#made that nothing character much better than it should have been

[emeraldthelynx]

Ready for a long post about this stuff?

-Sonic 06

The potential is there, it's just buried beneath the game attempting to soft-reboot the Sonic franchise. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Shadow's and Silver's stories, but Sonic's is a mess! I've hummed and hawed about ways to fix it, but I've never gotten anything concrete. The things I have figured out are that Elise needs to be kidnapped a total of once. She's okay going to Eggman to keep him from blowing up her kingdom, at the end, but only one kidnapping asides from that. I'm okay with Elise being human, give her a Sonic Unleashed human treatment and she'd fit right in. I do thing the affection between Sonic and Elise should be one-sided, with only Elise having feelings. I also misunderstood the thing about Elise's tears before I played the game and thought that only if they were tears of despair that they would release Iblis. So that solves the tears problem. I guess what it boils down to is making Elise more interesting and seeing what Sonic does because it's never really Sonic's story. It's what Sonic inspires other people to do.

-Sonic Forces

Approaching this with a little more approach to gameplay. Longer and more levels would do wonders, and also making three campaigns, one for Sonic, which is the first one you unlock, but he becomes a locked character after getting captured by Eggman, leaving you with the Rookie. There needs to be more Rookie levels before you encounter Sonic again, and you only get to control Classic Sonic after encountering him with either Sonic or the rookie, like how in Sonic Adventure you can unlock characters once you've interacted with them with a different one. I can't really think of anything wrong with the story, I made a post about Infinite a while back that explains why I think he's an interesting villain. I just think Forces needed 'more' and 'longer.'

-Digimon Frontier

This is such a small thing, but the animation. I want to watch it, but the animation makes it really, really hard to enjoy it.

-The Yu-gi-oh! DM filler arcs

I'm talking specifically about the Noa arc and the DOMA arc. Asides from the animation, what do you expect from Yugioh, the Noa arc needed to be put anywhere except the middle of Battle City, and maybe made a bit shorter. I also wished there was a little more playing around with the concept of them being in a Virtual World. There was so much wasted potential here. We even got a glimpse of what could have been with the Legendary Heroes arc, which set this whole thing up. More consequences, more interesting virtual world stuff, faster pacing, less Kaiba bros angst, I have thoughts. I also think that the cast of characters could have been cut down just a little. There's something there, and I haven't played around with it enough to really get what yet.

As for the DOMA arc, again, it needs to be shorter. I also think there should have been a more obvious effect of the Orichalcos card and stone, like, sensing evil, seeing the evil, a real visual effect. Something like the Dark Chips in the Megaman Battle Network series. I think Yami Yugi really should have had to wrestle with a dark influence, even before Yugi got taken. Yugi should have to deal with it too, but the darkness grips onto Yami more than him. The ending, the flashbacks, even the VS Yugi duel, it feels a bit lacklustre. We should have had cards with the characters trapped in them, like how Weevil said that one infamous card was Yugi. It would be a chase for the cards, and the cards could be used against them. The ending, what was with Yami Yugi just casually sealing the Leviathan into his body what was up with that- Ahem. Leviathan's beat, Dartz's beat. With Dartz' beat, the Leviathan does not have the power it did. There should be a speech, again, like something from the Megaman Battle Network series about darkness and how it rests in peoples' hearts and cannot be erased. Much better than whatever was going on originally.

-Sonic Prime

The wasted potential! Know what we could of had? We could of had game Sonic, the real one, travelling to Sonic X, Archie Sonic, Sonic Boom ect. Even if there were copyright issues with that, they could have done so much better than just to make 'edgy world,' 'jungle world,' and 'pirate world.' Sonic's self-loathing and air-headedness throughout the series makes it hard to watch for me. Sonic, just isn't like that. If he made a mistake, he would try to fix it. He moves on from the past and into the future. He doesn't care out of neglect, he doesn't care because he's at peace with how he can't change what's been. As for Shadow having beef with him, easy. Sonic broke the world Shadow promised Maria to save. Also, yeah. Mention. Maria. The series also moved too quickly. It felt like watching a four-hour long movie, and that didn't make it fun to watch. More self-contained episodes and even a 'filler' episode or two to have character development would have made it nicer.

-CrossFusion in the Rockman.EXE anime

CrossFusion just seemed to push the Internet aspect of the series into the background, along with the NetNavis. I think a balance could have been found, but the Internet having an effect on the real world is such an important part of the concept of the series. CrossFusion and Dimensional Areas taking that into the real world defeated the purpose of that. CrossFusion is really cool, and it can be done correctly. The Beast+ series of the anime was really good at balancing the CrossFusion and the Internet stuff. There's a couple of other things that can make it better and make the Navis more prominent. Bickering. Having Rockman and Netto (Lan) talk during the battles, make comments about how the other's feeling, and even take over for each other when they need to. Synchronization too! I just wish it was more 'Netto and Rockman are sharing a body' and less 'Netto is wearing Rockman's armour.'

-The Rockman.EXE anime in general not talking about Hub

Hub (Saito) is so important to the bond between Lan and Megaman. There's a reason they can do things that other Navi/Operator duos can't, they're literately brothers! It's hinted at very strongly in the manga, but the anime doesn't even make a hint! And there were so. Many. Opportunities! A little extra Hikari twins would have done the series good.

-World of Light in Smash Bros Ultimate

When World of Light was announced, me and my siblings were ecstatic. We were hoping it would be like Subspace Emissary in Brawl. So, much to our disappointment, there was no real plot. Just give the story/adventure mode a plot in the next Smash Bros game, that's all I ask.

-The Digimon sequel films (Tri, 02: The Beginning)

These films felt, angsty. I haven't watched Kizuna, so I can't judge that right now, but I have watched most of Tri and 02 The Beginning. I have separate complaints about them both. Tri. felt like they were squeezing in more angst and worry than there should be. The Digimon should have been in the human world to start with, like the 02 epilogue. Dark Gennai was weird, I didn't understand the plot really, I didn't feel like there was a real antagonist because there were just so many things going on at once, and also? The girls were not really treated right. Ordinimon was straight-up naked. And Mei just felt like a self-insert.

That's also my complaint with 02: The Beginning. It's like the whole plot revolved around this one OC with new information that changed canon and had a fan Digimon that had power that would bring the 02 kids into everything. I can literately summarize it as 'The 02 kids meet a new Digidestined, Lui Ohwada. Turns out he was the first-ever Digidestined! Watch as the gang teams up with Lui to save the day!' Yeah, if this was a fanfiction, I get the feeling some people would get turned off from this description. There's also far too many flashbacks. To address the self-insert thing, I have seen it done well! Amazingly well! The only thing is that the self-insert/OC needs to adapt to the world, not the world adapt to them.

-IDW Sonic

I, don't like it. Without the Freedom Fighters, I don't think the writers know how to make the story. Amy, and multiple other female characters, feel like they've been shoehorned into Sally's role, and that goes for a lot of other characters. New characters are being made to fill the old characters' shoes, and I just really, really want some new, hero, male characters. There's too many girl characters. And Surge just feels like Ian Flynn really wanted a Bass-coded rival for Sonic so that makes Kit her Treble. I don't know how much is 'Sonic' and how much is 'new people in Sonic's world.' It just feels like everybody's trying to fill space that existed in the Archie comics, but didn't need to exist in the IDW ones.

-WandaVision

This one is kinda out of left field, but I did enjoy the show. (Probably because it was mostly episodic and not 'four hour long movie.') I think the ending should have been better. And also, the premise of 'Wanda is grieving and this is her therapy' and where did that one which lady come from? The concept was there, and I loved the early episodes a lot, but the later ones just feel into the modern Marvel trap.

-Pokemon Horizons

'I want to learn about Pokemon' and a lot of really cool family backstory and connections is not enough for me to like Liko. There's nothing to really make her interesting. And Roy is just 'I want to catch the shiny Rayquaza!' I also don't know how I feel about all the Pokemon staying out of their Pokeballs all the time. By doing that, the individual Pokemon's personalities become smothered in what I like to call 'character overload.' The show suffers from this a lot actually. There's just too much and too many. The latest season is shaping up to be a bit more interesting, a bit more like the older Pokemon, but there's something about Pokemon Horizons that just feels a bit empty. It's like they're wringing out the very last drops of what once was. The Pokemon company has had success in other shows like Twilight Wings and PokeToons. I just kinda want side stories and slice of life from the series now that Ash has retired. Again, the show just feels hollow.

-Sonic Frontiers

I've talked about this before! Here and here, Frontiers has the opposite problem as Forces. There's too little going into too much. Despite having the most open world of a Sonic game, Frontiers feels the most empty. Everything is kinda 'samey' and everything feels dead. From what I've heard about the original plot, (Sonic's friends loosing their memories and Sonic looses his own when he restores them) that makes it seem much more interesting. I also wish that the DLC didn't feel shoehorned into the end of the game. Let me put it this way; Forces made me get back into the Sonic series with such a passion that I wrote a whole AU that I'm saving and hoping someday to get it picked up by SEGA. (I know that's a big dream, but still.) And Frontiers... I didn't even care when my brother said he was selling his copy, the one I had played on.

To summarize a lot of this post, Sonic always seems to have a lot of lost potential, especially when the potential is right there.

[windcarvedlyre]

While I'm at it, have a compilation of depictions of Barbatos. We know Mondstadt's are inaccurate:

but it really takes the piss.

For reference, here's his canon stripper archon outfit as seen in the webtoon and a TCG card:

I'll assume the missing ring things in the last image are an error. And that the TCG looks different for actual Teyvat residents; it would leak sensitive information about gods otherwise. The only difference I can see in the TCG depiction is the wings look more like... actual wings, but gold-rimmed fabric is still either fused with or draped over them.

With that in mind:

Statues of the Seven

Robes cover everything but his arms and face

No adornments on his wings or chest

No fusion of wings and fabric; instead they float a small distance from his back, attached to nothing

No cecilia

'Gateway to Celestia' statue

Outfit shows his figure more, especially his legs

Drapey sash thing over one arm and spiraling around him

Chest adornment but no wing adornments

Wings attached to back; unclear if they're meant to be attached to the fabric there or go through it

No cecilia

Wind, Courage and Wings depiction 1

(aka the fairytale Amber gives us in the prologue)

Outfit halfway between the above statue's and the stripper one

Chest adornment (simplified), no wing adornments

Gold-trimmed fabric over his shoulders extends into points instead of fusing into his wings

Simplified version of right leg sock thing

Left leg bare, no teal marking

May also have the booty shorts

Right arm bare, left maybe sleeved all the way to torso

Body wrapped in sash, maybe more loosely than the main statue

Lower part of sash maybe draped around both wrists

Something (maybe the sash) trails off, green/teal and semi-transparent

Wings have teal tint

Cecilia with green leaves

Wind, Courage and Wings depiction 2

You know. The same book.

Sash gone

Almost his stripper outfit except:

Wings still teal and unadorned, now also transparent

Other inaccuracies from depiction 1 present (no gold trims or teal lights on most of the outfit, though the crop top thing has one now)

No 'tail'

Cecilia leaves still green

Dvalin's story

This is a visual accompanying an account from Venti himself; unsurprisingly it's much more accurate. Some of the discrepancies could be intentional simplifications for the cutscene, but maybe the fact the finer details still don't match has implications about the story's accuracy.

Still lacks many gold trims and teal lights

Teal markings not present

Wings look like inorganic extensions of his outfit's fabric again, albeit with a subtle teal gradient and strange zigzags

Wing adornments finally there but lack spikes for some reason

Bonus: 2021 birthday art

From the official twitter. Faithful to the webtoon design except:

Thin gold trims along borders that previously lacked them

Pattern inside hood

New notches in crop top thing

I'm unsure if this is an overly detailed version of him for fun or if we should consider this his true canon design. The TCG card doesn't really clarify except the neck might have a gold trim:

So maybe?

In conclusion, Mondstadt doesn't know what Barbatos looks like and we might not either. At best some sort of transition from dressing more like his previous form, which happens to have detached 'wings' like his Statues of the Seven:

to the way he dresses now could explain some but not all of the discrepancies. But it's very possible (and maybe aligns better with his character story) that he's been using his current outfit for god business the entire time and all of his depictions are wrong.

Maybe the real archon outfit was the friends we made along the way.

The one constant is they always look like Nameless Bard.

[trothplighted]

I was going through some of Rowling’s old interviews and came across one in 2004 where she spoke of Sirius:

“I am so proud of the fact that a character, whom I always liked very much, though he never appeared as much more than a brooding presence in the books, has gained a passionate fan-club.”

This wasn’t the only time she expressed surprise that Sirius became a fan favourite, and it’s honestly baffling to me??? He had an entire book named after and primarily revolving around him, and is canonically the closest thing to a parent that Harry, the protagonist of the series, ever had. Even if we disregard everything else we know about Sirius and his storyline, there’s no way in hell he wasn’t going to be popular. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that a character like that was specifically designed for fan service (I mean...he's hot, has a flying motorbike, and is literally named after a star, lol). It’s bizarre that Rowling seems to have had no idea, and that she believed he was / intended him to be nothing more than a “brooding presence” in the series – which is at any rate an appalling and deeply unsympathetic way to describe his trauma and depression.

It made me think of how there's such a major disconnect between authorial intent and authorial execution when it comes to his character as well, especially in Order of the Phoenix. Characters like Molly or Hermione call him irresponsible/reckless/immature, claim he confused Harry and James, that he treated Harry like a friend rather than a godson, that he was biased against Snape, etc. Rowling’s interviews confirm that she intended to characterize Sirius in such a way and that Hermione and Molly are meant to be viewed as her mouthpieces. But Sirius’s actual behavior and relationship with Harry does not correspond with any of this and his actions + dialogue are for the most part very reasonable and sympathetic. (There’s also Kreacher’s storyline, which made me dislike Sirius a lot when I was younger, but upon my reread comes across as almost entirely nonsensical, contradictory, and seems specifically designed to paint Sirius in a bad light to the point where he’s compared to VOLDEMORT of all people by Hermione - who, in the process of criticizing Sirius, dehumanizes house elves entirely by claiming that none of them are capable of individual morality or have any ethical agency of their own. It's frustrating because she's 100% right that house elves should be freed but the way she infantalizes them is...pretty shitty and not the way to go about it. But I digress.)

Rowling seems to have done a complete 180 degree turn on how Sirius is presented by the narrative between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, and I can’t really understand why.

I get the sense that the creation of Sirius’s character in particular was, at the very least, partly accidental on Rowling’s part. She didn’t expect him to blow up the way he did, and I get the sense that she doesn’t seem to have been thrilled by how much the early HP fandom liked/valorized him. There was an interview where she was asked if she liked him, and she said that she did, only to immediately list down all his alleged flaws and emphasize that “I do not think he was wholly wonderful” (which character in the series is wholly wonderful, lol? Sirius came across as a great deal better than most to me). There have been so many other interviews where she’s done the same thing despite the fact that Sirius's faults or perceived faults had absolutely nothing to do with the questions at hand. It’s such a startling contrast how she talks about pretty much everyone else from his generation, all of whom she seems considerably warmer and more sympathetic towards in varying degrees.

As I haven’t been back in the fandom for very long, this is the first time I’ve come across her interviews - I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into them or not. I wondered if you agree/disagree, as you’ve been in the fandom for much longer and I love all your metas about the series. Thanks :)

You’ve hit upon my personal Rage Point for the entire series, anon.

I want to start by pointing something out about Sirius and Kreacher, which is that in GoF Sirius tells Ron and Harry (and Hermione, though he brings it up to compliment her observational skills) that Crouch Sr.’s mistreatment of Winky is an indicator of his character. (“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”) This is, somehow, the same man who one book later is egregiously dismissive of and abusive toward his family’s house-elf, to the point that this dismissal causes his death (oh, and Albus blames him for dying, too.) Despite Sirius expressing two wildly different viewpoints from book to book, we’re intended to take that as his true self, as the authentic expression of his beliefs and position.

I’ve spoken before more than once about other drastic character shifts that happened as a result of the Three Year Summer, both as a writing break and as a paradigm shift in the notoriety of and ubiquity of the series thanks to the movies being released starting in 2001. I was in elementary and middle school while the books were being published, and OotP was the first book I remember seeing large-scale advertisement for in my school outside of a book fair - there was a big larger-than-life poster teasing the book cover with a release date during the summer to get us all hyped up for it. I’d obviously heard of Harry Potter before that, but that was the moment when the books went from “famous book series” to “cultural phenomenon,” at least in my mind. And I think that we can trace this shift in opinion on Sirius Black back to the Three Year Summer, too.

In my opinion it’s obvious that Joanne really liked Sirius, when she first developed him. I don’t think she’s telling the truth when she says she doesn’t think he’s wholly wonderful - when she first came up with him she absolutely did. He’s got pride of place as a Cool Character in all the ways she loves to lavish attention on someone. He’s set up with a phenomenal entrance in PS chapter one and then he spends all of PoA in the spotlight. He has a dramatic reveal of his true allegiances and his innocence, and he’s Harry’s best and most supportive parental figure throughout GoF who consistently gives good advice and who risks his own life and liberty to make sure his godson is safe. He considers coming back to England and living in a cave and eating rats to be his duty as a godfather, and while Harry feels responsible for his circumstances he’s always really clear that he (1. doesn’t care about the risks to his health and safety (2. will gladly sacrifice comfort and stability if it means being able to protect this boy (3. will not let Harry feel guilty.

These aren’t the actions of a man who confuses Harry with James - throughout GoF he continues to insist that his decisions are his own, made as an adult trying to parent and support a kid who desperately needs a stable presence in his life. Harry’s used to taking the blame for the actions of adults (my heart is still rent asunder by his expectation that Lupin is going to gaslight him about denying him the chance to face the boggart in their first DADA lesson) and he’s also used to feeling like he has to manage the emotional state of a household (see: all the times he plans out what to say or not to say to the Dursleys to get them to do what he wants), and Sirius doesn’t let him sink into either of those pits. He also prevents Harry from bottling up his feelings or concealing his distress, and never lies or twists the truth. He’s being very deliberately written as someone who serves as a positive role model and positive mentor figure for Harry, and then suddenly come OotP he’s moody and immature and subject to a number of very strange smear campaigns from characters the author confirms are intended to reflect her real opinions.

So… what happened, over the course of the Three Year Summer, to make her change her mind? We can’t ever know for sure, obviously, because Joanne hasn’t ever bothered to lay out how her feelings on each member of her cast changed and evolved, and she’s unlikely to do so at any point in the future because now when people talk to her they mostly talk to her about transphobia. But I have a theory.

See, between 1998 and 2003, the HMS Wolfstar set sail. While most of the seminal meta came out after OotP (see “The Case for R/S” as probably the one I and others my age are most familiar with as an introduction to the ship) and most of the really famous fanfics started trickling out around that time (The Shoebox Project started in 2004), there were fanfics before that point, a growing fan community, and a number of pieces of fanart and fancomics (check out the list of doujinshi in the linked Fanlore article, some of those date back to 2001). Edit: here is an archived humorous/gently snarky list of Wolfstar fanfic tropes created in 2002 - while I can’t personally remember the names of fics from before 2004 or so I want to point to this as evidence that there was an established fan community, even using the “WolfStar” name, prior to the publication of OotP.

Normally, I wouldn’t think that fanfic from prior to 2010 or so had much of anything to do with the author’s opinions on their work, because norms and fan culture around fanfic were much more focused around keeping these stories private and away from the prying eyes of The Powers That Be/TPTB.

I say normally, because Joanne was aware of fanfiction, and aware of fanfiction remarkably early in her career as a public figure.

Younger fans are almost certainly not going to know this, but one of the first real fandom divides in HP had to do with fanfiction, and specifically the question of how to treat fanfiction written by and for adults that featured sex scenes or other mature content. Since the books were children’s books (though there was an adult fandom since the start, especially online - the Harry Potter For Grown-Ups/HP4GU mailing list and its descendant communities still loom large in fan history as some of the early pillars of today’s digital scene) a lot of people didn’t know what to do or how to treat fanfic. This was also compounded by fanfic being a lot more subject to legal action or takedown notices - Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Anne McCaffrey all became infamous either for pursuing individual authors and archives until they took down their stories or instituting guidelines about what kinds of transformative works were acceptable, or both in McCaffrey’s case.

Rowling, however, was different. Rowling said that noncommercial fanfic was completely fine, that she wasn’t going to pursue any kind of legal action against fanfic authors, and that as long as adult-oriented fanfic was appropriately warned for and not shown to or targeted to children, she didn’t care if it existed.

This laid the groundwork for the founding of Fanfiction.net, for fanfic communities on LiveJournal, and eventually for Archive of our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works. In an era where legal disclaimers were common on fanfics as a mostly-useless attempt to prevent being shut down by IP holders, Rowling threw the doors open and democratized her stories in a way she - I would argue - ultimately came to regret.

I can’t prove that her sudden slander of Sirius was a result of latent unexamined homophobia and a desire for revenge against the fandom for daring to claim one of her favorite characters as a gay man. I can’t prove that his backstory of being kicked out of his house (for unspoken Family Drama reasons centering around him being filthy and disgraceful) only to be shoved back into it, or Trustworthy Adults suddenly painting him as dangerous to children and inherently irresponsible and reckless, or all of his trauma being ignored and painted over, or every scrap of his heroism being erased, has to do with Joanne deciding that if we’ve made him gay he shouldn’t get to be a character anymore.

I can’t prove it.

But I do believe it. I believe it because when you ask yourself “is this queercoded character being subjected to authorial homophobia”, suddenly everything about Sirius’s arc in OotP makes complete and total sense in the worst way possible. This is also why I think Tonks and Remus were paired off, why Tonks suddenly becomes more gender-conforming, and why Bill Weasley transforms into Normal Settled-Down Hetero William. It feels like her desperate attempts to take her characters and shove them back into a box that she controls. I don’t think she was at that point consciously and virulently homophobic, but I think her clear and evident discomfort with fans interpreting these characters who she wanted to be straight comes through in her writing.

I also believe it because she does the same thing to Albus, after his death. Someone who’s been uncomplicatedly heroic and praised by all parties and even used as her mouthpiece to pass judgment on Sirius suddenly becomes morally suspect and untrustworthy and shady and secretive, with enemies lining up as soon as he’s dead to slander him - and again, just like with Sirius, we’re meant to accept this as the correct version of events. He even confirms all of this to Harry himself in the King’s Cross afterlife. The old Albus can’t come to the phone right now, he’s dead, and only his critics remain. Coincidentally, Albus is of course the only confirmed gay character in the entire story. Funny how that works out, isn’t it?

I’ve been angry at her for 20 years for killing Sirius, and angrier still at her straightwashing efforts. I wouldn’t believe her if she said she wasn’t doing that, at this point.

It’s not as if I expected her to be a perfect ally as a center-left moderate cishet white woman in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I do think that Dumbledore being gay was revolutionary in a way that most modern audiences seriously fail to appreciate, but I wish she wasn’t so damned insistent that no one else could be queer in any way at any point. She’s also really evidently uncomfortable about any displays of affection between confirmed same-sex pairings - she was absolutely neurotic about the amount of physical contact between Mads Mikkelsen and Jude Law during FB3, to the point that she fought with David Yates about it. And her behavior contributed to the intense homophobia I and others experienced in our formative early years in fandom - no-slash mailing lists and archives, the immediate classification of all queer fanfic as inherently more mature or more sexual simply by virtue of having queer people in it, Wizards For Bush, etc. As a result, boycott or no boycott, I hope that Wolfstar is canon in the new series, I hope Mundungus stays the crossdressing icon that they are, I hope Tonks is canonically nonbinary, and I hope Joanne loses sleep over it.

[tiki-was-here]

Nacho Varga x “Adult” Streamer Reader

Word Count: Idk but it’s short

This was supposed to be a full fic but now I feel like it’s a poorly constructed character study to help get me back into the groove of writing. Last time I took a break I didn’t write for two whole years so let’s hope I stay focused

Ignacio Varga had money, sure. Power, to an extent. But none of it ever felt like his. He wasn't running things, he was just surviving. Day in, day out, playing puppet to men with guns and crooked grins. His father’s disappointment sat heavy on his chest, eating at the one part of him that hadn’t been swallowed up by this life.

It had been three days since the girls left. Or maybe five. He couldn’t tell anymore. They smoked too much, laughed too loud, but they didn’t ask questions—exactly the kind of distractions Nacho needed.

The condo was dark. A single lamp flickered in the corner, casting long shadows across the bare floor. Nacho sat in front of his laptop at the kitchen counter, shirtless, a bottle of something half-empty near his elbow.

He didn’t even know what he was looking for anymore. Porn didn’t hit the way it used to. It was all static now—moaning, forced grins and pixelated skin. An ad for a cam site popped up and he clicked it without even thinking. Getting a virus would be the least of his worries right now.

One particular stream caught his eye. Simple lighting. Clean room. You were there, talking to the camera, laughing softly at something someone had typed in chat before leaning closer to read another. Something about you made him click.

The preview was a minute long. It was mostly just you talking to people who'd probably been watching you for a while, sipping from something from a cup. He waited for the inevitable moment where you'd lean forward, offer a smirk, whisper something filthy, but it never came. Maybe that’s why he didn’t click away.

Then the timer ran out and a message popped up prompting him to create an account if he wanted to keep watching.

A few minutes later, his card was charged, and he was back in your stream.

Normally, Nacho didn’t give things like this more than a passing glance. But tonight, the silence was louder than usual, and something about the quiet in your voice,maybe the soft cadence of it, the way your eyes seemed to be filled with a light he hadnt seen in a long time,hooked into the place inside him he usually kept hidden.

He started planning his nights around your schedule, started tipping more. Sometimes two hundred, sometimes five. He didn’t ask for anything special in return, just wanted to hear you talk. To see that look on your face when you read his name.You always smiled when you saw it.

That fucking smile.

He never used the cam option of course. Not even when he’d worked up the courage to buy a private session with you. Safety played a big part in his decision, but in truth he didn’t want you to see how tired and worn he looked.

He caught himself thinking about you during runs. Counting time until your next stream. Checking his phone in the middle of deals. His house started collecting unopened takeout containers and dust, because he didn’t care to leave the laptop for long. He bought better headphones. Cleared his schedule on the nights you were on.

It felt good,safe.

It made him feel like someone was looking at him—not Nacho —but Ignacio. The scared kid who used to help his dad fix cars in a tiny garage that smelled like oil and metal. The kid who the world had aged faster than it should have.

But nothing good ever lasted long in Nacho’s world.

A call came one night while you were telling a story about your day. He let it ring twice before muting it. But then it rang again. And again. And again.

Nacho sighed and picked it up.

“Varga. Where the fuck you been?”

He didn't answer, just let out a scoff of slight annoyance.

“Got a drop. Tonight. You in or not?”

Nacho stared at the screen. You were laughing now, eyes crinkling just right, holding your drink up like a toast to the chat. He wanted to stay. God, he wanted to stay.

But that wasn’t how it worked. You could buy time in this life, but not freedom.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m in.”

[theoutcastrogue]

That would be a brilliant trajectory for Cassian's arc, and would make for a great story. But another terrible trajectory has been hinted, and it's not about luck running out, it's about mystical bullshit (he's Special! he has a Purpose! the Force sensed it!) and ugh, not again chosen ones with preordained destinies, please.

Rogue One was an okay film as a prequel (not worth it as a standalone, but of course that's not what it was for), and the really good part of it was the ending, and what made the ending really good was the dramatic irony: we, the audience, know very well the results of the protagonists' actions. They save the galaxy, or at least allow for the galaxy to be saved. But they do NOT know. They go to their deaths without having the slightest idea if the plan they gave their lives for will work out in the end, or if their sacrifice was for nothing. They literally transmit the schematics without knowing for sure if someone's out there, and spend their last moments looking at the sky and hoping.

And that's the point. We never know. We can and indeed should try to predict possible outcomes as best we can, and adjust actions accordingly, but many things are beyond our sight, and most things are beyond our control, and the future is unwritten. So we do what we can, and hope.

If the schematics had been intercepted (entirely plausible because there was a whole-ass space battle out there, it was bad), it would have been for nothing, from a practical standpoint. But that wouldn't make it wrong: ZERO shit gets done if we expect guarantees before doing anything, and presentism is a terrible way to measure the worth of past actions. So all the drama and moral weight (or heroism, if you insist) of Cassian's actions in Rogue One lies in the uncertainty. In not knowing for sure if this is the right path or what will come of it, and doing it anyway, to the bitter end. A Cassian who believes that this will magically work, or this is what he was "meant" to do all along, is a very different and much less interesting character, and his story has a lot less to tell us about our own and decidedly Force-less world.

Andor has been really good so far, orders of magnitude better than Rogue One, or any Star Wars film for that matter. (I have minor issues with the writers' ignorance or perhaps indifference re: urban warfare and such, but eh.). Cassian is a realistic and compelling rebel, with all the ups and downs, rights and wrongs, truths and lies, passions and doubts this should entail. And I think it would be a terrible letdown if they switch the gist of the character from "real everyday person, trying his best, and surviving all this time thanks to his comrades, his own grit, and sheer dumb luck" to "Special person mystically endowed by the universe with an important Purpose, and once said Purpose is fulfilled (in Rogue One) he will be allowed and indeed predestined to bravely die".

I sincerely hope that's not what they're doing. I hope the scene with the healer is just an awkward attempt to include the Force in the narrative, and won't become a whole THING, and will absolutely not affect Cassian's choices in the future. Because that will not only cheapen Andor, it will also ruin Cassian's role in Rogue One.

cassian "the only special thing about me is luck, and i've overplayed my hand already" andor getting out of every impossible situation he's ever been in and finally running out of luck on scarif. i need a minute.

[fictionadventurer]

3, 7, and 8?

3. Favorite musical artist / group you started listening to this year?

Did I listen to anyone new this year? I feel like there was someone significant.

I don't think this is who I'm thinking of, but when I was listening to the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes soundtrack, I tended to enjoy the Molly Tuttle songs that got thrown in.

7. Favorite actor of the year?

Wendell Corey in Holiday Affair made "the wrong guy" so kind and charming and likable. He should have gotten the girl!

8. Game of the year?

I played a bunch of cribbage in December, which was fun.

[dw-flagler]

In this post, I will attempt to calmly, reasonably, and in-a-good-faith-manner argue all the points raised by tumblr user @library-bat-girl in the following posts. I am starting a new thread so as not to further destroy the original poster, @skitterenjoyer's, tumblr notifications. Worm (+MHA) spoilers ahead. This will be a long post.

Firstly, I would like to apologize on the worm fandom's behalf. We will not engage in ableism of any kind. I sincerely hope that this was a singular incident and @skittersdrippygirlcock will be better about this in the future.

"MHA has better characters,"

My Hero Academia's primary achievement, I think, is managing to make many decently well rounded characters in a fairly short time-span. It certainly has very good visual character design, with easily memorable character designs, like Mina Ashido or Tsuyu Asui. Most of Class 1A is shown to be more than single-note gimmick characters. For a story with such a tight schedule, and only so much page real-estate, that's impressive! For instance, a character decidedly outside of the main cast, Fumikage Tokoyami, is shown to have more to his personality than "is an edgelord," showing a humility and friendliness that is highly against-type. This is very different than a lot of its peers, especially in Shonen manga, where side characters (and sometimes even main characters) are never more than their tropes (see Fairy Tale, One Punch Man*, The Seven Deadly Sins, or Black Clover). My Hero Academia does clear that bar, by making side characters little more than their tropes. This is to say nothing of the primary cast, who, again, is largely defined by tropes and easily slotted into standardized interchangeable Shonen roles. Rival, Love Interest, Rival but Nice About It. Additionally, MHA has an uncomfortably sexualized main cast, for one composed primarily of minors.

This is compared to Worm, in which many characters are fully realized and could have been the protagonist (and often were in older drafts of the story, due to Worm's 10-year development hell). Every character that gets an interlude, and most that don't, all have fully realized interiority, traumas, and wants. In fact, this is one of the major themes of Worm. Every character, from the protagonist Taylor, to characters so minor they're seen only once (see Damsel of Distress, Dauntless), to major antagonists and monsters (see Jack Slash, Bonesaw) all have their own story, even if this is never shown on-screen. There are no "side characters" in the same manner as in My Hero Academia, because every character is a protagonist of their own story, and not in a trite "life is so beautiful" way.

Taylor isn't the center of the universe, there's an entire world outside of her 3-block bubble. The mechanism by which all characters get their superpowers means that the mere fact of having powers implies this about them. Even the seeming exceptions, aren't (see Alexandria, Garotte). Taylor is a good character. I don't even know how to elaborate on that. She just is. Worm does not have the character Minoru Mineta.

"a better plot,"

What... what is the plot of My Hero Academia? For the life of me, I can't seem to recall. I can tell you the general formula of most of the arcs for the first ~2/3rds of the story. Class 1A goes to do a hero high school thing, like do rescue training, or on-the-job training, or on-the-job-training, or on-the-job-training (they do it like 4 times for some reason), the League Of Villains shows up (even when it's seemingly not the league of villains it actually is the league of villains) they fight about it, the class beats all the villains, and Deku beats up strongest bad guy and also breaks his bones. Repeat step 1. But like. What's... the plot? The League of Villains is evil and wants to kill people and do bad stuff. They explicitly do not have greater motivations. There's generally themes of passing-on-to-the-new-generation, so there's Tomura Shigaraki as the arch nemesis to Izuku Midoriya, just as All Might's Nemesis is All For One. Eventually they fight a big fight about it and I stop reading because I find out about Worm. From what I understand (I have not read the conclusion) the series ends without addressing any long-running questions, wrapping up any character arcs, or concluding anything in a narratively satisfying manner. As if severely rushed.

Worm, there are maybe 15 main stories going on simultaneously, which are all tied into the final confrontation with Scion. The most obvious is Taylor's and the Undersiders' story, about taking over Brockton Bay and defeating Coil, which is a smaller part of Coil's story about taking over the bay, until their confrontation with him in arc 17, when it supersedes Coil's story, and then intersects with Cauldron's story, the Traveler's story, the Case 53s' stories, the Wards' story, all of it, in arcs 18-19. This is one example. A great deal of attention is spent making sure the reader knows that Taylor, the Undersiders, Coil, all of them, are bit players in a very large game. Despite this, it's never hard to follow, because Wildbow, while lacking some of the more flowery prose, manages extremely well at making his stories easy to understand.

"I feel like even people who like Worm can agree that Worm is not the most consistent piece of fiction ever written. The disjointed way it was written meant that emphasis was primarily put on 'What Wildbow thought was cool in the moment', [sic] and the story RADICALLY shifts gears every time a new arc starts."

What? Huh? Worm is extremely consistent. Like. 1.1 to E.x. It's, like. Not disjointed? Oh my god, are you talking about interludes? Is that what you mean? The interludes shift gears? Because that makes sense. It's one of the hardest things about worm, yeah. It's gripping! The interludes are a great idea to expand the world of worm, but the problem is that taylor's story is so intriguing that stepping away from it to focus on something else is hard, no matter how individually interesting. I want to read about taylor's escalation spiral, not the travelers! (As opposed to My Hero Academia having random escalation and de-escalation between arcs with no real explanation. We're reading about lives-on-the-line battles with child-slavers and then move to playing on a playground with little kids? Best I can think of is that this whiplash is intentional, but this is never communicated to the reader. Worm does not do this. Any de-escalation is met with the explicit understanding that this is merely a period of calm before things get even worse). Taylor's story wraps up in an extremely narratively satisfying fashion, following her story to its logical conclusion. There were so many ways it could have been avoided, but there was really only one way that it could have ended.

"better worldbuilding,"

This actually offends me. MHA could have had great world-building. It doesn't. Every potentially interesting bit of world-building is backpedaled out of or stopped before it could get anywhere. Or it's just never elaborated or expanded upon. Everyone having a superpower could have been cool, but the implications of this are nonexistent. The reasons for this having no real implications, that being the banning of quirks, also has implications that are also immediately backpedaled out of. It's been hundreds of years since our time, yet life is exactly the same. Nothing ever happens. Endeavor is a cool concept. I like Endeavor. his existence implies such interesting things about the world, how important hero ranking is to these people's lives, that he would create this horrific system of domestic abuse to try and get to the #1 spot. What does this say about this system of heroes that operates like a popularity contest? It could have said a lot. It says nothing. What does the League of Villains, a league of people who call themselves out-and-out villains, who base their ideology in opposing this system of heroes, say about society? Nothing. On purpose. Worm does something with this. One Punch Man does something with this. My Hero Academia puts it in the story, and lets it sit, unused, for a decade.

Worm has... unique world-building. Because it's both good and bad at the same time. Worm's #1 feature is its world. It's brilliant, full stop. Triggers, The Birdcage, the PRT, Exclusion Zones! Why does the status quo exist? what does it say about that society? What does it say about our society? Why hasn't society radically changed from how it is in our world? This is explained. This plays into the themes. The story wants to say something about this world, and so it does. There are characters whose stories explicitly delve into these themes that are set up in the worldbuilding, like Armsmaster, or Battery, or Bonesaw, or Coil, or Piggot or Alexandria or Taylor herself or Brian or Lisa or ANY OF THEM THEY ALL DO THIS. Sorry.

Anyway, the bad part is that the actual world is not well built (and is kind of racist). What's going on in Europe? There's a 3 blasphemies! a 3 what? never explained. What's going on in Asia, aside from Japan? China is a monarchy for some reason. Why? It's never elaborated on. India gets a little bit of elaboration, we're told its different but not how it's different. Wildbow uses machine translation wrong and names some guy caliph of dogs. This is like worm's #2 problem honestly (#1 is Amy). Wildbow tries to make the implication of a well thought out globe without actually making a well thought out globe.

"stronger themes,"

It really doesn't. As I said in the worldbuilding section, MHA makes a point out of not saying or doing anything. I don't know if editors made Horikoshi walk back the more ambitious story beats or what, but there are multiple points in the story where the author pretty much looks you directly in the eye and goes "This Story Isn't Saying Anything At All Even Though It Looked Like It Would. Lmao."

Worm has lots of themes. I think Armsmaster/Defiant's story is my favorite. His entire character arc (which is fully realized despite him being a background character for nearly the entire story) has a point to it. It says something. It's misanthropic and uplifting simultaneously, and manages to feel like it earns both. It's a shared theme with Bonesaw/Riley's story, explored in two different ways.

"Meanwhile MHA establishes an actual overall theme/message right from the start that expands and develops throughout the story. The worldbuilding is informed by the message, which informs the characters arcs and the people they become by the end of the story."

I notice that you never actually say what that message is. What is it? Like, for real. I'm not being confrontational or anything, like what is the message? Cuz' I can't think of one. My Hero Academia, at its very core, is a defense of the status quo. Much like its world-building, but much less forgivable, because it does do something new and unique with its world-building. MHA could have done some extremely interesting stuff with its early implicit critique of heroic society as shown with characters like Bakugo, or Shigaraki, or Endeavor, or Overhaul, or Midoriya himself! It just doesn't! It doesn't do stuff that Worm does do!

Worm does have a message. It has a lot of messages, actually, some that the author disagrees with somehow. Prison abolition, for one. We know Wildbow loves prison. Anyway, the big one is in the subtitle: doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Taylor's constant spiral of escalation, her dwindling attachments to her friends and greater focus on treating herself like a soldier is prevalent, and it is to be avoided. Taylor isn't a sin-eater. They don't exist. From what I remember, this is sort of explored in Deku's character arc for a short period of time, but much like everything else in MHA, it is backpedaled out of.

The funniest is "don't text and drive" though.

"Just on a basic level the way that the audience is meant to feel about Taylor oscillates wildly between being directed to think of her as a misunderstood victim of circumstance, or history's greatest monster."

That's kind of the point. Like. the audience isn't meant to look at Taylor the same way throughout the entire story. It's meant to change as she changes. Taylor's opinion of Taylor changes. The mistake here is saying it "oscillates wildly." it doesn't. It's a slow and steady change for the worse, as Taylor gets more violent and starts throwing away greater and greater parts of herself to become more like a robot and less like a person.

"But a bigger issue in general is tone. It's very focused on being dark and gritty and edgy, and it makes the mistake a lot of consciously edgy media does. IE: it thinks that all it has to do to be smart is be bleak and/or graphic. It doesn't really try to say anything, in fact it contradicts itself throughout the book as I mentioned before, it just throws in extremely graphic scenes and content periodically to remind the audience how fucked everything is."

Did you read the boys and think it was worm? What? It's not being smart when it's bleak or graphic? I actually personally like the endbringers or the slaughterhouse 9, and not because I like watching people suffer. These things exist for a reason. It's not being dark for the sake of being dark. The heroes could stop the slaughterhouse 9. We see that, when they almost stop the slaughterhouse 9 (it's explicitly shown that they are stopped from destroying the slaughterhouse 9). The question then becomes why don't they? It's a grim, brutal calculus, and one that wasn't worth it. That's the point. The Endbringers are different. It's not until arc 27 that they're really explained. You could either read them as a criticism of Eidolon or of ableism, honestly. I mean, it wasn't intentional, he didn't create them on purpose, he needed something to fight, because without that he's nothing. His powers are all he has.

"Worm spends so much time trying to be edgy that as with a lot of edgy media the edginess loses all impact quite quickly and becomes sort of cringe."

I don't really think so, but like. Okay. I don't think this is a reconcilable viewpoint (none of this is really but this especially), so like we're probably gonna have to agree to disagree. The only thing I can really think of as edgy for the sake of edginess is Amy's arc. But even that's not really true. It's meant to be an utterly avoidable tragedy that could never have been stopped because of the people involved. Much like Taylor, actually. Amy could have stepped back from the brink, but she didn't, because Amy could never have done that, and nobody else was willing/able to help. It's supposed to be a thing where you sit back and think of all the tiny ways this could have easily been avoided, but wasn't.

"When body horror happens it still has impact because it's not happening constantly."

I mean, I guess. But like. I never got desensitized to the body horror in Worm. It hit pretty consistently for me throughout. As opposed to MHA, where it was usually walked back by the end of every arc. I never felt much tension or suspense because it felt as if there weren't actual consequences. In Worm, when Brian was strung up on his nerves, it felt disgusting because I was fully aware Worm would explore the ripple effects of this. It felt entirely possible he would die there, or never recover, because Worm didn't pull its punches. MHA did. This is a matter of opinion. We'll just have to agree to disagree about it.

"But most importantly - you root for the heroes because the world actually seems like it's worth saving."

that's just, um. sorry. I'm really trying here. That's just. Uh. Dumb. Do you root for Batman cause Gotham is a nice city? Everything's worth saving, that's, like, at its most basic what the concept of a superhero is about.

"Not only that but MHA simply does villain protagonists objectively better than Worm."

um. No? There straight up aren't villain protagonists in MHA. The villains are the POV characters for, like, one arc? You know what, here's a good spot for it. It's stated throughout the story that Shigaraki and the League of Villains have a goal, beyond just death and destruction. They're here to stop the corrupt society of heroes (that MHA hints at the existence of before backpedaling away from), and bring about a fairer society. But then, and this part pissed me off, one of the characters, I think Bakugo, says: "you're just using that as cover! you just want to kill people, you have no noble goal!" and shigaraki's like "dang you caught me." and then it happens again with Deku! Because My Hero Academia is allergic to saying something. Nope! They're villains! No moral depth here! They're Villains, We're Heroes, Go Put Them In Jail.

This is opposed to Worm, where- "The characters of the villains and their origins are used to highlight the flaws in the Superhuman society"

"Most of the villains are only villains because society failed them in some way, and the specific ways in which that happened become big plot points that then play into the future arc of our heroic characters."

I had to walk away from my computer for this one. It's hard to be civil. It's really hard. Polite and reasonable.

So Worm is about this. To even say this without a shred of irony makes me thing you've never once read a single word of Worm and are doing this purely as bait. Or you've read all of Worm and are doing this purely as bait.

"They're actually extremely complex in a way that ends up being fundamentally important to the overall story - where in Worm the villains are either based heroes fighting a corrupt system or they're histories [sic] greatest monsters... until they're presented as heroes again."

I think I get it now. I really think I do. You're not supposed to agree with all the characters. Like. Worm is inconsistent, in that it follows the perspectives of inconsistent people. Of course Triumph and Armsmaster don't agree on what is right! They're different people, they have different perspectives!

"See. Worm fans keep saying "This is Bait." It's not Bait, you all are simply ridiculous and obsessed with this series to such a degree that you feel compelled to say "This is Bait" instead of just... ignoring it, because you have no actual counterargument."

Perhaps worm fans are inclined to believe you posted rage bait because you brazenly walked into another fandom's post and wholeheartedly proclaimed that the thing they liked was Stupid Idiot Bullshit For Fucking Morons, and refused to elaborate until prompted, at which point you said several things that are demonstrably false about Worm.

"Your only response to anything I've said is pedantry, bigotry, and deflection. If it was obviously just bait why are you engaging?"

Well, I'm engaging because I've been in a foul mood since I woke up this morning. Also because you, again, said some very rude and patently false statements about a story that I really enjoy and find narratively rich, even in its faults.

"MHA's characters do fall into archetypal shounen character roles - but they are all given a solid amount of focus explaining why they are like that and developing them into something bigger."

Again, as I said, it's a genuinely impressive feat to have an ensemble cast like what My Hero Academia has, and give so many of the characters a degree of depth, with such little manga to work with. I think worm does it better, but worm doesn't have to be economical about it. MHA does. The problem I have with this statement is that it becomes a question of scale. How much bigger? They're no longer defined by their tropes, instead defined by their opposition to their tropes. It's still a one-note character, you've merely changed the note from C to C sharp.

"so almost every member of the cast has an arc that either develops them past the person they initially seemed to be or explains why they're like that."

This is probably my favorite part about MHA. They do have arcs! I love ensemble casts! it does a much better job in this than all of its contemporaries, even One Piece. However, they are comparatively simplistic arcs that all follow a similar formula.

"I've heard people say MHA is neocon or pro-establishment but the story literally concludes by showing that society HAS TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE or the same problems that created the villains in the first place will keep happening. The entire time skip specifically focuses on the fact that for eight years the main characters have been forcing change in the world and addressing the issues the villains brought up."

Now, I'm going to be clear. I stopped reading My Hero Academia around chapter 275. I don't know the exact number, but it was the latest chapter in ~mid 2020. I would occasionally attempt to reread, in an attempt to catch up, but give up around chapter 200 out of boredom. I don't know exactly how the story ends, but I have read ~2/3rds of the story. I feel this gives me a pretty good understanding of the general tone of the story, unless it wildly changes tone at the 3/4ths mark, which you have explicitly said it does not, as it is extremely coherent and consistent. Therefore, I believe I can state with some degree of confidence that MHA does not do that.

I would certainly believe that it tries (and fails) to SFP it, but SFP does not promote a fundamental societal change. That's the problem. Strong Female Protagonist was willing to come up and say that Alison lived in a fundamentally unjust world, even if it was never willing or able to offer real change. And hey. You do what you can. I sincerely doubt My Hero Academia is even willing to call its world fundamentally unjust, from the 200+ chapters that I did read.

"In the case of the actual main characters, they have extremely comprehensive character arcs."

Adding this behind the last point just so that I don't have to reiterate I haven't finished the book. I am, however, very much not inclined to believe the actual main characters had extremely comprehensive character arcs.

Which plays back into the initial theory that ANYONE CAN BE A HERO.

man, spider-man did that better (not a real argument, but like, spider-man totally did that better). Not least because midoriya specifically could not become a hero were it not for all might giving him a power.

No, the Villains don't get happy endings,

Why not? Why do they go to jail, even the ones who changed and wanted to redeem themselves? Endeavor never goes to jail. He did some horrible stuff. He's redeemed himself in the eyes of the story, right? Anyone can be a hero, right? So why not them? Why haven't they redeemed themselves in the eyes of the story?

You may wish to turn this back on me and ask why doesn't Armsmaster go to prison? Because he's similar in some respects. But worm never calls prison justice. (for some reason, even though wildbow totally loves prison). Prison is punitive, a tool for those in charge to control those it manages to capture. Maybe some deserve life in the birdcage. Many don't. It doesn't matter. Because the birdcage isn't a tool of justice. It's not meant to be. it's a box to put the uncontrollable capes in, until they can be used as meat shields. So Armsmaster doesn't go to prison because the story says explicitly there is no point to it. But MHA? MHA says there is a point to it. Endeavor needs to go to prison if he wants to atone. He's escaping justice every second he's outside.

I have actually read Worm, and for the first half to two thirds I loved it.

Weird. That's exactly how long I really enjoyed MHA. Not, like relevant, to anything. Just odd. I mean, I don't actually dislike MHA. I think it's fine, actually. It feels like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to me. Funny (when Mineta isn't around), bombastic, and a good time, even if I don't think it's super thematically rich.

I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone who has never seen any of the merits of Worm, I'm coming at it from the perspective of someone who really liked it, gave it a fair shot, and was eventually disappointed when it ended up not tying together right.

See, this makes me more inclined to think it's bait, actually. since you said "Oh yeah. MHA is published. MHA's been an ongoing publication with a large following for ten years, in a notoriously competitive industry. Now this might seem kind of unimpressive, it's a very low bar to clear I know. But it's one Worm hasn't, so. I dunno, I'd say that's fairly objective. Now you may think "Yeah, but Trash fiction gets published all the time." And that's true but again - Worm hasn't. The worst piece of fiction you can think of got published and Worm didn't. You wanna be an asshole about this? The thing you love is so mid that it was self published in 2013, couldn't get picked up for professional publishing until 2019 and as far as I can see has stayed in development hell since then." in your previous post. Sure, perhaps we can say you were pissed at the time, but "the thing you love is worse than trash fiction, an altogether nothing piece of literature that isn't even worth the paper it would hypothetically be printed on" does not strike me as the words of someone who "really liked it, gave it a fair shot, and was eventually disappointed when it ended up not tying together right." In fact, going back through your other statements on the story, you seem to have genuinely disliked it from the very beginning, on grounds of being too edgy (which I can fully understand the logic of): "IE: it thinks that all it has to do to be smart is be bleak and/or graphic," thematically incoherent: "It doesn't really try to say anything, in fact it contradicts itself throughout the book as I mentioned before, it just throws in extremely graphic scenes and content periodically to remind the audience how fucked everything is," and utterly devoid of purpose or meaning. "When it does introduce new lore that new lore is almost always overly convoluted and acts as a catalyst for things happening, but not really things happening that play into a wider theme or message. It's just "Oh and here's this team of god-level serial killers who are gonna string a dude up by his nervous system." Like yeah, cool visual, but what is any of this actually saying?" This does not sound like a ringing endorsement of the first half of Worm to me. In fact, this sounds like you hated every second of it.

"And frankly given the number of comments that are just people saying "Bait" - I don't think any of y'all have engaged with this in a fair or honest way"

I'm going to reiterate on my previous statement. I like my hero academia. Capeshit is my favorite genre, it probably always will be. They're my favorite genre of story. While I find the themes—or lack thereof—extremely frustrating, I still think of it as fun. I gave it a fair shake. I would probably really enjoy the ending if I didn't have a reading list that was 300 books long.

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

even though i feel like i can confidently tell when a piece of art is generative A/I, i really don't feel inclined or really even justified calling someone out for it due to the precedent it sets - especially when artists who DO make their own pieces get caught in the crossfire for being inexperienced or making the choice to be more free-form when it comes to character design / consistency...

[sassyfever]

Okay but why is Meet the Robinsons so amazing, like I'm used to finding good movies long after their release but to find a movie of THIS level without even hearing anyone talk about it even a little bit. I was just trying to pass time and stumbled upon a masterpiece.

[sky-scribbles]

I'm going to say something controversial. I think there's something Veilguard does better than any other Dragon Age game. Namely: incorporating the companions into the plot.

Look, I love Origins as much as everyone. But to be frank: you could cut every companion except Alistair, Morrigan and Loghain and the plot could still work. Once you've finished the mission where you recruit a companion, there aren't other main quests that involve them in any way.

Oghren and Wynne could have stayed home after their recruitment missions for all the difference it would make to the main plot. Sten, Leliana and Zevran could vanish and nothing would change, because once they're on your team, they don't interact with the main plot at all. (There's the Temple of Sacred Ashes, I suppose - but even then, you'd be going on that quest whether Leliana and Wynne were there or not, and it's very telling that they can both die here and next to nothing in the rest of the game is impacted.)

Again: I love Origins. This doesn't detract from any of these characters being great, or from the story being great. It just means there's a layer of separation between the two. They're involved in the story, but they're not driving it, and you seldom get to see them have strong feelings about it.

DA2 is a huge step up. Your companions' personal stories are integral parts of the main plot. You can't do the Deep Roads expedition without witnessing Karl's death and its impact on Anders. You can't enter Act 2 without seeing Varric's brother betray him, or watching your sibling either die or begin a new path in life. Act 2's climax happens because of choices Isabela and Aveline have made. Act 3's endgame is all about Anders making one enormous decision. Even Fenris and Merrill, who have the fewest ties to the plot, have strong reasons to be invested in the Mage/Templar conflict.

And then Inquisition just... backslides. There are multiple companions you don't need to recruit at all, or can send away with zero alteration to the main plot. Your companions don't like Corypheus because he's bad, but no one - except maybe Varric - has any strong personal feelings about him. They have no personal stake in defeating him, not like Alistair has a personal stake in opposing Loghain, or Anders in opposing Meredith.

We go to the Winter Palace, and Vivienne is not made a part of that story. We have a whole subplot about the Wardens, and Blackwall only gets a couple of extra lines, if you even bring him. Their personal arcs could have been somehow impacted by these missions, and they're just... not. Sera is packed with internalised self-hatred that manifests as trying to distance herself from elven culture, to the point of sometimes lashing out at other elves. And despite all the missions you do where elven history features... Sera's growth past that flaw happens entirely offscreen between the base game and Trespasser?????

IMO, this is one of the biggest reasons why Corypheus is such a bland villain. He doesn't make anyone grow, except by starting a plot for them to be part of. He doesn't challenge them emotionally. No one is invested in him. Because no one interacts with the darn plot.

Veilguard, though? Veilguard keeps your companions interacting with the story the whole way through. The Treviso/Minrathous choice affects both Lucanis and Neve heavily, and impacts who they become for the rest of the game. These cities are personal to you, even if you're not a Crow or Shadow Dragon, because your companions love them.

The Siege of Weisshaupt is beyond personal to Davrin and Lucanis, both of whom are entrusted with major parts of the quest: trying to kill the archdemon and Ghilan'nain. Lucanis is affected by his failure to kill Ghilan'nain for ages afterward. Davrin is haunted by survivor's guilt; he should have died when he struck down the archdemon. He's alive. How can he live with that?

Whenever killing the gods becomes a possibility, Rook hands the lyrium dagger to Lucanis. When the squad go to fight the gods' dragons with the Wardens, Taash is the one to flush the first dragon out. When you infiltrate the Venatori, Neve tricks your way in, and everything that happens is especially weighty to Bellara, whose people have been abducted. On Tearstone Island, because of how Lucanis and Spite have grown, they strikes true.

Did you not hate Elgar'nan before that mission? Because you probably will after you watch him capture Bellara or Neve, and see his fellow god kill Harding or Davrin.

You know what's a great piece of writing? There's no reason Emmrich shouldn't have been an option to deal with the wards on Tearstone Island; he's one of the ideal options to take out more wards with the Veil Jumpers in the final mission. But you can't select him to do it. Because Emmrich has far less personal investment in the Elgar'nan battle than the other two. This is Neve's city. This is the monster who tries to call himself Bellara's god. The game makes sure the characters who take control of the Blight at the end are the ones with the greatest stakes in doing so.

One of your companions, not you, wrests command of the Blight from Elgar'nan. The final mission depends on how well you've come to know each companion's skills. They're just... always involved.

And they're invested, too. The companions all have serious personal reasons to hate the antagonists by the end. Lucanis and Neve have either seen their city burn, or know it happened at the cost of their friend's (and potential partner's) hometown. Davrin has seen his order devastated. These are Bellara's and Davrin's supposed gods, and instead of helping the elves reclaim their history and culture, they're trying to enslave the world. Harding learns that the Evanuris maimed and destroyed her Titan ancestors.

Emmrich and Taash have perhaps the smallest emotional tie - and sadly I do think Emmrich especially gets underutilized in the plot. But heck, Taash is still hella motivated by the way the gods are abusing dragons. And Emmrich is tied thematically to the main conflict. He's facing the question of immortality, while nigh-immortal beings are right in front of him, proving how that gift can be abused. The final choice of his personal arc is whether he's willing to embrace his personal, mortal attachments, at the cost of consequences that terrify him... you know, the same question that Solas faces at the end.

And don't even get me started on how everyone is emotionally tied to Solas. Harding and Neve watched him kill Varric in front of them. Everyone not dead or captured has to watch him drag Rook into the Fade. Just about every companion faces some kind of huge regret or failure at some point, in constant foreshadowing for Solas's prison of regret: both the literal one he sticks Rook in, and the mental one of his own making.

Veilguard has its problems, but it absolutely shines at keeping its characters involved and invested in the main story. It gives them things to do, it gives them reasons to care. For all the flaws this game has, this part is good writing.

[sleepn0tfound]

That's MY Daughter

DC x Fem!Neglected!Batsis! Reader x Marvel [Just some midnight thoughts]

Bruce and Tim realised something odd about Stark Industries. Ever since a few months ago the technology being produced there had improved by an unbelievable amount. It was futuristic, nothing that this world has seen before. And the weirdest part of it is the fact that Tony Stark had offered to partner up with Wayne Enterprises. THE Tony Stark, Iron Man, the most egotisical man they knew had willingly offered to partner up with them? After years of being petty with Bruce and the JL?

Tim had been made to prepare to become the new CEO soon, thus he recently started taking up more work at Wayne Enterprises when the agreement was made. Though instead of Tony being the one to talk about ideas it was an unknown woman communicating with him about the ideas, the product, the marketing, etc. And the merge of the two companies was an absolute success, the marketing especially drawing in young adults. (courtesy of Tim and the mysterious women who seems to be around the same age as him)

Who was the mysterious women though? Well both Bruce and Tim could only come to one solution. The least known character to Bruce, to Batman, which says a lot considering the fact that he had made a contingency plan for every Avenger, every hero, including his own teammates, including himself, yet this one character was completely unknown, zero plans if she were to go rogue. And that drove Bruce crazy. Her file was blank. Every vital information was marked with the word 'unknown'. It had been making Bruce paranoid for years since she had appeared next to the Avengers.

The reassurance from the Avengers never helped. It was as if something was gnawing at him. After all how could he trust them anyways? (careful Bruce your trust issues are showing)

One of the only things they knew about her is that she is the main hacker/coder for the Avengers, hence the reason why the Avengers digital security was admittedly better than the Justice League's and how much faster they got, what should be, classified information. (no matter how much Bruce wants to deny it)

And her codename, Special Agent Reaper. No she wasn't originally an Avenger, she was crowned the most skilled assassin of this era, working under S.H.I.E.L.D and one of the sole reasons why all of the HYDRA agents that have sneaked into S.H.I.E.L.D have been successfully taken out, her name would pass by in the wind every so often, they might be rumours or the truth but no one truly knows. Hell even Ra's Al Ghul, The Demon’s Head, had acknowledged her once. Even Talia had admitted that Damian's fighting technique was made to mirror The Reaper's, the only difference is he used katanas while the Reaper, fittingly, uses a scythe.

But one thing was for sure. If you saw the shadow of a hooded figure you better run, though at that point it might be too late.

As the saying goes, "Beware of the Grim Reaper. Wherever it goes death follows closely behind.”

⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆

“Ah! Brucie! Here you are!” Tony said, wine in hand as he approached Bruce at the gala. Well that was a first. He usually never played into the Brucie persona. Well nonetheless the show must go on.

“Tony!” Bruce threw himself at the other billionaire, acting as if he was drunk, ignoring the way Tony’s expression turned into a grimace for a split second.

As usual, they were both around other pretentious socialites who never seemed to run out of questions.

“Ah! Tony, I heard Stark Industries have been bringing in more money than ever.”

“Oh yes! It’s all because of this prodigy i had found. She actually was the reason why Stark Industries and Wayne Enterprises had a collab. I might even give the company to her when I retire!" He let out a laugh that seems to emanate the word 'rich', a small smirk stayed on his lips as he heard the guests at the gala begin to whisper.

"Oh? Is that so? Then I would love to meet the person I have been working with this entire time." Tim Drake-Wayne said as he finally came out of the corner where he would usually stay in to observe rather than interact.

"Be my guest." A subtle challenge, as if Tony was daring him to go through with it as they locked eyes. A smirk on one face while a well practiced smile on the other.

Bruce let out a light hearted laugh as he tightened his grip around Tony, a subtle warning to stay away from his son, "Well then I wouldn't mind arranging a meeting! I'm sure you wouldn't mind the others joining." His tone had a slight change that even the most observant wouldn't realise.

Bruce could barely keep up the 'Brucie' act with Tony bragging about how Stark Enterprises profits have shot up with him finding a 'prodigy' and someone who will take over the company once he retires.

"Not at all. The more the merrier. I assume you wouldn't mind me inviting more people as well." Tony sipped his wine, he wasn't one to back out from a challenge, especially when he is so confident.

⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆

This certainly wasn't how the Justice League and the Avengers expected their next meeting to happen. A petty fight between the two men that singlehandedly funds their respective teams causing all of them to be in one room together.

"Well then, Stark. Where is this prodigy that you speak so highly of?" Bruce said as he sported his famous batglare.

"I assure you she is on her way. She should just be right about done with her mission." Tony replied with the same tone, shooting a glare as well.

Meanwhile the two teams were watching this as if it was the most entertaining show they have seen.

.

.

.

"Hey I'm here." Y/n entered the hall, still wearing her assassin suit, though her signature black hood was down, revealing her face.

Silence seemed to engulf the room.

"Kid... Your hood."

"...Fuck."

hi! i might have disappeared for a month :D To those who are waiting for more parts of DC x Super/Kent!Reader it will come... eventually. I'm having the biggest writer's block for that specific AU so uhm yeah! I wasn't really planning on making that AU a series since it was mostly just me being bored and writing for the lols but since it received so much attention [thank you guys so much!] I have to do it now. i was doing some worldbuilding and already know how I want the reader to be and allat but I cant really think of how to shape the story ukukuk. so yeah stay tuned for that! also this thing was also just a blurb. Might make somewhat of continuation parts if I feel like it. [Also the neglected!batsis! fanfics I've been reading is getting to me. i have a feral urge to create a diff AU series for that] Also would you guys be interested in me creating a twitter/insta account or like a tele channel to post random things

[angelltheninth]

Do you think the Arcane lesbians tie their hair back when eating out?

Ya'll really trying to make me go feral with these eh?

Pairing: Vi, Caitlyn Kiramman, Maddie Nolen, Sevika, Ambessa Medarda x Fem!Reader

Tags: nsfw, smut, cunnilingus, hair-pulling, teasing, biting, being pinned down, praise, clit slapping

Ko-Fi | Rules | Fandoms and Characters | Commissions

A/N: As far as I know Ambessa is a bisexual queen so I'm putting her in here.

Vi ran her hand through her buzzcut and sighed. "I mean, I can tie my hair back but I don't really see the point. It's just on the one side of my face, and my back." She shrugged as she leaned further down between your legs. "It doesn't bother me. What about you?"

"Not really. I thought you might wanna do it so I can see your eyes more clearly. Your hair has been getting a bit longer lately. Might need a haircut some time soon." You hooked your legs around Vi's shoulders and sighed heavily as her tongue prodded against your entrance.

As she licked into you your hands ran through her hair, seeing her point as your hands were enough to hold her hair back. She didn't need a hair tie. She looked perfect just like this, between your legs, about to eat you out like you were her last meal.

"If you wanna keep looking at me better keep those hands in place, sweet stuff." Her teasing words made you moan and tighten your grip. You didn't want her to stop, so you would do as you were told.

With your hands and your legs keeping her in pace Vi moved her tongue through your wet folds, savoring your sweet taste and the ever present tug you gave against her scalp every time her tongue played with your clit. The real reason why she enjoyed it is because she didn't mind the pain, when it mixed with pleasure.

If Caitlyn ties her hair back when you two have sex then you know she feels like giving rather than receiving that night. As soon as you saw her do it you knew you were for a really long night. "What are you smiling like that for darling?" Caitlyn asked as she leaned in for a kiss.

With a smirk and not breaking the kiss you pulled her on top of you and cupper her cheeks. "You know why. You tied your hair back. Just seeing you do that gets me wet." Caitlyn's eyebrows furrowed and she tilted her head. Her hands cupped over yours before she pushed them to your sides and kissed down your body. It seemed to make her conflicted that you knew what she was gonna do.

"Am I that predictable? Should I do something to spice things up?" There was something dangerous in her eyes as she asked. "Since you can see what I do, perhaps a nice blindfold, to keep you guessing."

"I-I wouldn't be opposed to that." You spread your legs open further and moved your panties to the side. "What else do you wanna do to me?"

Caitlyn looked up at you right as her tongue pressed against your clit and stayed there. She pulled away after a few seconds. "I'm sure I can think of a few things. After I make you come." You couldn't think of anything either as Caitlyn started mercilessly licking at your clit.

Maddie always wore her hair tied back except for when she was sleeping or taking a shower. It was no different when she was between your legs. Other might argue she's silly when she ties her hair back like that but they don't know how much easier it makes it to please her favorite girl.

"Do you not like it? You always said my ponytail was pretty cute. What changed?" The look on her face was an almost rejected pout.

"Nothing." You laughed at the idea that she thought you were rejecting her sense of style. "I love how you look with your hair tied up. Makes you look so damn cute. When you're under me like this."

In retaliation of you calling her cute Maddie bit your inner thigh, pretty hard too, which made you exhale sharply and brace yourself against the headboard of the bed. "Don't go calling me cute while I'm making you come all over my face." The fact that you were above her, pussy dripping on her wasn't enough to make her blush, but your praise sure did.

"Aww, but you are cute. My cute, sweet girl. Being so good for me right now yeah?" As if it could help her Maddie pressed her face between your legs again, her tongue licking at double speed. "See, you're going so good. Of course you are, using your tongue just the way I want you to."

"Sweetheart, fuck, hold on, stop for a moment." Sevika moved away from you, her chin dripping with your pussy juices. You groaned, tried to pull her back but she pushed you back. "I said hold on. I'm just getting something real quick. I'll be right back."

You licked your lips as you watched her make her way to one of the drawers. To your disappointment it wasn't the one where she kept her strap, but she did pull out a hair tie. The disappointment may have been on your face for a split second but Sevika saw it and it made her grin even wider.

"Don't look so let down. I'm about to eat your sweet cunt until you pass out. Now lay back and wait until I get this thing on." It was a bit of a challenge to do with one hand. You saw her struggle with it before.

You sighed and gave her a bit of encouragement. "I can do that for you. I'm really good with my fingers." You waived at her with one hand while cupping your pussy with the other. "So I've been told anyway."

Sevika's eyes widened when she saw your slick dripping onto the sheets. "Hey, hands off what's mine. You're being a real brat right now." She fumbled with the hair tie a few more times before she managed to get it on. Her hand grabbed your wrist. "Mine." She growled possessively as she pushed her tongue into your pussyhole.

Ambessa never ties her hair back unless she's on the battlefield. She has no reason to tie her hair when she's in bed with you, pinning you down by the hips and absolutely feasting, licking and sucking on your clit and keeping your pussy lips parted so she can see your hole clench around nothing.

"More, please, please, I want you inside." You begged, your voice strained as you tried to push her face further down.

"Hm, brave tonight. Aren't you, pet? Thinking you can order me around, grabbing my hair like that. Was I away for too long that you forgot yourself?" She pulled away, her rough palm delivering a hard slap on your clit. Then another, and another until you were a crying, drooling mess. "Behave yourself."

Unfortunately, or fortunately, you couldn't do that. Your nails dug into her hair further and you saw her roll her eyes. "I'm sorry. I missed you so much, I promise I'll behave next time. Just... please..."

"Fine, fine." Ambessa reached over to the nightstand and pulled her hair back into a bun. It wasn't nearly as neat as she usually wore it but she was in a hurry. "I'll spend all night reminding your body of who it belongs to." The look she gave you then was similar to how you saw her look at her targets across the battlefield, dark, cocky, a little amused, and very determined.

[meiieiri]

𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 [toji fushiguro]

synopsis: so she tells him not to cry over the injustice of a life cut too short for at the end of all this, she’ll only be a dream.

pairing: ex-husband!toji fushiguro x terminally ill wife!reader | song inspo: soon you’ll get better, cancer

warnings: heavy angst, terminal illness (primary bone cancer, stroke and MS), mentions of divorce/past infidelity, allegories to cheating, major character death. please read at your own risk. | a/n: this was so heavy for me to write, i started writing at 2 in the morning, and it’s 6:34 now.

word count. 3k~

“Why can’t you do anything right?”

Toji should have noticed, he laments as he takes a sip of his cognac. He should have sensed that something was wrong sooner, maybe that way, he wouldn’t be begging to borrow some more time to make things right. Your fingers were trembling that day — the first time you ever ruined his morning coffee — your hands shaking uncontrollably as you washed the mug with a sorrowful look on your face, your eyes glossy with the tears you were desperately trying to hold back.

He shouldn’t have been so harsh, he realizes that now. Breakfast had been burnt to a crisp and ruined, sure, but nothing could compare to how he constantly ruins the one beautiful thing that has ever happened to him, who haphazardly spilled her smoothie on him when they first bumped into each other in Shinjuku just after he finally cashed in enough money with Shiu to get his laundry done.

Toji, whose senses have now been honed to pick up on the slightest of your sluggish movements and your pained and suppressed hisses, hears the bedsheets rustling and he instantly gets up before you could even force yourself out of bed. “Hey, hey, easy now.” He catches you before you could fall backwards onto the mattress, your skin appears cold and clammy, your thinning muscles stiff as a board — you must be having one of your episodes again. “What do you need?” he asks, his voice heartbreakingly gentle for the first time in months.

“Water.”

Your husband nods, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed, hurriedly making his way to the dining table which was now kept in your bedroom so you aren’t forced to move around too much. The sound of water splashing into the glass fills the air and you feel another stabbing pain coarse through your joints.

Toji gingerly brings the glass of water to your lips and you sighed, an exasperated yet amused smile on your face. “I can do it, babe. Don’t worry.” Why did that sound like you were trying to convince not just Toji but yourself? You bring your bony hands to grip the glass and it takes everything out of your husband not to break into a fit of sobs when he sees your hand violently shaking with effort just to keep the glass steady.

His larger hands close around your defeated one. “I-I…I can do it, I did it yesterday. Y-you saw me.”

“Shhh, I know, it’s okay.”

You bite your lip to distract yourself from the anguish of realizing the truth behind the doctor’s words. Everything you feared was finally becoming your and Toji’s bleak reality.

“It’ll be a painful decline.”

Funny how you’re the one fighting to extend your life but Toji feels like he’s already gone ahead and passed on. Just a few minutes earlier, you were overjoyed to see him again. You didn’t think he’d see your text thinking that his new girlfriend must have asked him to block your number, and you most certainly didn’t expect him to arrive when you asked for him via a brief phone call to drive you to the hospital for your monthly checkup since he took the car with him when you separated. He made up a bullshit excuse when Yuko asked where he was going in such a hurry and he makes it to your old shared apartment to see you sitting on the driveway looking thinner and sicklier than ever — your eyes were sunken, and your cheeks were hollow.

Yet in spite of that, you gave him the brightest of smiles, waving shyly to him as he steps out of the driver’s seat. “Happy morning!” you smiled, greeting him with your signature good morning tagline which he used to happily wake up to everyday. There wasn’t a scintilla of resentfulness in your demeanor, and you genuinely looked so happy to see him for the first time since he moved out.

“How long?” Toji asked the doctor, his heart twisted into knots when he hears you happily humming in the MRI room as you put your clothes back on, oblivious to the solemn mood in the other room. You already knew what was going on, but you’ll just continue pretending that everything’s alright and that this is nothing more but a case of fatigue so as not to inconvenience Toji.

“A year, maybe even less.”

“And…you’re saying it’s best if she simply…doesn’t get the treatment?”

The doctor sighs heavily. She’s seen many cases like this before, but none as utterly hopeless as yours. Even if you did start the treatment, the lesions in your spinal cord have already entered the most severe stage, you were already exhibiting signs of autonomic nervous system distress — the tremors, the uncontrollable stuttering of your words, the growing loss of balance — and as if that wasn’t enough, the doctor also discovers that you were suffering from primary osteosarcoma.

There was no way to cure you now that it’s too late.

“I suggest we just focus on keeping her comfortable. The only thing left for us to do now is to bring her home. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re so fucking embarrassing. I can’t bring you anywhere.”

By some miracle, you and Toji went out one night around four months before the divorce proceedings. He went home that day, exhausted beyond all belief from another mission, but he was in a good mood. Yuko was out working late tonight, so, he decides to take you out to your and his favorite izakaya for some yakitori.

Some time during the night, after downing three full bottles of sake together, you excuse yourself to use the restroom. “I’ll be right back,” you told Toji, tipsily kissing him on the cheek as you hop off the bar stool in the direction of the women’s room.

You couldn’t tell if you were staggering from the copious amounts of alcohol you ingested, but your legs were beginning to feel heavy, and for some ominous reason, you were slowly losing all sensation in your left leg. You try to hold onto one of the izakaya’s shōji panel decor pieces to regain your balance, but it was a futile effort in the end. Your knees suddenly buckle, and a sickening crack tears through your tibia as you fall to the ground.

“Are you alright?!”

Toji picks up on the commotion instantly and he sees the izakaya patrons crowding around the hallway leading to the restroom. He quickly makes his way over and a look of disgust appears on his features when he sees you crumpled on the ground and the mortifying sight of you having relieved yourself on the floor, tears of embarrassment staining your cheeks at the thought of your body suddenly malfunctioning like this.

Muttering out an ignorant apology for his seemingly drunk wife, he roughly picks you up, growing increasingly infuriated with you when one izakaya employee offers him a damp cloth to dry out your urine with. It was funny how quickly other people came to your aid — people whose names you don’t even know — while your own husband seems very reluctant to even touch you right now. He doesn’t speak to you on the way home even as you apologize while he’s loading you into the car, grimacing when the leather seat gets wet. “Toji, I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened—“

“—Save it.”

What he should have said was: “Are you okay?”, “It’s alright.” or better yet, “I still love you.”.

At present, Toji decides on a whim to take you to Yokohama’s famed bayside today. It’s only a two hour drive from your place in Tokyo and Toji figures you must miss going on road trips by now with you cooped up at home all the time. “Toji, are you sure this is a good idea?” you murmured nervously as the car pulls to a stop by the bayside promenade. What happens if you can’t control yourself again? There doesn’t look to be a lot of public restrooms nearby.

Toji plants a reassuring kiss to your nose. “Babe, you remember what the doctor said, spending some time outdoors can do wonders for your health. Besides, didn’t you always love the coast?” He brings your hand to his scarred lips, rubbing his thumb against the soft skin before stepping out of the car to retrieve your wheelchair from the trunk.

“I know but what if I have another accident?” you said worriedly, rolling down the car windows so he could hear you. “What if I embarrass you again?”

“There’s nothing embarrassing about you.”

You’ve lost all control of your lower extremities three months ago, rendering you unable to walk and feel when you need to relieve yourself. Toji struggles with the wheelchair for a bit and a flash of sadness fills your heart when you see him take a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He wasn’t angry, he was devastated. He looks wistfully at the boardwalk, a distant gaze trained on the sea. He remembers when you used to walk down this very lane, his hand protectively around your waist as you happily take selfies. He could still hear your fond giggles the last time the two of you went here.

“Why don’t you ever smile when I take pictures of you?”

Toji shoos away a pigeon from stealing a bite of his ice cream sandwich. He feigns an unamused look when you try to take another picture of him on your phone.

“Come on, I’ve been trying to get a shot of you all day! You still have to take pictures of me so I can post it on my Instagram feed!”

Your ever moody husband pinches off a small piece of bread and feeds it to the nosy pigeon. “You and your precious feed,” he bemoans jokingly.

“Please? Just one picture!“ you playfully nudged him. Truthfully, you just wanted to see him smile for once, a genuine one and not one of those lopsided smirks he usually gives you when he’s teasing you. “Please?” you pout knowing he can never say no to that adorable face you make when you really want him to do something or worse, buy something for you.

Sighing, he turns to look at your phone’s camera lens and you blush when a smile slowly illuminates his usually stoic face. Your thumb hovers over the stop recording function, not realizing you’re taking a video, but you can’t seem to press it. “What’s taking so long?” he holds the smile like he’s some cartoon character and you snap out of it.

“Oh shoot, it’s a video!” you laughed, and you begin to run down the boardwalk, eagerly getting away from Toji who demands that you delete it immediately. Of course, you’re no match for his borderline inhuman speed attributed to his athletic physique and he catches you by the waist, playfully swinging you over his shoulder like you’re a sack of potatoes.

Now, your giggles have gone silent.

Toji realizes now he should have indulged you more over the course of your relationship and subsequent marriage. Had he known that you won’t even make it to your third wedding anniversary, he would have allowed you to take as many pictures and videos of him as you’d like, he’d swallow his pride and he’d give you the brightest of smiles so you could happily post him on your social media accounts with a heartwarming caption about him being your “smiley hubby”.

More than that though, he should have taken more photos of you, mostly stolen candid shots, of course. You can’t catch him being all soft on you now. He still has a reputation to live up to after all. But more than that, had he known that your illness was intent on stealing every scrap of you from him, he should have made more effort in preserving all these memories. He should have kept everything from those toll tickets on your late night drives together when the two of you just needed a quick escape from the world, to receipts from your trip to Tokyo Disney Sea on your first wedding anniversary, and even simple convenience store receipts.

Toji should have kept everything down to the smallest of memories knowing one day, that’s all he’ll have to remember you by.

He opens the passenger seat’s door and he effortlessly gathers you into his arms, being extra careful with your fragile form as he sits you down on the wheelchair. He opens the backseat and he pulls out two different colored blankets, one sea-foam green and the other, rose pink. “Take your pick,” he smiles at you and you chuckled softly, pointing to the rose pink one. He happily covers your legs with it to keep you warm, stroking your cheek when you whisper a bashful ‘thank you’.

Suddenly, the wind picks up and your hair-clip that’s holding your locks in a low bun comes loose, and your head turns in the direction of where it flew off to. Toji is quick to take out his phone and he snaps a quick burst shot of you, your hair blowing in the wind, under the coastal spring weather. You turn to look at him and your face falls when you see him burying his phone in his pocket. Since you fell ill, you’ve become insecure of your appearance, banning your husband from taking pictures and videos of you altogether. “Toji, I thought I said no pictures.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The next day, you serendipitously find your photo on your Instagram handle with the caption: “Y/N — Yokohama, Spring, 2024” and when you swipe left, another picture, well to be more accurate, a screenshot of the video clip you accidentally took of him captioned: “Toji — Yokohama, Summer, 2022”.

“You don’t have to stick around for me. Please just go, I’m sure Yuko must be looking for you right now.”

Yuko, his new fiancé, had been blowing up his phone the entire day with texts demanding to know where he is and if he’s going to make it to their date that night. It’s 7 PM now, and Toji still hasn’t shown up to confirm their restaurant reservations. The damn witch will surely cuss him out when they see each other again, but for some reason, even if he tries, he simply cannot bring himself to give a flying fuck. Your immunologist and oncologist stepped out for a bit to allow you two a brief moment of privacy which had now stretched to an expanse of five hours since your results came in.

The air in the room is thick and heavy, not a single sound can be heard. Inside however, underneath this tough exterior he was projecting, Toji is throwing a fit, screaming at the sky like those broken men in those shitty Netflix romance tragedies he used to callously make fun of.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner? You knew, didn’t you?”

Toji’s bites his cheek trying to keep a lid on his emotions. He knows the answer. He just wants to hear you say it out loud. You hated him. You wanted nothing to do with him after he cheated on you with some girl he met at a bar in uptown Shibuya. That’s why you didn’t tell him, he didn’t deserve to know. “Shit,” he whispers harshly, crumpling the medical abstract in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? Was it because you hated me? Is that it? You didn’t think I’d worry about you?”

You screwed your eyes shut, shaking your head. You didn’t hate him, not even when you have every reason to. He abandoned you, left you to waste away and to die and yet, even now, you can’t bring yourself to resent him for the simple reason that he is the literal love of your life, the reason behind your smiles, your happy mornings and passionate midnight hours. “At first, I thought I was fine, maybe just fatigued or something.”

“Don’t lie. You knew something was going on and that something in your body was seriously fucked up.”

“And we weren’t married anymore so, I didn’t think it was right to tell you…I wanted to though, but I didn’t want to intrude on you and Yuko,” you said meekly. Even in your greatest hour of need, you were still thinking of him, putting him first even when he doesn’t deserve it. “I-I…I don’t hate you enough to worry you, to make you feel that you could have done something to prevent this. Because I’m telling you right now, regardless if you were faithful or not, I was bound to get sick anyway. You couldn’t have done anything to change that.”

“But I could have been there. I should have noticed. I shouldn’t have downplayed everything.” He says this as if he wants to shake this noble, self-sacrificing bullshit attitude out of your system. “I’m your husband. I should have been there.”

You flash him a heartbroken smile at his little slip-up, so, even now, he was still referring to himself as your husband, not your ex-husband. “To see me waste away? Babe, I don’t want you to see that.”

You begin to feel tears streaming down your face, the emotions you were experiencing now flowing like a free river after an entire dam is destroyed. Toji watches you unravel before his eyes and his bottom lip begins to tremble. What has he done? Dear god, what has he done to his poor, poor wife?

“I want you to remember me healthy, I want you to remember me as myself not this…sickly pitiful woman you’re unlucky to call your ex-wife…besides, after all this, I’ll only be a dream.” A mere passing second in his life. “And believe me, my life wasn’t so bad.”

He loses it at that.

“Just stop this, Y/N! Stop acting like you’re not scared shitless of dying, like you’re not gonna have regrets once all this is over! Stop pretending that things are gonna be alright one day because it won’t! Not when I’m now being forced to accept that you won’t get better, not when I’ve wasted so much time putting you through hell and back instead of taking care of you like a proper husband should, and certainly not when I’m suddenly supposed to learn to say goodbye and to live without you! Because fuck that, Y/N!”

You are left speechless at that.

Toji was never one to lose his cool, even during your worst arguments, he may slide a few snarky remarks here and there but Toji Fushiguro…never yells, and he doesn’t sob either.

You hesitantly stand up and walk over to him, crouching down in front of him as he covers his tear-stained eyes with his right hand while the other is crumpled around your medical abstract. Taking his left hand, you gently remove the medical abstract from his grip, and for the first time in so many months, you feel one another’s warm skin against each other. You press your forehead to his hand as you wept with him.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be a dream. I want you to be real.”

“Can’t you be bothered to clean up in here?!”

You wake up from your nap, you’ve been battling muscle and joint pain the entire day, the slightest of movement causing you to double over in agony and because of that, you weren’t able to clean the apartment today. You slowly get up from the couch, being extra cautious not to make any sudden movements. “Well?” Toji presses, his lips curled into a scowl.

“I’m sorry, I was feeling a little tired,” you sighed heavily, picking up a broom to sweep the living room floor despite the excruciating pain you were in. Toji rolls his eyes, handing you a Manila envelope. “What’s this?” you asked softly, peering inside.

“Divorce papers,” he shrugs nonchalantly. Everything stops, even the very rise and fall of your chest halts into an uneasy stasis. “I already signed them. I just need your signature then, I’ll move out by tomorrow.”

You must be dreaming. That’s the only logical explanation to all this. You’re asleep, in a deep REM sleep, utterly oblivious to the world. This wasn’t happening. But you could feel the rough surface of the brown envelope, and you could still feel the agonizing stabs of white hot pain throughout your body. Glancing at Toji, you see him texting someone with an eager look on his face that screams: “I’m free.”.

Instantly, it dawns on you.

“Will she make you happy?” you asked, putting down the broom to look around for a pen but Toji pulls one he stole from the law firm office out of his pocket.

“She will,” he answers simply.

And you are indeed grateful that he is completely upfront about finding another while the two of you are married. It would have hurt much more, you silently remind yourself, if he had just upped and left without another word leaving you to wonder what went wrong between the two of you. This was Toji’s final act of mercy in your marriage, and he’s not opposed to honesty and truthfulness either. Not once did he try to change his phone’s lock-screen passcode, nor did he try to conceal the identity of the woman who was texting him every night while you slept fitfully next to him. It was almost as if he wanted you to find out, like he wanted you to know so you could back off yourself.

But if there’s one thing Toji loves about you, it’s your unending faithfulness to your promises, to your marriage vows, and your willingness to endure anything he threw at you. You never checked his phone, you never brought up his affair, you never got angry with him. You just kept silent, simply content with giving and giving…and giving while he milked you dry by taking, and taking and taking, tearing you to pieces bit by bit without hearing a single complaint fall from your lips.

You were a devoted wife, through and through.

And it bored the hell out of him, on top of your recent mishaps, he was done. Done with everything, and done with you.

“Okay.”

Come morning, he takes everything he owns with him and promptly proposes to the girl he’s been seeing for the past year. Two weeks later, your divorce is received by the Tokyo Family Court and is summarily approved and finalized. From that moment on, you and Toji went on your separate ways never to look back, you were each other’s yesterdays, and the love that existed between the two of you was nullified in favor of acquaintanceship…or so you thought.

“Y/N, I’m home!” Toji calls into the house as he comes back from your neighborhood’s pharmacy. You look up from the book you were reading, smiling ever so slightly at your husband who seemed to have a wonderful sparkle in his eyes. “Hey, kid,” he kisses the top of your head when he reaches your wheelchair.

“You seem happy,” you remarked positively.

“Well, for one, they replenished their stocks today and I managed to get you your steroids and painkillers so you’ll be able to sleep easy tonight,” Toji smiles, taking out the items from the pharmacy’s paper bag. “And I got you this neat memory foam cushion for your wheelchair.” He fluffs it up as a form of demonstration before placing it behind your back.

When he sees you smile, a sense of relief washes over Toji. You reach towards him, and he pulls you into an embrace. “Thank you,” you said, pure sincerity dripping from your voice. “For everything you do.”

“Anything for you.” He suddenly moves back and reaches into the tote bag you lended him. “Oh, and wait, before I forget, I have another surprise.”

You laughed airily. “Another surprise? Now, you’re just spoiling me!”

He pulls out a piece of paper from the tote bag and he places it in your hands as your eyes quickly scan over the document. Your breath hitches in your throat when you realize what it is. Did Toji really—? You couldn’t believe it. “A marriage pre-registration,” you said in awe. You read it again just in case to make sure that this wasn’t a figment of your sick body’s imagination, that this was real, that Toji genuinely wants to make everything right again. Your fingers skim over your typewritten names. “It has our names…we’re really—“ You can’t even finish your sentence without bursting into happy tears. “Are we—?”

Toji nods, gazing into your eyes, and as emerald and (E/C) clash for what seems to be an eternity lost in one another, he plants a kiss to your temple, coming up to embrace you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder.

“We are. The Tokyo Family Court, as far as I know, will approve our remarriage once we file this. So, you have to get stronger, okay?” He’s begging you at this point, despite your rapidly deteriorating condition. “Strong enough to see me fix everything. Strong enough to be there on our second wedding, strong enough to say our vows again.”

Your hand comes up to stroke his cheek from behind, and he nuzzles into your neck at your tender touch.

“I will. I promise.”

But you never really get to say your vows. Not comprehensibly anyway.

“Babe, can you say that again?”

Toji crouches by your bedside as you look at him apologetically. You were causing him trouble and pain again which is the last thing that you want to give him especially when’s fought and worked so hard to care for you, to keep prolonging this borrowed time you’re on. “To-ji. Toji.” You gaze at him apprehensibly, not really believing you can do it without crumbling.

“Come on, babe, you can do it. Say my name, please…Toji. I’m Toji.”

“Toooji-“ you slurred sadly. At this point, your Multiple Sclerosis has reached its end stage and has taken…everything from you: your ability to walk, your ability to control your muscle spasms and other bodily functions…and now, coupled with an unexpected stroke, your ability to speak. And you and Toji know that time is almost up, with you having come to accept it, while your husband still held onto hope. Your fingers gently graze over his face as best as your spasms and tremors allow you, starting from his forehead to his eyes, his nose, his cheek and finally, his lips, as if you’re memorizing it one last time. “Lo-ove you-“

Toji sniffles, and your fingers instinctively catch his warm tears. “I love you,” he whispers brokenly. “I do. I love you.”

You feel yourself tearing up as you’re forced to watch your beloved cry. And the worst part? You can’t do a thing about it. “D-oon’t c-cry—‘m okaay. Promi-miise…e’everyything ‘ill be okaaay.”

“Y-yeah,” he chuckles, trying to crack a joke even as hope dwindles. “You’ve been nothing but a fucking champ this entire time, you know? I’m so proud of you. So…so…proud that you’re still here.” He strokes your hair as you tread between the realms of the conscious and the unconscious. “Do you wanna go out today? The weather’s shit though. You’ll probably catch your death out there.” At the mention of the word ‘death’, Toji stops, falling into an uncomfortable silence.

You smile weakly at him. “Tiiredd—“

“You’re no fun,” Toji gently flicks your nose and you scrunch it up in displeasure. “Sorry,” he chuckles, holding back an entire waterfall of tears. He knows it’s today. It has to be. You woke up today without your usual ‘happy morning’ greeting, and you refused to drink anything, much less eat anything. “You tired? Any pain?”

You shake your head. You’re as comfortable as you can be for the first time in months. Hospice nurses say humans are built to live the same way they are built to die, no person in this world has ever had the uncanny privilege of being able to look up ‘How to die?’ on a quick Google search and actually find a Wikihow on the morbid subject matter, nor is there anyone else who can teach another how it’s done. It’s just something humans know how to do without a manual, deeply ingrained in the very fabric of human existence is the fear of death, the fear of what comes after, the fear of a nothingness that could follow after living such a vibrant life. Your life was short, barely spanning thirty years, but you lived well: you fell in love, you got hurt, but you fell together again. Now it all has to come to an end, Toji will just have to take care of the rest.

And you weren’t scared.

Or at least you can’t look scared, if you were to be more accurate, you have to look strong and ready to accept the cards you’ve been dealt with for Toji’s sake. When he feels your hand start to slacken, Toji intakes a sharp, shaky breath of sheer panic. “Not yet, Y/N. Please. Not yet.”

He climbs into bed with you, bringing you closer to this desperate man you call yours. There was no getting better anymore, there was no miracle he could hang onto, no deity he could beg for death to spare you, no pill bottle he could pray to. He knew that from the start. But what he witnessed these past months, you’ve been the braver one between the two of you, you knew how to make the most of the rhythm this cruel world gave you and you graciously took him along to dance to the last song of the evening with you.

“There’s still hope. Just keep your eyes open. Just keep them open.” He presses his lips to your forehead, his delusion getting the better of him. “We’ll just keep trying…you can’t leave. You have to stay. You have to.”

“Thaank yoou—“ you softly told your Toji, your voice shrinking in decibels as you become a little drowsy, sinking into the warmth of the requiem of a life well spent.

Toji listens to you, his lips pursed, intent on making this final act of love — a love that is strong enough to say goodbye — a memorable one. And should the afterlife exist, he wishes to send you off with a smile, with the reassurance that he’ll be alright even if that was far from happening.

“Toji.”

“I want you to be real. And I don’t care if we’ll live on borrowed time. Another extra second with you…is enough to last me my entire lifetime.”

[c0cksuck3rs4lif3]

ᜊ 𝒻𝓁𝒾𝓅𝓅ℯ𝒹 ᜊ

Sam Winchester x fem!reader

summary: you come across a wishing well on a hunt, not thinking much of it. But what will happen when you accidentally wish for something that you’re not sure you’re ready for with your best friend?

warnings: slight smut, making out, angst if you squint, Dean walking in, mostly fluff I suppose, size kink, again if you squint, this is based off of 4x8! This is more of a sassy!sam fic, sorry abt it

a/n: hello! I usually write on Wattpad, (pls don’t crucify me I am not a child) but I’ve been on Tumblr recently and like the writing on here better! This is my first fanfiction written on here, so bear with me, and please tell me if I’ve made any mistakes! (T^T) This is proofread!

Fuck, this was bad.

Worse than the impending apocalypse? Probably not.

Worse than Dean being ripped out of hell by some mystery angel that you’d only just met on the last case, who actually threatened to wipe out an entire town full of people? Not really.

But this was some serious, deep, uncomfortably steamy shit you’d gotten yourself into.

Let’s take it back a bit, shall we?

You, Sam, and Dean had all caught wind of a case down in Concrete, Washington. Apparently, a girl had gotten pushed down a flight of stairs by a spirit, and another man claimed that he had been attacked by Bigfoot.

However, this was not the case for either of them. It turned out to be some kind of wishing well, spelled by a cursed coin thrown haphazardly into it, granting that person—and whoever else threw a coin in said well—any wish that their heart desired.

Dean, being Dean, wanted to try this little well out, to see if it actually worked the way that you all figured it had. And, being the absolute idiot that he was, decided to order himself a jalapeño sub sandwich, or something of the sort. And it actually worked.

Standing over the well, staring down into the clear water with coins littering the bottom of the plaster, one began to wonder. Could it truly grant any wish that someone had? If it only granted a harmless wish, then was this even truly a case? Couldn’t you just.. leave these people alone, let them have their wishes?

Dean seemed to have been speaking to you, but you hadn’t registered it until he smacked your arm.

“Hello? Earth to Major Tom?”

He asked sarcastically, finally eliciting a response from you. Your head snapped up at him and looked at the man next to you.

“What?”

Dean just chuckled, seeming to have read you like a book, glancing down at the water, before realigning his gaze with your own.

“You should make one. What’s the harm? C’mon, I think I have..”

He trailed off, digging into his jacket pockets, that jingled faintly as his hand sifted through the small pouch. Finally, with a triumphant sigh, he pulled out a penny and held it out for you to take. But Sam, probably being the closest thing to a brain cell shared between the three of you, spoke out against it.

“Uh, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Dean just scoffed and threw a snooty little look back at Sam over his shoulder, before holding up his sandwich for Sam to see, causing the younger brother to characteristically roll his eyes.

“What? You think a sandwich is harmful? Think it’s going to grow legs and start ripping people to shreds? This isn’t Captain Underpants, Sammy. No harm, no foul.”

Sam only exhaled an exasperated sigh and looked over at you. God, those puppy dog eyes should’ve been considered a fucking weapon against the psyche.

You had to quickly tear your gaze away from the endless sea of greens and browns that painted his irises, just to spare yourself from the silent judge of character as you carefully lifted the coin from Deans fingertips.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, Sam. Maybe this is all just a big misunderstanding. I mean, a wishing well? What harm could it do?”

You asked, before turning your attention to the fountain before you. Crap. You hadn’t really thought about what you’d wish for. Money? No. For Dean to stop being such a smartass? You didn’t think so. You hummed quietly in deep thought. What on earth were you going to wish for?

And then, there was the obvious one. For the reciprocation of feelings on behalf of the younger Winchester standing not five feet across from you, watching intently as you thought about what wish you were going to make.

No, your conscious mind screamed at you. That would be wrong. To strong arm Sam’s feelings, to try to get him to reciprocate this unrequited love you’d been carrying around with you for somewhere around two years now. It was like an eternity of a ball and chain.

Sam was.. well, to put it mildly, an absolute dreamboat. He was.. kind, and chivalrous, and respectful. He was built with a 6’4 mass of solid lines and lean muscle, a kind of soft comfort that only he could provide. It was absolutely torturous, having to be around him 24/7, stuck in a car for god only knows how many hours, motel rooms, cases where you’d have to patch each other up.

Swallowing your feelings felt like.. swallowing bleach and gasoline. It burned on its way down, and boiled deep in your gut, searing every square inch of nerve in your body, until you were nothing but seared and raw nerves, jolting unwanted electricity through your being whenever Sam dared to touch you, or say your name with that undeniable Sam-softness that only he could seem to produce.

You couldn’t have him. And that tore you apart. Because you’d never meet another man like Sam, not in your lifetime. You weren’t sure you wanted to.

But you’d decided a long time ago that you would rather stick by his side, come hell or high water, as a good friend, then ruin it completely with your own selfish wants and needs. No. Having Sam near you was enough. And you would rather die than drive him and Dean away. So, you kept quiet.

But in some fleeting moments, when Sam insisted on having you behind him so that he could protect you when you went into a haunted building or a cemetery, or in a diner when you locked eyes for just a little too long, or how frantic he’d become whenever you were injured beyond the common scrape or concussion that came easily about hunters, you wondered.

You wondered what it would be like for him to love you so much that he dedicated every breath, fight, and step to you; that he couldn’t bear to see you upset or angry, because it only incited the same feelings in his own gut; that he hated every second that someone approached you in a bar or diner, because he wanted to be the one to do it. You wished that Sam loved you the way that you so wholeheartedly loved him.

But it was wrong. How could you ever force him to love you, when it wasn’t his conscious mind making the decision? You couldn’t. That was the problem. You’d have to cook up another wish.

Well, you would’ve. If a waiter hadn’t accidentally bumped into you, causing you to drop the coin into the water of the fountain. Before you could stop it, a sharp gasp came from your throat as it plopped into the water.

Shit.

Maybe it hadn’t counted, because you hadn’t actually.. wished for it? You were scraping at the bottom of the barrel for some mercy from whatever god was watching over you.

You quickly snapped your head up to watch Sam, trying to decipher whether or not he felt any different at the moment. You stared, horrified, at your friend. You really really hoped that the wish hadn’t worked.

“Great, you two done? We’ve gotta figure this out.”

Sam said, his usually sassy nature poking through the edges. You breathed an internal sigh of relief. It hadn’t done anything. He was still your Sam, and he wasn’t going to start flailing to kiss the ground that you walked on anytime soon, which was very, very comforting.

Later, back in the motel room, you guys figured out that the ‘magic’ wishing well, had actually held a cursed coin that wasn’t supposed to be an act of good grace at all—it was essentially an object to cause chaos wherever it went and whoever wished upon it—hence why Dean was puking up his sandwich in the bathroom. It granted someone’s wish, only to twist it back on them and turn it into something, you guessed it! Chaotic.

While Dean was in the bathroom for the hundredth time, you couldn’t help but spare a glance at Sam, who was sitting across from you at the small table, typing away on his computer, trying to find out more. You just had to make sure.

“Hey, Sam?” You asked, timidly. You were immediately met with Sam’s piercing gaze, his frantic typing on his computer halting momentarily as you consumed his full attention.

“Yeah, what’s up?” He inquired, noticing the slightly nervous glint in your eyes. “Everything alright?”

You scrambled for an excuse. “Yeah, yeah! Of course, yeah, I’m fine. Just uh.. I was wondering.. how you were.. feeling?” Well. That was about the dumbest thing you’d ever said. This was so humiliating. How were you ever going to explain this to him?

His eyebrows furrowed as he looked at you. “Uh.. fine? Why, should I be in the bathroom with Dean, or something?”

“No, no. I was just.. wondering if he was contagious or anything. Do you.. feel any different than you did this morning?” You poked at his psyche, hoping to get a clear answer out of him without actually admitting what you’d wished for.

“Um, no. No, I feel fine. I’m sure he’s not contagious, I mean, it was his wish, so..” Sam retorted, a bit confused, but willing to explain it to you. Classic Sam.

“Right, right. Of course.” You said immediately afterward, before looking down at your hands and fiddling with the skin between your fingers. Nervous habit.

Sam noticed. He always noticed. He knew you a little too well, you decided. “Are you feeling okay? You’re acting a little squirrelly.” He deducted. What a little detective.

A very inconvenient detective.

And what did you do? You hesitated. Probably the worst thing to do in front of a man who knew you more than even you probably did.

His confusion quickly morphed into concern. The kind that consumed his entire expression and straightened his posture.

“_______? Are you okay?”

You panicked. “Yeah! Yeah, I’m okay, promise.” God you were an idiot, going belly up instead of just explaining to him what was going on. Coward.

Sam only stiffened more, staring at you, as if trying to get you to unveil your secrets by just piercing you with his intense gaze.

“Hey.. what did you wish for, earlier?” He asked, now extremely suspicious and worried for your well-being.

Before you could even get the chance to try and convince him that nothing was going on and that you were fine, Dean emerged from the bathroom with a towel gripped into his hand, held haphazardly to his mouth, as if to catch anything that decided to spew from it at any given point

“Sam.. how the hell do we fix this?” Dean asked desperately, nearly keeling over at the cramps in his stomach as he held it tightly.

~

After finding out who the original wisher was, you three were gearing up to go head to his house and talk some sense into him, and take his coin out of the fountain to undo all of the wishes.

You were loading yourself up with weapons, as hunters usually did, before glancing over at the nightstand that Sam was standing next to, seeing your little pocket knife that you carried around on it. You were loading your pistol and putting it in your waistband.

“Hey, Sam? Could you hand me my knife?” You asked, nodding towards the little silver thing on the table.

He glanced over at you, gave you a once over, before looking at the knife next to him on the nightstand.

“Uh.. you can’t just grab it yourself?” He said, his tone seeping with a kind of undercurrent of irritation. It caught you completely off guard.

“I.. you’re closer.” You were even more confused now, looking at him, as he stared at you with frustration and disdain. Was it something you’d done? Why was he acting like this?

“Why did you even take it off in the first place, _______? What if something had busted in here? You would’ve been completely unprepared.” He snapped, now turning towards you.

“Dude, what’s your deal? She put her knife down for a couple of hours, what’s got your panties in a twist?” Dean jumped into the conversation. Dean was just as much of your friend as Sam was, so he obviously jumped in to defend you if he thought that Sam was in the wrong.

“My deal Dean, is that you sleep with a gun under your pillow, and I never take mine off of me. So what, she just gets to be completely unguarded while we have to fight to save her ass? I’m so sick of her being such a little freeloader.” Sam retorted, aggression and venom practically bleeding from his mouth as he said it.

“Freeloader? How many times have I saved your ass? And you wanna call me a freeloader? What’s your problem, Sam? You were fine just a minute ago, and now you want to tear out my throat?” You yelled back, your short temper getting the best of you while you were under verbal siege.

“Yeah, well maybe I’m just sick of your bullshit, _______! I mean, you hardly contribute anything at all. God, you are such a nuisance.” He scoffed and turned his back to you. Now you were pissed.

“I’m a nuisance? What the hell is your fucking problem! Why are you being such an asshole right now?”

“Alright, guys, knock it off!” Dean tried to cut in over the noise, but he was just yelled over anyways.

Sam let out a bitter laugh and turned around to yell at you. But this time, he took an intimidating step closer. Not that you backed down, you weren’t a pussy. But you’d still never seen him try to walk up on you like this.

“Because I fucking hate you, _______! I hate how much you talk, your dumbass laugh, your stupid clothes, the way you follow us around like a lost puppy, I mean seriously, it’s pathetic. You slow us down, you’re hardly as trained as me and Dean are, I mean you’re just one giant inconvenience for the both of us! Why don’t you do everyone around here a favor and leave us the hell alone!” He bellowed, now only a mere six inches from your face, maybe. Towering over you.

The words struck you harder than you cared to admit. Tears pricked your eyes and threatened to fall as they welled up on your bottom lids. You almost physically recoiled, like you had taken a blow that you were massively unprepared for.

“Alright, that’s enough!” Dean cut in, storming over to Sam, grabbing his shoulder and shoving him back away from you, giving you the opportunity to breathe. “I don’t know what the hell your issue is, Sammy, but you need to fix it! You’re being a dick!” He yelled, now between you and Sam like a human shield.

You had heard enough. You took in a deep breath that came out as more of a sniffle, shoved past Dean and right up to the nightstand with your knife on it, pocketing it. You couldn’t believe that something so small had caused Sam to admit that he actually despised you. Practically from head to toe, by the sound of it.

You wiped the tears away from your cheeks and stormed past Sam, and towards the door to the motel room.

“I’ll be in the car.” Your voice was short, clipped, and undeniably hurt. You slammed the door so hard behind you that you were sure the floors below and above you heard it echo.

“Nice going, doofus.” Dean snapped at Sam as soon as you’d gone, continuing to gear himself up. Sam only rolled his eyes and scoffed in retort.

~

When all was said and done, and the curse was reversed, the coin melted down to nothing of use, you three found yourselves back in the motel room once again.

You’d been in a pissy mood ever since the interaction with Sam had happened. He’d been snappy and irate with you the entire time after the initial interaction about the stupid fucking knife. For good reason. And now that Sam’s head had cleared, he knew that it was a damn good reason, too.

You’d gotten in the shower immediately upon your return to the room, and had been in there ever since. This gave Dean the opportunity to talk to Sam without either you or him tearing each other apart.

“You wanna tell me what the hell that whole thing was about earlier?” Dean said, accusatory almost immediately because of the interaction they’d had earlier.

“I..” Sam sighed, looking at the carpet, “don’t know. I just..- I got so angry, I don’t even..-“

“Yeah, I figured, Sherlock Holmes. Nice detective work, there. Real Nobel Peace Prize winning.” Dean retorted, causing Sam to sigh once again.

“No, you don’t get it, Dean, I.. I really did hate her for a good minute there.” Sam admitted, finally turning towards his older brother, almost for answers. “I can’t explain it, I just.. I don’t know, dude.”

Dean stopped for a moment, the cogs in his head slowly turning as he tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with his brother. “That doesn’t make sense. You love-“

“Exactly, Dean. I love her. So I don’t know why I started acting like she was Hitler reincarnated, she just.. really pissed me off.”

“By asking for her damn knife?” Dean asked incredulously.

“I don’t know, Dean!” Sam snapped, before sighing and running a stressed hand through his hair.

Guilt ate away at him like a rotting disease. He couldn’t believe he’d said all those things to you, especially when absolutely none of it was true. He didn’t think you were a freeloader, he loved taking care of you. He loved listening to you talk, he loved hearing you laugh, he thought that your clothes were absolutely gorgeous on you, and he loved having you there 24/7, just.. following. It was endearing, that you trusted him so much to lead you. He swore sometimes that you’d let him lead you straight into hell, just as long as he was in front of you.

He loved it all. Every flaw, every perfection, every little thing that made you human. That made you, you; for lack of better words.

“Could it have been that curse?” Dean suggested, just as confused as Sam was about the whole ordeal.

“No.. no, it couldn’t have been. I didn’t feel any different before, I just..-“ He cut himself off, recalling the interaction that the two of you had earlier.

You never did tell him what you’d wished for.

And what was the opposite of hate?

“Oh, my god..” Sam groaned, running a hand over his face in realization.

“What? What’s up?” Dean asked, intrigued.

“Uh..” Sam sighed, turning to look back at the carpet, “nothing. Nothing, um.. you know what, Dean? I’m starving. Would you mind going out and getting some food?”

“What? No, tell me what the hell is-“

“Dean.”

The soft scold from Sam caught Dean’s attention, causing him to look at his younger sibling, a bit confused.

“I need to talk to _______. You should really go out and get some food while I do.” Sam repeated suggestively, hoping that Dean would finally get the hint and get the hell out of the motel room for a little while.

Finally, Dean reached the realization with a soft, understanding ‘ah’ and a nod, a lewd smirk on his face. “Right. Well, you know the rules,” he said, getting up and grabbing his keys and coat, “don’t do anything on my bed, don’t get anything on my bed, wear a condom—“

“Just get the hell out of here, Dean.” Sam chuckled, causing Dean to throw him a wink and slip out of the motel room quickly.

Sam wasn’t waiting long before you emerged from the bathroom, a sour expression still adorning your pretty face. God, he had to fix this. You looked so upset. He couldn’t even image.

His voice brought you out of your thoughts as you ran a brush through your wet hair. “Hey.”

You froze, for a moment or two, contemplating on even replying to him or not. You were still insanely pissed off. You decided to do it. “Oh, so what, you want to talk to me like I’m a person now? Or wait, sorry, I didn’t realize you spoke puppy.” You snapped, referring to his ‘lost puppy’ comment from before.

Sam flinched slightly with a quiet wince, as if your response had physically pained him to hear. He rose from the edge of the bed and approached you slowly, not wanting to upset or scare you like he’d done earlier. “Look, I know you’re upset-“

“Upset?” You laughed sarcastically and looked over at him. “Upset doesn’t even begin to skim the surface, Sam.” You barked, before turning and walking towards the couch, which you’d made into a makeshift bed. You always took the couch, because you were not going to sleep with Dean, who was practically an active octopus while he slept, or with Sam, for.. obvious reasons.

Sam sighed, but stood his ground. “I know. I know I screwed up. I’m sorry I was such a dick to you, okay? I don’t know why I was acting like that.” He said, telling a small little fib to weasel his way in with you. He’d had a pretty good idea on why. He just needed you to confirm it.

“I think.. I actually think it was the curse.” He admitted, and he noticed immediately when he saw you stiffen slightly.

“Why.. why would you think that?” You asked, slightly nervous, but still upset, so you had an excuse to not look up at him while he spoke to you.

He took a step closer. Fuck. You were royally screwed.

He ignored your question. “You didn’t tell me what your wish was earlier.” He said, taking another slow, deliberate step forward. You felt cornered. You shook your head lightly.

“It.. wasn’t much of a wish, I didn’t..- I didn’t mean to toss the coin in, that guy bumped into me, remember?” You scrambled to get even a scrap of an excuse to get you out of this hole you’d dug yourself into.

But, metaphorically, Sam was standing above you, holding an escape ladder tantalizingly in the air above you, daring you to admit it to his face, so that he’d allow your precious escape. He was standing so close now.

The same distance he’d been before, but less intimidating now, and with a new kind of tension that hadn’t been hanging in the air previously. Your breath hitched as his fingers brushed against your arm.

“Yeah? Well, what were you going to wish for?” He asked, his voice only a low hum compared to what it usually was. He stared at the side of your face, waiting for some kind of expression that told him what was going on inside your head.

“I.. um..” you didn’t even have the guts to respond. How could you tell him? It was horrible. And your hesitation was the reaction that Sam needed. The one that told him he was pushing on the right button.

“You asked me how I was feeling earlier, too. Why?” It kind of felt like an interrogation on your end, and as your last, flailing attempt to escape from his silent torment, you sighed shakily and rolled your eyes, hiding behind hardened emotions to get him to drop it.

“Because Dean was sick. You know that already, why are you even asking?” You said petulantly, making an attempt to push past him, to put some distance between the two of you. But that plan fell short when Sam gently wrapped his large palm around the flesh of your upper arm, holding you firmly in place.

“Right. And it’s definitely not because you wished for me to fall in love with you today, right?”

Your breath hitched. You were sure that your face had turned all sorts of bright pink because of how warm your skin felt on your bones. You finally risked a glance up at his face, and he held a small, knowing smirk there, waiting for you.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about…” you murmured softly.

“Don’t I? You know what’s the opposite of love, _______? Hate. The coin, it made everything go to chaos, right?” He said, and before you could even respond, he continued.

“You wondered why it didn’t affect me at first? It was because I was already in love with you.” He said it so shamelessly, like he hadn’t been shoving the feeling down for god only knows how long, like he hadn’t been terrified that the day he finally told you, would be the day that he lost you. But he didn’t care about any of that anymore. He just needed you to know that he didn’t hate you. He never could.

Your face flushed, and you stared up at him with wide eyes. He sighed softly and brought his hand up to gently caress, then cup your cheek, rubbing his thumb gently over the plump skin there.

“I love the sound of your voice, the way that you talk; I love your laugh and your smile; I love how kind and passionate you are; I love how you feel like you can let me protect you, even when you know you can do it yourself— I love you, _______. Please, honey, you have to believe me.” Sam’s voice faded quietly into somewhat of a whispered plea, hoping that his words had gotten through to you, and that you knew he’d never hated you.

You, on the other hand, were completely gobsmacked with disbelief and awe. Sam. Your Sam. He was in love with you? That was why the wish hadn’t worked? Sam was in love with you? You felt like crawling out of your skin and dying there—because at least then, you’d die a happy woman, knowing that the man you loved, reciprocated. If only you could remain in this moment, forever.

“I.. you..” you struggled to find the words for a moment, before swallowing down a heavy saliva that had weighed on your tongue for a bit now, “but you said..-“

“I know what I said. Believe me, I know what I said, damnit.” He said, the guilt weighing heavy on his shoulders, and seeping deep into his bones. It showed in the soft murmur of his tone, the dip in his voice. “I.. don’t hate you. I could never hate anything about you, sweetheart. You’re perfect..” he muttered, laying his brow against your own and removing the hand from your arm now.

Sam’s now free hand went up to cup your other cheek, and you could feel his breath fanning over the skin on your face. Your breath stuttered in your throat.

“You’re just saying that..-“ you tried to retort, but he shut you up quickly.

“I’m not. Really, I’m not. I don’t hate anything about you.” He said, still trying to desperately convince you.

“You will. Eventually.” You replied grimly, your hands coming up to rest against his wrists gently, soaking up his presence as much as you possibly could.

Sam only shook his head softly, silently disagreeing with you, but he didn’t want to argue. His thumbs rubbed stripes along your cheekbones, his touch was reverent, almost worshiping, like he was holding the heavens and the earth in his hands. Something precious.

One of his hands trailed down from your cheek, to your neck, collarbone, lower until he was brushing against your stomach briskly, before finally settling possessively on your hip. It was just then that you truly knew how big he was compared to you. Just by the weight and size of his hand on your skin.

Your breath shook, and Sam’s other hand started to trail up into your hair, the back of your head, his touch slow, and deliberate. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, almost as lost as you were, before they snapped back open and landed on your own. “Tell me to stop..” he prayed quietly.

You only gazed up at those hazel eyes, and shook your head with a soft, timid, “No.”

And it seemed like that had just snapped Sam’s carefully held restraint completely in two.

He sighed heavily and slammed his lips up against yours. Out of all the times that you’d imagined yourself kissing Sam for the first time, you’d always imagined that it would be soft. Careful. Deliberate. But it was actually far from it.

Your mouths clashed together in a desperate, heated mixture of teeth and tongue, you both panting for air, and yet not daring to pull away and break the delicate atmosphere. Sam’s tongue swiped long swathes against your own, the feeling of your different salivas mixing and coating the insides of your mouths intoxicating to both parties.

His grip on your hip tightened, and his hand in your hair became demanding, taking a fistful of it and pushing you deeper into him. He pulled you closer by your hip, causing your back to arch slightly against him, and he took that to his full advantage.

You could feel the shit-eating grin on his face against your lips before you saw it, and you knew that he had to be up to something. His hand traveled from his hip to the lower dip in your back, pressing you further into him, and making you arch back even more, which only lead to him having to lean over you to kiss you properly, delicately reminding you how you were smaller than him.

His hand slipped underneath your shirt desperately, taking a step forward and letting your knees hit the back of his mattress, before pushing you down. As you sat, your kiss was broken, leaving you both panting, gasping for air that you’d taken from each other.

Sam looked down at you, tilting your head back up to look at him by your chin. This was his way of giving you an out if you wanted it. If you weren’t ready. His eyes held a silent question. Are you ready? Do you want this? Do you want me? In response to every single one of them, you only sighed and reached up, cupping your hands behind the back of his neck and bringing him in close, clashing your lips together again.

He certainly had no problem with that. He let out a deep, guttural groan that filled you head-to-toe with that one bass-y note, the vibrations against your lips enough to make you moan back. He quickly swallowed the noise and went to ease you onto your back. Excitement and arousal coursed through your veins, threatening to spill over at any moment.

Sam had slowly been lowering you more and more, until he had you on your elbows underneath him, just about to make that final push to have you on your back, splayed out for him, just like he’d dreamed of time and time again. He let out a shaky sigh and broke your kiss, much to your dismay.

You tried to chase his lips with a soft whine, only to have him shift his weight to one arm, using his now free hand to grab your jaw and tilt it away. He didn’t leave you confused for very long.

His lips trailed wet, hot kisses down your jaw and neck, leaving small bite marks and hickeys as he went. Now that he had you, he wasn’t going to hold back. He would be the only person to see you like this. He’d be the only one to see the marks he left on your skin. Sam wasn’t much of a show off anyways.

Your head tilted back naturally as you panted and moaned softly into the air, whining whenever he nipped at a particularly sensitive spot in the expanse of your skin. One of his knees came to rest between your legs, pressing up into your core tantalizingly.

You squirmed and pressed into him with an equal amount of fervor, feeling another satisfied grin on his face press against the skin of your bed as you did.

You were a mess already. Your hair was tousled, as was his, both pairs of lips were pink and swollen, and your shirt was now somewhat rearranged on your bodice. You were sure that your cheeks were flushed to high hell, too.

So, that being said, it was probably the absolute worst timing when the lock to the motel clicked, and the door swung open.

You let out a quick gasp, pulling away from Sam and staring, horrified, at the door where Dean was now currently standing, staring at the scene before him, frozen. You let out a soft, embarrassed little sigh, hiding your face away from Dean into Sam’s shoulder. That one little noise, paired with the action, made Sam absolutely melt against you. He quickly gathered himself with a deep breath, turning back to Dean.

“Sorry, dude.” He apologized sheepishly.

“Eh, it’s alright, just uh.. wrap it before you tap it, you know.” Dean said awkwardly, earning him a glare from you. He cleared his throat, and with a soft ‘okay’, went to leave the room, before quickly coming back and setting one of the bags of food on the ground next to the door for you two later to share.

“For you, uh.. I’ll.. I’ll leave you be. Yeah. Um.. yeah.” He said, before finally slipping out of the room and locking the door behind him. For a moment, you and Sam shared a quiet look, before bursting out into crippling laughter that had you both gripping onto each other for support.

God, you loved hearing him laugh. Genuinely laugh. Your world had been all kinds of fucked up recently, and it was a rare sight to even see him really smile anymore. So whenever you did, you savored every second of it, worried that the moment would pass faster than you could comprehend.

Once the laughter died down, and the mood turned a bit softer once more, Sam just quietly sat and watched you, hovering above by his hands planted on either side of your head. You only stared back quietly, before finally breaking out into a content smile.

“What?” You asked sweetly.

Sam only sighed and leaned in, pressing chaste, loving kisses against your neck again. Much less ravenously than before. “Just.. admiring. You’re gorgeous.” He conferred, trailing the kisses everywhere from your jaw to your collarbone, his hands beginning to wander up your shirt again, a little slower this time.

Your breath hitched and you gripped his shoulders, moaning out a soft little, “Sam..” as he continued his ministrations.

“Shh, I know, honey.. I’ve got a lot of making up to do, you know? Just.. lie back, baby. I’ll take care of you.” He murmured quietly against your skin, trailing his kisses a bit farther down.

The man knew how to keep a promise. ‘Cause oh lord, did he make it up to you.

notes: AAHHHHHHHH!!! First tumblr story, I think it’s pretty solid. A little rushed at the end, because it’s currently almost one in the morning, and I have school tomorrow lol but I didn’t want to break my train of thought. Let me know what you think!! If you have any tips, I’d really appreciate them! Thx!

Xoxo,

Happy Reading! ❤️

[gyeomsweetgyeom]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ can I call her what she is? ⋆⭒˚.⋆

summary: Doyoung has a new girlfriend and she makes it very clear to you and you alone that she doesn't like you. Too bad no one believes you

(cw: f!reader, cursing, side character is a bitch, the guys are idiots, angsty with a happy ending!)

You liked to think you were a likable person. You were kind, you had good manners, you were polite, you were never rude, but now you were starting to rethink it all. Ever since Doyoung's girlfriend, Jane, started hanging around, actually. They hadn't been together long, but she was a strong character so it was no wonder she wormed her way into hanging around with you guys.

It wasn't that she was outright mean, but she was snide and passive aggressive. Only to you it seemed. You really should have been in a better state of mind too, you and fratboy!Jaehyun had been official now for a few weeks now. There was a lot of texting over winter break and a lot of time spent together since school started back up. However, you were still a little iffy about you two being together. Old insecurities hadn't yet been quelled and Jane being a bitch just made you feel worse.

Somehow Jane had finagled her way into a Sunday dinner, an event usually reserved the brothers and their partners. It made sense, but usually partners didn't show up within the first month of dating. Jane and Doyoung had only been together for three weeks from what you understood, and you knew better than anyone that being around this group of guys could be a lot. You'd attended a few times before you and Jaehyun were official and you remember being beyond overwhelmed.

You and Taeyong were in the kitchen, plating up the take out you guys had ordered. The kitchen was loud since everyone was hanging out waiting for the last few people to show up. It was like every other Sunday dinner, loud laughing, lots of talking, and complaining about Johnny being gone, some kind of family emergency.

Doyoung led Jane into the kitchen and you watched as she went around the room and greeted everyone. You exhaled a long breath, watching as she greeted Taeyong with a wave and a smile on her face. You waved at her, smiling, "Hey Jane, it's so good to see you again."

The smile on her face freezes, the smile no longer reaching her eyes, "right, so good to see you too."

The weird feeling you always get around her settles into your stomach as dinner progresses. The guys hang on Jane's every word as she explains some kind of biological chemistry phenomenon. Even you have to admit it's interesting, but then she turns to you. The smile on her face is sweet, but you know that look. She's about to say something rude to you.

She clears her throat as she turns to you, "and I'm sorry, what was your major again? Something with children, right?"

"Yeah, I'm an elementary education major," you nod. Jaehyun smiles as he rubs your back, encouraging this connection between the ladies of Nu Chi Theta.

"Of course you are," Jane nods, "you know, times have changed. Women are more than able to pick something in fields that aren't already overrun by females."

You open your mouth to respond, but nothing comes out and Jane's attention is drawn elsewhere with a smug smirk in your direction. What the fuck was her problem?

The dinner ends not too much later, though you had hoped it would have ended sooner. Jane has gone home, something about chemistry homework or whatever. You stay at the table gnawing on your bottom lip as the guys continue to talk around you. You turn to Jaehyun on your right, your voice low, "do you think Jane is mean to me?"

His brows furrow, "what are you talking about? She's nice to everyone."

You helplessly turn to Haechan who sits on your left. He's always had your back, surely he'll believe you, right? "Do you think Jane is weird with me?"

"Did she say something mean to you?" Haechan asks, you nod sincerely, "I didn't catch that. What did she say?"

"About my major being overrun with females," you explain slowly.

Haechan cocks his head to the side, "well, teaching is a field dominated by women so she wasn't really wrong though was she?"

After that night you start to second guess yourself. Were you overthinking it? Was she not being mean to you? Were you making it all up? Still, you find that you don't attend the Sunday dinners because you know she'll be there. When you can't avoid her, you just get quiet and don't interact as much as you normally would.

Tonight though, you cant avoid it. All your excuses have run out and unfortunately telling Jaehyun your pet chinchilla was sick didn't work. You sit in your usual seat, poking at the food on your plate with a blank look on your face.

You can feel Jane's bitchy energy focused right on you. Great, here comes another blow. She sets her cup down, "so did you help Taeyong make dinner tonight?"

You shake your head, not looking up from your plate, "no."

"No wonder it tastes better," she laughs and to your dismay, the rest of the table bursts out in chuckles too.

"But we usually order take out, so she doesn't cook anyway," you hear Johnny pipe up. You look up, feeling a sense of hope and an immense sense of appreciation for your friend.

It's barely enough to deter Jane. She waves off Johnny's comment with another laugh, "so how long have Sunday dinners been for official partners? I know you and Jaehyun haven't been official for very long, right?"

Jaehyun pipes up, "Since the middle of December, happiest days of my life since then."

The other guys roll their eyes playfully, having heard enough about the two of you to know that they won't miss out on anything as they return to their own conversations. Her brows furrow as she leans in from her seat across from you, "Doyoung mentioned that you two had a think going on for months before, so were you just a booty call? Did you trick him into making it official?"

"Ha, trick me," Jaehyun chuckles. Your brows furrow as you look at him with a look of complete hurt. Did he not hear everything she said?

"And I mean really, besides his good looks, what was so appealing about Jaehyun? He had a reputation for sticking his dick anywhere didn't he? I don't think I'd ever let a man disrespect me the way he disrespected you," she shrugs her shoulders, looking around the table at all the guys who have now gone silent.

Johnny coughs out in shock, "yo, what the fuck, Jane?"

"I'm just being honest," Jane shrugs, "it's not that serious."

"No! It is that serious. No one asked you to be honest about shit that doesn't have the slightest thing to do with you," Johnny counters.

"It's just girl talk John, typical female conversation," Jane rolls her eyes.

"But it's not a conversation when Sweets hasn't even said more than one word. You're being really fucking rude. There's no reason to dredge up old wounds for my friends and make a mess where you're not involved at all," Jonnny argues.

"She also implied that I'm a slut," Jaehyun pipes up.

Johnny holds his open palm out in Jaehyun's direction, "I just watched you let Jane stomp all over your girlfriend and decimate her self esteem, you don't get to be defended right now. You fucking laughed about Jane saying Sweets was just a booty call, bro!"

"Johnny, it's alright..." you offer quietly.

"It's really not though. Is this the first time she's talked to you like this?" Johnny asks.

Beside you Haechan shakes his head softly, "it's not. She made some comments a few weeks ago and Sweets asked us about it."

"And that's why you haven't been coming to the dinners, isn't it?" Johnny asks.

You're barely able to nod before Jaehyun is tugging you into his arms in a tight hug and apologizing profusely right in your ear, "I was such an idiot. I'm so sorry, Sweetheart. I'm always going to listen to whatever you say and agree no matter what."

Johnny clears his throat, "I'm sorry to do this to your girlfriend, Doyoung, but I'm going to have to invoke my power as vice president of this frat and ask that you leave, Jane."

Doyoung chokes on his drink, "have you been telling people you're my girlfriend?"

"Yes, because I said I am," Jane rolls her eyes as she stands.

"You're my lab partner in chemistry that can't tell when she's overstayed her welcome. You heard Johnny, bye," Doyoung waves.

She strides away with a scoff, telling Doyoung she was breaking up with him. Everyone looks around the table awkwardly before Haechan clears his throat, "we owe you an apology Sweets."

The table of frat boys nods, all expressing their words of apology as Jaehyun holds you tightly and presses a kiss to the top of your head. Haechan groans, "well, can I call her what she is without anyone getting offended? She was a mega bitch!"

"Cheers to that," Jaehyun chuckles, raising his cup.

[pugh-bug]

His Promised Sin

———————————————————————

Remmick x reader

Word count: 2.9k

Warnings: smut, nsfw, lots of mentions of religion and Satan, brief threat of sa

Finally posting this, sorry for the wait I’ve had a lot to sort out this week planning a funeral but I adored writing this. I’ll definitely be writing for Remmick again and for other Sinners characters. Any comments are appreciated so much <33

——————————————————————

In the fierce heat you trudged home, the journey only seeming longer with each step. The centre of town was five miles away on foot but there was nowhere else to buy groceries so walk you did. What you couldn’t afford to buy you grew and what you couldn’t grow you borrowed, from old friends who also couldn’t leave town. No one ever left and those who did soon returned, even the Moore brothers couldn’t stay away but you saw little of them.

Once the path shrunk into a pitiful thing only you could follow you knew you were almost home. You glanced at your ring finger thinking of Chris and the promise he’d just made before leaving. The promise of marriage. Soon. Guilt rang in your chest, working its way down to your gut and settling there.

It wasn’t just that you didn’t love him, that most suitors could live with, it was that you didn’t particularly like him. He didn’t make you laugh or cry. He didn’t make you feel anything worth much and yet you’d agreed. To Chris your politeness was excitement but you knew the truth. No man had made you excited since that night.

Creek

You pushed your weary door open with one hand and clutched your bag of goods with the other. Home at last. It was modest, nothing special, and yet it was the one place you felt comfortable. Peaceful. Some deep part of you hated how safe those words had become, how you prized surviving over thriving and hid from the world. Something better had to be out there, something you wouldn’t just settle for but embrace. Something to fuel you, fill your soul with purpose and set your nerves alight. In your lifetime nothing had matched that description except…

“Where are we going?”

You followed your new friend and classmate into the woods missing home already. If your Mother knew you were alone with a boy at night you’d be in more trouble than you could handle. No amount of grovelling would appease that woman.

“I should get home, they’ll be wondering where I’ve gotten to.”

Johnny ignored your worries, snaking an arm round your waist and pulling you close to his warm body. You froze. “You’re gonna enjoy this.” He grinned, before planting a sloppy kiss on your unsuspecting lips and attempting another.

“Get off!”

But he wasn’t concerned, not until -

“Listen!” You hissed, shoving Johnny away. Something was lingering in the trees watching your every movement. Your Daddy had taught you about hunting animals and in that moment you felt at one with his prey. Hunted. Somehow you knew where to look to see your predator, catching its gaze a few yards away.

Your heart began pounding loud as Johnny’s voice telling you to stop wasting his time. That didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Nothing else existed but you and the glimpse of a face among the branches. A face with eyes you could hardly make out in the darkness except for red. A grin, a gleam in his eyes and a finger to his dripping lips telling you shush.

Nightfall approached as you sleepily unpacked your things, cursing yourself for craving more than you had. For daydreaming about anything but the wedding, if it ever happened. He’d only kissed you once the day his Grandma, who’s life was sadder than her death, gave her blessing. It hadn’t been the love you’d read about in books or witnessed between Smoke and Annie. It hadn’t been love at all and to worsen the blow, to fuel your disappointment, it hadn’t been lust either. A marriage of convenience.

That night you read until your eyes grew heavy and the book slipped away. You dreamt of the face from years ago, the face of something evil.

If it hadn’t have been for the open window you’d have slept through the howling wind.

Rising from your bed to close it, you heard it stop as quickly as it had started. Silence. You were left only with silence as a companion in the twilight except it seemed to want something. It stirred in the air and within you. A deep longing for a cure to the emptiness that had buried its way into your bones through years of sorrow.

Cautiously, you lit a lantern and held it to your window. Something ancient had awakened and somehow you knew Satan in the flesh was just outside. He’d been just outside all your life watching and waiting. Biding his time until you’d abandon all hope of a lasting morality and gladly give in to your sinful desires.

It seemed that night he would no longer idly watch.

Tap tap

Taking a deep breath before doing so, you walked towards the sound. Your front door. You ought to have walked like a traitor on a plank, like a person approaching death with terror. You didn’t, although a rhythmic thud sounded some alarm in your chest as you opened the door.

But there was no one there.

Relief should have been your immediate and only feeling but although it was there you felt a wave of disappointment overpower it. Had the tapping been in your head, or had the wind sent branches tumbling to your front door? The wind that had ceased long before the tapping…

You stood there for a moment letting the night air cool your body until a whisper of your name set your nerves alight.

“Y/n…”

Again, unmistakable a second time. You were not alone.

“Y/n…”

Taunting and nearby, the voice was beckoning you outside. All you had to do was answer. There was nothing but miles of forest between you and the nearest human soul. To answer would be inviting death.

As you made to enter and lock the door the air around you changed as if a gust of wind had ran through you. Alarmed you turned away from your house only to see him standing metres away. In every way he was the same demonic presence you’d encountered all those years ago without a mark of time on him. The only difference was his face, his mouth, was clean from blood. He would have looked to anyone else normal. Human. Harmless. You knew better.

“You know my name.”

A nervousness rang in your voice that only amused the visitor.

“Darlin I know lots of names, names are easy. Bet you’d even know mine if you thought about it long enough.”

You tensed at his words, his unnervingly charming manner of speaking and his grin and yet you did know. You’d always known, somehow he’d told you in the spiritual sense. In a different realm, perhaps in a different lifetime.

“Remmick.”

He bowed as if accepting a great honour, always remaining a few steps from you and your door.

“That’s what God gave me.”

His sardonic smile told you he was mocking your beliefs before he spoke again, eyeing your small house.

“Hasn’t given you much has he?”

“I have enough.”

That was the truth. You had more than you needed and less than you wanted, same as everyone else from town.

“But are you happy?”

You pursed your lips.

“I’m content.”

Remmick simply tutted, leaning closer to you with a demonic shine in his eyes.

“Ah sweetheart, contentment is the enemy of joy.”

Suddenly the emptiness you’d carried within you felt encompassing. Impossible to ignore. When your eyes met Remmick’s you knew he could see it on you, even smell it. A moment passed before you considered the small yet powerful distance between the two of you.

“Are you going to ask me to invite you in?”

Remmick rocked back on his heels, smiling comfortably to himself seemingly.

“No need to.”

You cocked your head.

“You already let me in.”

He ceased rocking.

“I didn-“

“You called out to me, you’ve been calling for my kind a long time.”

You thought of every celebration, every lonely night, every passing year you’d spent longing for something to take you away. A part of you had always felt heard, understood by some invisible force of nature - perhaps God. But God hadn’t been listening, Remmick had.

“Why now, after so long?”

He didn’t answer.

“Will you answer if I let you in?”

The light of the moon flickered in Remmick’s stare. He was undoubtedly the flame to your moth and he knew it, smiling as all those do who know they’ve won. It wasn’t just foolish to let him in it was suicidal but you felt a strange peacefulness with your decision. It was like he’d said: you’d already let him in.

Remmick watched, impressed, as you opened your door fully and gestured for him to come in. He hesitated only for a moment before slowly following you down the hall and into your kitchen. As he eyed your home, you glanced at the drawer you knew housed several knives.

Inside Remmick could almost pass for human, even to you. His eyes didn’t have the same demonic gleam they possessed outside. You watched as he ran a calloused hand down your armchair and caressed the tassels of your lampshade, like a child left unsupervised. He seemed in awe of everything and you found yourself feeling a solemn sense of pity in your heart. What kind of life did he live? Did he have a home of his own? These were questions amongst hundreds others you craved answers for.

“Why now?”

Remmick turned toward you, still keeping a few metres distance. The air moved differently around him, sensing he did not belong. It parted for him out of fear and perhaps on some level respect for he was more ancient than any other being. He smelt of the earth as if he’d been born from roots, not a Mother’s womb.

“You weren’t sure what you wanted, til now.”

“And what do I want?”

He just smiled as if the answer was obvious and perhaps it was. You turned away from Remmick pondering his words…escape.

“That’s it.”

That voice, he spoke like a serpent. A siren. Everything the local preacher warned you about was standing before you in your own kitchen. Invited.

“Don’t look so afraid now darlin, you wanted me here.”

That he knew you couldn’t argue with, no matter how horrid a truth it was. It hadn’t been delirium or the forceful hand of another that had led you to sin. You’d had the same teachings as everyone in town, the same goodness and voice of God. It had never been enough and looking at Remmick, sensing his sinful ferocity, you knew only he would be.

“I know...”

It had barely been a whisper but you knew he’d heard. Resigned to your fate, you stared solemnly at Remmick. He stared back with the sight of countless forgotten souls.

“Will you leave…”

You let out a shaky breath, finding the floor easier to talk to.

“My body…will you leave it here when it’s done?”

Remmick took slow, almost careful, steps toward you. Once his face was mere inches from your own he shook his head, looking down at your tearful eyes as if you were a thing to be pitied. Pitied and played with.

“We’ll see where the night takes us.”

You felt weakened by his words and yet no encounter rendered you so energised. None except…

“Johnny.”

Remmick ran a sharp tongue over his sharper teeth.

“Don’t worry. He’s out of reach.”

You thought of Johnny’s incessant touches, his threats.

“Is that where anyone who meets you ends up?”

“Just the ones who deserve it.”

You looked up at Remmick taking in the shape of his jaw, the line of his nose and the unruliness of his hair. He shouldn’t have been appealing, not when his very existence went against God, but he was. With every look, every word uttered you felt yourself being pulled by an invisible force into him. Shrouded under his being.

“Do I deserve it?”

“Deserve?”

Remmick’s eyes were transfixed on your neck before he pulled away to speak once more.

“Forsake that word, it means nothing to you.”

His eyes bored into yours, you heard his words run through your entire body. You felt the sudden urge to nod in blind agreement as after all it had been Remmick who’d saved you. Answered your callings. He had been your saviour so you’d worship him as you saw fit.

“You don’t have to hide your true nature from me, I smell it on you.”

Before you could think of a reply Remmick moved, slow but purposeful like a hunting snake. You watched him mouth agape as he lowered himself down…down…down until his eyes were level with your thighs. There was nothing between you and Remmick but a thin layer of linen and yet he made no attempt to rid you of your clothes. Instead he looked up at you with a face as innocent as you believed him capable of having. He was asking for permission.

“Chris…”

Your stomach churned at the thought of him at home, eagerly telling his family of your plans.

“Isn’t here is he?”

Remmick’s voice took you out of your head, snapping you into submission.

Your only response was to lift your nightdress, keeping your eyes on his. You waited for the judgement, from who you didn’t know. There were only sinners present. Remmick took a long look, drinking in the sight before he tasted you.

“Mnghn…”

You let out before clasping a hand over your mouth. Remmick peered up at you, grinning.

“Don’t gotta be quiet for me sweetheart.”

If you were thinking of speaking there was no need, Remmick dived back in without another word. His tongue felt feverish, its movements unrelenting and hungry. You clung to the kitchen counter as he tasted every inch of you, his tongue seeming longer by the second.

“Jesus…”

But he wasn’t present, only Remmick and his tongue could end your suffering. Only the warm feeling of lust could envelope you, your mind unreachable and your soul his. No man on Earth ever made your body sing, it was as if Remmick had done this a hundred times before. You knew this feeling had been chasing you, and you it, long before the knock at your door and worse still…that you’d miss it tomorrow.

“Sweetest thing these lips have tasted.”

His words were purest filth, his mouth ancient sin spurring you on. Your hips involuntarily bucked into his mouth demanding, praying for more. He gladly obliged by adding a finger to your torment, circling your clit whilst his tongue had its way. Your grip on the counter tightened, your eyes pleading to close but Remmick’s eyes on you said no: don’t look away. Savour every minute. Savour him.

It was too much: Remmick’s devouring, his words, his scent and the feeling of oblivion growing hotter in your core. Your hand found its way into his hair, gripping him harder than the counter only invigorating him.

“Yes angel, just like that.”

Every cell in your body felt magnetised to him as you came with a howl of his name and fire in your lungs. You hardly registered Remmick’s awe filled eyes on your shaking body, pre occupied with seeing every star in the universe. The room, the house it all felt small. Inconsequential. You were rising above it or perhaps sinking below, you no longer cared.

“Better?”

Remmick rose to steady you with strong arms, not waiting for an answer. His fingers and mouth were wet with your slick but he made no effort to clean himself. You had half a mind to grab his face between your hands and bite, kiss and lick yourself off him but his words halted you.

“Are you ready sweetheart?”

He traced the shape of your face with his index finger admiring you almost like a lover would, a starved one. Your breath hitched when his hand found your throat and ever so gently squeezed.

“Your blood is louder than most.”

“You can hear it?”

“Always have.”

You pictured Remmick following your pulse to Johnny’s chosen spot, basking in the cover of twilight before draining him dry. It was an image you’d torn apart and rebuilt countless times when trying to forget. But in your kitchen, with Remmick’s teeth so close to your neck it and your escape in reach it seemed almost comforting. The inevitability of it all eased your lost soul, the knowing that no force on Earth could steer Remmick from your path. His path was yours and yours his, always had been.

You craned your neck for him, closing your eyes to bask in what would surely be the beginning of something unholy but no bite came. Remmick guided your head back in place, a solemn finality in his gleaming eyes.

“Dawn’s comin.”

He gestured to your window and sure enough a sunrise was brewing, threatening to end your night of living. Your mouth opened to speak but no words came out.

“I’ll still be here when you wake.”

Remmick licked what was left of your slick off his fingers, tasting as if you were a delicacy. In the time it took for your eyes to blink he was gone yet the scent of him lingered. You imagined it always would, that a part of him as he said would remain with you. He’d doomed you both, promised without such words to end your stagnant suffering and damn you to Hell.

You dreamt of following him there gladly, knowing your time would come soon enough.

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