#like yes stop entertaining this stupid bs | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lycorogue · 4 years ago

Text

“What did you expect me to do?”: In Defense of the Car Scene and Alya

Okay, so I’ve been seeing a lot of salt lately (and I tend to follow blogs that stay positive and relatively salt-free with regards to the fandom) about the car scene towards the end of the Miraculous Ladybug NY special.

Mainly the “stupidity” of the writers having Alya demand that Marinette should have said something to Adrien when the car pulled up.

“Couldn’t you see he was just waiting for you to tell him to stay?”

I’ve seen fans counter “it’s not like it would have changed anything” or “what could she do against his father’s wishes” or “her asking him to stay wouldn’t have stopped Gabriel from demanding he come along” and other such arguments.

And, yes, as viewers and as adults (I believe most, if not all, of the blogs I follow are run by adults), WE know that those are all true. Gabriel, as Hawk Moth, has just set a dangerous supervillain lose on the city with a way to make NYC even MORE dangerous by turning the superheroes against the city as well. He wants his son the HELL out of there ASAP. Nothing anyone would say could change his mind.

We also know that the only reason Adrien was allowed to go in the first place was because Gabe-y was going to NYC himself and figured it was a convenient way to not have to hide that he’d be even MORE absent from Adrien’s life for a few days. Especially given that Nathalie is clearly bedridden after the events of the S3 finale and so Gabriel can’t even outsource his parenting onto her.

HOWEVER, as the CHARACTERS, none of them know that.

What they DO know is that Marinette is apparently a miracle worker. As far as they are concerned, Marinette is the Mr. Agreste Whisperer. There have been a couple of times that she was able to convince Gabriel to let Adrien do something. If she’s involved, he can go to birthday parties. He can host a Christmas dinner. He can return to school. He can sneak off to a movie. He can do impromptu photo shoots for his friend’s fashion line. He can go on international class trips. Heck, the fashion show that showcased Marinette’s winning derby hat MAGICALLY DREW GABRIEL AGRESTE HIMSELF OUT OF HIS HOME FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MONTHS! One of the FEW times he’s left his mansion in a year (at least).

If Marinette could do all that, despite the odds, despite Gabriel Agreste seemingly being steadfast in his decision, then why can’t she do so again? Why couldn’t she ask Adrien to stay with them, and then try to talk Mr. Agreste into allowing it?

She refused to sit idly by when Adrien said he wouldn’t be able to go on the New York trip. She stormed over to the Agreste mansion and “convinced” Mr. Agreste to let his son come.

“My father told me everything. The only reason I can enjoy this beautiful sunset is you. I thought it would be impossible, but you believed in it. You're always willing to take a chance on something or someone, even when no one else is.”

...even when no one else is.

Marinette doesn’t give up on anyone or anything!

Until that moment. That moment when Adrien desperately needed someone to fight for him, to prove to him he’s worth fighting for, to validate that people DO value him and want him to stay. The moment when Adrien needed Marinette’s determination and positivity the most, and she failed him. (Not to salt on Marinette. I totally get why she froze. I’m just putting this in the perspective of the characters)

He had told Marinette that “You're always willing to take a chance on something or someone, even when no one else is,” and yet, apparently this is the point where Marinette draws the line. This is when she’s no longer willing to take that chance. HE’S not worthy of that chance anymore, and with everything that just happened between him and Ladybug, he FEELS that to his core.

Alya sees this. Alya can SENSE how much Adrien needed his defender in that moment, and Marinette just threw in the towel on him. Yes, Nino begged Adrien to not go, but it’s been shown multiple times that Nino truly doesn’t have any power over what Adrien can and can’t do. Sure, it may be a small bit of comfort that Nino wanted him to stay, but it wasn’t what Adrien needed in that moment.

THAT is why Alya was so pissed at Marinette. All those times that the girl did over-the-top stunts to try to get Adrien’s attention. All the times Marinette has gone to bat for Adrien over “silly” things in the past. All the energy Marinette puts into proving Lila is lying. Then the ONE TIME someone clearly needs her to go to bat for them, and she BAILS!? THAT is when Marinette suddenly doesn’t think Adrien’s worth the effort!? Worse comes to worst, if Gabriel shrugs Marinette off and still demands that Adrien comes with, at least then Adrien still knows someone is willing to fight on his behalf, and that’s something.

But this? Not a single word? It snaps Alya. Trying to get over Adrien is one thing, but now Marinette is overcompensating to the extreme where she’s not even being a good FRIEND to him. Nope. This shit is NOT going to fly with her.

So she storms up to her bestie. She yells at her. She has no clue what inner turmoil is going on with Marinette. She knows nothing of Chat Noir. Honestly, at that moment I don’t think she even realizes Ladybug and Chat Noir are in NYC.

True, it’s a dumb move to send Marinette racing after Adrien in the rain when the city is on lockdown and a dangerous supervillain is on the lose. I’m sure Alya beat herself up about that the moment Marinette was out of view and Alya had a moment to calm down.

BUT THE GIRL IS FOURTEEN! SHE’S ALLOWED TO BE LASER FOCUSED AND NOT SEE THE BIG PICTURE WHEN HER EMOTIONS TAKE HOLD. KIDS ARE ALLOWED TO MAKE MISTAKES.

Also, let’s just face the facts. The amount of times Alya puts HERSELF in danger for a scoop, she probably doesn’t even truly grasp the potential consequences. I mean, yeah, she’s cut back on the self-endangerment a lot after becoming Rena Rouge, but still. Besides, NYC is flooded with superheroes, and at this point none of them have been influenced by the supervillian yet. As far as Alya’s concerned, how much danger could Marinette truly get in, right?

Plus, Alya never expressly told Marinette to go full-romcom-trope and chase Adrien down; meet him at the airport to beg him to stay. She just yelled at her best friend to shake her out of whatever teenage BS was going on with her trying to get over Adrien and make a flippin’ decision already (not that Alya was making that easy, but that’s for another post). Marinette simply made that decision on her own and Alya didn’t stop her. Maybe she tried, but Marinette moved too quick. We don’t know. The camera was on Marinette.

That notwithstanding, once Alya sees the news and knows that Marinette is now MIA, she probably has a MAJOR breakdown. We didn’t see it because it wasn’t important to the plot, but I trust that Alya doted heavily on Marinette the second she returned. Apologizing for her outburst and not focusing on if Marinette was okay. This is probably also where that 180 about deciding how Marinette feels about Adrien came from. Alya demanding Marinette figure it out NOW potentially put her in danger, so instead Alya has decided that Marinette SHOULD go at her own pace; there’s always tomorrow. We’ll see if that continues in s4.

Now, would I have written this whole car scene differently to try to avoid all of those narrative pitfalls? Maybe, but I’m also not a professional scriptwriter, so I can’t really critique those who are for their judgement calls. They went for the emotional gut-punch, and they kept the characters in-character. That’s all I can really ask for from them.

At the end of the day, while it is always nice when shows take on the responsibility to educate their viewers and show them healthier ways to accomplish things, it’s not expressly their job. Their job is to entertain, and that scene WAS entertainment. It’s only with emotional and mental maturity, as well as an analytical and critical eye, does this scene present itself as problematic and therefore no longer enjoyable, despite it being fairly accurate with regards to how teenagers might think.

Now, I’m not saying we CAN’T criticize the show. By all means, go ahead. I am still reading the salt and internalizing why it’s there so that I can learn and be better with my own writing. However, we should also be aware of how our own views and personal demands on storytellers might jade us to the show. In doing so, we should then be cautious about HOW we criticize the show, because the last thing this fandom needs is more salt.

#ML #ML spoilers #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug spoilers #ML NY special #ML NY special spoilers #analysis #fan analysis #LycoRogue analysis #LycoRogue original #long post #in defense of #Alya Cesaire #the car scene #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Adrien Agreste #Gabriel Agreste #(not in defense of him but he's part of this so I added him to the tags)#remember to be kind to the show's writers

106 notes · View notes

lovemesomesurveys · 3 years ago

Text

Thought I Couldn't Top It, Huh? OVER 2000 Questions! (Truly the Longest!) Created by distortedcognition Part 12

Even more strange Questions...

If you could create the world, would you make it a triangle or a square? Square. Do you find yourself frequently sounding like Donald Duck with a migraine? Not sure what that would sound like, exactly, but I’m gonna say no. Estimating, how many pieces of lined paper have you used this year? I’d say like 100. If you were a pen, what kind of pen would you be? (Be specific.) I’d be a dried up pen that never works right. If you were a pencil, what kind of pencil would you be? A dull one. What is your favorite thing to highlight? The stuff I think is important. What number can you relate to the most? I don’t relate to numbers. What would you do if you were a spider? Ew, please no I don’t want to be a spider. A chicken? Chicken things. A goose? Lounge in the water.

An anteater? Ew, eat ants? If you were a pirate, which sea would you sail? I’d sail the 7 seas. Would you rather sell your life or gamble it away? Sell it. If you could pay anyone in the world to be your friend, who would it be? I don’t want to pay anyone to be friend. That’s stupid. Do you think that Bigfoot is really fighting with aliens? Totally. Do you believe tabloids? Sometimes, but you have to be skeptical and educate yourself. If you were a tabloid, would you believe in yourself? Nope. Why do you believe tabloids? Because some are truthful. Why do you not believe tabloids? Because a lot is BS for entertainment purposes. Estimating, how many different tabloids are there? I don’t know, man. Who do you think is the best Disney supporting actor? Uhh. Does citrus acid make you happy? No. On the HB scale, what is your favorite lead? What. Do you think PLAGIARISTS should die long and horrible deaths? Uh, no, but it is an extremely shitty thing to do. Don’t steal people’s work. Do your own shit and give credit where it’s due. What do you think of LYING, CHEATING, and PLAGIARISM? They’re messed up. How mean do you think PLAGIARISTS are? Intentionally plagiarizing someone’s work is shitty and mean, just don’t do it. How angry do PLAGIARISTS make /you/ feel? Did that happen to you? If PLAGIARISM was a dollar, how much money would you have? No one has plagiarized me and I haven’t plagiarized either. If someone PLAGIARIZED you, what would you do? I would be furious to see someone else getting credit for MY work and I’d have to try to do something about it. What would you include in a nasty Bzoink e-mail intended for them? Ohhh duh that’s right that’s the whole reason for this survey lol. I totally forgot someone stole your survey. I was so confused as to why there were so many questons about plagiarism, ha. ANYWAY, if I decided to reach out them to personally I would start off civil and ask them to please delete it. Should PLAGIARISTS be pushed off buildings? No. I hope you’re not actually this violent cause some of your questions have me concerned. Should PLAGIARISTS who PLAGIARIZE our survey grovel at our feet? They just need to stop stealing other people’s shit, give credit where it’s due, and come up with their own stuff. And should they delete their survey? Yes.

Do you think PLAGIARISTS who like fashion are dumb? No? Do you think Skittles should be evil? It’s a candy... Do you think PLAGIARISTS are the new PURPLE? ...

Do you think cats should eat PLAGIARISTS for breakfast? ... Dogs? ... Llamas? ... Do you think PLAGIARISTS are desperate? They just lack creativity and respect. I have no creativity either, but I don’t go around stealing other people’s shit. You don’t get to do that just because you can’t come up with your own ideas, it doesn’t work that way. You can get inspired by other people’s work, but don’t downright copy and paste it.

#personal #text #survey #surveys #over 2000 questions survey series part 12 #about me #random #long survey

1 note · View note

panharmonium · 5 years ago

Text

a face like a wounded bear (i’ve just got a few things on my mind, that’s all)

back on my merlin rewatch rambles this week. i’m finishing up S1 now and just putting down some notes here for myself about 1.11 - specifically, how it ties back to/is informed by 1.10, because this is something that’s been on my mind for a long time.

these got a bit long so feel free to scroll past if this isn’t your cup of tea!

standard disclaimer for people who don’t know me and might stumble across this: i got into this show late and i have not finished season 5. i am GOING to finish season 5, hence this rewatch. so far i have remained unspoiled for the end of this show; i super appreciate everybody helping me stay that way. you have my permission to laugh at me for being ten years late to this show in the first place and also for taking a geological age to finish the last four episodes. i understand and fully support you in this; in my defense, i have been using the break to write fic, so i hope all can be forgiven in the end X)

with that out of the way, some thoughts!

i. a wounded bear

i really appreciate how much angrier merlin suddenly is at everything once we hit ‘the labyrinth of gedref.’

he’s still trying to help solve arthur’s problems, and he’s still rooting for arthur to succeed, but he’s also snappy and irritable and getting lost staring out windows, and his patience level with arthur in particular is set to absolute zero. it’s not a catastrophic change - it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like arthur anymore or that he doesn’t still respect arthur for what arthur...could be, and for what he is, at moments; merlin obviously still deeply admires him for caring so much about the people of camelot and he obviously still believes that arthur is noble at heart and worth supporting. but he’s simultaneously sick and tired of arthur’s particular brand of princely BS, and in this episode it’s starting to show.

before this episode, merlin used to tolerate arthur’s dumbassery with a kind of...willingness to be amused as opposed to annoyed. arthur would go into his “insult merlin” routine or say something only a rich idiot would say and merlin would just laugh it off, or quip it away, or roll his eyes and get on with his day. he was kind of…gently entertained by the people he had to serve. he was having a little adventure right then, you know? and the nobles, arthur included, were colorful characters in this story he’d walked into. if they were occasionally insufferable, well, at least they were good for a laugh.

for example, that episode where arthur keeps asking merlin to cover for him so he can go have his little dates with sophia? merlin winds up in the stocks for it three times in a row, but the first time, he just shrugs it off with his typical cheery equanimity and wryly says, “i forgot how much fun this was!” and then when arthur asks him to cover for him a second time, merlin is just psyched that arthur is having such a good time with sophia, and he immediately agrees to do it, saying, “don’t worry, i’ll find a way to get you out of it!” and then he’s back in the stocks, but when he comes out of them, gaius is more annoyed at arthur than merlin is. and then after arthur runs off to “elope” with sophia, and merlin ends up in the stocks a THIRD time, it’s just the funny zinger at the end of the episode. he’s not upset about it. it’s just like, “meh! here i am again! classic merlin misadventure, what can you do? :)”

there is no chance that would fly in the back quarter of S1. none. zero.

merlin is completely fed up in 1.11. starting with the hunting party’s slaughter of the unicorn, and then branching out to other, smaller things - every dismissive thing arthur says to him, every time arthur ignores or denies the reality of their situation and tries to pin responsibility for camelot’s misfortune on sorcery rather than his own actions, every time arthur makes stupid comments like ‘merlin you’re less intelligent than a rat’ - in this episode, merlin doesn’t roll with those things. he snaps back, or raises his voice; he refuses to be talked over, he bites back “i’m THIRSTY” when arthur tells him to stop smacking his lips in the granary.

in another episode, that stuff might have been delivered in a jokey way - and it will be again, some day in the future, when they’re both back to having fun with it - but merlin’s not having fun with it in 1.11. he’s giving arthur challenging stares and resentful glares instead of friendly, this-is-just-how-we-tease-each-other looks. his tone isn’t amused or fondly exasperated, it’s frustrated or irritated or, sometimes, straight-up angry.

there’s a point in one of their arguments where merlin says he believes what anhora is saying, and arthur’s cold response is, “then you’re a fool. you cannot trust a single word a sorcerer says. you’d do well to remember that.”

and merlin gives him the most baleful glare. like he wants to just...strangle him with his eyes. like he has so many cutting things just sitting on the tip of his tongue and can’t decide which one he wishes he could say first.

ii. a few things on my mind

this, i think, is where it’s worth remembering that this episode takes place in a larger context than ‘arthur did a dumbass thing at the beginning of the episode and merlin’s upset about it.’

because merlin definitely is upset about the unicorn, but merlin’s also just upset, full stop, about things that have nothing to do with the unicorn or camelot’s curse or camelot to begin with, and it’s bleeding over into other areas of his life.

to clarify: i don’t think we can really understand merlin’s subtle attitude shift in 1.11 without understanding that 1.11 takes place immediately after 1.10.

1.11 is one of two S1 episodes whose positions in the timeline we can actually pinpoint relative to their neighbors (the first being 1.02, which is directly stated to take place on merlin’s “first day as arthur’s servant,” aka the day after 1.01). 1.11 likewise can be mapped accurately onto the timeline, because kanen comes thundering into ealdor bellowing “it’s harvest time!” in 1.10, and then in 1.11 camelot is bringing in their harvest, too (literally, gaius yells at the end, “they’re bringing in the harvest!”).

there’s really not any wiggle room there. the harvest season is only so many weeks long to begin with, and we know ealdor was pretty far along with their work in 1.10 - we see the evidence of their labor, and if the grain hadn’t already been harvested, kanen’s group wouldn’t have had anything to steal. ealdor is smaller, so it makes sense for them to finish faster than camelot, but it looks like camelot is just getting started in 1.11, given the state of their grain reserves and the fact that so much grain appears to be unharvested when the blight hits. and, that being the case, honestly, camelot had to have started like, immediately after 1.10 finished, or even while that arc was still going on. it’s already pushing the boundaries of disbelief that they wouldn’t have started by the time ealdor has gotten so much done. there’s no plausible way they could have waited any longer. harvest season is the same for everyone; it’s not some kind of rotating schedule. people only have about a month to get it done in the first place.

so these two episodes occur, at the absolute most, a couple weeks apart from one another, and that’s only by the most generous of estimates; it’s more likely that they’re closer together than that, given the information above. but honestly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s two weeks or two days - either way, merlin in 1.11 has something going on in his head that’s extremely recent and taking up kind of a lot of his energy.

i don’t know that this angle gets looked at often, because the understandable tendency is to mostly focus on merlin in relation to arthur, and this becomes especially true in episodes that contain arthur+merlin umm...idk, focus scenes like the one near the end of 1.11. but this is the angle that’s always on my mind when i watch the end of S1, because if there is one hill i’ve staked out for the digging of my future grave, it’s the following:

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon.

this probably qualifies as an unpopular fandom opinion, but it’s something i absolutely refuse to budge on.

and of course it’s just my own read, obviously; you may have more fun coming at this episode from a different direction, and that’s totally cool! but for me, my understanding when i’m watching this season - merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. especially not yet, especially not now, when merlin has only known arthur for a few months and he’s just coming back from being with people who have known him (and i mean known him, known everything, known him for real) for something like twenty years.

merlin’s life does NOT revolve around arthur pendragon. his relationship with arthur, at this point, is not the most important relationship in his life. arthur is not the best friend he’s ever had. arthur is barely merlin’s friend at all, right now. arthur likes him all right, yes, and merlin likes him back, most of the time, but arthur doesn’t even know him, really.

arthur doesn’t know.

and i love arthur and merlin, like - i’m as down for the mythic, destiny-laden, we-find-each-other-in-every-universe dimension of their dynamic as anybody, and when those two finally have an equal, healthy friendship going on, i’m going to be cheering for them. but it doesn’t change the fact that merlin had a life before he came to camelot, or the fact that by 1.11 he’s only been in camelot for a few months and doesn’t really know arthur all that well yet.

you can pick whatever example you want to illustrate this point; there are enough of them to choose from, but one of the clearest is in 1.11, when arthur passes his final test and drinks anhora’s fake poison. merlin thinks arthur is dead, at that point - he’s pretty well convinced that the poison was real and that arthur has just keeled over dead on the beach - but his reaction to arthur’s ‘death’ is....i don’t want to minimize it, exactly, because merlin's obviously upset about it, but at the same time the level of distress he displays is visibly, objectively different from what we see from him in other contexts. it looks nothing like his naked grief when will is slipping away from him in 1.10, or his desperation when his mother shows up deathly ill on his doorstep in 1.13. he doesn’t look at potentiallydead!arthur the same way, or talk to him the same way, or touch him the same way - of course he hustles right over and shakes him to see if he can wake him up, but it is just...you can watch these scenes next to each other and they are just not the same. it is not the same gentle way he leans over his mother, the way he takes her hand, strokes her forehead, folds gaius’ rabbit’s foot into her fingers. it is not the same way he cradles will in 1.10, when his fingers are in will’s hair and his hand is just - reflexively rubbing will’s head in a way that is just so...intimate and automatic and brokenly tender like -

of course it’s different with them! he loves them! watching them suffer is torture for him, and the idea of losing either of them is devastating to him on a scale i can’t possibly understand. he’s only ever had two people in his life. one parent. one friend. they were his whole world.

so, yeah, merlin is stressed about arthur’s apparent death. he’s upset. he likes arthur, he believes in arthur, he’s appalled that this is happening. but it’s not a personal grief. there aren’t any deathbed confessions. there aren’t any gentle touches. there aren’t any tears. his protest to anhora isn’t ‘i love this person and i don’t want them to leave me;’ it’s ‘i was meant to protect him!’ it’s about him failing at his “destiny;” it’s about the fact that someone told him he was born like this for a reason and now he’s failed at the job that gave him a sense of purpose, at the thing that made him feel like having magic was worth all this terrible trouble.

contrast this to when his mother shows up dying in 1.13, and gaius tries to prevent merlin from saving her by bringing up the importance of merlin’s “destiny.” on that occasion, merlin’s immediate incredulous retort is, “my destiny? this is my mother.”

arthur’s death and merlin’s distress over it all come back to merlin’s unfulfilled destiny, in 1.11. but merlin couldn’t care less about his destiny when it’s his mother’s life on the line. my destiny means nothing if i cannot save her.

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. not here, not now.

[that said - it’s different, of course, later in the series. merlin’s reaction to arthur’s supposed death in 5.07 isn’t just “oh no i failed!”, it’s also a personal, particular anguish. they matter to each other, by then. (though even then i think there’s a lot to be said about the…unhealthy tragedy of merlin giving up on his own wants and needs and worth as a person who exists outside the context of this narrow mandate to protect someone who doesn’t know who merlin really is and wouldn’t love him if he did - but that’s just the situation merlin’s trapped himself in, by that point. it’s what he’s accepted for himself. it’s all he thinks he deserves.)]

[that’s a post for another day, though, so. back to the point.]

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. merlin had a life all his own before he came to camelot, and during the last quarter of season 1, every part of it that matters to him is falling apart.

i keep coming back to this, every time i think about this kid. there’s just no way to overstate the fact that merlin’s world up until this point has always been just two people. his whole life has been just two people. his whole life has been just one parent. his whole life has been just one friend.

and after 1.10, his one friend is dead.

i think we dramatically underestimate the impact of merlin having half of his world obliterated, just like that.

that’s not something he gets up and strolls away from. he can’t roll with that punch. he carries that for the rest of his life.

you know what i mean? it would be a disastrous enough thing on its own, without even getting into the fact that it unfolds in a way that is SO complicated and tied up with messy personal history and regret/guilt that it needs to be parsed in an essay of its own (which, yes, i might already have half-written; yes, i have too much extra time on my hands this month.) we’re also not getting into the fact that like - okay, the sort of grimly positive flip side to only having two significant relationships in your life is that you’ve also never personally experienced any significant bereavement. you don’t have any extended family to mourn, no friends to lose, et cetera. so to have your first experience with loss be something so huge, when you’ve had no practice dealing with grief, and to be trapped in a place where you aren’t allowed to discuss it honestly because if you told somebody what it all really meant you’d be executed?

i’d be in a bad mood, too.

merlin is such a good kid and he tries so hard to have a smile for everyone, but i can’t watch the last quarter of S1 without seeing the strain of this weighing on him. it affects how he reacts to the situation with gwen’s father in 1.12 (more on that another time), and it absolutely plays into the fact that he spends the season finale racing from one side of the kingdom to the other, desperate to sacrifice his life for someone else’s.

^^ regarding that last bit - i think about that a lot. merlin tries to die three separate times over the last three episodes of S1, and it’s not that he’s...running around trying to get someone to kill him, exactly, but there’s definitely a very real sense that he’s dumped any interest in self-preservation, at this point, that he doesn’t care what happens to him. if dying is what it takes to make sure nobody else is taken away from him, then that’s fine. he will do literally anything to not feel this again.

merlin is trying to process something so big for him and he’s trying, by necessity, to do it alone, because he left his mother behind and came back to camelot where nobody understands that the only person other than his mother who ever loved him just died lying for him. he is so stressed out in the last three episodes of this season and so desperately unhappy about things he isn’t allowed to even mention, and i just think it’s impossible to evaluate these episodes outside of that particular context.

“we haven’t done all the things we’re meant to do,” he protests in the finale - and you can feel that aching admission come welling right up out of his soul. it’s uttered in a new context, yes, but he’s been thinking it for weeks and weeks and weeks already, too late to change anything, too late to buy his friend any more time. he’s hurting. and he goes zipping around from life-sacrifice to life-sacrifice in the last three episodes in a desperate attempt to keep himself from hurting more.

iii. i’d never have a friend who could be such an ass

the point of all this is the following: the reason merlin sounds like he’s fed up with arthur in 1.11 is because he is fed up with arthur in 1.11. he’s fed up with everything. they all just got home from ealdor somewhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks ago, and merlin is reeling. he feels like his head and his heart are still trapped on the other side of the border. he’s sick of looking at arthur’s arrogant, insensitive, infuriatingly alive face - and i say this while recognizing that, even at the same time, merlin also cares about arthur, and believes in him, and lionizes him; admires him; hero-worships him, even. these two things can be simultaneously true. merlin’s relationship with arthur is already so fraught with dissonance (how can you care about someone who thinks people like you are inherently evil? how can you respect someone who oppresses you?) - and merlin’s always carried two contradictory truths when he navigates their relationship, one in each hand. and right now it’s just that one hand is holding something too heavy. he’s not being bitchy, he’s busy - he’s trying to deal with something that is taking up 100% of his mental and emotional energy; he doesn’t have anything left over to accommodate arthur pendragon’s dumbassery.

and arthur pendragon IS a dumbass; let’s not pretend that he isn’t. i love him, and he has moments that are so admirable and glorious and shining that they take your breath away, when you can see why gwen says you are going to live to be the man i see inside you; i can see a king that the people will love and be proud to call their sovereign (that speech makes my eyes sting EVERY TIME, it gets me right there) - but arthur is STILL a dumbass. no question about it. he has so far to go, still. he’s dumb in all the generic ‘oblivious rich dude’ ways, and he’s also a jerk in his own specific ‘arrogant arthur pendragon TM’ ways, and merlin at this particular moment doesn’t have the energy to deal with it. he likes arthur, even at this early stage, despite all the mental gymnastics he has to do in order to like someone who hates magic-users. but merlin’s closest friend in the world is dead, and arthur is such an asshole sometimes and it’s like - this is what i got in exchange? this is the trade the universe made? what the hell makes arthur more deserving of being here than somebody who loved me without being told, without being taught, without needing to be constantly convinced that i should be allowed to exist and be safe and be loved on this earth?

are we really surprised that merlin wants to strangle arthur after that trademark ‘you cannot trust a single word a sorcerer says’ comment? merlin has enough reasons to resent that on his own behalf, but his own secret isn’t the problem, this time; the problem is that they literally just got home from their little jaunt to ealdor and the only reason arthur even made it back from ealdor in the first place was because (as far as arthur knows) a ‘sorcerer’ died saving his stupid life, and arthur knows that, and still, this is what he has to say?

and that’s on top of like - back in ealdor before they left, the fact that arthur really felt it was necessary to take time out of his day to come over and reproachfully chastise merlin about not disclosing will’s ‘magic,’ AT WILL’S FUCKING FUNERAL??? “you know how dangerous magic is. you shouldn’t have kept this from me.” AT WILL’S FUNERAL? RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS BURNING CORPSE? LIKE???? HELLO????

can you imagine being in this scenario??? and thinking??? yeah this is appropriate. this is the time.

how is merlin supposed to respond to that? when arthur’s like ‘you know how dangerous magic is’ and merlin is just like ????!! we are AT HIS FUNERAL!!! we are literally WATCHING HIS BODY BURN!!!! you know how dangerous magic is FFS THAT ‘MAGIC-USER’ COULDN’T STAND YOU AND HE STILL SAVED YOUR UNGRATEFUL LIFE AND HE’S DEAD BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT AND WE’RE AT HIS FUNERAL OMG IS THIS THE TIME? IS IT EVER GOING TO BE THE TIME? SHUT! UP!

of course merlin wants to kill him.

so anyway. i really appreciate merlin’s sudden prickliness in this episode. it’s subtle enough not to be completely jarring, but it’s still clearly perceptible, and i’m glad for that, because this is something that should be perceptible, given the timeline, but at the same time merlin would never, ever mention what’s really bothering him out loud, because a) the sorcery element and arthur’s involvement in how things went down have made it an absolutely unbroachable, forbidden topic, and b) guilt has wired merlin’s jaw shut.

^^ re: that last thing - it’s a post for another day, and i won’t really get into it now, but suffice to say, once again, that merlin spends the last quarter of season 1 running around trying his absolute hardest to throw his life away for someone, and i just feel like...i think it says something about the kind of pain he is in, and the kind of apology he feels he needs to make.

he is having a very hard time. merlin in the back quarter of S1 is feeling very alone and very much like he doesn’t deserve to ever feel better.

so if he’s a little bitey with arthur’s trademark noble nonsense, i think we can cut him some slack.

#meta #the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #tl;dr: merlin in 1.11 is grieving #this is...a lot of meta about not-arthur for an episode with such a frequently giffed arthur+merlin scene lol #but i don't care #not everything in merlin's life is about arthur pendragon #some things are just his #and will is one of those things #it has been so desperately rare for merlin to experience love without fear #every other relationship he has is tainted with 'they don't love the real me. they will hate me when they know.'#the very very few people who give him a breath of relief from this - who let him Exist and know beyond a doubt that he is cared for -#we RESPECT those people in this house!!!#how crucially important they are to him #how essential to his existence #how fundamental to his survival #how much they mean to him and how deeply it changes him when they're torn away #will and lancelot and hunith and gaius are the real mvps folks

80 notes · View notes

writingsoftheunderworld · 5 years ago

Text

C. 5: AU- yes! Time Travel -no?

AO3

Bonnie was on her way back home, power humming under her skin, feeling like a full day spent sunbathing, just this thin layer of vibration there, of warmth. It felt better than she had in much too long. Jeremy had requested to be dropped off at the Grill, so she was now carefully balancing her bag of food, a burger and fries, large both, and an extra large coke that she was already down half of in just the short drive back. She wished she could say she was excited to go home, hell, she should have been since it’s been equally long that she hasn’t had the time to waste time at home and only home. But she wasn’t. She had three projects, two papers and a ton of homework to get back on top of, that she’d neglected the past few months, since news of Klaus got out. And she still would be focusing on that threat if her dad hadn’t issued a much worse threat, grounded if she doesn’t get her grades up in a month. All in all, pretty fair of him she thought, but still, annoying.

She was only vaguely curious how Caroline and Elena were still getting Bs every so often in class, but Caroline could just write everything with super speed and if you were to be completely honest, Elena could just ask Stefan to compel her grades back up if she really needed to, and she also didn’t have that much to do with the threat of Klaus. Bonnie wasn’t being mean by thinking that, it was just the facts, Elena was certainly extremely worried because of him and, to be completely honest Katherine likely as well, but there was nearly nothing she needed or could do, not like Caroline who was a vampire with super speed and strength or Bonnie with her magic. And Bonnie certainly didn’t begrudge her friends the downtime, she just wished she could get some more herself if anything.

Bonnie hooked her leg around the door and pushed it shut behind her, the loud bang vibrating throughout the hallway and kitchen. She sighed, toed her shoes off, cursed as her bag fell off her shoulder and stuck on her wrist awkwardly and then dropped it to the small shoes’ rack, hung on a hook. She threw the jacked she had on onto the chair as she set the food on the table, drew a large slurp of her coke as she rose on her tiptoes to get one of the plates from the upper cabinet, before dropping both it and the plate onto the counter to rummage through the drawers for some utensils. She wondered if Caroline still did that weird thing of cutting through her burger even now, but only half-focused on that thought as she retrieved a fork and then the sweet chilli she’d stored in the fridge from her last excursion to the Grill for food, probably months ago. She took her food, balancing rather precariously in her hands, and made her way to the TV. There had to be some shitty reality show or sitcom or something to watch at this hour right? Wasn’t that what normal people did when they got home after work and school?

She thumbed through the channels quickly, refusing to start eating until she had some entertainment running commentary on the background as well until she settled on some trivia quiz show thing she’d never heard of and probably never watch again, but it made for good distraction for now. She could still feel the waves of new power strumming in her body, filling her up with warmth and safety, like a nice summer morning. She thought back to the day’s events. The day that hadn’t even been that long yet more things happened than she’d have ever thought and her threshold for that had reached never-before seen heights about two years ago when Damon Salvatore crashed into her friends lives violently. That thought only sent her mind further down the rabbit hole that the elder Salvatore sibling usually did, which meant a confusing and conflicting barrage of both his worst deeds and the times he’d saved her or her loved ones. It was the strangest thing to her to look back on things now, after a day spent in his presence, his irritating voice narrating everything now, as though even outside of his general vicinity she still couldn’t escape the man. But he’d also surprised her a few times too, every so often, as though the mere idea that he could ever give anyone the mistaken impression that he could be decent was repulsive to him.

God, Damon drove her mad, so mad she genuinely worried she might actually cause a fire in the middle of town sometimes. She didn’t know what it was exactly, because while he was definitely annoying constantly and had done truly horrendous things to her and her loved ones, he still shouldn’t have caused her so much aggravation. There have been others that have done similar or worse things than him that she just put aside so quickly, but him? No, he was like a fungus, spreading and disgusting but also vaguely helpful for the environment. She guessed, she hadn’t been paying much attention in Biology lately. And he also, weirdly enough, made her feel... not safe, but some kind of confident perhaps, like she knew exactly where she stood with him and that he knew exactly how much she could take and wasn’t afraid to push her to those limits because he knew exactly where the breaking point was and when to stop. Which was just the stupidest thing she’d ever thought about really since he’d tried killing her before, several times. And used her for her magic constantly. Than again, so did everyone else.

When had her life become this thing that it now was? There were times where she couldn’t even remember what her Grams looked like at the end of the day because of what she’d had to do or how much of herself she had had to give, and Grams’ death had ripped part of her and kept it empty still. There was still a hole where her Grams should’ve been, but still, there was so much going on, so often, that Grams sometimes just… faded. She wasn’t gone, no, she was never gone from her thoughts, but sometimes, after having been kidnapped and drained of blood and magic, Grams got quiet in her mind. And other times she screamed, because Bonnie knew it wasn’t good to use up her power the way she was, it was too much, pushing too hard. She knew Grams would’ve put her foot down if she’d seen how Bonnie’s friends had taken to treating her lately, less of a person, more of a tool or weapon.

And Bonnie could see that too, and it hurt. It hurt so bad sometimes she just needed to get away from it all. But her friends could die if she didn’t do those things and she couldn’t bare to lose more people - sometimes she wondered whether she should send her dad away or come clean about all of it because he wasn’t safe, so one was safe. And then sometime Damon would say something stupid but so very neccessary that that it actually did make her feel some level of safe, because at least then she had confirmation that at least one other peron in their group of mismatched survivors was aware of how fucked up it all was and how some things needed to be done regardless. And she couldn’t help but give him some credit there. Even if she still preferred to see him writhing on the ground in pain.

¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.

Rose woke up a few hours later. The house was eerily silent that for a second she forgot what had happened and wondered if her friends were playing pranks on her. It was highly disconcerting to wake up to a house you’ve known as home for almost a decade now and find it so quiet when usually there were too many people everywhere. But the bed she was laying on wasn’t her bed and the room she was in wasn’t her room and the whole house smelled different and felt different. She stood up, looked around then out the window, saw the sun was just setting, all orange and red shining through the blinds - The world is on fire, you see that Rosie-Posie? - and sighed. She missed her parents. She had barely gotten the chance to see them when she decided to go ahead and do something stupid. And god, was it ever stupid, it was so dumb it wasn’t just regular stupid, but, in Lizzy Saltzman’s words, stoopid , which apparently was a whole other level of idiocy that apparently her mom and Lizzy’s mom-not-mom had come up with when they were younger. She felt stoopid , now that she’d done this. She understood the difference.

She listened a bit, trying to see if she could hear anyone else in the house, but the Boarding House was too big and she wasn’t a vampire so she couldn’t hear any voice, but could hear every single creek and it was vaguely terrifying and she felt 11 again and sleeping here for the first time and scared about the big old house and the strange new people living with her in it. It was kind of eye-opening to be completely honest, to her. It reminded her of how good she had it now and how really, really bad it was that she’d done that spell in the first place. Another sigh and she was getting up, stretching as she went, bones popping and an odd crink in her neck from the bad position she’d slept in and a ghost pain in her elbow, likely from having hit in while sleeping as she sometimes did. A small snort at the memory of her mom’s comically horrified face when she saw her wake up bruised the first time had her startled and she snorted again at scaring herself like a baby.

Rose rubbed at her eyes, crusty from the sleep, finger-combed her hair out of her face and went to the bathroom. When she returned she flipped the lights on and sat on the edge of the bed, pulled out her phone and opened the notes. She had to get a plan done. She thought about everything she knew and made a list to get it all in order, then took that list and figured what she wanted to get out of this whole situation and how much she could actually do and ended up with at least an idea of what she should and shouldn’t do. Firstly she realised there was absolutely no way of preventing Klaus from becoming the hybrid, he was too paranoid, too determined and too dangerous to even consider that possibility at this point in time. The Klaus she knew in her world? A completely different story, but this one wasn’t that guy so in the words of the Klaus that had taken her to her first art show simply because she and Hope had asked him to she would just have to revise and adapt. She also couldn’t kill him. She didn’t have nearly enough power to pull any kind of binding spell from his bloodline to be able to not cause a genocide so that was equally off the board as well. Plus she actually kind of liked the guy he became in the future so she wanted to keep him alive to actually maybe become him. But she also didn’t want anyone to die. So she needed a plan to keep them alive or at least bring them back. Luckily her mom had been the Anchor to the Other Side for a while there and had learned a lot about how that worked and while they no longer had an Other Side themselves, it still very much existed here so that brought several very good and very real possibilities of preventing deaths. Score one Rose, zero this freaky universe.

She also kind of wanted to get her parents to at least not hate each other a bit quicker here. She’s heard them enough times talk about how if they’d actually gotten along earlier, things could’ve been prevented. She wasn’t entirely sure what those things were, because she was pretty sure they weren’t delusional enough to think that them getting together could actually prevent stuff like Silas or the Travellers that she’d heard them speak about, but she could definitely see how it would have helped. Her parents worked incredibly well together. Even when they disagreed on stuff constantly they still had this synchronisation to their planning and execution that no one could deny. So yeah, Rose wanted to play match-maker a bit. Not the main goal here, nor would she really push for anything since that wasn’t going to help at all, but if she saw any opportunity, sure, she’d try. Lizzy would be so proud of her when she got back, she always tried to get Rose to join her in her match-making escapades around school.

Mind made up, she smiled, pleased with herself and headed downstairs to try to get on top of everything. She needed help coming up with a feasible and best plan and she could hear Damon talking down the hall from the living room area. Actually, she paused and grinned, she could hear a lot of people, likely the whole gang. Perfect, this was going to be just great. So Rose rounded the corner and was about to open her mouth to get this show on the road when she heard a very familiar voice and saw a very familiar sight surrounded by complete shocked chaos about to unleash.

“Rose-Sheila Bennett-Salvatore, what on Earth were you thinking?”

The voice of Bonnie Bennett-Salvatore was calm, her stance relaxed as she stood in front of the fireplace. She didn’t seem to be angry, save for the words that she’d just uttered, if anything, Rose thought her mom was a bit too at ease and amused by the whole situation. Her dad though, well. Damon Salvatore-Bennett was not pleased, and she could tell because he had his hands on his hips and that disappointed look on his face, furrowed brow and tight jaw, shaking his head minutely, tense. No, her dad was not amused at all, if anything he seemed more likely to start her lecture early and publicly and ground her for the next year than anything else. So Rose was even more surprised to see her mom smile brightly and relieved and feel her dad rush to her and wrap his arms around her so tight and so warm she would've cried if she could breathe.

“Dad. Dad, I’m okay, I promise.” she reassured even as she squeezed him just as tightly and gave a shaky grin in response to her mom. “Sorry.” she mumbled next, right in the crook of her dad’s neck who says ‘it's ok Rosie-Posie’ so softly she choked up a bit, and knew her mom heard it or saw it because her smile tempered slightly and the worried she must have been keeping pushed to the surface. Bonnie walked over to them, her hand gently caressing Damon’s back to get him to ease up and he startled a bit, jumping and then disentangling himself from Rose only for her to find herself face to face with her mom and now she doesn’t know what to do because dad is easy, dad glares and rants and raves but it’s all because he worries and the second he realises nothing is wrong he instantly forgives, but mom either grounds her or lectures or of gives her some kind of punishment and that when she messes up with stuff that is easy to fix if still vaguely serious, but this is something else, this could’ve actually turned out much worse and so Rose braced for whatever her mom might say now that she’s seen Rose was alright.

So Rose was entirely unprepared for her mom to cup her cheeks and brush her still dishevelled hair out of her eyes and kiss her forehead and now Rose was definitely going to cry, but that was ok because mom also wraped her arms around her and she could burrow now in her neck as well and mom smells of home in an entirely different way that dad did, but he also smelled of home too and it’s a bit too much for her so she could feel a few stray tears escaping, but that was ok too because she could just hide them in the material of her mom blouse and under the shade of her dad’s hand caressing her hair softly. When she drew back, she was alright again, only she realised that the other ones, the people from this universe w ere still there and looking both vaguely confused, but a lot angrier and a lot more shocked and oh god this will still kill her, won’t it?

Hopefully you guys don’t mind I brought future Bamon to the past, but this kinda drama just speaks to me, hahaha! Sorry, not sorry! Lemme know what you guys think. I don’t think this will be much longer now - but then again I didn’t think this would be multi chaptered in the first place so what do I know really?

Stay safe out there guys! Bye

#Bamon #bamon fic #bamon fanfic #bonnie bennett #bonnie/damon #Bonnie x Damon #Damon x Bonnie #Bonnie #Damon #damon salvatore #future daughter #tvd fic #tvd fanfiction #TVD

28 notes · View notes

aquaburst3 · 4 years ago

Text

I’m gonna unleash a bit of salt in order to get this out of my system. Now that the excitement has died down a bit, to be quite honest, I feel like the Pomefiore arc was rather underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong. The first half of this arc until Deuce and Epel go out is great. (Even if I have issues with it, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.) Just this update makes me feel mixed.

More undercut because of spoilers.

Issues I had with it

Why didn’t Jack play a bigger role in this arc? The flashbacks flat out stated that the two are close friends since they were little kids. You think that Jack would step in and help out a lot more if they have that close of a bond.

The climax seemed underwhelming storywise. It just seemed like Vil just shrugged and decided to randomly poison Neige out of nowhere. Then Rook stops Vil and he gets pissed, and then overblot. That just just seems rather basic to me. I thought that there would be a lot more to it like someone getting poisoned and the team curing them before confronting Vil or something more than just that.

Someone on Discord said that he was disappointed since the rhythmic battle with Vil was super easy to beat compared to Jamil and some of the other dorm leaders. I don’t play the game, so I can’t back that up. But there’s that, I guess.

Is it just me or did it take very little for Vil to overblot? He only used his powers only twice this arc, and then overblot. Hell, Leona used his powers more often than Vil before he overblotted! Like what happened with Leona, that doesn’t make sense or fit the established lore, seeming like a giant plothole. Idk, the story could have done a better job at building up to him overblotting and had him use his powers far more.

I’m kinda disappointed that Neige and Vil aren’t stepbrothers. I feel like something like that would’ve added more meat to their conflict. For one, it would parallel Snow White with Vil being jealous of a family member. It would’ve made the conflict much more personal on both ends, giving more meaning to the rivalry between them.

Neige and Vil hardly interacted, despite their spat being the centre point of that whole arc. I would’ve liked them interacted at least a lot at the end. (Yes, I know Leona hardly interacted with Malleus in his arc, but the latter doesn’t get out all that much and Leona was a lot more crafty with his plan, so there’s at least an explanation why.)

Someone posted a theory on here before this part came out about how Grant and some of the other dwarves getting jealous of Vil's team's skill, so Grant decides to go behind Neige's back to "cancel" Vil, saying his dirty laundry. This makes Vil extra pissed, thinking, "Fuck it. If I can't get my way playing fair, then I'll take him out of the competition." After the battle, they apologize for how they treated him and undo the damage. I would've loved to see that play out, considering that would make the conflict more nuanced, and, for a lack of a better term, adult. If this was the case, Neige's teammates would be like Janice from Mean Girls in the sense that they were equally in the wrong and ruthless. Sure, poisoning people is wrong, obviously, but so is what they did.

What’s with the poisoned apple in the opening credits? And Kalim’s story that seemed like foreshadowing? And Jamil/Kalim’s skills about knowing how to deal with those who are poisoned? Or Deuce falling behind the rest of the team? What about Vil pressuring Epel like he forced him into the competition for some dark reason? (Yes, I know he used Epel’s juice at the end, but there seemed to be more to it than that, because Vil could’ve poisoned any food or drink item and got the same result.) Those plot points sure lead to fucking nowhere.

Vil’s backstory seemed underwhelming and the least justified out of any of the dorm leaders so far. What’s his dark and “tragic” backstory? He just hated being typecast as a villain in roles and when he was very small some people were scared of him because they thought he was the same character that he played in a movie before they outgrew it for obvious reasons. Seriously, that’s it?! That’s his only motivation for steeping so low as to poison someone?! I get why he would be upset about about being typecast, but after seeing what others like Jamil went through during their pasts, it just seems like nothing. All actors are typecast in some way real life! I mean, people typecasted Robert Patterson after his role as Edward Cullen, but you didn’t see him snap like that after people doubted that he could play Batman. At least Azul was constantly bullied and fat shamed throughout his childhood, so his actions make far more sense. Vil just comes across as very melodramatic and his attempt to poison Neige just seems extremely unjustified. All it took was for a casting director say that “he wasn’t chosen for the role because they wanted a more ‘bland’ looking man in the main role” one time and Neige is his archenemy for life. It reminds me a lot of how Lance named Keith as his rival in Voltron, despite not knowing him. That seems rather OOC to me. Before it seemed like he was like Miranda from Devil Wears Prada where he was a strict and took things too far, but was professional and above else logical. Him declaring Neige as his rival just over that seems rather petty and isn’t something that a logical person like him would do. I wish his backstory was more inline with Jamil and Riddle’s where it alluded to some serious issues with the entertainment industry, just so that way his actions make more sense. (Seriously, you have no idea how fucked up entertainment industry can get. There’s a reason why former child stars are often so messed up in the head as adults.)

On a similar note, I kinda wish that the something happened on the team or in his personal life that pushed him over the edge like someone being injured on the team, putting the VDC in jeopardy, so he got desperate enough to do something that stupid and against his morals. Again, just so his actions made more sense and him trying to poison Neige came less out of nowhere.

Am I the only one that hates Vil’s overblot design? I’m a graphic designer. It looks far too busy, uses a lot of weird textures, there’s no visual hierarchy, it has nipples on it...for some reason, and he looks too much like those Virgin Mary paintings instead of a queen that he’s supposed to be. It just doesn’t suit his character at all. (Personally, if I designed the outfit, I would put him in a purple gown with a light purple cape, a high collar and crown on his head.) Then again, this is coming from the same person who hates Jamil’s overblot design, so take that with a mountain of salt.

Over all, I thought this arc would be epic, but it just felt meh when everything's said and done. I wouldn't be surprised it failed to deliver because of the hiatus making me build up false expectations for it in my head. Covid 19 probably messed up a lot of aspects of this arc. Understandable, but it still sucks, since I was looking forward to it.

Though, I swear if Vil loses the competition, because of “the villain must be punished in any Disney universe” bs, I’ll flip a table. (Because that’s not how things work in real life. This isn’t an underdog sports movie where a team can half ass their way to a victory. Neige’s team was super sloppy with their routine and Vil’s was just better on all accounts, so he should obviously win. Vil deserves that after all the hard work he put into this. Having Neige randomly win would go against what the game set up so far with it subverting a lot of anime tropes.)

Having said that, I love a lot of things about this arc. Everything until just this update is pretty solid storywise. Just I wish the story took its time more with this section to have it come together more properly. Though, I would’ve still liked Jack to play a larger role and for Vil to use his magic more often, since those were issues even before the update.

Eh, either way, I’ll just follow my original outline and make the changes I suggested in this rambling to my own take of the Pomefiore arc in my fic...once I get to that point, that is. It’s canon divergent anyways and I already said that arc would be different, so I don’t care if breaks away from the canon.

#aqua rambles

4 notes · View notes

lavendersuh · 5 years ago

Text

my youth

pairing: jinyoung x reader

genre: fluff, teacher!au, enemies to lovers!au

word count: 0.7k

hi loves!! i got two really similar requests recently:

@istanyukhei: “Can I request fem reader with Got7 Jinyoung fluff with prompts 5 & 24?”

@this-is-the-bbc: “hi!! could you do an enemies to lovers au with got7 jinyoung where they're both high school teachers? angst to fluff, gender neutral. bonus if you could add prompt 5 somewhere? thank you!”

so i decided to merge them!! this is gender neutral reader, teacher au, with both of the prompts below! this is sorta really short i apologize that it’s not the greatest but i’m just using writing as stress relief from all the papers i’m avoiding working on.... lol hope you enjoy xx

5. “Don’t yell at me like I’m a child!!” - “DON’T THROW SCISSORS!”

24. “Wait a second are you jealous?”

you and jinyoung are teachers

of high schoolers to be exact

which can be. interesting

you work at a private school, which means its not a huge place

the faculty is small, meaning you all know each other well

you’ve been able to meet some really nice people and find some friends

the only person you don’t get along with is your l o v e l y neighbor across the hall

park jinyoung

you aren’t sure how it started but you’re pretty sure you have an enemy???

this is your first teaching gig, you can’t afford to be in constant battle with the attractive man across the hall!!

but alas

chaos tends to ensue

one day the principal, aka YOUR BOSS, is walking through the halls as you reprimand jinyoung for his stupidity

you had gone into his classroom to borrow some supplies, which he proceeded to toss to you from his desk

which was all fine until you asked for the scissors

your temper was always so quick to ignite when jinyoung was involved

you have the same effect on jinyoung

“don’t yell at me like i’m a child!!”

“DON’T THROW SCISSORS!”

of course THIS is when the principal decides to walk in

that afternoon, once all the students have gone home, he reminds the both of you to remain professional

“set a good example for the kids”

ah yes the kids

they all think you and jinyoung are either already hooking up or they are placing bets on when yall will finally do it

jinyoung finds this out the hard way

by hearing some of the boys in the hallway discussing it

ewwwww

naturally, he has to run into your classroom at the end of the day and tell you

you give him a grossed out look

“stop listening in on our students’ conversations!!”

but you can’t help it

you end up overhearing shit too

you and jinyoung start telling each other about the BS that yall hear while you guys walk to the parking lot each day

it’s quite entertaining comparing gossip and rumors that circulate through the school, both about the students themselves as well as the faculty

its been a few weeks, filled with less fighting

its…. strange

yall still definitely argue

but you find that it never ~really~ makes you mad anymore

its just petty bickering that ends up with you back in your own classroom smiling like a dumbass

its not until nearly two months before the end of the school year when something happens

you are laughing through telling jinyoung about some of your students gossiping about a boy with a crush on you

apparently he wanted to give you chocolate and the whole nine yards

you found the entire thing h i l a r i o u s

but when you looked over at jinyoung he didn’t seem to find it that funny

in fact, he seemed upset ?

“what’s wrong?”

“idk,” he starts, “i know they are minors and shit but the thought of someone actually getting you gifts and asking like that…”

“what, you think i don’t deserve that type of treatment?”

he sputters, looking at his feet as yall keep walking

it takes you a minute, before you pause your footsteps and gaze at him

“wait a second, are you… jealous?”

his eyes widen

his mouth opens but like, no words come out ope

you both stand there, in the lobby of the school, staring at each other

“i mean,” he starts, clearing his throat with a cough, “yeah. i guess i am.”

now its your turn to be speechless

because what!!

you quickly regain your composure, though

“well?” you ask with a sly smile, “what are you planning to do about that?”

he grasps your hand, lightning quick

his eyes are still like saucers

its clear he didn’t think any of this through lmao

but yo, impulse is good sometimes

cause now yall are k i s s i n g

just as you break apart, a music student passes by, leaving to go home after practice

she stops when she sees yall in each other’s arms

“what the fuck!!!” she screams “you couldn’t wait two days!!! i lost the bet i had with my friends!!”

her eyes widen when she realizes what she just said

she quickly scurries away

you look back at jinyoung

and smile real big

because at one time you had an across-the-hall nemesis

but now its looking like you have an across-the-hall boyfriend??

you aren’t complaining

#jinyoung #jinyoung x reader #jinyoung x you #got7 fanfic #got7 #fanfic #teacher au #enemies to lovers #requests #my writing

136 notes · View notes

avantegarda · 5 years ago

Note

Congratulations on 600 followers! Could you write a fic or share your hcs for the quote, “Maedhros did deeds of surpassing valour, and the Orcs fled before his face; for since his torment upon Thangorodrim his spirit burned like a white fire within, and he was as one that returns from the dead”? (It's my favorite line in the Silm. Maedhros is such a badass!)

Every day I wake up and tell myself, “Molly, when someone sends you a really good fic request, you are going to write something good and serious and emotional and not some stupid BS that you and only like three other living beings will find entertaining”

Unfortunately, I am a lying liar. So inspired by your excellent quote, here’s a snippet from my Maglor Joins the Fellowship au, wherein Maggie and Bilbo chill in Rivendell and have a chat about history.

“Now this line here,” Bilbo said, stabbing at a line in the book with his finger. “Maedhros did deeds of surpassing valour, and the Orcs fled before his face; for since his torment upon Thangorodrim his spirit burned like a white fire within, and he was as one that returns from the dead. That’s one of yours, I assume.”

Maglor shrugged modestly. “I can only take partial credit. I say a great deal of clever things, you know, and some of them wind up being written down.”

“Ah, but how much truth is there in that one?” asked Bilbo. “Bit of a prettied up summary, if you ask me. Because I’ve known people, who have gone through...well, perhaps not what your brother went through, but terrible things, terrible. And plenty of them went on to do brave deeds, but there was plenty of suffering to go through first.”

“Yes,” Maglor said quietly. “There always is."

“You’ll forgive me for asking you all these probing questions, of course,” Bilbo said. “Only if I am going to write about Elvish history, I feel I ought to know everything I can about your family, and who better to tell me what your famous brother was really like than, well...you?”

What does it matter? Maglor was tempted to say. There is hardly a soul alive in this age who would be willing to see my brother as anything other than a villain. I can barely do so myself, some days.

Aloud he said, “What my brother was really like, Mr. Baggins? There is nothing in the passage you just read that is a lie. Maedhros was brave, and ferocious, and he took every single piece of the pain Morgoth caused him and channeled it into winning in any way he could. People feared him, and they were right to do so.”

Bilbo nodded, barely looking up from the notes he was furiously scribbling. “Go on.”

“There isn’t much left to say. Except that...” Maglor hesitated. “Except that wasn’t all he was, Mr. Baggins. He was still our responsible older brother, even in the midst of all that pain. He would come to the Gap and complain with me about what the younger ones were up to, and we would laugh so hard we could barely breathe--or we would go visit Celegorm and Curufin and Maedhros would spend ages lecturing them on how to not be rude to Sindarin diplomats. We never stopped being a family, you know, not until the very end. Maybe not even then.” He glanced at Bilbo, who was still writing. “Forgive me for rambling. Does that answer your question?”

“Oh, yes,” Bilbo replied, smiling broadly. “Very much so.”

#asks #my writing #sexy 600 #silmarillion #tolkien #i barely know what i'm doing here #guess who's coming to mordor #my-silmarillion-soul

140 notes · View notes

3norachas · 6 years ago

Text

wrong send • bang chan (I)

pair: bang chan x reader

genre: college au, friends to lovers, fake dating, fluff, suggestive no smut tho uwu, a little angst, bullet point scenario

warnings: suggestive it’s just making out sjabdka

“In which Y/n was supposed to send her best friend, Lee Minho, a porn link for scientific purposes but accidentally sent it to her neighbor, Bang Chan.”

masterlist (a/n: sike ya bitch I’m too excited to wait for 6 pm so here you go hnng gotta cut it halfway bc tumblr can’t handle this masterpiece hnnghgn anyway sorry this took too long ive been procrastinating and i still had irremediable and unforeseen to deal with hhnghgn but pls don’t be afraid to request huehuehue and im sorry if my style of writing in bullet point format is similar to some writers hgnfhgng i’ve read some of these types of writing and it stuck with me so im very sorry :((( )

taglist: @cahtastrophie @anxietyishell

PART II

you and minho were close

you grew up together

learned to walk together

bath together when you were babies of course :))

bully and judge people together

basically everything

you studied in the same school and were inseparable since birth

it was like two puzzle together

when you need help with love minho is there to watch over you he scares all of them but u dont need to know that oof

when minho’s in trouble you’re there for him even if it’s bailing him out of jail dont ask why

you even watch porn together ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

but that’s all platonic!!!

the two of you tried dating and were each other’s first kiss

but it didn’t really work out for the both of you

it was too awkward

so you decided that you were better off as friends

but that didn’t stop the two of you to be close huehuehue

y’all still cuddle like kids and personal space never existed between the two of you

that stayed until college

everyone legit thought the two of you were dating but—

“me and minho??”, “me and y/n??”

and you’d both send each other a playful glare

“ew no”

so when minho asked you to send him some link to a gay porn website

you didn’t even bat an eye

so here you are

about to send some porn link for minho’s entertainment and prob for his minho junior ;)))

“here’s the link you bitch”

and there you go

but what weirded u out tho is when minho didn’t reply immediately

he’s always fast when it comes to your texts or calls

but then you thought maybe he couldn’t wait anymore and is busy fucking or whatever

so imagine your shock when u received a text with multiple question marks

“?????????”

“hello to you too but what is this for?”

it was bang chan

bang motherfucking chan

The Bang Chan™

the one with grades higher than your height

the athlete who joins a lot of sports but eats like he hasn’t for weeks

the one who sits in front of you and asks for pencils every now and then

and has more girls than you have friends

“is this porn?”

“oh wait”

“it is porn”

you threw your phone away from you, burying your face on the pillow to sulk in embarrassment

out of all people it just had to be him ๐·°(৹˃̵﹏˂̵৹)°·๐

your phone rang with the ring tone minho had set for himself let’s all assume it’s a sexy song

“hoe where’s the link”

“i think i did something terrible”

“wouldn’t be your first time lmao but what is it??”

“i accidentally sent it to someone else….”

“…..”

“….”

“…”

“..”

“how and who the hell did u sent it to?”

“bang chan…”

“whomst-hAHAHAHHNGDBJ ISN’T THAT YOUR NEIGHBOR??”

“DON’T LAUGH A ME U BITCH ;’((("

“I CAN’T NOT HUHAHAHA”

you whine while he wheezes at your misery

“just tell him it’s not for him and apologize u big baby”

“but that’s just embarrassing” o(╥﹏╥)o

“do you really want him to think that it’s for him and you’re trying to make him hard and seduce him?? what makes it worse is that it’s gay porn”

“nO”

“tHEN DO SOMETHING”

so that’s how you find yourself standing in front of the door of the apartment across yours

with shaky hands you knock on the door

it opens to reveal bang chan himself in his shirtless glory- Σ(゜ロ゜;)

…..

(╬⁽⁽ ⁰ ⁾⁾ Д ⁽⁽ ⁰ ⁾⁾) !!!!!!!

sHiRtLEsS?????

suddenly, you don’t know how to breathe don’t we all tho

hngkdb mfucking bitch has defined abs how can you function normally

how is this man comfortable with showing his abs to random people???

it doesn’t help that he still has little droplets of water on his body

“hi?”

you yelp, literally, and that caused a small chuckle from chan at your cute reaction but!!!

HiS cHuCKle sOuNdED !!!!

you pinch your wrist to wake yourself up and maybe stop yourself from staring at his torso

now is not the time y/n!! ‎(ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ

“um- I’m- hi….”

“hi there” he smiles his dimpled smile and —*inhales*

your heart went !!!!

it took you a lot to compose yourself before you squish his cheeks in your hands

nO Y/N !!!

cOnTRol YOuRSeLf !!!

“soooo”

“huh?”

“come inside for a bit” he grins at your confused look and opened his door wider

what

wHaT?

reluctantly, you follow him inside his apartment. you weren’t surprised when u saw the mess inside, it was a small space but it wasn’t too small

what surprised you tho

there were pieces of female clothes on the floor and bed

Σ(‘◉⌓◉’)

you were confused for a moment before you finally undersstood the situation and that those clothes where female clothing

fEMALE

nOT HIS

“channie who was that?”

your head whip to the bathroom door to stare at the girl is your neck ok y/n?

her eyes were wide

wIDe

like this O - O

and she looks scared :00

“a-are you chan’s s/o?” she gulps before scurrying to gather her things and run pass you muttering apologies and out the door she went

s/O????

you didn’t even have time to explain that you weren’t !!!

she just ran pass you !!!!

and wasn’t that mina?!?!

like The Mina™ who gets all boys huehue

“I’m sorry about her”

you hear chan sigh, now wearing a shirt

which was great bc if he stayed shirtless you might not be able to speak normally bold of u to assume that you can speak even if he’s fully clothed hhghghng

“she really think that these hook ups we have has a meaning”

hookups?

you shook your head, mumbling about how it doesn’t really mind you which is a big fucking lie

wHAT IF MINA GOSSIPS TO HER FRIENDS THAT YOU WERE CHAN’S S/O???

if anything she may already have broadcasted it to the whole campus

“sooo why did you came here??”

chan settled on his bed with a cute curious look on his face

just then did you remembered

yOU SEND HIM A GAY PORN LINK

suddenly you’re back to phase one

you keep opening and shutting your mouth from nervousness lIKE HELLO??? HOW??? ARE YOU??? SUPPOSED TO BE CALM???

aND IT’S CHAN SO???

DON’T!!! BLAME!!! Y/N!!!

“i-t’s about t-the… link-”

chan chuckles and nods his head ”yeah i saw it”

sAW IT?!?!

aS iN hE wATcHeD tHe vIdEO!?!?!

!!!!

chan must’ve noticed the look on your face and laughed his beautiful laugh and you felt your heart is being crushed !!!!

“no not like that! i meant that i received it yes”

oHh

stupid you

why would chan even watch it if he knows that it’s porn hhnghg maybe he did watched it ;)))

you played with the hem of your shirt. eyes casted down from embarrassment smh how many times are you going to embarrass yourself y/n hhhnghn

“p-please forget about the link”

“oh??” chan tilted his head in confusion still with his mfuckin smile

“i-it wasn’t supposed to be sent for you!!! i’m really sorry for calling you bitch too…”

chan was shookt when you bowed 360 degrees and repeatedly apologizing

so being the kind person he is he took a hold of your shoulders with a cute smile

cHAN STOP MAKING CUTE FACES !!! Y/N IS DEAD !!!

AND HE’S TOO CLOSE FOR COMFOT HHNGHNY/N ARE YOU STILL ALIVE???

HANG IN THERE SWEETY

“it’s alright, i don’t mind but…”

but???

“does your boyfriend know???”

?????

“boyfriend?? i’m sorry but i don’t-”

“isn’t minho your boyfriend? y’know the dance major? i’m pretty sure the link is for him, right?”

o-O!!?

he thought you and minho??? are??? dating???

“um n-no we’re not! i mean we’re close but that’s it!”

chan released a relieved sigh and his smile came back

bUT?? HE’S STILL TOO CLOSE?? AND HIS BREATHING HITS YOUR BURNING CHEEKS??

“that’s good, I really thought I was going to have to face him”

he lets out a breathy laugh before letting go you secretly miss his touch and heading for his kitchen

“do you want to eat before going ahead? i mean you’re literally just across my front door so??”

well who are you to say no to that :’))

even if it’s possible that he can murder you rn but chan?? hurt someone??

yeah keep telling that to yourself :’))

what you didn’t expect tho was for the two of you to hit it off ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

the two of you have so many things to talk about and it was never awkward and chan was literally listening to whatever bs you were rambling about

and he has such a soft look on his face when he listens to you uwu ɾ⚈▿⚈ɹ

but it wasn’t long before you have to get going bc it’s a school day tomorrow

BUT THAT’S OK !!!

BC THE SECOND U OPENED YOUR DOOR TO HEAD TO COLLEGE HE OPENED HIS WITH A CUTE MORNING SMILE

y’all walk to college together with small talks and he walk you to your first class uwu (▰˘v˘▰)

when lunch arrived you and minho sat at the same table like usual

“soooo how did it went with chan??” minho asked with his mouth stuffed with pasta

“huh??”

minho deadpanned and threw one of his garlic bread at you

sTOP WASTING FOOD U HOE (ง •̀ゝ•́)ง

“i was asking about chan u dumbo”

from the grin on your face minho knew he was going to hear some good tea and drama although he insulted you for being a coward at first

“he’s hooking up with mina :000″

“is that the only thing you heard from what i just said :’<”

he was about to say something else when your junior best friend jisung came running to your table

“why didn’t you tell me!?!? i thought we were friends!?!?” (▰˘︹˘▰)

“tell you what??”

you can tell jisung was clearly offended but you didn’t know why tho

“that you and chan are dating you traitor!"

Σ(꒪ȏ꒪)

you and minho shared a look

"i was expecting that”

“WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW???”

jisung look confused so you ended up explaining what happened yesterday with chan

“how did you managed to send him the porn link tho” jisung to a sad y/n,

“and what the hell did you need the porn link for?” jisung to a flustered minho

“that’s not the point!!” (●o≧д��)

you slump on your seat with a defeated look and just then did u noticed the look that people are sending you

automatically you hid yourself by snuggling into minho uwu u cute y/n

“oi, you can’t just snuggle into me when everyone thinks you have a boyfriend” — “but i don’t”

“y/n?”

u look up from minho’s shoulder to see chan

"chan!!!" Σ(゜ロ゜;)

"can we talk for a moment??”

minho nudge you on the elbow, nodding as if to tell you to go ahead so you stood up and followed chan outside the cafeteria

when you’re outside chan faces you with a bothered look

“I’m so sorry for what people are saying about us I’m pretty sure it was mina she usually gossips a lot to her friends but I didn’t expect her to tell them that we’re dating just bc you came yesterday-”

chan was now rambling his apologies just like you did last night he looked cute like that btw

“it’s ok chan!! I’m sure you didn’t mean for that to happen”

chan was relieved when he heard that but he looked like he was still bothered by something

so being the sweetheart you are you asked him what it is ^~^

“can I ask you a favor??” he look uncertain so normally you were concerned

so you nod because !!!!

chan is worried !!!!

so it has to be something big !!!!

“i know this is probably going to be weird bc we just met last night and we’re not that close but-” chan look at your eyes to see if you still want him to continue so you nod at him

“c-can we please date?? but like fake dating and all?? i thought about it and it would really help me avoid those girls who wanted me in their bed and don’t worry i’ll pay you back! i swear-”

(〃ﾟдﾟ〃)!!!

"d-date!?!?!?”

you yelped, cheeks burning bright from chan’s offer

HOW CAN YOU NOT??

CHAN LITERALLY ASKED YOU TO DATE HIM !!! IT MAY BE FAKE AND ALL BUT STILL !!! HE ASKED YOU !!! YOU !!! TO DATE !!! OUT OF ALL PEOPLE !!!

and it didn’t help that he said please insert sad uwu :((

AS IF YOU’D SAY NO :((

"i-it’s ok if you don’t want to though!! I won’t force you!!”

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD SAY NO TO BANG CHAN?? DEFINITELY NOT YOU BC!!! IT’S!!! BANG CHAN!!!

“i-im fine with it but why me tho??” bc you’re cute and awesome y/n (ﾟヮﾟ)

your cheeks became even more red than possible when chan gave you cute smile

"well, I really want to get to know you since last night and you weren’t like any girl to be honest”

aaAAHH

BANG CHAN U BITCH

Y/N???

ARE YOU STILL ALIVE???

you can feel your heart fluttering from his confession definitely not because he was looking at you with a fond smile and soft caring eyes hnghn

“so, are you in?"

with your trembling weak heart you nodded, knees weakening when he beamed at you and his mother fucking cute dimples showed

you’re doomed :’))

"great! I’ll see you later then”

later?? o-O??

“um what for??”

he chuckled at your confused lil face and patted your head

aaAAHH YOUR HEART JUST SKIPPED THOUSANDS OF BEATS

“for our first date dummy”

574 notes · View notes

ill-skillsgard · 5 years ago

Text

Back on this Henry Deaver x Mistress BS. Thanks guys. I should be focusing on chaptered stories but this imagine is getting away from me!

*Disclaimer - I always get asks about this so I’ll just say it here. I do not condone cheating and every opinion expressed below the cut is fictitious and not to be taken seriously. Enjoy!

More Henry x Mistress here + here + here

You cleaned the bar with vigour, scrubbing at the cup rings until they dissolved and then scrubbing more. It did nothing to make you feel any cleaner but it was a good distraction and nobody was going to get mad at you for cleaning. By the time you had your way with it, the bar and all its glass and silverware were sparkling. But you still felt crusty.

The night before you couldn’t sleep. All you could do was lie in your bed with the covers half on, half-dreaming about the two nights you had spent with him. At the time, they had felt magical and nothing you could do would make the tingle leave your inner thighs alone. Not even the sight of his wife looking at you with naivety could make you stop thinking about how Henry had made you feel.

And you read his texts over and over until some parts of them were committed to memory. You hadn’t even known him that long but you could still hear his voice in your head narrating every line, every apology, every attempt to make you understand that he wasn’t expecting you to give him an inch of sympathy.

You thought about telling his wife yourself. What was stopping you from dropping the truth bomb on them? Well, lots of things were stopping you. Firstly, you didn’t know what her name was or where to find her. Secondly, she looked to be the type that might pull a trigger and ask questions later. You didn’t know her and couldn’t be sure whether she would lash out violently at you or blame you for everything. After all, you were the other woman. And that in itself carried a whole different weight of shame. You didn’t cheat but you hadn’t had the sense to dig a little deeper before jumping into bed with some stranger.

then the memories of being in bed with him flooded in and drowned out the guilt for a little while. The way he looked at you like you were a whole other species... The mutual attraction had been so palpable. And the way he had fucked you while simultaneously making love to you was another new concept that had worked intoxicating fingers into your chest to close around your heart.

Sure, when he had himself inside of you the obscenities pouring from those pouty lips did a number on your nervous system. Every time he spoke of your body, made mention of how splendid it felt to be between your legs or told you how beautiful you were, a shock of oxytocin made another stitch that bound you to him. But after all that... After the wild sex and multiple-orgasms, Henry laid with you and ran his short fingernails lovingly over your skin, up your arm, around your shoulder and down your back in a repetitive, soothing motion that made the tension in your muscles disappear. You could have sworn, at the time, that it was love. And you clung to him like he had been thrown at you to help keep you from drowning.

It had been four days since you ran into him at the grocery store and the pain still hadn’t lessened an inch. Henry lived on your brain now and you knew it would be weeks and weeks until you could wake up without thinking to look beside you for a long, pale body calmly breathing.

Henry had the audacity to show up in the café on a quiet morning you were working alone. The only people that came down were sleepy hotel guests looking for coffee or a bite to eat and they were always an easy crowd. But when he walked through the French doors with a navy blue suit on, you paled. A grimace took over your face and he chewed the inside of his cheek a moment because he knew damn well what he was doing.

"Have a seat anywhere, preferably out on the patio where I can't see you," you took your first dig.

There was nobody else in the café to hear your jab but he looked around like there was. He nodded his head and started toward the bar.

"No, no... Not in here. If you want service-"

"I'll only be a moment. I need a coffee."

"I'll make you one to-go then," you averted your eyes from him.

The drumming of your heart smacked against your heaving chest hard enough to nearly make noise. Henry leaned over the bar and stared at you with a sorrowful look.

"I didn't know you were working."

"The chances were high," you said.

"I know... I'm sorry."

"Ugh, just stop apologizing already! No amount of sorry is going to change anything."

"I know. I know," he muttered before sliding himself onto the barstool directly in front of where you stood at the bar.

You turned away and snatched a paper cup out of a holder to get started on sending him on his way. Determined not to entertain him further, you vowed to only address him as you would a regular patron. No calling him by his first name, no nasty looks. Just pure, forced customer service voice.

You pressed a button-down to dispense piping hot coffee into the cup. Remembering that he liked a bit of cream, you left room at the top before closing the cup with a plastic lid. You gathered up some sugar packets and cream cups for him and slid it all across the bar to him.

"Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome, sir! Have a great day!"

He clicked his tongue and sighed. "Oh, come on."

"I'm sorry, sir. Did I miss something?"

At the moment your fake smile began to fade, a gaggle of customers entered the café. That slapped the mask right back on your face and you leaned closer to Henry.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?"

"Actually, yes. There is," he began.

You watched impatiently as he pulled out his silver pen and reached across the bar counter to grab a paper napkin. He clicked the end of the pen, wrote down a 3 digit number, clicked the pen again and replaced it in his coat pocket. Henry slid the napkin toward you and you looked at is as though he had just blown his nose into it.

"This is the room I'll be in for the next two nights. I'd really like to discuss this further. If you refuse, I won't ever reach out to you again. I'll get the company to put me up in a different hotel and that will be that. You don't have to say anything now but... Just think about it. If you decide not to come, I'll accept that graciously."

You said nothing while he scanned your expression for any insight but you remained stone-faced. Henry gave you a curt nod, pocketed the sugar packets and cream, grabbed his coffee and left.

He didn't have the swagger of a womanizing scum bag and you still couldn't grip what had transpired. Henry just didn't seem the type to screw around on his wife. Not after he had treated you so wonderfully. His voice was calm, his eyes were never wandering and his demeanour was quiet and respectful. How could a man like that be a cheater?

You thought it stupid to ask yourself that question because you already had the answer. And for the next twenty-four hours, you decided that you wouldn't go to him and the determination to forget all about Henry was firm. He didn't deserve the chance to explain. There was nothing he could possibly say that would change your mind.

Forgetting was impossible when you knew that he was in the same building as you. Your curiosities took a turn for the morbid and you began thinking of what Henry could possibly offer as an excuse for his behaviour. Surely it was some flimsy fabrication or delusional reasoning he had goaded himself into believing. You nearly scoffed aloud thinking of all of the pitiful things he might say.

Then you started to think about what he could say that might make you think twice. That was when you started cursing yourself. The urge to find out what he had to say tugged at your heels, fueled every lost train of thought and pulled you down into reveries of just how desperate he seemed when you'd had each other. Your composure was shaking and soon it would collapse. And when it did, he was right there at the door to answer your knocking.

"Wow... I didn't expect you to actually come-"

"Let's make this quick," you cut him off as you pushed by him and stood in the center of the room.

"I don't want to hear any apologies. I just want to hear your explanation. I have to know."

"Well, can I at least get you a drink?"

"I don’t think so."

"Very well," Henry sighed.

"Would you like to have a seat?"

"I'll stand."

"Mind if I do?"

You gestured at the furniture, unconcerned with however he wished to place himself in the hotel room. The tension did not dissipate as he sat down and the placid way he crossed his leg over the other made you even more uncomfortable.

"It's difficult to start so if you don't mind me being candid, I'll tell you everything."

"Sure."

"Well... My wife... She... She's not quite into me anymore," Henry started.

Your eyes had already begun to roll but you were interested in hearing more so you made no sounds of interruption and allowed him to continue.

"At first I thought maybe she wasn't attracted to me... And I struggled a long time with that. Thinking maybe we had just lost the spark. Maybe it's because I don't look the same as I did when we met. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough to romance her. She insisted she was still attracted to me but she never wanted me any more than a few feet near her. She began to complain about my scent giving her headaches so I switched colognes and then stopped wearing it altogether."

"Hm," you uttered during a pause.

"She told me the way I chewed made something grind inside of her so we started eating in different rooms. She complained that I was too warm to share a bed with so I bought her a California king-sized bed but she insisted I still kept her awake at night. You know... I dressed nicely, I shaved every day, I worked out and got into the best shape of my life and she still wouldn't allow me to even kiss her on the cheek before work. It got me thinking... Perhaps it wasn't me. Perhaps it was something deeper. I thought she could have been having some of her own inner struggles that she couldn't reconcile with."

You blinked at him, looking twice as invested as you had when he began. Henry sighed, scratched the back of his head and then wiped the corners of his mouth with two fingers.

"I asked her if she wanted to see other people and that I wouldn't be hurt if that's what she wanted. She said no. She said that she wanted to stay married to me. I still don't understand her reasoning. But... It progressed. No sex, no intimacy of any kind, no willingness to talk about it... Nothing. She refused couples therapy. She flat out told me that nothing was wrong. I let this go on for several more months until I asked her for a divorce. Things got really ugly after that."

"How so?"

"She accused me of infidelity. This was a while back. I accused her of cheating because she clearly had no interest in me. And I never got an explanation. That was back in the Winter. We're talking six months ago. We haven't slept together in the same bed for over a year yet every time I confront her about it, she skirts the issue and finds a way to make it seem like it's my fault. I still don't know what's wrong. All I know is... I've had no semblance of self-esteem and a wife that sees no problem with how things are."

"Why don't you leave her? If she treats you so terribly then leave."

"You know, I want to. I've tried. She's on the rise at her job right now. She's making enormous strides. Any time I impose even the slightest threat to her little world, it explodes in my face. Not only that, but she's developed this little charade at her job that she and I are a power-couple now. So we get to play pretend in front of our peers and superiors to win brownie points. They all praise us and our rock-solid relationship and I just have to smile and try not to... I don't know."

Henry's throat bobbed and you noticed a wet gleam over his eyes that wasn't there before. Shuffling your feet, you clasped your hands and tried not to stand too awkwardly. You had conjured a lot of scenarios in your mind before this point but not one of them included him crying.

"When your love isn't returned to you... It makes you think of terrible things. Hell, it made me do a terrible thing... The old me would have never dreamed of pursuing someone else. We were happy. I actually wanted to be with her. I still do. But she continues to silently abhor my existence while I exhaust every avenue of getting her to come back."

You started to feel the first bubble of resentment form in your gut. It was the first time you had entertained the idea of Henry's wife actually having a fault in the situation. But you had to stand strong.

"That's... A lot of detail. But cheating is still inexcusable. You should have called her and told her it was over before doing what you did."

"And ruin the first night I met you? Trust me, I thought about it. But... Well, nevermind. It doesn't matter now."

"What is it?" You pressed.

"No. It's inappropriate."

"Just tell me what you want to say while I'm giving you the chance."

"Talking to you just made me want to forget it all. You don't understand how badly I needed that. Somebody to talk to, I mean."

"Christ... Do you have any idea how torturous it is to be in my situation? Why didn't you at least give me a choice?"

"Well, I didn't force you into anything, if that's what you mean."

"No. I mean... You should have told me you were married and then I could have decided for myself whether I wanted to cross that line."

"I..." Henry sighed. "You're right. I know you said you don't want an apology but I really am sorry. I haven't been myself. My head is... Totally messed up."

"It sucks that your wife... Doesn't treat you well. And I can see that you're not really a bad guy. But you have to do what's best for yourself and set things straight. You can't just lie and deceive. Were you ever going to tell me about her if I hadn't run into you?"

Henry weighed his next words carefully. "Yes. I knew that after the first night. But I was just so messed up on the feeling of being wanted again that nothing else seemed to matter."

"Sweet, sweet words," you murmured, concealing the glimmer of a smile he caused.

"Anyway... I'm sure you have places to be. I'm glad you gave me the chance to state my case. If I wouldn't have had the chance to, it would eat me alive."

"Still kind of hard to have sympathy, Henry."

"Right, I know. I'm sor— It's um... Yeah."

You let out a long breath and a hot wave of nausea twisted your stomach into a knot. Henry noticed your discomfort but said nothing until you had taken a couple more deep breaths.

"Yeah, maybe I should go," you said.

"Are you all right? Would you like some water?" Henry shot up off the couch and made his way toward the sliver of a kitchenette.

Before you could refuse he was at your side with a cold bottle of water. You took it, twisted off the cap and gulped down a few mouthfuls.

"Thanks," you said as you came up for more air.

"No problem."

Now he was standing right in front of you, looking at you with sympathy. When he was this close, it was hard to ignore how broad his shoulders were and you were reminded of how he moved and maneuvered you like you were nothing. There was strength in his massive grip. But Henry couldn't have looked any less threatening than when he stood before you with his eyes shining regretfully.

"Can I ask you one thing before you go?" His voice wavered.

"Okay."

"If I did give you the choice... If I'd have told you... Would you have refused me?"

"God, don't make me answer that," you nearly choked.

"Just curious," he withdrew a bit further from you.

"It... Would have been a challenge. But what good would my answer be to you now?"

"I just want to know if I still got it, to be honest. Am I... You know, adequate, I guess?"

Biting down on the inside of your lip, you let a casual glance fall down and climb back up him. "You've got something, that's for sure."

"Something?"

"Don't make me say it," your cheeks sizzled.

"Okay, okay... I get it. I suppose I'll finish up the weekend here and then I'll start using a different hotel."

"I don't care if you still stay here. Just... Don't get me into any more trouble. And fix your situation... Whatever that might entail."

"I won't. I promise. And I will."

Lies. Beautiful lies.

#henry deaver stuff #henry x mistress #henry deaver x mistress #bill skarsgård fanfiction #bill skarsgård imagine

127 notes · View notes

michael-langdon-appreciation · 6 years ago

Note

I love the pain. Bring it on. Eventually there’ll be fluff so I’m not worried -MC

You all asked for the angst. I’m sorry…

Also line breaks signal a change in POV!

Here’s Part 3 of the Runaway Saga 🙈

The fire crackles in the hearth, little snaps punctuating the still air.

You’ve been sat there for the best part of an hour, waiting for him to say something. Anything. The blanket pools around your shoulders as Michael trudges by and dumps himself in the armchair. You can’t help but feel responsible, a sting of guilt running through your body. You were pretty much clueless, but that doesn’t stop Michael from throwing you the occasional sour glare. His hands are clasped together as if he’s praying to his father for strength. Michael Langdon gives off the air of a man on the brink, lost and dazed from recent events.

You pick yourself up from the sofa and kneel before him, close enough to rest your hand over his, ‘I didn’t know.’ You’ve repeated it so often over the past few days, but Michael still flinches every time you bring it up. ‘I had no idea Jim wanted to take me away from you.’

His golden hair falls limply down over his shoulders, ‘I know. You don’t have to keep saying it.’

Your phone lights up, resting on the sofa. Michael’s palm opens and your phone flies into his palm before you can stop him.

He checks the Caller ID - Jim.

The phone goes flying, smashing against the wall, ‘Michael!’

He scowls darkly at the cracked screen, ‘I despise liars, Y/N.’ You retrieve your phone, still vibrating but you can’t unlock it and you don’t try. Michael heads to the balcony, his hand clench the railings tight. ‘At least Jim was right about one thing,’ He mutters. ‘This place is pretty much hell.’

You join Michael outside, the view mostly tiled ceilings and the blue sky. You both can hear the waves smashing against the shore even though you can’t see them. The cold seeps into your bare feet, but you ignore it and wrap your arms around Michael’s back. ‘I know you want time,’ You begin carefully, pressing your lips to Michael’s neck. ‘But ignoring them will only make things worse. They aren’t going to stop trying to reach us and soon one will show up here.’

You await his reply, knowing that you have to be patient with Michael. It takes so much for him to reveal himself, the insecure boy that hides underneath his impressive figure. You occasionally kiss that little spot, watching the shudders roll up Michael’s spine. It’s a sensitive area, one that usually has his mouth running, ‘I entertained the idea.’ Michael admits, ‘After Jim took you, I thought about being selfish. What I’d do if it was just us, when the world is dead and I decide how things are. But-’

‘But we are a team.’ You finish, ‘A unit that loves each other.’ He doesn’t answer and a sliver of fear runs through you, ‘Michael?’

‘I thought so.’

‘They love you.’ You reaffirm, ‘Jim and Duncan, they’re just being stupid-’

‘Maybe.’

‘Do you know something I don’t?’ You ask, ‘Have you heard something?’

Michael turns round. His arms slide up your arms, Michael just taking you in. You meet his blue gaze and then your eyes flicker down to the tremble of his hips. Michael brings your head to his chest, his large hand cupping the back of your head, ‘They love you.’ He throws my words back at me, ‘They love you more than me.’

‘That’s not true.’ You say at once, your voice a little muffled. ‘Duncan-’

‘Duncan was mine.’ Michael cuts over you, ‘Before you came along, before Jim there was the two of us. I brought him out of a very dark place and he was mouldable and did whatever I asked. We fell for each other with ease, things were good.’ Michael swallows, ‘I was the one who wanted more.’ He’s fighting back tears now, ‘I pushed Duncan to try with you and now I’ve lost him.’

His words have a salt sting to them and you find yourself backing out of his arms, ‘Are you saying, I stole Duncan from you?’

‘That apartment isn’t for me.’ Michael’s conviction is strong, ‘If it was, he’d have done it years ago.’

‘You’re blaming me?’ The hurt is evident in your voice, ‘I didn’t ask Duncan to do anything.’

‘Just like you didn’t ask Jim to steal you away either.’ Michael’s voice rises, ‘But where did it leave me, Y/N? Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?’

You swallow back your fury, ‘Do you think I am here for the good of my health?’ You question, ‘Do you think I’d be sat here like a hermit for the past however many days if I wasn’t for you? No I am here Michael, because you couldn’t face the other two. Because instead of confronting them and hearing what they have to say you’d rather smash my phone and hide away like a child.’

‘I AM NOT A CHILD.’ Michael thunders, ‘HOW DARE YOU?’

‘I will not sit by and let you blame me for what has happened.’ You’re not going to be intimidated by the Antichrist, ‘Grow the fuck up.’

You shove past him, but Michael catches your arm, ‘Wait, Y/N. I’m sorry.’

Your eyes fall onto Michael’s hand, bare and almost foreign without the accompaniment of his usual rings. When you catch his eyes the tears have finally fallen, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He confesses, ‘I thought they loved me.’

‘You’re jumping to conclusions.’ You try and reason with him again, ‘You don’t know that they’re feelings have changed till you speak with them.’

‘Do you love me?’

Michael has always been there for you, more than any of the others. He’s the one to make your problems go away, the one stay up with late at night, sharing secrets with your heads next to each other. He’s your safety and you’re his lifeline, the calm one who knows just what to say to calm him.

You can’t let him go.

‘Yes.’

He sweeps you back in, cradling your head close. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He kisses you deeply, ‘I can’t lose you too. I don’t want to.’

You put enough space between your lips to speak, ‘But you have to speak to them.’ You order, ‘If you can’t then I don’t think this can keep going on.’

Yes, Duncan’s staying with Jim, only because he can keep tabs on the nasty little manipulator.

Jim tosses his phone across the breakfast bar, ‘She still isn’t answering. Neither’s Michael.’

‘I don’t blame her.’ Duncan says, ‘Not after what you pulled at the beach.’

Jim scowls right back, ‘You’re just mad that I got there before you. Trying to steal Y/N away from us, sequestering her away in New York? Did you think none of us would find out?’

‘I didn’t buy that fucking place for Y/N.’ Duncan snarls, abandoning his croissant. He bites his lip, but Duncan can’t take back the words that just spilled from his lips.

‘You think I’m buying that BS?’

‘It’s the truth.’ He’s fucked it already, he may as well as come clean.

Jim’s mouth opens to retort, but it snaps shut as he thinks things over, ‘You bought an apartment for who then?’

Duncan can’t look at him, not at the boy before him, the one who looks so murderous. How he misses the fondness that Jim used to hold in his eyes for him, that spark of green amongst the blue.

‘For Michael?’ Jim guesses.

‘No.’

‘I dunno then, for your own personal escape from us?’

‘For you, Jim.’

It takes Jim a minute to comprehend, ‘What?’

‘You can be so fucking dumb at times.’ But Duncan doesn’t mean it, he never means it when he shouts at Jim. But Jim has made things so difficult lately. It broke his fucking heart to find him gone with Y/N, that he couldn’t get there first and swipe his Beach Boy away. ‘You had to make everything so difficult.’ The word vomit is spilling forth again, ‘You thought it was for Y/N and you flipped. I get that, but it was for you. I wanted to take you away, to meet my parents.’ Duncan takes in a deep breath, levelling Jim with his gaze. ‘I wanted you to be my boyfriend Jim, exclusively.’

He drops his eyes and picks up his plate. Duncan dumps his half-eaten croissant in the trash and starts washing the plate for something to do. Jim is horribly, eerily quiet still by the breakfast bar. He checks his phone but there’s still nothing, Jim’s a creature of habit just like Duncan whose own hand fishes out his phone and checks the time, scrolls through his Twitter. Anything is better than the silence between them.

‘Dunc,’ Jim begins. ‘I had no idea.’

‘I know,’ Duncan keeps his eyes glued to his phone.

Jim slides off his seat and walks over to him. He confiscates Duncan’s phone and the Mogul lets him, finally peeking at Jim’s face to get a read of what he’s thinking. Jim looks devastated, his forehead creased as he takes Duncan’s hand in his and holds it to his chest. Duncan knows it’s not good news.

He always did.

‘You know that for me it’s Y/N.’ Jim says, so quietly Duncan almost misses it. ‘It’s always been Y/N.’

‘I know.’ He repeats, the words robotic and not his own anymore.

Jim kisses the top of Duncan’s hand, ‘I’m so sorry, Duncan. The foursome thing, it’s great and I would still go for it now and then because, well damn. It’s fucking amazing.’ He’s trying to reach him, to make Duncan laugh but his heart is being yanked in two and all Duncan can do is turn away, looking out at the beach of Palos Verdes from the open window. Jim’s hand is on his shoulder, ‘But I meant what I said about it not being enough. I can’t keep going on the way we are.’

‘Do you think she would be with you?’

It’s a loaded question, an unfair one.

Jim swallows, Duncan hears the sound. ‘I hope that after the couple of days we’ve had, yes.’

‘Even though you lied to her?’

‘Well I haven’t been the only one have I?’

Duncan shoves himself away, he can’t hear the derision that is definitely there in Jim’s voice. ‘Fuck you,’ He spits, heading to the bedroom.

Jim gives chase, ‘Duncan I didn’t mean. I just meant that we need to talk things through, it’s all become so messy.’

‘No we could have been okay.’ Duncan says, still marching. ‘If you had just waited I could have asked you and that would have been it. We could have carried on or faced it, but Michael hates us both and Y/N’s with him doing God knows what.’ He grabs the door, ready to shut it but Jim sticks his foot in the way.

‘What was I meant to think?’ He asks, ‘Duncan, I don’t want things to end this way.’

‘Well it has to.’

‘It doesn’t.’ Jim reaches to stroke his face, to touch his stubble but Duncan pushes him back out of the way of the door.

‘Look you just didn’t think, Jim.’ Duncan says, ‘I know that but I also need to have time to cope with this.’

Jim frowns, ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying I’m not going back with you lot.’ Duncan’s made up his mind, the ice encasing over his heart. ‘I still hold a special place for Y/N and Michael but I can’t carry on pretending I’m okay sharing you.’

Jim tries to reach him but Duncan shoves him even harder. Jim’s calm snaps, ‘You’re fucking leaving us?’

‘Like you weren’t gonna do it first.’

‘Duncan this isn’t right. I didn’t know about this!’

‘Well you should have thought about someone’s happiness other than your own.’ His vision is blurred with tears. Duncan doesn’t get upset, but Jim Mason has damn well done it. Jim tries to get through the door once more, but Duncan’s fist connects before he can stop himself. Jim smacks against the wall, the bruise forming immediately on his skin. Duncan sucks in a breath, ‘I hope Y/N’s smarter than you think she is.’ His voice is hoarse, damaged from the hurt, the regret, from Jim. ‘I hope to God she never goes near you again. Because you took all of our happiness away when you took her here.’

He closes the door on Jim and locks it. Duncan waits, listening for Jim to pick himself off the floor and head back downstairs. There’s silence and then a sound like a wounded animal, Jim shrieks, a fist hitting the door. ‘DUNCAN!’ He screams, ‘You can’t say that to me!’

Duncan holds his breath, he doesn’t dare answer. His own tears are blinding him as he rests his forehead against the door, ‘Go away, Jim.’ He whispers, ‘Leave me in peace, give me that.’

How Jim heard him, he’ll never know. But Jim falls silent at once and then there’s the sound of footsteps and then silence once more.

Duncan hides in the bedroom for three hours before he can bring himself to stop being a coward. He steps into the living room where every sign of another person has been removed. Jim’s gone and all that’s left is a scrawled note, crossed out in three places from where Jim tried to convey his feelings. Duncan can make out the large, ‘SCREW YOU.’ blackened out on the top right corner.

It’s simple but effective - Going to get Y/N. Don’t contact me again.

When Jim arrives he half expects Michael to fling him against a wall. He may have even done so, if Y/N wasn’t there.

‘Come in.’ She says, opening the door wide enough for Jim to enter with his suitcase.

‘Thank you for letting me stay.’ He avoids Michael’s gaze out of guilt. Duncan’s admission burns inside him and Jim can’t bring himself to even think in the Antichrist’s presence. Michael stands there in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair tied back in a low bun. Babyhairs escape here and there, making Michael look the most unkempt Jim has ever seen him. He pushes them behind his ears out of habit, his blue eyes darting between Y/N and Jim.

‘Where’s Duncan?’ He asks, ‘I thought he’d be with you.’

‘Not after recent developments.’

It’s then Y/N notices the dark bruise on his cheek, she gasps dramatically and cups Jim’s chin in her hand at once, ‘Did he do this?’

Jim nods, the guilt rising like bile in his throat. The memory of Duncan’s fist flashes in his mind and all it takes is a wince from Michael to know he’s seen it. ‘Take a seat.’ He offers, leading the way to the sofa and sitting down himself. Jim knows the drill and sits next to Michael who rests his palm against Jim’s bruised cheek. Michael’s eyes slip closed, his voice chanting low and then it’s all over. Jim runs his finger down his cheek to find it smooth and healed once more, ‘Thank you.’

Michael shrugs, it’s nothing to him after all. As easy as levitating a book.

Y/N remains standing, ‘I can’t believe he’d hit you.’ She says, ‘What is he thinking?’

Jim can’t hold it in any longer, ‘He told me some things.’

‘What kind of things?’ Michael isn’t making things easy. Not that Jim expected him to, the Antichrist’s guard is way up high, like brick-wall high. Y/N deposits herself on the armchair beside Michael and Jim can’t help but notice how Michael’s hand caresses her thigh. It’s an obvious claim he’s staking on her, right in front of Jim.

He can’t be the one to tell him. He can’t.

‘Spit it out, Jim.’ Michael snaps, ‘I assume you’re here to carry on your holiday.’

‘Don’t be callous,’ Y/N warns, shooting Michael a warning look. ‘What happened, Jim?’ He tries to find the words, but they just aren’t there. How can he tell them that Duncan wants only him?

He can’t.

‘Oh fuck me.’

Jim’s eyes close, fucking Michael.

Y/N looks between Michael and Jim, ‘What?’

Michael seems frozen, his eyes penetrating into Jim. He can’t look away, it’s as if Michael is burrowing into his every thought and then it’s like someone has taken a melon-baller and brought up everything Jim as repressing to the surface. Duncan’s declaration explodes at the forefront of his mind, right for Michael’s viewing. The Antichrist’s breath hitches and then he’s up, pacing back and forth. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘I didn’t know how to say.’ Jim explains quickly, looking to Y/N for support.

She takes Michael’s place on the sofa, her hand sliding across to take Jim’s. ‘What’s going on, Jim?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s going on.’ Michael’s voice is raw, the pain doubled from the strain Y/N’s heard over the past couple of days. Michael sucks in a shaky breath, but he can’t hold it. His shoulders hitch and right as the thought to do something hits, Y/N’s already beaten him to it.

’Breathe, Michael.’ She encourages, squeezing his hands and maintaining eye contact.

The jealousy rears in Jim, despite his best efforts to quell it. He slides off the sofa to join the other two, not wanting to be left out or forgotten. ‘It could just be temporary.’ He offers, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Duncan bought the apartment for Jim.’ Michael spits the words out as if they are poison.

Jim can’t watch Y/N. He can’t bear to see her in pain and he pulls her into his arms at once, ‘I didn’t know.’ He says, ‘I had no idea he felt that way or I’d have never just took you.’

‘What?’ He can hear Y/N’s voice go up an octave. She escapes Jim’s grasp and wraps her arms around herself, Y/N’s face contorts horribly as she too tries to keep her emotions in check. Michael’s doing a slight better job, still furious but when Y/N breaks down, covering her face he’s over in a heartbeat. Michael kneels down before her, ‘Y/N. We’ll sort this.’

‘He loves you?’ She questions, peering through her fingers to look at Jim.

Tears pricks his eyes too, watching the people he loves be torn apart, ‘Yeah.’

‘Oh my god, what?’ The tears fall down Y/N’s cheeks, fast and heavy. ‘He planned to leave us?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jim admits.

‘It fucking looks like it.’ Michael says, ‘He went behind our backs. Was he even going to tell us?’

‘He must have.’ Jim says, ‘Duncan wouldn’t just fuck off.’

Jim’s body flies sideways and then he’s pressed against the wall, held there by magic. Michael advances on him, his hand closing around Jim’s throat. ‘This is all your fault.’ He spits, putting a light pressure on Jim’s windpipe.

‘What?’ Jim squeaks, scrabbling against Michael’s grasp. ‘I didn’t do anything Michael, I didn’t know!’

‘You found out about the apartment and you took Y/N away from me.’ He spits, ‘And now you’re taking Duncan too.’

’No!’ Jim’s eyes bluge, reaching out to Y/N. But she isn’t looking at the boys, her gaze is locked on her knees. Frozen.

‘You can’t have her.’ Michael shouts, ‘I loved you. I loved ALL of you.’

‘I know.’

‘I WON’T BE LEFT BEHIND!’ Michael screams, dropping Jim.

The Beach Boy crumples on the floor, but Y/N still doesn’t come to help him. ‘Y/N?’

‘Get out.’

He blinks, Jim’s vision a blurry mess from Michael’s assault. Did he hear her right?

Y/N lifts her head up, ‘GET OUT JIM!’

Jim picks himself off the floor, scurrying over to her. ‘Baby, please. I never meant-’

‘I know but I can’t see you right now.’ She cries, trying to wipe at her eyes.

He produces a tissue from his pocket, wiping away at her face, ‘No, Y/N. Please don’t shut me out. All I want is you.’

‘You’re a fucking prick.’ Michael hisses, ‘You never loved me.’

‘Michael this isn’t just about you.’ Jim snaps, but he wishes he hadn’t. Why can’t he keep his mouth shut anymore, ‘This affect all of us. Our entire fucking lives.’

‘Too right it does,’ Michael fires back. ‘I’ve given up my cause for you all.’

Y/N’s just starting to get her breathing back under control, ‘We can’t lose Duncan.’

‘I think we have.’ Michael and Y/N’s eyes slide right to Jim, ‘I told him not to contact me.’

‘Oh, Jim.’ Y/N breathes, ‘But he loves you.

‘And I love you.’ Jim knows it in the depths of his heart, ‘I’m sorry, Michael. It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you, or Duncan and I may have said something things to both of you but-’

‘Don’t bother.’ Michael says, ‘I can take the hint. I’ll leave you two alone.’

Y/N reaches out for him, ‘No, Michael.’

But the Antichrist is gone, disappearing down the hallway.

Y/N scrubs at her eyes, ‘So Duncan’s gone?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jim admits, ‘It’s all one big mess. I proved that I loved you when I took you with me and I told him not to contact me. Can you forgive me for lying to you?’

It takes her a while but Y/N slowly nods, ‘Never again, Jim.’ She says, ‘You can’t lie to me about anything.’

Jim takes her hand, ’I won’t.’ He kisses her forehead, earning himself a watery smile that disappears.

‘But I won’t leave Michael.’

He fights the rage surging once more, ‘Why?’

‘Because he needs me.’ She says, ‘And I love him, Jim.’

‘But you love me too.’

‘I love all of you.’ Y/N confesses, inspecting the marks Michael’s fingers left around Jim’s neck. ‘But this just isn’t working out.’

Fear grips him, ‘What do you mean?’

Y/N’s reached some kind of decision. Jim can see it and his stomach turns to lead, ‘I won’t abandon Michael for anything.’ She resolves.

That’s it. The blow that crushes him, that snaps Jim in two.

‘You’re leaving me?’ Jim’s sobbing before he can stop himself, ‘You’re choosing Michael Langdon? The fucking Antichrist?’

‘Stop it.’ Y/N hisses, ‘As if you care who he is.’

Jim hasn’t stopped holding her hand, ‘We have the chance to get out of this and live a life together.’ He urges, ‘You and me. I meant what I said, Y/N. About a family and everything.’

‘And where does that leave Michael?’

‘Why does he matter?’

‘Because you’re meant to love him too, Jim.’ Y/N voice rises, ‘Or was it all an act? Did you fake it just to get me because I can’t deal with you telling me that.’

Jim’s speechless. At first, maybe. But yes, feelings were caught and then the resentment started.

Y/N takes his silence as confirmation, ‘I need you to leave.’ She orders, ‘I need time to think.’ Jim shakes his head, but Y/N tugs her hand out of his grip, ‘If you love me, you’ll give me this.’

Y/N found him later in the bedroom. Michael’s curled up in the fetal position, his hair half coming out of his bun. He doesn’t care about it anymore. He feels numb, as if he can’t breathe properly. It’s the worst feeling he can ever imagine, worse than when his Grandma threw him out, worse than Ben Harmon’s rejection, perhaps even worse than when his Mrs Mead was murdered. ‘Oh my darling,’ He knows Y/N is there and chokes back the most pathetic sob when she wraps him up, spooning herself against him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Why are you so good?’ Michael mumbles, ‘You should go, be with Jim.’

‘I don’t want to.’ She kisses him behind the ear, right on his devil’s mark. It tingles, just as it does every time Y/N kisses him there. ‘I’m staying right here.’

‘You’d risk a chance for happiness for me?’ Michael asks.

She doesn’t answer at first, ‘I love you all.’ She states, ’But clearly this foursome hasn’t worked out. Feelings have caught, all round.’

‘Not me.’ Michael’s adamant in that, ‘I still fucking love Jim despite everything. I love Duncan, how could I not?’ He rolls over onto his back so he can look at Y/N, ‘I love you so much.’

Y/N catches Michael’s hand, kissing his palm. ‘We need to take a break.’ She says, ‘All of us.’

‘No, Y/N please.’

‘I’m not leaving you.’ Her voice is firm, ‘I would never. Not after this, but a relationship just isn’t healthy right now darling.’

Michael swallows down his pain because she’s right. It doesn’t stop the tears from coming again, ‘So what does it make us?’

Y/N rests her head on his chest, ‘I don’t know.’ She says, ‘Something more than friends but not quite lovers.’

‘That doesn’t sound good.’

She laughs, ‘I told Jim to give me space.’

‘Good.’

‘I think I’m going to tell him the same thing.’ Y/N decides, ‘I don’t think we should see anyone for a while.’

He thinks it over long and hard, Michael’s fingers weaving their way into Y/N’s hair. She’s all he has left, so loyal. The only one to truly love him.

‘I think’s wise.’ He lets a tear drop down his face and watches it land in Y/N’s hair, ‘Jesus Christ my whole world is falling apart.’

Y/N nudges her head up, meeting Michael in a kiss. ‘Well let’s hope there’s still a chance to put it back together. For all of us.’

TAGGING: @langdonsrapture @langdonsoceaneyes @duncvn @ritualmichael @cryptid-coalition @sodanova @langdvn@lovelykhaleesiii @sammythankyou @kylosbabe @avesatanormalpeoplescareme @langdonsdemon @americanhorrorstudies @petersfern-fics @sojournmichael @starwlkers @ccodyfern @yourkingcodyfern @jimmlangdon @hanhanxx @cocosfern@thelangdoncooperative @queencocoakimmie @wroteclassicaly @moontheweirdpan @megacombusken @divinelangdon@starspangledfuck @cherryberryann @lambofcairo @ccodyfern@flowersiren @oldschoolhoe @chocolateandhorror @infernal-langdon @jim-mason22 @duncandimension @luxuryglitterhoe @langdonsinferno @astir-bread @amytakesmanhattan @i-will-die-for-jim-mason @mega-combusken @kahhlo @gremlinkween @satcnas @russianspacegeckosexparty @rosy-pugs @starwlkers @alexcornerblog @sloppy-little-witch-bitch26 @michael-langdon-owns-my-soul and anyone I missed out I’m sorry the list is BIG! ❤️

273 notes · View notes

aceandsparrow · 5 years ago

Text

Survivor 40: Episode 10

[A] Oh we're just getting right into the loved ones visit. Okay.

[S] "No way!" There is a loved-ones challenge literally every season.

[S] Many loved ones? [A] Wait, what. Kids?

[A] So much crying and it's just the first contestant.

[S] I'd get voted off cause I would not cry for everyone else's loved ones.

[S] Denise is so very short.

[A] Sarah's partner reminds me a little of Tony. If Tony's wife looks like Sarah, I'm done.

[S] As much as I don't really like loved one reunions on Survivor, Jeff is good at asking the right questions.

[A] Nick's fiance looks not thrilled to be there. And reminds me of someone who says "that's so funny."

[S] I don't know why but I imagined Tony's kids were older. [A] I imagined Tony' kids to be like 9 or so, but not much older.

[S] Take a heartwarming moment and turn it into a product placement. [A] Seriously. The loved ones episode is now a sponsored thing? Ugh.

[S] I wish either Rob or Amber were still in it. "BRING OUT YOUR LOVED ONES!" [A] Man, if Rob or Amber was in, that would have been awesome.

[A] WHAT. NO. THIS IS STUPID. MAKE THEM FIGHT.

[A] Rob: "I hope it's something good and not something bad." Ethan: "It's something bad. It's never anything good. This is the Edge." Ethan, always the optimist.

[S] Someone bringing Rob and Amber's kids? Yup.

[A] Of course it's the goddamn twin.

[A] The Edge of Extinction family visits were far more entertaining than the other ones. Minus Adam, of course. [S] DON'T FORGET TO THANK FIJI AIRWAYS!

[A] For the love of god, no one misspell or put a letter upside down. I'm looking at you, Benjamin.

[S] LOL. Ben is like fuck this challenge.

[S] I feel like they are all leaving too much slack.

[A] Nooooo, Ben! You had it all spelled right too!

[S] YES! Vote out Sarah!

[S] Tony isn't freaking out just because he disagrees with you, Sarah.

[S] Incorrect Tony. The fact that he'd vote Sarah out if he could is why Jeremy needs to stay.

[A] I want to see Jeremy use his advantage because it's such a weird advantage that has interesting ramifications.

[S] Fuck the whispering. Come on. [A] This whispering BS just keeps getting worse this season. [S] Stop playing your fucking games y'all.

[A] Jeremy, just do it. [S] They shouldn't be allowed to whisper after he plays that. Come on. [A] I wish Jeremy just handed the note to Jeff and left. Then Jeff had them vote. No discussion, no explanation, no nothing.

[A] Rob sits in the middle of the jury looking like a disapproving father.

[A] You're already 5-4, why use the steal a vote? Unless they split the vote expecting an idol play. But even then, it'd be 3-3-3, right?

[S] Don't think they were going for Denise. [A] Wrong move, Kim. They're coming for you or Tyson.

[A] Tyson being voted back out was inevitable.

[S] Ahh, the Edge all hugging Jeff is adorable.

#survivor #survivor 40 #winners at war

1 note · View note

ainabaina · 5 years ago

Text

Sometimes being an ARMY is so exhausting. Half the fans when they watch reaction videos are just hyping up someone who says ’bts are the best, I’m a fan! No other group can ever’ after literally watching 5 seconds of them and then when they watch for example exo or something like that they’re like ‘they’ve got nothing on bts’ and like some armys fucking go crazy in the comments literally dragging other groups down. Like stop. Every group has their own flavour and their own path like stop trying to fucking shit on other groups for the awards they don’t win, the awards they do win, the connections they have/don’t have, their talent or whatever. Just stop.

Also, people are going to use them for clout. Yes, that’s true. Some western media are going crazy to get it. But that doesn’t automatically mean that everybody is out to fucking get their fame off of them.

The artists I’ve seen get fucking attacked by armys just what the hell?

ATEEZ performed BS&T - clout.

EXO - fucking stupid fan war.

Seventeen - undeserving of their award.

Park Bom - clout. literally fucking attacked because she said rap monster.

Stray Kids - voting.

And the sad thing is, there is more than just those few, they populate in their thousands with how many hate comments artists receive. Also some armys and their morals - what the fuck? They’re super fucked up and I’m not just meaning saesangs AND the whole ‘no 72636 awards/ no daesang no opinion bullshit (this goes for other fandoms too sometimes) like I’m not going to measure up my kpop boys and girls by the amount of awards they have, or how many international fans they have or how many western tv broadcasting stations they can overcrowd. I won’t. I just won’t. I’m proud of everyone who wins an award don’t get me wrong, but their worth to me? Is much more than a hunk of metal on a stand.

I wish BTS were to say something and were to just reign in the fucking horses. Cause this shit is getting fucking out of hand. And if on the slightest chance ( I somewhat doubt it) that bts themselves cannot say it, big hit entertainment, you’re up. It just needs to be done.

I love these boys so fucking much. So much. They seriously mean the world to me and they have for years now but this fandom and some of the people in it (not everyone of course) it’s just- I don’t want to be a part of it anymore sometimes. It’s a hard pill to swallow but that’s the truth.

I’m still going to love them and support them, of course they haven’t gotten rid of me that easily but- I really want them to take a stand on this matter.

#bts #army #frustration #that really fucking hurt to write #but i feel good to know i wrote it and collected my thoughts #i agree with a lot of people im seeing #not completely but enough #vent #if youre gonna be pissed off im sorry but-

1 note · View note

lucyyh · 6 years ago

Text

Ranting: Arrow 7x12

Well, my expectations were low for this episode, because well, MG wrote it, and the man have fucked up time and time again, since at least Season 4B.

It was good to watch some old faces, and old footage from earlier seasons. The documentary style was good too, the crew that follows them where there, without being overwhelming or annoying. That is for other characters the same as always. What I hated with passion is the stupid color in the episode. Like yes, they were trying to make it seem like a documentary, but damn you could have chose to go gray, and not that weird reddish, dark and absolutely awful color.

Baddie of the Week:

So...we are gonna have two vigilante killers in a row it seems. This one was a mad man only looking for masks (still, I want to know where Rory is!), and next episode will be Stan the Fan. I least I hope is Stan. I miss that psycho. Anyway, I feel like this is a sample of how MG had run out of ideas, a long time ago... using almost the same plot is typical of him...

Still, the guy was interesting. Not well developed to be amazing, but still entertaining for the episode.

Mayor Pollard:

Rolling my eyes at you woman, so hard. Still, is one of those characters that drive you up the wall, but you appreciate their consistency in their belief and their honesty when something proves them wrong. She is that for me. I don't like her, but still she isn't an hypocrite. I can respect that.

The NTA:

Ohhh look! now they say Oliver is a hero. I don't care about them.

I'm just gonna say this totally unrelated thing to the episode: I'm glad Dinah's make up looked more natural. I don't like her at all with the eyeliner, and the red lipstick...she looks way better in this episode.

BS:

It was good to see BS is not dead and was replace for this supossedly good and friendly new LL. That short interview with the documentary crew showed us she is still there.

Special Guests:

I love watching Thea, Quentin, Rory, Sara and Sin...Barry too, although his comment about Oliver being damage...yeah, I'm tired of this. He fixed it, but still. Unnecessary. I did love what everyone else had to say about vigilantes and Oliver...

I HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR COLIN MAKING AN APPEREANCE. AND THEY WERE CRUSHED UNTIL THEY WERE NOTHING MORE THAN DUST.

John Diggle:

Look Digg, I love you. Your interaction with the documentary people was funny...but explain to me this:

"We had each other's back"

You did? with the whole team? ARE YOU FUCKING SURE JOHN? BECAUSE IF I REMEMBER YOU CLEARLY LEFT FELICITY TO FEND FOR HERSELF, AND AFTER THAT, YOU EXCUSE YOUR SHITTY BEHAVIOR SAYING YOU WERE GIVING HER SPACE.

So no John, you didn't have each other's back.

I can let you say Oliver and you support each other, because it was implied in 7x01 that you visited him regularly...

BUT DON'T COME HERE INTO MY HOUSE AND LIE TO MY FACE.

You ABANDONED the one person you wanted to protect since the beginning, or at least your did before your mid life crisis, or whatever the fuck what happened to you in season 6 was.

You are right too in this: Oliver shouldn't have went to prison for you, bunch of ungrateful bastards. It's good that you finally are recognizing this.

Emiko: Eh. She was fine. *Shrugs* I don't have much to say about her, but it was cute that she didn't want to stop working with Rene.

Will and Zoe: Look at the babies being best friends! Rene was hilarious here too. Will is so conflicted right now, you can see it in his behavior...he wanted to trust in Zoe, but there was something holding him back: Is it shame for getting expelled? or is something else?

William and Felicity:

Oh Will...it while I was watching him so angry, and taking it all on Felicity, it made me think about my nephews.(They are 12 and 13). They behave just like him when they felt they were wronged in some way. I understand his hurt and anger. Will have some serious issues, that were address a little in season six: the fear of abandonment the most prominent, for what we had seen. First not wanting Oliver to be the Green Arrow, and now with Felicity sending him away to boarding school.

It's someone surprised he was so angry with her? She has been a constant, the one that explained to him so beautifully why it was important for Oliver to be the Green Arrow; the one he spent all those months living with, supporting each other, and sharing the fear of being found by Ricardo Díaz, the one who encouraged his enthusiasm and love for studies, technology in particular. We don't know yet why he was expelled, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was to get back at his parents for sending him away, and not letting him come back for Christmas. I would be pissed too.

The lack of Oliver being there for his son, it was...I don't even know what to call it. I'm angry about it. But hey, that's MG and his shitty writing.

Oliver:

He was great. But I wish he would stop believing everything is his fault. And you know? don't turn yourself in to be send AGAIN to prison. WTF.

Felicity:

I missed my girl. She didn't have enough screen time. FUCK YOU MG.

Olicity:

SO GOOD WE GOT A SCENE WITH THEM IN THE SAME PLACE.

FUCK YOU MG.

This episode was...okay. I'm being a nice person saying it was okay. MG continues to show that what he believes is right, in this case "a love letter to the fans", is completely different for what a big part of the fans believe it is. But hey, he has different views on what a "nice guy" is, or a "good reporter" is...so nothing new under the sun. I’m sure he is butthurt and oh so surprised by the people who didn’t like the episode....

Until Arrow gets rid of this man, his shitty writing, and decision making power, this show will continue to be bits of good things mix with a lot of dissapointment.

Sorry for all the swearing. But is so easy to do it when is in another language 😂😂😂

#arrow commentary #my arrow rants #arrow discussion #arrow spoilers #arrow S7

48 notes · View notes