#no info given to me about anyone else i can contact even though things are clearly Wrong

[adelle-ein]

college admins man. college admins

[kyra45]

Keys guide to scam spotting (v2)

Hi! I’m Key (Or Jess depending on which blog you know me from) and I’ll be telling you some better information and detail on how to spot a scam account be it a pet scam or a donation scam. All information is based on my own experiences and I’ll try to keep this post accessible so the only big text is the title. This information should help in understanding how these scams work and how to spot them without having to do too much work. As always, if you appreciate what I do and want to show it, sharing these info posts helps other users see it and learn about blogs that might send them asks.

—

What is a donation scam? - A donation scam is when someone is being deceptive to get money by claiming they need mutual aid or support. For example, they are using the story from someone else’s fundraising post in order to get donations and won’t tell anyone their lying. This is called a donation scam. While the story may be legitimate, it is a story stolen off someone else and means the real person isn’t getting the support they asked for because someone else is using it. These stories are often stolen off Facebook/GoFundMe or even Instagram and could come from a private account or group so searching wouldn’t come up with a source. The images may also be stolen from somewhere else too.

How do you spot a donation scam? - Donation scams are usually easily spotted if you take a closer look at the information being given. Stolen stories will often have certain parts removed and replaced with the information the scammer added themselves. Sometimes the post may be composed of two different parts and won’t sound right if you pay close attention. For example, part of the story sounds fine but then the second part of the story seems out of place and doesn’t match up with the beginning. Another thing to check is how old the account is and if you have timestamps on you can see if an older post is backdated. You can also check to see if the account has tagged certain blogs in their post though this isn’t always a sign of a scam.

What is post backdating? - Post backdating is changing the dates of a reblogged post to look older then it really is. While this can be used with good intentions, scammers often use this to trick people into thinking their account is years old or even a few months old. The one way to find this is by turning on timestamps in dashboard settings and checking ‘other notes’ in reblogs. This is the only way to see the true date something was shared. Accounts who backdate posts will often claim someone told them to do it or they’ll say they didn’t know it was bad. However, you can not accidentally backdate a post.

Did the account contact you first? - A common occurrence is that you will get scam asks if you share a popular or trending post. Usually these accounts send asks to anyone they find without care of who it is and might lie as well if you ask them how they found you. In general, a brand new account shouldn’t easily find you unless they were watching the notes of popular posts. Occasionally these new accounts will even send asks to certain accounts they shouldn’t know about unless they have seen the account before. If your DMs are closed, the ask may ask you to message them because it’s urgent but all they will do is ask for money or ask you to loan them some money.

—

What is a pet donation scam? - A pet donation scam is where someone has went and looked around for vet fundraisers online and then took it for themselves by saving the images and story while erasing any links that would lead to the real pet getting support. They will then repost it to tumblr and say it’s actually their pet needing urgent care with the post title being very large and in red text for a sense of urgency. Sometimes they’ll say they can’t use GoFundMe because it has a fee or something else. This is a scam because they are not the owner of the pet and have stolen everything meaning no funds sent will be towards the actual pets care.

How do you spot a pet donation scam? - A common way of a pet donation scam is by how old the pinned post is and how many posts are reblogged on the account. Usually there is only a few posts shared and always shared around the same time and then no more. These posts all come from a trending topic, a fandom, or are popular posts. Another thing is checking the bio in Google search and seeing if it’s been took from someone else as the scammer never makes their own bio. Reverse image search their pfp to see who it really belongs to in case they stole it. Another important thing is to check their link and see if it matches up with the vet bill. Since most pictures are stolen off a private group, reverse image search won’t find them. The name they may have is likely not their real name and is stolen.

Did the account send you an ask? - Regardless of what the ask says, it usually requests you to answer it privately or message them so they can tell you thanks. These asks may have several emojis in them as well but their always just copy/pasted and sent to multiple users all at once on a daily basis. The private answer is so the ask won’t show up if someone is looking it up. If their post is public, there shouldn’t be a reason to need a private response to an ask you have sent to many people unless you are trying to hide it. Messaging these accounts is useless because they’ll lie to you when you ask them questions back or just ignore you.

—

What is a fake check scam? - A fake check scam is when a generally blank account with no pfp will message you after you used certain tags and ask you if you still need help. Even if you have links to send support, these accounts will ignore that in order to ask for your personal information such as phone number or banking details. They will then offer to send you a check. This is a fake check and cashing it won’t be scamming the scammer. You will lose money instead and the scammer will already move on to someone else. Never give them your private information.

Are there any other scam types? - When you tag posts, you’ll often get messages from accounts claiming they can help you get more attention on your campaign but you have to pay them money or go off-site to contact them. These are fake support accounts and they always use stock images while pretending to be officially affiliated and act like their Digital Marketing title means their not trying to scam you. They get defensive when called out and may start insulting you when they figure out you are already aware they aren’t legitimate.

—

What is a funeral donation scam? - A funeral donation scam is when an account posts saying someone has passed away but the images they used are actually took from someone else and may be photoshopped. Bills may be edited to suit their story and names may be changed to someone else’s. This isn’t a real common scam! But it’s happened a lot lately but the basics are the account will steal someone’s pictures and pass them off as theirs and when caught will say they were forced to or know it’s wrong but did it anyway.

—

In closing, this is information regarding common scam types you’ll find on tumblr. It’s always suggested to pay close attention to asks you get it they fit the criteria of being sent from a scammer. Answer the asks publicly and call out the blog. The scammer may block you as a result, but it’ll help your ask be seen it someone has looked it up. I suggest never spamming asks to share your pinned aid post because unfortunately scammers do this and you shouldn’t ignore people saying to please stop spamming. Always check to see if someone is comfortable getting these kinds of asks too because it won’t look too good if you have sent them an ask when they say please don’t.

As always, not everyone asking for support is a scammer! Legitimate people are out there. It’s just unfortunate scammers have made it harder for them to get help. You can always do your own research and compare it to what others have given and come to your own conclusion.

[moddymoon]

ABDL registration?

Yesterday I spotted a "ABDL community registration" and I thought I'd take a look at it, to see if there's stuff that was there that set off obvious alarm bells.

The first thing that is an "obvious alarm bell" which honestly, is something that is hard to spot with it. "Registration" costs $99.00.

What does this get you? Well, it gets you "registered". What exactly does that mean? I could say what I think it means, but as to why you would pay that kind of money (it's certainly not insignificant) and what they say it means... I have no idea...

What I think it means, is that it commits you to paying more money to them. Let's remember. This is not actually something that is anything other than a "single" place that is asking for this. It's not anything vaguely official that anyone else is recoginsing.

That's the most obvious alarm bell to me. Even $25.00 would be a fair amount to be offering in any of these situations unless you are really getting some good idea as to what it's for, and what you're getting into. Which so far I've not seen evidence of.

But let's look at the information they are asking for:

legal name (practically no one needs this, if you're not dealing with a government agency, for the most part no one actually needs this, many still will refuse service without it, but if it's not an institution directly reporting to the government, it's not justified... Doctors, lawyers, engineers, maybe? Not that it's needed).

Little name... OK fair. Though not needed.

Age/little age... Maybe fair, if we know what services we're really registering for.

Email... Yeah you're going to have at least some form of contact, and this is fair.

Phone no real reason for this (though some may prefer phone over email, and it could be a back up).

Address... OK, another rather problematic thing... Similar to the legal name. Maybe not quite as bad, as it's not quite as dangerous. If you are getting service/deliveries it makes sense, but at this point... there's no evidence that there even is a service, and whether it's at your location or not is hard to know.

"Role" which is fair, but how they've set it up is terrible. People easily can have multiple roles, and that should be easy to handle.

"I'm subscribing" there's three options, you can select one of the three options. It's not clear what the three options actually mean.

level of experience... Yeah, though not sure the way it's put is useful.

ABDL gears... Now it's not clear what this is referring to, but hey nothing really wrong here.

desired session location This is useful for getting input. Like whether a person would be interested in what type of service. It's not useful with the $99.000 fee... It could be looking at whether a given service has any demand. Now again... You can only select one item of the 3 offered.

Covid vaccine status... "Yes," "No," or "Other"? What is "other?" Really.

Demenour requested... Big long list, and only one option can be selected.

Availability... It's just a text field.

Fetishes to focus on (not really very clear what this is, the design is poor).

Roleplay experience... It's useful, but meaningless terms...

Disability status (first optional one)... Useful, but considering what is here... I would say not likely to be properly accommodated, and honestly... They don't ask any info about it beyond if it exists.

Picture...

OK... The thing here is there is almost nothing here that is really needed at the point of getting this filled.

It's not really worth even considering it. Even before spotting this level of private information they are explicitly gathering.

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 14: Bad Day

I think I should get a do-over on this day because it just sucked rhinos. I was having these really intense, complicated dreams and my alarm woke me up right in the middle of them and so I didn't wake up properly and then I never got over it. Like I don't think I was properly awake at any point today; I was so heavy and so tired and toward the end of the day I was thinking things like 'what if I just fell asleep in this chair' and 'my whole body hurts, that's not good.' When this sort of thing happens to me, there's always a part of me that's like, for what though? I'm a good worker; I'm good at my job; but the hours put in are about my own oppression and really no other reason at all and sometimes the full force of this just hits me.

Anyway. And no one was around. The 1LS, but they weren't in the library much, aside from wandering around in tours while dressed up. But the staff was just totally fucking AWOL which sort of annoyed me: I was the only one in TS but reference was down to 1 person for part of the day, too, circ was down a person for part of the day. I really, really hated being alone. I never love it but this was worse because I was so tired and also just...bitter. I'm bitter about every detail of the circumstances that put me in this position.

And more than anything I am really, really upset about all the work I lost today. I checked very single wiki page and we lost 18 and 11 were 'mine' as in, in my section. Even the ones that are straightforward to recreate are still going to be a pain in the pass because I have this, like, mental block to redoing work. I hate it so much. But my contact info... that list predated me. It's over 10 years of collected and consistently updated information and notes.... I'm just devastated. It's all gone. I was literally hiding out in the basement bathroom sobbing. I'm never getting it back. It can't really be recreated. It's going to come back different, as it were.

I'm going to have to go to work tomorrow and just treat this like an annoying task and be cool about it because it's no one's fault, right, it was a misunderstanding and a mistake! But I'm not at work right now and it absolutely is someone's fault and I'm angry. I feel guilty too but in a 'you should have predicted things that were not predictable given your level of knowledge' and 'you should have foreseen scenarios that are only obvious in hindsight' and 'you shouldn't have had those assumptions that are now obviously wrong.' Which is maybe true. But I didn't delete the files. I didn't go on a 'we need to clean this UP no one can see that we have old notes' spree for, in retrospect, essentially no reason. I didn't mass delete a folder of files without looking at what was in it. I did say I thought it was fine and I am full of self-loathing about that. And I did say that under the same false assumption everyone else had. But it just... it's absolutely outrageous and unjustifiable in retrospect that files that were sitting around not causing anyone any harm for 8 years are suddenly so fucking objectionable that we need to bomb them into oblivion without even spot checking them for continued use. Why. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY.

But I'm going to go to work and I'm going to pretend I didn't cry in the bathroom about it and I'm a good worker who will contribute to the attempt to put it all back together again and that I'm not the person who correctly says 'hey do we need to delete it though' all the time and that I'm not the person who is suffering the most from this and hey also that I'm not the person who was holding down the fort while the rest of them were off doing fuck all for a whole day. And then I'm packing my bags and going to see my fucking family and I hope some sort of disaster happens while I'm gone that I don't have to worry about.

Anyway when I got home I immediately fell asleep for several hours.I do feel better for that. Just upset still.

[tyrannuspitch]

things i liked about season 2, a non-exhaustive list

alex's overall state of mind. skipping school and turning up bruised. getting scolded for absences when he's just witnessed a murder. the way he speaks to sabina - very gentle and a little uncertain of himself, but also, scarily intense. the fact that he's afraid he's "dangerous" and "losing his mind", and others call him "unstable and "damaged", and this whole time he is fixated on yassen, whose name he knows but who he keeps calling "the man with the scar". (there's a kind of symmetry in there, isn't there? someone else dangerous and damaged who might have answers?) the way he's clearly reliving ian's death through ed pleasance's attempted assassination and he's convinced that this time he can fix it. and maybe finally get those answers he never got to begin with.

also the fact that everyone is telling alex he's crazy even for things he absolutely knows to be true but can't prove! the moment with the police where the contact info alex was given fails! sabina's reaction to alex saying he'd been employed by blunt! i'm not blaming sabina in context, but like... there's something very powerful there. alex is a child who has been horrifically abused and he can't tell anyone for any reason because they're more likely to assume he's delusional and/or lying than believe him.

the sense of inevitability, despite the whole season apparently turning alex's recruitment process on its head. how quick alex is to accept that it's Happening Again and he has no choice but to respond, how he actually seeks out blunt even though he must think there's a good chance blunt will use him the same way again if he does make contact, how blunt's refusal to listen actually backs alex into a corner and puts him in more danger. how alex's grudge against blunt's department for what they did in season 1 is slowly eroding. tom talking about "what they did to you" vs alex talking about blunt & co "leaving me behind".

how smithers and jones see themselves as helping alex, when what they're actually doing is enabling him going into the field alone without backup and with only minimal intel, while using the intel he gives them... and alex is grateful for this because it means someone is doing something. :(

how alex fucks up with smoking mirror. because he ISN'T an agent, he doesn't have training or backup or access to anything like the information a real agent should, he doesn't even have means of self-defence beyond his bare hands. how smoking mirror is somehow surprised by this, because he assumed alex having an adult's responsibilities would mean he had an adult's... resources? respect? rights? how he wanted alex to protect HIM. when alex is just a fourteen year old looking for any adult who can give him answers or help.

alex deliberately modelling himself on ian - "do you think if ian was here he would just walk away?" - and yassen viewing alex almost entirely through his relationship to john - "find scorpia, find out who you really are"... but that's not who alex is. that's who john was.

[maximotts]

♡ 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘵. 𝘪𝘪 ♡ {𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘵}

pt. i || pt. iii

a/n: ahaha remember when I said all would be fixed in this part? Turns out I lied. Part 2 was getting way too long and I didn't want this to feel rushed so part 3 will be the final part, but fret not, I'm finalizing part 3 as we speak because I didn't want to leave y'all at another painful cliffhanger. That'll be up right after this one before I go to bed tonight

warnings: angst, another semi-argument, Wanda reading Natasha's thoughts, a gallon of hurt feelings, panic attacks (Wanda)

summary: Natasha can't give Wanda space anymore after an Incident. aka the Secret Softy finally realizes she misses the Small Sunshine

words: 3.1k

masterlist. || navi. || request info/rules. :open

𝘮𝘰𝘺𝘢 𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘬𝘢𝘺𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘬𝘢 = 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭

𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘬𝘢 = 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺

𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘰𝘺 = 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵

✣ ✣ ✣

It’d been three weeks. Three weeks since she’d seen Wanda, eaten any meals with her, watched her dark hair fall gently over her shoulders as she laughed, or felt her soft hands brush against her fingers for reassurance or in a silent request to be held. Safe to say, Natasha missed Wanda terribly. Even more so, the guilt from how deeply she’d hurt the person she cared about was eating her alive. She saw Wanda’s wounded face almost as frequently as she blinked and she longed to reach out and hug her until it was all better.

She had made attempts. The night of her blow up, Natasha knocked on Wanda’s door for a good five minutes. It was obvious she was in there, sitcom laughter emanating from her television. After a while it was clear she wasn’t ready to talk and Natasha understood; she wouldn’t want to talk to her either. She resigned herself to seeing Wanda at breakfast the next morning, hoping maybe a friendly smile from across the room would let the girl know she wasn’t mad at her. But Wanda was nowhere to be found. Two days of missed meals later and having tripped over a dirty sandwich plate in front of Wanda’s room and Natasha realized she was purposely avoiding even the possibility of having to sit next to the redhead when she ate. Again, Natasha couldn’t blame her.

Now three weeks in, Natasha settled on just walking in. Wanda rarely kept her door locked when she was inside, she and Natasha were the only ones with permanent rooms on the female residence side and there was never an issue with Nat coming in unannounced- until now of course. An hour’s worth of hyping herself up behind her, she took the ten steps next door to where she’d hopefully be able to fix her awful mess. Still she hovered outside, hand outstretched, hovering as she took one last deep breath.

Her hand never reached the doorknob.

Before Natasha could make contact with the metal, a hot spark of red zapped her hand and she jumped back to avoid further attack. “Wa-”

“Don’t even think about it, Natasha Romanoff.” The first time she heard that voice again, she didn’t expect it to sound so dangerous. Natasha expected anger, but she didn’t know Wanda could sound so threatening.

She’d be a fool to try the knob again, it’d only upset her further. Nevertheless, it was important she at least got part of her message out. “I know you’re upset, Wanda. I’m upset with myself too. I was wrong, so wrong. I never should have hurt you like I did, I should have just talked to you. That’s on me. I want to prove to you I’m sorry, maybe even earn your trust back eventually? Whenever you’re ready.” Natasha sighed, twisting her still tingling hand in the other. “I miss you, but I ruined us. Not you. I’m sorry, Wanda.”

Unbeknownst to Natasha, Wanda had wandered closer to the door as soon as she noticed the other pacing outside of her doorway. She wasn’t ready to talk to her; she couldn’t find a way to face her yet without fear of looking like she was coming crawling back without having heard an apology, but before she could think too hard on it, Natasha was speaking. Her heart grew heavy with the weight of Natasha’s words. She wasn’t one for feelings or true emotions and although fairly clumsily uttered, Wanda knew sincerity when she heard it. Swayed as her heart was to run into the arms of the woman she missed for the past week, her brain instantly reminded her of other words.

You still want her after she told you how clingy you are? She’s right. You are pathetic.

The ache was back, stinging just as sharp as the day she’d first heard. She couldn’t yet.

Wanda’s back hit the wall, sinking to the floor with her knees huddled close to her chest. She knew Natasha had just been angry when she lashed out, that she wouldn’t typically be so public with her outbursts, much less direct them towards her, but there were some true feelings within those poison laced words and Wanda didn’t want to have that conversation yet.

“Well.. you know where to find me.” Wanda hated how sad Natasha sounded; she must’ve been tearing herself apart. She despised not being able to fix things. Soft footsteps told Wanda she was fully alone again and although that should have let her relax, she groaned with how empty she felt once more.

✣ ✣ ✣

Another week went by with no exchanged words and Natasha was beginning to give up hope. She’d ruined everything between them seemingly irreparably; asking any of her teammates yielded a non-committal response, none of them were spending tons of time with her either. She’d given up on knocking, having only met silence or words of warning. All she could do was wait.

For Wanda’s part, she felt like she was going to burst. Her skin felt like it was on fire, nervous energy sparking right under the surface. She’d closed herself off to everyone, opening herself up to Natasha was a mistake, it must have been. Her last words to her had been apologetic and kind, but the hurtful ones still lingered and she felt stuck. It was tearing her apart. Even more so, today’s training left her disoriented- earthquake simulation. As the fake ground shook under her and buildings fell, Wanda was spiraled back to childhood and more recently, Sokovia, and although she played it off as nothing with others, as soon as she was back in the safety of her room she fell apart.

Before she would seek out Natasha, whisper her worries against her skin from under the safety of a warm blanket. She couldn’t do that now, couldn’t ask such a thing from Natasha after what she said and after near radio silence for a month. Wanda huddled in her own bed, tired eyes staring longingly at the wall separating her and Natasha’s room. The person she wanted -needed- was so close, but so far. “You’re fine. You’ve dealt with this alone before.”

✣ ✣ ✣

Natasha couldn’t sleep. Not for lack of exhaustion; she’d been training longer these days in hopes of catching more glimpses of Wanda, just to make sure she looked okay. It was working and thankfully from what she could see, Wanda was alright. The past few days were different though; she looked more tired, dragging along more and more, and now today she’d survived the earthquake simulator. To anyone else, Wanda looked like her normal self, quiet and to herself, but Natasha saw the girl’s hands shake, watched her stance go slack in a way she’d warned Wanda against many times. Afterwards, Wanda was off to her usual seclusion before Natasha could reach her from across the room so she settled for giving Bruce a stern talking to instead. He should’ve known better than to shove Wanda in that simulation, especially by herself.

She left a properly admonished Bruce, heading in the direction of Wanda’s room. Arguments be damned, she wouldn’t let Wanda explode alone, even if she hated her for intruding after. If her repeated self-reassurance weren’t enough to convince her by the time she reached her destination, the moans and whines from within set her mind. Natasha hovered again, weighing the consequences, but Wanda let out such a sob that she couldn’t ignore. “Wanda? Can I come in please?” Her hand landed safely on the door, an improvement from last time.

“It’s just me, I wanted to check on you after training.” No response, but no rejection either. She turned the knob, grateful Wanda seemed to have forgotten to lock the door. Whether it was a mistake or a silent hope for Natasha’s intervention, she didn’t know, but she would use the opportunity. She could barely find Wanda in the dark room, but her eyes settled on the small form in the middle of her large bed and Natasha was by her side in an instant.

“Wanda? Sweetheart, hey, it’s me. What’s wrong?” Her eyes were unfocused, pupils blown wide with fear. Natasha longed to scoop her up, but she couldn’t startle her; she didn’t even know if she’d want her there once she realized who she was. Still, it hurt so deeply to have let her get this bad; she could’ve helped if Wanda trusted her enough to reach out. Natasha waited for what felt like hours until Wanda noticed her, crouching by a bed was rough on her tired knees, but she’d stay like that forever if need be. When Wanda finally made eye contact, she only stared at the redhead, as if figuring out whether the woman in front of her was real or not. She took a daring step, holding her hand out to Wanda, keeping it in her eyeline as long as she could until her palm reached her head. Her thumb moved, ever so softly, over her scalp as a test. Anything she could do to soothe her. “I’m here, Wands.”

If Natasha weren’t so strong, Wanda would’ve knocked her over. She’d thrown her full weight onto her in an instant, clinging to Natasha for dear life while her lower half still hung from the bed. There were so many things tearing at her, so much emotion she needed to unload, but she was too overwhelmed. Natasha had come to her. Had ignored their month of silence and hurt feelings to try to aid her and it left her stunned. “Tash- Natasha.. I-I’m so sorry..”

“Ah, no none of that,” Natasha stood with a grunt, taking Wanda with her to set them both on the bed. She navigated her way to the top of the bed in the dark, only stopping when her back hit the headboard, letting Wanda hold onto her, “This is my fault, I’m sorry. I should have been here for you.”

Wanda shook her head slowly, burying herself as far into the crook of her neck as deep as she could. “No. I should’ve been able to handle training today. You were right, I can’t do anything myself. I’m weak and pathetic and..” Sobs took over any chance of coherent words, shaking against the warm body she’d missed so much. Part of her screamed to move away, to suck up her tears and prove to Natasha she was just fine on her own. But she couldn’t pretend. She was fine on her own, she could handle it, but she needed the comfort of someone she trusted too. Someone she could relay her thoughts too instead of bottling them all inside until they got the best of her.

Before she knew it, Natasha felt tears rolling down her cheeks as well. She hated crying, couldn’t stand being so outwardly vulnerable with someone else, but if Wanda could be with her then she owed her the same trust. Toned arms pulled the small woman trembling against her closer, pressing frantic kisses to the crown of her head, anything to show her apologies. “You’re not weak for your emotions, detka. It’s one of the strongest things you could do to allow yourself to open yourself up and trust me.. I should have given you that same trust and been honest from the start.” Natasha cradled Wanda’s head to her chest, rocking her as sweetly as she could. She knew she was holding her a fraction too tight, but she couldn’t help it. Reassuring fingers brushed through long brunette hair, keeping her as close as possible.

“Can you forgive me?” The muffled voice from below temporarily shook Natasha from her waterfall of revelations and she remembered why they were in this situation.

“Moya sladkaya detka, you were forgiven weeks ago. You were trying to help me and yes, we need to talk about how I deal with the aftermath of long missions because I do sometimes need time to myself, but nothing, nothing you did warranted how I hurt you.” Wanda froze and for a moment Natasha was scared she would pull away, but she nodded slowly. “Can you forgive me?”

That was a loaded question. Wanda fought to clear her thoughts, organize them in any way that could possibly make sense. She wanted so badly to simply accept and stay in Natasha’s arms. It wasn’t that she thought Natasha was lying to her; she truly believed she was sorry for what she did, but that didn’t mean those words didn’t still swirl through her head everyday since she’d first uttered them. It was hard to think so close to her. Wanda pried herself away from Natasha, not missing the way Natasha kept hold on her hips as if letting go meant she’d lose her forever. “I want to forgive you, Natasha.”

It hurt, but it was fair. She didn’t expect an easy apology and didn't deserve one either. “There’s a but coming, right?” Wanda couldn’t meet her eyes; she only avoided eye contact when she had more to say and was biding her time. “You don’t have to forgive me, Wanda. I’m willing to do whatever you need to make you feel safe again, no matter how long it takes.” And she meant it. Natasha would put in the work for Wanda, she was more than worth it.

She knew what she needed. It was the only way she could think of easing her mind. Still, Wanda promised she wouldn’t do it again unless she had to, but… she had to. “I need to feel you.” A hesitant ring-clad hand reached out, tapping Natasha’s temple to finish the thought she couldn’t speak. “Nothing traumatic, nothing too deeply buried.. hopefully, at least.” Rarely was it hard for Wanda to search out thoughts in someone about a particular person who crossed their mind regularly. She hoped it was more than wishful thinking that Natasha had her in her thoughts with some frequency. “Please, Tash… I need to know you feel more for me than just ‘clingy, weak puppy.’”

Natasha opened her mouth to retort, to try to take her harsh words back, but she knew it wouldn’t help. The thought of Wanda searching through her mind again scared her still. Last time left her shaken for weeks, months, after what she’d dug up, but back then Wanda was looking to hurt her and damn, she was great at it. She had to trust she wouldn’t do that now. Trust was so hard. A promise was a promise, though. Natasha took Wanda’s free hand in both of hers, a lifeline to hold while she gave herself to the woman she cared so much for. “Okay.. be gentle?”

Wanda let out a chuckle; Natasha’s sensitive side was so very cute. “I would never be anything but, dorogoy.” Natasha nodded, swallowing her fears with reassurance. Wanda was only ever kind to her, too much at times; Steve and Sam never missed an opportunity to poke fun at Natasha when in the early days Wanda was practically exploding with nerves around the redhead. Eventually they figured out it was less that Wanda thought Natasha was going to beat the pulp out of her and more that she wished the older woman would crush her with her thighs- but the two men waited for Natasha to figure that one out on her own.

“Go ahead, Wands. Just be quick about it, alright? I don’t want to spill all my secrets right now.” Wanda agreed with a quiet hum, shaking her head and straightening her spine before moving her fingers alongside Natasha’s head. It reminded her of the first time they’d officially met; a bittersweet memory of how stunning she felt her then enemy was, but bringing her trauma to the surface before those steadfast blue eyes caught sight of her. Now though, Wanda was careful. Only going deep enough to look at Natasha’s memories and thoughts about her. How surprised she was that Wanda was as powerful as she was. Her instant and ongoing distrust of her when she and her brother came to aid the Avengers in Sokovia. Natasha’s annoyance at her stolen red jacket, with an added and apparently shocking sense of possessiveness brought on by seeing her in her clothing. Interesting. Wanda would note that little fact for the future.

Red ringed eyes shone in the darkness, both locked onto Natasha’s and staring far past her. She wanted to be open and honest, that was the whole point. Consequently Wanda let Natasha see what she was seeing and with every twinge of irritation her past self felt towards Wanda and her initial attempts to gain trust with her new team, specifically with herself, her current self cringed at her behavior. But slowly things shifted. Resentment shifted to reluctant endearment, then care and protection and finally into where she longed for Wanda’s calming presence when she was stressed or wanted a confidant. The weight of vulnerability felt like being flayed alive and despite the hand Natasha held using one finger to stroke reassuringly at her palm, she squirmed as they approached that night Natasha came home a month ago.

“You’re fighting me.” The brunette’s eyebrows furrowed, pushing harder at the memory Natasha was keeping away from her. “Stop it.”

Red curls shook as Natasha hung her head; she didn’t want to live through it again. Every night it haunted her. She should’ve just talked to her, given her credit for being one of the most understanding people she’s ever met, having her see it again would just push Wanda further away- “I can still hear your thoughts, Natasha.” Her racing concerns rang loud in Wanda’s own brain, blocking out any hope of unlocking that dreaded outburst until she could get her to calm down. “Trust me, please. You have to let me in.” True, Wanda could forcibly rip the memory from her with ease. It would take such little effort, but she wouldn’t- couldn’t. She needed Natasha to let her see, allow herself to be this forthcoming with Wanda. That would speak louder than anything.

It took everything in Natasha to take her next breath, “Okay, do it.” Wanda breathed a sigh of relief, Natasha’s agreement giving her hope of progress. She slipped her hand from Natasha’s warm grasp, ignoring the small sad noise she was sure Natasha didn’t want to talk about. Instead her hand went to the back of Natasha’s head and brought it forward to rest on her shoulder, her nose promptly burying itself in the crook of Wanda’s neck. Her gentle floral scent settled Natasha’s worries; it’d been too long since she was allowed so close. “I trust you.”

[bluebellhairpin]

Haikyuu Headcanons - PDA

A/N: I don’t know where this came from, BUT,,,, Serotonin dosage is Complete. Ready for your injection? - Nemo

Masterlist  

Daichi Sawamura

He tones down his clingy-ness around other people. Let’s say that. 

He does not want to make anyone uncomfortable, and knowing the team, he doesn’t want to draw too much attention either encase that makes you uncomfortable. 

HoWeVer,,, that just means he restrains himself to hand-holding, arm around your shoulder, and forehead kisses. 

Sometimes he goes more than that, but only on special occasions, or if he’s really missed you.

If you asked him nicely and battered your eyelashes at him he’d probably groan a little then chuckle and give you a lil peck on the lips. 

Only and I mean only if you asked.

If I haven’ stressed this enough, his main goal is you being comfortable, which would mean the amount of PDA he does would depend on you and how much you are comfortable with - as well as who else is around. 

If it’s Suga or the likes of Tsuki, he’s more comfortable with PDA, because he know’s (for their own reasons) that they both couldn’t give two sh- 

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Tsukishima Kei

He’s - 

Good grief, i CAN’T EVEN EXPLAIN BRO

It’s either he’s initiating it, in some way that’s got Tsuki written all over it (ie. resting his arm on your damn head) or he’s teasing you about being needy (ie. that one time you held his hand while waiting for Yamaguchi outside a store).

All good-natured though. He would rather die than have hurt you in some way (especially with his words, because damn if that tongue ain’t the sharpest object on this earth), not that he’d ever admit it though. Duh.

His PDA can come across as a bit blunt, or harsh, but he’s just doing his best.

Even around Yamaguchi it barely goes further than hand-holding. 

He makes up for it when you’re alone, or where he feels more comfortable. Don’ worry ‘bout it. 

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Asahi Azumane

Don’t. Just don’t. 

Do not pressure him, do not force it on him. 

Given time, he will become more open to it, and he will greatly enjoy it too, but especially early on in a relationship he isn’t a PDA type of guy.

Not because he doesn’t want it, no no no, but because he is baby and can’t handle the attention. 

He stutters, blushes, and mind goes blank if you so much as accidentally brush your hand with his, like - That’s How Much He Can’t Handle It. 

Once he is comfortable, however, he will even do so much as give you a  little hug and kiss your cheek in front of the team, and that’s how you know he loves you - because he’s grown to learn to become comfortable with it, because then he can show to others how much he loves you.

He’s just really precious, please don’t @ me. 

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Sugawara Koushi

This lil bastard,,, I sweAR- 

Once you’ve given him an OK to go ahead with any type of PDA, he will do it, and he will do it as often as he pleases, or as you allow. 

I’m not saying that a PDA war between you both had happened more than once or twice, but it has. 

He generally isn’t bothered by any particular type of PDA - 

- but god forbid you squish his cheeks in your hands to give him a smooch in front of the boys. If there’s any way to get him red and flustered THAT IS IT GUYS!!!

Lock up that info and keep it safe!!! 

It’s not because it embarrasses him (okay, maybe slightly) but the fact you were so forward about it?? 

Get’s him every time. 

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Ukai Keishin

Let’s get one thing straight with this man, his view on PDA changed to accommodate two *social* settings.

The first is when he’s ‘Coach Ukai’, and the other one is just plain ‘Ukai’. 

Literally the only difference is that he’s a lot less forward and more professional (pfffft boy, you scoff at him every time when he pulls that) when he’s coaching.

Basically he just tries to hide the kisses, soft touches, and pining glances when he’s with the Karasuno team.

If the scoffing didn’t tell you, he doesn’t do a very good job at it.

If you’re with him in the shop, he’ll be just the same as he is at home. Very comfortable. Very much like a married-couple. 

The customers don’t really mind. There’s a couple old ladies, and when they come in they always ask after you once they’ve bought their stuffs. They’re very pleased when you pop out the back room to say hi. They’re very sweet. 

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Oikawa Tooru

If you came into my house and told me that Oikawa didn’t crave attention, and burst to tears the first time you gave him so much as a cuddle and a peck on the cheek then we already have problems.

Because he did.

And you can pry that out of the cold, dead fingers of my rotting corpse. 

Being closed doors he’s basically all over you, but outside he tones it done a fair amount.

That being said, he’s still not as subtle about it as the likes of Daichi, in fact he’s probably one of the more contact-oriented of all the boys’ even if he’s not asking for it.

He pines. all the time.

If he’s not touching you, he wants to hold you hand. If he’s holding your hand, he wants to have an arm around you waist. If his arm’s around you waist, he want’s you sitting in his lap.

It’s an endless cycle, and I pray that you’re ready for it. 

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Kuroo Tetsurou

He’s all about the casual PDA, man. 

Subtle touches and ‘accidental’ hand brushes were probably how the whole relationship started, and just because you’re dating DOES NOT mean he’s going to stop.

He does need to be sweet in among all the teasing, you know!

He’s a romantic, that's what it comes down to. 

He explicitly remembers going to a carnival with you, and waiting in line for a ride to finish so you both could have a go. It came very natural to him to lean up behind you and rest his head on your shoulder. When you leaned back into him he d i e d 

He’s very comfortable around you, and others, so he has zero problem just vibing in your general area or being all up-in-your face, depending on what you like.

Respectful boi

He likes you, and he’s a casually tactile-type of person. Sometimes he can forget some people don’t like it, but he always manages to remember what you allow. 

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Tanaka Ryunosuke 

Contrary to what some may think, he’s actually very patient if it comes to having to wait for you to get comfortable with PDA.

He would wait until you were both old and grey before you held his hand in public if he had to.

but please don’t make him he just wants to show you off

He’s very proud of himself for getting an s/o, and he looks at you like you hung the stars because you’re with him.

But as soon as you give him an ok?

All over you. All the time. 

He *loves* you, and he needs to make sure you always know that, and that Noya knows that, and Daichi knows, and other teams know, and that everyone knows! 

Listen, I like Tanaka a lot, so I’m trying to manifest him best I can because god dammit he deserves some cuddles every half hour, on the dot. 

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Bokuto Kotaro

He needs PDA. And no, I’m not just saying that.

Oh, you disagree? Have you even seen the show? This guy craves validation, and if his s/o doesn’t give it to him then he’s l o s t.

However much he may act cool about it when asking for a little smooch or cuddle in public, if it’s given to him he will melt, then short-circuit, and then it’s like someone boosted him with adrenaline and he cannot stop blabbering about random stuff and holding you close. 

It’s a wild and slightly dramatic process, but that’s just Bokuto for you.

He - SJKSJSSSS

He probably has a bet with himself for how many times his PDA get’s you to smile everyday. (The record is twelve times, and everytime he breaks the record he takes you both out for meat buns.)

The PDA is mostly just hand holding and lil’ kisses, but they make his day, every time.

He’s a simple person. 

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Nishinoya Yuu

This boy, this male, he will worship the ground you walk on. 

Let him. 

Please.

He’ll mostly come up behind you and wrap his arms around your waist and bury his face in your back/neck. It’s surprising, but it’s nice because you know it’s always him. You have to pry him off with the promise of a kiss, though, otherwise he ain’t moving. 

He’s always so excited to see you, like a little puppy, and if that cannot even light a spark of happiness in Tsuki’s heart then he has no hope left. 

His love for you is contagious. He doesn’t even need to be touching you to express PDA, like - how does he even do that? It that normal? Is he normal?

He giggles whenever you kiss his nose, so of course you do it in front of the team! his giggles are a blessing! Why would you keep them all to yourself? Blushy Noya ehehehe

He’s really cute Everytime he sees you, everyone knows, because he yells “HEYYY BABYYYYYY!” in the exact same voice he uses for ‘Rolling Thunda’. There is n o e s c a p e ! 

[queenlilith43]

The Eldest Curses

So we know of the eldest curses. We know they are the oldest child of a Prince of Hell. But what do they do? What powers do they hold? And how far do they have to fall?

In this post I'll go over some theories and all the information we know about them, confirmed eldest curses, and their respective parents.

I'm sorry if my hate for Asmodeus comes out, but as my friend @patalliumapples said, "You hate Asmodeus so much and it’s so funny to me. Like I hate him too but it seems like he personally murdered your family and it’s so funny."

Tags: @apple-bottom-jeansx @the-blackdale @murderbabies @unorganisedbookshelf @revati3008 @patalliumapples @tenacioushubb @hardlymatters @pjo-tsc-trc-otherthingstoo if you gave me a theory idea you'll be tagged later in the post.

What We Know

Eldest curses are the oldest children of any given Prince of Hell at a moment. So if a Prince of Hell has seven kids alive, the oldest one will be his eldest curse. However, this is unlikely, because they die easily. The magic is too much for them to handle.

There are two confirmed eldest curses living right now: Magnus Bane and Tessa Gray.

Magnus Bane

Age: Anywhere between 380-400 years old

Parent: Asmodeus

Powers: He's very powerful, but any specific powers based on his demon parent? Not really. Unless you count sexy as a power.

Contact with Demon Parent: Magnus has met Asmodeus several times. He summoned him when he was very young, and the regretted it. Then there was the Crimson Hand, his little demon-worshipping cult. Magnus ran into Asmodeus again in The Red Scrolls of Magic and City of Heavenly Fire, but hasn't been under his sway . . . Yet.

Tessa Gray

Age: 147-ish, born in 1862

Parent: Belial

Powers: Tessa, being half Shadowhunter, is special. She doesn't have many regular warlock powers, but she can shapeshift into anyone she likes. However, after absorbing the power of the angel Ithuriel, it's harder for her to change. It's also not a good idea for her to shapeshift when she's pregnant, as found out in Ghosts of the Shadow Market.

Contact with Demon Parent: She has not talked with Belial. Her children, James and Lucie, have had contact several times throughout the Last Hours, but she herself has not talked to Belial. Belial did consider possessing her, but between Ithuriel protecting her and his sexism, it's unlikely.

The Other Stuff

Eldest curses are supposed to be powerful. They're literally demon royalty, and Magnus and Tessa's uncle is Lucifer. Just think on that.

So I'm just gonna talk about some stuff Asmodeus brought up in The Red Scrolls of Magic. I was going to analyze some quotes but it just was taking me too long and I was getting too angry at Asmodeus. My solution is to just do a brief summary of what he said.

Eldest curses have some powers. We don't what, but I can gather they were made to rule. (On iron thrones as Asmodeus said, which is very specific)

And Asmodeus sure loves his. Why? Because he's a manipulative son of a bitch that's why. (The hate is strong right now.)

Asmodeus has had a lot of kids, because he's the demon of lust, but Magnus is very powerful. He's strong, and Asmodeus wants to mess with him to take control of him.

And now onto the theories!

Theories

And the crackpot clowning starts here.

@the-blackdale came up with the theory that some ✨ necromancy ✨ will be in order and Magnus dies at some point, but comes back to life in TBVOTD.

@murderbabies suggested that to summon Lucifer needs blood to be summoned. Blood of an eldest curse, most likely, because we know warlock blood has some powers. I really don't think it would rivers of blood, but enough to draw a small sigil. (As we know from Chain of Iron all the Princes have a sigil that might be used to summon them.)

@patalliumapples and I have the headcanon Raynor is actually Sammael's son, but it's unlikely to actually be canon. Still, a nice thought.

I think Aldous Nix, the warlock from The Bane Chronicles who making a Portal to Pandemonium, is an eldest curse. Maybe Belphegor. He is dead now, but before that, he was at least 1000 years old. That was before Sammael did his little Incursion thing, and that means there had to be a very powerful demon to get to the surface to be his father. So possibly an eldest curse.

Basically assume every warlock is an eldest curse unless confirmed otherwise.

So combining the two theories from @the-blackdale and @murderbabies is that maybe the death or at least one eldest curse would be needed to get Luci back into this world. They paint a sigil with that blood, and bring Lucifer in through it. Not sure when necromancy would be in order, but maybe Asmodeus would bring his son back to show him what they had done.

@revati3008 brought up that maybe Max is an eldest curse who was placed strategically so Magnus would adopt him. And who did this? Asmodeus. Because he wanted to manipulate his child.

Just imagine that. Asmodeus holding the knowledge of their child's parentage over Magnus and Alec's heads. Sounds like something he would do. This would also be even more causally cruel if Max is an eldest curse, because most of those die under the weight of their own power.

But that's super-likely because of a vision Magnus had in TLBOW and also based solely on vibes.

And then the good ol' key theory. @tenacioushubb is the mastermind of this one.

The core idea of this theory is that the eldest curses are analogous to keys. And these keys are needed to unchain Lucifer from a prison. This theory does require Luci to be chained up, but this could explain why demons are coming from Pandemonium in the first place. Lucifer being chained up (probably in Pandemonium) would be the source of all the demon energy. Him coming to our world would be the "wicked powers" aspect of that series.

Also, as @patalliumapples pointed out to me, maybe this how Asmodeus is going to use Magnus. Though this stems from something I noticed before, and ties into something I call the "Castle Theory" which is legit just based off some lyrics from Halsey's Castle.

Sit down and grab some popcorn this one's complicated and very crack pot.

So here are the lyrics that inspired me:

I'm headed straight for the castle

They wanna make me their queen

And there's an old man sitting on the throne

That's saying that I probably shouldn't be so mean

I'm headed straight for the castle

They've got the kingdom locked up

And there's an old man sitting on the throne

That's saying I should probably keep my pretty mouth shut

Straight for the castle

I've said before this song has the same vibes as Clary going into Edom to rescue Jocelyn and the others. This will come up later.

Focusing on Magnus-he already was going to be made to be a king. In one of his dreams in TLBOW, Magnus dreamt of ruling a ruined world. Those chains on his arms from the thorn were there, too.

In The Red Scrolls of Magic while Asmodeus was info-dumping on us, he mentioned the eldest curses were "meant for thrones of iron." Which was so random. Why specify iron? We all know it's deadly to faeries, what does he want?

So I looked up what iron is supposed to do in the Shadowhunters Codex because I didn't know if there was anything else it did. Whelp, turns out a nickel-iron alloy called meteoric iron (normally found in meteors) is a good magic conductor, along with most iron being toxic to the fae.

And my mind was spinning. Rushing to check the Bane Chronicles, I looked at what the Hotel Dumort was built of. It actually was demonic metal, but I'd you had enough iron that can conduct magic,

So if Magnus sits on a throne of iron with enough demonic magic in him, it could unlock Lucifer down there.

Another theory that a few people have brought up is Magnus being possessed by a demon. I feel like it would be a demon Asmodeus sent to posses Magnus, not himself, but at least Asmodeus is smart. He has some sort of brain, unlike Belial, who just acts like he does, and then fails.

Last theory is something I'll do another post on because it needs a LOT of research to back it up.

This theory is that the eldest curses are similar to the Nephilim from the Bible.

These Nephilim were the children of fallen angels on earth. Same as the eldest curses. Though these Nephilim were giants, hundreds of feet tall.

But in one of Magnus's many visions, he dreamt he was tall. And this was after sitting on that throne, after ruling his own world.

Again, more research needed, but I think it could explain their power.

Feel free to add your own theories and thoughts! If I missed any canon info that could be helpful also tell me and I'll edit the post so it's included.

[jasmine-the-fox]

I did the work... You guys were lazy

For this salt fic, I want you all to see what happens to the class for believing Lila and her lies and leaving behind Marinette... Also Damienette ship!!

For years Marinette didn’t think about her old class... Caline Bustier’s class was gone like the wind to her when she left Paris to go to Gotham for college, there were times when Alya and some of them will text her old number about demands of baked goods, dresses or new date Adrien plans... She would ignore them and at one point got rid of her phone as she was done with them, the only people she spoke to was Chloe who never believed Lila and even worked hard to be forgiven by Mari, Sabrina did so much research on Lila with Max that they too were forgiven with time, then was Alix who was visited by a furious Bunnix who showed Alix her future if she follows Lila.

Nathaniel was also someone who believe Mari, from the start he thought Lila was strange and one day with Marc spoke to Mari and has been loyal to her... Lastly was Kitty section, Luka was furious with them for listening to Lila about music and warned them about him quitting if they keep this up, after a while they heard Mari crying to Luka about what Lila did to her and they ended up leaving Lila, outside the class was of course Luka and Marc, Kagami, Aurore, Mireille, Ondine and Felix who is Adrien’s cousin, he was furious when Chloe told him about Adrien’s take the higher road line he told Mari.

Each of her friends did sadly go to different places and she only had Chloe with her in Gotham but that was fine with her, she still texted and did video calls with them so that was fine to her... And then she met Damian Wayne, the boy was cold and rarely spoke to anyone unless for a project he had to do in a team, slowly she began talking to him outside of class and that made him at some point want to speak with her about anything at all that wasn’t even related to school, with time Chloe helped her with there friends to change Marinette’s style, she went from pigtails to her hair down or in a braid, from white pink and gray to black and other kinds of colors.

She also began to wear make-up and she opened up a website for her designs, a blog so people can see tips and tricks on how to do things with clothes or how to fix something, she also took down all her previous accounts she had with the class following her and opened new accounts for her real friends to be seen with her, Damian would glare when his brother’s would talk about a new post on her social media or on her blog while his father often commissions her for clothes, this caused for her to become famous in Gotham and Clark interview her... Making her also famous in Metropolis.

And while she was becoming famous while still in school... Her class was losing there dreams, Alya was the first one to go through this, Nadja Chamack got to interview Lois Lane who ripped into the Ladyblog by pointing out posts she made that were lies and the consequences that would have happened if certain people saw them... Leading to her blog being taken down, she with Lila got sued and Lila was exposed as the liar she was including the bonus of Lila being deported back to Italy to live with her grand-parents who were sending her to a private school.

Slowly everyone including Adrien were targeted, Adrien being found out as Lila revealed that he and Marinette were the only ones who knew she was lying from the start... He was homeschooled once again but was able to go to college, he picked one his friends were going to with the grades they had but they all glared at him... But none of them thought to apologize to Mari for bullying her and claiming her to be a liar... Not until there bank accounts were frozen because there parents received from Tom and Sabine bills for each of there kids for baked goods, clothes, babysitting that Alya and Nino put on her at the last minute for a date and anything else that they never paid back.

That’s when they remembered Marinette, they all began trying to call and text her... But her number wasn’t available anymore as it wasn’t use so they couldn’t talk to her, Alya thought she was being petty while Adrien thought Mari was being selfish, with time they got back to work on what they wanted... And then they saw Mari on the news in Metropolis as an up coming designer, Gabriel Agreste saw a solution to the problem Lila brought to his work and told Adrien to try and talk to her and see if she would date him... Except Adrien didn’t have her current number.

It took some time but Gabriel ended up being invited to a Wayne Gala, he took his son and instructed him to try and get Marinette’s new number to try and then date her, Adrien was certain it would all go well and he would get her new number... Then everyone will be able to contact her and things will go back to normal for them, when they got there, Adrien began looking for Mari but saw Chloe with Damian Wayne and some girl with short hair, he decided to ignore them for now and focus on searching for Mari but couldn’t find her at all.

“Adrien? I’m surprised that your here since your father always comes alone” he turned to find Chloe and the girl from earlier, Damian wasn’t with them now and was instead talking to some guests “Hey there Chlo, my dad heard about Mari on the news and wanted to meet her and so I was just trying to find her for him” he explained as the girl looked annoyed at him while Chloe looked disappointed “Mari has been next to me from the start... You should have come over the moment you got here” she said as Adrien looked shocked at Marinette, her hair was now chin length, her dress was a beautiful red dress with a beautiful dragon design.

Chloe had to then walk away to speak with a guest, leaving the two alone, Adrien began trying to start a conversation but Mari simply went with short and simple answers... No going into detail of things, this was not the Marinette Dupain-Cheng he knew so he had to do something, he then began asking her if she could show him around Gotham while he was here, if she would like to have lunch with him at some point and even if she would like to dance with him... She said straight up no and didn’t give him a reason as to why, still wanting her number to begin contacting her, he decided to wait until she was drinking wine before snatching her phone from her purse and adding her number to his phone and sending it to the class before putting it back into her purse.

He just had to tell her she gave it to him while she was a little drunk, it would be just fine in the end and nothing would go wrong... He was wrong, the next day, police came to arrest him for stealing her phone and sending her number to others who contacted her the whole night... He tried to defend himself but security camera’s caught him stealing her phone and slipping it back, he was being sued and a restraining order was on him to stay away from her while she once again changed her number and ended up telling her clients about it... Gabriel was disappointed in his son for he had to go meet with her to try and fix everything... While trying to get her to agree to going on a date with his son.

She was already dating Damian though.

He found out when he saw them together, Damian had called her Angel and they kissed before he left, she refused to go on a date with his son or to remove the restraining order on his son... But Gabriel won’t give up “Make one of them hate the other, anything will do but make one of them dump the other!” he ordered his son who nodded to the demand, since Adrien couldn’t get close to Mari... He had to aim for Damian, he decided to us a few pictures he took of her in the past to make Damian think she has been dragging around a bunch of guys and girls, he didn’t care that Nino and Kim knew from childhood, he also didn’t care that Chloe and Kagami were in a relationship with one another, he didn’t care about Luka and Felix’ pride.

He was going to win this no matter what... He will make his father proud of him.

He was sent back to Paris to be put in jail there three days later, he really didn’t know what went wrong, all he did was show Damian the pictures and told him a few lies about her... And next thing he knew police was at his hotel room door and took him away to get to the airport to get to Paris, what he didn’t know was that Damian had seen those very pictures on Mari’s old friends and current friends social medias, so he knew he was lying from the start and called the police about it, Gabriel tried to stop them but he too was sent back to Paris for Nathalie had given the police a recording of Gabriel telling Adrien to try and get Mari’s number and have her date him.

Because of this both of there miraculous were taken, since Ladybug was now part of Batman’s team and had warned the police about the Agreste father and son having one each, Nathalie of course gave up her’s with the info and then returned early to Paris to take care of things there... And get Lila into even more trouble as she did work with Hawkmoth all this time, even so it wasn’t over, after a while in prison Adrien was released but not his father, after that Adrien saw his friends and fixed everything with them since he did get Mari’s number for them... If only for a while, so they forgave him, Adrien ended up getting the whole Agreste fortune and he then sold the mansion and the fashion company to live in an apartment.

His friends all worked hard to save up money to have a class reunion, with time everything was planned out and they got the whole class notified about it so they know when it happens and where to go at what time, they were so happy to have it happen as they couldn’t wait to see everyone, when the day came they were shocked at the friends they thought were evil...

Max and Sabrina ended up getting married, it was big and hard to get into a news reporter was able to find out from Sabrina that her dress was made by Marinette herself, Kitty section ended up breaking up, Juleka was now a model for Mari while Rose became a writer, Mylène was now a famous actress and happily married to Ivan who was now a famous song writer, Chloe and Kagami also got married, Chloe was Marinette’s assistant while Kagami opened up a Tsurugi fencing school in Gotham, Luka was now following Jagged Stone and becoming a famous singer and guitar player, Nathaniel become her website artist, helping her redesign her site page depending on new themes and seasons while Felix was Marinette’s image manager.

They were all there, even Lila... But Marinette was nowhere in sight, they all tried getting answers but the gang had ignored them, Aurore, Ondine, Mireille and Marc found it funny that they would try to get answers on Mari after all this time they had bullied her, Marinette then walked in arm in arm with Damian Wayne, they looked amazing in there outfits, just like all of her friends as they too were wearing her designs, the two walked around to greet her friends and see how they were doing since the last time they had spoken together, Alya and the gang tried to talk to her but all she did was ignore them... Lila on the other hand glared at Mari.

Everything Marinette was doing and getting... Should have been her, Lila should have been the one to meet Damian Wayne, she should be the one dating him, SHE should be the one becoming famous! But no! She was found out as being dangerous, working with a villain like Hawkmoth destroyed everything she could hope for... Now she worked part-time at some little restaurant in Italy being barely paid much with the hopes of meeting some rich guy to sweep her off her feet, she looked at times towards Adrien, he may no longer be a model for his father’s designs but he was now modeling for an agency who knew of what he liked, disliked and wanted to work in.

Even so she was disappointed when she saw how Adrien was focused on Mari, he still wanted to be with her,  he began walking towards “Agreste! You know that the restraining order is still on you! Take one more step towards Mari and I will call the cops!” Chloe shouted making the other’s of the class look at her in shock, Restraining order? On Adrien? To not get close of sweet innocent Marinette? Chloe must be lying, so of course Alya snapped back with Nino on her side on how Adrien has a right to greet Mari, they claim he’s allowed to go see her and insist he does, Kim pushes him forward towards Mari while Sabrina calls her dad to inform him about Adrien breaking the restraining order.

He got there in just a few minutes...

“Mister Agreste due to the fact that you broke the restraining order miss Marinette Dupain-Cheng placed on you after you stole her phone during a Wayne gala and then sent her number to an unknown number of people you will be coming with me to the station” Roger said as he cuffed Adrien and forced him to follow to his police car, Alya, Nino, Kim and Lila were in a massive shock at this... So Chloe was right, Marinette did put a restraining order on Adrien... Because they wanted her number to talk to her again since she changed it after all this time, and now here she was, changed and not allowing them to talk to her and to apologize for what they did.

The whole event ended and by morning everyone was on a plane to get back to where they live or are to be staying for work, about a week later Alya found out in the paper that Marinette was going to become a Wayne soon, she so badly wanted to report about in order to help her make it big so she with Nino got to the airport and paid for plane tickets to Gotham to speak with her, they found where she worked and begged to see her “Alya? Nino? Can I ask why your here in Gotham?” they turned to find Mari with Damian, they were just about to leave for lunch when she saw them “Mari! Gurl you NEED to let me report about your wedding! This could give me a huge break and get to become a reporter again!” Alya claimed as Mari glared at her.

“What do you mean by again? Alya all this time, you were not a reporter... You were the owner of a tabloid that posted every single lie Lila spoke to you, and as for this big break of yours it was destroyed the second Lois spoke about the Ladyblog, try anywhere and they will reject you because Lois is the one who reveals who is a good reporter... And those who are like you... Trash under our feet” Mari hissed and began walking with her fiancé too the door until she turned to the front desk “Alissa, please get these two on the blacklist and kick them out, I don’t want to see this trash by the street when I get back” she said and walked out like this wasn’t anything new for her to say.

Marinette worked hard to get to where she was... With the help of her friends and Damian... But her three remaining classmates all believed that Lila would help them skip up to the lifestyle she has now... But everyone knows you need to put the effort into things to get there.

[masterhandss]

Hello! Uhm… there’s something I’ve been wondering about for a long time now regarding Nicol. And I figured I may as well ask now, since S2 has started airing.

I’ve seen his wiki page. And it says and I quote: It was later revealed that his emotionless face and quiet nature is a result of extreme trauma. From a young age, people of all genders and ages would tend to do absurd things, as well as assaulting him.

I’ve been so fixated on this probably since S1 had finished, yet I haven’t really had the time to read all the light novels to know where this specifically comes from or even be sure if it’s actually true. The only thing I managed to find was a scene (I think in one of the later volumes) about Katarina pointing out this creepy guy that took Nicol’s used utensils and stared at him a lot, but she didn’t do anything about it because Sophia saw nothing wrong with that guy’s behavior and told her it was okay.

I’m not sure if the wiki was referring to that scene, or something else. And since I know that you read the light novels, I was hoping if maybe you could check that info and confirm/deny it for me. If it is true… then it really puts a whole different perspective on Nicol. People in the series have been shown to faint if Nicol smiles, but it was also mentioned how he was one of the only second year students in the student council because people would fight over him.

And to think their behavior possibly had escalated to the point of traumatizing him as a child makes me very heartbroken to think about. Especially when the wiki also mentioned how he feels very uncomfortable when he’s the center of attention… makes me wonder if the anime will even touch upon any of that.

Hello! I'm sorry if answering this one took such a long time. This one definitely caught my interest so I wanted to take my time in writing a response for this.

// trigger warning: brief mentions of assault (nothing too graphic I swear)

I'm an editor for the wiki, so I admit that I have seen that description on Nicol's page too. I don't know who wrote it (and I never bothered to edit or adjust the wording), but that doesn't really matter since it's not exactly something I can deny.

Before that I just want to make it clear first that the "assault" mentioned in the wiki is probably not sexual or physical assault, it's likely referring to a simple assault, aka any unwanted advances that is done without consent. Whether or not any advances on Nicol while he was growing up were leaning towards sexual assault or physical assault (unwanted physical contact from men and women, sexual invitations, groping etc.) has not been mentioned by the books. It used to be a very popular headcanon for the more darker and realistic depictions of the hamefura or fortune lover world to give Nicol that kind of backstory, which is why I still feel like clarifying just in case anyone might get the wrong idea.

Hamefura is a very light-hearted series so I doubt it would put Nicol is such a tough dark position. While it's played for laughs, thankfully Nicol's beauty makes him so dazzling that people can't get close to him rather than being so handsome that people would try to initiate physical contact at every opportunity lmao.

Rather than the wiki pertaining to a specific scenes, I think it might be written in hindsight instead. It could very much be referring to the guy from Volume 6 who keeps staring at Nicol and stealing his uetnsils, but I feel like it could also be referring to the possibility/likeliness of such events and advances happening regularly. Like we don't really need to be told that men and woman throw themselves at Nicol for us to know about it. I mean if its frequent enough for Nicol to be unbothered by it, then it must happen a lot (as gross as that is). Regardless, those advances can still be classified as assault (since Nicol is not a fan of it at all) and the only reason he doesn't do anything about it is because it happens so often that it might be not worth the trouble anymore. At least we do know from the StoryMe hamefura game that Nicol will act in the face of an unfavorable position if he can, so hopefully he isn't just sitting around like an animal in the zoo if he were to receive unwanted advances.

I wouldn't deny that all of these interactions hadn't traumatized Nicol though. They never really mention in the books word-for-word why Nicol is so emotionally stunted/incapable and silent, they only really mention that he doesn't talk because he doesn't want to receive any unwarranted pity. In the first hamefura anthology (whose canonicity is up for debate), they do say there that the reason why Nicol doesn't talk a lot is because people would twist his words in order to turn it around and make him sound more tragic and pitiable than he actually is. I'm no expert on what is or what isn't considered as trauma, but that sounds like a source of trauma to me. The idea of Nicol being so fed up of people misinterpreting his words and expressions in order to fit what they want to hear must have been so hard on him, to the point where he decided to just not speak at all. It can be easily link to his emotionless-ness too, since any positive reaction like a smile could be twisted to mean other things.

Realistically, having people constantly fight over you, whisper things about you behind your back, constantly ogle at you and be constantly flirted on regardless of gender sounds terrible. If that was me I'd be traumatized too. He definitely hates being in the center of attention for all the reasons previously discussed and other well-known variables; he's always in the eyes of every noble around him which makes him hate being in the spotlight (from his perspective, maybe he always feels like the spotlight is on him, like it'll just never leave. he'll always bothered by the eyes of other people even maybe when he's at home... eyes watching him with desires and expectations, haunting him even when he's alone...). It really makes you think about what kind of life Nicol had been living in without Katarina's positive influence. He would have to bear the burden alone, without being able to say a word about it because he needs to act tough for the sake of Sophia.

Like geez, Nicol is even aware that he has stalkers but isn't doing anything about because "they aren't harmful". He never even really clarified what he meant by that (at least I don't remember anyways, feel free to correct me), like is he already doing something to stop the stalker, is it happening so often that he doesn't care anymore or is he fine with it because the stalker hasn't done anything dangerous (yet)???

If you want an /objective/ answer to whether or not the wiki description was referring to the stalker man from Volume 6 or something else, that line on the wiki was added on April 27, 2020; while the JP release of Volume 6 was on March 20, 2018 vs the EN ebook release which was on June 28, 2020.

The editor is likely a JP reader, or it was just an interpretation based most-likely what-if scenarios/interpretations. That's a fun fact for ya :DD

—and since you mentioned that you haven't read all the volumes of the light novels yet, let me help you by listing chapters in the books with a Nicol POV (that I can remember, as of Volume 9)

Volume 1 Chapter 5 (Encountering Katarina) Volume 2 Chapter 4 (Remembering Katarina's Positive Influence) Volume 3 Chapter 2 (School Festival Various Vignettes - Nicol Ascart) Volume 4 Extra Chapter (The Troubles of Nicol Ascart) Volume 5 Chapter 4 (A Lady for Nicol) Volume 8 Chapter 2 (Nicol's "dream")

With this, hopefully it'll be easier for you to cross-reference if you want to look into Nicol's character on your own :DD

TLDR; the trauma and assault mentioned in the wiki is definitely real, although the extent and severity might depend on the reader('s imagination). There's no particular scene to point to as the source, explanation or example of Nicol being given uncomfortable treatment, but it's not hard to imagine given the kind of character Nicol is. He is a silent beauty who caries himself smartly and politely, which in the eyes of many carnivorous nobles is the perfect kind of prey. Whether or not he was assaulted in any way or if people's behavior towards him can be considered as assault depends on the reader, since we still have yet to get a deep dive on Nicol's life outside of his friend group.

If there's any confirmation or deconfirmation to anything I said that I have missed during my skimming on the light novels, feel free to tell me! If I got the definitions and examples of trauma and assault wrong, feel free to tell me and I'll edit this post as fast as I can!

I know this might not exactly be the response you were hoping for, but I hope it was good enough to read qwq. There's so much I could still say but I know I'll go too deep into interpretation (I kinda already did though...), which I want to avoid since the question is asking for in-canon proofs and instances.

Thank you for the ask!

[techmiranda]

Cad Bane - The Concept of Trust: Part 1 - Meeting and Departing (SW fanfiction)

Relying on, or trusting anyone else than yourself is a fool's errand, and anyone is replaceable. This is something two bounty hunters, Cad Bane and She can agree, but what is going to happen when this belief is put in a test time and again during the years?

...Ok, this was first meant just for the drawer, but then I grew so fond of writing this story of Cad Bane x OC female bounty hunter with issues of her own, that I decided to share it. It's becoming a novel, now in total there is some 36 parts ready (oops!) that I'm posting after I get them refined, but the stories inside are 1-6 chapters long. It's mature fanfic and smut, containing depictions of sex and violence (you have now been warned!), so I can't put it all here, but if darker side action-romance might be your thing, please go and check. :)

Part 1: Meeting and Departing

Bane was having a problem. The contract was good, the pay was good, but this time he didn't know how to proceed. There were too many precautions and too little knowledge of the target and this was definitely not one he wanted to approach without a good plan. He perfunctorily cycled through the database of bounty hunters active in the region, until one in particular caught his eye. Bane had heard her name a couple of times. A female hunter, not very well-known, but a couple of others had given praise of her preparations and information gathering skills. It seemed she was only a short trip away so Bane decided to give it a shot. He did not want to transmit any info via the bounty-net, and certainly not across open comms; better to see who she was and make sure no one picked up what was going on.

Bane contacted her just to settle a time to meet. She gave the coordinates of a smaller spaceport in the Outer Rim and when Bane arrived he saw a ship named " The Dalcassian". It was a modified YT-2400 cargo-type freighter with adequate guns and some other modifications to serve its purpose better. Not bad. Bane liked some of the mods he saw. He went in and was a bit disappointed that the cargo door was open. Sloppy. She had her back turned to him, doing some welding as Bane went in.

"Your door was wide open." Bane said, trying to see if she was startled.

"No, I opened it for you as I picked up from the port's comms line your ship had landed and saw you approaching from the cameras. As you can see I have my hands full for a moment. Wait a minute, you'll soon have my attention." she said without turning her head.

Bane raised his eyebrows. Not bad. Not bad at all. Maybe this trip was not in vain. He leaned his back towards the wall and continued watching her. Nice frame. Muscular. Bane liked what he saw, though it did not matter. This was business and not pleasure.

In a couple of minutes she had finished her job and turned around.

"So what can I do for you?" her face was strong and eyes were questioning.

"I need some information about a certain person and facility."

"Sure, give me all the data you can and specify what you need and I see what I can do. How much time do I have?"

"You will get the name and the coordinates of the facility. And you have until tomorrow evening."

She looked at him, raising her eyebrow. "You understand that with poor background info and scope you will get poor intel?"

"I am not going to share any details with you. Just do what I tell you."

She sneered, and her eyes narrowed to slits. "Your call. Also, it's not much time. I am not sure how much data I can get for you. Depends of the target."

"Do what you can. I was told you are adequate in this so prove it!" Bane snapped when giving her the chip.

She seemed to get more annoyed when hearing his tone. "If that's what they say. ...Fine. Well, I have some work to do so if you please..." she waved her hand towards the door, turning her back at him, already heading towards the cockpit. Meeting was clearly over. Bane was not sure what to think of her watching her walk away. A bit feisty.

Early the next evening she sent him a message to say that she was coming with the findings, and asked if they could meet on his ship. It was all the same for Bane so in ten minutes she arrived. Bane waited on the ramp and stretched out his hand for the chip. She hesitated for a moment.

"You just want the chip?"

"That's what I paid for, what's the problem?" Bane sounded irritated.

"Ok. Listen to me for a moment. I was able to sift through some of the data already, so if you want to save yourself some work, I suggest you lend me your ear for a moment."

Bane scowled. "Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?" he snarled.

She looked at him wearily. "No, I am just trying to give you more useful and refined information instead of raw data. Then you decide what you do with it."

What the hell did she think she could give that was so valuable? But, he admitted that he was a bit curious and there was still time.

"Fine. Come in."

She followed him and put the chip in the data pad she had brought with her, as she started to explain what she had found out; It was surprisingly much. Bane now understood why she was reluctant to just give the chip, it would have taken a lot of effort and time to sort out the most useful information as he hadn't given her any specifications where to focus. Bane could not disagree. She was good. The points and processing of the info she had made were in the mark. It took fifteen minutes for her to explain her findings. She sat on the chair and Bane crouched over her shoulder to see better. She did not seem to be a bit bothered by how close Bane was. That was a tad uncommon as he tended to have an opposite effect on most.

Then she stood up, handing him the chip. "That's it. Good hunt." and with that she walked out.

Bane watched her leave Hell. That woman was undervalued.

As time went by Bane found himself visiting her ship more often for information. He could have just sent the requests, but for some reason he wanted to do it face-to-face when possible. At first, his requests were only for intel, but later he asked her to attend on occasions when he needed a group. She did not disappoint on that front either. She was a professional. Good with guns, flying, repairs, mechanics and tech. Was able to hold her ground in hand-to-hand combat and her tactical eye was almost as good as her information gathering skills. Not bad. Not rough for the eye either.

Some years passed by and she had become one of the mercenaries Bane used regularly. He admitted he had grown ...used to having her in the team and her abilities were undeniable. She had a sarcastic sense of humour and seemed to give rats about Bane's not-so-approachable reputation and snarky remarks, returning them swiftly with a crooked grin, but only outside work. On missions she was consummate professional, reliable and good at following orders and that was something Bane could respect. He admitted their mutual banter was ...enjoyable. Sometimes he thought there was  almost a flirting undertone, but it was always gone faster than Bitefly sting gave you a rash. She wasn't the type to mix business and pleasure either and that was something Bane could respect too. It made things clearer.

Several years later Bane had gathered a group for the mission. They were to capture a Gran merchant. Alive. She had done the intel and was giving the last briefing, going through the layout of the facility and guard rotations. Bane watched her bend over the table. A position she often seemed to work in. He found himself wondering how she might react if, one day, he would go over there and press himself against her, grabbing... Bane shook his head. Druk. This was no time to be distracted. ...And yet the thought came back. He snapped out of it feeling irritated.

"That's enough, let's go."

She looked at him puzzled. "Bane, there are a couple of things you should know that I fou-."

"We have enough information. Everybody knows the plan, their places and job. Go."

She looked after him but did not continue, just shrugged her shoulders and followed others.

It was not an easy mission, but everybody had a specific job to take out guards and cut the escape routes on different areas as Bane entered the compound and pursued the target. The only problem was the unmarked emergency exit that led straight to a yard where the Gran merchant’s very own ship was fuelled and waiting. The guards were able to keep Bane at bay for a moment to give the target more time to get away. Fuck, Bane thought, thinking if this was one of the "couple of more things" she was trying to tell him Before he had cut her off. Bane finished the guards and ran after the prey, only to see Gran nearing the ship, too far away that even the filament cable could reach him. Bane cursed.

Then he saw a familiar figure on the other side of the ship, obviously ignorant of the approaching merchant. Bane cursed again. What the hell was she doing there? She was supposed to be on the other side of the compound to take down the guards. Then he saw Gran pointing his blaster at her and Bane fired his gun towards the merchant without thinking further, bolt missing the merchant's head only by inches. The Gran ceased his attack, and darted for the ship, the boarding ramp already closing before he had disappeared from view. By now, she had noticed the merchant, but made no gesture to pursue. She was too far off anyways, but she didn't even seem to react that much, just looking how their target got safely away behind the ship's doors and started the engines. The prey would be gone in seconds.

Bane was infuriated. Not only that the prize had escaped, but that he had almost killed the target and lost the bounty... And for what? To save a woman who hadn’t the sense to stay in position and stick to the plan. A woman that made him so distracted, that he had almost blasted his payday to smithereens.

Bane bolted down to her. She did not seem to understand what was going on when the snarling Duros was at her face.

"What the fuck were you doing here?"

She looked at him, eyes narrowing.

"I was..."

"You were meant to be on the other side, taking care of the guards there!"

"I did..."

Bane waved his hand and turned away, not wanting to hear what she was going to say. He felt uneasy and did not want to dwell on a thought, that his anger was maybe nearly as much because she was almost shot than that his prize had escaped. Bane winced at the thought. Why did he even give Bantha's druk about if she had been killed? There were plenty of bounty hunters around if needed. This was becoming ...personal and Bane did not like it. He turned around looking at her perplexed expression.

"You are a weakness. I can't afford that." His voice was dour as he said the words slowly.

She looked at him, her eyes widening as she dwelled in the words, standing still for a moment, trying to find the words and Bane was able to see how she kept her anger just hardly at bay. Then she exhaled and her demeanor changed to cold and rigid. She stared Bane right into eyes when walking in front of him, so close Bane was able to feel her body heat.

"I finished my job there and secured the doors. As you did not care to hear about the unmarked route, or the ship, I came here for a back-up plan."

She slammed a small device against Bane's chest.

"I put a tracking device on his ship in case he was able to escape."

Bane looked at her speechless.

"You better get going. Shouldn't lose that precious prize." With that, she barged past him, and it was no accident that her shoulder struck Bane’s chest.

[inthewild-flowers]

helloooo here's a commission for @ilysmb !!

info: omgcp, jack/bitty/parse, just under 2k words.

summary: parse accidentally hits someone with his car, and jack and bitty help him cover it up

warnings: blood, dead body, mentions of a car accident and murder, it felt a bit gory when I was writing it but it's not that bad

Oddly enough, Jack isn’t panicking.

He’s pretty sure he should be panicking. But he’s feeling quite calm, actually. Serene, almost. This is almost certainly one of the worst things that could be happening, but Jack’s brain doesn’t seem to be processing it right now, and he’s okay with that.

Parse is panicking. Parse is also covered in blood, so maybe it makes sense that it’s affecting him more. Bitty’s got his hands on his hips and he’s frowning deeply at Parse, and Jack almost laughs, because Bitty is so rarely openly disapproving of anyone, but apparently this warrants it.

“Can you tell us that again?” Bitty asks. Parse twists his hands in his shirt, starts to run them through his hair. Realizes they’re covered in blood. Goes back to twisting his shirt.

“I was driving,” he says, “and it was dark, and I hit something. And then I got out and it was a person and they’re dead.”

“And you’re covered in their blood because…” Bitty trails off and looks at Parse expectantly. His eyebrows are raised, as if he’s daring Parse to provide a satisfactory explanation.

Parse sighs. “Because I put them in the trunk,” he says.

“You what?”

“I put their fucking body in my fucking trunk and now I need to figure out what do do about it!”

A tiny laugh escapes Jack’s mouth, and Bitty shoots him a terrifying look. Jack clears his throat and looks at the floor, avoiding Parse’s eyes. If he looks at him, he’ll laugh again, he knows it.

Bitty sighs. “Alright,” he says, “let’s get you cleaned up before we do anything else.”

“Won’t I just get bloody again?”

“You’ll feel better when you’re clean.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay.”

Jack follows Parse up the stairs, one hand resting on his back after Parse stumbles and nearly falls. He guides him to the bathroom, sits him down on the closed toilet seat, and tells him to stay there while Jack gets clean clothes. When he comes back, Parse is pale and shaking, his hands twisted together with his nails digging into his skin.

“I killed someone,” he whispers.

Jack doesn’t know what to say to that. He did kill someone, and there’s not much comfort to be given in this situation. He gently separates Parse’s hands and holds one in each of his own. The blood smears between them, covering Jack’s hands as well, but he doesn’t care.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “You didn’t mean to, and we’re going to help you. You’re not alone in this.”

Parse nods, a jerky motion as he stares at their intertwined hands. Jack kisses his forehead. “Come on,” he says, “Let’s get you in the shower.”

~~~

Twenty minutes later, they’re back downstairs and Bitty has three slices of pie on the table. Bitty, despite his reaction earlier, greets Parse with a worried look and a tight hug. He fiddles with a strand of Parse’s damp hair and asks, “Are you okay?”

Parse shrugs.

Bitty nods, and he ushers Parse into a chair and hands him a fork. Parse picks at the pie, but doesn’t eat any.

“What are we going to do?” Jack asks.

“Clean it up,” Bitty replies.

“Clean it up?”

“Yes, clean it up. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Jack stares at Bitty for a moment. “Yeah, okay. Let me do some googling.”

“I feel like,” Parse says, then pauses and thinks for a moment. “I feel like googling might not be the best idea. Do you really want ‘how to clean blood out of a car’ in your search history?”

“Oh, yeah.” Jack is lost now. Bitty pats him on the arm.

“Don’t worry honey, I’ve got this.”

~~~

The first thing they do is dig a grave. Bitty wants to move the body first so that he can start cleaning the car, but Jack points out that if they’re going to move the body, they’ll need to have somewhere to move it to. So digging the grave comes first.

The far corner of their backyard is secluded, and the ground is soft, but it still takes hours to dig a deep enough grave, even with all three of them digging. It’s well past midnight by the time they’re satisfied, and although Parse seems to have calmed down slightly, Bitty has a murderous gleam in his eye.

“If you ever pull something like this again, Kent,” he says, “it’ll be your body we’re burying.”

Parse briefly makes eye contact with Jack, then looks away before either of them laugh. “Understood,” he says.

Bitty throws down his shovel and sits down in the dirt. Parse sits next to him, and Jack next to Parse. Their legs dangle over the edge of the pit they’ve dug, and Jack feels as though he could fall in at any second. He rests his head on Parse’s shoulder and reaches out to hold his hand. He can see Bitty doing the same.

They sit like that for a long time, contemplating the grave in silence. Then Parse says, “What if we get caught?”

Jack has been trying not to think about that possibility. He doesn’t know what he’d do if they got caught. At this point, it’s too late to stop, but he wonders if it might have been easier if Parse had just called the police when he hit the person. If he hadn’t got Jack and Bitty to help him. Jack immediately feels bad for that train of thought, because Parse didn’t ask them to go to these lengths, did he? Jack and Bitty decided to do this, and the more he thinks about it, the more he’s convinced it was the right thing to do. No, not exactly the <i>right</i> thing. But he doesn’t know what the consequences would have been had Parse called the police, owned up to this, and he doesn’t want to consider the idea of losing him. So yes, Jack decides, he and Bitty are doing the right thing.

“We won’t get caught,” Bitty says.

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure we don’t. Besides, who would expect two NHL players and their internet famous boyfriend to have a body buried in their backyard?”

Parse nods. Jack nods as well. Bitty kicks his heel against the side of the grave.

“Are you guys ready for the next bit?” Jack asks. Parse shakes his head. His grip on Jack’s hand tightens.

“We’re going to have to do it before it starts to get light,” Bitty says.

“Can we wait a little bit longer?” Parse asks. He sounds scared. Bitty sighs, but nods.

“Yeah,” he says, “a little bit longer.”

~~~

The first thing they have to do is find a tarp to make carrying the body easier. Jack digs around in the basement until he finds one, tucked in among their camping gear that they haven't used in years. He brings it out to the car, and he hopes that none of the neighbours are awake and looking out the window.

When he steps outside, though, he sees that Bitty has moved the car into the garage, and he remembers that there’s a door leading right from the garage to the backyard, and suddenly the task seems far less dangerous. Jack goes back into the house, then into the garage, where Bitty and Parse are standing by the car, staring at the trunk apprehensively.

“Have you opened it yet?” Jack asks.

“Does it look like we’ve opened it?” Bitty replies. He winces, and seems immediately sorry, but Jack isn’t mad. This is a stressful night for all of them.

He opens the trunk.

The body is inside, as he expected. It doesn’t smell terrible yet. It’s covered in blood, and the blood has smeared across the entirety of the trunk. It’s going to be awful to clean up.

Jack stares at the body for a moment. Don’t think of it as a person, he tells himself. He doesn’t know how else to think of it, though, and he wants to look away but can’t quite manage it. He clears his throat.

“So,” he says, “how are we going to do this?”

~~~

How they do it is like this: they spread the tarp on the floor of the garage. Part of it is under the car, and it’s perfectly positioned under the trunk. Bitty supplies three pairs of bright yellow cleaning gloves, and they roll the body out of the trunk and onto the tarp. Parse doesn’t help much. He started retching as soon as he touched the body.

So it’s Bitty and Jack that get it carefully onto the tarp, Bitty and Jack that each take two corners of the tarp and lift, Bitty and Jack that carry it out to the hole in the garden while Parse holds the door for them and stares at the ceiling. Bitty and Jack that dump it in. Jack thinks it’s fitting, a true demonstration of the lengths they’re willing to go to protect someone they love. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he also thinks it’s horrifying, but he ignores it. That can wait.

Parse is still shaking too much to hold a shovel, still looking sick at the sight of the corpse, so it’s Bitty and Jack that bury it as well, working silently side by side. The sun starts to rise. They pack in the last of the dirt.

It’s obvious that something has happened in that corner of the garden. Where yesterday there had been perfect green grass, now there’s a patch of exposed dirt and rocks.

“How are we going to cover that up?” Parse whispers. It’s the first thing he’s said in hours.

“I’ll go get some trees today,” Jack replies. “Baby ones, and we’ll plant them there. We can say we dug it up for that.”

Parse nods. His shoulders are tense, and he looks like he could collapse at any moment.

“You need to sleep,” Bitty tells him. Parse shakes his head.

“I don’t think I can,” he says.

“Will it help if we’re there?”

Parse shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Bitty stands on his tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m going to clean the car,” he says, “and then we’re all going to go to bed. You don’t need to sleep,” he adds when Parse starts to say something, “but having us there with you will be better than you being alone. And you do need to sleep.”

Parse nods. Jack reaches out and takes his hand, lacing their fingers together. “It’s going to be okay,” he says again. “You’re not alone.”

Parse gives him a small smile, but he doesn’t reply.

[jamestrmtx]

Fairytale Complex - [Undertale | Sans x Reader]

[Gender Neutral, Frisk's Parent Reader]

Chapter One | Home

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(Author Note, written in November 2020 and updated on May 2021: For those who've already read the prologue, two changes happened: [1] the story title went from Goodnight, Starlight to Fairytale Complex, and [2] since this's a rewrite of an older work, the main/focus relationship would now be Sans, but there will still be alternate relationships, other main four being Papyrus, Muffet, Grillby, and Napstablook! More info on that can be found on Chapter Sixteen | Dummy! (Part 3 of 3).)

• • •

Your phone lights up and buzzes erratically, waking you up and forcing you to get out of bed when it proves to be too far away for you to reach it. The screen marks an unholy five thirty five in the morning, and you can only wonder over what your aunt wants to discuss with you at such an early hour. There's around two urgent voicemails, eleven text messages, and three missed calls, all from her, so you decide on phoning her back to get things over with.

She answers fast, hardly giving the phone a chance to beep once.

"Turn on the TV right now, honey," your aunt shouts, an indistinguishable emotion between anger and shock displayed in her voice. "Now," she repeats, authority shown in that single word. "And don't forget to call me later. We need to talk." She hangs up after that, leaving you with more questions than you once had.

You raise a brow at the oddity of her call, yet relent with how tired both your mind and body feel. You'd left work at eleven at night, only to arrive home at midnight and fall asleep at one. With barely five hours of rest in your system, you don't exactly feel motivated to watch television, yet that changes when you sit at the edge of your bed, turn it on, and see the first thing there is a breaking news report taking over every cable channel present. No matter which one you switch to, it's there, reporting over the rise of a whole new species of living beings, these capable of human reasoning and conduct, as one of the reporters and even a scientist so claimed based on the little information they've both gathered about the species already. They proceed to display a picture of a large crowd of people gathered near a mountain, these looking straight out of a fantasy novel. They vary greatly, from bipedal, anthropomorphic fish, bears, bunnies, goats, and spiders, to living skeletons, ghosts, and live, humanoid flames. You have to rub sleep away from your eyes and blink a few times to process what's going on, until you see who's standing smack in the middle of them all.

"F- Frisk?!" you shout, breaking the silence of your home and the night.

Almost immediately, you pick up your phone and search for more information on where and when the picture was taken. The sun seemed to be setting in it, and based on when the news had chosen to report on the event, you figure Frisk has to be with that group somewhere around. You access the news channel's main page and see a pinned post asking for information on the child's parents, comment section blocked to prevent a flood in them, along with the share button to keep any second parties from spreading it around more.

>> A goat lady by the name of Toriel has taken Frisk under her temporary care while authorities regain contact with the child's parents. If anyone reading this post happens to know about their location, number, or any other contact information, please do let us know over at private message, so that we may interview them personally. We have searched far and wide for more thorough information on the child, but Child Protective Services have settled upon keeping that information private, while the child refused to tell us anything else after they found out over what penalties their parents would be receiving. They insist that their primary caregiver is a good person, that they do not know about their secondary caregiver's whereabouts, and that they will not allow anything bad to happen to either of them, refusing to so much as give up their last name to us as a result. However, we are still in dire need of said information in order to interview the parents and perform more proper investigations as to why the child disappeared for a period of almost two whole months.

Below the basic gist stands a shorter paragraph and a photo of a different monster, this one a skeleton instead of a goat woman.

>> In addition to the goat lady offering to look after Frisk for the time being, another monster has reached out to us and left his number only specifically for the parents. He states it is necessary they meet and that he would like to offer an explanation as to what happened at the Underground and how Frisk got there. If you are one of the parents, please contact us through private message so that we may provide you with his number and further directions on what to do from there.

You check the time of the post, lock your phone, and set it aside when the news returns from a commercial break, this one much shorter compared to usually. 

"Passerby say it sounded similar to that of a bomb going off, yet there were no signs of destruction and nobody near when they made it to the place where they heard the noise. It's estimated the Barrier broke at late evening, and that the monsters left with Frisk barely an hour after that event, without bothering to inform anyone over the missing child's arrival. Authorities claim they've yet to gain contact with Frisk's secondary caregiver and that they are now on their way to contact their primary one. Given the circumstances and the current hour, Child Protective Services believe it best to visit at noon, as they have already tracked down the parent's location and received further information on the subject through social media. That's all we've managed to cover so far, but remember to stay tuned for more at-"

“(Mom/Dad), I'm home!”

Your eyes shoot open and you almost have to double take when you hear that voice. It's followed by a few persistent knocks on the door, though you still go as far as to check the pulse on your wrist to make sure you're still alive. You turn the television off, hop out of bed, and rush over to the living room, where you're greeted with the sight of Frisk standing by the entrance and looking around, their own set of keys balanced on their finger as they take in their surroundings. They continue to look this way and that, observing the changes you've made to the house since they were gone. 

They meet with your eyes and freeze up, taking a small, precautionary step forward. "I… I missed you," they mutter, voice soft and quiet, a large difference from when they announced they were back home. They fiddle with their hands and face at the floor, casting a guilty look at the worn welcome mat as they say, "I'm sorry for… for disappearing like that. But I promise I-"

Before they can finish speaking, you've already made it to their side. Your arms wrap around them and you bring them in for a strong and lasting embrace, tucking their head against your chest, squeezing them tight, and allowing them to listen to your heart beat. "Oh, sweetheart, forget all that," you reply, stroking their hair and kissing their forehead. "I… I missed you, too." You hold them tight and let some of your worries out through another squeeze. It feels almost bizarre having them in your arms again, but it feels right all the same. Every puzzle seems to fall right into place, and the only thing in your mind right now's their well-being. "H- How are you, by the way?" you ask, breaking the hug apart. "Are you hungry? ...Sleepy? And who brought you here? Did they treat you well?"

"I'm okay," they reply, giggling. "Miss Toriel made me some food before we left, and I'm way too pumped to even think about sleeping!"

"And where is Miss Toriel?"

"She left right after we got here. She said she didn't want to bother you now that I'm back, and that you could meet up with her some other time!"

You hug them yet again, still too stricken to let go of them. "I'm… I'm so glad you're back home, dear," you whisper, holding them close as you mutter more sentences with similar sentiments to the previous one. You still can't shake off your shock nor can you believe this is real. The rational part of your brain insists it's no time to be emotional and that you need answers stat, though the emotional part demands you pour all your attention onto the moment and appreciate Frisk's return. You'd cried countless hours, days, nights, and weeks. And all of that pent up regret, confusion, and relief begins to be let out through whispered words, strong hugs, and gentle caresses. "I… I thought you were gone for good, dear, an- and that you left because you hated me." You hiccup at that last statement and hold them tighter, fearing another disappearance. "I'm sorry if I ever made you feel bad about me being your (mother/father). And… And I'm sorry for anything I might've done to upset you. I- I'll try to be a better parent for you from now on, and you can tell me over where I can improve. Alright?"

Frisk breaks the hug apart and faces up at you with a frown. "What are you saying? I don't hate you, (mom/dad)!" they reply, gaze furrowed and eyes wide. "I… I was thinking about something else that day. B- But it has nothing to do with you. I promise!"

"Then why did you disappear?" you ask, placing a hand over their shoulder and maintaining your frown. "Why did you run away? ...And just what do you mean by that? What were you thinking about before you disappeared?"

Looking caught, they face the floor and fiddle with their hands again. "...Can we talk about that later? I think I'm feeling sleepy now."

Your glare finally shows through, the rational part of you taking over now. "Don't you dare change the subject, Frisk (L/N). What did you mean by that? What happened before you disappeared?"

"Please, (mom/dad)! I can tell you later," they whine, tears welling up in their eyes. "I- I don't wanna talk about that right now. I miss you. And I… I really wanna be with you right now. I really miss my home, I miss studying with you, and I... I miss going out on weekends with you, too."

You straighten your posture, cross your arms tight, and frown, still unconvinced. "Can you promise me you'll tell me first thing tomorrow, after we catch up today?"

Slowly, they nod. "I promise."

"Pinky promise?"

Frisk smiles bright and wide at your suggestion and at the gesture you make, pinky finger offered out to them. They interlock theirs with yours and let go when you both nod, sealing the deal. "I promise. Could we go watch a movie now?"

"Didn't you say you were sleepy?"

"I sleep better with the TV on!"

"Yeah, right." Despite yourself, you giggle and smile at them. Then, you place a hand on their head and mess up their hair, poking your tongue out when they glare at you. "Let's go, then. Just... Remember me to call my boss so I can take the day off today and go to work a bit later tomorrow."

"...Can you really do that? I thought you could get fired for that!"

"Probably not." You laugh. "But you're my main and only priority right now. And I can just try to find another job after all this's over with."

You offer your hand out to them and lead the way back to your bedroom when they take it. Your heart's still racing and you've yet to acknowledge the fact they're finally back with you, though your happiness continues to persist through it all; they're here and that's all that matters right now. Worry would come in later.

"Why did you move the TV to the bedroom, though?" they ask, halfway through your destination.

You squeeze their hand and stare down at them, managing a guilty and meek smile. "I, uh, might've... borrowed your dad's Netflicks password, and tried watching some movies since you went missing. I could barely sleep at night, so I just tried distracting myself by finding something new to watch." You let go, finally reaching the door of your bedroom. "I also made sure to tidy up your bedroom once a week, just in case you ever came back, so it's all nice and clean if you want to go there later," you say, smiling. "But... I'm guessing you'd want to be with me for awhile now?"

They nod, not an ounce of reluctance present in their actions. "Definitely!" They flinch back and giggle when you kiss their cheek as a response, "Can I, really?"

"As long as you fulfill your promise, then yes. You can stay in my bedroom for as long as you want, dear."

"But didn't you say I was a big kid just last year?"

"Yes, but I…" You chew on your lip and blink back tears, their return finally dawning on you. "I missed you too much to care about that right now."

You turn on the television and access Netflicks, putting on a movie and climbing into bed. They do the same and rest their head against your lap, cuddling against you. You both stay that way for the entirety of the movie, with them close and with your hand on their head, stroking their hair until they fall asleep halfway in.

When you're sure they're out like a light, you allow yourself to cry again; tears continue to go down the more time you spend with Frisk close to your side.

They were back.

Your prayers had been answered, and now you wouldn't have to lay awake at night, feeling guilty and mourning over their loss for hours on end.

Hopefully, Child Protective Services and Frisk's school would go easier on you now; despite what you said about not minding if they were taken away after their return, you do care. Now that they're back in your arms, you can't imagine not having the right to visit them again; a world without them. At that thought, sorrow overflows your mind and you find yourself crying quietly during what's left of another movie, uncontrolled yet quiet as you try not to wake or worry Frisk over your state. You needed to be strong for their sake and for your own as well, if the time to part ways from them ever became a reality.

That's the last thing you think of as you close your eyes, exhaustion finally taking your body for itself. Faint murmurs of an ongoing movie are the last things you hear and the sight of Frisk sleeping peacefully on your lap is the last thing you see. It all feels right, yet not; cherishing these final moments is the only thing you can do for now.

[Previous] | [Next]

[sprnklersplashes]

theo/robin- “we broke up but I was in an accident and you're still my emergency and you dropped everything to come to the hospital”

also on ao3

He grabs the phone at what he suspects is a second before it stops ringing. After pushing himself off the couch and throwing about five hundred things off the coffee table in search of it. He can feel Moth’s stink eye on him even as he turns and heads into the hall, half-closing the living room door. Not just because he disrupted the organised chaos of their coffee table, but because he violated their ‘no answering the phone during the movie’ rule. He’ll make it up to her, he tells himself. He’ll do the coffee run tomorrow. Even she can’t remain mad after an iced latte.

He hears her pause the movie and thinks maybe he’ll throw in a cupcake too.

“Hello?”  he asks.

“Robin Goodfellow?”

“Yep.” He’s just a little suspicious, because the voice definitely isn’t one he recognises, and hardly anyone has his number, just Moth and a few close friends. It’s a little unusual, but not too much, and certainly not enough to scare him or anything.

“This is Greendale hospital.We’re calling you because you’re the emergency contact for Theo Putnam.”

Apparently, he spoke too soon.

The first part is enough to send a shiver running up his spine. He thankfully doesn’t have too much experience in hospitals, but the word still puts him on edge. His experiences might be few and far between, but he’s smart enough to know that calls from hospitals mean bad news, 99% of the time.

And yet, that’s not even the part he’s focussing on. Instead he’s focussing on the name uttered on the other line. A name that makes him feel like he’s drowning, and flying, and dying all at once, just at the mention of it.

“Theo?” he asks. Slowly, the information begins to come together, clicking like a jigsaw puzzle. Theo. Hospital. Hospital. Theo. Emergency contact. Him. Emergency. Theo in hospital for an emergency. He breathes out steadily, one hand flat against the wall, and swallows past the lump in his throat. “Theo Putnam?”

“Yes.” The operator’s voice is soft, careful, coaxing him to stay calm, and it would work were it not clearly rehearsed. They’re trained to stay calm in any kind of crisis. Robin is yet to learn that. “He was in a motorbike accident. We’ve tried to get ahold of his father, but we’ve been unable to reach him.” 

Robin looks down at his watch. Of course, he thinks. Thursday night. 8pm. If nothing has changed, then Mr Putnam is out in the fields right now, his phone left on the kitchen table because, in his words, ‘it’s too expensive to take out and get lost’. Theo had tried, and failed, to explain to him that the point of a cellphone is for people to reach him whenever they need to. Briefly, he hopes that the hospital doesn’t see Mr Putnam as some neglectful asshole for this.

But there’s more pressing things than Mr Putnam’s reputation.

“Is-is he okay?” He pushes his hair away from his face and pretends not to notice the trembling hand, or how the warmth has fled his skin entirely.

“Yes. We believe there’s nothing fatal. Like I said, he crashed his motorbike and was badly hurt. And since he’s a minor, we need someone to come in and fill out some paperwork for him, and take him home. He’s in no state to drive himself.”

I bet he isn’t. Robin lets out a soft curse and leans against the wall. Now that the worst-case scenario is over, he lets himself think about how much bullshit this all is, and how much of an asshole Theo is because, seriously dude, you didn’t update your emergency contact info? Why was I even there to begin with?

His heart flutters though, just a little, when he thinks about it, and he tries not to hate himself for it.

“Mr Goodfellow?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I-I’ll be right there. Thanks. Bye.” He hangs up before they can say anything else, and lets the dial tone ring in his ear, flood his mind and leave it blank, before springing into action.

And of course, Moth is standing in the doorway when he turns, her grin only growing wider when he jumps.

“Jesus, Moth.”

“Where you off to, hot shot?” she teases, like she doesn’t know. Like she paused the movie so they could watch it together. Like that name didn’t set alarm bells off for her as much as it did for him.

Moth never liked Theo, and never made an attempt to hide it. Not even when he brought him around, or when Theo tried to get on her good side. He gets it, to some extent, given that they;re brother and sister in all but blood, and protecting him was a job she began early on. But even he soon got bored of her speeches about how Theo isn’t good enough for him, how he’s risking too much for a small town farm boy. He reminded her that he was hardly high class himself-an ex foster care brat who only just got a full-time job as a tattoo artist. Her rants didn’t stop bringing Theo round though, and towards the end he just started tuning her out. He assumed, hoped, that one day she’d get tired, or bored, and then finally see the good in Theo, and they’d all live happily ever after.

So much for that.

She wasn’t necessarily happy when Robin came home that night, eyes full of tears and heart freshly broken. She made him some tea, turned on Taylor Swift and let him cry his sad little heart out. So no, she wasn’t happy. But still.

Now he pushes past her into the living room, grabs his jacket from the coffee table, and prepares himself for some more of her bullshit.

“I guess I owe Mer ten bucks,” she sighs. Her response is so far from what he expected-which was something closer to a rant about how he’s better than this-that he freezes in place, his eyes narrowing in a silent demand for the answer. She just shrugs, her lips pursed like it all makes perfect sense. “She bet me you wouldn’t last six months without him. I thought you were stronger than that, but that’s what I get for believing in you.”

“Okay, first off, can you and your girlfriend stop making bets on my love life,” he says. “And second, he was in an accident, for your information.” He pulls his jacket on and turns down the collar. “He’s in the hospital. I'm his emergency contact.”

“Oh,” is all she says. She’s not one for admitting when she’s wrong, not out loud, so she just steps aside and tosses the keys into his open hand. It’s enough for him though, and he taps her shoulder as he passes her in thanks. “Text me when you’re coming home,” she says just as he opens the door. “And if you need anything. And… if he’s okay.”

He nods, the gesture minute, and jogs outside. He throws himself into the car and peels out of the driveway, shaking fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. He picks the first radio station he can and turns it almost all the way up, letting it drown out his thoughts.

It doesn’t work, but no-one can say he didn’t try.

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

He’s not in the waiting room five minutes before he puts his headphones in. It’s the same logic as the music in the car; drown out the sounds, forget where he is. The paperwork sits on his lap, supported by a wooden clipboard that’s seen better days and a receptionist with tired, sympathetic eyes sporting dark shadows. She tells him she’ll come and get him whenever he can see him, and less than a minute later, appears with a paper cup of coffee. ‘You look like you could use it,’ she said before leaving him to the paperwork.

The coffee sucks, but the gesture is appreciated.

He texts the Midsummer Night's group chat, updating them on what little has happened so far. Moth is surprisingly sympathetic, messaging him privately saying she hopes he’s okay, Merry offering words of comfort and the others piling on with the love and support. It’s beautiful, and it’s sweet, but it’s suffocating. He mutes the chat before he can see someone else asking if there’s anything they can do and puts on a podcast that has yet to let him down. From there he reads through the paperwork and mindlessly puts his signature wherever he needs to. He tenses at the sight of the word ‘surgery’, even if the word ‘minor’ is before it and shudders at the word ‘accident’. He turns the volume up on his podcast every time his thoughts start going down a road he doesn’t like, as if Theo will be okay if he doesn’t let himself think about it.

By the time the nurse taps him on the shoulder, he’s getting dirty looks from the lady two seats down that tells him everything she thinks about his podcast choices.

“Hey,” the nurse quietly, like he might bolt if she scares him. “The surgery went well, and we moved him to the recovery room. He’s awake, if you want to go see him.”

She leads him down a perfectly-polished corridor, neon lights distorted in the shiny reflection, and quickly up in a too-small elevator before stopping outside what must be Theo’s room. Room 203, with the word RECOVERY printed on the wood in grubby white letters. The nurse tells him something in a soft, polite voice and he thanks her before leaving, because he wasn’t raised in a barn, and then it’s just him and the door. And Theo, on the other side of it.

It takes more effort than it should just to put his hand on the handle.

It’s been four months now. Four months, two weeks, five days, because yeah, he counted. Four months since Theo’s insecurities got the better of him and he told Robin to leave, since Robin got tired of trying to work it out and told him that he’d come back whenever he’s ready. A week later, Roz appeared on Robin’s doorstep with most of his things in a box-a mixtape he’d made for Theo’s birthday, one of his shirts, his cap, a book he’d forgotten about. Four months of waiting beside the phone, of not-so-subtly checking out his social medias.

Four months without waking up next to him, or meeting him for coffee, or sharing milkshakes, or having his face pressed into the crook of his neck.

Four months had never felt so long, and now here they are.

He doesn’t feel himself turning the handle, only sees the door slowly opening before him, a cold wash spreading over his body. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Stony silence. A potted plant being thrown at his head. A colourful array of curse words telling Robin exactly where to go. Or maybe, in his wildest dreams, Theo bursting into tears and begging him to take him back.

He doesn’t know what he expects, but what he gets is Theo blinking at him, surprise slowly trickling through the medication-induced haze.

“Hi,” he says slowly. That’s the first word Theo has said to him in four months. Hi. His response is ‘hey’, so it’s not like he’s much better, but still. 

He closes the door and moves closer, stopping a good few feet from Theo’s bed. He isn’t an asshole, and so he lets the fog clear a good bit before he starts saying anything. He had planned on going straight into a lecture, but state he’s in, he now feels bad doing so. His skin is almost as pale as the sheets he’s lying on, his right cheek sporting a nasty looking purple bruise, smaller marks and cuts trailing along his neck and jaw. The arm facing Robin is wrapped in layers of white bandage, while the opposite leg sits atop the sheets and wrapped in a cast. He moves, little by little, until he can see that side of his body, which seems to be more bruises than skin. He winces on instinct, and then remembers that he still can’t see what’s beneath the blanket and hospital gown.

“What are you doing here?” Theo asks after a while.

“I’m still your emergency contact,” he replies, and he tries not to laugh when Theo curses under his breath. He chuckles humorlessly. “Seriously, you need to get that changed.”

“Yeah, I’ll make that a priority.”

“Well, you should. I changed my contact info two months ago. When-” The words catch in his throat. When it became clear to him that Theo didn’t want him back. When he texted him and waited around for two days for a reply. When it was obvious that Theo had moved on and he should do the same. “Well, I did.”

“Oh well good for y-” He gasps sharply, the word turning into a strained cry as he clearly pulls on something he shouldn't have. Robin’s at his side in less than a moment, his hands on his shoulders because he’s unsure where else to put them. They stay there, sitting in that half-embrace, as the seconds pass and the tension fades from Theo’s face. Robin watches and resists the urge to run his thumb along Theo’s jaw.

“You okay?”

“Peachy keen,” he replies in a voice that implies anything but. Now that he’s closer, Theo somehow looks worse than he did when he came in. He can see the bruises poking out from beneath the hospital-issued gown, along with freshly-covered cuts. He remembers the nurse telling him something about needing stitches and he tries not to shudder. 

Theo’s eyes follow his and, because Theo is a bastard, he smiles.

“I look pretty badass huh?”

“Not the word I would use.” Theo pouts and damn it, Robin can’t help it. He laughs; he’s not made of stone. Theo laughs too, as much as his beaten-up body will allow, and raises an eyebrow at him. “So is this the part where you tell me ‘I told you so’?”

“No. Because I am not an asshole.”

But in complete fairness, he did tell him so. Several times, in fact. He told him over and over again that that bike was a death trap and would it kill him to wear a helmet for the love of God and there’s no way he should be on that thing when he doesn’t even have a permit and does he know the reason motorbike insurance is so much cheaper than car insurance? He had told him all of that, over and over again, and Theo had just laughed and kissed his cheek and told him he’s cute when he’s protective. 

Well now he’s cute and right.

“No,” Theo says after a pause. “You’re not an asshole.” He tilts his chin slightly and looks at him, his eyes still slightly dazed, probably from the pain meds. “You came all the way out here because you heard I got hurt. That’s not an asshole thing to do.”

“Yeah, well… You’d have done the same for me.” He doesn’t deny it. Instead he just huffs a soft laugh and looks down at his sheets, his free hand toying with the fabric. Maybe it’s just him, he hopes it’s just him, but it feels too bold, what he said. Like he had just asked, or at least implied, something about them not being entirely over. His heart skips a beat, and so he quickly changes the subject. “They said they’re trying to reach your dad. I know he’s usually busy these nights. They said they’ll keep trying to reach him.”

“Oh God.” Theo’s head hits the pillow, a low groan escaping him. “My dad.”

“Yeah.” Theo opens one eye and looks at him and sighs heavily, grunting slightly with his sore chest. “You may not tell me you told me so, but my dad definitely will.”

“Well, to be fair… he told you so.” He chuckles when Theo flips him off, a scowl on his bruised face. Robin feels braver, and moves closer again. 

“Do you know what happened to the bike?” he asks.

“Nope,” he sighs. “I haven’t seen that bike since I crashed it. And I kind of forgot to ask the paramedics what they were going to do with it.” He picks at the sheet. “But given how I ended up, she’s probably scrap metal by now.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know how much you loved that bike.”

“No you’re not,” he replies dryly. “You hated it.”

“No, I hated the risk attached to it. That’s different.” He finds himself, somehow, standing at the foot of Theo’s bed, his hands shoved into his pockets. He opens his mouth to say something else, but he doesn’t know what, and it feels weird. Words always came easy with Theo. That happens when you have someone you can be yourself around. When there’s no need to hide anything because you’re not afraid of what they’ll do. There was never any need for hesitation or hint of discomfort between them. Not until right now.

He doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t want to go either. He’ll stay until his dad comes, he decides. Until he knows Theo’s going to be okay.

And it’s probably a good thing he does, given that his ever-restless ex boyfriend grows bored of laying down and tries to push himself up, despite his beaten-up body’s protests. He gasps sharply, a short, stifled grunt escapes him, but he keeps acting as though it didn’t happen. Robin rolls his eyes and moves over to him; one hand on his arm and the other adjusting his pillows. Theo scowls again, because he would walk on broken legs before asking for help, but he doesn’t push him away.

“Here, careful… there you go.” Theo sits up against the wall, his back supported by pillows. Robin settles next to him on the mattress, watching his face for any indication that he should go. He doesn’t get one. Instead, he gets a smile, and the ghosting of fingertips along his hand.

“Thank you,” he says. “For… for coming here.”

“It’s fine,” he replies. His mouth runs dry, his heart beating louder and louder being so close to him. He’s missed him. Holy crap, he’s missed him. He’s missed him for months and it all slams into him now, like a speeding train hitting him. Theo doesn’t meet his eyes, doesn’t say anything, just keeps tracing patterns on his hand, his finger getting faster and faster by the minute. He knows him well enough to know what that means. He doesn’t push though, because finally being this close to him is something he doesn’t want to risk losing.

“Robin,” he begins after a long while. “About what I said to you-”

“It’s fine,” he says again, a little too quickly this time.

“It’s not,” he says firmly, shaking his head slightly. “It wasn’t. What I said, the way I said it…” He closes his eyes briefly, probably reliving the night they broke up. He’s recalled it countless times since then. “You didn’t deserve it. And don’t-” He holds up his finger to silence him before Robin can even say anything. “Tell me that it’s okay, you Canadian asshole. Because it wasn’t.”

He laughs at that, even if it’s short-lived. He felt bad for thinking it sometimes, but it never felt right, what Theo had said to him. Half-sentences about not wanting to hold him back, how he can’t stay and give up everything just for him. How he ended it with “I don’t want you anymore” and told him to go. Aside from maybe cheating on him, he doesn’t know how it could have been worse. Leaving him with a broken heart and so many unanswered questions.

“Okay, it was,” he says. “Thank you for apologising.” Theo smiles, barely, and his fingers move quicker against his hand. He doesn’t say anything, not out loud, but he does rest his free hand on Theo’s knee. A brave move, maybe, but also a silent signal that it’s okay. That whatever he has to say, he can say it. God knows when they’ll see each other again, so they might as well.

He must hear it, but even so it takes a lifetime for him to say “I got scared.” He leans back on the pillows, the three words having drained him, and Robin processes it.

“You got scared?” he asks. “Scared of what?”

“Of us,” he sighs. “Of you and me and… how serious it was all getting. And… and your family, and my family, and school. And it was all getting so serious and I-I freaked out.” He swallows thickly and pulls his  good knee close to his chest, a small whimper escaping him. He doesn’t know if it’s from the pain or something else. “I’m sorry.”

They fall silent, and Robin digests what he said. For the past few months, he’s lived with constant confusion over their break-up, and it was just over the past week that it was slowly morphing into acceptance that Theo had just outgrown him. Now there’s this, and his view is shaken up again.

“Oh,” he replies. That might be the only thing he’s capable of saying, given how tight his throat is. He tries to clear it, only to find tears blurring his vision. “Theo… what happened?” Something comes back to him, one night near the end, with Theo over at his place. Him arguing quietly with Moth in the kitchen, her whispering that Theo will ‘ruin his life’. It hadn’t occurred to him how thin the walls in their house actually are. “Did you hear me and Moth?”

“Some of it,” he mumbles. Robin opens his mouth, a fire against Moth ready, but Theo holds up his hand, his pained expression grinding him to a halt. “It’s not just Moth though. It’s everyone else. You heard it too right?” He laughs bitterly. “When people said how weird it was that we were getting so serious so fast.”

Robin doesn’t say anything. Theo’s right; people did talk. It wasn’t because it was two boys, which for Greenedale, is saying something. It was the fact that they’d only been together a few weeks before they were staying at each other’s houses. It was that just two months into their relationship, Robin gave Theo his father’s ring. They talked even more when Robin let it slip they were looking at apartments to share for when Theo went off to college. So yes, people talked, but they weren’t listening. Or apparently, he wasn’t.

“Since when do you care what other people think?” he asks after a while.

“I don’t. But I care about you,” he says. “I care because what if they were right? Robin, you were planning on moving out of Greenedale for me.”

“Yeah, and I said I was okay with it.”

“Well what if I wasn’t?” His voice is tight, shaking, and when tears run down his red cheeks, Robin doesn’t hesitate in wiping them away. Theo leans into his touch, shivering slightly at his skin against his. His hand comes up and wraps around his wrist, his thumb rubbing against the back of Robin’s as he tries to compose himself. “What if I wasn’t okay with dragging you across the country?”

“Is that what you think you were doing?” he asks. “Theo… you weren’t dragging me anywhere. I wanted to go with you.” He swallows thickly before adding, “I still do.” Theo closes his eyes and runs his hand through his hair, his fingers catching on knots.

“Yeah I know,” he whispers, and Robin isn’t sure if he’s talking to him or to himself. “I know that now.” Theo hesitates for a moment, uncertainty in his eyes, but then he wriggles closer, despite his beaten-up body, and Robin does the same until they’re just a breath apart. Close enough for Robin to count the freckles on Theo’s cheeks. Holy crap, he loves those freckles. He loves him, every part of him.

Moth was wrong; he wasn’t lasting six months without him.

“Why did you come here?” Theo asks.

“Because I’m your emergency contact,” he reminds him. 

“Mm-mm.” He shakes his head. “Roz is third on the list. You know that. You could have left it to her. Why did you come?”

“Because you were hurt,” he says, and he means it. It’s the truth, but not the whole truth, and they both know it. “Because I miss you.”

Theo laughs, and kisses the inside of his wrist. 

“I miss you too,” he says, and the tears running down Robin’s face aren’t from heartbreak this time.

The kiss starts slowly, their foreheads pressed together before their lips touch. Robin moves to hold the back of Theo’s head, his free hand on his hip, still mindful of the condition his ex(?) boyfriend is in. Theo’s hand curls into Robin’s shirt, his other tangled in his hair. He feels Theo’s grin against his mouth, feels his own heart finally being put back together. Feels the weight of the past four months finally slipping away, leaving a new future open for them. Together.

But he also feels Theo’s hand shaking, his short, pained gasp against his mouth, and so he pulls away, leaving a small frown on his boyfriend’s face.

“I’m not going to make out with you on a hospital bed,” he tells him. “No matter how badly I want to.” Theo huffs a laugh and nods. 

“Fair enough,” he says. He doesn’t let go of Robin’s hand though, instead linking their fingers together. “What about when I get out of here, we can maybe talk about this? About you and me and…. Everything. And I can try not to freak out this time.”

Robin pushes Theo’s hair away from his face, mindful of the bruises, and smiles.

“I’d like that.” He moves in to kiss him again, fully intending to keep it small this time, but they’re interrupted by the door opening, and a familiar, frantic voice cutting through the air.

“Theo? Oh my God, I left my phone in the house and I just got the call from the hospital, are you-”

He stops his rant just as Robin turns around, his and Theo’s faces a matching shade of red. He feels flashed back to when Mr Putnam caught them in Theo’s room, his mouth hanging open and his eyes darting between them just like he did then, waiting for an explanation. Except they’re not in Theo’s bedroom this time around, and this is the first time Joe has seen him in months, so he sympathises for him this time around.

“So…” he begins. “You two got back together?”

Theo just laughs and buries his face in Robin’s shoulder.

support me on ko-fi

[ineedglasses]

VK Character Analysis: Rido Kuran

Rido is a complete, messed up, SOB, but I still like him as a character because he is simply such a fun villain. If I were to place him in that alignment chart thing, he would be “chaotic evil” without a doubt.

While he is generally seen as a creepy, sister-obsessed, maniac, I really believe he was different earlier in his life. 

This analysis is based off the Rido we see in the manga and the light novel, NOT the Rido in the anime, since the anime was trash and deviated from the manga when it came to his arc. Anyway, at the start of the post, I will go over the info from the light novel and manga, next will be my headcanons of him as a young man and at the end is my interpretation of him when he was crazy, as we see him in the original series.

                                                               XXX

The Deranged Love story in the Fleeting Dreams light novel talks about Rido’s obsession with Juri and gives some info on their past. However, when compared to the original VK series there are several points that don’t add up, and some parts of the light novel simply make no sense.

First, Both VKM and the light novel mention that Rido killed his parents and presumably devoured them to take their powers. That makes sense, it seems like something he would do. What doesn’t make sense to me is the timeline. When exactly did he kill his parents? 

All the light novel tells us is that he killed them immediately after they engaged him to Shizuka. Is this around the time Haruka and Juri got married? I always assumed Haruka and Juri have been married for a while, like at least 1000 years. If this is the case, within that time period, how can they not notice that their parents are dead and that their brother killed them? 

Or does their murder occur closer to the time Juri got pregnant? But this doesn’t make sense either because Rido referred to Shizuka as a “small child” when he killed his parents, and by the time Juri was pregnant with Yuki’s real brother, Shizuka was probably already at least one or two thousand years old. Unless Shizuka is much younger than we thought? So when exactly Rido kills his parents is quite the mystery.

Secondly, How did he kill his parents? 

I assume the older a pureblood, the more powerful they are. So how can he, by himself, kill his parents, both of whom are older and more powerful than him? I doubt his dad was a weakling because as former king of vampires, he should be quite powerful. In the light novel, it seems his parents were already wary of him and wanted to keep him away from Juri. Thus they wouldn’t completely let their guard down around him. And its not like Rido could carry around a hunter sword with him without it being noticed. Even if he was carrying something small like a dagger, his parents should have been able to overwhelm him in a fight since its 2 vs 1. 

Kaname has commented that “purebloods have equal powers, so they would only exhaust each other in battle”; basically it is hard to kill another pureblood unless you have some advantage (e.g. Shizuka being already wounded by Zero’s hunter gun). So the only logical way Rido can kill his parents is if he catches them off guard, such as when they are taking a centuries long slumber in the family mausoleum, basically doing what Sara did to Hanadagi. 

Thirdly, another point that makes no sense is that Rido in the light novel says:

“My parents had taken my precious Juri far away from me and made it so that we could never meet.” 

How exactly did his parents take Juri away and stop them from ever meeting again? Send her abroad with no intention of ever letting her return? And yet the manga clearly contradicts that, because Rido is still in contact with Haruka and Juri, he was there to see their firstborn baby!

Fourthly, this is a small detail that has always irked me: In the manga, when Yuki’s brother peed on him, Rido mentions that he used to change his siblings’ diapers when they were babies. 

However the light novel kind of contradicts that, because young Rido upon being called in to meet his baby sister says: “I will confess that newborns seemed very uninteresting to me at that time”; does this sound like an older brother that would change his younger siblings’ diapers? It sounds like a guy who would leave baby care to the nannies and stay far away from soiled diapers. 

Finally, we get to the biggest illogical point in the light novel: Rido was a psychopath that just randomly developed an obsession upon seeing the newborn Juri.

“ It was in that moment – somewhere in the depths of my being – something abruptly flared to life. […] I was overwhelmed by the urge to devour her.”

No normal person just out of the blue feels the urge to consume a baby, only crazy people do. The rest of the light novel story continues depicting Rido as a psychopath. Their parents notice there is something wrong with their son because the mom slaps Rido and starts to keep him away from Juri. Adding on to this portrayal of him as batshit crazy, after he (somehow) kills his parents, he says the following:

“That’s what you get for getting in my way, you naughty things…” 

LOL, who in their right mind would call their parents “naughty things”?

My issue is this: I highly doubt Rido was crazy from the start, because it would make no sense. If Rido was crazy, how the hell could Juri and Haruka not have noticed for over 3000 years?! Even the dumbest person would get a clue that their brother was crazy after just 30 years, much less 3000 years. They trusted him enough to let him hold their baby, so they clearly believed Rido was not crazy. There is no way that Juri and Haruka were that stupid and blind. Thus, I doubt that Rido was crazy at the start of his life. So, this aspect of the light novel is just total BS to me.

IF Rido really was crazy from the start, then his mom and dad were bad parents. Yes, it makes sense to keep Juri away from Rido if he really were a psychopath, but their other actions were just extremely irresponsible and selfish. If you know your son is dangerous, maybe you should address this issue properly. After all, he is a pureblood and if you don’t deal with the problem, there will be huge repercussions for everyone given the destructive powers of purebloods. 

But instead of taking their son to see a mental health professional like any decent parent would do, Papa and Mama Kuran decided to solve the problem by engaging him off to a “tiny child”. I’m no parenting expert, but I’m sure if your son has mental issues, you definitely should NOT marry him off to any girl. Even if they didn’t get him some help, they should have at least locked him up like Shizuka to ensure he didn’t harm anyone... but they just let him roam free.

If this is the extent of their problem-solving ability, then it’s for the best that they ended the monarchy because they must have been cruddy rulers. But who knows, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they believed the “tiny child” they chose for him has a PhD in psychology and can provide their son with the help he clearly needs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I consider the light novel to be only pseudo-canon since it was inspired by Hino but written by someone else (Ayuna Fujisaka), so I will just ignore the parts that don’t make sense and keep the parts that do.

                                                              XXX

This following section is what I believe Rido to have been like when he was a (sane) young man, based on the info in the manga and the few bits that do make sense in the light novel.

Since Rido was the oldest son and born in a time when the Kurans were still the ruling family, he probably grew up with a lot of pressure and expectations as he was the crown prince. Given these conditions, he was most likely serious and hardworking, doing his best to live up to those expectations and preparing to be the next king (kinda like Eins in The Royal Tutor LOL).

He was also probably a bit older than Haruka and Juri (because according to the manga he has experience changing their diapers and taking care of them). And since he was probably busy with his princely duties, he did not spend a bunch of time with his siblings and thus Haruka and Juri were naturally closer to one another than Juri was to him. She probably saw him a respected older brother but not as reachable and easy to connect to as Haruka.

Rido was probably arrogant, possessive, and entitled even at the start (though at much milder levels than towards the end), which makes sense given his background. Not only was he a pureblood, but the crown prince too. And since he was prince, he probably had to deal with the dog-eat-dog world of politics from a young age, so that probably made him more cynical and darker than his siblings who had much less pressure and responsibility. It would almost be shocking if he was a humble and kind person instead.

Anyway, according to the custom of primogeniture, both the throne and Juri should have been his. Since it was tradition of the Kurans to marry their siblings, it only makes sense that as the oldest son and legitimate heir, he was the one that Juri should have married. Yet for whatever reason, their dad decided to end the monarchy, which must have been a huge blow to Rido who spent his whole life preparing to be the next king. He probably drove himself to despair questioning why and if there was something wrong with him that his father would pull such a move.

Then Rido probably got another big slap to the face: Juri choosing to marry Haruka instead of him, with his parents probably giving them their blessings. So not only has he lost the throne, he also lost the fiancée that should have been his according to precedent. And Juri choosing Haruka probably made Rido lose face among their society, since people would naturally wonder why Juri spurned tradition and married the second son instead.

(Actually, it wouldn’t matter if the monarchy getting dissolved took place first or if Juri choosing Haruka took place first, the point is both happened and it screwed him up.)

Rido most likely didn’t love Juri, but simply believed he did. He probably conflated Juri with what he lost/ what should have been his by birthright and became unhealthily obsessed with the idea of her. It didn’t help that the one Juri chose was Haruka, who we know has a mild and kind personality. To someone like Rido, those are traits probably considered “weak”, and thus he probably never thought of Haruka as his rival. Therefore, the fact that he lost to Haruka of all people shocked him, and there might have been some anger and sorrow at being betrayed by a sibling. So anyway, Rido’s emotions as well as his ego got clobbered.

But fate is not done with him yet! His parents most likely decided to engage him to Shizuka “without his consent” around the time that Haruka and Juri got engaged/married. They might have rushed to engage him off to whoever was available at that time (unluckily for Shizuka it happened to be her), hoping to get him out of the way of his siblings’ happiness. Rido probably was pissed, since not only does he not get to choose his new fiancée, the one chosen for him hails from a clan with a history of supposedly going insane, instead of someone with a less problematic pedigree. His parents really doing him dirty lol.

I think he really had some deep-rooted problems with his parents. Sometimes parents just don’t like their child, because of personality and ideological differences…Anyway, they were definitely in a strained relationship which would explain why Rido could go so far to kill his own parents and feel no guilt over it.

                                                                XXX

Finally, towards the end of his life he really just lost it.

Rido probably tried to keep up appearances and act like everything is okay and that his world is not falling apart, thus allowing Juri and Haruka to still trust him. But over the years he just stewed in his anger against his parents, his siblings and the world in general and turned into a very bitter and hateful person on the inside. And although he probably tried to suppress his growing darkness, his bad traits got amped up while his better traits died. It was probably extremely infuriating for him to see his siblings so happy in their pink glittery world while he himself was drowning in darkness.

(Even Kaien was annoyed by Haruka and Juri’s “pink world”, imagine an already salty and bitter Rido seeing this type of scene for centuries and just frothing with rage on the inside LOL)

So Rido became a sadistic ass towards the end, taking his anger out on people that have nothing to do with it. He tried to make Shizuka miserable and force her to be docile and had no luck with that but succeeded in breaking Senri’s mom and driving the poor woman crazy. Though if you think about it, in a way he did succeed in breaking Shizuka too… he caused her lover’s death and when she lost her lover, she basically lost her will to live.

Hino showed how talented Rido is at antagonizing others. While he possessed Senri, he intentionally hurt Senri’s body to toy with Takuma.

Even after his death, his dregs were tormenting Kaname by pointing out all his inner concerns, taunting Kaname about how he has no hope left. 

In VKM, Yuki mentions Rido as someone “with overwhelming desires that only plunge the world around [him] into misery.” Overall, Rido probably got his giggles by making others miserable.

Besides getting high off ruining the lives of other people, he was just a bastard in general. He used everyone around him as tools, even his own sons. Unlike Shizuka or Kaname, he did not care about his subordinates at all, to him they were just “appetizers” and expendables. He also had zero reservations about forcing lower vampires to submit to his will.

Anyway, Rido probably was already a bitter jackass but he really snapped when he found out Juri was pregnant and would start a happy little family with Haruka. Maybe he was idiotically holding onto hope that as long as Juri didn’t have a kid, he still had a chance? Regardless, it was at that point that he gave up any vestiges of humanity he had left and decided to just pursue power instead.

With no hope left he just decided to give in to his primitive instincts and lust after power, at the expense of family ties. In a way, he might have felt betrayed by his family, and reasoned with himself that unlike the throne and Juri, at least power won’t be stolen away.

BTW, I think his decision to sacrifice Yuki’s real brother to ancestor Kaname was spontaneous and not premeditated. After all, crazy people are unlikely to plan things in advance and just do as their whims dictate...

Maybe it came to him right when he stared at Juri holding her newborn. 

“It’s such irony that this baby was named ‘Kaname’ like you. That’s what got me started thinking of this.”

Because his plan (if he had one) sucked. He should have known that the famished, revived ancestor would attack him, since the blood of a tiny baby was clearly not enough. And yet he made no preparations to fend off such an attack and ended up getting drained by Kaname.

As a side note, Haruka could have killed Rido right then, when Rido was badly wounded by ancestor Kaname. 

But he didn’t, and chose to have Rido imprisoned by the Senate instead. Haruka should have known that Rido would never give up on destroying his family as long as he lived, so the logical thing would have been to kill him. Even Rido mentions this later when he returned for Yuki.

While Haruka’s pacifist nature played a part in this, I think he also restrained himself from giving in to vengeful rage partly out of the fact that they are family, and more likely out of guilt. Perhaps Haruka had always felt guilty for marrying Juri and realized that he was partly responsible for driving Rido insane.

Anyway, Rido crossed the line by killing a helpless baby and basically burned all his bridges. At this point he didn’t really give any fucks anymore. 

Asato mentions how Rido was like a child, even though he has lived so long. I think the analogy fits, because Rido acted like a child throwing a tantrum, trying to destroy everything and doing whatever he pleased with no regard for consequences or others.

In a sense, like Shizuka, Rido had already lost his will to go on living. The only thing keeping him hanging on was the need to lash out. Even though he acted like he was pursuing greater power, aiming to consume Kaname and Yuki to become more powerful, he wasn’t actually trying. 

If he was serious, he would not have gotten easily distracted, suddenly deciding to have Yuki replace Juri instead of continuing with the plan to devour her. Rido also didn’t bother trying to fight seriously at the end and Zero comments on this.

Otherwise Zero and Yuki together could not have beaten him, given how Rido is much older/powerful and consumed at least 2 other purebloods. Even Sara said that Rido was acting foolishly reckless, saying he was just having fun.

                                                             XXX

Overall, given this interpretation of Rido, I actually feel bad for him. I believe that he drove himself crazy wondering why his parents ended the monarchy instead of letting him be the next king, and wondering why Juri chose Haruka over him. Those questions probably haunted him for centuries.

That feeling that you tried your best, did everything you were supposed to, but still ended up with nothing is something I can relate to. Sometimes one just wants to watch the world burn given how unjust life usually is (even though logically we know it is wrong to feel this way). So yeah, these are my headcanons and analysis of Rido, who I prefer to see as a deeper/more interesting character than just a sis-con psychopath LOL.

[crossdressingdeath]

I know you'll probably disagree with me, but i rlly hate the Cloud recessess ending. It's just....

Those elders killed wwx. The Lans were 100% ready to murder both at Qiongqi path but also at the siege. They see him as the guy who corrupted their precious jade. They all preach righteousness, but the whole madam Lan thing is iffy at best and i do not believe that everyone there fully believes the rules. Hell, i have a special bone to pick with the " do not gossip" rule, seeing as gossip had been the main info route for women in patriarchal societies.

I just don't think that after wwx killed Lans in the siege they'd be all that willing to forgive him and take him in w open arms. The juniors and kids love him, yes, but people who saw the war....

Not to mention the whole " do not speak to WWX " rule. I've seen ppl say it's a joke but it's On The Wall. It's supposed to be followed. Even if it was intended as a joke - which i don't believe - it's very cruel for someone w rejection and trust issues.

I also hate it from a very personal perspective. I see Wwx as ND, and, as an ND myself, all those rules terrify me. From the no running and the proper posture ones, i can pretty well imagine they forbid stimming. The Lan curfew would fuck anyone with insomnia and there's smth deeply ucked up abt the " do not grieve in excess". I get that they're supossed to be a paragon of the best things at all time, and that LJY is very UnLan like, but for someone w anxiety who CAN'T follow those rules, it would be a nightmare.

...Some points:

First, the Lan elders did not kill WWX, nor did they attack him unfairly. They weren’t looking at him as the man who corrupted LWJ, either, or at least that wasn’t their primary concern (I will never forgive CQL for suggesting they were or it was); they were looking at him as a traitor to the sects who was raising an army to destroy them. Remember, that is the information the Lans had. Every source they had except for LWJ (who the people he would have gone to would have known was biased and who presumably everyone knew had recently been in close contact with WWX where he could have been manipulated or enchanted in some way), sources which included multiple sect leaders (one of whom was WWX’s brother) and LXC’s dear friend, swore up and down that WWX was a major threat, and let’s face it, WWX didn’t do much to dissuade people from thinking that! Acting like the Lans were maliciously targeting WWX is doing them something of a disservice, I’d say. They acted based on the knowledge they had available; note how the Lans are the first to offer WWX their help once they’re given reason to believe he may not be a villain! And even aside from that, saying they killed WWX (and not JGS and JGY’s manipulation or JC’s army) feels a bit like scapegoating, honestly. Of the four sects, the Lans are quite possibly the least responsible for WWX’s death. If it would hurt him to live with or around anyone who held any responsibility for his death his only option would be to live as a hermit, which would be far worse for him. And yeah, the Lans aren’t perfectly righteous all the time and some morally dubious things have been done by Lan sect members; they’re human, after all! Some of them will only be as moral as their sect leader demands they be! That doesn’t mean the sect as a whole is bad, especially with LXC, LQR and LWJ in charge. Certainly I’d say they’re still better than the other sects, all things considered. One ambiguous situation that may or may not have involved some members of the previous generation doing some fucked up shit doesn’t mean WWX would for sure be mistreated! 

As for gossip... there’s a difference between sharing information and gossiping. There’s no evidence that the Lan women are blocked from... y’know, freely communicating and sharing information between themselves. We have no reason to believe they are reliant on gossip. Also they presumably go out night hunting just like the men? Men and women are kept separate in the Cloud Recesses, but I get the sense that that’s more like... school stuff than anything else. The women aren’t exactly locked up, they can be cultivators! The society is still sexist, but that doesn’t mean they’re kept from going out and doing things. And I need to make this clear: there is a fair chance that the rule against gossip saved LWJ’s life, because it kept word of him defending WWX from the sects from spreading to people who would not be willing to let bygones be bygones. Gossip sucks! It hurts people! A lot of this story (and more to the point the suffering of the characters within the story) happens because of gossip! The Lans banning gossip is pretty clearly supposed to be a good thing, I’d say.

And yeah, maybe after WWX killed a bunch of their sect the Lans wouldn’t accept him with open arms as if nothing ever happened! And that’s fair! I can’t imagine where WWX could go where that wouldn’t be the case, unless he and LWJ chose to abandon the cultivation world forever. But you know what else the Lans won’t do? Try to execute him. Or from what we see in the extras even dwell on the past that much. No, the Lans aren’t going to immediately forgive WWX and bring him into the fold without a moment’s hesitation, but you know what? They accept his marriage to LWJ! They let him supervise the juniors on night hunts! They consider him part of their sect! Honestly, that is all WWX can really ask and far more than he’d get from any other sect. There are consequences for what WWX did, even though he wasn’t the villain or necessarily trying to hurt anyone, and frankly people not being entirely comfortable with his presence is very much reasonable.

The “do not speak to WWX” rule may not be a joke, but it’s also pretty clearly not a serious rule. No one takes it seriously. The juniors (the only people WWX really talks to anyway aside from LXC and LWJ) only pay it the minimum lip service of talking to him off the path. WWX himself sure as hell doesn’t care! He clearly finds it pretty damn funny. And I don’t think a guy who has never liked him once again proving he does not like him (in a way that is clearly temporary given how later LQR invites WWX to the Lan family banquet with... reasonable amounts of grace, thereby implicitly accepting him as LWJ’s husband and therefore his own family by marriage) counts as a rejection or a breach of WWX’s trust? Like, LQR has literally always hated WWX. He isn’t preventing WWX and LWJ from spending time together or shutting WWX out of the Cloud Recesses or even making a concentrated effort to keep people from talking to him; he’s venting his frustrations, but if he really intended to block WWX from taking part in life in the Cloud Recesses he would’ve done a hell of a lot more than just make a rule who no one WWX likes follows anyway. It’s a temper tantrum, that’s all, and clearly that’s what WWX takes it as. I mean, if nothing else you can’t ban people from talking to the sect heir’s spouse indefinitely. That’s just not sustainable.

As for the rules... banning people from running in the Cloud Recesses and demanding proper posture during lessons doesn’t suggest to me that they wouldn’t allow stimming? ‘No running’ at least is a common rule... most places. It’s distracting, and can be dangerous. And the rule about sitting properly doesn’t mean “Don’t move at all ever”; it means... well, “sit properly”. Don’t slouch or sprawl across the floor. I see no reason why that wouldn’t preclude means of stimming that wouldn’t be disruptive (and given this is in a classroom environment “not disruptive” is kind of important). I mean, those rules certainly don’t suggest that they’re any worse than other sects, and given this is the sect that has magic music for calming people’s minds if any sect would give allowances for neurodivergence it would be this one. Also I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a song to put people to sleep, or medication that can help; this is a world with magic, after all, and if there’s a song that can put spirits to rest there are probably songs for human medicine and care. And of course there’s an element of conflicting needs; maybe the rules would screw you over, but frankly firmly enforced rules keeping people from running around or sprawling out of their seats would’ve been a godsend for me in school, given how much trouble I had focusing with people making noise around me. At the end of the day, is it guaranteed that the Lans would make allowances for people with needs that conflict with the Lan rules? No. But I’d argue it’s more likely that they would than any other sect. This is ahistorical fantasy ancient China, too; you can only expect so much in the mental health department. Still, a sect that literally invented magic music for calming the mind actually seems like the best choice for people with anxiety and such. There’s a reason why there are multiple fics that essentially set the Lans up as mental health experts in the setting!

Basically, a lot of your arguments seem to be issues that WWX would have in any sect. Unless he wanted to give up on the support of a sect altogether, they’re all things that he would have to work through or come to terms with. And of course... the most important point is that WWX is happy in the Lan sect. The extras make that clear. He has a home, duties that he enjoys performing, the love of his family and the support of his sect. He’s happy. I just... I do not understand why people keep feeling the need to try to make it angsty when the novel makes it clear that he genuinely enjoys his life in Gusu, and more than that that if he ever decided he didn’t enjoy it he could leave at any time. You have to remember that: if WWX wanted to leave... he would. He and LWJ would just go, and only come back occasionally so that LWJ could visit his home. Hell, LWJ would insist on leaving for WWX’s sake. So like... the Lan sect wouldn’t suit everyone, but WWX is quite content there and doesn’t want to leave. He’s happy and free to come and go as he wishes; there really isn’t anything to be concerned about there.