your face and this unlocks a lot of his memories as ren. how… timely, ironic it was to be held captive by your own reincarnation. its as if the heavens really planned it from the start.

you felt him staring at your face and which you snarled asking if theres something wrong. he just continously stared and smirked. you couldnt shake a feeling of familiarity with blade but aeons its an unbearable feeling but why would you say this to the general or other cloud knights… they might just interrogate you.

“you know if youre not going to answer my question well so be it. i know ive seen you in my dreams. i know we’ve met before. i know you know me from somewhere. but who are you?”

“you are bold as ever… but you should maybe figure out things on your own? its no fun giving you all the answers is it not? my new appearance is a clue, i’ll give you that.”

jing yuan

you knew jing yuan as your sparring mate whenever he was under jingliu and you under a different master. you both trained to becoming the strongest and maybe compete for the highest title of the alliance.

you sparred almost everyday with him. he enjoyed every moment he has with you. whether it was going for walks or eating food with you, it is a cherishable moment for him and you too. as you both grew into your teen years, you both happened to confess at the same time and became official.

unfortunately, your death caught up with you quickly. jing yuan was still quite young to experience grief but it didnt hinder him to train the hardest. jingliu wasnt in particular fond of you in the first place since you were distacting him.

without letting his master know, jing yuan would write letters to you everyday about what hes doing and how much he loves you. wherever you are he knows you both are in the same world or universe one way or another. he keeps most of your possessions because he believes it is his goodluck charm.

when he became general, he still wrote letters to you and even ask some of his servants to make a mini statue of your weapon to be displayed, in exchange for great amounts of money. he deeply misses you and he knows he carries a great amount of responsibility now that he is a leader. he secretly prays he gets to meet you again, even for one last time.

one faithful morning, he stumbled across a familiar face while shopping miscellaneous stuff for his cute mimi because he accidentally bumped into you pretty hard.

“ouch! be mindful of where you’re…. i-i apologize! i didnt mean to.”

“oh its alright it is actually my fault, i apologize. sorry to ask you this question but is your name (name)?”

“yes it is… why do you ask?

… on second thought i think you look familiar asides from the fact youre the general, i feel like i’ve known you before.”

[screamingatanemptyroom]

Please Fix the Story- pt 27 The Higher Realm

Here it is guys, a new part! Not very long, but it's new and I'm happy. Thanks for everyone who waited.

Masterpost linked here for anyone who wants to re-read.

___________________________

*** Soul transfer 25% complete. ***

As the words formed in front of me, I felt a sudden surge of dark power from deep within my soul. It crackled just beneath my skin, an incredible, immeasurable force.  I could feel it, knew it was there with a deep certainty I couldn’t explain. But while I could sense the enormity of it, I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t reach it or use it in any way. I stared down at my hand in frustration, wishing I understood what “soul transfer” meant, and how it was connected to this power within me.

“Umm… are you okay?”

A soft voice broke me from my reverie. I glanced up to see Liam staring at me with a look of concern. “If this is a bad time, I can come back later…” He was still extending a hand down to me to help me to stand.

How long have I been sitting here, staring at my hand, like a crazy person?

“Sorry.” I took Liam’s offered hand, sucking in a shocked breath once I did so.  There was a sudden connection when our hands touched. Something deep within my soul that had felt empty and alone had filled the moment my hand touched his, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. The connection was strange to me, but at the same time achingly familiar. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the shock, and used his help to stand next to him.  I was somewhat surprised to realize how tall he was, his thinner frame disguising his height. I tilted my head back, my eyes meeting his own quietly amused gaze.

“Sorry.” I repeated. “I’m just a little confused and lost.”

“Ah. No worries about that! You’re in good company, I happen to specialize in being lost and confused.” He answered with a smile.

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I’m Bel.”

“I know.”

I sighed with relief. “Good, I wasn’t sure, since we looked so different when we last saw each other!”

“You knew that was me?” He blurted out, obviously surprised. “How?”

I tilted my head. “You have the same name? We had coffee? You were the assassin who wasn’t a cat?”

“Ah… Yes!  The assassin world. That’s definitely the time I was thinking of, and not any other lower realm.”  Nodding enthusiastically, he avoided my curious look, but didn’t step away from our close position.

It was then I realized, somewhat uncomfortably, that I had not let go of his hand after taking it to stand up. With a regret I couldn’t quite explain, I released him, my hand feeling immediately empty and cold. Besides that, I felt a deep fatigue slowly settling in, an unexplainable tiredness as if my energy was slowly being sapped away. It had started from the moment I woke up here, and slowly became more noticeable over time. I looked over at Liam, who seemed unaffected by any similar exhaustion.

There’s something so familiar about him, I feel it even more so than I did in the assassin world. Which reminds me…

BAM!

“Ouch!” Liam rubbed his upper arm where I softly punched him. He looked down at me, confused. “What was that for?”

Avoiding his puppy dog eyes, I forced myself to scowl and explain. “THAT’s for poisoning yourself, you jerk!”

“Oh. That.”

“YEAH THAT! Do you know how hard I cried when I realized what you did? Just casually drinking poison and sneaking off to an alley to die?”

“I’m sorry, I…” He stuttered as he rushed to explain himself. “I didn’t think…”

“Didn’t think what?”

“Didn’t think it would matter.” His voice was neutral, almost carefree, which made the certainty of his words even worse. He truly didn’t think there was anyone who minded that he died in that world. “I’m the villain, Bel. I had to die if that lower realm world was to avoid being destroyed. I didn’t want you to feel sad or guilty, and that seemed the best way.” He paused. “Wait… why did you cry? Weren’t you happy the world was saved?”

I shook my head, resisting the urge to knock some sense into this man. “I cried because I thought you were dead! I thought I would never see you again!”

“You wanted to see me again?” His excited tone threw me off.

“Well… yes, but you’re missing the point!”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“Do you even know why are you apologizing?”

“Because I made you sad when I drank poison and died in the lower realm. So I’ll try my best not to drink poison ever again.”  He paused. “Is that right?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Not just poison, Liam, try not to get hurt at all.”

“That would be difficult.” He now had a solemn expression on. “Villains have to have a bad ending for the story to end happily.”

The villain? I felt a dull burning ache in my heart at his words, a memory just beyond reach.

“Why do you think you’re the villain?”

He shrugged. “It’s my role.”

“I don’t think you’re a villain. Villains don’t drink poison to protect a world from being destroyed.”

“I never said I was good at being a villain.”

I sighed at his amused words, and gave up trying to convince Liam for now. Turning away from him, I finally took a good look at my surroundings. The sense of fatigue was growing stronger, I felt dead on my feet, but curiosity overcame the tiredness as I examined my new location.

 “Where are we?”

It was a forest, somewhat similar to the one that surrounded the castle in the Higher Realm, but a dark and twisted version. The sunlight around us was a muted, almost grayish light, piercing through the rotting branches, barely reaching the ground that was mixed dirt and dying grass. The trees pierced through the earth, tangled dark wood fighting each other for the slightest hint of light and air. The shadows were just a bit too dark, not matching the objects casting them.

“Is this still the higher realm?”

“…No. I’ve never seen that place, but I heard it’s beautiful. This place is different.” Liam looked around dully.

“It’s not a lower realm though, there’s no story or mission prompt. So where is it?”

“It a separate realm, with a specific purpose.” He was now staring at his feet, avoiding eye contact.

“What purpose?”

“It’s a cage, Bel.” His blue eyes met mine, and I could see the deep sadness within it. “And you can’t stay here.”

I was shocked at that. “You want me to leave?”

“What?!” He almost fell in shock at my words, stumbling over his words as he tried to explain. “No, that’s not what I mean at all! I would love for you to stay! Nothing would make me happier than if you could live here… I mean…” He seemed to realize what he was saying, and flushed with embarrassment. “It’s this place that’s the problem… watch:”

He reached out and touched a tree branch, which fell to pieces in his hand.

“This place destroys life, slowly draining the energy from everything in it until only death remains. Nothing good can survive here.”

That explains the tiredness I felt. For a moment I remembered Adonis showing me a blood red door.  What had he called it? “A higher realm like ours. But a place of pure evil.” He told me something similar at the time, that nothing good could survive there.  Looks like I managed to explore the scary portal in the end. But if what they are saying is true…

 “What about you, Liam? How can you live here if it’s so dangerous?

“I told you.” He shrugged. “This world is a cage. And I’m the monster it’s meant to hold.”

“You’re not…” I wanted to protest his words, but I stopped at the look in his eyes. Changing tactics, I asked instead: “So how do we escape this cage?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned. “How did you get here?”

I thought about my last memory before I woke up, and then cursed loudly. “That IDIOT!”

“…I’m sorry?”

“Not you! That jerk who drugged me and tossed me in here!” My stomach growled. “And he did it before I could even eat BREAKFAST! He couldn’t wait until I had a chance to eat?” I shook my head sadly. “That’s almost as much of a crime as the kidnapping itself!”

The tree Liam’s hand had been resting on snapped like a twig, falling to the ground with a loud crash. Ignoring the carnage, he turned towards me, his face grim. “Who did this to you?”

“The kidnapping? He calls himself Adonis, I, however, have much more descriptive and fun colorful names for him.”

“Adonis…” Liam thought the name over for a moment. “Blonde fellow? Acts as if he’s the most important person in the universe?”

“That’s him!”

Liam growled under his breath. It was difficult to make out words, but I barely made out “Should have bit him harder.”

I raised an eyebrow at that, “You BIT him?”

“In another world. Wish I could snapped his neck, or at least ripped a limb off, rather than just take a bite...” He stopped, seemingly realizing what he just said, and looked over at me with an embarrassed expression. “Not that I’m normally biting people!”

I waved a hand at his distressed expression. “Don’t worry, I’d bite a few limbs off of the guy if I could right now. Especially with how hungry I am.” I laughed bitterly. “He better HOPE I get some food in me before I see him again!”

“Well, if Adonis the Great and Full of Himself was the one who put you here, then we have a bit of a problem. He’s the only one that I know of who has been able to open the portal to here.”

“Not that I want to go back anyways.”

“I told you, this place will kill you if you stay.” He shook his head at that. “First, we need to figure out food. Follow me.” He started walking deeper into the forest. I had to trot to keep up with his longer stride at first, but he quickly slowed down to allow me to walk at a regular pace. Even that was tiring, but I pushed forward.  I looked at the forest, wondering what there would be to scavenge in such a dead place. Deciding to ask Liam, I tugged at his hand, noticing idly his ears turning red at the brief contact.

“What kind of food do you normally eat here?”

Liam blinked, seeming almost confused by the question. “There’s a few beasts… kind of. They should be edible for humans.”

“Okay. Cooked meat doesn’t sound too bad.”

“…Yes… cooked…because that’s how normal humans eat. I eat it like that too.”

Eyeing his dodgy appearance, I decided not to ask.

After a few minutes of walking, during which I became progressively more winded, we finally came to a large cave.

“Here’s my home!” Liam smiled proudly as we entered. “I carved it myself!” He proceeded to show me the fairly spacious cave with roughly made, mostly empty rooms, boasting about the thickness of the walls and the special rocks he had collected along the way.

I smiled at his boasting, the stared at the enormous claw marks in the carved stone walls, and silently looked away.

He pushed a roughly made stool close to me. “Here, have a seat.”

“Thank you!” I sat down, breathing heavily. “I’m beat!”

Liam’s expression was concerned as he watched me rest. “This place is already draining you, Bel. I’m worried what will happen if you stay here too long.”

“I’m fine!” I waved a hand tiredly. “Just need to catch my breath.”

He wasn’t reassured. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Maybe I’m just out of shape, have you thought about that?”

“Sure, that’s it.” Liam laughed quietly, almost seemingly in spite of himself. “Either way, while you rest, I’ll get you some food.”

“I’ll help…” I stood up, but my legs gave out beneath me and I started to fall. Liam, surprised, caught me, lifting me up in a careful hold. Silently, he moved deeper into the cave, entering one of the carved rooms.  A single cot sat on a dirt floor, and he gently laid me down on it.

“Umm, thanks.” I looked up at Liam and paused saw an embarrassed expression, his eyes avoiding my own as he turned away.

“Rest here. I’ll bring you food.” He muttered quietly. “Cooked meat. Cooked.” He seemed to be reminding himself as he hurried out of the room, leaving me alone with just my thoughts and the sound of a rumbling, empty stomach.

I stared at the empty room for a few seconds, and then laughed. “What a cute villain.”

*** Soul transfer 28% complete. ***

______________________________

“Where are we?”

I looked up at the stranger who called himself Liam. His face was indifferent, his dark blue eyes cold as he shook his head slowly. “This isn’t a place for you. That’s all that matters. You should leave.”

“I can’t leave.” My voice cracked into a soft sob as I failed to hold back tears. “I’ve been betrayed, I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“You can do what you like, but you shouldn’t stay here.” He tried to laugh, but the sound couldn’t really be a laugh, it was far too sad and bitter of a sound to be called something so cheerful. “Otherwise, you’ll die, just like everything else.”

_______________________

“Bel, wake up.”

I blinked, the vision in my dream fading away as Liam’s face came into view.

I thought about the scene I had seen, similar to my recent interaction with Liam, but different. It felt real, like a memory. I’ve been here before. I’ve met Liam before in this place. It’s the same… but different.

But what is different? If I had to pin down what had changed from what I had remembered, it was Liam and I. The “me” in that memory was far more devastated by Adonis’s betrayal. I on the other hand, was more pissed than sad, wanting to save my mental energy towards plotting my revenge rather than mourning the friendship.

Anyone who is willing to stab me in the back doesn’t deserve my tears.

The Liam in my memory was different too. He was harsher, colder. The current Liam’s eyes were gentler, filled with a deep strength that hadn’t been there before.

We were both stronger, but it was more than that. There was a connection between us, not present in the brief memory of him from before. Something had changed in us. Something that had happened to bring us here again. I had a feeling that as the “soul transfer” continued I would learn more. If only I could figure out what made it increase!

“Bel, are you okay?”

I smiled at Liam, trying to reassure him. “I’m awake.”

“Good! So I made you some food…” He held out some charred meat that had been roughly cut up into bite sized chunks. It did not look very appetizing.

“I’m sorry.” He noticed me looking the food over and put his head down. “It’s my first time cooking it like this.”

I tried not to wonder how he usually ate meat if he didn’t cook it and took the burnt food from his hands. “Thanks, I’m starving!”

I ate it slowly, surprised at the not-terrible taste. Finishing the portion, I gave Liam a thumbs up. “It’s good!”

“Really?” He lit up with excitement. “I’ll keep working on my cooking and make it even better!”

Support spouse. The thought came and went, the words seeming strange and familiar at the same time.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to track down some fruit on the edge of this realm that are still alive and edible.” He said with a grin as I continued to eat. “That should at least keep you going until that Adonis the Jerkwad can come back to save you.”

I put down the meat in my hand. “I mean it Liam, I’m not going with him.”

“But you’ll die here.”

I didn’t hesitate, meeting his dark blue gaze with my own. “I’d rather that then agree to his broken idea of fate.”

The word fate seemed to twist within Liam, and for the first time I saw rage instead of amusement deep within his eyes. “Fate.” He spat the word out like a curse.: “… So you want to stay here?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Look you see we should talk about this before you say no…” I paused. “Did you just say ‘yes’?”

“I actually said ‘okay’ but essentially yes.”

“But… but…”

He was grinning again. “Did you want me to say ‘no’’? Or did you want to finish convincing me? Because I can pretend to say no if you want to say your piece.”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll get hurt?”

He pointed at me. “You don’t want to be under Adonis the Asshat’s control, under the control of fate.” His finger pointed at himself. “I happen to really really like having you around.” He shrugged. “So I guess we’ll just have to come up with a way to help you survive here.”

“Just like that?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

I grinned. “Then it’s settled. I’m staying with you AND not dying!”

*** Soul transfer 29% complete. ***

Eyeing the silent glowing words in the air, and curious about their meaning, I went back to eating the meat, which seemed to taste even better than before.

_________________

After eating I fell asleep again, feeling drained. This time I didn’t dream, but when I woke up, I still felt tired. Liam wasn’t kidding when he said this place would drain my energy from me.

…

Where is Liam?

Looking around, I saw that Liam, who had been by my side since I first woke up in this realm, was gone. I felt momentarily lost, and a bit lonely. Shaking my head in mild frustration, I forced myself to stand, bracing a hand against a claw marked wall.

Bel… you’ve been just fine being alone in the higher realm before this. In fact, you used to be excited when you could ditch Adonis the Buttface and spend time by yourself! How can you be so affected by just a few minutes without Liam?

…

…

… as the uncomfortable silence stretched on, I twiddled my thumbs, feeling a strange urge to juggle.

BAM!

A loud noise sounded out from a different part of the cave. “Thank goodness for that!” I didn’t even care if it was a deadly monster that broke into the cave, it was better than sitting bored and silent. I walked out, holding onto the wall for support, my feet shuffling oddly as I forced them to move. Taking short pauses to catch my breath, I continued to go slowly to the source of the noise. When I exited the room into the large open common space of the cave, however, I stopped, this time due to shock rather than exhaustion.

A glowing portal had opened in the air. It was similar to the ones in the higher realm, but different in several ways.  The edges glowed a blood red, and the whole space gave off a malicious energy. As I watched, the tear in space closed, leaving only the feeling of unease behind.

And on the floor beneath where the portal had hovered, lay Liam.

“Liam!” I stumbled forward, half kneeling, half falling towards him. He was curled in a ball, his clothing damp with sweat. His face was paler than it had been, his face drawn in a silent mask of pain.

What had he gone through in a lower realm? I knew from experience that injuries from the lower realms didn’t follow you to the higher realms.

But the pain did.

Before I could investigate further, Liam turned over onto his back, his blue eyes still showing pain… but triumph as well.

“I got it!”

“You got what?” I asked. “Beaten up?”

“No! … I mean yes I did but that’s not the point!” he laughed. “I tricked Dumbo into slipping up and telling me what we need!”

“Dumbo… you mean Adonis?”

“That’s what I said, Adonis the Great and Mighty Dumbo.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle, having to sit down as even kneeling became too much. “So what did he tell you?”

“You don’t belong here… your very nature makes this realm reject you. Just as my nature, my energy allows me to live here trapped but fine. Which means you just need a different energy to survive in this world! One that won’t be sapped away. And who happens to possess an energy that this realm doesn’t feed off of?” His grin widened.

“You?”

“Yep!” He stood up, muttered “excuse me” and picked me up again, carrying me back to the cot in the other room.

“Wait! So if that’s the case why are you taking me back to bed? Can you just give me the energy? Also how do I get your energy? Do we have to do it on the bed?”

Liam turned a bright red. “No, it’s not what you think! I’m just letting you rest while I go prepare stuff…” He very quickly but gently set me down and rushed out of the room, as if afraid to hear anything else from me.

“Ummm…”I was asking in earnest, but my words seemed to make Liam misunderstand. Thinking for a moment, I groaned and covered my face in my hands, feeling the heat radiating off it “Stupid Bel.”

After what seemed like an eternity Liam returned with a cup. Still slightly embarrassed, I took it from him, looking at the liquid inside.

It was gold.

“What is this?”

“This?” He seemed confused by the question. “It’s blood.”

“No, it’s not.”

“What do you mean?”

“The blood of what? A magical creature?”

Liam laughed uncomfortably. “No, just my blood.”

“Why is it gold?”

He hesitated at that. “Normal blood is a gold color. That’s what regular human blood looks like. Yep. That’s it.”

“No… it’s red.”

“Maybe you’re confused?” He flinched at my expression. “Maybe everyone has gold blood and it just seemed red at the time? Because of bad lighting?”

I watched him bend his head uncomfortably, looking almost scared that I would ask further. My heart ached.

“Sure, Liam. It’s just normal, human blood.” I smiled as I saw him sigh with relief out of the corner of my eye. “Now what do I do with it?”

“You drink it. Thus, the cup.” Seeing my blanching expression, he continued to explain. “You see, it’s how to transfer some of my energy to you. It won’t fix everything, but it will help with the worst of it. I promise it won’t hurt you!”

I believed him. “Thank you, Liam.” I tipped it back and drank it. It was warm, but strangely sweet.

Yeah, definitely not “normal human blood” even if the color didn’t make it obvious.

As I drank it, I felt a good portion of energy return to me. I was still a little tired, but at least I should be able to walk without falling or passing out. I stood up, turning around, and gave Liam a hug. “Thank you!”

He stiffened in shock, but reached out to hug me back before stepping away, blushing. “S-sure… anytime…”

We smiled at each other, and for the first time that I could remember, for the first time since I had woken up in the higher realm, I felt at peace.

I felt at home.

 *** Soul transfer 30% complete. ***

[swan-of-sunrise]

Let It Out, and Let It In

Summary: Spiraling under the immeasurable weight of his trauma, Steve desperately seeks out the company of his girlfriend and, after experiencing a panic attack in her presence, unexpectedly finds himself opening up to her about his mental health.

Pairing: Steve Rogers X Fem!Reader

Word Count: 5.1k

Warnings/Disclaimers: Disclaimer for a detailed depiction of a panic attack and a frank discussion about Steve Rogers’ trauma

A/N: Hi guys! I've been an MCU/Steve Rogers fan for damn near a decade now, and it hasn't escaped my notice that Steve's trauma has a tendency of being overlooked and overshadowed. So today, we'll be getting a glimpse of his ongoing mental health struggles (I promise you it's not all angst!) Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy!

Let It Out, and Let It In September 2015 The Home of (Y/N) (Y/L/N) and Sam Wilson, Washington D.C. (Superhero Snapshots Masterlist)

“Should’ve called ahead, Rogers,” Steve chastised himself under his breath as he knocked three times on (Y/N)’s front door. He shoved the hood of his sweatshirt off his head and roughly combed his fingers through his hair, the poor attempt to straighten up his appearance for his girlfriend doing very little to distract from his spiraling mental state.

Like many, Steve didn’t exactly have fond memories of high school. While everyone around him seemed to struggle a little as they transitioned from awkward adolescence to mature adulthood, he always felt as though he was one massive step behind them without any hope of catching up. One aspect of high school he did appreciate, though – apart from his friendship with Bucky and his beloved art – were his English courses; he devoured each of the novels, plays and poems that they were assigned to read and thoroughly enjoyed writing themes that analyzed their deeper meanings. One of his favorite books had been The Great Gatsby and even eighty years later, he could still recall the telling exchange that Jay Gatsby shared with Nick Carraway towards the beginning of their friendship: ‘You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me.’

The brief line of Gatsby’s dialogue managed to stick with Steve long after he’d finished reading the book, initially because he couldn’t imagine how one’s life could become so lonely but eventually, because he’d come to understand Gatsby’s words all too well; he suffered the loss of his mother and Bucky, went into the ice in 1945 and woke up to find that nearly seventy years had passed him by, grappled with the losses of all his fellow Howling Commandos and helplessly watched as the last personified tie to his past slowly succumbed to dementia. Like Gatsby, Steve preferred the company of strangers; they made it easier for him to ignore the crippling loneliness because they never bothered to try and get to know the traumatized twenty-seven-year-old man behind the red, white and blue shield.

Things began to change for him not long after the Battle of New York. He befriended Natasha, one of his fellow Avengers, and she tried her best to acclimate him to his new life; maybe it was a result of all she’d suffered at the hands of the Red Room or because she was just incredibly adept at reading people, but Nat knew that he was struggling and in her own unique way, she did everything she could to be there for him. He met Sam and (Y/N), leaving his apartment for his usual morning run around the National Mall wearing a serious scowl but departing for his S.H.I.E.L.D. mission afterwards with a truly happy smile on his face; Sam soon became one of his best friends, the VA trauma counselor understanding his difficulties with adjusting to his new life but never treating him differently because of them, and he found himself falling in love with (Y/N), the historical-fiction novelist bursting into his life like sunshine on a cloudy day and making him feel truly seen for who he was instead of the larger-than-life mantle he carried. And with the help of (Y/N), Sam and Nat, he grew closer to his fellow Avengers, even finding himself beginning to view them as his family and accepting the fact that he wasn’t alone anymore.

But while Steve had slowly grown to love and appreciate his new life, there were still some days when the reality of his situation would weigh heavily on his mind and it was only a matter of time before he’d break down into a full-blown panic attack; he did his best to hide his struggles from his girlfriend and friends, not wanting to hurt their feelings or make them feel that they weren’t enough for him, but it was becoming harder and harder for him to pretend that everything was all right. It was one of those awful days that saw Steve impulsively asking Nat to land the Quinjet at Joint Base Andrews on their way home from a mission in Argentina; the assassin did as he asked without question, but he could feel her concerned gaze following him as he walked down the ramp and marched across the airstrip alone. Ignoring the mounting pressure in his chest, he elected to do what he’d often do before the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and take a walk through the streets of D.C., following in Jay Gatsby’s footsteps and surrounding himself with strangers to avoid addressing the memories of his old life that were clawing their way to the forefront of his mind.

With the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low over his face and his hands shoved into its pockets, Steve trudged down North Capitol Street with his eyes downcast, prolonging his return to his dark and impersonal apartment and the panic attack that would inevitably follow. Dusk had already fallen and downtown, the city’s nightlife was beginning to ramp up; restaurants were packed with families visiting the historic city and cheerful groups of friends pulled one another into the bars and nightclubs, while couples walked arm-in-arm and took in the glimmering lights that illuminated the city’s imposing monuments. It wasn’t until Steve walked past a bookstore and caught sight of (Y/N)’s debut novel, For Queen and Country, proudly displayed in the window that he felt his mind beginning to clear and a small smile tug on his lips. In that instant, Steve was engulfed by an overwhelming need to see his girlfriend and he continued walking down the street at an increased pace, spurred on by the sunshine that might succeed in breaking through the bleak isolation he found himself consumed by.

Steve forced himself out of his musings just as the door swung open to reveal (Y/N); he was pleased to see that she was dressed for a comfortable night in, with a well-loved Lauryn Hill concert t-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants, but it was evident by the white strip adhered to her nose and the hair towel balanced on her head that he’d interrupted her evening. “Steve!” (Y/N), unaware of the guilt he was experiencing for interrupting her relaxing evening, smiled broadly and opened her door wider. “I’ve really got to stop listening to Sam; that lying Birdbrain told me you guys wouldn’t be back from Argentina until tomorrow.”

“The mission wrapped up a lot quicker than we’d initially anticipated, so Sam’s off the hook fir lying this time,” Steve replied with a small smile as he shoved his fidgeting hands into his pockets. “I, um, I’m really sorry that I didn’t call or text you before coming over, but I was on my way home and I…anyway, I can leave if I’m intruding-”

“Don’t be silly, you’re not intruding!” Standing the side, (Y/N) allowed him to step through the doorway and closed the door before turning to give him a sheepish smile. “After spending all day going over my book’s first draft with Greg, I treated myself to a bubble bath and I may or may not have fallen asleep in the tub; I woke up in lukewarm water and my fingers were all pruney, but it was a damn good nap.”

“You’ve been working hard on your novel, sunshine; if anyone deserves a little rest and relaxation, it’s you.” Steve slipped off his sneakers and neatly placed them near the entryway table, straightening and chuckling when his girlfriend launched herself into his arms and nuzzled her face against his chest. “Did you miss me?”

(Y/N) nodded and tightened her arms around his waist. “I always miss you whenever you’re away on a mission, sweetheart.”

Steve’s heart melted and before he knew it, one of his arms was holding her close while his hand was guiding her face upwards so that his lips could meet hers; their kiss was slow yet passionate, with each of them doing all they could to savor their rare moment of peace, but his initial reason for visiting the historical-fiction novelist made its presence known in his mind and saw him give her one last kiss before pulling away with a forced smile. “Me too, baby. I just…I really needed to see you.”

(Y/N)’s head tilted to the side as her (Y/E/C) eyes studied him but to his surprise and overwhelming gratitude, she didn’t ask him what was wrong or if he was all right. Instead, she took both of his hands in hers and playfully swung their arms while giving him a coy smile. “I was about to try my luck at cooking dinner and since my culinary skills aren’t exactly up to par, I could really use the assistance of a big, strong Avenger. Do you know if any of them are brave enough to accept this dangerous mission?”

“I think I’m up for the challenge, ma’am,” Steve impishly replied and his overstated authoritative tone made (Y/N) giggle as she led him into the kitchen to prepare dinner. “Can I, um, ask what’s on your nose?”

“Oh, it’s for unclogging oil and dead skin cells from pores! It’s a little gross to remove but at the same time, kind of satisfying. Did you want to try one out for yourself?”

“…Sure, why not?”

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

While helping his girlfriend cook dinner wasn’t quite as dangerous of a task as she’d made it out to be, Steve certainly had his hands full with making sure she didn’t over-season or burn anything in her eagerness to prove her minimal culinary skills; most importantly, however, cooking alongside (Y/N) helped to take his mind off the incapacitating loneliness that drove him to her doorstep in the first place. They sat at the dining room table to enjoy their chicken parmigiana with angel hair pasta and broccoli and (Y/N) even brought out a pricier bottle of red wine to enjoy with their food, a gift she claimed was sent by Tony and Pepper to congratulate her for winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction. Steve listened to (Y/N) talk about the last-minute touches being placed on what would soon be her second published novel with rapt attention, voicing his amazement when she revealed which of her favorite authors would be joining her at an upcoming writing convention and chuckling as she told him about the playful argument she’d gotten into with her publisher about certain spelling choices in her draft.

After they finished their meal, they cleaned up the sizable mess they’d made in the kitchen, with Steve washing the dirty dishes and (Y/N) drying and putting them away; they fell into a comfortable silence while they worked, and he found himself focusing on her soft humming as he deliberated over whether or not to open up to her about the complex emotions he was fighting to control. He loved his girlfriend with all his heart, but it was because of his love for her that he hesitated to fully open up and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why: he was not only afraid that he’d hurt her feelings if he told her that he still struggled to acclimate to the twenty-first century, but he was also afraid that the truth would only serve to drive her away. The memory-wiping device from that Will Smith alien movie Tony made me watch could solve all of my problems in the blink of an eye, he sullenly thought with a sideways glance at a blissfully unaware (Y/N) putting away their dishes, you can’t miss something that you don’t have any memories of.

With the kitchen scrubbed clean and the comforting sound of a light rainfall outside echoing throughout the cozy home, Steve and (Y/N) took to the couch to watch some television. The historical-fiction novelist dissolved into a fit of giggles after applying a cleansing strip to Steve’s nose and he happily indulged her by posing for the selfie she all but begged for his permission to take. After she took several pictures and disposed of their cleansing strips, he pulled her into his arms and soundly kissed her, finding that the dark cloud that hung over him was slowly but surely dispersing the longer she kissed him back.

“Do you feel like watching a movie?” (Y/N) breathlessly asked after they’d finally separated for air. A knowing smile was beginning to spread across her face as she realized they’d moved positions during their impromptu make-out session; the historical-fiction novelist was lying flat on her back while he held himself above her and as he deviously grinned down at her, she twirled her fingers around his sweatshirt’s drawstrings and shrugged offhandedly. “Not that I have any problem with continuing our current activities, of course-”

“Neither do I.”

His girlfriend’s smirk widened at his hasty reply. “But TCM’s been airing a really good screwball comedy marathon all day, and I was thinking that we could give it a watch. I guarantee that my world-famous Milk Duds-and-popcorn concoction pairs excellently with a glass of top shelf red wine and 1935’s Top Hat, so how ‘bout it?”

Steve’s smile instantly dropped at her otherwise innocuous statement. His lungs began to restrict, his vision blurred and it was as though someone had suddenly flipped a switch inside of his hippocampus; all at once, jarring flashes of cloudy memories flooded his mind and overtook his vision.

Bucky dragging Steve along on another double date and insisting that this one would be different than the other failed dates he’d arranged…his throat constricting as his date scowled at the sight of him…sitting in a darkened theater beside the highly displeased woman and throwing his best friend an envious look as he smoothly draped an arm over his smitten date’s shoulders…trying his damndest to enjoy the hit Astaire & Rogers musical-comedy so that his night wouldn’t be so miserable…

“Sweetheart? Are you okay?”

Fists tightening in anger when he saw a furious-looking man dragging his date up the aisle while she begged him to calm down…staggering to his feet in the alleyway behind the theater and throwing another punch at the laughing man, only for him to easily dodge and shove him against the nearby dumpster…fighting to catch his breath as he crumpled to the grimy ground and panicking when he recognized the tell-tale signs of an oncoming asthma attack…frantically grabbing at his pockets in search of his asthma cigarettes, fully conscious of Bucky’s shouting and his date’s frightened scream but unable to stop the black dots from invading his vision…

“You’re having a panic attack, Steve, so I need you to take a deep breath. Can you do that for me? C’mon, sweetheart, just breathe.”

Bucky’s hand colliding with his bruised cheek and stunning him back to consciousness long enough for his best friend to practically shove a lit asthma cigarette between his lips…inhaling the smoke and clutching his ribs as his body was wracked with a violent coughing fit…calling out for his mother the moment he regained his breath, only to break down into heaving sobs when he remembered that she’d been gone for nearly six months…

“Steve, look at me.” The sudden feel of his fingers pressed against a soft warmth finally forced Steve’s eyes open; although he was crouched in the corner of his girlfriend’s living room instead of a dingy alleyway behind Bay Ridge’s Alpine Cinema, his chest was still heaving under the strain of regaining his breath and his entire body was trembling. He focused on the blurry figure and realized in a flash of fear that it was (Y/N) kneeling on the floor before him, looking calm and composed as she held his hand against the side of her neck and gently spoke to him. “Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, like this.” The historical-fiction novelist completed the breathing exercise and nodded in approval when he shakily copied her. “That’s it, you’re doing so well, sweetheart. What are three things you can see?”

“You,” Steve automatically replied, making his girlfriend smile as his eyes darted around in search of two more items. “Sam’s bowl of wine corks…the lamp that you found at that estate sale a couple of weeks ago.”

“Good, good, but don’t forget to keep on breathing. What’re three things you can hear?”

He took another deep breath and released it before answering. “The rain falling on the rooftop above us…the refrigerator’s ice-maker refilling itself…the ticking of the clock in the entryway.”

(Y/N)’s eyes searched his and he spotted the flicker of trepidation that briefly flashed across them while she studied his features. “You’re doing such a good job, sweetheart. Now, can you touch three things for me and tell me what you feel?”

“Y-Yeah…” Steve swallowed thickly, his stiff fingers slowly flexing against the skin of his girlfriend’s neck as he focused on all he could feel. “Your pulse. It’s strong and steady. I can feel the warmth of the blood flowing through your veins.” Emboldened by her encouraging nod, he brought his other hand up to rest flat against his chest and stretched out his fingers along the material of his sweatshirt. “My sweatshirt’s soft, and my fingers catch on its embroidered logo…” He lowered his hand to touch the living room’s hardwood floor and winced at the unpleasant sensation. “The floor’s cold. All I can think about is the moment I crashed the Valkyrie into the ice.”

The historical-fiction novelist raised her arms but suddenly halted her movements. “Are you up for a hug right now?” Instead of answering, Steve wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a tight embrace; he buried his face in her neck and squeezed his eyes shut as her arms draped around his shoulders, savoring the weight of her warm body pressed against his and practically preening when her fingers rhythmically carded through his hair. “You can talk to me, Steve. Whatever it is you have to get off your chest, I’ll listen.” He could feel her press a kiss onto his hair. “And if you want to just sit here and enjoy the silence, then I’ll be more than happy to oblige you. I…I don’t want you to be afraid of letting me in; you deserve to feel safe enough to express yourself, sweetheart, no matter what.”

Steve didn’t know how long they sat there in silence before he rested his chin on her shoulder and stared unseeingly at her cozy living room as he finally found his voice. “The first thing that people told me after coming out of the ice was how lucky I was. They told me that surviving the crash and the ice was a blessing in disguise and that I’d have a shot at living a better life – and they were all so damn pleased with themselves as they were saying it, too, like they could claim that they did their one good deed for the day by convincing Captain America that he was better off in the 21st century – and none of ‘em could understand why I wasn’t as happy as the rest of the world was. Fury arranged for me to see a therapist, but I stopped going after the first appointment because I could see that it’d be more of the same ‘be grateful for what you’ve been given’ shit; there was no one I felt that I could talk to, and then after Loki and the Battle of New York happened…well, most everyone stopped trying to get to know me after that. The lack of any genuine companionship meant it was easier for me to hide and even numb my feelings, but when I found myself bonding with you and Nat and Sam, I…I started to become afraid of driving you all away.”

Steve pulled back far enough to meet (Y/N)’s eyes, only realizing he’d started to cry when her hands delicately cradled his face and her thumbs brushed his drying tear tracks away. “Were you afraid of how we’d react if you admitted that you still think about your old life?” There was no hint of judgement in her expression or hostility in her eyes, only patience and consideration, and Steve found himself silently appreciating his girlfriend’s kindhearted nature as he nodded. “Sweetheart, I want you to listen to me very carefully: depriving yourself of emotions is to deprive yourself of humanity. You’re human, Steve, and you’re allowed to feel however you feel. The people who love you love you for who you are and while I can’t speak for Sam or Nat, I want you to know that I’ll never, ever ask you to repress your emotions for my sake.”

“(Y/N)…” Steve softly started as one of his hands moved to caress her cheek. “No matter what, I’m always gonna have these memories of my life without you in my head. I have no way of knowing when or even if I’ll be settled into my new life. Doesn’t that…doesn’t that bother you?”

His girlfriend smiled patiently and shook her head before countering his question with one of her own. “If our roles were reversed and I was the one who’d come out of the ice instead, would you still love and accept me for who I am?”

“Of course I would, sunshine,” Steve replied with conviction.

“Then believe me when I say that I’ll always love and accept you, sweetheart, no matter what.” With tears beginning to well in her own eyes, (Y/N) leaned forward and pressed a kiss onto his forehead. “Please, please believe me.”

Steve’s heart nearly broke at the desperation that laced her plea and he hurriedly nodded. “I believe you, baby.” He gently coaxed her to look up and into his eyes; the unabashed love that he saw emanating from her tear-filled eyes melted something deep within him, encouraging him to rest his forehead against hers and brush the pad of his thumb along her flushed cheek. “I believe you.” They stayed there for an undetermined amount of time, with their arms wrapped around one another and their eyes closed while they relished the warmth of one another’s embrace and listened to the steady patter of rain outside. When Steve felt his heartbeat slow to its usual pace and his limbs stop their trembling, he trailed his hand down from his girlfriend’s cheek to rest against her chest, in the space directly over her heart; he wasn’t sure why, but the steady beating of her heart against his palm was soothing to him. “Thank you for helping me through all of that; if I’d gone through it alone, I’d still be spiraling right about now.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, about how often do you go through a panic attack?”

Opening his eyes, Steve considered her question for several moments as he took in the consideration that was written across her face. “A couple of times a month,” He replied with a wistful smile. “They started right after I came out of the ice, but they’ve been happening a little more frequently lately.”

(Y/N) offered him a sympathetic smile. “You know, I may not be a Certified Kick-Ass Counselor like Sam is but if I learned anything from working with him down at the VA, it’s that acknowledging your feelings can be a great first step towards healing.” He hummed thoughtfully and took in her words as her fingers smoothed down his rumpled hair. “When you start to feel another panic attack coming on, you can always give me a call and I’ll do whatever I can to help you through it, okay? You don’t have to go through this alone.”

“I’m not sure how it’ll live up to this…” Steve’s arms wound back around the historical-fiction novelist’s waist and pulled her in close with a content smile on his face. “But I promise you I will.” The familiar jingle of their local ten o’clock news sounded throughout the living room, causing him to give his girlfriend an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, we’re probably missing that screwball comedy marathon you wanted to watch, aren’t we?”

“It’s okay, I’ll just head down to Barnes & Noble one of these days and buy the Blu-Rays. Besides, I think that now’s the perfect time to introduce you to one of favorite comfort movies, but only if you’re up for it.”

Steve, touched by the consideration she was continuously showing for him and his mental health, swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat and pressed a chaste kiss onto her lips, pulling back after a moment with a playful grin. “I’m up for anything, so long as it’s with my best girl…and her world-famous Milk Duds-and-popcorn concoction, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” (Y/N) readily agreed as she fought the smirk of amusement that was threatening to spread across her face; after extricating herself from his embrace, she hopped to her feet and offered him her hand, lacing her fingers around his once he stood and leading him into the kitchen as she continued. “We’ll make my not-so-secret recipe, pop open another bottle of pricey wine, and then we’ll be all set to watch 1978’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!”

“That’s the Beatles, right? So, does that mean the movie’s about the album?”

“…You’ll see.”

Needless to say, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was one of the strangest movies Steve had ever seen, but it was also one of the most entertaining movie-watching experiences he’d ever had; he chuckled at all of the corny yet earnest moments, watched in admiration as his girlfriend sang along to each and every one of the Beatles songs that played and even caught himself tearing up at the few emotional moments, all while indulging in some delicious popcorn and wine. Steve’s arms were holding (Y/N) close while they lounged across the couch and it was then, as the historical-fiction novelist in his arms sang her heart out to the film’s absurd yet catchy version of ‘Get Back,’ that he realized he felt more grounded in reality than he’d felt in a long, long time.

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

Three days later, Steve was returning to his room in the Avengers Facility after a long intelligence briefing with the rest of the team when he spotted a box sitting in front of his suite’s locked door. I don’t remember ordering anything online, he thought to himself as he cautiously picked up the box and brought it inside; their mail was regularly scanned and checked for explosives and biological weapons upon arrival and while Steve was fond of bidding on used vinyl records on Ebay, he hadn’t logged into his account since well before his mission in Argentina.

“Please don’t be another ‘Over The Hill’ shirt from Tony,” He sighed under his breath, setting the package down onto his bed and retrieving his pocket knife from his dresser drawer.

Steve carefully sliced through the packing tape and pushed open the cardboard flaps, his head tilting to the side when his eyes landed on a misshapen bundle of bubble wrap inside. His interest piqued, he unfurled the piece of bubble wrap and his brows rose in surprise when a large stuffed black and white cow tumbled out onto his comforter; a small card was attached to the sky-blue bow around the stuffed animal’s neck, and he wasted no time in detaching it and reading its brief contents.

Sweetheart,

Meet Buttercup the Cow! I did a little research and found out that weighted stuffed animals can help reduce feelings of anxiety and even ground someone who’s experiencing a panic attack; whenever you begin to feel yourself spiraling or getting lost in your memories, hold Buttercup and imagine that I’m right there with you, giving you the biggest hug imaginable.

With all my love,

Your Sunshine

Steve’s eyes prickled with unshed tears as he placed the heartfelt note down on his dresser, right beside the framed sketch he’d drawn of his beautiful girlfriend long before they began to date. He picked up the stuffed cow and tested its weight in his hands before hugging it tight to his chest; he could already feel his shoulders relaxing and when he nuzzled his cheek against the soft fabric, he realized that the clever historical-fiction novelist had sprayed some of her perfume – Design by Paul Sebastian – onto the stuffed cow. Breathing in the familiar notes of tuberose and jasmine, Steve briefly closed his eyes as he smiled to himself and thought about how much he loved his girlfriend and her kind heart.

A brilliant idea suddenly came to Steve’s mind and after setting Buttercup down on his pillow, he pulled a jacket on, tucked his wallet into his back pocket and scooped up his motorcycle’s keys, hurrying out of his suite and down the hall to the common room; Sam was in the middle of making a sandwich while Wanda and Vision sat together on the sofa debating their favorite sitcoms, the counselor looking up from his half-made meal and flashing him a welcoming smile. “Hey, man, we’re gonna do a little team bonding and watch Modern Family while we eat lunch; you want a sandwich or a wrap?”

“Thanks for the offer, Sam, but I’ve gotta go run an errand,” Steve replied with an apologetic look and twirled his keys around his finger. “Do you happen to know where the nearest Barnes & Noble is?”

“Um, I think there’s one up in Kingston…?”

“1200 Ulster Avenue.” They both looked over at their android teammate as he nonchalantly continued. “According to all available data, the store sees low to moderate business around this time, and the traffic appears to be light.”

An impressed Steve gave him an appreciative nod. “Thanks, Vis.”

Their exchange caught Wanda’s attention, causing her to look up from her box set of DVD’s and arch a curious brow. “You usually detest going out on errands. Is everything all right?”

“Yep, I’ve just got some Blu-Rays I need to buy.” He flashed his befuddled teammates a grin as he brusquely headed out of the common room. “I’ll see you guys later!”

As he jogged down the steps and crossed their private parking lot towards his motorcycle, the cell phone in his pocket chimed; he swung his leg over and sat as he pulled his phone out to check his text messages, chuckling to himself after reading his friend’s brief message.

Sam: If you show up at Booksmart’s doorstep with a box set of old Cary Grant flicks, she just might ask you to marry her on the spot 😂

Glancing up towards the floor-to-ceiling window in the common room and spotting an amused Sam watching him, Steve grinned and gave the counselor a teasing salute before revving up the engine and taking off. I can’t think of a better outcome than that, he thought to himself as he sped down the road, a truly happy smile spreading across her face at the mental image of someday marrying the love of his life.

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

A/N: And there we have it! I promise, the next one-shot will be a little happier and although I haven't decided which movie/show I wanna tackle next, I'm sure that little series will be happier too! Thank you all so much for reading and commenting! I’ve created a Spotify playlist inspired by this series, and I’ll be updating it every time I upload a new chapter. Enjoy!

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ziGMhEsAw833GQ9eV44nR?si=6dfead09c76848d5 

Stumblin’ In Book VII: “Superhero Snapshots” Masterlist 

Stumblin’ In Book II: “Age of Ultron” Masterlist

Tagging:  @mrs-obrien​​​​​ @lahoete​​​​​ @awkward117 @cminr @natdrunk​​​​ @momc95​​​​​ @savedbystyle​​​​​ @miraculouscloud @awkwardnesshabitat​​​​​ @marinettepotterandplagg​​​​​ @mangosandmimosas @supersouthy @benakenalove​​​​​ @brooke0297​​​​​ @hufflepeople​​​​​ @becausewelie​​​​​ @outoftheregular​​​​​​ @junipermurdock​​​​​ @ladydmalfoy @mads-weasley​​​​​ @username23345@crist1216​​​​​ @capswife​​​​​ @lilmschild​​​​​ @avngrsinitiative @crowleysqueenofhell​​​​​ @y-napotat​​​ @mary1raven​​​​​ ​​​​​@groovy-lady @ljej95 @innersublimefury @prettysbliss

[late-to-the-party-81]

Cuddles are the cure

Ask: Omg omg omg Jen please please can I have some Bruce/Hulk and Reader. I'm in desperate need of some super fluff, like imagine Hulk just picking you up and snuggling you all warm when you're I'm you're sad 🥺🥺🥺

AN: Super fluff, you say, Elsie? In fact it’s so fluffy I had to throw in reader comforting Hulk too - mutual comforting. Set in the world of You, Me and the Other Guy and slots in as part two of the series.

Beta’d by @lunarbuck

Moodboard by me and dividers by @firefly-graphics

Master list | Series Master list

Relationship: Bruce/Hulk x Reader

WC: 1.5k

CW: Fluff. Lots of cuddles. Soft kisses. Implied Tony being a dickhead. Working in customer retail sucks.

In every way that mattered, your life had improved immeasurably since you and Bruce had started dating. You already had a friendship, a connection, and you couldn’t believe how easy the two of you just fit. 

It was still early days though - you had your shifts, and when Bruce, or rather the Hulk, wasn’t off saving the world with the other Avengers, he had his research and other interests.You didn’t want to live in each others pockets, but still made the effort to see each other at least three times a week, and spoke on the phone all the other days.

You’d introduced him to your small circle of friends, and none of them realised who he actually was, aside from being a sweet nerd who’d swept you off your feet. It was the one advantage of having two personas, you supposed - it meant that he could maintain privacy when out and about.

In return, Bruce had invited you to come and meet the other Avengers. He’d done that charming thing of coming over all shy, asking you while cleaning his glasses with his shirt, so that he wouldn’t have to look at you and risk rejection.

“I mean, you only have to come if you want to. I don’t want you to be disappointed or overwhelmed, because they can be a handful. Tony will tease me… and flirt with you, Steve’s actually got a filthy potty mouth, Nat can be pretty intimidating, Thor, when he’s here, is loud and Clint… well… he’s got a specific sense of humour.”

You’d reached out and placed your hand on his arm, and he’d put his glasses back on and looked at you, expression unreadable.

“I’d love to meet them, and not because they’re the Avengers, but because they’re your friends and colleagues.”

“As long as you’re sure.”

You’d shifted closer, cupping his face with your hand and brushing your nose against his.

“Certain.”

They’d been everything Bruce had described and more, but you’d won them over, and now had your own Avengers Tower access clearance. Sometimes you and Bruce met up there, especially if he was working late, or had been on a mission. It was also the best space for you to hang out with Hulk. The green giant was actually a massive cuddle bug, and enjoyed lounging in his/Bruce’s room, watching Disney movies with you while eating insane amounts of popcorn and candy. 

At first, Bruce had been reticent about letting you spend time with his other persona, but you’d convinced him that you would be fine. You knew almost from the first moment that you’d met him that you and Hulk would be friends, because he and Bruce were two sides of the same coin - he would never hurt you.

Now, so far in your relationship, it had all been sunshine and roses - well, apart from that night, but considering what it had led to, you couldn’t be too upset - you and Bruce having cute dates, sweet kisses and lots of laughter.  As you got off the subway you hoped that he’d be able to manage something different, and you didn’t mean intimacy. Well, that would be nice, but also, you were content to wait until it felt right for both of you. What you did need today was comfort, because it had been A Day TM (a really shitty day) because even the best relationship could improve what it was like to work in a retail job.

It wasn’t as though you weren’t used to asshole customers - you had to usually deal with one or two every day, but today! It was like they’d all held a meeting and decided to show up at the same time and be meaner and more horrible than normal - asking for complex drinks that made no sense, then telling you that you’d done it wrong, when you’d actually triple checked with them before starting.

Walking up to the front entrance of the tower you fanned your face, trying to disperse the tears that threatened to fall from just thinking about it. You wouldn’t let them bring you down!

Striding into the building, you flashed your access card to the security guard before swiping it at the executive elevator. You were glad that you’d be able to travel straight to Bruce’s floor. He wasn’t expecting you at this time, but one of your colleagues had owed you, so you’d ended your shift a couple of hours early and made your way straight here. Hopefully you’d be able to hang out in his room while he finished up his work for the day. Or maybe you could keep him company in the lab if you signed some kind of NDA.  

You could feel yourself spiralling and you swallowed back a small cry, turning it into a hiccup as the elevator came to a halt and you virtually stumbled out into Bruce’s living room…

… to be met with the sight of Hulk, sitting on the floor, worry beads around his neck, watching Lilo and Stitch.

His face broke into a broad smile when he saw you, and he clambered to his feet as quickly as he could.

“Pretty Girl!” He turned and looked at the clock and then back at you. “Pretty Girl early!”

You bit your lip and nodded. Despite your mood, a small smile played at the edges of your mouth.

“Uh-huh. I just needed to see you… or Bruce.”

Hulk looked at you for a moment, and blinked. “Pretty Girl okay that Hulk here, not Bruce?”

You nodded, his earnestness and innocence threatening to destroy the last of your control. You took a step towards him, followed by a second and then you were throwing yourself into his arms, pressing your face against his chest and letting the tears of frustration flow.

Slowly, Hulk wrapped his arms around you, and you noticed he was a little unsure.

“Pretty Girl sad. Did bad man come back and try hurt you?”

You lifted your head, and sniffed with a little smile. “No. Nothing like that. Just a bad day at work.”

You eased out of his hold so you could drop your purse and take your coat off.

“How Hulk help? Want Hulk smash?”

He was too sweet. It was tempting.

“No. No smashing. Just be you, buddy. Sit back down and I’ll join you - we can finish watching together. I just need some cuddles.”

He let out a light snort and lumbered back over to his pile of cushions, dropping down heavily. You knew that Tony had had this floor reinforced, but you were still astounded when the floor didn’t shake. Once he appeared comfortable you joined him, climbing up into his lap and pressing into his side. He was so warm!

You watched in silence together for 10 minutes or so, both of you letting out the odd bark of laughter at the antics of Lilo and her extraterrestrial friend. You could feel yourself calming down just through this - being here and being cared for, with no expectation, something that previous boyfriends had never given you.

You were glad you had Bruce, and Hulk. Which brought you back to why the latter was here.

“Hey, Big Guy. Any reason you’re out today? Was there a mission, because I know Bruce had a load of scientific stuff to do today.”

You felt his body stiffen under you.

“No mission. No smash. Stark happen.”

You sighed - it stood to reason.

“Did he frighten Bruce again?”

He let out a resigned huff.

“Wanted to know what makes Hulk appear. Now Hulk not want to go back. Hulk come here, home. Watch movies, try to be calm.”

You rose up on your knees and pressed your palm to his cheek, feeling him lean into it gently.

“So you’ve had a bad day too? I’m sorry. What about if I get some more snacks and you pick another movie. How does that sound?”

“Hulk like snacks. Hulk like movies. Hulk love Pretty Girl.”

You dropped a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Love you too, Big Guy.”

You got up, and went to the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards for enough snacks to keep Hulk sated. You smiled to yourself as you heard him talking to FRIDAY, picking the next thing you were going to watch. Snacks and drinks obtained you took your place, back on his lap.

The opening credits played and you smiled - the Little Mermaid.

“You know, if you ever have this problem again, ask FRIDAY to call me. I’m more than happy to help cheer you up. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes. Hulk and Pretty Girl best friends.”

You both settled down then to watch Ariel fight for her true love. Hulk kept an arm around you, holding you close, but without squashing you, and every so often you ran your hand up and down his arm or scratched your fingers into his black hair, quietly soothing him.

About 10 minutes from the end, Hulk started to fidget and shift under you. You got up and watched as he slowly shrank, and his skin returned to pink. Bruce looked up at you, slightly chagrined, from the pillow nest on the floor. “Hey.”

You smiled and sat back down next to him, wrapping your arms around one of his and leaning your head on his shoulder. “Hey, yourself. Feeling better?”

“Absolutely.” Bruce leant over and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “And you? Sorry I wasn’t here to help.”

“Not your fault. And I’m sure there will be another day with a-hole customers. I’m also certain that Tony won’t frighten Hulk out of you again.”

Bruce chuckled. “You give him more credit than he’s due. Although he might not try it again for a while - the Other Guy smashed up his new Porsche…”

You couldn’t help it - you laughed out loud, cuddling into your boyfriend, and realising that life wasn’t so bad after all.

Tag list: @jobean12-blog @tuiccim @krissy25 @bodeckersdiamonddoll @goldylions @luxeavenger @wheezy-stucky @doasyoudesireandlive @chemtrails-club @peaches1958 @pono-pura-vida @writing-for-marvel @esposadomd

[imagine-darksiders]

Okay, so, sad girl hours right now.

Y/N has been a lot quieter than usual, and when asked “what’s wrong?” they immediately break down crying because they were having a shit day where EVERYTHING was going wrong, but didn’t want to bother anyone with their stupid human problems (there’s far greater things to worry about in the heat of the apocalypse), so they kept it bottled up only for that one simple question to shatter the dam holding them together. The four horsemen + my comfort giant ™ Ulthane.

Also if you’re having a bad day like me: one bad day doesn’t equal a bad life. You’ve made it this far; surely you can make it to wherever you want to go next! You are loved and you are valid. Don’t give up just yet. ❤️

Hey, I'm really sorry, I know you requested the Horsemen too but I got way too carried away with Ulthane, and wrote an 8000 word response to this ask lmao, and by then I thought it might be getting too long.

Content warning: This gets quite existential. Allusions to suicidal thoughts, talks about death and the inevitability of death. Depression. The end of the world. The Apocalypse, nihilism. Crying, smoking, cigarettes, emotional outbursts. Ulthane is trying his best to raise this tree full of sad, unpredictable kids.

---------------------------------------------------------------

This was always bound to happen…

Ulthane’s chest swells and sags in the wake of a mammoth sigh, like a wave kissing the shoreline before it retreats back into the tumultuous sea.

A tall, arched hollow carved out of the trunk of the Maker Tree allows him a limited glimpse of the city beyond this inner sanctum. Through the fragmented shadows of a thousand, whispering leaves, the night sky peeks back in at him, a vast, endless beast of shimmering obsidian, crushed velvet strewn above the Earth.

It’s dark out there, immeasurably so without the lights and sounds of a population that had once been two million strong.

He would have liked to have seen it….

From his usual post at the anvil nestled deep inside the cavity of the great tree, Ulthane’s gaze calmly trails after a tiny, tiptoeing shape that hugs the wooden walls, a dark silhouette creeping through the hollow and out onto the plateau overlooking Haven City.

Again, the brawny maker exhales a long, gentle breath as he lowers his hammer to the anvil and drapes a burly forearm across the cool, flat surface, ears tipped towards the ground in unhappy contemplation.

He recognises the silhouette.

It can only be one human.

You. Your stature, your gait. Not to mention that this is the third time in as many days that he’s spotted you leaving the safety of the sleeping nook to venture outside and into the wild, chilly night.

The first time, he’d merely turned you right back around at the entrance, giving you a gentle nudge with his fingertips and a disgruntled reprimand about not leaving the tree after dark… Or at all for that matter.

Your face was tilted down then - he assumed in embarrassment – as you slumped your way back up to the nook, never letting him catch a glimpse of your expression, and never speaking a word to the huge, hovering maker.

That alone had stirred a modicum of unrest in the back of his mind.

Typically, he’d had very little trouble getting a conversation out of you. But that night, he brushed your unusual silence aside, chalking it up to fatigue, or perhaps that strange habit some humans have of walking around in their sleep.

They even have a sleepwalker in their midst… Damn near gave Ulthane a heart attack when he turned around one night to find the little blighter standing motionlessly just behind his boots, their mouth slightly ajar and their eyes lidded full of sleep, staring past him at nothing.

The phenomenon is yet another curious facet of human biology he wishes he could share with an old friend of his.

Alas…

Ulthane had elected to keep a closer eye on you during the nights, even warned Elanya and Yarin that they might have another walking sleeper on their hands.

He’d hoped, perhaps naively, that it might have just been a one-time occurrence.

His hopes were dashed when it happened again.

Ulthane had never had his own younglings. Never really gave it much thought beyond his brother’s teasing.

‘You sure you don’t plan on havin’ yer own?’ Thane guffawed unhelpfully as he watched his disgruntled brother fish a tiny, spluttering Karn out of the aqueduct that runs adjacent to Muria’s garden. ‘You’d make a good sire.’

‘Not until you have some first,’ Ulthane groused back as a way to escape answering, settling the boy on his knee with a fist clenched around his overall straps, like scruffing a pup. Ulthane had made a mental note then and there to teach Karn how to swim the very next morning. Preferably in the Fjord, and not in their sacred waterways.

Helping Eideard raise Alya and Valus was preoccupying enough, and then Karn was born a few centuries after the twins hit their adolescence. The boy lost his dam, and thus it fell to the other makers in Tri Stone to keep their littlest tyke out of danger as best they could.

In hindsight, Ulthane is grateful that he had any experience with younglings at all, because sometimes, taking care of a tree-full of humans feels a bit like wrangling toddlers who won’t do as they’re damn well told. Oh, they used to, back when they first met the giant and were utterly petrified of him. He didn’t like that much, but at least when they feared repercussions, they actually listened if he told them not to go outside, not to talk to the demon lurking on the plateau, not to climb the upper branches, not to drink the rubbing alcohol, not to sleep in their bedrolls with their boots on, and…

Ulthane wrinkles his nose and groans as he scrubs a rough hand down his face. Stone be damned, maybe he would have made a good sire after all.

The second night, you’d managed to slip past the vigilant maker without detection. He only realised something was amiss when, from the corner of an eye, he’d caught a tiny, orange glow blooming to life in the pitch-black dark beyond the hollow.

Immediately alert, he’d lifted his head from his work at the anvil to look properly, and found his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. There was a soft glow, small and round hovering in the darkness outside, several feet above the ground.

He squinted at it, watched it flare brightly for a moment before it receded to a softer burn once more.

….

“I’m just having a smoke,” you’d uttered tonelessly as he tromped through the hollow to find you leaning on the wooden ridge that separates you from a nasty, two-hundred-foot plummet to the city square below.

You didn’t turn around as you spoke. You didn’t need to. You could have heard the giant coming from a mile away.

Stealth isn’t something makers usually bother with…

Ulthane almost thought he should be angry. You’re a smart human. You should have known better than to leave the safety of the tree. But all he found when he loomed close enough to actually peer down and sideways at your face was something that took his great, thumping heart in a fist and wrung it dry.

Sad… is too gentle a word for it.

What he saw in your face at that moment, peering out over the city, shrouded by night’s enigmatic hue, was far more alarming to the burly maker than he’d ever admit to you aloud.

Oh, there was sadness there, certainly. But it was also so much worse than that.

With humans, it’s all in the eyes, he’s found. Humans have such astoundingly expressive eyes.

Dark pupils that expand and contract. Sclera that turns red from fatigue or anguish. Lashes that glisten like jewels when tears escape the confines of their eyelids.

Ulthane might be reduced to a soft-hearted fool whenever one of his – the - humans cries, yet he can’t stop himself from finding the act ethereally beautiful, in a way.

Tears are rare in other species, even among the younglings. In his own village, the river that brings them water is referred to colloquially as the Tears of the Mountain, a name steeped in reverence, life-bringing water.

There were tears on your lashes that night, he recalls.

They sparkled in the gentle glow cast by a thin, white stick that dangled loosely between your parted lips.

As the maker stared down at you, trying to decide whether he should be relieved you hadn’t ventured any further than that, or livid that you were out there at all, you raised your hand to your mouth and held the stick steady between two fingers, drawing in a slow, uneven breath. Ulthane watched on, captivated by the end of the stick burning even hotter in the deep, blue twilight.

Plucking it from your mouth entirely, you’d exhaled, and he was even more amazed to see you breathing out smoke, like dragon-fire. Ulthane could do little else but gawk down at the elegant cloud of white as it billowed through your lips and drifted up towards the sky. It’d been a long time since he’d seen a dragon… Looking at you then, he couldn’t shake the image of a poor, lonely beast gazing forlornly over a home it would never get back.

Ulthane had seen such looks before, on the faces of his fellow makers when their home fell prey to Corruption. The foul plague drove them further into the outer reaches of their own realm, trapping and isolating them, stealing their bodies and using their own people as puppets against the survivors.

One by one, the makers fell, those who were brave or foolish enough to try and fight back.

He’d watched the younglings lose their hope, their wonder at an infinite Universe. With each maker felled by the vile darkness spreading its tendrils across their land, the resolve of those that were left started to waver.

There was a pattern, Ulthane noticed, in those who were closest to death. They stopped being scared. They stopped being outraged and desperate to save their homes and themselves. Resignation became an entirely new plague, killing off the once bustling village of Tri Stone until only he and a few others remained. Apathy grew like a tumorous thing, deadening the eyes of all but the stoutest hearts and minds.

That’s what you looked like, he’d realised with the lurching, ominous chill of dread creeping up his stomach walls.

Resigned.

Hardly alive, just existing. Existing until the inevitable, as if you were already hand in hand with Death just waiting for the nod.

This was always bound to happen…

“Thought I told you to stop sneakin’ out here,” he’d eventually rumbled, his tone gruff and guarded, but his intentions couldn’t be softer.

You didn’t react to the maker’s words, merely continued to gaze out at the skyscrapers reaching up towards the stars. “Didn’t want to smoke inside,” you said quietly, “The others shouldn’t have to breathe this shit.”

All that did was set alarm bells blaring in Ulthane’s skull.

Pale, blue eyes turned to glare sharply at the innocuous stick poking through your teeth.

“And, er… Should you be breathin’ it?” His loaded question held a merit of danger to it, like the hammer of a gun, cocked and ready to fall at a moment’s notice if he doesn’t hear what he wants to.

Which made it all the more surprising that you didn’t immediately try to ease the maker’s nerves as you usually would. Instead, you raised your shoulders in a lazy shrug and hummed, “Either the demons kill me, or this cig will. Doesn’t really matter at this point, does it? Who gives a shit?”

Another odd, human colloquialism, but he got the gist.

Ulthane still isn’t particularly proud of what he did then.

Maybe it was the blasé reference to your own mortality or the blunt ultimatum, or even the suggestion that your life isn’t cared about. Something struck a nerve, and Ulthane wasted no time in reaching down and using the very tips of his thumb and forefinger to pinch the burning end of the ‘cig’ and pluck it out from between your teeth, unaffected by the tiny fire singing his calloused skin.

And then came the most egregious act.

He tossed it, flicked the tiny thing from his fingers and sent it sailing over the wooden ledge where it fell, down, down and further down until its glowing ember disappeared in the darkness dozens of feet below, extinguished by the rush of wind hitting its stub.

Ulthane fully expected some sort of retaliation. He even hoped for it. Anger, indignation, frustration. Hell, he half wanted you to round on him, all fire and brimstone and spewing venom, demanding that he go down there and retrieve your stolen treasure.

Anything. Anything at all that would have returned a little life to your lustreless eyes.

What he got instead was a deathly-quiet voice that cracked at the end of its sentence. “That was the only one I had left…”

Ulthane thought it might have hurt less if Yarin slugged him in the gut.

Looking back on it now, as he stands at his anvil watching you traipse aimlessly into the dark for the third time, Ulthane finds he can hardly blame you for resenting him.

You and the other humans… You don’t have much left anymore. And what little you do have is cherished with fierce devotion. Even the most mundane things. He can still recall the ghoulish howl one of the women emitted after her bracelet’s string snapped, spilling colourful beads across the floor of the tree, her desperation as she clawed after them, wailing. You were among the first to drop down and search with her. “We’ll get them all back, Sam,” you soothed as she clutched the broken elastic to her breast with one hand, knuckles bone-white, “We’ll find them, it’s alright. You’ll be alright.”

It was never just a bracelet.

And that tiny, little stick you called a ‘cig’ probably meant more to you than the old maker could ever comprehend.

A low, resonant hum starts up deep in the base of Ulthane’s throat as he tracks your silhouette across the hollow until you vanish out onto the gloomy plateau. Perhaps he should leave you be tonight…

With a grunt, the maker focuses back on the little talisman sitting on his anvil – a gift for the Horsman, whose efforts to recover more survivors from the crumbling city haven’t gone unnoticed.

Readjusting his grip on the hammer, he taps it half-heartedly on the metal casing, ears pinned back as he tries to quell the nagging thoughts scurrying about in his skull.

Suppose you fell off the plateau… Suppose you were spotted by a dusk-wing flying by overhead…

Ulthane manages to restrain himself for all of five minutes before he frustratedly tosses his hammer down onto the anvil’s surface with a resounding ‘clang,’ and shoves himself away from the workstation, stomping off towards the tree’s hollow, his brother’s laughter ringing in his ears.

In his haste not to hurry, he fails miserably, and at last comes bursting out onto the wooden plateau, eyes zeroing in on the small shape ahead of him.

It’s more of a relief than he’ll ever admit to find you leaning on the ridge, just as you had the previous two instances, arms draped across the top, shoulders hunched, your head ducked into the collar of a light, grey jacket.

Holding a breath in his lungs until he’s confident he can let it go quietly, Ulthane draws closer.

As he does, a sudden white cloud billows from your mouth, and the maker almost thinks you’ve managed to scrounge up another of those ‘cigs.’ But when he comes to a slow, heavy halt beside you and glances down, he can’t spot anything of its likeness hanging between your lips.

Belatedly, he finally realises what’s wrong.

It’s cold out here. At least it must be for a human with parchment-thin skin.

You barely acknowledge his presence as he reaches for the blue, well-worn cowl wrapped around his neck. Ulthane makes sure to grumble aloud as he pulls it over his head. “Hmph…catch yer damn death…” he mutters grumpily, pretending that the mere act of draping it over your shoulders and using the pads of his fingers to wrap swathes of warm fabric around you is a terrible inconvenience. He also tries hard not to fixate on the way his cowl spills down your back to pool at your feet.

Maker’s bones… You’re so tiny.

Sluggishly, you roll your head sideways to peer at the makeshift blanket, giving Ulthane a proper glimpse of your flat, unreadable expression lit by the luminous moon hanging overhead in a star-spattered sky.

Something ancient and primitive inside him is immensely pleased when you don’t reject the offer of warmth. It settles him, leaves his restless soul satisfied, though only by a small margin. You’re still out of the safe confines of the tree, in the dark, after all.

Everything else about the maker’s nature still urges him to get you out of the open.

But Ulthane has been around long enough to recognise a pattern when he sees it.

This is the third time he’s found you out here, alone.

Twice was a coincidence. But three times?

Deliberate.

He needs to get to the bottom of this now.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” he mutters, withdrawing his hands but lowering his hefty bulk onto one knee to be closer to your height. It’s only after he says it out loud that he realises, he’s right. You have been quiet lately. Moreso than usual.

For several, long moments, you remain inert, blankly staring down at the fabric cocoon you’ve found yourself in. “Have I?” you ask in a whisper, brows twitching as if they want to furrow but can’t muster up the energy to.

Humming pensively, the maker raises his head, keeping you in the corner of his watchful eye. “Been missin’ you at the anvil…” he admits, shrugging a massive shoulder to try and retain a modicum of indifference. If you only knew how much he looks forward to your company, he’d never be able to look you in the eye.

“In fact,” he adds, adjusting his weight, “Only time I seem to catch you nowadays s’when I find you out here. Where you aren’t s’posed to be.”

There might have once been a time when merely adding a stern inflection to his voice would send you cowering away from him. Some of the humans who are newer to the tree still do it. But you, over time, had stopped, realising that Ulthane was as likely to hurt you as he was to fly to the moon.

But it wasn’t often that he had to add those inflections. And if ever he did, it was usually because you or one of the others was doing something you really shouldn’t have been doing. Even then, you may not have cowered, but you’d certainly have the decency to look admonished, apologetic even. You’d offer the maker a quick, sheepish smile that worked wonders to appease him and earned him hours of teasing from Elanya and Yarin.

Now, however, he gets nothing. Not a flinch, nor a quibble. No sheepish yet disarming smile that puts a youthful quiver back into his heart. What he gets instead is a weary sigh, followed by a decidedly bitter, “Maybe I just want to be left alone, huh?”

A disconcerting pang hits him right in the pit of his stomach… Something is definitely wrong.

Perhaps it’s narcissistic of him to presume, but that one, barbed request from you is enough to set off a needling voice at the back of his mind, one that callously plants the seed that all of this - your behaviour, your apathy, your twilight excursions – somehow, it’s all his fault. Casting his brain about, he tries to think of something in particular he’d done that would cause you to seek distance from him, all the while pretending it doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it does. Aside from tossing your last ‘cig,’ he doesn’t land on anything that sticks out. But you’d fallen quiet and withdrawn long before that incident occurred.

Then again, he is still trying to wrap his head around all the complexities of the human social structure… As he considers it, he realises with a sinking feeling that it’s highly likely he’s committed some sort of faux-pas and never even noticed…

Shit.

Scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he untucks his braid from the confines of his tunic and exhales roughly, nostrils flared in agitation.

“Look…” he sighs, roving his gaze out to look at the silhouettes of a dozen, towering skyscrapers, “M’not… V’e always been more for brawn than brain, mm?” Pausing, he raps at his skull with a solid knuckle. “So… If I… said somethin’ I shouldn’t have… and it… changed the way you see me-…”

Again, his voice trails off, and he returns his eyes to you, finding you tilting your face up towards him with the tiniest crease sitting between your eyebrows.

Are you angry at him? Confused?

It’s so hard to tell sometimes. A human’s face can tell a thousand little stories with one twitch of the muscles, fluid in a way makers and other species could never hope to be.

Ulthane’s chest gives a rumble, like something massive and subterranean passing far beneath the Earth’s crust. He truly hopes you aren’t angry at him.

“Just…” A pair of immense shoulders sag dejectedly as the maker squeezes his eyes shut, bracing himself before he pries them open again, peering down at you from underneath his crumpled brow. “Just tell me what I said,” he finally croaks, “And I’ll never say it again.” He never intended for it to sound so much like a wounded plea, wants to weld his mouth shut when his voice breaks unexpectedly.

Son of a bitch. These humans must be starting to rub off on him.

Deafening silence chases the end of his sentence, and for a time, he’s stuck observing your face fall gradually from a nearly imperceptible frown to a solemn, sympathetic wince.

“Ulthane… It… Hhh.” A rush of air bursts out of your parted lips, harder than a sigh. You’ve been doing that a lot lately, he realises. Dragging your eyes over towards the distant city, you gaze out at it for a second before returning them to the underside of Ulthane’s chin, your lips tilted down at the ground. “Listen. I’m not trying to be a dick, a-and I mean this in the best possible way… but it isn’t about you, I promise… You haven’t done anything wrong.” It’s the firmest voice you’ve used yet.

Glancing down, you blink miserably at the toes of your shoes poking out from under his oversized cowl. “I’m sorry,” you add, this time in a far gentler, wobbly lilt, “I’m sorry I told you I wanted to be left alone. It isn’t your fault.”

Oh… that’s… actually a lot more relieving than he’d care to admit out loud.

The speck of lightness that lifts his chest doesn’t last for long, however.

There still begs another question, one he’s hardly qualified to be asking… If your issue isn’t with something he’s said or done… then…

The notion suddenly occurs to him that you might be getting grief from someone else. One of your fellow humans, perhaps?

Before he can wrestle it down, a hot burst of protective indignation flares up in his chest. He’d have noticed, surely. Wouldn’t he? He’d know if one of his charges was being upset by someone while under his roof… Right?

Griping unhappily, Ulthane reminds himself that he’s nothing if not a persistent old bastard. And when he’d made his quiet, private oath to protect what remains of a species he inadvertently helped to eradicate, he didn’t just pledge his protection to their physical wellbeing.

The tremendous breath he exhales through his nostrils is strong enough to disturb the hairs on top of your head, a fleeting reminder of how even the smallest gesture from a man his size can affect you in some way…

“Right then,” he rumbles with a deliberate edge to his tone that sets your shoulders tensing under the soft weight of his cowl, “But there is somethin’ botherin’ you, aye?”

He sees you stiffen, watches the flicker of something raw and frantic pass over your dainty face. Then, he sees that mask of apathy fall back into place, hiding yourself away from him once more.

“Nothing’s bothering me, really,” you deflect, shrugging one shoulder as nonchalance might throw him off the scent.

Ulthane’s bushy eyebrows dip at the centre of his forehead. ‘Not having that...’

The sound of creaking leather and clanking metal fills the air as Ulthane adjusts himself onto two knees at your side, resting back on his hindquarters.

You actively jump at the sensation of a colossal palm cupping around your back, almost leaping away entirely before you realise what it is and force yourself to go still again, allowing the maker behind you to push warmth and sincerity into your windchilled bones.

As he covers your fragile spine with his hand, Ulthane’s instincts lay their rearing heads back down, appeased to have a physical wall of muscle and flesh standing between you and the outside world.

“Reckon I’d know if somethin’ was wrong with my favourite human,” he says, only half-joking, regarding you closely to gauge your reaction.

“Favourite?” you scoff wetly, “Now you’re just trying to butter me up.”

Giving a chuckle, he replies, “Maybe…” A heavy pause, then… “S’it workin’?”

Instead of a response, you suck down a lungful of cold air, letting it all go again in a slow, shaky breath. “You should go inside, Big Guy,” you whisper, turning to lean your weight against the wooden ridge again, “I’ll be fine in a minute. Just need a little more fresh air.”

Would it be hypocritical of him to call you a liar?

Shifting his weight, he hums - a tectonic, mellow sound coming from deep in the cavern of his chest. “Nah,” he decides quietly, “Reckon I’d rather stay out here with you till you tell me what’s wrong…”

He doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t feel he needs to.

“Oh…” Your breath hitches. Already, you’ve started to tremble beneath his palm, and he’s fairly confident you can’t accredit it to the cold.

Persistent as he is, the Old One is also a patient maker. And while he doesn’t especially like the idea of letting you stay out here all night, if it gets him to the bottom of this silent state of mind you’re in, then it’s a bullet he’s happy to bite. Besides, he’s quick to remind himself that he’s here with you.

The other humans are safe inside, carefully watched over by the ever-attentive Yarin and a devoted Elanya. The pair have taken to guarding the upper nook where their charges slumber at night.

Which leaves Ulthane free to guard this wayward soul. He’s glad to. Outwardly, he wouldn’t usually even allude to keeping favourites. After all, it’s a badly kept secret that he has a soft spot for all the humans he’s brought here, even the elusive and ungovernable Jones who leaves the tree so frequently, Ulthane is convinced the man is trying to send him to an early grave.

But you… The soft spot he has for you is especially tender.

There in the darkness, he waits, silent and still, an unmoving sentry at your back.

Minutes pass, and only the hushed whispering of ten million leaves breaks the spell of quiet settled around you.

And then, an entirely different sound disturbs the peace. One that’s much closer to home.

That first wet, convulsing sob tugs the maker’s ears down a fraction, but he lets out a sigh, giving your back the gentlest of pats, encouraging another bleat of misery to jump out of you before you can stuff it back down your throat.

There you go…

Once the first few cries are shaken are loose, there’s no damming the flow.

Hands fly up to crush against your mouth as you lurch forwards into another sob, burying your face inside the relative privacy of your palms.

Before Ulthane can adjust his hand to catch you, your legs promptly buckle and give way under you, sending you crashing to your knees in front of the ridge and collapsing against it, turning sideways away from him, shoulder pressed to the wood.

All the while, his hand remains adhered to you.

Your back jumps up and down beneath his palm, broken sounds squeak out through the miniscule gaps between your fingers, and a confusing jumble of guilt and relief mingles together in the maker’s chest.

Crying isn’t something exclusive to humans, but they’re by far the most prone to it.

Ulthane tries not to dwell on the fact that he’s pushed you to this, like some, tenacious bully. His old soul yearns to extinguish any source of distress you might face. You’ve had enough anguish to last you a lifetime, after all. But the guilt he feels is buried well beneath a much more potent relief.

This had to happen.

‘This is good,’ he tells himself staunchly, trying in vain to steel his ancient heart against your soul-crushing cries, ‘This is better than the emotionless vacuum you were floating in before.’

Your body jerks viciously with each, strangled sob, teeth pressed against the skin of your palms to muffle each sound you emit.

You’re trying your best to be quiet. Subdued and secretive in your unravelling.

He knows he’s the one who wanted this to happen, but that doesn’t make it any less jarring to see you cry.

A century ago, if anyone were to ask Ulthane if he’d describe himself as a comforting maker, he’d have laughed himself hoarse. A bruiser like him? Comforting? He supposes it’s still laughable today.

Sometimes, he catches himself wishing he knew where Azrael had disappeared off to after the seals were broken. The angel would know what to say to you, no doubt. Daft bird is even more of a sap than Ulthane where humans are concerned, and ferociously intelligent to boot, even among Heaven’s scribes and scholars.

Why the White City’s brightest mage had decided that Ulthane was a maker to befriend, is a mystery that would have any sage scratching their heads and offering a helpless shrug.

‘Still,’ he muses, frowning gently down at the human quivering beneath his fingers, ‘You haven’t pulled away entirely yet.’

So perhaps, despite all of his clumsy, heavy-handedness, he might not be doing as terribly as he thinks he is…

Absently, Ulthane smooths his calloused thumb up and down your back, hyper-aware of the notches in your delicate spine. He’s glad he opted not to don his thick, leather gloves this evening. He feels gentler without them…

The cowl, however, has begun to slip off your shoulders, dislodged a little further with every breath you choke on.

Just as Ulthane withdraws his hand from your back and pinches the fabric to readjust it, his ears register a broken whisper drifting through the air.

“It’s all gone, Ulthane,” you squeeze out at last, hands cupped pitiably over your mouth so you can drag in a shuddering breath, “Everything’s gone. God – fuck!”

All at once, the cowl slips from his fingers and falls around you once more as the maker goes very still, his gigantic hand hovering stiffly above you. Slowly, a pair of pointed ears pin themselves against the sides of his skull, and a cold splash of realisation douses his chest in ice.

If he weren’t worried about startling you, he’d smack a palm over his forehead as comprehension ploughs into him like a runaway stone rolling down a hillside.

Of course…

How could he be so blind? Oh, he’s such a fool!

The most obvious reason is literally sitting in plain sight all around him, yet somehow, he didn’t see the woods for the bloody great tree slapped bang in the centre. He assumed your troubles were smaller, simpler. It feels like an insult to you, deducing that your despair was due to something so trivial as an untoward comment.

Hanging his head, Ulthane’s face twists up in shame.

Trembling like the leaves overhead, you clutch desperately to your own shoulders, fingertips bunching into the blue fabric draped over them. “What the Hell are we even doing?” you blurt out, ripping your hands away from your face and wringing them in front of you, “The world just fucking ended! It’s over, a-and we’re just sitting up here like… like fucking rats in a sinking ship!”

By now, you’re almost shouting, losing control of your own voice without any residual strength left to keep the emotions you’ve buried so deep from rising to the surface and bursting like pustules on your tongue.

It must hurt you to bare yourself like this, it is hurting you. The sudden change in your demeanour freezes Ulthane solid for a few, uncertain seconds, though he doesn’t stay motionless for long.

When you rush to swallow another breath, he stretches out an arm and envelopes you in his hand once more as if the weight of it might keep you from springing to your feet and fleeing at the slightest provocation.

You buckle under the appendage, leaning forwards to gulp in another lungful of air that collapses into a heart-wrenching sob. “I-I just-!” But you stuff your lips together to trap the rest of the words.

Ulthane latches onto your reluctance with a discontented hum. “Come on now,” he utters, wrapping large but cautious fingertips around your shoulder and trying to coax you into turning to face him, “Won’t do you no good keepin’ it all in now, eh?”

Your only response is to give your head a rapid shake, digging your fingernails into the cowl as you resist the giant’s gentle tugging. “I can’t,” you croak, voice hoarse.

“Yes,” the maker argues, “You can.”

It’s so matter of fact, you almost believe him.

For several, unpleasant moments, your breath continues to catch in your chest as your shoulders hitch up and down, and still you refuse to turn around and face the giant looming behind you.

Then all at once, like a flipped switch, the tension in your body disappears and you deflate like a ruptured lung, sagging in on yourself so abruptly, Ulthane jerks forwards, assuming you’ve passed out on him.

Before he can scoop you into his hand however, you shift, using your shoulder to shove away from the ridge and arduously manoeuvring yourself around until you’re leaning back against the solid wood. Reluctantly, Ulthane allows his hand to slide off your spine and it flops dejectedly into his lap.

You still won’t meet his gaze.

At least he can see your face though.

He always thought he had a heart of steel before he came to Earth, even liked to think that millennia of experience and trials would have left him immoveable and stoic like the maker heroes in Eideard’s stories.

It’s remarkably humbling to gaze down into the face of a human and realise he doesn’t know himself nearly as well as he likes to think he does. Because one glimpse of the wetness shining off your cheeks and the rivulets cutting glistening tracks down to your chin has Ulthane Blackhammer fighting back the urge to press a hand over his lurching heart.

He draws back a little with a soft intake of breath, gathering his thoughts before he presses his lips together into a resolute frown and leans towards you once more, his monstrous fingers shuddering with the effort of moving slowly and carefully enough to brush the pad of his thumb across your cheek.

That’s when you finally look at him.

Dazzling eyes shine with tears as they venture up to meet his own.

Your mouth opens, and in reverent anticipation, Ulthane pulls his hand away from your face, ears tipped forwards to listen.

“I just want it to be over,” you utter, so softly that he has to strain to hear you, “I can’t stand it… I can’t stand just waiting around to die…”

Ulthane’s jaw clenches firmly shut.

“Who says you’re dyin’?” he retorts, perhaps a bit more sharply than he intended, “Yer not goin’ to die.”

This time, your shoulders jump with humourless laugh instead of a sob.

“Look around you, Ulthane,” you hiccough, gesturing a floppy hand at the city to your back, “Every day could be the day those demons decide to climb up here and finish what they started. We all know it’s bound to happen. I wish they’d just… get it over with!”

The maker opens his mouth to argue, to gruffly retort that he’d never let the bastards get within a metre of you without having to go through him first, but you’re already carrying on.

“We’re all just living on borrowed time! And I can’t-!”

One again, your voice falters and fades, dying in your throat.

Swallowing audibly, you let your head fall forwards until your chin almost rests on your chest.

Ulthane works his clenched jaws apart, watching from beneath heavily furrowed brows as you lift your hands up in front of your face and stare down at your palms as if there’s an answer in them somewhere, if only you could see it.

“I just can’t keep doing this…” you finally murmur, letting your arms fall into your lap.

Apprehensive, Ulthane prompts, “Doing what?”

You don’t reply right away, and his heart is steadily making its way up into his throat by the time you pose a question, disregarding his own. “You ever think… it might be better to just… like… get it over with?” you ask, eyes pinched in tormented thought, “Instead of waiting for something even worse to happen?”

Suddenly, Ulthane hates the idea of you being so close to that two-hundred-foot drop.

The hand he’s braced on the ground to keep himself steady curls into a fist until his knuckles dig achingly into the wood underneath him. “No,” he all but growls in response, curling his lips back at an unseen threat, “It wouldn’t be better.”

“God…” Your head tips back, the base of your skull clunking against the ridge behind you as you squint tearfully up at the maker. If he looks closely, he almost imagines he can see the full moon reflected in your eyes. “There’s no future for us… We have nothing left. Everything humanity has ever worked for… millions of years of history… it’s gone, Ulthane. It’s just gone.” Another couple of tears slip past your lashes and dribble down your cheeks. Your bottom lip quivers. “There’s no coming back from this… is there? So why are we still bothering?”

Suddenly, the maker hauls himself to his boots – and he’ll be damned if he acknowledges the spike of real, unfamiliar fear that jabs him through the ribs. “Stop it,” he warns… Begs…

For a moment longer, you just look at him with that tired, beaten frown, then you lower your eyes and the moonlight disappears from them, leaving them dark and shadowed by your eyelashes.

“Yeah,” you sniff, “That’s why I’ve been quiet lately…”

Ulthane’s blood rushes through his ears and he’s struck with the urge to start pacing up and down along the tree’s outer path. Later, he’ll recognise it as adrenaline.

“Stone’s breath…” he huffs mindlessly, scrubbing a hand down over his beard. He’s bristling against an enemy he can’t put his fist through, and it wars with the maker’s reflex.

This is… this is so much bigger than he is… and that’s saying something.

He thought he’d be prepared for this if it happened. But all he’s been doing is burying his head in the sand, hoping that optimism and a steady, day to day routine of survival would keep the humans from losing their last dregs of hope.

The surrender in your voice, your eyes, your words… It’s like you’re there already.

What if he says the wrong thing? What if he can’t pull your toes back off the ledge?

What would Azrael say? What would Eideard say?

Something poignant, no doubt. About how hope is never lost so long as you’re still alive to fight for it.

But Ulthane is a defender, not a sage. His priority is your safety.

In a moment of clarity, he clings to that one fact, pushing for reassurance above all else.

Rattled, though not quite ready to face why, the Old one levels a finger at you, pointing it determinedly down at your face. “Now, you listen to me,” he starts, “I won’t hear no talk about how you’re not comin’ back from this. Moment you start thinkin’ like that, it’s really over. And I’ll certainly not be lettin’ you think those demon’s’ll be the end of you. Alright? You’re livin’ to the end of a long, safe life, so help me Stonefather.”

At the end of his reprimand, you try to smile up at him, a pitying thing that tells him everything he needs to know.

You don’t believe him.

“You have a future,” he continues, steadfast, “I’ll give you a future. I’ll make one for you, carve it out with my bare hands if I have to.”

He’d drag you kicking and screaming to the life you deserve if it comes down to it.

Eyes drooping heavily, you start to look down again.

“M’not lettin’ you lose hope,” Ulthane growls in response, and this time, he can’t stop himself from reaching down and curling a fist around you, gathering you up into his palm until you sit small and vulnerable at its centre.

You look a little surprised by the motion, blinking wetly into the old smith’s scowl as he raises you to his face and levels you with a look so full of conviction, you recoil from it, as if pushed by his sheer force of will. “You’re makin’ it through this,” he tells you unwaveringly, warm breath brushing against your collarbones. “You have to see how it turns out.”

“Even if it hurts?” you ask in a wobbly voice.

He stops just short of saying that he wouldn’t let anything hurt you. But that isn’t what you need to hear. He’ll prove it to you through action.

“Even then,” he relents instead.

Resignation settles across your face then, but it isn’t the same as it was before. It’s a kind of acceptance of the inevitable, but the inevitable isn’t death.

It’s Ulthane Blackhammer.

“But…” Still, you protest. “But I’m so fucking tired, Ulthane.”

Without hesitation, he shrugs a shoulder and says, “I’ll carry you.”

“That’s not what I-“

“- I know what you meant,” the maker cuts you off, fixing you with a sharp eye, “F’you’re tired. I’ll carry you. I’m a fair bit strong, case you hadn’t noticed. But don’t go forgettin’; you’re a fighter.”

You try to shake your head with a weak laugh, but he catches your chin with a crooked forefinger and tilts your face back towards him. “You are,” he insists, meeting your owlish gaze, “Been fightin’ to keep goin’ since day one. I… can see that now.”

He really can. He’s just sorry he never told you he noticed before.

“You think you can’t come back from this? You’re wrong. You won’t know unless you try. N’those other humans in there-“ He jerks his head backwards towards the tree. “-They’re gonna need all the help they can get to rebuild. You think Jones’d remember to feed himself without you remindin’ him?

There! At last, the minutest wobble of your lips as they twitch upwards at their corners.

Chest swelling with a modest injection of triumph, Ulthane cocks his own grin at you whilst you wipe your eyes on the sleeve of your jacket.

“Now, you just let ol’ Ulthane worry about those demons,” he announces, “You worry about gettin’ some proper shuteye. Can’t teach Elanya to play cards if you’re noddin’ off every five minutes, ey?”

A laugh this time. It’s a soft, warped thing with too much moisture, but it’s still a laugh. He counts that as a win.

There’s still the same, bone-deep languor clinging to your face, yet even that is a vast improvement to the indifference you’ve been displaying of late. Quirking your head to one side, you regard the maker ponderously for a minute, brows knitting across your forehead.

Then, “You really care about us, don’t you?”

Caught off guard, Ulthane’s ears tip down, and he instinctively glances over his shoulder at the hollow to check that nobody is lurking there before returning his attention to you, lifting one shoulder in a bashful shrug.

“Well… I, erm…” Clearing his throat, he lowers his voice and shoots you a gruff look. “Don’t you go spreadin’ that around…”

As if it wasn’t as plain as the nose on his face.

Eager to change the subject, though not so eager to be rid of that fond, sombre look he's receiving, the maker twists his head around and bobs it towards the tree's entrance. "Ready to head back in?" he broaches, "You can sleep down by the anvil on my cowl, if you want." One of the beds would be better for you, but... selfishly perhaps, he wants you close tonight.

You seem to agree, offering the maker a shy nod in return.

"Yeah," you acquiesce, leaning back into the pads of his fingers that curve up behind you, providing support when your jaws part with a wide yawn.

Trying not to smile fondly at the sight, Ulthane begins tromping steadily back inside the tree, his nerves settling down as he carries you nearer to the light and warmth.

"Ulthane?"

"Mm?" he rumbles in response.

"Thanks... for caring, I mean. I owe you one."

His footsteps falter just for a second. Abaddon's face springs unbidden into his mind's eye. A golden sword and a promise that all would be well...

Swallowing hard, Ulthane wafts the memories away like a bad smell and offers his dour response.

"You don't owe me a thing."

[xielianlover2]

Okay. I need to talk about Xie Lian. This is gonna be a bit rambly, jumbled, and unedited because I am kinda sleep-deprived right now.

Out of every fictional character I’ve read about… Xie Lian stands out as possessing the most remarkable mental fortitude and resilience I’ve ever seen. He’s such a brave and stubborn man. He’s, well… a diamond in the rough. 

I always thought him to be really mature for his age in the flashbacks. He was what, only around 16-17? And then after he descended down to save his kingdom, he was around the mental age of 20. He was barely an adult. Yet he had his whole kingdom’s fate on his shoulders, and the way he was treated was beyond horrible. 

That’s the problem with getting assigned the role of a leader… a general even. The number of deaths, their successes, their losses all fall upon the one who had the most status, most importance. So many people blamed Xie Lian for the fall on Xianle, but really, none of that was on him. Xianle was gonna fall either way due to all the politics and strife. But my goodness. To put all that blame on a child??? It’s so despicable. 

It made me terribly sad to see Xie Lian blame himself for what happened to Xianle and his people, when they were the ones who put him on a pedestal and did nothing to help ease his burdens. I think Xie Lian has natural charisma and could be a good leader, however he does not have the heart for it. He cares too much. He’s the type who wants to save everyone. He doesn’t like or want to see people suffer, even those considered his enemies. 

Xie Lian suffers a lot. He goes through so much, goes to unimaginable suffering constantly for 800 years. However, the core message of the series is that Xie Lian, as an individual, has the power to decide his own fate. He has the power to decide to remain pure at heart in the face of immeasurable suffering and to not give into Bai Wuxiang’s manipulations.  

His suffering can’t even be put into words. To be blamed for a whole kingdom dying. To blame himself for the horrifying Human-Face disease. Then he was banished and cursed and hunted by the Yong’an’s people. He became extremely depressed on top of trying to survive and take care of his parents each day. Mu Qing helped a lot, but he too eventually left. He resorted to stealing, which went completely against his morals. He was cornered by 33 Heavenly Officials, who humiliated and bullied him, Mu Qing being one of the people involved as well. All the while being haunted bu Bai Wuxiang, who’s truly a sadistic, unredeemable monster. Then he was brutally stabbed fatally hundreds of times in the most horrific way possible and the recovery-time was just two months of pain with the monster who made it all happen keeping him for company. Then Feng Xin left because Xie Lian changed too much, was too hurt and numb and lashed out. 

Then his parents left him too in a way. And Xie Lian probably blames himself for that. So at that point, Xie Lian just craved death. But he couldn’t even die because of the cursed shackle. 

But still. Still. Even after going after Lang Ying and having Wu Ming burn down the palace and could release the Human-Face disease all over the Yong’an kingdom.

He still chose to pin himself on the ground outside with the same sword that killed him hundreds of times… and waited for three whole days for one, just one person, one samaritan to help him. He still had a dredge of hope in humanity. In people. Because in the end, Xie Lian is an empathetic and kind person. He believes and has hope in people- because he is a pure-hearted person himself, and has to believe there are other people like him out there. Because he can’t be the only one. (He’s not, but a person like him is one out of millions.)

And deep inside he starts to believe Bai Wuxiang’s words when he come on the third day to convince him that this test/social experiment he was doing was pointless. That it is all so hopeless, and these people aren’t worth living, not after how much Xie Lian suffered at their hands. 

But all it took was one person. He was waiting. To be proved wrong. He wanted to be proved wrong, even after everything. That truly… I don’t have words for how amazing that is. 

And then. Even after 800 years of having literally nothing. 800 years of loneliness, suffering, and depression. Being nailed through the heart and buried alive for an undetermined time. Just so he could save more people again. He still remained the same. So pure of heart. So sweet and kind. He even asked for his second shackle to take away his luck so other people more “deserving” than him can take it. 

He still has his problems. His mental health is terrible. He’s very depressed. He chose to stay in a coffin for what could be a hundred years because of self-flagellation probably.

He has no self-esteem, except he’s so interestingly contradictory. He loathes himself, but he also believes he’s completely right. If Xie Lian had to do everything over again, I have no doubt he would do the same thing, except the second-time, maybe blame himself less, because he knows deep down what he is doing is right. He has a simple, but strict moral code. All he wants to do is the right thing. That means saving the common people. Interfere and help if he sees someone suffering. If he can save one person, he will save one person. If he can save a hundred people, he will save a hundred people. 

What a stubborn, beautiful person. 

Book 8: “I won’t! I won’t I won’t change!”… He’s been pent up for far too long. It was as though he’d been waiting for a chance like this all these years, and tears rolled as he screamed. “I won’t change! Even if it’s painful, even if I die, I won’t change, I will never change!”

And he didn’t. He has more than proven that he won’t change even if he died a hundred times. He won’t change even if he died a million times. Even as a young adult, he stood in front of a whole village of people after experiencing what is it like to feel stabbed fatally hundred of times already and was ready to do it all over again willingly. With even more people, even a whole kingdom of people.

Insane does not even begin to cover it. What an extraordinary resilient and compassionate person. 

Xie Lian is truly… something else. Something beyond words. He is also the only type of God I would willingly pray to. 

I understand why Hua Cheng would go to any extent for him. 

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Unscripted Bracket — Finals

Propaganda

Glenn Close (Dungeons & Daddies):

#Propaganda for Glenn Close: one of the other PCs mentions multiple times how hot he is #Actually several characters point it out but especially Henry #Also the only person in a podcast that has to put a disclaimer about not being a BDSM podcast to have had sex during the course of the show

Young hot rocker dilf

Loyal to his dead wife <3

Does in fact smoke weed

BARD!! HES A BARD. HE WAS LEAD GUITAR IN HIS BAND (that he was kicked out of)

His band was a Christmas cover band btw.

Literally the fandom had hot Glenn summer which consisted of drawing him being incredibly hot and sexy

Anti government (ofc)

Kind of cringefail (Disney adult) (was on dilfs of disneyland)

Young and sexy not your style? Then how about HIM AFTER YEARS LOCKED IN A TIME PRISON WITH A DAMN HANNIBAL MASK ??

Lost an eye and wears a fucking eyepatch

One incredibly buff arm

Has a pet rat named after his son <3

Immeasurable amounts of trauma in this man- becomes progressively more unhinged

OH OLD HUMAN BARD ISNT CUTTING IT? FINE

HE BECOMES A FUCKING DEMON

A COOL HOT ONE-EYED DEMON WHO WANTS TO KILL HIS DAD (also sexy)

HE CANONICALLY ENDS CHRISTIAN HELL VIA CHRISTMAS

IS ALSO WAY OVERLEVELED

Becomes a demon hunter for the rest of his existence

Also nonwhite !!! We are done with cringefail whiteboys !!!!!!!!!

I can’t put into words ok just know he is the best plz love him.

Okay but Glenn made a minivan cum by talking to her so

HE HAS A BOOK THAT HE MARKS X’S AND CHECKS FOR EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THAT DAY WAS A SUCCESS OR NOT. TO SEE IF HE DID GOOD THAT DAY. ITS ALMOST ENTIRELY X’S. HE WAS CUCKED OUT OF A SON. AND A DEAD WIFE. HE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO KILL HIS DAD IN REVENGE. There’s absolutely nothing going for him except his sex appeal in his life. Nobody he loved remembers him. He lost his eye. All he has is a pet rat and friends who admit they don’t really like him that much. He was kicked out of his own band. The band was named after him. He was kicked out of the Glenn Close trio. All he could do was deez nuts the big bad and be sexy. If nothing else, then pity him. Look in his eyes. Look at his heart and soul. He did not do the BDSM episode for this I’ll tell you what. Do this for my his sake. Do it for Nick Jr, who needs the prize money to pay for his rat snacks. Do it for his son. For Morgan. Ganbatte.

Glenn is the goofiest sexiest character there is and I will die on this hill! I will ride into battle for him! what Dndads created is truly unique and Glenn is a key part of that and for that he deserves to win. I said it before and I'll say it again - GLENN SWEEEEEP

Can we talk about how he says ‘baby’ casually? Like he just calls people that?? That’s HOT. THAT IS HOT!! He’s also bilingual and knows Japanese!!!! He’s a big dumb idiot with a lot of charisma!!!!!! HE WORKED AT A BDSM PLACE FOR TWO SEPARATE ONE SHOTS. HES SO SAD BUT PLAYS IT OFF LIKE HE’S CHILL ALL THE TIME!! HE DOESN’T THINK OF HIMSELF AS SINGLE BECAUSE HE DIDN’T DIVORCE HIS DEAD WIFE!!! He’s like.. the perfect guy. We need this win.

I’d also like to add the fact I made this. Which is the first 11 episodes edited to (almost) only have Glenn in them <3 which is a level of insanity I hope to reiterate. These took hours to make. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.

vote Glenn I am asking with the biggest saddest eyes possible 🥺🥺🥺 he is so sexy it's pathetic and also so pathetic it's sexy, no I can not possibly adequately elaborate just trust me

Mod Note: While I will still take "bad dads are sexy" propaganda and "bad dads aren't sexy" anti-propaganda, I kindly request no more discussion on whether or not he was a bad father. This is a sexypoll, not a parentingpoll. If you see a post you strongly disagree with, you can just not reblog it.

Mod Note 2: This tournament is about fictional podcast characters. Please do not vote for the real actress Glenn Close.

Gable (Campaign: Skyjacks):

7ft tall silver-haired thembo of a fallen angel. was the literal sword of god until they killed him! reasons slightly unclear but probably sure to forbidden queer love! super caring for their friends. has one friend they have known for hundreds of years who they HATE but are bound to by the red string of fate. their sword is a part of them, they can sheathe it into a tattoo. they start out indistinct at the edges but as they have continued on through the campaign they have become more and more distinct. they became a flaming engine of justice to kill their friends shitheaded older brother who was following him. they have learned enough necromancy to allow other fallen angels to die, even though they typically cannot. they fly giant birds in to battle.

7ft tall beefcake wielding a sword as tall as they are. vengeful sweetheart

Imagine now: a fallen angel with beautiful gray hair and very big muscles. Now imagine them with a 9 ft sword. Now imagine them as a helmsperson of a pirate ship in a flowy deep-v pirate shirt. Now imagine they're dumb as a fucking rock. And finally, imagine that they killed god. Here, you have made Gable Skyjacks: sexiest podcast character of all time.

7ft tall nonbinary/genderfluid thembo fallen angel sky pirate who wields a buster sword. silvergrey hair with black/gold streaks as they regain feathers/memories of before their fall. back is covered in tattoos that hide the scars of their shredded off wings. killed God. toxic exes with lucifer. they are the keeper of several giant war birds who occasionally crave human flesh. they enjoy getting rowdy/smoking rope with their boys. they collect rocks that they think are neat. When anyone admits they are attracted to them, Gable trips over their words and absolutely swaglessly ends up sounding stupider and sexier by the end of the conversation; the will they/won't they and teasing they dish out to these (un?)lucky few is palpable. Sometimes the buster sword is on fire. They are immortal, they are cringe, they are trying to atone because they believe they are the reason the world is ruined.

Okay so aside from all of the above (giant with a matching giant flaming sword, killed god, extreme dumbass), here's some more propaganda for Gable the Godkiller.

They've escaped death multiple times with their partner in... crime? Like literally they were about to be executed in the most brutal way possible and just. Escaped and killed all their captors in the snowy wastelands.

They are the helmsperson of the Uhuru and take this job very seriously and definitely haven't left it to Bowser (you know, like from Mario) multiple times. Can steer that flying ship in horrible weather and still make it to port safely.

Healed an entire fucking hospital by cutting their hair for someone they had the hots for who was also in the hospital. Imagine being on that level of myth making in some random port city because of a hair cut.

Giant bird caretaker and also took the giant birds out on their friend's bachelor party (this was like. his Xth polyamorous marriage at this point btw) and had a fucking blast getting high on some rope and fucking around. They've also flown these birds into combat and looked cool as hell doing it (see: killing their friend's shithead of an older brother in a joust).

Had a relationship with Lucifer the Morning Star before they fell as an angel and killed God. Literally the reason the stars fell was their love for each other. The world would not look the same without Gable and they are, at the very least indirectly responsible for the creation of the Church of the Slain God and everything it represents (fantasy Catholicism).

And also yeah they are regularly tripping over themself and saying very silly things. 10/10 character we love Liz Anderson and Gable in this house

I am seeing people say that this Nicky fellow is basically trans! That's very cool! Gable is actually trans. Pronouns they/them/any presentation whatever they feel like.

Gable held a bachelor party for a BFF where the attendees hunted from their sky birds, wore dresses, and still managed to keep their eyeliner on point!

Gable killed God because he wouldn't let them be queer. They should rightfully crush anyone in their path.

We are finally going up against a character I know. I can confidently say all sexy moments with Gable are much sexier than TAZ's largely off-screen romances. Mod Note: This was written during the poll versus Killian Fangbattle.

But seriously. Listen to Gable's most recent introduction. Unparalleled sexy thembo introduction! Context: The Captain's Council is at a magical tattoo/piercing parlor (which has a lengthy form and disclosure process), trying to stay below the radar, and the Captain and Jonnit are pretending to be father/son to keep up the ruse. And to let Jonnit get a tattoo, since he's technically sort of underage. Bonus: Gable's decision at the tattoo/piercing parlor and noping out of Orimar and Jonnit's acting. (You should check out the full episode! Episode 197 starts a new arc and a good point to step into the series!)

Nicky Close (Dungeons & Daddies):

One armed half-demon man with a sword (also a Dedicated, Involved, Loving Father). (Specifically campaign 2, where he is an adult)

Transmasc bisexual (or at least so widely accepted as such it's basically canon) dilf half-demon let's start with the basics

And by half-demon I mean the literal prince of Hell

But also simultaneously is Saint Nicolas get you a man who can do both specifically this man

Missing an arm cause his ex-friends tragically betrayed him and shot it off but he doesn't need two arms to show you a good time wink wink ;)

The betrayal in question forced him to be seperated from his also hot milf voice actress wife and their son which is sad but in like a way that makes him sexier

Uses his one hand to wield a flaming katana that he used to rescue his son from the FBI

Protects his family with his life very literally which is hot as hell

Big himbo energy couldn't come up with a good plan if he used 100% of his brain

When he does fail at things it's pretty cute honestly

Definitely played a variety of musical instruments before the whole arm thing happened! Maybe he still does idk he's a sexy mystery

2 in 1 deal! This man was born from the merging of two timelines! Kinda sick!!! Also two dads = twice the daddy issues

You'd think the whole being forcibly split from his family thing would mean he isn't very close with his son but nope! His son adores him! They get along great!!!

His mom is simultaneously alive and dead

His mom bagged fucking two different dudes (one of whom FOUND HER DEAD in a different timeline, both of which are demons)

HIS MOMS NAME IS MORGAN FREEMAN, HIS DAD’S NAME IS GLENN CLOSE, AND HIS OTHER DAD’S NAME IS JODIE FOSTER, AND HIS GREAT SOMETHING GRANDFATHER’S NAME IS MERYL STREEP

HIS SONS NAME IS TAYLOR SWIFT

Lifelong pot smoker 👍 (plus drug flower user!!)

CANONICALLY BOTH A POLO WEARER (and yes, has all the stereotypes of that attached with it — a nerd, which is hot) AND A LEATHER JACKET WEARER (which also has all the stereotypes attached with it — a rebel dude person, which is also hot) [<- all widely accepted as canon by the fandom even as he’s older]

A part of the SECOND BIGGEST ship of season two, (Nark) despite the two characters only having one-two canon interactions (one of which JUST happened last episode)

Man’s a himbo what’s hotter than that

So many fucking names. You try to tag him in anything and he takes up half the space. That’s probably hot. For someone out there

This was already mentioned but so very very trans. Like. It’s basically canon

Rock and roll(er)

Joined a group of thieves called the watermice when he was like 13

for a few minutes had a guitar called the Battle Axe of Hatred

definitely had an frienimies with benefits relationship with his childhood friend Lark (sorry ppl that don’t ship nark lol) (it’s canon after ep 44 hah)

Nicky also acts like his sons Pokémon! Taylor tells his dad to do things, and Nicky does it without thinking about anything else he could do!

I feel like the audio of the entire Nick-breaking-into-the-FBI scene should be propaganda, but I'm copying select bits from the transcript:

Anthony: Yeah, it kind of echoes up through the vent, like the beginning of Metal Gear Solid. You hear a voice that strikes you as ever so slightly familiar, Taylor. Saying—  ??: [a deep voice] [echoing in the vent] Where is he?  Anthony: You hear—  Will: Uh-oh, he’s hot.  Anthony: —a bunch of shouting voices.  [giggles]  Beth: Uh-oh! Anthony: You hear a bunch of shouting voices and people shouting for him to get down on the ground to turn off his flame. To fucking get his hands behind his back. You hear this rhythmic stepping forward— because his footsteps don't sound like anybody else's because it's almost like… y’know when you toss a little bit of water onto a really hot pan and it just sizzles like that? It's like every footstep he's taking, you can hear that— Freddie: Cool  Anthony: — and you can feel some of that heat coming up in this vent, even though you can't see him at this point. And he goes—  ??: [echoing] Where. Is. My. Boy? Anthony: You hear the FBI agent—the FBI in quotation marks agent—in the back going like—  Agent: [echoing] He's safe for now. If you want to go ahead and make sure that he stays that way, you feel free to go ahead and step inside the suite that we've prepared for you, my boy. Anthony: And you hear the hot guy voice saying—  [chuckles]  The Hot Guy: [echoing] I don't think that's going to happen.

...

[a powerful rush of air builds] Anthony: You hear—  [gunfire, and the air rush culminates in a burst of flame; from underneath the fire, metal music starts playing] Anthony: —plumes of flame exploding.  [a person’s pained shout, gunfire and bursts of flame continue]  Anthony: You can feel the heat radiating through this metal vent and it's actually beginning to hurt and burn your hands.

...

Anthony: And you hear blood—  [sizzling]  Anthony: —hitting the fucking ground and you hear sizzling and things boiling and burning. Taylor: That could just be coffee! That could just be coffee. Link, let's go. Anthony: And you are getting closer and closer to the elevator. And you hear that same hot voice say—  The Hot Guy: [echoing] Where the hell is Taylor?

Gable and Nicky Together:

We are on a joint ticket now! This is a truly unbeatable combo. Not even god can nerf it because Gable killed him. Vote for us. Nicky Close will watch your stuff and play with your cats while Gable gives you the night of your life.

Gable and Nicky can literally be yuor angle or ur bevil.

Art of Gable and Nicky from @slightlyhopefulromantic.

[qqueenofhades]

JSYK the OP of the Crab Day post is a self-identified conservative Christian. Can't speak to anything she may have done or said, but I do know that Crab Day wouldn't actually fix Tumblr - the site is running a 30mil *deficit,* which is different from debt. All Crab Day would do would be telling staff that their current policies get users to send them more money, which doesn't actually change anything. Corporations change only when their business strategy is losing the shareholders money.

Gotta be honest, my friend, I'm... not sure what you're trying to do here? Warn me that the original post was made by a Problematic Person (tm) and therefore that must mean it's all wrong, or.... what?

We know that Tumblr badly needs money, because they have told us that and openly admitted that the unpopular new changes were spurred by a need for increasing revenue. I logged on just now on desktop and got a suggestion that I could purchase an ad-free browsing subscription to help support the hellsite (which is the word they used, because they have very much embraced the joke). I have in fact already bought an ad-free subscription, both because I like the product Tumblr provides and want to keep using it in its current form, and because it makes my mobile experience immeasurably nicer. I am well aware that especially in this era of social media sites dropping like flies, the continued existence of a platform that is 30-million-dollars underwater (however you want to split hairs about exactly how) is not a guarantee. And we all complain about Tumblr, but we have all been here a long time (me, uh, over 10 years), we have a solid community, there's no other alternative that's really ever come up or gotten the same kind of uptake, and if it went under, we would be uh, screwed.

Tumblr is kind of a mess, it's the antithesis of every social media site, and it doesn't (for now) have the crap that makes The Artist Formerly Known As Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so utterly unusable, or if it does, you can (mostly) turn it off. That's why we all like it and why, even if we are resolutely anti-capitalist gremlins who resist being marketed to with every fiber of our being, it doesn't change the fact that servers, staff, and all the rest cost real human-people money which the site, by their own frank admission, is struggling to raise. Even if staff does often make crappy updates, they generally at least TRY to listen to us and include a feature to make it optional or roll it back, unlike certain unnamed idiot billionaires. Their mockery of other social media sites can sometimes be a little much, but for now, Tumblr is pretty much the last place on the internet that does what it does, and I like it that way. If it went under and took my blog of 10+ years and all my friends with it, I would be incredibly sad.

That being the case, and basic financial realities being what they are, encouraging people to toss a few bucks at a TOTALLY OPTIONAL and fun gimmick that increases functionality for a product we like is actually not a bad thing. TumblrMart has crabs, checkmarks, Ea-Nasir merchandise (seriously), ad-free browsing, etc., and if our choice is voluntarily supporting the site through fun (and again, OPTIONAL) purchases versus having us all be involuntarily subject to some horrible data-scraping mechanism or forced off altogether because they couldn't keep the lights on, that is fine with me. Nobody is making anybody do or buy anything. But if you like the product Tumblr provides and want a fun material way to show your appreciation, then I don't think it's some Great Transgression to participate in that.