#long live the real Star Wars

[the-far-bright-center]

Thanks for going through what makes this trend so awful in detail. It strikes me that it's a such a shame it was The Force Awakens of all things that Hollywood tried to mimic, instead of Mad Max: Fury Road, which came out earlier the same year, and which was a vastly superior film in almost every possible way.

The Force Awakens was, without a doubt, the worst cinema viewing experience of my life. Prior to seeing it, I remember thinking to myself 'if this is even half as good as the Mad Max movie was, then it might be alright'. Fury Road had been a rare example of a nostalgic sequel/reboot done right, and at the time I’d been hoping it would set the stage for things to come. I assumed the worst that could happen was that TFA would just be a cheesy, mindless action romp, but otherwise harmless. Oh sweet summer child, little did I know just how wrong I would be. The moment the opening text scrolled by, I knew something was terribly, unforgivably wrong. Immediately, I felt a sense of disorientation and panic setting in. The entire premise made no sense and was completely out-of-character, and that was even before the movie had started! It only got worse from there, until I stumbled broken-hearted out of the cinema, feeling as though someone had just reached back through time, found my happiest childhood memories and destroyed them before my very eyes. Return of the Jedi was my most-watched movie as a kid. If I had to pick a single film that embodied my childhood, that would be it. And TFA tried to gaslight me and tell me the events of that movie never happened, or if they did, they certainly didn't matter. Han and Leia were my childhood OTP, and TFA tried to gaslight me and tell me they never mattered. Luke Skywalker was my childhood hero, and TFA tried to gaslight me into believing that nothing he did ever mattered. Vader's redemption at the end of RotJ was, by pure chance, the very first Star Wars scene I ever saw as a child, and is forever ingrained in my heart and mind. And once again, TFA tried to tell me it never mattered or had any lasting positive effect whatsoever.

In the immediate aftermath, I felt like Star Wars was lost to me forever. For months I was in despair and afraid that I'd never be able to feel anything positive about it ever again. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and eventually I turned my focus back to Lucas-era Star Wars, and blacklisted and avoided everything about the rest of the fake-sequel movies. Nothing in any further sequel entry could ever 'fix' the damage TFA had done, so there was no point watching any further. It was obvious that Disney never cared one jot about the original story or characters—if they had, they would never have allowed something like TFA to ‘happen’ in the first place.

Since then, it’s become clear to me that we live in strangely cynical and iconoclastic times, in which nostalgic, long-beloved stories stories are mined for profit and then almost gleefully desecrated. One of the prevailing attitudes of this era is that 'subversion' automatically makes something ‘better’. Or, perhaps, more 'realistic', and thus more palatable to contemporary expectations. That all older stories are inherently outdated and ‘need’ to be overturned, even if the story in question was a positive or uplifting one. The fact that it didn't seem to occur to anyone that the original Star Wars saga was never in *need* of 'subversion' in the first place will never cease to astonish me. Disney treated a story that had been complete since 1983 (and in it’s fullest form, since 2005) as if it had been left open-ended (NOT because of any supposed 'flaws' with the original, but only because it’s more lucrative for a story to go on indefinitely) and tried to gaslight us all into believing it had never had a satisfactory or meaningful conclusion. In doing so, they forgot the key to the original films’ success and staying power: Star Wars is meant to function like a myth or a fairytale. It’s not meant to be 'realistic' in its outcome. And in a fairytale, OTPs don’t break up. Heroes don’t abandon their loved ones. And saving someone from the Dark Side is a galaxy-liberating blessing, not a generational curse.

Despite the continued onslaught, there are glimmers of hope. Hollywood may still be enamoured with its endless destructive spin-offs, reboots, and sequels, but at least the popularity of The Force Awakens itself seems to have waned. Of course, as someone who's been swimming against that particular tide from the start, I could just be biased. But I'm also an archivist and art historian by training, and I feel strongly that beautiful, old things can and should be preserved. And in the intervening years since TFA's release, I've focused on preserving the memory of the REAL Skywalker saga: the mythic, transcendent story that I've known and loved my whole life. A story that has already stood the test of time and will continue to do so, long after any unworthy 'additions' fade away into oblivion.

The unfortunate legacy of The Force Awakens and the Star Wars sequels

The fact that The Force Awakens made so much money in 2015 has been a lead weight around Hollywood’s neck for a full decade now. 

We’re *STILL* seeing decades-late sequels that imitate the Star Wars sequels’ WORST elements. 

Specifically:

Make sure your classic character(s) has/have been totally miserable and/or failures since they were last seen. Yes, even though it’s been at LEAST a decade, they should’ve been suffering the whole fucking time.

Erase at least one character’s growth (or sometimes even their base character traits) entirely, resetting them back where they started in their first film (or, alternatively, rendering them unrecognizable). 

Kill off some of those legacy characters ASAP to ensure they have no hope of ever achieving the happy ending you once promised/implied.

Work in obvious repeats of prior movies’ events and scenes so the audience can be like “Oooh, I remember when they said/did that in the other movies,” resulting in them feeling like they’re in on something and are therefore validated.

In fact… maybe just copy/paste the entire plot from an earlier entry? No surprises means MAXIMUM NOSTALGIA.

These things were all present in The Force Awakens and even repeated for The Last Jedi. But they wound up just being pioneers of a shitty trend.

Some examples:

Terminator: Dark Fate

Ghostbusters Afterlife

The Matrix Resurrections

Scream (2022)

Clerks III

The degree of the severity of these things varies, at least. Maybe not every single legacy character has been completely miserable since we last saw them; it might be only some or even just one of them. I’ll also grant Ghostbusters Afterlife that killing off Egon was the only reasonable choice available to them. Situations like these can help soften the blow… and for those reasons, I don’t hate ALL of the movies I just listed. There’s even one or two I kinda like!

But make no mistake: All of the above lessons/tropes are still shitty ones. The legacy of the Star Wars sequels (TFA most specifically) is still a damning one. I honestly believe that ALL the movies I cited would all be better off if they hadn’t taken ANY cues from TFA’s template.

[fantasticgothicpeachsludge]

Cal: I like wearing oversized sweaters. Not just because they're extremely comfy and cuddly, but because whenever the sleeves are really big, I get to flop them around and smack people.

[backpackingspace]

Okay but if you think about it. it's more hilarious that qui gon was rooted in the living force. King probably didn't even know force visions were a real thing. He probably had zero idea what was happening to obi wan. He just knew his new kid was possessed and he'd like a different one please and thanks.

[dr-gaytorius]

ok i gotta get this off my chest but i cant let anyone i know irl know. i am Down Bad for my ex. not the guy i just broke up with, no, it's much worse. my ex from high school-19. it's like i woke up a few months ago and was like. oh. uh oh. i don't think i should get into much detail but it's so bad lmao and very dramatic and i've never felt this way before. and god... he's so hot. he's so stupidly pretty i want to blow something up

[telltaletypist]

i have a theory that any franchise that lasts long enough eventually becomes incestuous and ends up eating its own tail, thematically. stories in these franchises can only ever comment on themselves

i think a lot about what alan moore said about his work on the killing joke, about how hollow it is in hindsight since the theme really just boils down to "batman and the joker are kinda similar when you think about it", which i suppose is a pretty novel observation, certainly changes the way i read batman comics, but what is there in that insight for me as a human being living in the real world that i can apply to my actual life? not a whole lot. all it can do is reward emotional investment in the brand of batman. if you don't really give a shit about batman there's nothing there for you.

the disney era of star wars is especially bad about this. by and large they're really just about our relationship to star wars. even the last jedi, which tries to be a little more critical about it, still can't break out of the thematic black hole the franchise has become. andor is possibly the only exception to this, and i steadfastly believe that was a total fluke. don't get it twisted, andor is good despite its connection to star wars, not because of it, and if it were just an original tv show about resisting space fascism, it would probably be better for it (if less popular). we're all lowkey dreading the second season bc we know that no star wars property can resist devolving into a nostalgia wank fest forever

there's nothing inherently wrong with hollow entertainment, but i do think there's something grotesque about pumping the gdp of a small nation into an entertainment product that doesn't aspire to be anything more than an advertisement for itself

[sheliesshattered]

My window to order was starting to narrow, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Captain Accreditation License prop I'd been eyeing for my Batuu Bound birthday outing coming up. It's such a silly little detail, but the reviews are filled with people talking about getting to use it in Galaxy's Edge when the Stormtroopers stop them to ask to see some identification, which sounds like a fun interaction. And like, I can make a great deal of soft kit, I can even put together my own greebles out of foam -- but laser engraving is way outside my wheelhouse and tool access.

But before I could order it, I had to come up with a bunch of info to go on it, like name, home planet, ship type, that sort of thing. I had a basic idea of what sort of character I wanted to portray with my outfit for Batuu, but filling out the info for the pilot's license really made me lock down a bunch of details, which eventually evolved into full on original character creation.

It also got me started in learning to read Aurebesh, the Star Wars transliteration alphabet, but that's a whole other rabbit hole, lol.

Character wise, I started with my absolute love of piloting the Falcon in Smuggler's Run (my desire to do so again was one of the major reasons for deciding to do this for my birthday) and my fav in the sequel movies, Benicio Del Toro's "D.J." character. (The very brief political commentary about weapons manufacturers profiting off both sides of the war, and his little "live free, don't join" axiom are just so amazing, I still cannot believe we got that in a Star Wars movie.)

I also took into account that the timeframe for Galaxy's Edge is between Ep 8 and Ep 9, in roughly 34 or 35 ABY (years after the Battle of Yavin, at the end of Ep 4), and that I want to do the lightsaber building activity at Savi's Workshop the day we visit. The Etsy listing for the license also had an interesting little note about choosing a homeworld, calling out that 'because of well-known galactic events' Alderaan would only be an option for characters over the age of 40 or so. That comment got my mental gears turning, and sent me down the path of researching the year that Disney's Batuu is set in, etc.

At that same time, I was trying out different potential hairstyles for keeping my waist-length hair controlled during a day at Disneyland while still looking Star Wars-y. I tried a couple of Rey inspired hair styles, but eventually settled on something much more like Leia's looks in Ep 5 and Ep 6, with multiple braids wrapped around the crown to form a full circle. It's easy and comfortable and will keep my hair from tangling and works well with my hooded wrap thing, so I decided that hairstyle would be part of my look, and part of my character building.

So at that point I had: pilot, politically unaffiliated, soon to own a lightsaber, emulating Princess Leia and/or Alderaanian hairstyles, and grew up mostly after the fall of the Empire and probably wouldn't remember (or only just barely remember) the destruction of Alderaan. On that last point I was splitting the difference slightly -- if I translated my real age now into the Star Wars timeline (and Galaxy's Edge being set in ~35 ABY), then I would have been roughly 8 years old when Alderaan was destroyed. But in reality, I was born shortly after Ep 5 came out, and my earliest memories of Star Wars are knowing all about the movies, playing Star Wars make-believe with other kids in the neighborhood, and being excited that Ep 4 was going to be airing on TV.

After a lot of noodling on this, while sewing or driving or trying to fall asleep, the character started to come together in my head. Her mother was born and raised on Alderaan, but around age 20 (in 2 or 3 BBY, roughly) met a dashing young pilot on a freighter passing through, fell in love, and left Alderaan to be with him. They got married and lived mostly in the hyperspace lanes for a couple years, jumping from place to place. When she found out she was pregnant, she temporarily went back to Alderaan to be with her family and have her baby there. In the last year before the Battle of Yavin, she had a baby girl she named Samæni Ray, and after a few weeks she and the baby left Alderaan to meet up with her husband again.

So none of them were on Alderaan when the Death Star targeted and destroyed the planet. In the wake of the tragedy, the Alderaanian diaspora would have pulled together all across the galaxy, trying to get word of anyone who might have survived. And then, a miracle: Princess Leia somehow survived! The princess that Samæni's mother had grown up idolizing from afar, someone similar to her in age and physical appearance (pictures of my real mother from the 1970s bear a striking resemblance to Carrie Fisher in the same time period) -- the princess that Samæni's mother had loved for as long as she could remember, she not only survived but she stepped up to lead the Resistance against the Empire!

You know those people in real life who like, collected merchandise about Princess Diana? Yeah, that's Samæni's mom, but with Princess Leia, lol.

The war to overthrow the Empire only lasted for another 5 years or so, ending with the Battle of Jakuu in 5 ABY. So I figure Samæni might have vague early childhood memories of her parents celebrating the end of the war. They weren't actively members of the Resistance, and Samæni's father was much more politically neutral, preferring to focus on his work as a freighter pilot, but as far as Samæni's mother was concerned, anything Princess Leia did was a blessing on the galaxy, so it would have been a big deal for her, both during the war and in the years after as the New Republic was established.

During those early years of the New Republic, Samæni's father's freight business continued to do well, and she mostly grew up in her family's Gozanti-class cruiser, as they moved things from one planet to the next. She learned to pilot at her father's side, eventually sat for a pilot's license exam as a young adult, and then struck out on her own. Samæni's first job as a pilot was for a company that operated light freighters as party ships, allowing those with modest disposable income to see the galaxy in style but without the expense of a yacht cruiser. (The company probably had a ridiculous tagline like: "From here to thar with an open bar!")

Since those early jobs-for-hire, Samæni saved up enough money to buy her own little light freighter and start an inport/export business in which she (and her partner Jack) go to outer rim worlds to buy antiquities, oddities, and rare objects and bring them back to an upper-middle class clientele in the core worlds and inner rim. Their current ship is a bit of an antique itself, a Kazellis-class light freighter that is flashy enough to fit in in the nicer areas of Coruscant, but hard-working and easily repairable enough to take Samæni and Jack to all those far-flung worlds with treasures to acquire. Their ship has room for some larger pieces, but most of the cargo area has been converted into full-time living quarters, since they rarely stay planet-side for very long.

Their home-port is the ecumenoplis planet of Denon, an inner-rim world that sits at the intersection of two major hyperspeed trade routes. Denon was the closest thing to a homeworld that Samæni had growing up, and her parents have since retired to the equatorial area of the planet, in a community with a lot of other retired pilots and haulers and ship mechanics. (Her father's favorite local cantina is named for the CEC catalog part number for a replacement hyperdrive lever. He and all his old pilot buddies think it is hilarious.)

Samæni's mother continues to talk about Princess Leia like they are close friends (despite never actually having met her), and keeps informed on the rise of the First Order and the resistance to it mostly because she has set up HoloNet news alerts for General Organa. But Samæni takes more after her father in that regard, doesn't particularly care about politics or taking sides in any civil war, other than how it impacts business. The destruction of the Hosnian system by the First Order's Starkiller Base is enough to push Samæni towards siding against the First Order, but she still isn't about to rush out to join the Resistance, either.

Her pilot's license lists Denon as her homeworld, and it would take some dedicated digging to find that her planet of birth is actually Alderaan. She only lived there for the first few weeks of her life, and her only memory of it is how sad it's always made her mother. The traditional hairstyles and the stories about Princess Leia are really the only parts of the culture that she inherited. Samæni has never wanted to talk about being from Alderaan with anyone, and as the Empire's successor has come to power in the last few years, it's seemed even more dangerous to let anyone outside of close friends and family know that she is technically a survivor of the last time a galactic power was going around destroying planets.

Samæni and Jack are heading to the outer rim world of Batuu to visit Dok Ondar's Den of Antiquities, and follow up on a tip about Savi's crew of 'scrap metal' gatherers, in case there's something there that might sell well on a core world. Arriving to find that both the Resistance and the First Order have a presence in Black Spire Outpost will be less than ideal, but Samæni and Jack have been to enough rough ports across the galaxy that they know how to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

And hey, if First Order troopers stop to ask them for ID, Samæni will have a genuine pilot's license to show them. ;)

[springcatalyst]

this movie is permanently implanted in my retinas. it's not even that good

[seungkw1]

make me — ksy

♡ pairing: kwon soonyoung x afab!reader ♡ theme: smut [18+ mdni], humor ♡ wc: 1.8k ♡ warnings: alcohol consumption, oral (m. receiving, f. receiving implied), handjob, hoshi is obsessed w boobs, hoshi is a simp, i ramble on about star wars for a bit at the beginning ♡ a/n: might have to do a pt. 2 to this one so lmk if anyone is interested in that 👀

“No it’s not.”

“Yes, it is!!”

“Soonyoung. Be so fucking for real right now.” 

Your roommate doesn’t usually drink, and you’re starting to see why. Two Jack & Cokes and he’s fucking gone already.

“I’m telling you y/n, The Rise of Skywalker is so fucking good. You should stop being a haterrrr,” he says, inches away from your face as he leans over to you, nearly pushing you off the couch. You’ve never been this physically close to him, though you’ve certainly thought about it (more than once). Your heart flutters from the proximity of his lips to yours, but you have more important matters at hand right now.

“I didn’t say I hated it, it’s just not that good compared to all the other Star Wars movies!”

He picks up his drink again. You stop him before he can take a sip, handing him a glass of water instead. 

“Well how would I know? I haven’t seen the other movies.”

“WHAT?!”

He takes a big gulp of the water. “I’ve only seen the new ones,” he admits with a shrug.

“Oh my god,” you mumble, resting your forehead against your palm in exasperation. You grab the remainder of his beverage and drink it all in one go. 

This argument isn’t that serious of course - you just need to calm your nerves a bit, considering Soonyoung has now placed your hand on your thigh as he blabbers on.

“Besides, seeing Kylo Ren and Rey finally kiss was great. I cheered.”

“You’re a fucking REYLO SHIPPER??”

“A what?” He blinks at you with heavy eyelids. “I don’t speak that language.”

“Kylo Ren and Rey made a terrible couple, it’s literally toxic. The plot between them should’ve never been a romance.”

“But I like romance!” he practically shouts in your face. You’ve always enjoyed bantering with Soonyoung for fun, but the alcohol in both of your systems is definitely upping the ante. You’ve seen him act ridiculous plenty of times before, but he’s on another level today.

“It’s fucking Star Wars, it doesn’t need romance!!” you shout back.

“Well I think it does!” he states indignantly.

“What do you know?? You haven’t seen the other movies!!”

“So I can’t have an opinion??”

“NO??”

“Why are you being so mean to meeeee,” Soonyoung whines, making big sad puppy dog eyes at you. “I’ve never done anything wrong in my life.”

“You’re literally insane. Get off of me!” you shout as he leans over onto you, practically clinging onto you in his drunken stupor.

He ignores you, getting even more up in your face. “You’re just mad because I have better taste in movies than you.”

“Will you just shut the FUCK UP???”

“MAKE ME!”

You pause, staring at him for a few moments too long. He stares back at you, confusion spreading across his face. Then-

You kiss him.

Your lips press softly against his for only a few moments. You pull back, looking at your roommate eye to eye, watching his inebriated brain trying to process what just happened. As if a lightbulb goes off above his head, it suddenly clicks. He swallows nervously.

“What was that for?” he hesitantly asks, barely more than a whisper.

“I…” you start, but quite honestly you don’t know where that came from. Sure, you’ve found Soonyoung attractive since the day you met him - and sure, living with him has led to a few domestic fantasies here and there. But you are friends, nothing more - your boundaries are unspoken, but clearly established. 

Or so you thought.

Soonyoung’s dark eyes stare into yours. Panic alarms are going off in your head. You fucked up you fucked up you fucked up oh god you fucked up big time…

“I’m so sorr-”

You don’t get to finish that sentence. Soonyoung’s mouth aligns with yours, kissing you hungrily, his hands grasping onto your arms. Shock reverberates through your body as he makes out with you, his hands sliding to your back, pulling your body close against his as his tongue pokes at your lips, requesting entrance. You let him in. He squeezes you even tighter against him as he kisses you like his life depends on it.

After what felt like about a thousand years, you break apart, barely - his lips hovering mere inches in front of yours. The look he gives you is one you’ve never seen him make before - he gazes at you like you’re the most delicious thing he’s ever seen, and he wants to devour you.

You try to speak, but nothing comes out. You’re simply dumbstruck.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to do that,” he mutters as his hands drop to your hips, still holding onto you for dear life.

“You… like me?”

You silently curse yourself at how dumb you sound. Asking him if he likes you, as if you were in fucking middle school.

“Yeah,” he replies emphatically. “I really really really like you.”

Your head spins, the intoxication doing nothing to help you process this information.

“Um… since when?” 

Soonyoung is still drunk as hell, but he speaks clear as day.

“Short answer, since we moved in together.”

You wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t.

“And the long answer?”

He shifts awkwardly, doing a very poor job of trying to hide his boner.

“Middle of July. It was hot as balls. I woke up that morning to you making pancakes. You were wearing a light blue tank top with nothing underneath, and-” he trails off. You raise an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to go on.

“And my god, your boobs looked perfect. The pancakes smelled good, but all I wanted was your tits in my mouth.” 

His hand delicately trails up to your breasts, where he is currently staring, taking one of them and squeezing it. He lets out a soft groan as he does.

“Fuck, even better than I imagined.”

“Is that why you took so long to come out for breakfast that day?” you say as your fingertips glide over his thigh, moving toward the very obvious bulge that has formed in his pants. You grab his cock through the fabric. He practically yelps as you begin to caress it slowly.

“Y-yeah,” he answers, his voice going up an octave, practically melting under your touch. 

“So you’re saying that you went and jerked off while you thought of my tits.”

“Um,” he tenses up nervously, realizing what he’s just admitted to.

Before he can say anything else, you take your shirt off, leaving you in just your bra. If his eyes could physically pop out of his head on a pair of springs, they’d be doing just that right now.

You unclasp the hook, removing the undergarment and tossing it aside. He gawks at you - his cock twitches under your palm. You begin to stroke his length, but he immediately grabs your hand to stop you.

“I’ll cum in my pants if you keep doing that.” He’s still staring at your chest.

“Where would you rather cum?”

“I- what?” He looks up at you, his eyes darting between your mouth and your eyes, then back to your boobs, then back to your mouth. 

“Okay then,” you say as you slide off the couch.

“What’re you-” he asks, but freezes as you position yourself between his legs. His body tenses as you undo his belt, quickly unfastening the button and yanking the zipper down. The rock hard bulge protrudes through the fabric of his underwear, begging to escape. You pull the band down, freeing his already-leaking cock. You take the length in your hands, giving it a few slow strokes. He sinks into the couch with a loud groan.

“Oh my god,” he mumbles, your touch sending him to another planet. 

With a swirl of your tongue you lap up the precum dripping from his tip, causing him to let out the biggest whine. You wrap your lips around the head, slowly taking his length into your mouth. 

“Fuckkkkkkk, y/n…” 

He lets out a gasp as you swallow him to his base. He places one hand softly upon your head as you begin to move your mouth up and down his cock. Within seconds he is a moaning, blubbering mess.

“Feels so good baby, oh god don’t stop. You’re so fucking hot oh my god… fuckkkk…”

You increase your pace. Between moans he continues praising you, whining and whimpering, begging you for more. The man simply cannot shut up about how good you’re sucking him off.

And it’s making you so incredibly wet right now.

You want to touch yourself so badly, but your priority is pleasuring Soonyoung. And judging by the way he is wriggling under you, bucking his hips and fucking his cock into your throat, unintelligibly babbling as he moans your name - you’re doing a pretty damn good job.

“Oh fuck,” he cries out. “Fuck, y/n, gonna cum…”

The words are barely out of his mouth before hot white ropes are hitting the back of your throat. He grips onto your hair as he cums, cock pulsating in your mouth as he rides out his high. As he comes down, he collapses into the sofa - you slowly pull your mouth off of him, making a show of swallowing all of his cum.

“Jesus fucking Christ, y/n…”

You climb back up onto the couch. He immediately leans in and starts kissing you.

“Thank you,” he murmurs between kisses.

“Are you seriously thanking me for sucking your dick?”

He shrugs as he wraps his arms around your waist. “You just gave me the best head of my life, least I can do is say thanks.”

“Actually,” he corrects himself right away, “I take that back. If you’ll let me, can I… may I please eat you out?”

You burst out laughing. He looks at you, puzzled.

“Sorry, if you don’t want-”

“No no no,” you tell him, still laughing. “It’s not that, I’ve just never had anybody ask me so politely like that before.”

His face lights up, hopeful. “So can I?” he pleads enthusiastically. “Pleaseeeeeeee? Please please please?”

You lean your head into his shoulder, giggling like an idiot.

“Soonyoung, you are truly one of a kind.”

He gently grabs your chin, tilting your head up until you are eye to eye. His nose presses into yours.

“Is that a yes?”

You smile as you kiss him.

“Yes, it’s a yes.”

He practically leaps off the couch, startling you. He grabs your hand, pulling you up and directing you toward his bedroom.

“Wait,” he says as he pauses. He looks at you very seriously.

“My room or yours?”

“Don’t care,” you respond eagerly.

He grins. “Yours, then.”

—

[breedbun]

loid x male reader idk lol.. with homoerotic tensions between you and loid obviously because it's fun!

details: male reader, spy x family, m!reader x loid, yor does not have romantic feelings for loid, anya is silently watching all ts unfold. this will NOT be canon. EXTREMELY homoerotic friendship. youre loid's informant, u replace franky xd

warnings: homo obv, amab reader, he/him pronouns, femboy reader (haha i love dresses), yuri thinks you're a girl and tries to pursue you after thinking loid cares for you.

sfw !! ; your "first" encounter with Yor and.. her eccentric brother. not my best work ^_^ NSFW (no plot) coming soon guys calm down

"When the stars align, I'll see you again one day."

As tensions don't ease between Ostania and Westalis, Loid continues to do his part to ensure the large possibility of war breaking out between the East and the West does not shatter the fragile peace they have at the moment. While Loid may be the best of the best spies, you come in handy for him too, obviously. Living your life as (Y/N, L/N) is pretty simple. You live in the same apartment complex as Loid, you work at a cutesy bakery which you enjoy greatly, and you have a stable side job as an informant for Loid. So, even while you pursue your simplistic and carefree life, you're still doing your part to help keep Ostania and Westalis safe! How you get your information, was top secret, but you did have an ability for thieving and hacking.. and that came in handy.

Whilst Loid had initially asked you to pretend to be his wife for Anya's school interview, you were quite hesitant.. but still accepted! And really, you made.. a perfect wife. Seeing you all dressed up and talking like Loid's wife, and Anya's mother, it honestly woke something up in Loid. But alas, Loid had found a real mother for Anya, and to be honest, you joked about how this was definitely cheating. In an unrelated note, you were happy to provide Loid with information he needed.. as long as he had the dollars to pay for it, hehe.

When the day came for Loid to introduce you as a friend to his new pretend-wife, Yor, you agreed, even if you felt just a little bitter. Your only comfort was that it was just play pretend.

You stepped into your small walk-in wardrobe, examining the arrays of adorable dresses hung up within your shelves. You pick a relatively modest, ruffled one, with pink and red hues, unzipping the back of the dress. Undressing yourself, you step into your dress, and pull it up, zipping the back of your clothing up. Picking a pair of laced socks, and pretty shoes, you chose a pastry leftover in your fridge and packed it up into a paper bag. Once you got your irritatingly hard-to-wear shoes on, you finally left the house and locked your front door with a firm click.

Happily strolling down the hall of you and Loid's apartment complex, you reach the elevator and press the button to the floor above your home. As you arrive in front of Loid's door, you hear.. yelling. Of a man's voice, clearly not Loid's calm voice, because he'd never yell at his family this angrily, honestly. You debate whether or not you should even ring the doorbell at this point.. but your hand knocks on the door before you can come to a conclusion.

The yelling stops momentarily, and Loid opens the door. You offer him a quick smile, looking over his shoulder as you saw.. a strange black-haired man, Yor, and little Anya. Anya loved when you came over, too.

"Great timing, (Y/N). Come, come in," Loid ushers you in, an arm over your shoulders as he guides you to the dinner table.. where there was a strangely strong scent of wine. As you sit down, you glance over at Yor, offering her a warm smile. She smiled back, and it comforted you knowing that Yor was obviously a kindhearted woman. Loid picked a lovely girl to be his pretend-wife. Anyway, the strange black-haired man stares straight at you, squinting as his face seemed flush and his posture screamed of.. 'drunk.' For a moment, it was oddly silent. The only sound was Loid bringing away the plates, and cleaning the table, while Anya toyed with a cute plush llama. Yor held Anya in her arms, letting her sit on her lap, while Yuri.. kept staring.

"...Ah, um. You.. you alright, there?" You ask, taking a sip of the wine Loid had poured for you just a few minutes ago. Yuri stood up from the sofa, groggily approaching you, a hand on the table cloth as he breached your personal space carelessly. Loid placed a hand on Yuri's shoulder, raising an eyebrow as he noticed your discomfort, how you shrunk in your chair and how your nose scrunched ever so slightly. Simply, Loid guides Yuri to sit down in a chair beside you. "Yuri. Maybe you shouldn't go that close to my friend, yes?"

Yuri also raised an eyebrow. He crossed his arms, before struggling to stand up again, pushing his index finger against Loid's chest. "Loid Forger...! Are you... is this.. IS THIS YOUR SISTER?!" Yuri yelled, a snarky grin on his face as he glanced towards you, your face flushing ...out of second-hand embarrassment for this strange man named Yuri. He snickers, moving away from Loid as Yuri places two hands beside you, against the back of your chair, as he leaned in, trapping you against the backrest chair and him. "If you're going to steal m—MY sister, Forger, I will definitely.. steal YOURS!!"

Ah. He's on the floor now.

Loid had immediately pushed Yuri off, as Yor rushed to Yuri's side, seemingly embarrassed of her own brother, you'd assume.. from how similar they looked. Loid glared at Yuri for just a split second, which you caught onto immediately, still shocked as you leaned against the back of your chair. Loid's expression immediately shifts to one of faked apologetic empathy, kneeling down to help Yuri.. and being pushed away by him as well.

"You were invading (Y/N)'s space. I had no choice, but to pull you off. I just didn't expect you to lose your balance, Yuri."

You try your best to include yourself in this incident. You are the supposed 'victim' after all. So, you crouch down, helping Yuri up with Yor, giving him a small shy smile, praying that he doesn't take it in the wrong way. In doing so, he actually accepts your help.

"No, it's alright, Loid! It's fine. He's extremely intoxicated, it seems," you added, chuckling sympathetically (which is not real!) as Yuri stands up with you and Yor's help. You assume Yor is a strong woman, since.. clearly, Yuri doesn't feel as heavy as he looks.. he didn't feel as heavy as a grown man, at least. As such, Loid apologises to Yuri again, laughing as he tries to brush it off. Yuri starts to sound like an old man yelling at a cloud, but everyone tries to calm him down. It's not long before Yuri falls asleep on the couch. Yeah.. it'd be best to let him nap for now, probably?

With a tug of your arm, you look down to see precious Anya... seemingly starstruck by how you dressed.

"...Princess?"

And just before you can respond—

"Oh! Prince!"

Huh? How'd she know that? Not many children realize that you're.. well, a guy. Not with your pretty hair, soft face, and dresses.

[hanasnx]

" I FANTASIZE ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME " — hayden christensen.

MINORS DNI 18+ NOTES: kinktober. WARNINGS: fem reader ノ established relationship ノ daddy kink ノ sexual content: p in v ノ unprotected sex ノ dumbification ノ breeding kink ノ pregnancy scare ノ size difference ノ marriage mentions.

YOUNG!HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN who’s specifically close to your age. He fathers you while he doesn't have that much more life experience compared to you, even indulges in some breeding kink with his little girl. Your college-age boyfriend lets you sit on his cock and call him dad while he tells you he's "gonna put a baby in you, give you your own little girl to take care of." She'll be part of daddy's twins, you'll wear matching outfits and do you hair the same. "you'd look so cute" he says "with a little mini-you following you around. Like a doll to dress up." This movie star, fresh off the Star Wars set, bought you a 40k rock after the first week of dating you, just hasn't found the right time to propose yet—he just knows he wants you to call him dad for the rest of your lives.

He fucks you raw, talks shit in your ear about how he's gonna make sure this time. You were so eager to reach back and peel the condom right off of him, let him hit it bareback. You presented your little pussy so readily, how could he not reward you with a couple loads? You plead your usual mantras, begging him for it, telling him you'll do anything he wants, you'll do anything for him. So he lets you have it, empties himself into your little hole and plugs you up. Even does it a few times to really hammer it in that thick head of yours that he's getting what he wants. Talks you through feeling that warm seed spill out of you, only to get replaced with more, makes sure you know he's fucking a baby into you.

It's all just talk. Early in the morning he gets you a Plan B to take, he knows the drill. However, the results don't pan out as expected. Your period is late, and you get nervous. "It's normal," he reassures while he strokes your hair, "We'll keep an eye on it, sweetheart, just gotta be patient." Rocking you in his lap while he holds you, tucking your head under his chin.

"I don't understand!" you cry, clutching onto his clothes at his chest. Those glossy eyes he fell for look up at him and bat long eyelashes. "We're so careful." you sniffle.

His lips press together, memories come flooding back at the night in question. Your grabby hands stretching that sticky cum-stained condom off, and him pushing his hips forward to offer it to you. The positions you got up to that night. The euphoria of feeling each other bare intoxicating you two, filling your heads as you let fantasies run away with you. A knowing look pierces your innocent act, and a petite smile tugs at the corners of your lips, as if he's transferred the dirty recollections to you. Suddenly bashful, you cover your mouth with your hand. "Oh, I suppose we weren't very..." you trail off, electing to not finish the word "safe." He leans forward to peck your forehead.

You two have a couple of long talks about the reality of the situation, him talking, you listening. You let him reassure you that he'll "still love you whatever happens, whatever you choose to do." unsaid that it's in the case that you do get pregnant. It's not what you want to happen, but it assuages the anxious feeling in your stomach to know you've got someone who won't cut and run.

A couple of negative pregnancy tests and getting your period eases your worries, too. Taking out your relief on Hayden, you throw your arms around his neck to kiss on him drunkenly. "We almost made a baby together, daddy. Isn't that crazy? You almost put a kid in me for real... we would've made such a cute kid, don't you think?" the way you're babbling makes it sound like you're... disappointed that it didn't happen—or you're hot and bothered by the fact it almost did.

"Uh-huh, princess, that's right." he humors you while you kiss his grin. A big hand strokes up and down your back. "Was scary though, huh?" In a calculated move, he subtly reinforces the fear of it, to make sure you know the consequences you two narrowly escaped. You nod while your pursed lips dig into his cheek, essentially nuzzling your face against his. He jostles you to make sure you're listening. "We'll just have to be extra careful next time. Gotta learn to keep the condom on."

[maxwell-grant]

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural  peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

[munsonsreputation]

the tiger

steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: [5.4K]

warnings: warnings: semi proof-read, no use of y/n, established relationship, reader has *secret survival skills,* k!lling the guards who are attacking stevie + friends, fire, mentions of blood and death (don't worry it ends with fluff <3), (partly inspired by 'dot' in fargo s5)

Summary: Thrusted into the unknown of the Upside Down and otherworldly creatures that came with it, you finally had a reason to let the tiger out of its cage and to everyone’s surprise they never thought you had it in you to save their lives and the world.

“You have five fucking seconds to tell me where they’re coming from!”

Your voice clamored vociferously, standing above one of the obviously now dead guards that had been tracking your boyfriend and his friends around Star Court for god knows how long.

Had Steve not left the stupid walkie talkie on, you wouldn’t have heard the beseeching cries and shouts that had rung through the device while you were sitting at home having a day to yourself as you waited for him to clock out of work.

The second you heard the code red, your fight or flight activated, hopping onto the channel as you tried to get filled in on what was happening. Perhaps a robbery or even a lockdown, but what you didn’t expect was to hear your boyfriend tell you that there was a secret Russian Base under Star Court and the girl he babysat was now their prime target.

They were coming for the ones you loved and you’d be damned if they even laid a finger on any of them, let alone the love of your life.

You were a woman of many skills: you knew how to cook up a good roast dinner, could play a few songs on the piano if you tried hard enough, and you even knew how to hot wire a car in case of emergencies.

But you were also a woman with many tricks up her sleeves: guns hidden in the floorboards, a deadly mean quick hand, and most of all a tiger that had been kept in its cage for too long and now the perfect time to set her free.

Steve’s mouth was held agape, staring up at you shellshocked and confused, as did everyone else. The last thing they expect was for you to throw yourself into danger with them, and most of all to see you with a gun in your hands ready to go to war—a war where one enemy's life was already taken.

“W—what….baby, what, I, h-how?” He stammered weakly, pulling himself to sit against the wall, limbs still aching after all the torment he endured.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was the drugs still in his system, making him see things. But sure enough, this was real life, and you just killed a man right before his eyes.

“Y-you just killed him.” He swallowed thickly, watching the floor pool with blood, which got progressively bigger, prompting everyone to scoot away.

You wrung your neck, lowering the gun to your side, nudging the corpse with your foot just to be sure he was really gone.

“He tried to kill you all first.” You defended, shaking your head at the scene, still in disbelief that this was the circumstances.

Time wasn’t on your side and clearly neither was the slim hallway they were hiding in. Despite everyone’s consternation, you knew it wasn’t the right time to explain any of this on your behalf. Every second counted, and you needed to get moving before the enemies zeroed in.

You stepped over to Steve, stooping down to his level, your eyes locked with his softly. Sympathy leaking from them knowing he went through hell, but your voice was a grim contrast that was needed for the moment.

“Look, you need to tell me where they’re coming from so I can help. I can’t get us to safety if I don’t know where they’re coming from. Tell me, Steve… now.”

You thumbed his chin mildly ordering him to focus on you and not the dead body on the ground.

His jaw trembling in your touch, eyes moving from side to side checking the halls.

“T—the back exits. We tried to get out but then we had to backtrack because that guy found us.” He gulped, hurtling his eyes to the body.

You took a deep breath, dragging his face back to you to begin surveying his injuries. His lip was busted open, dried blood coating the skin around his mouth and making a trail all the way down to his neck. The skin around his eye was swollen, a pale yellow settling against his tan skin that would surely turn all sorts of blue and purples.

“They did a number on you, huh?” You whispered, glancing down at his knuckles where fresh blood clung to the skin. He obviously put up a good fight before you arrived.

“But he finally won a fight! He knocked one of the guards out!” Dustin expressed, somehow still a little jubilant despite the mere fact that their lives were on the line.

You huffed out a weak laugh, dropping your hand from his face and turning to survey everyone else. Robin looked to sustain the same injuries as Steve yet a little less severe. Unlike Steve, she was still high on whatever drugs they had given her. You could tell by her dilated pupils alone.

For the most part, all the kids seemed to be in good shape physically. They showed no signs of injury, just sweat dripping down their foreheads and chests that were breathing heavily still disturbed up by the chaos.

But it was El whose pant leg was saturated with blood that instantly had you concerned. She sat with her back against the wall, weakly resting her head on Max’s shoulder while Mike clasped her hand. She looked about ready to drop, weak and drained of all her might.

“What happened to your leg?” You jutted your chin out, inching over to her and silently asking for permission, which she granted, and you swiftly tugged on the cuff of her jeans.

Lucas scratched his neck, face twisting when you exposed the gory laceration.

“A Demogorgon kinda attached itself to her and when we tried to get it off, it took some skin with it.”

“A demo what?” You asked bewildered, looking around at everyone for some sort of explanation that they clearly couldn’t give you right now.

“It’s basically the big evil creature that’s out to get El.” Will clarified, saving you from the technicalities of it all.

“But there’s also Demodogs and the Mind Flayer, which is out to get us…or actually, specifically El, right now,” Dustin reminded, as if you would know what any of that meant.

“I have so many questions,” you mumbled, eyes closing, trying to fathom the absurdity before opening them wide and taking a deep breath.

“But right now, I need to dress this wound before she bleeds out.”

Everyone agreed, moving close to get a good look but enough to give El space to breathe. You looked around, wondering who would best to stay on lookout while you were busy. Steve was obviously still rattled, and you were positive Robin nor Jonathan would be good with a gun, so you decided on Nancy.

She surprisingly knew a lot about guns, a suspicious amount to make you think she knew exactly how to use one.

“Can you use this?” You looked over at her, holding the weapon up as she nodded with confidence, holding her hand out for it.

“Watch both ways and if you see anyone, shoot until you’re sure they are dead.” You advised, handing it off to her before you crawled towards the dead guard.

They kept their eyes on you, observing you work the belt through the pant loops and take the pen from his shirt pocket, scurrying back to El. Contorting the belt into a loop around her leg, you fastened it tightly, apologizing under your breath when she whimpered, trying to keep her cries muted.

You tucked the excess leather around, taking a deep breath when you looked up at her after wedging the pen between the material and her skin. This part was always the worst, but it was for the greater good of her health.

“It’s gonna hurt, but I need to do this to make sure you don’t bleed out anymore than you already did, alright?”

She nodded, readying herself against the wall, closing her eyes tightly, reaching for Max’s hand and gripping it tightly You gave her a quiet countdown before beginning to twist. They all hushed her cries all while you didn’t stop until it was sheath-like, knowing it was the only way for the blood to clot and temporarily seal the wound.

“All done.” You patted her calf, dusting your hands and standing up.

With how much time you all had already wasted, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the guards found you in the only place they hadn’t searched. You had to think quick, walking over to the corpse and working the sling of the gun off his torso and draping it over yourself before you searched the rest of his pockets.

“Jonathan, here.” You shook a taser in the air, tossing it to him.

“Robin, this is for you.” A mace spray was put into her hands and the long distance aspect was going to be great.

“And baby, this is all yours.” You reached into your own back pocket where another gun was hidden, holding it out for him as he took it, inspecting the weapon and looking up at you surprised.

“Where did you even get this?” He gawked perplexed, somehow searching for answers instead of focusing on making it out alive to ask said questions when your lives weren’t on the line.

“It’s a long story, but I’ll catch you up when we make it out here, yeah?”

“What about us?” Dustin declared, arms held out wide wanting to get a super duper cool weapon like everyone else.

You reached around your waist, slipping off the walkie and tossing it at him. “Get on the emergency channel and give them our location and say there’s been a fire at Star Court and that we’re locked in.”

“A fire? Wouldn’t it be easier to just radio for Hop?” Max suggested, but you shook your head with a heavy sigh, giving everyone the unfortunate news that the easy way out wasn’t a possibility anymore.

“I called the station before I got here and Hop is nowhere to be found. The rest of the staff thought I was having a psychotic breakdown. I doubt they’re gonna believe Russians and some enormous creature are trying to take over Hawkins.”

Hope began to fade from their faces, but you knew you could get everyone out despite the odds—they just had to trust you.

“Look, I’m gonna lead and make sure it’s clear. When I say clear, I want you to run straight as fast as you can and when I say duck, you get down where you are and you do not move. Understood?”

They all nodded, beginning to move themselves off the ground, ready for your command. You led the pack, crouching low to hide behind walls peeking around the corner ensuring it was clear to which it was.

“Clear,” you whisper shouted, stepping out of the way and ushering all of them to keep moving, shuffling against the floors and doing their best to keep their movements fluid and quick.

“Duck,” you shouted a little louder, successfully making it to the main floor of the food court.

“I can hear them,” Erica muttered, eyes darting up, signaling that they were close by, and continuing to move would blow your cover.

“Give me something.” You mouthed, holding your palm out towards Lucas who speedily reached into his back pocked providing you with a slingshot and a small pebble.

“What are you doing?” Steve whispered.

“Causing a distraction and getting us back in the clear.” You murmured, attempting to get your aim just perfect.

Pulling the rubber band back, you held the rock securely, steering it towards the second floor, hoping it would reach far enough, only having one take. Before you could second guess yourself, you let it rip, watching the rock soar through the air, just barely making it over the railing and clanging against the metal, causing the shouts of the guards to echo in the empty mall.

With them distracted in the opposite direction, you gestured to everyone to stick close, needing to get as far away as possible.

“C’mon, follow me,” you whispered, crouching as you crawled toward the food court.

Steve followed closely behind you, gun cocked and ready to fire if there was a sudden attack, but his mind was clearly still trying to process everything in front of him.

“I can’t believe this is happening. Are you like a spy or something?” Steve hissed from behind you, causing you to turn your head over your shoulder, glaring at his outrageous question.

“No, I’m not a spy Steven.” You jeered, shaking your head before diverting your attention back in front of you to lead the pack.

“Then—then how do you know all about this stuff?” He argued still trying to keep his voice low despite the gnawing fear and uncertainty lingering in his mind.

You two had been together for quite sometime, and Steve figured he would have at least an inkling of knowledge that his girlfriend had the survival skills of a trained professional, let alone having the ability to kill someone cold blooded.

“I told you I was a girl scout when I was younger.” You retorted.

“Girl scouts sell cookies! They don’t know how to work guns or survive through a world takeover.” He remarked unbelievably.

Lucas who lurked too closely behind his beloved babysitter, nudged at his neck, eyes going wide as he spoke in defense of you.

“Are you really questioning her skills right now? She just killed that guard and saved our lives.” He argued, narrowing his eyes at Steve wondering how he could think this was the right moment to debate you.

Steve swallowed, shaking his head and catching up to you. “I’m sorry okay! I’m just confused and lost and—”

“Duck!” you shouted, pulling Steve's arm and throwing yourself onto the ground as gunfire started, screams and shouts ringing out as you covered your head and tried to shield yourself from any stray bullets.

“Oh, my god! We’re gonna die! We’re so gonna die!” Robin shouted, holding her hands over her ears, pinching her eyes shut tight, as if her last moments on Earth would take place any second.

“Robin shut up! You’re not helping!” Max scolded, clamping her hand over her mouth to keep her quiet as the gunshots slowly quieted and their voices faded.

“Stay here!” You demanded quietly, gesturing at all of them to stay low and close.

Listening in, the guards diverted towards the opposite direction, giving you all a moment to breathe and recoup for a few seconds.

Dustin looked over at El, quickly spitting out top secret information. “El can help, she has powers!”

At that point, you didn’t know what was real life and fantasy anymore. The lines were blurred and no matter how much you wanted to wake up and believe it was all just a surreal dream you knew their lives and yours were at stake for you to waste any time questioning the boy.

You sucked in a deep breath, eyeing the girl who sat weak and defeated, eyes communicating the want to help, but she physically couldn’t.

“She has a messed up leg. I doubt we want to put her in more danger by letting her use her… powers.” You reasoned with a sigh, passing her an understanding look. Everyone hopelessly agreed.

There was no time to waste and the best bet you had at escaping was eliminating as many of the enemies as you could. Tugging at the strap of the gun around your body, you quickly released the magazine, checking the bullets and debating your choices.

They watched you carefully, as if you were doing mental match before you clicked the magazine back into placed and nodded to yourself.

You glanced at everyone, beginning to brief them on the plan.

“In the meantime, call for help and everybody else stay here and do not move until I say clear. Got it?” You said, watched as Dustin picked up the walkie, whisper-shouting for help as everyone else nodded.

“W-What about me?” Steve gulped, eyes twinkling with a need to know how he could help—or it could’ve been the aftereffects of the drugs making him hallucinate.

You reached out, patting his cheek fondly despite the circumstances.

“Watch my back and don’t let me die.” You responded.

“Yeah, I can do that.” He nodded promptly, holding the gun into position, a little more confidently this time knowing he couldn’t let anything happen to you.

With no more time to spare, you scrambled off your feet, leaving them behind the protection of the counter whilst you stayed hidden behind a concrete pillar.

With the mess of debris on the floor, you stomped hard on a Coca-Cola can and kicked it away. The sound of aluminum screeching across the floors and grabbing the attention of the guards who you were trying to lure onto lower ground to be on your playing field.

Your friends winced at the sound, but they didn’t let out a peep, following your directions carefully. They listened intently, picking up a few voices from the top floor muttering as their footsteps pounded against with every step, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.

“Stay down.” You mouthed to them, giving them a final warning as you took a deep breath.

If you were correct, their blocking would be in a single file row, hoping to cover as much ground as they could and spread the gunfire as opposed to clumping up. You had to be stealthy and fast—and boy, were you good at that.

“Over here, assholes!”

Firing a single shot into the air, footsteps and shouts traveled down the broken escalators, bullets and gunfire echoed through the mall as you held your breath and braced yourself.

You kept the gun parallel to your shoulder, finger steady over the trigger as you ducked down and away from the pillar, moving left to right as you fired in quick sequences, watching as their bodies dropped in tandem with each bullet that pierced through them.

Steve couldn’t see any of the damage you had done with counter acting as an obstructed view, but he could see your every move. The curl of your lip and the squinting of your eyes as you moved across the floors smoothly, as if this wasn’t your first time.

If he didn’t know any better, he would think he was falling in love again.

“Holy shit!” Dustin exclaimed, immediately standing up when the gunfire came to a halt, forgetting that he was supposed to wait for your all clear.

“Bitch!” A gruff voice spat harshly, from the floor, a wounded guard who was inching towards his gun causing everyone else to scream panicked.

“Shit!” Lucas cursed, reaching for his friend’s arm to pull him down.

“Get down, you dumbass!” Max added, tugging harshly at his leg, until he fall on top of their bodies causing groans.

“Relax!” you shouted, firing off a single bullet—your last one, as you finally stood up straight.

“Now he’s dead.” You said, letting your chest fall with a relieved breath as you made your way over to the scene, nudging the guard with your foot once more just to be sure he was decimated.

Slowly your friends creeped up from their hiding spot, mouths falling open and foreheads creasing with disbelief as the guards laid lifeless as if it wasn’t a fair fight. You were unharmed, in perfectly mint condition, gesturing your friends to come out while you made your rounds and seized the weapons from the dead.

“So this mind flayer thing that after El…” You huffed, bending down to flip over a guard and remove his rifle from his body.

“How do we kill it?” You asked, hurling the empty gun away from your body and replacing it with the new one.

Your question fell on deaf ears, as they were too caught in trying to process what the hell just happened, and the fact that you were acting so normal about it.

“Are we really skipping over the fact that there’s about a dozen dead Russian spies laying on the ground right now, that you killed?” Mike finally broke the silence, threading his hands through his hair trying not to throw up at the scene.

You glanced back at them, still rummaging through the pockets and creating a pile of weapons for them to pick through and use.

“Yes, I killed them.” You rolled your eyes, standing up straight and crossing your arms over your chest. “Now can we move on and find a way out of here, because I’d really like to avoid another gunfight.”

“Fire. It doesn’t like heat.” Nancy replied hastily, ignoring her little brother’s attitude, as she went towards the pile, picking out her own weaponry knowing you were right.

“Okay, well, does anyone have any ideas?” You diverted your eyes towards everyone else, happy that at least Nancy was at least attempting to get into the right headspace.

“Is the professional killer really asking us?” Mike retorted crudely, looking you up and down as if you were supposed to solve every problem in the world.

“Oh my god, would you just stop!” You snapped back, prompting the rest of the kids to smack their friend over the head, chiding at his indifference.

“You need to stop being a smartass. She just saved your girlfriend’s life and all of our asses, too.” Erica retorted, shaking her head as she walked off, picking up a taser from the pile, and smirking down at it.

You closed your eyes tightly, fighting off a migraine that was surely going to take full effect soon, not having the patience to prepare yourself for a deadly monster commie battle on a Friday afternoon.

“Guy’s focus, we need to find a way to kill this thing and then get out,” Jonathan interjected, snapping everyone back into reality, beginning to brainstorm.

Steve’s eyes darted towards the top level of the hall, the bright red letters catching his attention, and soon enough the idea sparked like a light bulb.

“Babe…the Supercuts.” He spoke quickly, pointing upstairs as everyone else tried to put together what he was getting at.

“What?” You furrowed your brows, waiting for him to explain.

“Hairspray, it’s flammable, and they’ve gotta have like a gazillion cans in there, right?” He laughed half-heartedly, hoping he wasn’t just being a dingus.

A smile creeped onto your face, thankful that his obsession with his hair had another purpose.

“I never thought I’d say this, but you’re a genius, Harrington.” Robin sighed out with a weak laugh, running her hands through her hair as she walked in circles, waiting for you to give them directions.

“We’ll split up. One group will go get the hairsprays and the others will go find lighters.”

You and Steve raced up the broken escalator steps, with some of the kids following behind you both. While Nancy and Jonathan went off to find the fire source.

It was like an assembly line, you and Steve picking up boxes of the hairspray and sending it along as each kid passed it down to the ground floor, wanting to reduce the amount of trips taken up and down.

Jonathan and Nancy were able to find a few lighters hidden in the jackets of the guards, though they surely were disgusted with the thought of basically robbing the dead. Even Dustin and Erica managed to rip apart some of the concession stands, lugging out the propane tanks, knowing they would help tremendously if they wanted to burn the Mind Flayer to ash.

El, despite her injury, aided in opening the boxes of hairspray. Running a pocketknife along the taped seam and pouring out the bottles for easy access. It only took a couple of minutes before you all finished up with the task of gathering the materials and other helpful stuff that was scattered across the dirty mall floor, waiting for the game plan.

“How do we lure this thing in?” You caught your breath, brushing back your hair, hoping this supposed monster wasn’t too scary to handle.

“Blood, but I don’t think using El would be smart right now. She’s low on energy and her powers might not be as strong as they were before.”

Mike looked down at his girlfriend’s leg that was still in obvious pain as she apologetically smiled at everyone desperately wishing she could help.

You reassured her with a gentle nod, sticking your hand out towards her, asking for the pocketknife that she apprehensively handed over to you, well aware of what you were going to use it for.

Holding it in your dominant hand, you held your breath, ready to slice through the palm of your opposite hand.

“What are you doing?” Steve’s eyes widened, immediately grabbing your wrist and stopping you.

You shook your head at him obliviously, trying to wiggle out of his grasp.

“What does it look like? I’m going to lure him in.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m going to let my girlfriend be the bait for this monster.”

“Steve, I’m going to be fin—”

“Look as much as this lovers quarrel is a bit entertaining and slightly endearing, we have very little time left and if we don’t get a head start on killing this thing, then there’s no way in hell any of us is making it out of here alive.” Dustin interrupted, tapping his foot on the ground and holding up his wristwatch.

You sighed, relaxing in Steve’s hold. Your eyes softening as he met yours doubtfully not wanting to put you in danger more than you already had. But deep inside, you and Steve both knew that the best bet of getting out alive was letting you take the lead, and you needed him to trust you.

“Let me do this, please? You’re always playing hero and fixing everything. Let me take over for once okay? I trust that you won’t let anything happen to me, so if you see me struggling, I give you full permission to step in. But please, just let me have a go first.”

You brows pulled together, attempting to get through to him despite understanding his justified resistance.

Shutting his eyes tightly, and letting out a deep breath, his fingertips loosened over your wrists before he nodded and looked at you once more.

“F-fine, okay! But the second, I don’t feel comfortable, I’m stepping in and no one better stop me.” He turned around, pointing a stern finger at everyone else who nodded without a second thought.

“Let’s get this rodeo on the road.”

The kids were instructed to move to higher ground, none of you wanting them to be harmed in the crossfire to come. They were equipped with a few bottles of hairspray, lighters, and duct tape to create their own version of a hybrid flamethrower-molotov that they would chuck down at the Mind Flayer.

Robin, Nancy, and Jonathan were behind the same Orange Julius counter that shielded them a short while ago, while Steve insisted that he stick a few feet closer to you but still hidden behind the concrete planters.

There was no time to die.

Sucking in a deep breath and holding it, you slide the knife across your palm, watching as the blood began to pool and your arm started to tremor.

“Come and get me you asshole!” You shouted, wincing while you held your arm out, attempting to lure the monster in with the smell of your blood.

It came like a rolling thunder from a distance, a loud roar crushing through your eardrums causing you to drop the knife, bending down to pick up your gun while the mall lights began to flicker and the deafening screeches came closer before the glass shattered above you.

“Fuck,” you grimaced, throwing yourself onto the ground, clutching your arms around your head, attempting to shield yourself from the falling debris.

But the glass was quickly the least of your worries with the sight of a subhuman creature stomping towards you. It looked beyond barbaric, mottled skin of some sort dripping with an icky substance as its razor blade like mouth opened and resounded something frightful in the air.

You had to kill it…or at least try.

Struggling to grip the gun tightly with your injured hand, you did what you could, firing multiple shots into the mouth of the creature, watching as it shrieked sharply and its legs jerked into the air. But despite not letting up on the trigger, the monster didn’t seem phased, still stalking its way towards you and running out of bullets you knew you didn’t have enough time to reload the magazine.

“Fire!” you shouted, throwing the gun away and crawling towards safety where Steve was holding a hand out to you.

“Come on!” Steve yelled, rushing out into the open without thinking, tightly grabbing your hands and essentially pulling you across the floors before the fire could swallow you whole.

You could feel the heat just a few feet away, the mixture of the flamethrower-molotovs combined with the gunfire being set off created an infero that popped and sizzled away at the monster with each cry resulting in a limb being weakened and dropping to the ground.

While you were too busy watching the scene in front of you, Steve was more worried about you, just nearly escaping a death trap that he would have never forgiven himself for. His back hit a stop, sliding down the wall as he wrapped his arms around your frame, shielding you from the wreckage as the monster’s cries slowly died out with the heat burning it to ash.

“We need to go!” a voice yelled from the top floor, the children racing down the escalator steps with El being carried out by Max and Mike.

“This place is going to burn down, let’s go!” Robin slid out from behind the counter towards you and Steve, tugging the both of you up, before running towards the nearest exit.

“I got you, baby. Come on.” Steve whispered, hauling your body into his arms, hurrying towards the doors where Jonathan and Nancy held it open, waving their hands and shouting for you both to hurry.

His footsteps didn’t halt against the pavements, wanting to get as far away as he possibly could, worried the Mind Flayer would somehow survive the blazes and come back for you now that you were the new target. Running across the street, they all collapsed onto the ground, eyes widening as the entire mall became engulfed in flames and sirens began ringing through the open air.

Steve managed to set you down on a patch of dying grass, hands traveling across your clothing and skin, trying to make sure you weren’t hurt.

“Are you okay? Did that thing hurt you anywhere? Talk to me, c’mon.” He pleaded, clutching your cheeks in his hands.

Your lips push out harsh breaths, eyes filling with tears as you coughed out roughly.

“I—I’m fine,” you whispered, swallowing through the dryness in your throat.

“Just a little cut…see?” You managed to crack a joke, weakly holding your bloodied hand up as you blinked and the tears flowed down your cheeks.

Steve huffed out a wobbly chuckle, shaking his head at you before kissing your lips, not minding the sting in his open wound, focused on the relief that you made it out alive. You kissed back passionately, not knowing what you’d do with yourself if you found out Steve or any of your friends were hurt badly, let alone killed in Star Court.

The sirens got closer, a helicopter radioing in from above you, causing you both to pull away and look up at the flashing lights with soldiers being airlifted down.

Everything was going to be ok.

“You’re going to tell me how you’re so good at saving my ass and killing, right?” He asked, diverting his eyes back to yours twinkling with a slight bit of tease.

“As long as you tell me everything about this Upside Down crap?” You replied, with a languid push on his chest not caring about the bloody stain you left on his Scoops uniform.

“Promise.” He nodded with a grin, pulling you in for another kiss that drowned out the sounds of the emergency personnel attempting to get to you both.

They just had no idea…you were for real, a tiger.

💌 reblogs, tags, comments, + likes are greatly appreciated! leave a comment and let me know if want to be added to my taglist!! 💌

a/n: i'm back bitches!!! happy fall and im so sorry for keeping you all waiting since FOREVER! I hope you guys like this one and thanks for sticking around--it means the world to me 🥹💘✨

taglist: @translatemunson @kennedy-brooke @manda-panda-monium @tvserie-s-world @givemeth @steveharringtonswife @astolenkiss @loving-and-dreaming @awkotaco24 @engenelxver @elfiaaaa @pbs-theundeadmaggot @johnricharddeacy @gaysludge @keerysfolklore @micheledawn1975 @ihatepeanutss @bakugouswh0r3

[mysunshinetemptress]

In The Moonlight

Leah Williamson x singer!reader warnings: None except shitty writing, fluff

A grin stretched across your face, wide enough to rival the jet lag currently waging war in your head. Two world tours back to back had been a whirlwind, exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure, Social media detox was the doctor's orders, a chance to reconnect with the real world however it was about to get a small pause with the absurdity of the TikTok trend.

Here you were, the hottest pop star on the planet, about to participate in a goofy social media challenge inspired by a goofy song from a sitcom.

You had stumbled upon a hilarious trend, people were reenacting the iconic scene from Modern Family where Dylan serenades Haley with his...interestingly phrased song, "In the Moonlight (Do Me)," and passing it off as their own in front of their family and friends. Laughter bubbled up in your chest as you watched one particularly enthusiastic boy singing the suggestive lyrics much to his parent's disgust and surprise.

"Right," you declared, voice thick with amusement, as you spoke into the phone"I'm breaking my social media blackout for this because I can't help but take part in this trend."

With a mischievous glint in your eyes, you grabbed your phone heading to the living room where Leah and a few of your family and friends have gathered for the barbecue. "hey guys can I have your attention for a quick second, please..I know I'm supposed to be on a break but, I can't get this new song out of my head and I need your opinion on it, I actually think it might work for a single."

A collective groan went up from the assembled group. They knew your "work" mode well, and it usually involved long nights in the studio, not impromptu living room performances. But Leah, ever the supportive girlfriend, flashed a smile.

"Alright, Elvis," she said, amusement dancing in her eyes. "Hit us with this 'new song.'"

Taking a dramatic breath, you check the tuning of your guitar, "It's eh, well you all know who it's about, the same person as all my other songs..it's called In the Moonlight"

The first strum of your guitar sent a hush over the room. They expected the usual pop magic, the infectious energy that had propelled you to superstardom. Instead, your voice crooned out the opening lines of Dylan's "song" with a hilariously exaggerated earnestness.

"The stars are falling from the sky, and you're the reason why. The moon is shining on your face, and I think it's found its place."

Laughter erupted as you finished the first verse, shattering the stunned silence. Your face turned crimson, but you held your pose, trying to maintain a serious expression as you began the chorus.

"Cause maybe, baby, I just want to do you, do you, do you want to do me, do me, underneath the moonlight, moonlight."

Your friends began to laugh silently as Leah's parents and your parents looked on horrified.

"And now we're hiding in my car, I let you see my scars, escape the dark for just one night, your heart makes me explode with light."

Leah snorted, trying to stifle a laugh. Your family exchanged bewildered glances.

"Baby, maybe, Maybe I will steal you, steal you just so I can feel you, feel you, maybe that will heal you, heal you on the inside."

The last note of your "song" died down, replaced by the deafening sound of crickets...or at least, it felt that way. Your family and friends stared at you, mouths agape, the only sound a choked cough from Leah's dad.

The tension broke as Leah doubled over, tears streaming down her face. "Oh my god," she gasped between laughs, "that was amazing! You had them fooled for a good minute there!"

Slowly, the rest of the room caught on. Laughter erupted, first in hesitant chuckles, then in full-blown roars. Even Leah's parents faces still flushed with surprise, couldn't help but crack a smile.

Your parents, still trying to process the experience, shot you a look that mingled amusement with a hint of disapproval. "Honey," your mom began cautiously, "that wasn't exactly...subtle, was it?"

You grinned sheepishly. "Maybe not," you admitted. "But you gotta admit, the reactions were priceless!"

Leah walked over, shaking her head and trying to hide a smile. "You're a menace," she said, giving you a playful shove.

You posted the video a short while later breaking the internet once again. The next morning, your phone was buzzing with notifications. Fans everywhere were recreating your video. You were trending again only this time not because of your tour.

Leah smiled hugging you from behind the next morning "You know I love you and all the wonderful songs you write about me, us, our relationship, but please promise me you will never write anything like that."

Leah smiled hugging you from behind the next morning "You know I love you and all the wonderful songs you write about me, us, and our relationship, but please promise me you will never write anything like that." You laughed turning in her arms "I love you too much to write a song just about your body and my wants for it, no I'll write about you, your soul and sometimes when I feel extra fruity then I'll write about your body and my wants for it no my needs for it."

Leah pulled you in closer kissing you softly "And I'll be your number one listener."

[verstarppen]

pairing; lando norris x fem! star wars actress! reader [ no faceclaim ] a/n; sorry for not posting i was planning the funeral for max's winning streak and mourning please excuse me ALSO THANK YOU FOR 250 FOLLOWERS I WOULD DIE FOR YOU ALL [ series masterlist ]

liked by alex_albon, oscarpiastri, danielricciardo and 983,212 others

yndeathtrooper escaped the after party for a walk

view all 277,322 comments

spookyscaryscuderia the only people on earth who will leave THE EMMYS for a CHICKEN WRAP

alex_albon My invite didn't arrive it's fine guys

danielricciardo Mine neither yndeathtrooper pay the bill alex_albon YOU'RE A MILLIONAIRE yndeathtrooper BITCH YOU TOO

astongoatin i'm obsessed with them help me

verstappler DAMN IT the after party pics would've gone hard

monte_carlos_55 live laugh love y/nlando

liked by yn.jpg, oscarpiastri, danielricciardo and 667,389 others

lando.jpg january

view all 238,982 comments

oscarpiastri Oh the honor of being on a lando.jpg post

lando.jpg enjoy your 15 minutes of fame, mate

haas_shaker THE CAMERA PERSON???

sunbathepapaya the note :((((((((

wafflemango I can't believe I lived to witness Y/nlando make cookies live, what a time to be alive

maxmaxmaxsuper When was this?? What happened?? wafflemango Powder fight, choking on batter, Lando cut his finger THROUGH a strawberry, the oven gave out and they had to call the owner of the guest house because it wouldn't turn on. BUT THEY SURVIVED and apparently it tasted good maxmaxmaxsuper I'm convinced these people are not real

481_landoscar Everyone please pray for Oscar Piastri. He's not dead, just third wheeling.

liked by landonorris, danielricciardo, pascalispunk and 4,592,102 others

starwars Something is coming. Something dark.

Meet # MorganElsbeth , # ShinHati and  # HeraSyndulla. Experience the two-episode premiere of @ AhsokaOfficial, a Star Wars Original series, streaming August 23 only on @ DisneyPlus.

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pearlyricciardo ok but is y/n in those two episodes because im not watching otherwise

loleclerc y/n and lando did more marketing for this than any official account 💀💀

danielricciardo But will you be watching them with the star of the show? That's what I thought.

yndeathtrooper holy shit you're watching ahsoka with lars mikkelsen? danielricciardo I wish.

liked by yndeathtrooper, oscarpiastri, landonorris and 281,322 others

mclaren Not long now, boys.⏳

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yndeathtrooper ay who's the guy on the right he's kinda cute

landonorris did you see this in a mirror like?? yndeathtrooper who are you

bellanorris CAN'T WAIT

sugarussell LET'S GO BOYS

stappenlover lando first win this year i'm calling it

liked by yn.jpg, lando.jpg, maxverstappen1 and 119,902 others

daniel3.jpg Took my kids shopping

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yn.jpg thank you father

daniel3.jpg Please don't call me that lando.jpg ur daughter calls me daddy too daniel3.jpg Why would you tell me this

maxverstappen1 Did you get me the yogurt

yn.jpg yes sir 🫡 lando.jpg don't """"sir"""" this loser maxverstappen1 You can repeat that after you pass me yn.jpg LMAOOOOOOO

liked by georgerussell63, oscarpiastri, mclaren and 1,808,644 others

yndeathtrooper bye cool hotel sorry for the broken headboard

view all 987,555 comments

goosestappen you broke what

typicallyleclerc YOU CAN'T WATERBOARD THIS INFORMATION OUT OF ME Y'ALL ARE STRONGER FR

chewie_gum mOOOM Y/N AND LANDO ARE BEING WILD ON SOCIAL MEDIA AGAIN

solorgana GET IT GET IT GET IT

landonorris i am speed

yndeathtroopers you're so funny landonorris i know mclaren We wish you were. landonorris what the fuck

pic credits: instagram and pinterest

taglist: @justdreamersdream @cha-hot @dl-yum @minkyungseokie @allywthsr (taglist is open!)

[revelboo]

revel i really love how everything you wrote is connected to eachother in some way its actually so satisfying to read from the very first post and read from there! feels like seeing the bigger picture!

I try to connect the IDW fics or TFP fics to each other when possible, because it makes it more fun for me. This one is a bit earlier than intended, but the reblog tags for the last Jazz bit were killing me 😭

Over It Now Pt 9

IDW Jazz x Reader

• Tracking your passage through the house, his optics follow as lights come on, go out until you reach your bedroom and then the house is dark and silent, leaving him with his thoughts. With his oldest and truest companion, self loathing. Your anger spreading like poison through him as he walks to sit under that ancient pin oak in your yard near your window, head tipped back to look at the hints of stars through the leaves and trying to remember before the war. Back when his smile hadn’t been just a convenient mask to hide behind, he’d been a musician. A singer. He’d been happy then, but it’s been a long time since he was that bot. Sometimes it feels like the memory of a ghost, a life that couldn’t possibly be his. Optics shuttering behind his visor, he tries to picture the street, busy with Cybertronians going about their day. The weight of an instrument in his hands, servos dancing over chords.

• Furious with Jazz and yourself, you lay there in the dark and stare at the ceiling. Wondering why you let him get under your skin when you know the likely outcome. If everything is a game to him, then getting close or allowing him close is only going to hurt you in the end. You know that. So why does that crooked little smile keep slipping into your head? You’re angriest because of how you’d felt when he’d held you like that, safe, precious, like you mattered and it hadn’t been real. Because you’re dumb enough to play right into his little game. At first, the sound is so low you almost miss it. Something aside from the hum of the ceiling fan. Singing, the sound so achingly lonely even as the words mean nothing to you. Sliding out of bed, you limp to the window and peek out through the blinds, spotting the glow of Jazz’s visor beneath the tree, his biolights faintly limning his frame. He’s making that bittersweet sound and even if you don’t understand the language, it’s so full of yearning that it hurts.

• It’s not the sort of songs he’d sang on the streets of Iacon or Praxus, something new. Pouring all the poison in him out into the quiet night, all the things he can’t say out loud. The hurt, the loneliness, and the need for someone to see him, to see past the shiny, smiling veneer and realize that no, he’s not okay. Hasn’t been for a long time. The song sinks its claws into him, a stream of longing and grief, every word a new chain pulling him down with their weight. Because no one really sees him. They never have. Their needs forging him into this so he can do what needs to be done. No matter the cost. A good little spy smiling instead of screaming. The touch of a little hand on his ped breaks him from the song, voice faltering. And you’re right there, head down. Crying as you lean on your crutches, crying for him because he can’t and no one else will.

• You can’t stop crying, because that song is a living thing twisting inside you, all sweetness and barbed wire. This is something real, not a lie and it hurts more than a song should. Then he’s leaning forward, a servo tipping your chin up and then sliding over your cheek. “Sorry, doll. Didn’t mean to wake you,” he says voice low, big hand outstretched like he wants to pick you up, pull you into him again. But hesitating. And you grab onto his servos, letting your crutches fall as he catches you, lifts you to cradle against him, big hands tucking your little frame against the warm mesh of his neck. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to do this anymore.” Pressing your face against him, you’re not sure what he means by that. Maybe not lying. Maybe being real. But maybe you can help him figure it out.

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[maidenvault]

Okay so, Crosshair’s hand.

Has anyone pointed this out? When Crosshair kills Nolan, he doesn't use his shooting hand.

He uses his left. Just as he very significantly has to in the series finale.

I don't know if the writers knew as far back as "The Outpost" that Crosshair was going to lose the use of his shooting hand and by extension everything he believed made him strong, a "superior" clone, and safe from being discarded when he was kind of fascism-pilled. But it feels extra significant in retrospect that his first action taken against the Empire is not done with the hand associated with the terrible things he did as an Imperial sniper. And it's after he just got a difficult lesson about how his own personal strength and skills aren't enough to protect him - he was saved twice by Mayday, then possibly only survived through the night because he wouldn't leave him behind and could share his body heat. He may be using his left hand when he shoots Nolan because his other arm is tired from supporting Mayday all the way back, which only adds to the symbolic touch I love that Mayday is using his rifle as a crutch to help him walk as well (and of course, he's at close range so quite meaningfully Crosshair doesn't use the rifle to shoot here either). It all supports the idea of this as the first huge moment of transformation for Crosshair when he's finally turning his fire on the real enemy out of a desire to protect others, however futile and too late it is in this particular situation.

Going back and noticing this really reinforced for me that Crosshair's hand injury probably isn't just meant as a manifestation of his trauma related to Tantiss. It would make sense considering it's his shooting hand that it also has something to do with his inner conflict regarding his changed relationship with violence and killing.

The Batch were introduced as these stereotypically macho soldier characters, an impression that's softened a little as early as the pilot of TBB but still distinguishes them a little from other clones. In a kind of funny way you can look at the whole series as being about these guys who were only brought up to fight gradually discovering and finding peace with their more traditionally feminine sides - literally because of Omega, a female version of themselves who shows them the possibilities of being a family and living for others instead of for violence.

For Crosshair this journey is much more difficult and like a painful rebirth than it is for anyone else because being a soldier was so much of his identity. He's always been the one to most pointedly distinguish his squad from regs because of their "superior" traits that he thinks will make the Empire value them, and he clearly internalized the way the Kaminoans only care about clones as weapons to be used in war. And it all betrays how little value Crosshair actually believes he has deep down. It was easy to go into S3 being especially worried about his fate because he's believed so long that he's not good for anything but fighting and he's the character it was the hardest to imagine adjusting to a different life.

But in retrospect, it was stupid to think they'd let him off that easy and of course the whole point is that it takes a lot to get him there. What exactly he went through on Tantiss beyond the electroshock torture we've seen is never delved into but personally, I think being a soldier is something that's poisoned for Crosshair after he becomes a victim of the Empire himself and subject to their attempts at reconditioning. He's not psychologically able to be that person anymore, but for a long time is still trying to largely rely on himself and his own strength. He tries to sacrifice himself for others because he's still holding onto that part of himself in a way.

But for once in Star Wars we've gotten a fully realized redemption arc showing that sometimes what's harder than giving your life in a redemptive way is to actually have to figure out how to live with the bad things you've done and be better. Some of the people Crosshair hurt were his family, and he has to learn he can only make things better by being there for them. He has to learn that he actually can survive and figure out a way forward from his life as a soldier if he lets himself rely on them, just like he only survived Barton IV with help from Mayday. As @moonstrider9904 explains so well in this post, that is what's so important about Crosshair losing the hand and making that final shot to save Omega with Hunter's support. Symbolically he's had that toxic part of himself actually cut off and it's the final, most painful part of his rebirth. But because of that he's forced to find that he can live on without it, that he's surrounded by people who love and believe in him anyway, and that having superhuman skills as a killer was never what gave him worth.

No, having his shooting hand cut off doesn't "fix" anything or mean that Crosshair is healed. He's probably only begun to recover from everything he's been through. But all we really need to see is that he's firmly found his place as part of a family instead of a squad, and he's not going to be alone as he deals with all of that.