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phoenixrising0308 · 2 years

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An American in Cordonia: Maneater

Books: The Royal Romance 1

Rating: M (18+) Sexual situation and adult themes.

Trigger Warnings in this chapter: 🍋

Pairing: Liam x Jessica Garcia (MC)

An American In Cordonia Series premise: A New Yorker seeking adventure and love finds herself living abroad to competing for the hand of a man who will become King. When things don’t go according to plan they enter into a Cordonian arrangement. This is a series about Jessica Garcia’s life abroad, her time as a suitor, and explores her romantic relationship with Liam while she lives in a Cordonian arrangement. Catch up here

Disclaimer

Chapter Summary: Jessica reads an interesting article and gets sexually curious.

Chapter Song inspiration: ManEater - Nelly Furtado

Word Count: 2,460 *As always, forgive my typos and grammatical errors.*

Average reading time: 8 minutes

Liam’s Study- Palace

Jessica sat on Liam’s desk next to him, swinging her legs, reading an article in a magazine. While Liam reviewed paperwork forwarded to him by his advisers, he picked up the document labeled security briefing, read a few lines, and looked at Jessica with a smile. When she didn’t notice, Liam playful drew circles on Jessica’s knee and said, “So Jess, is that the magazine you brought?”

“Well, geezus, nothing gets past that Royal Guard, now does it?”

“No, Love, it does not.” Liam cleared his throat and began to read, “6:15 AM Lady Jessica exited the palace. At the gate, she was approached by Drake Walker, who was overheard saying, “Where fuck do you think you’re going alone? It’s still fucken dark.” Lady Jessica responded by saying, “I didn’t realize I needed your permission.” Mr. Walker then drove Lady Jessica to the Cordonian International Airport. Whereupon entry, Lady Jessica made a ‘B’ line to a Cinnabon counter and yelled, “Fuck YES churro’s!” Liam laughed and collected himself, then continued, “She purchased an order of churros. Shortly after, Mr. Walker and Lady Jessica got into a disagreement over the churros. He held the churro over her head, teasing her as she attempted to reclaim it. Mr. Walker then handed her the churro after taking what was deemed by Lady Jessica a much too generous bite and handed it back to her. Mr. Walker was heard saying, “I regret nothing” Lady Jessica then walked to a newsstand and was observed purchasing an American Magazine ‘Cosmopolitan’ ,ten blow pops and a bag of M&M with peanuts.” Liam looked at and quirked his brow and said, “Really, ten blow pops?”

Jessica put her hands on her waist and said, “Are you judging me? I needed them okay.”

Liam pursed his lips and said, “Don’t be so defensive. I love that your mouth tastes like cherry by the way.”

“Good. Cause I was gonna say.”

Liam rubbed her thigh and continued reading out loud “Mr. Walker purchased a Nicolas Sparks novel titled ‘A walk to remember’ The pair returned to the palace at 7:30 AM without incident.”

“Yea, that sounds accurate and rather detailed. Surprised they didn’t tell you the flavors. BUT I bought the magazine because my cousin got a photo credit. It just so happened that as I was flipping through it to see what I was missing back house in the states an article caught my eye and it made me think of you, so read a few times.”

“Oh, Jess, there is more in my brief. A significant detail I might add.”

Jessica looked at curiously, “Really? I can’t think of anything else.”

He put down the briefing, and his blue sparkled as he looked at her and said, “Lady Jessica presented herself for breakfast at 8:00 am. As per usual, she looked gorgeous, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.”

Jessica smiled and smoothed down her dress, and said, “Thank you.”

He kissed her sweetly and said, “Now, tell me Love what is it you are reading that reminded you of me?”

Jessica sheepishly said, “Ummm… Well,so-”

Liam peaked at the article Jessica was reading and blushed as he read the title aloud, ‘Man-eater: How to give a mind-blowing orgasm to your uncircumcised partner.’ by Callie Cross. I wonder what sage advice Ms. Cross has to offer.”

Jessica bit her lip and said, “I heard it’s common in Europe not to be, you know. And you seemed rather sensitive during the Cordonian Waltz, so I figured you weren’t. Then I saw it, and well… anyway, I wanted to know if there was anything extra I could do… to like make it better for you.”

“You. Excite. Me. Jess.” Liam ran his hand up her thigh and then stood up. “Whatever you do to me is enough, and whatever you allow me to do you well, it feels like heaven.” He leaned in and bit Jessica’s bottom lip, getting some of her berry lipstick on his lip.

“Mmmm,” Jessica purred.

Jessica jumped off the desk and gave Liam a cheeky smile, and she kept her eyes focused on him as she unbuckled his pants took him out of his underwear just enough to do what she read about in the article.

Jessica knelt before him, looking at his thick, engorged shaft. Liam’s foreskin skin was fully retracted, and the article informed her; Liam would be sensitive to her touch. She took him in her hand and palmed him, gently pumping it back and forth. Following the instruction, she sang 'twinkle twinkle little star’ in her head as that was the suggestion for the duration and stroking pace. Step two directed her to move on to oral stimulation for twenty seconds before performing what was called the ’man-eater.’ However, she was an overachiever and wanted to do this while maintaining eye contact. She swirled her tongue around his tip and began to count in her head while her eyes were fixed on Liam.

*Ring* *Ring* *Ring*

The ringing of the phone caused her to lose count. 'Fuck, this is a lot harder than it looks. Okay, do it again.’ She thought, and she started to count to herself

'1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19. 20 AND 'Man-eater'

Liam’s knees suddenly buckled at stimulation, lost his balance, and hunched over his desk, “God, your mouth.”

Jessica continued this time at a slower and sensual pace. Liam stood up and tilted his head back as he glanced. Liam bucked his hips just a bit, a silent plea for more, and then a vocal plea for more when he said, “Jess, don’t stop.”

Jessica smiled at that as Liam ran fingers through her hair, beaming down at sight below him. He guided her mouth to him, gasping as Jessica took him in without a second thought. He moaned, spreading his legs a bit so she could have a more accessible angle.

“I love your mouth.” Liam groaned, making Jessica smile internally because, well, she could not do it on the outside. Liam’s eyes slipping closed for a brief moment. He let out a moan and showered her with praises.

*ring* *ring*ring*

“This feels so…so good,” he mumbled, sighing deeply.

*ring* *ring*ring*

Their eyes met, and he flashed her a soft smile, his thighs tensing slowly. Jessica knew he was close. She hollowed out her cheeks, sucking harder. Liam tugged at her hair with a louder moan, his eyes rolling back a bit.

“Yeah, just like that, oh my… AHH…” Liam whispered, moving her hair out of her face and looking down at her. “Fuck. Love.” Liam babbled, closing his eyes. He felt himself growing closer and closer, and he had never felt this type of pleasure in his life. He knew part of it was the sex act itself. The other part was the woman performing it—his feeling for her magnified the situation.

*knocking* *knocking* *knocking*

Outside: Your Royal Highness

“I’m close, I’m close,” Liam warned, gasping and tugging at her hair by accident.

Jessica breathed out, “I want it.”

“God. Love.” Liam panted

Liam cried out, his body spasming and he did not know what to do with himself. He let out a guttural moan, bucking his hips into her mouth by accident as he came. “Fuck”

*Thud*

“Ouch!”

The door flung open.

Liam slammed his hand on his desk.

Constantine shouted, “Liam! Did you not get the message I was requesting an audience with you!”

Liam stammered, “I’m ….sorry father, I got caught up in a phone call. It was impossible to step away.”

“I spent the last forty-five minutes entertaining Landon and Emmeline complaints that you are not fair to their poodle-brained daughter. Who loves to play dress-up with dogs. The girl is forgettable. I don’t even recall her name, and we were just talking about her. Now The Lee’s want to speak with me no doubts more brown-nosing.”

“I understand. I am sorry for any discomfort I have caused.”

“Pull yourself together, my boy! You are flushed and sweating. You have an hour, Liam, sort yourself out! Do not keep Regina and me waiting. There is only so much chit-chat a man can take in a lifetime!”

Constantine turned on his heels and exited the study. Slamming the door as he left.

Liam got on the floor. “Are you okay? Love, I’m so sorry.”

Jessica put her hand over her lips.

Liam’s face fell, afraid that he had hurt her and with worry on his face. He asked, “Jess, are you bleeding? Please tell me your okay. I’m so sorry.”

She quickly cupped his face and smiled. “You’re fine, I’m fine. I assume you liked it.” Jessica said with a playful smile on her lips.

Liam sighed in relief and moved the hair out of her face. “I didn’t want to do it while I was in your mouth. I’m very sorry.”

“Why?”

“I feel guilty I suppose.”

“Liam, there is nothing to be guilty about. Is it because I’m a suitor? Like we aren’t serious about each other”

“Oh no. I’m serious about you. That’s why I feel it seems rather impolite to release myself in your mouth.”

“Liam, baby, its okay. I like it. I like the way you taste.”

Liam helped Jessica get off the floor then

“Let me make it up to you. Get on my desk. It’s your turn now.”

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littlefreya · 4 years

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Santa Baby

Summary: For over a decade, detective Walter Marshall kept a dirty little secret, thinking no one would ever find out about his past. Sadly for him, you are somewhat of a detective yourself.

Challenge prompt: the song Santa Baby.

Pairing: Walter Marshall x reader

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: Some sexy themes but mostly fluffy floof fluff.

A/N: This is for @toomanystoriessolittletime Christmas challenge, which I am sadly a day late with. Remind me to never sign up to challenges. I stumbled upon erotic book covers that looked a lot like Walter (this and this) so decided it’s a funny idea. I never read these books, so I am not mocking it or the artist who drew it. Many thanks to @wondersofdreaming for helping me out. Not beta’d, I own my mistakes.

Please feedback, comment, reblog if you enjoyed reading. 💖

Title: Santa Baby

It’s not that Detective Marshall was the Grinch or anything, it’s just that he couldn’t afford to be merry. With crime levels peaking during that time of the year, and sunlight being scarce, his body ran strictly on caffeine and stale doughnuts.

The temptation to spend Christmas eve sprawled on the worn-out leather sofa in his office was quite strong tonight. But even big hulking bears had their weaknesses, and as exhausted as he was, he dreaded every morning he woke up without your warm body curled up beside him.

With his energy level blinking red, he finally decided to call it a night and drive home. Heavy growling and thundering drums roared within his truck, the extreme Scandinavian black-metal he listened to served as a complete contrast to the soft snow that fell from the sky and quietly piled up on the sides of the road. Pausing at the street-light, he watched the little crystals striving to form on his windshield and melting just as quickly against the heat of the car.

For a single moment, all the terrors of the night diminished by the little flame that was the reminiscent of you - his little firefly who led him through the darkness, tender as snow and wild as fire. Accelerating just a tad, he imagined you’d be asleep by the time he’d get there, and if not, Walter hoped to at least be in your good graces.

Luckily, ther warm orange hues beaming through the windows assured him that you were still very much awake, and he couldn’t help but spare one of his rare smiles.

Muffled tunes of a familiar song played beyond the door, the bass vibrating through the polished wooden flooring and the walls. Slow and sensual like honey rolling off one’s finger, the jazzy beats filled the spacious house along with the sweetest scent of crushed peppercorn and red berries. Smiling wider, he held onto the doorframe and kicked off his heavy boots.

“Pet?” he called and followed into the living room, hearing you humming along with the lyrics.

“Santa baby, just slip a Sable under the tree for me.”

Oh, he was indeed in your good graces.

Sitting on your knees with your ankles hunched below your ass, you wore a velvety Santa hat and a sheer, red nighty finished by fake white fur that outlined your breasts. Your hands held a shiny green present over your thighs, and you gave him one of those coy looks that made him want to fall before you and pledge himself as your servant.

Instead, he crooked an eyebrow and unzipped his thick winter coat, carelessly discarding it on the floor and making his way toward you.

“Have you been an awful good girl?”

Sleeves rolled up; he crossed his muscular arms together while towering over you. His cobalt eyes drank in your sight, trying to decide what to do with you first. The scent of musky sweat mingled with dark cologne wafted over you within seconds, making your chest rise and sink in a primal instinct.

“Oh, I’m definitely going down your chimney tonight,” he growled upon your reaction to his presence and sucked in his bottom lip with growing hunger.

“At least three times,” you dared him in return and then casually lowered your gaze to the box perched on your lap.

The large man caught on the hint and carefully knelt before you. One of his hands reached to stroke his beard while his mind rummaged to figure out what surprise hid behind the shiny package.

“Got something for me over there?” he wondered with a playful beam, “I thought we’re not doing presents until tomorrow morning.”

“Just a little teaser,” you answered. Your eyes shone brighter than the large decorated tree that stood at the corner of the living room.

Being a detective, Walter could practically smell the mischief that drenched every teeny hair on your body. As usual, his naughty vixen was up to no good. It always made him laugh how bad you were in trying to surprise him, which worked in his favour. Walter hated surprises.

Intrigued, he snatched the gift from your hands and shook it against his ear for shy second before beginning to unwrap it. His eyes briefly scrutinised yours, darkening, smokey with lust while he tore at the chrome paper and absentmindedly threw pieces of green wrapping all over the living room.

You watched carefully, your cheeks rounding and filling, your teeth flashing with wickedness upon seeing the colour drain from his rugged face.

“Where…”

Walter paused and swallowed the lump in his throat. Fingers oily with sweat and knuckles turning white, dug into the object held in his hand.

“How did you find this?!”

The snort you’ve been trying to hold back for the last couple of minutes finally made its way out, followed by a fit of uncontrollable giggles that made you fall to your back with your hand held over your torso.

Walter, on the other hand, was anything but amused. He always feared the day someone would dig up his dirtiest secret.

It was more than a decade ago when he was struggling to pay his tuition to the police academy that Walter found an easy and quick way to make money. As a British immigrant who barely had friends and blended with the crowd, he made the mistake of thinking no one will ever know about his short-lived modelling career for cheesy erotic novels.

He should have known better. He might have been a professional police detective, but you had a skill for uncovering the truth.

“Where did you find this?” Walter repeated with a frown, clenching his jaw and waving the colorful book in the air.

Pausing your giggles merely for a second, you took a gander at the cover, focusing on the image of your dear husband’s open white shirt. There he was, the man you knew as a brooding, black-sweater wearing grump, lost in some green meadow with a half-naked chick. A deep dramatic gaze crisped his younger face, his nose inhaling the scent of her hair, and his hand laid flat upon her juicy rump.

Oh the drama!

You tried to speak, but all that came out of your mouth was an uncontrollable peal of chuckles. The corny title of the book didn’t help either; his fiery love rod.

Walter sulked and suddenly shuffled to hover above you, one hand snapped at your wrist before the other discarded the book onto your sternum and joined in restraining your other arm. Led purely by instinct, your legs spread to straddle his wide waist and wrapped around his muscular ass.

Staring at your strong, intimidating husband, the laughter rolling from your lips slowly died down, yet the smile was still smeared between your cheeks, especially once you felt his groin pressing into yours.

“Woman!” the big bear growled at you, “I am not going to ask you more than once, where on earth did you bloody find this?”

“The second-hand bookstore,” you answered and glanced at the book lying upon your chest, “was looking for something raunchy to read when suddenly I noticed a familiar face.” You explained and then swallowed the dryness in your throat.

“At first I thought I was hallucinating with all them Christmas carols eating into my brain, but then when I took a closer peek, I recognised my husband’s ‘fuck me’ stare.”

Walter felt a burn rising in his throat and swerving to tingle at his bristly cheeks. If there ever was a moment when he regretted a life decision, that moment was now. He knew he’d never hear the end of it from you. You were dauntless and unyielding as the ocean, one of the reasons why he was utterly in love with you.

Nostrils flaring, he tightened the grasp around your wrists and rolled his hips into yours, eliciting a small moan from your quivering lips. The thick bulge in his groin hardened at the calling of the hot, wet patch in your panties.

“Name your terms, woman.”

“You are going to read it to me,” you answered without even overthinking and gestured toward the book with your chin. “Every. night. before. bedtime. I want you to hold me in your big strong arms and read me a chapter from ‘his fiery love rod’, or else…”

“Or else?...”

The fire from the mental suddenly illuminated your face, causing dark shadows to form over your irises and the hollows below your brows. “Your friends at the MPD are going to find out about this one,” you paused, “and the 12 others that you made.”

Taken back by your words, Walter gulped, his fingers became moist around your wrists as sheer horror seeped into his mind.

“You... you know about the others?”

You nodded at him and then snaked your legs around the back of his thighs to cage him in your grasp like a fickle dryad growing her roots around a helpless wanderer. With his attention faltering, you twisted your hips and rolled the two of you so you were on top. Fingers lacing into his, you pinned him down and leered over him with cascading triumph.

“12 books, all under our Christmas tree, detective, so you better be good to me tonight and satisfy all my needs.”

Adam apple bobbing up and down, Walter watched you with a mixture of awe and agitation. There was nothing he hated more than losing control, but damn if he didn’t adore his wicked queen, especially when you were in a joyous mood, which, as he found, tended to be contagious. The moments in which the grouchy detective felt at peace were rare to non-existent. It was only in the embrace of your thighs that he thought that for a minute, everything is going to be okay.

Noticing the muscles of his jaw somewhat relax, you reached for the Christmas hat and slipped it off your head, placing it atop of his curly mess instead. Your hands held firmly onto Walter’s shoulders, and with a careful twist, you flipped the two of you over once again and shoved him down your torso while blissfully chanting.

“Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight, hurry down the chimney tonight, hurry toniiiiiiiiiiight.”

*No permission is given for reposting my work, copying it, ideas or parts it and claiming it as your own

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Disclaimer: I don’t own Night Hunter/Nomis or Walter Marshall

#henry cavill #StephsChristmasWritingChallenge #walter marshall x reader #henry cavill x reader #walter marshall

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thetypedwriter · 2 years

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These Violent Delights Book Review

These Violent Delights Book Review by Micah Nemerever

I love sharing my book opinions with others. One of the primary reasons I started this blog was to share my very strong

feelings as I didn’t have many people in real life that I could do that with (or who were interested in listening).

Throughout this experience, I’ve also loved listening to others and their opinions on books. Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I vehemently disagree with them, and sometimes it’s a cacophonous mix of both.

One bookstragrammer I like in particular shares my very opinionated feelings more often than not. So of course, the other day while browsing Instagram, I caught a post of hers asking the question: what book can you not stand others criticizing?

This really got me thinking, as there are a plethora of books I adore, but I’m not blind to their flaws. The Foxhole Court, for example, is a book series I’ve read over three times now, a series I’m obsessed with, and yet I completely understand why others don’t like it.

The only book series that I could possibly see as fitting the question is Harry Potter. Now. I’ve met people who don’t like Harry Potter. That’s fine.

However, I also have yet to meet a single person who has read all seven books and still disliked it. Usually people who dislike Harry Potter either haven’t read the books, didn’t finish reading the books, or have only seen the movies. I’m sorry (not sorry) to say, but those people don’t count.

In the same vein, I was so incredibly curious to read a book that someone I admire claimed they hated seeing critiques of.

Let me say right now: I hope they don’t see this review.

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever is not to be confused with the Romeo and Juliet remake duology by the same name by Chloe Gong. The two books have nothing in common except for their title.

These Violent Delights by Michael Neveremer is an odd little book about two teenage boys growing up in the 1970’s in Pittsburgh.

As the two boys meet, named Paul and Julian respectively, they feel seen and understood by someone else for the first time in their entire lives.

The book delves into the dangers of codependency, issues of isolation and elitism, and the toxicity in the belief that no one else can understand what the characters are going through.

I do like the theme of this novel. I’m obsessed with the idea of someone feeling special or like they’re the exception. However, I usually like this (especially in Romantic pairings) in a positive way.

For example, one partner doesn’t like sharing food with friends or family but will let their romantic partner get away with it. Something small and cute and worthless.

This novel takes the idea of being the exception to intense and violent lengths as Julian and Paul do anything and everything to prove that they need nor want anyone but each other.

Mental health, intelligence, philosophy, and justice all play a role as the two boys grow closer and closer with devastating consequences.

This book, while entertaining in a dark and twisted kind-of-way, did make me want to keep turning the page as the book starts in medias res.

The first chapter shows you exactly how far these boys will go and the whole book is you leading up to the moment of climax and the aftermath of the climax as you witness Paul and Julian dealing with the consequences of their actions.

I know I haven’t been very detailed about what this book is or exactly what it’s about, but honestly, I’ve said almost all that I can. The book is less about plot points and specific timelines and more about the evolving relationship between Paul and Julian and the spiderweb effects it has both on them and the people around them.

This book is deeply psychological as well as thrillingly emotional.

It’s dark and creepy and more often than not, perplexing and convoluted.

Nemerever is a good writer, but at times I found him intentionally dense and confusing which I didn’t always appreciate while reading. I like the overall themes of this book and the ending was unexpected which is always, always a joy.

However, this book didn’t have a happy ending.

Maybe it was naive of me to think it would, but I still wanted it, no matter that these characters were too broken for something like a happy ending.

Overall, I disagree with my bookstagrammer entirely. While I enjoyed the dark maelstrom that was These Violent Delights, I don’t think it was without fault.

The sometimes pretentious writing, the inversion of a beloved trope, and the desolate ending all made me frown more than smile.

While the themes are very real and the book was richly driven by character relationships, it wasn’t enough at the end of the day to leave this book without any negatives.

Recommendation: If you enjoy dark stories with ambiguous characters where the plot revolves almost entirely around the progression and dissolution of a very intimate, punishing, and toxic relationship this very well may be the story for you. For me, the writing was often confusing and the paltry ending left me dissatisfied and unhappy. If you can stomach not getting your “happy ever after” this twisted tale will keep you on the edge of your toes.

Score: 6/10

#these violent delights #micah nemerever #book #favorite books #book review #Book Recommendations #book rec #book recs #top books #popular fiction #Popular Books #LGBTQ fiction #lgbtqbook #6/10

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millllenniawrites · 4 years

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gold rush (Poe Dameron x Reader)

part two of dear love of mine

words: 2.6k

warnings: reader has a last name; regency au for the aesthetic but it’s historically inaccurate for the *vibes*; afab!reader; slow burn; sexual themes throughout; eventual smut; pining; awkwardness and slight secondhand embarrassment possible; everyone is unreliable; warnings will be added as the series progresses

a/n: WE’RE FINALLY GETTING INTO THE STORY IM SO EXCITED also we get a lot more Poe in this chapter which I hope you guys like!! as always, if you wanna be added to the taglist, there’s a link in my bio :)

You didn’t see General Dameron or Lord Barnes until dinner that night.

They’d been busy moving their things in. Two more carriages had arrived shortly after the men, but they were mostly carrying Lord Barnes’ staff. With the grandeur of his presence, you were surprised at how little his servants had to carry into your home.

It did make you happy to see that he was keeping those loyal to his father employed through the renovation of his home. You had discussed the very topic at length with Mister Kirk, who had informed you just how easily those servant jobs can be lost.

And how difficult it could be to regain them.

You couldn’t imagine not having your staff with you. Your Ladies Maid, Char, had been the only new edition to your household that you could remember since Siena had been born. You were one big family. They were paid, certainly, but family all the same. No one else had been around through grieving your father’s death. No uncles, no aunts. But the people that had looked after your family since before you were born had been there every step of the way.

At the very top of the staircase you had tumbled down with Ana only hours earlier was a large circular landing, branching off into two halls. The western wing held your sisters’ bedrooms, yours, and the room your mother had moved into in her grief.

The eastern wing was seldom used these days. Since your father had passed, it had been empty except for the staff and your rare journeys to your father’s study for records and estate paperwork. It was perfect for your guests, separate enough from the rest of your family that your eldest sister’s virtue could be ensured without having to turn away the Lord of the land you lived upon.

He would be quite the match for her indeed, if he could get around to actually proposing.

Though you knew that you should have been focusing on Lord Barnes and how best to nudge him in your sister’s direction, your thoughts returned to the General.

You wondered how he was filling his time before dinner. You’d offered them a tour — well, Mister Kirk had offered them a tour on your behalf — but they’d both declined. Perhaps their trip had been long. Ana had not mentioned where they had been voyaging from. It could have been far. Lord Barnes had a few homes. The men in town had said as much when you’d been not-eavesdropping at one of the spring balls.

Only to assure yourself and your mother that Ana would be kept and cared for when they did marry.

Fussing with your hair could only provide distraction for so long. Sat at your vanity, you fiddled with brushes and clips and jewelry that Char had so neatly arranged that morning. Your room was beautiful, smaller than your eldest sisters and made smaller still by the shelves you’d insisted on lining the walls and packing with books. There was no shortage of beautiful trinkets, littered among the stacks of paper. Among your favourites, a bronze compass your father had gifted you and a necklace that had belonged to a distant grandmother you’d never met that appeared more like water droplets than stones.

Every time you allowed your eyes to wander, you could see the General gazing back. Your short glimpse of him had cemented itself in your memory, not allowing you a moment of respite.

He had to know how handsome he was to walk the way he did. Never mind how short your interaction was. You’d seen enough.

Another beautiful man, not unlike the Lord Barnes. The money, the fame behind his title and his bloody victory, meant nothing to you.

But there was something about those eyes…

Perhaps your sisters’ company would distract you.

Before you’d fully registered your decision to move, you found yourself out of your bedroom and at the bottom of the stairs. Your sisters and mother loitered in front of the dining room, chattering amongst themselves.

You slid in between Siena and Ana, linking your arms with theirs. “Are we awaiting something?”

Ana bumped her forehead into your shoulder. “You, silly. Shall we sit. Chef said she was almost finished with supper.”

Your mother opened up the doors to the dining room. This was one room that you were truly proud to inherit. Since you were of an age to sit up without assistance, you’d all sat at the same table. Your grubby hands had smudged across it’s surface. You’d traced the curved edge with the end of a fork at more than one of your father’s terrible business dinner meetings. It was as much of an heirloom than anything else your parents could leave you.

You sat first, at the head of the table opposite your mother as you had since your father had vacated his seat. Your sisters joined you in their chairs with their backs to the window, Siena closest to you.

She leaned across the corner of the table, whispering behind her hand, “How old do you reckon the General is?”

With a roll of your eyes, you whispered back, “Too old for you, dear sister.”

As if summoned, the man himself walked through the door with the Lord Barnes in tow. The General was no longer in a military uniform but a loose white shirt, the sleeves unbound. Barnes was dressed, jacket buttoned and hat tucked under his arm. Truly opposites.

To your dismay, the General sat beside you, leaving the seat next to your mother to Barnes.

“Thank you for joining us, gentleman.” Your mother lifted her wine glass to them, and you followed her lead.

As your servants set your meals in front of you, Lord Barnes broke the silence. “I must say, Miss Dean,” The title caught your attention, though he had directed it to Ana, “It is refreshing to see you after so long of reading your words. Though it was a necessary evil, I have needed to gaze upon you for some time.”

He was bold. So quick to flatter, and in front of your mother, no less. But you weren’t afforded the time to process his words before the General was cutting in.

“A need, you say?” He echoed. “You aren’t perhaps attempting to rewrite Shakespeare, are you, Finn?” The Lord shot an amused look to his companion, who continued, “Does the line not go something like, ‘So are you to my thoughts as food to life, or as sweet seasoned showers are to the ground’?”

Your mother and Siena both sighed, as if you were the only one that could see the General’s clear attempt to flaunt his abilities. It seemed he was determined to be as infuriating as he was beautiful. And you simply would not have that in your home, disrupting your sister’s love.

“Did you have a lot of time to study literature while on the front lines, General?” You asked sweetly, glaring daggers across your plate. “Or was your time spent reading in an office far from the dying cries of your men?”

Your mother politely engaged Lord Barnes in a conversation as the General’s eyes flared. “I studied classics in school, Miss Dean. I can assure you, though I am a few years removed from my education, I do believe I remember the details of my years of study.”

“Did you attend a private school before joining the military, General? It would be a shame if your father had paid good money for you to quote sonnets on the battlefield.” Siena kicked you under the table but nothing could distract you from the fire behind the General’s eyes.

“I did, though it was of my own merit, not my father’s coin.”

“Lord Barnes!” Siena said loudly, forcing you to keep quiet as the rest of the table fell silent. “How long was your journey today? I don’t think you said.”

“A few hours. And please, do call me Finn. I think that we will all be getting to know each other quite well in the next little while and I must admit I am not used to the title, even after a year.”

“Then we shall.” Ana’s sweet voice broke you out of your anger. The way she gazed at Finn would have stoked the flames if not for how truly happy you were for her.

Siena perked up as she discovered a way to insert herself into the discussion. “Do you have a favourite, General? Of the writers you studied?”

“The King himself, of course. Shakespeare. I couldn’t possibly pick another. Do you know of another writer that can so excellently balance the comic and the tragic, Miss Dean?” He addressed you, causing Siena to slump down in her seat. “For if you do, I certainly would not mind a recommendation. This summer shall be long without anything stimulating to discuss.”

“Oh General, don’t get her started on the greeks!” Siena faked a swoon, the back of her hand pressed to her brow as she deflated in her chair. “She truly won’t stop chattering if you do.”

The light behind his eyes shifted, the defensive fire from before becoming a curious simmer. “You’re well read.”

You chuckled unbecomingly into your wine. “You sound so surprised, General. Is it more shocking that I am beautiful or that I am a woman, as well as educated?”

Evidently taken aback, he took a moment to compose himself before responding, “I will admit that while both of those traits may make you… distracting, Miss Dean, they do not surprise me. I simply expected the future matron of these grounds to be more focused on her people, rather than a man’s education.”

“Are you accusing me of neglecting my duties, General Dameron?” Your sharp tone silenced the room.

He seemed as if he might be ill over the table before quickly recovering. In a soft voice, he said, “Of course not, Miss Dean.”

His grovelling could not quell the need in your gut to put him in his place. “I would hope not. Though I understand that perhaps the concept is foreign to a man such as yourself, women are more than capable of a trick known as multitasking.”

With a small, apologetic smile into his soup, the General ducked his head.

A rush of untapped power surged in you at his bowed head. You breathed deeply to keep from further injuring him, taking a bite of the soup in front of you.

It tasted of nothing. Chef had rarely disappointed in the years she’d worked for your family, so you were certain it must be you. The sourness of your exchange had need to be cleansed from your palate, perhaps.

A trip to Father’s study would do just the trick. And while you were there, you could brush up on your reading to ensure you were thoroughly prepared on the next occasion the General dared to test you.

“I do believe I am finished.” You pushed your seat back, standing and sweeping from the room without so much as a backward glance.

***

You clutched your skirts in one hand to keep from tripping as you ascended the long staircase that lead you up to your room, your nose in your book. The house was quiet. After your outburst at dinner, it couldn’t have been terribly comfortable to stay seated in that room.

Mrs Wex had not yet extinguished the candles that lined the hall, which left you to navigate in their dull glow. It wasn’t needed. You could have found your way to the room that had been yours since you were a child in the pitch dark. Or asleep. Or bound and barely able to move.

The violent thought was enough to stop you in your tracks. Perhaps it was time to put the books away and get some rest.

You turned down the hallway to the west wing, tucking your book under your arm. It was one that you’d read enough times to open and begin at any place without really missing any of the story, so you weren’t terribly worried about marking down the page number.

A shadow at the end of the hallway moved.

You didn’t have a chance to raise your book up to defend yourself or scream before the shadow held out his hands and stepped into the candlelight. “Miss Dean, it’s me.”

Your hand flew to your throat. “General Dameron,” The words were breathier than you intended, but you pressed on, whisper-shouting, “What exactly do you think you are doing?!”

The General’s sharp features stood out in the wavering light. His hands trembled. Quickly, he straightened himself and let his hands drop. “I was…” He glanced over his shoulder, back down the long hallway. You followed his gaze and noticed your door ajar. “I was searching for a servant. I hadn’t noticed how late it was, so I took care of my task myself.”

Before you could comment on the strange ‘coincidence’ of your room’s disturbance, you realized how close you were standing to him. Your gaze traced down the column of his throat, to the collar of his shirt that he had left unbutton, exposing his chest.

Swallowing hard, you forced yourself to look into his eyes. “It is not proper, General Dameron, for us to be alone together.”

He bowed, stepping away from you as if his proximity was the offending matter, not his presence itself. “I shall leave you then, Miss Dean. Goodnight.” With a slight duck of his head, he walked quickly to the end of the hall with his hands clutched tightly behind his back.

You gazed after him. He was a curious man, confident and near-boastful one moment, and almost shy the next. It certainly was not becoming of a General, who you would have more likely assigned the former description. It would not inspire confidence in men for them to witness their leader so bashful in the presence of a woman.

Once he was surely out of range, you entered your room. Everything was as it should be, nothing disturbed, aside from a folded square of parchment sitting atop the covers of your bed.

You unfolded it. The ink was still drying, but through the smudges, you read:

Dear Esteemed Host,

On behalf of myself and my colleague and friend, Lord Barnes—

In the margins, he had scrawled: Would he be as insistent on being address as Finn in the written form? I suppose we will not ever know.

You continued on reading.

On behalf of myself and my colleague and friend, Lord Barnes, I thank you for your most gracious invitation to reside with you for this tumultuous time in our lives. Though your mother is the owner of this property, I understand from your wonderful staff that it is you that truly manages the grounds, while your mother looks after your sisters, so I thought a formal thanks to be required.

I also think an apology is in order for my behaviour at dinner.

You had never known a man to apologize. For anything. You sat in the shock for a moment before returning to the letter.

I had not intended to offend, though I do believe this was the result of my actions. I truly look forward to further opportunity to hear of your studies and perhaps share some of what I have learned, should you wish to hear of it.

Your humble servant,

General Poe Dameron

You hadn’t known his name. Poe. He’d scrawled the characters messily, perhaps through force of habit. It fit somehow, warm on your tongue as you whispered his name into the night air.

Perhaps you could entertain his questioning. It couldn’t truly hurt. Could it?

#poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x you #poe dameron x y/n #mywriting #poe dameron fic #regency au #bridgerton au

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sfb123 · 4 years

Text

Sapere Aude - Part 8A

Book: The Royal Heir

Pairing: King Liam Rys x Queen Riley Brooks

All characters belong to Pixelberry.

Catch Up Here

Series Description: I developed a theory of what I think will happen in TRH Book 4, and I was encouraged by some very lovely people to turn my theory into a fic, so here it is. Basically, Riley is recruited to join the Via Imperii, this series will follow her as she joins them to try and bring them down from the inside, and all of the drama and bombshells she learns along the way. Sapere Aude is Latin for “dare to know” it seemed like an appropriate title.

Rating: M -MATURE

Warning: Adult language, smut (🍋🍋🍋) and other adult themes.

Word Count: 4,049

Notes: I know I’ve sucked at updating and posting. I hit kind of a personal slump in my writing, there was a lot of self-loathing involved. I really struggled with writing chapter 9, and I eventually had a revelation that it was likely because I wasn’t done exploring everything that happened in chapter 8, so I’ve made a sub chapter. We follow Liam when after he leaves their quarters and get into his thought process in dealing with the bombshell that was dropped on him.

And yes, you read that rating right, my lemon tree has had its first bloom. I really stressed myself out over this, so I hope it’s worth the time I spent trying to convince myself that I was doing a good job, not to mention the time my friends had to spend (see below) to boost my ego.

Thank you so so much to @txemrn for reading a couple of snippets for me and being the cheerleader I needed when I was feeling really down on myself and my work...even though I was supposed to be the one giving YOU a peptalk!

And a super special thank you to my fairy smutmother @jessiembruno. You listened to me complain, and doubt myself, and a million other things multiple times a day while I was trying to find my way, and you never once came off as annoyed or frustrated. I am so lucky to be able to call you a friend.

Finally, thank you so much @twinkleallnight for my UPDATED moodboard! She took it upon herself to update it to better reflect the feel of the story, and she did a kick ass job!

Tags: I’m officially rocking my new tag list. Everyone is listed below as well as in the comments for safety. If you’d like to be added or removed, let me know!

“Liam, where are you going?”

“I need to take a walk. Gather my thoughts.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I need to be alone right now. You stay here, I’ll be back shortly.”

Before she could stop him, Liam was out the door. He knew she just wanted to be there for him, but he needed to be alone. The royal quarters, his home, his sanctuary, suddenly felt so small. He was suffocating there, he needed to get away, to breathe.

“Your majesty?” Bastien stopped him.

“I’m fine, Bastien, just going for a walk. Please stand down.” Liam tried to keep his tone and expression neutral, but it was obvious to Bastien that something was wrong. He bowed to the King, following orders and remaining at his post.

Liam continued walking through the palace, unsure where he was going, he just needed to get out. He found himself walking through the gardens, approaching the maze. One of his mother’s last projects before her passing...or rather, before she abandoned him. It was always a special place for Liam. Growing up, he would often go there to hide out when he was feeling lonely, or missing his mother more than usual. It was one of his favorite spots on the grounds, possibly in the world. How would he ever be able to look at this space the same again? It would serve as a constant reminder of the insurmountable betrayal he had faced at the hands of the woman that gave him life.

As he walked the familiar path through the maze, he considered his options. Perhaps he would burn it to the ground, and salt the earth to prevent any attempts at regrowth. Would that make him feel better? Would it take away the pain?

Likely not, but it would feel good to know that I took something away from her that she cherished so dearly. A metaphor for what she has done to me. My memories of her, her kindness, her generosity, they mean nothing anymore. Because, to her, I meant nothing. I couldn’t have. If I did, she wouldn’t have left.

He continued his journey, getting lost in his thoughts. He would look back at his childhood memories, trying to remember something, anything, that could ease this moment for him. Nothing came. His mind then wandered to the relationship he could have had with Thomas, his brother. He had another brother this whole time. All those times when Leo had run off to god knows where, he wouldn’t have had to be quite as alone as he was. Sure, he had Drake to keep him company, but Drake wasn’t a prince. He didn’t have the same expectations, the same limitations, that Liam faced. He could have had someone else by his side that understood all of it.

How was he supposed to feel about Thomas now that he knew the truth? His first instinct was anger, but he quickly rejected that. It wasn’t his fault that they were kept apart their whole lives. He was suddenly very curious about Thomas’s life.

What was his childhood like? How did he feel when he learned that he was also royalty? Has he ever wanted to say anything to me, to come forward? Would I have believed him if he had?

Even though he wasn’t supposed to know any of this, he hoped that things would get to a point where he could talk to Thomas, and ask those questions. Ideally in a casual setting over drinks, and not an interrogation cell.

Liam soon found himself in the center of the maze. As he took in his surroundings, his mind kept racing back to his childhood. The picnics with his mother, the games of maze tag with Drake.

I wonder if Thomas would have liked to play maze tag with us, had he been around.

He felt a sudden calming come over him at one point. When he took a look around, he realized that he was standing in the exact spot where he and Riley had landed when he inadvertently tackled her the night of the masquerade ball. The night he learned she had traveled halfway around the world just for a chance to be with him, because she felt what he was feeling after just a few hours together one night in New York. Even now, all these years later, he still felt the same butterflies in his stomach thinking of that moment.

Wistfully, he walked a bit further, to the spot where they stood the night of his coronation, where he had finally managed to say those three words he had been feeling since the moment his eyes met hers. He smiled as he replayed the memory of her saying it back to him. He was fairly certain at the time that she felt the same way, but to hear those words fall from her beautiful lips, he had never felt a high quite like that in his life. His mind then wandered to the events that those words led to, another moment he had long dreamed of. Physically expressing the love they had just declared. He felt his heart start to race thinking of their first time together. All of the sudden, anger quickly replaced all other emotions, as he remembered that there was a tape of that moment. A tape that was recorded, and held, by her group. He quickly searched the area, digging his arms through the hedges, looking for anywhere a camera might be hidden. He came up empty. Given how long it had been since the recording, it made sense that they had likely removed their surveillance from the area.

Another reason to be rid of this maze once and for all. Another reminder of the deceit. Only this time it’s worse, they brought Riley into it.

Liam needed to move on from the center of the maze, so he continued walking, finally coming across the wishing well. The wishing well his mother had told him about when he was a child.

Can you take back wishes? I wished so many times that my mother would come back to me, for her death to have been a misunderstanding. Well Liam, you got your wish, now look at you. How many other wishes have I made that will come back around to bite me in the ass?

His mind began to wander again. This time, to the night of the Homecoming Ball. The night Riley was officially presented as the Duchess of Valtora, and more importantly, his fiance. They both made wishes that night, he remembered his wish: to never let fear dictate his choices, the way his father did.

He let fear dictate his choices because of the loss of his wife. Had he known what truly happened, things would have been different. Perhaps he wouldn’t have interfered with my choice during the social season. I could have been with Riley all along. The way things were always supposed to be. I know we ended up together, and the struggles made our bond that much stronger, but there was a very real chance that I could have lost her forever, I almost did, over his choice.

Thinking of Riley reminded him of her reassurances that night, she was so confident in his ability to be a good King. She believed in him from day one, and never faltered in that. Even when he didn’t believe in himself, thinking of Riley, and her faith in him gave him the strength to continue on. To be the best man, and King he could be. To make his Queen proud.

In that moment, Liam had an epiphany. This maze was so much more than his childhood and memories of a mother that betrayed him. This maze was about the love he and Riley shared. It had played a paramount role in their story. When he looked around, he saw memories of them, their stolen moments, their heartfelt confessions. He couldn’t get rid of this maze, if he did, he would be destroying a piece of his heart.

From this moment forward, this maze is not about her, not about the lies that she raised me on. It is about the love and support I have shared with my soulmate. This is where our love, much like the flowers that adorn these hedges, blossomed.

Riley...my heart, my world, my Queen. She gave up her life, her freedom, to be with me. She left her family and friends, her job, everything, for me. She has dedicated her life to my country, she has taken on my responsibilities. What have I done in return? I’ve put her in this impossible position. I’ve put her in harm's way, yet again, for the good of Cordonia. A country had never even heard of before I came in and turned her life upside down.

He needed to get back to her. Walking back toward the palace, he started considering how she might be feeling in that moment. He had been so caught up in his own mind, that he didn’t stop to think what all of this was doing to her. She had to deliver devastating news to the man she loved, and his reaction was to abandon her. His heart sank as he approached their quarters, he felt so small. He entered their bedroom, overwhelmed with shame for the way he had left her.

Of course she’s still awake. She probably stayed up worrying about me. I was so selfish to just leave her like that.

He kept his head down, too ashamed to look her in the eye, and walked straight into his closet to get ready for bed. His mind working overtime, trying to find the right words, but nothing came. He exited the closet and walked toward the bed, hoping something would come to him.

Finally, Riley broke the silence in the room.

“Liam…” She said barely above a whisper, he turned his head and looked at her for the first time since arriving home. “I’m sorry.” She placed her hand gently over his.

She thinks I’m mad at her. She’s blaming herself. How does she not understand that she is the only thing keeping me from going off the edge? I’m the one that dragged her through all of this, and she’s apologizing to me. I don’t deserve her love.

He was overwhelmed with anger at himself, and heartbreak for his wife. “Riley, you have nothing to apologize for. I am the one that wanted you to do this. You did nothing wrong. None of this is on you.” He tried to smile, but he knew it was unconvincing. He could feel the sting of tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

“Fine, but you’re not allowed to blame yourself either.”

Even to this day, after all of these years, it astonishes me how she can see right through me like that. I’ve had years of training to hide my thoughts and emotions, that training proved useless when it comes to Riley.

“What you just said, telling me you were the one that wanted me to do this. I know you Liam Rys, better than anyone. You’re thinking about how you brought all of this on yourself.”

It’s the truth. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t talked you into joining.

For the second time that night, Liam couldn’t bear to look his wife in the eyes. She was right, but so was he. Liam felt the firm, yet loving touch of Riley’s hand holding his chin and lifting his gaze to meet hers. There was a fire in her eyes, unlike any he had seen from her before.

“This is all on them, it’s the Via Imperii’s fault. That’s why we’re going to take them down. Together. Just like Anton, just like Auvernal, just like Barthelemy, just like any other enemy that has ever, or will ever come our way. We are the King and Queen of Cordonia, Liam and Riley Rys. We are a force to be reckoned with.”

Liam was taken aback by the determination in her statement. He knew she was strong, she had been his rock since the day they met, but this was so much more than that. He didn’t know it was possible, but he felt his love for her grow.

Awestruck, he took the hand she had planted on his chin in his, and brought it to his lips, kissing it softly. “You always know just what to say, love.”

“Years of diplomatic training. I need to be prepared for every possible scenario.” She winked at him.

He couldn’t help but chuckle at the comment. She made it seem so easy to turn his mood around. It was something he would never understand, but always be grateful for.

God, I love this woman.

Riley smiled and leaned into him. “C’mon, let’s try to get some sleep. We can circle back to this nightmare in the morning, start working on a plan.” They both laid back onto the bed, and into each others arms.

In the middle of the night, Liam’s eyes shot open, his heart pounding in his chest, worry overcoming him. He needed a moment to get his bearings, turning to his left to make sure she was still there. She was.

He had been dreaming, a nightmare, technically. Riley was gone, he wasn’t sure where she had gone or why. All he knew was he felt empty, broken, more so than he ever had before. He watched Riley as she slept, a single tear rolling down his cheek. He thought back to his family, the people that were supposed to be there and care for him above all else.

His mother, who had lied to him from the second he was brought into this world. She was his benchmark for love and support, but it was all fake. Because of her, he lived his life based on false ideals. Then he met Riley, she showed him what love and support truly was.

Leo, he was a great brother growing up. He made sure Liam got to have fun, and took the heat when it would get out of hand. However as he got older, his priorities changed, and he was around less and less. When he finally abdicated the throne, he placed the weight of the world on Liam’s shoulders. The bright side to that, was that becoming the Crown Prince, and having a social season, brought Riley into his life. She helped him believe that he truly could carry the weight that was thrust upon him.

His father, a King above all else. As hard as Liam tried to break through that wall, it was duty and his country above all else. That never mattered to Liam though, he still looked up to his father and held him to such a high standard. Until it was uncovered that he attempted to destroy his son’s one chance at true happiness. Despite his attempts at ruining her name, and putting her in harm’s way, Riley stayed and fought. She fought for herself, and she fought for their love. She forgave him for his actions, something Liam was never fully able to do. And when Liam mourned his loss, she was there by his side, holding his hand.

Riley, his bright spot in all of the darkness. His constant source of goodness and joy. In all of that pain, Riley was there. Who would be there if she left him? He would have nothing, he would be nothing. He felt a tightness in his chest at the thought of losing her. He reached his hand out and gently stroked her arm, needing to touch her.

He saw her eyes slowly start to flutter open.

She’s cute when she’s tired.

He watched as she lifted her hand and ran her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

“Hey, are you ok?”

He unsuccessfully tried to swallow away the lump in his throat before answering. “Please don’t leave me, Riley.”

Liam watched as she sat up in bed, a confused look on her face. “Liam, never. I love you, you’re stuck with me for life.

He knew she meant it, but he also knew these things weren’t always under their control. “I just…there have been so many people that said they cared about me, and then left. Losing them was so hard. But if I lost you Riley, I don’t know how I would be able to continue on. You are the most important part of me, my everything. I don’t exist without you.”

A sadness overtook Riley’s face, Liam felt horrible for making her feel that way. He looked down before feeling her hands on either side of his face, her thumbs softly stroking his cheeks. “Liam, I promise you with all my heart, and everything I am, that there is nothing on this earth that could take me away from you. My husband and my daughter are the greatest joys of my life. A world without the two of you is not a world I would ever even want to think about.”

In that moment, all Liam could think about was being as close to her as he possibly could. He desperately needed to feel her body tangled with his. He surged forward and kissed her with everything he had. It was a kiss loaded with love, longing, and need. He lowered Riley from her seated position and rolled on top of her.

“Show me.” He whispered.

“Yes, my king.”

He shuddered at her words. Pinning her hands above her head, he slowly rolled his hips into her so that she could feel just how desperate he was for his wife. Riley closed her eyes and moaned at the sensation.

Liam’s mouth moved to her ear, nipping at the lobe before saying in a commanding, yet tender tone, “Open your eyes Riley, I want you to see everything I am going to do to you.”

Riley’s eyes opened as she met Liam’s hungry gaze. “Yes, my king.”

“Good girl.” He kissed her deeply, removing one hand from hers and slowly moving it down her body, traveling the familiar curves that drove him crazy time and time again.

Liam’s lips moved away from hers, treading across her jawline and down her neck. Riley hissed at the feeling of his teeth running along her tender skin. “Liam, calm down. You’re going to leave marks.”

“Good, they will serve as a reminder that you belong here, with me.”

Riley freed her wrists from Liam’s grasp and brought his face to hers. “Liam, I don’t need a reminder, I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere.”

He silenced her with a searing kiss. One hand traced the curve of her breast as the other traveled downward, rubbing her center through her panties. “You’re so wet for me already, love.”

All Riley could do was groan in response. She felt his lips return to her neck, as his hands traveled to the hem of her tank top, he gently lifted the shirt over her head and deposited it on the floor. His mouth continued its descent, kissing her shoulder and quickly moving to her breast, taking the nipple into his mouth, slowly circling it with his tongue. He kissed across her chest, paying the same attention to the other breast.

The quiet moans and whimpers coming from his wife were the encouragement Liam needed to continue moving south, kissing down her torso until he was met with the waistband of her panties. He paused and looked up at her.

“Liam, please.” She whispered, desperate for him to remove the lacy barrier.

He gave her a wolfish grin before taking them between his teeth and quickly dragging them down her legs. Once they were removed, he lifted her foot and softly kissed the inside of her ankle, his lips moved at a painfully slow speed, resting her leg over his shoulder as he moved closer to her wanting center.

As soon as Riley felt Liam’s breath on her glistening core, her own breath hitched. Liam heard it, and it satisfied him to know that in that moment she needed him just as much as he needed her. He tantalizingly licked up the length of her slit until he reached her sensitive nub.

She gasped as he began sucking and licking, his tongue moving in calculated circles. He knew her body inside and out, he knew just what to do to her to get the reaction he wanted.

Riley’s hands quickly found their way to Liam, running her fingers through his hair and gripping tightly guiding him exactly where she needed him. The pressure caused Liam to moan into her, Riley felt the vibration against her body and trembled.

Sensing that she was close to her release, he slowly slid one finger inside of her, and curled it slightly. She bucked her hips and moaned Liam’s name, that was all the invitation he needed to add a second finger.

“Yes Liam, don’t stop.”

He looked up at her with an unmistakable mix of lust and adoration. “Never, Riley.” Before continuing his efforts, causing Riley to plummet over the edge, loudly moaning his name. He worked through her release, savoring every second of her ecstasy.

As she started to come down from her release, Liam kissed a path up her stomach, positioning himself on top of her. Once they were face to face he kissed her deeply.

Their tongues intertwined, and Riley’s hands drifted to the front of Liam’s pajama pants, palming his hardness through the fabric eliciting a deep groan from him. Riley smiled into the kiss, moving her hand into his pants, wrapping it around his length and pumping slowly.

“Mmm...are you ready to take all of me, love?” He asked as he thrust into her hand.

Riley nipped at his bottom lip before responding. “Yes Liam, I need you.”

He quickly removed his pants, lining himself up with her entrance. Pressing his forehead to hers, and looking deep into her eyes, he eased himself into her carefully, desperate to feel every inch of her. He paused for a moment, allowing her to adjust before slowly rocking his hips against her.

As they moved together, Liam began sucking and nibbling on Riley’s earlobe. Riley whimpered in response, her hands running up and down his muscular back. She wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into him, urging him to move faster. He complied, and almost immediately, he felt her walls starting to clench around him.

“That’s it Riley. Cum for me, love.” He locked eyes with her again, bringing one hand to her cheek to ensure she held his gaze through her release.

Riley’s back arched as she lost control, the muscles in her body tensed, and she screamed out in pleasure. “Oh god Liam, yes!”

Watching and feeling Riley come undone was all Liam needed to push him over the edge. He thrust into her one last time with a guttural groan as he filled her with his seed.

They laid still for several moments, Liam resting his face in the crook of Riley’s neck, breathing in her scent as his breathing slowly began to return to normal. He then removed himself from her and laid on his back, pulling Riley to his side. She rested her head on his chest, and he responded by planting a gentle kiss on the crown of her head.

“Are you feeling better?” She tilted her head up to look at him.

He stroked her cheek and smiled softly at her. “Much. Thank you Riley.” Their lips met in a brief kiss.

“Good. Now please try to get some sleep, we’re going to have a lot to figure out in the morning.”

“Of course. Riley?”

She looked up at him, eyelids heavy. “Hmm?”

“I love you, so much.” He kissed her on her forehead.

She smiled and leaned into him, placing several light kisses on his chest. “I love you too, Liam. Always.”

He let out a content sigh and tightened his arms around his wife as they both drifted off to sleep.

Permatag:

@anjanettexcordonia @athena-penrose @choicesficwriterscreations @cordonia-gothqueen @cordoniaqueensworld @gabesmommie1130 @gkittylove99 @hopefulmoonobject @hopelessromanticmonie @iaminlovewithtrr @jessiembruno @kat-tia801 @khoicesbyk @kingliam2019 @lucy-268 @marshmallowsaremyfavorite @mile9213 @mom2000aggie @pixie88 @queenrileyrose @secretaryunpaid @sweatyrysconnoisseur @texaskitten30 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @twinkleallnight @txemrn

Sapere Aude:

@burnsoslow

Liam x Riley:

@jared2612

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james-joyces-right-eyeball · 3 years

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Absolute Favorite Books I’d Recommend to Anyone

This is a list of my top-tier favorite books that I would recommend/talk about endlessly to pretty much anyone (in no particular order). I know people probably don’t care but I just like talking about books I love so here we are.

Beloved - Toni Morrison

~ Based off the real story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who escaped slavery and when captured killed her child in order to prevent them from ever being enslaved again, Beloved tells the story of a mother named Sethe, born in slavery who eventually escaped and is haunted by the figurative demons of her trauma and the literal (arguably) ghost of her dead daughter, who she herself killed. It is an excellent exploration of the horrors of slavery and of the haunting legacy of the institution for those who were subjected to it.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

~ If you’ve been on Tumblr for a while, you probably know what Lolita is. The story of the predatory Humbert Humbert who lusts after, rapes, and kidnaps the “nymphet” Dolores Haze. An excellent construction of how predators, unreliable narrators in their own right, hide behind fabrications, almost-believable excuses, and pretty words to make their actions seem maybe not so bad. In the words of the book itself, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

Ulysses - James Joyce

~ Notoriously one of the most difficult books in the English language, Ulysses lifts its structure from Homer’s Odyssey to tell the story of a common man, Leopold Bloom, as he goes about his day. Yes, this book takes place over the course of only one day. We follow Bloom as well as Joyce’s literary counterpart Stephen Daedalus through their thoughts and actions, gathering details of their lives previous throughout. It’s a book that, in my own words, “is life”. It is sad, funny, strange, vulgar, disgusting, beautiful, revelatory, sensual, and nonsensical all at once. Joyce aimed to create a reflection of life through his stream-of-consciousness style which some people might find confusing, but I personally find absolutely beautiful and honest and realistic. The prose is also gorgeous, but that could be applied to everything Joyce wrote.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

~ The classic gothic book that tells the tale of Heathcliff and his ultimately destructive love of Catherine Earnshaw, whose eventual marriage to someone else and the general mistreatment of him by her family drives Heathcliff insane and he spends the rest of his life trying to take revenge by abusing and torturing the next Earnshaw and Linton (the family into which Catherine marries) generations. If I’m being honest, I like this book mostly because of how wild and dark it is, but the writing is also genius and beautiful. I think the book also carries an interesting view of the destructive nature of revenge, overzealous love, and othering.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

~ A coming-of-age story at the turn of the century that tells the story of Francie Nolan, a young bookish girl growing up in a lower class family in New York City. It tells about her father’s struggles with alcoholism as well as her mother’s struggles to deal with that and at the same time raise Francie and her brother. Francie is confronted with a strange, uncertain world as a young girl, but tries to face it with bravery throughout childhood

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

~ Another coming-of-age story, this time about four young sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March. You are probably familiar with this book already; it’s had more movie adaptations then I can possibly remember off the top of my head. It’s the story of four sisters as they try to navigate growing up, love, and loss during the mid to late 1800s.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

~ A novel that tells the story of Celie, a young black woman who is raped and then married young to a man who will go on to use and abuse her, through her letters to God. Throughout the novel she meets Shug Avery, a woman with whom she eventually falls in love and begins a relationship with. Through this and her eventual freedom from her abusive husband, she is able to gain at last her own sense of self and take back control over her life, a life no longer ruled by the abusive men around her.

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

~ The tragic story of young black girl Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more than to have blonde hair and blue eyes just like the women she sees in the movies. Both a deconstruction of the whiteness of beauty standards as well as how these standards can utterly destroy vulnerable young girls, it is also an exploration of the people who allow these sorts of things to happen, including Pecola’s mother and father. The Bluest Eye, I think, showcases one of the aspects of Toni Morrison that I like the most, that I aspire to the most: her ability to enter the minds of all people, even people who you might despise at first. Her characters, especially Cholly in The Bluest Eye, are ones you might not entirely sympathize with, but they will always be ones you understand.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

~ Based off of the author’s own experiences as a young college student, The Bell Jar tells the story of Esther Greenwood, whose depression over her place as a woman in a patriarchal society as well as her inability to choose a life path for herself leads to a suicide attempt and a subsequent stay in a mental hospital. A very nuanced portrayal of mental illness, especially anxiety and depression, The Bell Jar is an extremely moving and relatable story for me and clearly is as well for others. It is a classic for a reason.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

~ A memoir of Angelou’s childhood, this book tells the story of her experiences living as a black girl in the south with her grandmother and brother as well as her later years living with her mother. It also tells of how she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was around eight or nine, and how she struggled to live with that and find her voice, both literally and figuratively. A wonderful book about overcoming struggles and the power of words and literature in such times.

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

~ Ellison’s novel tells the story of a young black man, never getting a name in the text, and his feelings of invisibility and his struggles to find a place in society to belong. His struggles only lead him further into despair, until he decides to “become invisible” as people seem not to see him as a person anyway. Invisible Man is an exploration of American mid-century racism and the isolation it causes to those subjected to it. Not only that, but it is surprisingly relevant to our times now, especially on the subject of police violence. (Personal anecdote: When I first read this book, when I got to the aforementioned police violence part it was right in the middle of the BLM resurgence last summer and I cried for a good twenty minutes while reading that chapter over how nothing had changed and it still hurts me to think about it. Embarrassingly, my dad walked in on me while I was crying, and I had to quickly explain it away.)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

~ The title basically says it all lol. This book tells of the coming-of-age of Stephen Daedalus (the same one from the later-written Ulysses). His sensitive childhood, his awkward and lustful adolescence, his feelings of Irish nationality and Catholic guilt, and his struggles to fully realize himself, both as an artist and a human being. It is a very hopeful story, and one that I love mostly because I relate so much to Stephen Daedalus as an artist and as a person.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

~ A magical-realist intergenerational family drama, Marquez’s book traces the various lives and loves of the Buendia family over the course of (you guessed it!) one hundred years. A beautifully written, at times extremely emotionally moving and chilling masterpiece, Marquez in a way retells the history of Colombia, of its colonization and exploitation.

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

~ A classic Russian novel of society and love, Tolstoy tells the story of Anna Karenina, married, wealthy woman with a child she adores. However, she falls in love with another man, Count Vronsky, and comes to a tragic end for her love. The parallel story of the novel is that of Konstantin Levin, a wealthy landowner who also struggles to find fulfillment in his life and understand his place in society.

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

~ A novel that features an entire family of unreliable narrators, The Sound and the Fury details the fall of a once-prominent southern Compson family and always-present place of the past. There are four different narratives: Benjy Compson, a mentally disabled man who is unsure of his surroundings and of time and only knows that he misses his older sister Caddy; Quintin Compson, the eldest son and a Harvard man both obsessed with his sister retaining her “purity” and the fact that she failed to do so and had a baby out of wedlock, going as far to claim it is his baby in an attempt to preserve something of the family reputation; Jason Compson, who is the caretaker of Caddy’s daughter and believes her to be going down her mother’s “sinful” path; and Dilsey, the black maid of the Compson’s who unlike the people she cares for is not weighed down by their history. The narratives take place in different time periods and is in a stream-of-consciousness style. It’s a deeply dark and disturbing novel about the haunting nature of the past, a common theme in Faulkner’s work (see Absalom, Absalom! for more of this).

Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

~ It is the story of Milkman Dead, a young black man growing up in the south and his relationship with his very complicated family. To say anymore would be to spoil the novel, but I will say that it is an excellent book about family, self-fulfillment in a world that tries to deny you that, and, like The Bluest Eye, exhibits Morrison’s excellent character work.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

~ A play which takes place on the patriarch of a family’s birthday in the oppressive heat of the midsummer south, Williams’ play explores lies, secrets, and how repression only results in anger, frustration, and sadness. It’s a tragic but brilliant play that I think was very ahead of its time. If you’ve read it (or do read it) then you know what I mean.

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin

~ This book tells the story of a young man and his love of another man named Giovanni while he is in Paris. It is a book about love, queer guilt, and has what I would call an ambiguous ending. There is uncertainty at the end, but there does seem to be some kind of acceptance. It is a bit of a coming-out story, but more than that it is a story of personal acceptance and at the same time a sad, tragic love story.

HERmione - H.D.

~ An underrated modernist masterpiece, HERmione is a somewhat fictionalized account of the author, Hilda Doolittle’s, experience as a young aspiring poet dating another poet (in real life Ezra Pound in this book named George Lowndes) who is a threat to her both physically and emotionally. It explores her own mental state, as she considers herself a failure and falls in love with a woman for the first time (Fayne Rabb in the book, Frances Gregg in real life).

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

~ People think about going to a lighthouse. They do not. A couple years and a war passes then they do. That may seem like a boring plot, and you may be right. However, To the Lighthouse is not much about plot. It is more about the inner lives of its characters, a family and their friends, on two different occasions of their lives: one before WWI and one after WWI. Woolf explores in this novel the trauma that results from such a massive loss of life and security. Not only that, she also explores the nature of art (especially in female artists) in the character of Lily Briscoe and her struggles to complete a painting. It’s a short novel, but it contains so much about life, love, and loss within these few pages.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

~ A southern gothic novel about isolation and loneliness in a small town. Every character has something to separate them from wider society, and often find solace and companionship in a deaf man, John Singer, who himself experiences a loneliness that they cannot understand. There are various forms of social isolation explored in this novel: by race, disability, age, gender, etc. A wonderful, heart-wrenching book about loneliness and the depths it can potentially drag people to.

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

~ A modernist masterpiece of a poem, Eliot describes feeling emptiness and isolation. The brilliance of it can only be shown by an excerpt:

“Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

“The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. “

(My personal favorite line from this poem is, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”)

The Trial - Franz Kafka

~ The protagonist of the novel, Josef K., wakes up one morning to find that he has been placed under arrest for reasons that are kept from him. Kafka creates throughout the novel a scathing satire of bureaucracy, as K. tries to find out more about his case, more about his trial, but only becomes more confused as he digs deeper. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the world he lives in, and the more tries to explain it the further the more that proves to be the case. An excellently constructed novel and a great one to read if you would like to be depressed about the state of the world because, though Kafka’s work is a satire, like a lot of his other work, it manages to strike a strangely real note.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard

~ An absurdist play that is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in the broad overview of the original play, do not matter. Throughout the play, they question their existence and the purpose of it and through that Stoppard dissects not only the absurdity of life, but how fiction and theater reflect that absurdity inadvertently.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

~ The novel details the journey the Bundren family makes after the death of the family matriarch, Addie, to bury her. Each chapter offers a different narrative from the family members and those who surround them, revealing some ulterior motives to them “going to town” to bury Addie. The patriarch Anse desires a pair of false teeth, and the daughter Dewey Dell is pregnant and needs an abortion, as there is no way for her or her family to support it. It’s about the powerlessness of people in the impoverished south. The Bundrens are constantly subject to forces beyond their control, struggles which would be easily solved if they had the money to spare for it. There is more to the book, but that is my favorite reading of it, that of class. Faulkner’s ability to create distinct voices for every one of his characters shines through here.

And, last but not least:

The Collected Poems - Sylvia Plath

~ All the poems Plath wrote during her tragically short lifetime. The best way to demonstrate or summarize the book’s brilliance is just to show you. This is her poem “Edge”, which appears in the book:

“The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty. She has folded Them back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED! HAPPY READING TO ALL!

#dark academia #books and literature #toni morrison #james joyce #tennessee williams #virginia woolf #william faulkner #sylvia plath #plays #poetry #can you tell i like southern and modernist lit lol?

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avengershumanresources · 3 years

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blood 12 - Strange/Stark!Reader

Relationship: Dr. Strange/Princess!Stark!Reader

Rating: M

Warnings: Adult Themes, smut, adult language, implied sexual violence, general violence

Synopsis: Reader is the daughter of the legendary King Anthony Stark, Uniter of Lands, The Iron Defender, and leader of the realm. When the king disappears during battle, hope is lost and he is presumed dead.

When the late king’s uncle, Obadiah, takes the throne until your brother Peter is of age, he quickly arranges a marriage for you with a wicked king in a neighboring kingdom.

With the realms politics in question, and rumors of an upcoming siege to overthrow Peter’s rule before it starts, you quickly learn who is loyal to the crown and who is not.

part 11 - part 13

Masterlist

Chapter Playlist (GUESS WHO FINALLY FIGURED OUT THE PLAYLIST ISSUE)

12 - a memory

You’d been in the tunnels hundreds, if not, thousands of times in your life. There were very few places you were positive you could navigate blindly, but these caves and tunnels? Someone could take away every sense you had and you’d still be able to find your way home.

It was a little unsettling bringing Loki into your secret place. Very few people knew of the natural caves that fed into manmade tunnels (carved by your ancestor, Richard Stark, when he settled the land).

In fact, you could only think of four people, including yourself, who could navigate the paths without becoming lost.

There was you, Natalia (who’d originally shown you), James, and Stephen.

Not even Peter was privy to the knowledge of these cavernous paths, covered in old magic and fake tunnels.

The cave system was incredible. It was naturally occurring and if the history you’d dug up with Stephen was accurate, your ancestor had purposely selected the land for that reason. They were enhanced with this very action in mind.

To reclaim the castle by surprise if an antagonistic force overtook it.

Stephen once mentioned that history often repeated itself, but you liked to think it was more of a mimicry of the past. Similar, but never the same.

King Richard Stark the First never dealt with any serious threats to his reign. He lived a long life, had many children with his beloved wife, and died a very old man with his family at his bedside.

His son, however, King Emil Stark, faced many problems in his short reign. He was nearly murdered by his own brother, but escaped the plot using these very tunnels.

Later, he took back the castle with regional support and a surprise caravan of soldiers marched through one of the larger sections of the cave system.

You’d assumed and so had Stephen, when you’d read about the tale, that Richard had only told his eldest son. Why else had he been able to catch the younger brother by surprise?

But why had Richard only told one son?

Emil took the knowledge to his grave, but one of the soldiers had a son, who went with his father long after the battle to explore. That son had another son, and so on until one day, a red haired daughter was born.

That daughter was caught sneaking bread from the kitchens and when you protected her and gave her extra food, she taught you.

It was a funny thing, time. Cyclical, ever changing, but in the end, the fates would do as they pleased. How these tunnels led Nat into your life. How these tunnels have you freedom to explore and learn the land around you. How these tunnels brought the most important person into your life.

(—)

The first time you met Stephen Strange, you were sixteen years old.

By that point, you’d scared off almost every Master who’d passed the threshold of your castle. Some complained you asked too many questions, others tried to restrict knowledge of the dark and dastardly from you, one insisted a princess was to be simple minded and obedient.

That was the last one you’d chased off after casually bringing the fact up during dinner and letting Pepper deal with the rest.

This was long before Morgan. This was when Peter was still a little boy and you were a girl still trying to figure out your place in a world that didn’t value or respect you.

The first time you met Stephen Strange was ten days before he was due to arrive, officially.

You hadn’t known it was him at first. He’d been sitting in the woods on a stump, reading a book on local geography when you passed him on your way back to the tunnels that threaded their way through the forest to the castle. You and Natalia had spent the last few years wreaking havoc on the guard, slipping away without a word, only to reappear in a pub later that night.

You noted the odd fellow, out of place in the massive woods but not entirely unexpected and paused to do a double take.

“What are you reading?”

He peered up from his book, a brow quirked in her direction.

“What?”

You took a few steps closer. He didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons. Though Natalia would later reprimand you for being too trusting of strangers.

“What are you reading?” you repeated, having read the title and still wondering why someone would spend a beautiful afternoon such as that one, in the forest, alone, reading a book on geography.

“A book on geography,” he answered, folding the tome half shut and pointing a finger to the cover. “Geo-graph-y.”

He recited the word slowly, as if you couldn’t understand reading or letters.

“I know what it says,” you huffed, a little indignant at his tone. Did you look like some lowly peasant who couldn’t read? Glancing at your clothes you frowned. A simple frock.

Oh. Maybe you did.

“Why are you all the way out here?” you asked again, a little irritated when he went back to the book and ignored her.

“It’s quiet,” he lowered the book again, staring at you over the edge of the pages. “Or rather it was.”

“No one passes through here, usually,” you hummed, glancing around. “It’s a bit depressing though, isn’t it? The trees are blocking all of the sun.”

“I don’t need sunlight,” he stated cryptically and you noted his distinct robes of blue.

Kamar-Taj.

“Are you a sorcerer?” you asked, settling across from him on a mossy rock and leaning forward. “You’re a little young aren’t you?”

“I’m eighteen,” he shot back sharply. “I’ve been training my whole life. That’s considered more than experienced at this point.”

“So you are a sorcerer,” you confirmed with a sly smirk. “They’re getting a new Master Sorcerer up at the castle soon. Maybe you know him? Master Strange?”

If he knew the name, he made no indication and instead let out a long sigh, standing and closing his book.

“Never heard of him,” he replied curtly. “If you’ll excuse me.”

He started to move toward one of the paths in the forest, but you caught up to him and followed closely behind.

“Why were you out here?” you asked curiously, trodding behind in the footprints he left behind.

“I told you, for peace,” he stated, a little exasperation to his tone.

Maybe that’s why you couldn’t hold a Master at the castle for very long, they frowned on questions and maybe Kamar-Taj taught them all to be sticks in the mud.

“You’re reading a book on geography,” you repeated. “Local geography if I recall?”

Your eyes fell on the book in his hand and he immediately shoved it to his chest, blocking it from view and continuing his path.

“You’re certainly not from around here,” you continued musing, plucking a flower from a nearby plant and twirling it between your fingers. He stopped and looked over at her.

“How can you tell?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Your accent is a little off,” you noted with a little chuckle. “It sounds like it’s from the border, where Kamar-Taj is located.”

“I was in Asgard,” he countered and you shrugged.

“Just to visit I’m sure,” you insisted and he didn’t reply. You twirled the flower again, giving it a small sniff. “I’m betting you were looking for the caves, weren’t you?”

His irritated expression fell and you walked up, tucking the flower behind his ear and grabbing his wrist.

“Here’s the thing, I’ve read that book and it’s ridiculously outdated and inaccurate,” you continued, pulling him back the direction you just came. “You see, Richard Stark, the son of Arthur Stark the Conqueror, had this whole region charted when he sought to build his fortress.”

“Yes, and this book is that report,” the boy insisted quickly and you laughed, much to his annoyance. “Why would he have built the castle if the report was inaccurate?”

“There was an accurate report at some point,” you explained, reaching and snatching the book up. You flipped through the pages until you found the section on the cave systems. “There’s a little truth to this, some of the tunnels are accurate but the entrances are all wrong.”

“But given the layout of the land-,” he protested and you shook your head.

“Just follow me,” you led the way past the stump he’d been sitting on toward the mouth of one of the well memorized tunnels into the castle. “They can go on for miles, so you have to be careful.”

“How do you know?” he challenged, sizing you over.

You paused. The tunnels were a closely guarded secret between you and Natalia, whose late father had passed the knowledge down to her. Aside from the serious security risk, you knew nothing of this boy or his past. So you stayed vague.

“I’ve explored them a few times,” you answered casually, hopping down into one of the smaller openings and calling for him to follow behind.

The two of you spent a few hours exploring areas even you hadn’t been familiar with. He pointed out a few magic runes, explaining their meaning as best he could (some were completely foreign to both of you) and not looking too annoyed when you peppered him with questions.

“Are you noble?” he finally asked when you walked him from the structure back toward the forest. “You’re very well read.”

“I like books,” you answered with a smile. “My father taught me to read at a young age and I never stopped.”

It was a half answer and a full truth, satisfying enough for him because he nodded.

“I’m in town for a few more nights,” he looked hesitant, clearing his throat nervously. “If you’d like to stop by the inn?”

Excitement sparked in your chest.

“I’ll see what I can do,” you promised, a big grin on your face that was decidedly not very ladylike. “Who should I ask for?”

“Stephen,” he replied. “Ask for Stephen.”

(—)

“I can feel Amora’s magic,” Loki stated, pausing in the tunnel and looking around. “How certain are you of those wards?”

Stephen’s hand reached and lightly touched one of the intricately carved runes in the tunnel wall. He paused, his expression moving from its usual frustration in failing to recognize the pattern to surprise.

“They never faltered when I tried experimenting,” he assured the prince.

“And many Master Sorcerer’s before you have tried completely sealing the castle,” you added, finally lowering your hood to look between the men. “It’s impossible. The runes are very old magic.”

Loki said something, but you didn’t hear him, instead you were taken by surprise when Stephen turned and flipped the amulet around your neck around to study the runes carved into the back.

“By the Gods,” he murmured, holding it up to the wall. “It’s seidr.”

You looked between the two symbols. Nearly identical with a few alterations, likely given a difference between the spells, but the base characters were perfect copies.

“Impossible, seidr was eliminated before this castle was built,” Loki insisted. “My grandfather completed the task and died before Arthur Stark even dreamed of this land.”

“It’d explain why traditional magic can’t touch it,” you pointed out.

“And why you can navigate the cave system so flawlessly,” Stephen reminded you. “We’ve found wings and sub-tunnels that defy geological principals…”

“Then it’s a promising omen,” Loki stated firmly. “We continue on with our task, remove Amora and reclaim the kingdom.”

(—)

“I can’t stay for long,” you explained a few days after your initial meeting. The ball to celebrate the new sorcerer was that evening and your maid had been nagging you all morning about getting a proper bath and dressing done for the event.

She’d heard the sorcerer was quite the looker.

Gods if you cared.

“I’m due to leave tonight as well,” he replied quietly. “I wanted to give you something to remember me.”

He handed you a book, “The Complete History of the Vanir Valley”.

“I might have uh, borrowed it from Kamar-Taj before I left,” he explained sheepishly. “It’s a very good book and it mentions this region and some of the more ancient history involved with it. Given your knowledge of the geography and geology…”

You clutched the book to your chest, absolutely moved by the young man’s kind gesture. Despite only knowing him a little over a week, you’d come to respect and enjoy his company on your adventures. He’d even met Nat, who admitted she enjoyed his sharp wit and jokes- a rare acknowledgment by the hardened thief.

“Do you have to go?” you asked quietly. “There’s so much more to explore…”

“I’m due to report to my next assignment,” he kicked at a nearby stick. “I’ll write. You live near the village? I’ll send a raven when I arrive.”

“I’ll miss you, Stephen,” you mumbled, trying to blink back a few tears. This stupid boy was the first person who hadn’t looked at you and completely rejected your intelligence. He listened and discussed philosophy and magic and history and science and…

He was leaving.

“Our paths will cross again, I’m sure,” he stated with a curt nod, pausing, unsure what to do with himself. He settled on leaning in and pressing a quick peck to your cheek, his face burning bright red when he pulled away. “Goodbye.”

He murmured your name like a soft prayer before starting back down the pathway toward the village.

The entire time you knew him, Stephen never admitted if he knew you were the princess the whole time or if it had taken him by surprise as well.

But the moment you saw him enter the ball room, you had to hold onto a nearby table to stop yourself from tumbling forward in shock.

Master Stephen Strange.

“You didn’t tell me you were the new Master,” you challenged, catching him by the elbow once introductions had been made and he was mingling between rounds of dancing. You guided him toward the edge of the room, ignoring the incredulous looks and whispers being shot in your direction.

“You didn’t tell me you were the princess,” he countered, a smirk on his lips, eyes wandering toward the dancers moving across the floor.

“You already knew, you must have,” you narrowed your gaze suspiciously at him. “‘Our paths will cross again’, that was nonsense then?”

“Would you like to dance?” he offered an arm, already pulling you toward the dance floor. You relented, continuing to badger him while he hummed and didn’t directly acknowledge your accusations.

“Admit it, you knew!”

“The roasted duck is incredibly tender, is that a regional recipe or how the ducks are bred?”

“The cook marinates it for two days,” you answered briefly. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Your father mentioned your last Master called you simple?”

“In so many words.”

“Their loss is my gain, I have a phenomenal collection of books you can read if you’d like.”

“I’m not letting this go,” you started back, asking him about the collection in detail, and eventually, letting it go.

Your new friend was now your tutor and companion within the walls of the castle, as well as outside of it.

You weren’t one to tempt the fates too much.

(—)

The path into the castle from where you had entered had three break off points. One lead to the hall by your quarters, the second led to the throne room and the third led down to the kitchens.

For obvious reasons, the three of you decided on the kitchens, hoping to slip in unnoticed with the general chaos outside the castle.

Before exiting the security of the tunnel, you paused, fingers drifting over the stone walls, praying their security and strength would somehow leech into you.

“I didn’t know it was you,” Stephen murmured, leaning into your shoulder while Loki scouted ahead.

“What?” you blinked up at him.

“The ball,” he explained quietly. “When I first arrived, you asked if I knew and I didn’t. I was just as surprised as you were.”

Dumbfounded you turned to face him, chests nearly pressed together from the small space.

“You acted like you had,” you scowled at him. “I was furious for months.”

“I know,” he frowned sympathetically. “But you were so impressed, because truly, you hid it well.”

“Aside from being well read,” you challenged and he shook his head.

“There are plenty of non-royal nobles who can read a good book,” he countered softly, his hand moving to cup your cheek. “I was transfixed by such a stunning creature with an equally stunning mind. Would you believe me if I said it was love at first sight? I almost turned down the post.”

“Will you two quit it and get a move on?” Loki hissed back into the tunnel. “It’s clear.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” you whispered, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

“Gods, I’m glad I didn’t either.”

(—)

13 - a surprise

(--)

TAG LIST (LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE ADDED)

@ayamenimthiriel @ladynothing

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yurimother · 4 years

Text

LGBTQ Manga Review – Syrup: A Yuri Anthology Vol. 1

Shakaijin Yuri, stories featuring love between adult women who have left school, is a well-established corner in the Japanese Yuri market. Over the past few months, the scene started to pick up its full force in the West. English audiences are experiencing new Shakaijin series, both contemporary like Still Sick and older such as The Conditions of Paradise. For me, there are few works so prolific and intrinsic to the Shakaijin boom as Syrup. In Japanese, the subtitle reads Shakaijin Yuri Anthology. While the English release drops the subgenre's label, the content remains the same, an anthology dedicated to nothing but Yuri love stories featuring adult women from some of the Yuri industries best. However, Syrup's focus on mature and workplace stories more than piqued my interest. However, readers will likely be disappointed with this inconsistent and often forgettable anthology that is just as sour as sweet.

One of Syrup's main draws is its contributors. Some of the best in the Yuri world touched this manga, and even Western Yurijin will likely recognize a few of the names like Yukiko (Futaribeya), Itou Hachi (Kindred Spirits on the Roof), and of course Morinaga Milk (Girl Friends). It is always exciting to read a story from one of your favorites. Even I, who cares rather little for authorship, was happy to see Ohi Pikachi, who wrote the incredible Our Teachers are Dating, among the list. It also provides readers with a chance to familiarize themselves with unfamiliar creators like Amano Shuninta and Kurogane Ken, who grace the anthology with some of its best chapters.

Another benefit of having such a variety of contributors is the plethora of different art styles in the anthology. There is such a stark yet fun contrast between more mature or sensuous styles like Matsuzaki Natsumi and Ito Hachi's bubble moe characters. The manga spans almost every point between these two styles, and just flipping through the pages to look at the artwork can be a fun experience. Of course, some are more polished than others. Mochi_Au_Lait's simplistic and flat style stands as an unfortunate outlier among some other fabulous artists. However, their story, "The Cram School Teachers," is one of the funniest in the anthology. Not every story's aesthetics will suit all readers, but that is the point of a collection, to sample a wide array of talents. Fly's beautiful cover illustration wraps the fantastic art within, standing as a crown jewel of Yuri manga covers.

Unfortunately, the plot and characters are not nearly as enjoyable as the art. While a mixture of aesthetics can add to a work, different story styles often feel inconsistent. For this reason, I usually prefer collections of a single author's short stories, like Rouge Nagashiro's Eve and Eve and Morishima Akiko's The Conditions of Paradise. However, a unifying theme can often correct this issue. Sadly, a few too many of the stories seem to revel in the more "adult" allowances of adult characters and ironically created some of the most immature entries in the anthology.

Before diving too deep into the weeds of mediocrity, there are some chapters in Syrup worthy of highlight. Two of the best chapters, Shioya Teruko's "Promise" and Kurogane Kenn's "Rose Quartz" feature women in established relationships taking the next step in their relationship. Reading about these women celebrate their feelings for each other is wholesome, charming, and even sensual. The latter of the two stories is also one of the few to use adult content in a way that feels more mature. It clarifies the characters' love and attraction for each other, rather than just flashing a panel of exposed breasts for fanservice. It is great to see artists use their allowance to show a little more in profound ways while not letting it run away from them. It demonstrates admirable restraint and thoughtful writing that respects its characters.

Other interesting chapters include "Mama X Mom," which is less about the sexual relationship between two women and focuses on the character's emotional bonds in a unique situation. Ito Hachi's "First Grown-Up Love" perhaps lives up to the Syrup title the most, as it is an adorably sweet and fluffy tale of first love at adulthood. As one of the longer stories, it also has a bit more time for subtly and, thus, it includes some of the stronger and more interesting characters.

Sadly, most of the stories in Syrup are incredibly mediocre. Telling a compelling narrative with interesting characters in such a brief form, in some cases as short as six pages, is a daunting task that most chapters fail to overcome. They are utterly dull and forgetful, with characters designed with little more than maybe a job and the fact that they are interested in a woman in mind. They leave little impression, and even in the moment of reading, one finds themselves tired and wishing for the passage to end. A few tales show some modicum of potential, like Kodama Naoko's "Daily Smile," but they often end before they can get going.

A few dull chapters are acceptable, as tastes will vary, and many will enjoy some of the stories that left me utterly unenthused. However, where Syrup struggles are in its weak chapters. Some, like Yoshimura Kana's "Coward Queen," a confusing and offputting depiction of two women making a pornographic movie, and Matsuzaki Natsumi's "My Femme Fatale" revel far too much in displaying as much nudity as they can get away with before being labeled as porn. The former of these portray a lust for sadism that clashes with the rest of the primarily mundane anthology. It might even spoiler the next several chapters, as it is one of the first stories and leaves readers with immense displeasure.

There are some questionable attitudes towards boundaries and crossing lines, even outside the more salacious and exploitative stories. Depictions or descriptions of actions like staring at a woman's underwear or breasts, or awkwardly splurting out "I'm a virgin," are tossed out casually, often portrayed as romantic. Now, this manga is a work of fiction and can be enjoyed even with some more questionable aspects, as they usually are not deal breakers here. However, the dated attitudes feel like something out of an '80s comedy, not in a manga that, in all else, appears to at least attempt to hold an air of realism. This pervasive element at best makes an already struggling story worse, but it can add unpleasant notes to otherwise delightful offerings.

There is no better example of potentially compelling work squandered by its unsavory elements than Morinaga Milks "Working with an Angel." It starts pretty well, introducing readers to an entertainment agency manager with a forbidden otaku friendship with a model. However, instead of taking a more intelligent or realistic approach of the two trying to keep their growing relationship secret or a heroic, "consequences be damned," declaration of love, the story turns sleazy. The model wants to show her naked body off to the manager as the latter admits that she spies on the models while they change. Off-putting is the most generous review of this final chapter.

While Syrup: A Yuri Anthology has a few bright offerings of sweet and compelling relationship between adult women, it is incredibly bogged down by forgettable and mediocre stories. Few stories can present more than a weak premise and characters best described as "female" within their short page count. More objectionable, with a few notable exceptions, Syrup muddles its attempts to show how grown-up Yuri can by mistaking boobs and fanservice for maturity. Yes, Shakaijin stories, tales of adult women can be sexy. In fact, they should be more than willing to describe inelegance and lust; after all, for many people, that is what love is. Still, too often, Syrup forgets the heart, affection, and emotion, substituting them for cheap, uninspired story beats and characters. There are some chapters worth readers' time, but unless you are a hardcore fan of a contributor, this is an easy skip

It is challenging to award ratings for Syrup, as each story's merits vary. Some are a comfortable 8 or 9 and others a measly 2 or 3. However, the majority of the book was unobjectionable yet poorly constructed fluff, as respected in the scores below.

Ratings: Story – 5 Characters – 3 Art – 8 LGBTQ – 6 Sexual Content – 8 Final – 5

Review copy provided by Seven Seas Entertainment

Purchase Syrup: A Yuri Anthology Vol. 1 digitally in print: https://amzn.to/39ObT5F

Legally purchasing manga helps support creators and publishers. YuriMother makes a small commission from sales at no additional cost to the consumer.

#yuri #manga #reviews #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+#queer #gay #romance #art #lesbian #lesbians #wlw #girls love #gl #syrup #sweet #comics #anthology #collection #literature #books #anime

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prettywarriors · 3 years

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Ok ill bite whats the worst mg series

alright, whats the worst magical girl series in your opinion?

Thanks you two for letting me do some yelling. The obvious guess would likely be one of the recent edgelord shows right? Magical Girl Site or something similar? But nay I say, for while MGS and Day Break Illusion and such and what not generally tell you what to expect right away. Don't like super violence and suffering? Watch something else is the clear message from the get go. One of the bait and switch series then like Madoka or maybe Yuki Yuna? For what faults they may or may not have, at least these series do something and are interesting, even if you're not huge on what goes down in the series. A parody then? They range from affectionate to banned in New Zealand but regardless of quality and their feelings for MGs, it's a parody. It's a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously (plus they're usually short so you can just forget about them forever).

So what makes a series terrible then, I am sure you are asking. IMO? Setting expectations for an interesting and enjoyable series, and then dashing them to hell.

Come with me below the cut, as I talk about Key Princess Story: Kagihime Eternal Alice Rondo!

Spoilers abound so if you care about those for a 15 year old series, click away.

Background: Kagihime was a 4 volume manga that ran from 2004-2006 that was picked up for a 13 episode anime adaptation near the end of its run. The manga is created by a pair (Kaishaku) who you may know for making Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto. Kannazuki no Miko, and Steel Angel Kurumi, and the anime had a script written by the same writer (Mamiko Ikeda) for Tenshi Ni Narumon who also did some script writing for Princess Tutu and Seven of Seven. The anime also had 6 character music videos which are fairly simple but a nice addition to the series for the main girls. Discotek has been publishing the anime in the states in recent years, and the manga was brought over by *squints at book spine* Dr Master Publications.

The Premise: Girls transform and enter weird outside of reality spaces to fight each other with giant keys to take each other’s stories to create a third Alice In Wonderland story.

Well, an off-brand Alice story written by Alternate L. Takion, rather than Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson, that while the series uses all the aesthetic hallmarks of the tradition Alice, the little we see of the in universe Alice story is clearly different. Which is fine, at the end of the day, it’s still about someone who loves the Alice stories and wishes there was more, and even makes his own fanfiction version. His? Oh yeah, while the girls do all the fighting, the main character is Aruto, a teen boy who loves Alice, and for reasons we don’t know till late game, can enter the liminal spaces that the ‘Alice Users’ fight in. He chases a girl who looks like the Alice he sees in his story, who is named Arisu, and gets roped into this fanfic battle royale. He is also the older brother of the very needy Kirihara, who also ends up being and Alice User. As does Kirihara’s bff Kisa. To round out the group of enemies-turned-friends-who-will-work-together-to-collect-the-Eternal-Alice-without-having-to-fight-eachother group is a young genius researcher Kirika who wants to know more about Aruto’s connection that allows him to enter the spaces where the girls fight.

Then there’s all the other girls, some of whom still have real importance to the story and some who have a few panels or 2 scenes total. But with a whole bunch of girls to design, the creators reached out to a whole lot of other people to have them create designs! Eventually the battle gets down to the last few girls, there’s a confrontation with the guy running the whole thing, and while the anime and manga vary quite a bit the whole time, in both version Aruto ends up with Kirihara. Oh and Arisu was created by Aruto’s super imagination powers.

The Promise: Here on is subjective, particularly with what I personally saw as potential from this series. because I need you to understand how much I want to like this series.

~Alice in Wonderland themed: I know some people aren’t alice fans and that’s fine you do you but as a big alice fan this is great. We have a few alice episodes and themed characters amongst series like CCS and MGRP, and even Alice themes in other series like Tweeny Witches and Alice 19th. But damn it I am down for Alice series.

~Giant Keyyyyyyyys: Yeah yeah Kingdom Hearts but these keys are much more staff like for a lot of the characters which ads and air of elegance rather than the KH ones that for me at least feel well designed for big ol props rather than actual weapons. We also get...

~Weapon variety: It counts as a key if it’s a thorn whip that can be shaped like a key right? How about a giant pocket knife? Crossbows can also be keys. Hush. And we have this variety because

~Guest Artists: For magical girl series where we have a variety of outfits designed by different people, we have Kagihime, Uta~Kata, and uhh I guess Magia Record? But that’s a mobile game with a hella number of characters and with how mobile game works I wouldn’t count it just because it’s less the intent of the series to have variety and more the nature of having lots of girls. (Precure doesn’t count because unless I missed a memo each season’s set is still by one designer). If a series isn’t about a team and therefore doesn’t need cohesion, bringing in other artists is a great way for variety and new looks.

~The long term goal: Fighting with other people who love the same piece of media you do in hopes of creating new material that will be viewed as official? That’s just fandom nowadays. But it’s a legitimate interesting concept, and opens up so many doors for a message for the series, be it ‘what you create is no less valuable than the canon work’ or ‘it’s hard to let go when something you love doesn’t have more to it but you can still love it for what it is’ or ‘bond with the people who like the thing you like ya idiot instead of fighting about it’. The concept is interesting and there are so many narrative ways you can take this.

~Gays: Between the anime and manga, we have at least 5 wlw. Is it a magical girl series without some gays? (side note- the manga had a short thing where the MC wears a girl’s uniform and is pretty comfortable in it and while there is no way this was the intent, between that and the emphasis on the stories that live in girls and how the fight zones have no men, I’m just saying, Trans girl Aruto.)

~Greater Fairy Tale Premise: We meet a Little Match Girl based MG who is obsessed with Andersen rather than the Alice books, and touch on a Sleeping Beauty character in the manga. The manga at least implies that classic stories and fairy tale authors uh. Live on in a liminal space as immortals with world warping powers within that world and there could be opportunities for other girls in the real world to fight for Little Mermaid 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The Good: Everything has positive points, no matter how bad it is.

~Character Designs: Some of those looks slap. As do most of their weapons.

~Backgrounds: I have a strong opinion on backgrounds in anime that can be easily boiled down to old watercolor backgrounds good, modern filtered photos as background bad, and as a 2006 series, this might not be Memole nice but they’re quite attractive.

~Splash Pages: Easily my favorite thing after the designs, each chapter’s title page for the manga just has a character standing in a setting. Which is not everyone’s thing I’m sure but it’s a nice simplistic way to let the characters breathe imo. Even if at least some of the settings were deffo traced. But that’s how backgrounds work to some extent? If I ever get to the Met again, I am tracking down this exact photo, but here is a likely candidate for an example.

~Different Versions: I do not understand the need to make an adaptation that tries to be a 1:1. Kagihime had the same ideas and characters and did some of the same beats but very much had a different finale story and a lot of changes in the middle (like the Alice cops in the manga). Again, not something everyone probably wants I’m sure, but I very appreciate this, especially since the Anime kept good pace with the number of Manga chapters (reading the manga again while watching the anime at 3.8x speed just now was very interesting to see the different interpretations of events in a different medium.)

The ‘Fine’: Yeah.

~Anime Visuals: Look 2006 was still early enough into digipaint that I will give it a total pass on these. The colors are too bright but in a very bland way, the lineart is nothing interesting, and the faces are. Iffy. But it’s not total garbage to look at (probably helped by backgrounds and character designs...) it just came out in an era where not enough people knew how to stylize things to account for the weakness of the tools of the time. (It was 4 years earlier but I feel Kagihime is the polar opposite of Chobits with its painfully bland color palette while still being just. Flat. Sorry for the drive by Chii.)

~Music?: There sure were songs. Obviously, they are nothing to me.

The Bad: CW for.... somehow all the big things to an extent.

~Fanservice: Look, I am fine with fanservice, especially for a series that’s, ya know, not targeted at kids, big Mai Hime fan here even if I would recommend skipping the panty thief episode. And honestly the series generally isn’t fanservicey, at least by the modern standards of having the camera choosing under the skirt rather than an over the shoulder shot like I’ve seen plenty in other shows. Even the sexier outfits like the rose whip dominatrix aren’t bad BUT. When the girls fight. One takes her phallic key and drives it into another girls chest between the boobs while the loser cries in pain and then her book comes out and when the victor rips out pages, the loser’s clothes also rip. It is very SuperS Amazon Trio assault metaphor-y. There’s also a bit of fanservice with the sister becauseeeee....

~Incest: If you read the premise up there, first wow good job because I’m sure not re-reading that, you might have noticed I said MC ends up with his sister. As someone who is a big mythology fan and watches plenty of anime, I have a decent tolerance for your obligatory ‘oh we’re siblings but actually cousins so our feelings are okay’ or whatever the fuck Citrus has going on I don’t know that series and I don’t vibe BUT. I have limits and boy did this series go beyond that because multiple episodes are dedicated to the sister being in love with the brother? And the brother returns her feelings but knows that they are wrong so he put everything he likes in his sister into his version of Alice who, of course, physically manifests as Arisu who he creates accidentally with his uh. Magic imagination powers. But again in both versions MC still ends up with his sister. Hey, at least the manga eventually said the boy was adopted when the sister was like, 3, so if nothing else no blood relations? The anime did not ad this. -_-

~Under Utilized Characters: Arisu’s gradual revelation that she has no childhood memories because she isn’t a real person is so interesting and they don’t do nothing with it but also? That’s the kind of thing I personally would love to dig into and Kagihime, while touching on this world shattering revelation, easily loops back to So Anyway She Should Fight For The Man and to hell with developing a life or personality outside of what has been written for her. The rest of the main 5 were 2 note characters which. Could be worse? The most interesting character ends up being the child genius who accidentally murdered her childhood bestie (and/or lover? depending on version) and her coming to terms with that (the friend is alive but the version changes how and why she thinks she’s dead). Then the villain has the motivation of ‘i lost my creativity and now have become an immortal living outside of normal space and am getting girls to fight each other because that’s like a story so I’m still relevant right?’. But shoutout to the anime for then taking death of the author literally. The numerous other girls are canon fodder outside of like. The manga version of the dead gf and the little match girl.

~Battle Royale: This is not a thing I have an issue with generally. Again, but Mai Hime fan, I need to read MGRP 11, BUT by not developing the non-main girls there is no emotional connection which makes them just canon fodder and that’s boring as sin for a royale system. The initial main character fights revolve so much around the MC guy being there that they fall flat, and the 2 or 3 final battles in both versions still feel without any stakes. Also for a royale thing most of the characters don’t actually die, which cool! Neat! Except when they do? Some nobodies and a somebody are murdered (at least in the manga) and the tone never feels like it’s supposed to be upping the stakes, it’s just. Some people are dead now. And do you want to guess which of the main characters died?

~Gays: Oh boy the best friend of the brother-complex sister is in love with her and (in the manga) dies. She does apparently get better for the last chapter but the death itself is only felt by the rest of the cast for a page or two before we go back to feeling sad big brother wants to kiss his mentally generated sister clone rather than his actual sister u_u. Bury your gays is nothing new, but I wonder if it was also intended to be justified because Guess Who Is Creepy and a bit Perverted? Oh look the lesbian keeps the used swimsuit of her beloved and manipulates events to get an indirect kiss and when she sees the sister trying to strange Arisu for a moment she decides to do it for the sister? It’s not good. You want bad gay rep in a magical girl series, well here ya go. We also had a nobody in the first(second?) episode whose story pages reveal her having a kiss with a girl, and then we also have the prodigy again and- in the manga- her. Uh. childhood lover who she thought she killed but the girl has been wiping her mind over and over so prodigy remembers ‘killing’ the friend and not the she’s alive so she can keep? fucking with her? Toxic!

~Sexual Content: But wait you say, you already covered fanservice! Ah but that is sexual content for titilation. This is sexual content for dramatic backstory! The red riding hood character was sexually assaulted, another character was manipulated into sex first as a teen and then more often to ‘get into the publishing industry’, and the same writer forces some aggressive kisses on the MC. None of it is gratuitous which is nice, but also, was it necessary? Not making a new point for this but read riding hood’s dog was also murdered so unnecessary animal death gets tossed on in there.

~Male Lead: You can have a male, non magical character as the main character surrounded by magical girls. This is not how to do it. If I can make a vicious and hopefully not understood reference, Aruto is basically Tate from the Mai Hime Manga. If you understood that, I am so sorry. If you didn’t, congrats! Don’t read the manga. Or do and send me asks about the iconic final page of the first volume (18+). Anyway, this dude is boring, everything revolves around him, BUT I’ll be generous and say at least this isn’t a harem series? It looks like it out of context but it’s just a triangle with a fun attached scientist and token lesbian.

~Premise: They didn’t make good use of it. The initial goals of ‘take other girls pages from their soul books because if we get enough we unlock a third alice book’ is good! And then we add the twist that that was never going to happen and either if we get all the pages we can grant a wish, or these fights are just happening for the amusement of and asshole. Either way, yeah okay I guess. But at no point do we ever achieve this forbidden wish granting book and the asshole just. Lives. Nothing happens to him. His peers don’t even dunk on him. The only real changes from the beginning and the end of the series are: the siblings are now chill with dating, and the scientist lady won’t turn into a child in magical spaces. Oh. Yeah.

~Why did we make this adult a child sometimes?: I think we know why. Stop trying to get those types of folks to watch your already meh series. I also could have sworn at points in the past looking up images for this series I’ve seen extra art for Yuuri the Thumbelina-y Alice User that seemed like it would fit alongside anything by POP. You know, the Moetan guy. If you don’t know, god I wish that were me.

Wrap Up: I have definitely forgotten some points and am well within my rights to ad to this whenever I remember more points but uh. Yeah.

Listen you want an alice themed battle royale with nice outfits? Rozen maiden is right there. Battle Royale magical girl series that’s good with fanservice? Mai Hime. Series with different outfits while being based on a classic story? Pretear.

Hope anyone who read all of this at least got what I was saying, even if they don’t agree with it. And thanks for reading because whoops.

#why do ya'll let me write so damn many words #thanks ya'll for letting me write so many words #kagihime eternal alice rondo #long post #text #not fashion #whoops 3k words

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spockandawe · 4 years

Note

What are your favorite chinese webnovels? What are some of the differences youve noticed between cnovels and other types of novels?

That second question is really, REALLY interesting, and I really want to answer it well, and I am REALLY sure I’m going to do a bad job of answering it, so let me just noodle about that first question for a minute while I try to think XD

I went through some of my TOP-top favorite novels in more detail yesterday, but generally speaking, mxtx and meatbun are both at the top of the pack. They’re really good at writing compelling main characters and balancing piles of angst with plenty of humor and pulling everything together into a very satisfying ending (which is something I don’t alwaysssss see, even in some of the novels I really like). After them, The Disabled Tyrant’s Pet Palm Fish (transmigration, ancient chinese prince falls in love with pet fish) and Golden Stage (ancient chinese gay arranged marriage between bitter enemies(?)) are two novels that I love a lot, which both have very cute romances and go a bit lighter on the main character suffering front, and which I broadly recommend to anyone who’s interested in the genre. They didn’t end stick the landing QUITE as hard as an svsss or tgcf, but they still were very nice.

Then, let me see. I’m trying to remember which books I’ve read in the last year, and am doing a terrible job, haha. I will say that a book I enjoyed for like... eighty percent of it and then the ending let me down terribly was The Dreamer In The Spring Boudoir (modern day career woman transmigrates into barely-fantasy ancient china novel as the disliked primary wife of a nobleman), which is also the only straight webnovel I’ve read so far. The main character and romance were delightful, but that ending... haha, wow, I felt betrayed. But I did like the first half very much!! I’m idly contemplating a deliberately-partial reread. Then I’m currently like two chapters away from catching up with the current translation of The Wife Is First (ancient chinese prince lives out time travel fixit fic, determined to treat his spouse better this time around). I’m also catching up on Heroic Death System (transmigration, across MANY universes, where the goal is to die heroically in each one, and also maybeeeee to find his boyfriend in each one. this shit gets fucking bananas. in one of them, he emotionally seduces his boyfriend while he’s a dolphin. in another one, he’s a sentient mushroom. i’m in the middle of a section titled ‘I Am An Evil Pen’. yes, like a writing utensil type of pen. this is the weirdest book I’ve read so far). Oh, and Thousand Autumns (righteous sect leader gets sabotaged and loses a fight, wakes up blind and amnesiac, demonic sect leader is like ‘lol i bet i can turn him evil’ and accidentally catches feelings along the way).

What else... I’m keeping up with (but behind on) some others. First, there’s How To Survive As A Villain (modern terminally ill CEO transmigrates into stallion novel, wakes up as villain, accidentally seduces hero). Then, we’ve got Transmigrating Into The Body Of The Heartthrob’s Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend (only modern webnovel I’ve read, young man transmigrates into beginning of gratuitous whump book, back in high school, and is determined to protect the protagonist from all the canonical suffering). Then there’s Pulling Together A Villain Reformation Strategy (guy transmigrates into story as the hero’s childhood friend who will eventually become his enemy and get killed, successfully acts out his part and dies, completely fails to realize he’s broken his friend’s heart in the process... and then wakes up in another character’s body). And then there’s The Villain’s White Lotus Halo (a transmigrator keeps bouncing from universe to universe as a cannon fodder villain, who gets like half a line before being killed. he tries to purchase an upgrade package so he can be a COOL villain instead, but accidentally gets sold a ‘white lotus halo’ package instead, so that no matter what he does, everyone is just DEEPLY moved by his appearance and is positive he did nothing wrong). All of those are EXTREMELY delightful. You may notice a running transmigration theme, which....... yeah, I think there are a TON of delightful stories in the webnovel scene that deal with this genre, which seem so rare in English language media.

Which makes a good transition point to what’s different about the cnovel scene! I’ve seen hardly any transmigration stories in English, and I’ve got a couple go-to examples for when I’m trying to explain it, but like. Only a couple. Which is such a shame! Like, there’s the default idea of ‘I was reading this book and then I woke up inside the book!!’ but it’s clearly such an established genre that people are playing with it in all kinds of interesting ways, like in The Villain’s White Lotus Halo or Heroic Death System setups. It’s kind of wild to me, because it seems like such a gimme for a nice easy story structure? Whatever kind of world you want to present, there’s no need to introduce it to the reader from the ground up, or find a good way to hook them in. Either the main character read the book in question and can explain the premise and why we should care in pov, or the main character is new to the universe too, and trying to find their own footing. I enjoy it a lot! I’ve sampled transmigration books that didn’t grab me, but I’ve sampled way more that did.

And then, the one semi-technical answer I thought of to this question was the way that these novels tend to handle pov. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule that regular novels are restricted to one pov, or that pov can only change at hard breaks in the story, but if I saw a bog-standard american novel glide from pov to pov the way these novels regularly do, I would tend to wonder if it was sloppiness or a mistake, or I would grump to myself about how I don’t like omniscient third person pov. And I still don’t know exactly what I think about this, or why it’s different in here, but I’m pretty sure I like it a lot, especially for stories where the romance tends to play a large part :V

I used to read a lot of Books About Writing, and read plenty of stuff about why you don’t DO this, but.... I like it! In dtppf, Jing-wang can’t talk, and when Li Yu is a fish, he can’t talk, and drifting from one of their perspectives to the other gives me lots of useful information about how they’re both feeling. Could that be conveyed through restricted pov? Maybe! But I’m typesetting the svsss extras right now, and I’m in the bing-ge vs bing-mei section, and we get a few brief flashes of bing-ge’s thoughts, and it’s so NICE. It’s information I would not have otherwise received, because Shen Qingqiu sure wasn’t going to notice it. But early in the story, that pov was withheld from me, which also made sense (or hua cheng’s pov was withheld from me FOREVER, which makes me so sad ;u;). There don’t seem to be any hard and fast rules, which makes me really nervous about writing fic and trying to match the style, but I do like it a lot!

And I’m definitely not able to articulate this in the way that I would like to, or speak with any real authority (I’m not that widely read in the cnovel scene, and i’m not very genre-adventurous in english), but there’s something about the role that the romances play in these stories that’s different from what I’m used to expecting, and it’s VERY tasty to me. I only rarely read romance novels, because I’m not often interested in the romance as a primary plot driver, but the romances in these books play a more substantial role than I’m used to expecting. And I’m into it! It’s a balance closer to what I’d expect from, like, a shippy longform fanfic. Which covers a lot of ground and is NOT a precise measure, but there’s more emotional weight given to the romance than I would expect, but without the romance carrying ALL of the emotional weight, and it strikes a perfect balance for me in a way I’m not used to encountering. Now, some of this could definitely be due to me not finding the right authors, or right subgenres, or whatever. But in the genres I inhabit, it’s a subtle difference, but one I find compelling.

Oh, one last thing. The cultural differences, duh :P I’m only familiar with things like, say, ancient chinese court etiquette through a lens of fan-translated novels like these, and I didn’t grow up steeped in the culture in a way I’m used to the trappings of something like medieval european courts. But there’s a distinct flavor to the social dynamics of these novels, from the formal levels down to the casual, and I know it’s super intricate and detailed and that authors play with differing degrees of historical accuracy vs fictional fun, and I wish I was better equipped to speak to the nature of any of this. But I find it really compelling! I recognize that it’s only new to ME because I didn’t seek out chinese media before now. And, the point that I originally wanted to get to before I got super distracted: the flirting. The flirting and teasing are a very different flavor from what I would expect in most english language media, and I love it, even if I can’t speak to how much of that is purely cultural, and how much of it is like... the conventions of How Fiction Is Written varying by culture, if that makes sense. I adore seeing what flirting and affection and indulgence and attentiveness look like in different settings, and these books, with their heavy romantic focus, absolutely deliver.

#spock replies #long post/#i've read more novels than i thought :p #i thought it wasn't many #but then more kept occurring to me #i've only read a few that i don't recommend period but i've read a lot of good ones #Anonymous

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warrioreowynofrohan · 4 years

Text

This is similar to one of my previous posts, but it has some new elements so I’m copying it over. This is the second of my posts on the core themes of each book in The Stormlight Archive. The first, on Rhythm of War, is here.

This post contains Rhythm of War spoilers.

Stormlight Archive Themes - Redemption in Oathbringer

If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means I can’t have grown to become someone else. It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.

Redemption is a theme running through the entirety of the Stormlight Archive, but it is strongest and most central in Oathbringer- not only in Dalinar’s character arc but also in Szeth’s, in the start of Venli’s redemption arc, and - in a negative manner - in the arcs of Moash and Amaram. Oathbringer also, to my mind, encapsulates the philosophy of the entire series regarding redemption in one scene of striking symbolism.

The idea of redemption is Oathbringer is often paired, in analyses, with that of accepting responsibility for your actions - indeed, I almost titled this essay “redemption and responsibility.” And that is absolutely a necessary element that distinguishes the successful redemption arcs from the failed ones. But in thinking about it I realized that I had things in the wrong order - for both Dalinar and Venli, mercy is is what enables them to take responsibility, not the result of them doing so. They are both able to grapple with their actions and take responsibility for them, and this is what enables their redemption arcs, but in both cases it is a consequence of them already having been shown grace before they exhibited any change in behaviour.

When Dalinar visits the Nightwatcher, he has been a brutal conqueror for 23 years and then a drunk for the last five and a half. His sole redeeming characteristic is that he knows in his soul what he needs and it isn’t power or strength or to return to the man he was before Evi’s death, or the ability to blame someone else for his deed. He knows he’s guilty, and he begs for forgiveness. And what Cultivation gives him is not precisely that, but the chance to become someone better. It is crucial to remember that, while he forgets his actions and forgets Evi, that is not what asked for; his goal was not to be free of the knowledge of what he did, but the chance for it not to be the end of his story; the chance to be something other than the monster he knew he was.

When he rejects Odium’s offer to take his pain, on the battlefield outside Thaylen City, it is without any expectation of forgiveness or of freedom from his crushing guilt. Evi’s forgiveness is not something he has remotely earned or deserved, by that action or any of his actions; it is pure grace. When we talk about redemption arcs, “deserving” has nothing to do with it. Dalinar didn’t remotely deserve his. He knows this, and it’s why he’s ready to hold out the possibility of redemption to Amaram and, in ROW, to Taravangian - because if Dalinar can be redeemed, then the door is not closed to anyone. The difference is not in worthiness of redemption, but willingness to accept it.

And this is also seen in the beginning of Venli’s redemption arc. Timbre finds her and stays with her long before she’s demonstrated any positive qualities that would subgest fitness for being a Radiant. In the context of ROW, knowing that Eshonai bonded Timbre just before her death, I believe it’s because Eshonai asked her spren to look out for her sister. As with Cultivation’s gift to Dalinar, it is Venli’s bond with Timbre that enables her to become a better person, to make herself accountable to her people for her actions, to begin taking personal risks to do what is right.

Something similar is also present in Elhokar’s arc. Kaladin saves him before he’s done anything substantive to change, when Elhokar has only shown the first beginnings of recognition that he is not the person or the king that he should be or wants to be. He is capable of the change he exhibits in Oathbringer, the genuine humility and desire to serve his people, because Kaladin’s rescue gave him the chance to become that person. It’s not truly a failed or prevented redemption arc. He died, but he died trying to be better, and that matters.

The difference with Amaram, that prevents his redemption arc, isn’t that he’s uniquely evil. (Dalinar has also killed his own men, in battle-lust rather than in cold blood.) What prevents it is the rejection of the truth he knows in his soul: that he has done something horrifically evil, that he is in the wrong.

“No, he’ll never forgive me.”

“The bridgeman?”

“Not him.” Amaram tapped his chest. “Him.”

Amaram’s rationalizations during his fight with Kaladin are the consequence of him refusing the knowledge of who he is, or trying to escape from it. Ironically, Amaram previously put up quite a good pretence of willingness to accept responsibility for his own actions - he told Dalinar that after the war was over he’d be willing to stand trial for what he did to Kaladin and his men. I believe he meant it - but what he wanted, like Taravangian, was to be seen as, or see himself as, some kind of martyr, sacrificing his morality for the greater good. Which is a very different thing from the recognition that you’re wrong.

Moash’s arc is also one away from accepting responsibility - in his first chapter in Oathbringer, he feels terribly guilty for betraying Kaladin and recognizes thst he was wrong, and then he moves further and further away from this in every subsequent chapter, until Odium’s whispered lies - What happened at the Shattered Plains wasn’t my fault. I was pushed into it. I can’t be blamed. - begin to take hold. When he gives up his pain to Odium, he remains driven by the desperate need to hide from his guilt, and his campaign in ROW to drive Kaladin to suicide is driven in large part by the need to prove to himself that giving up hus pain was the only possible decision by driving Kaladin to make the same one. As long as Kaladin lives, he is proof of an alternative path. (Yes, a twisted death wish that regards this as mercy is also part of it.)

Moash, like Amaram, and Dalinar, and Venli, does receive an offer of redemption undeserved, not in Oathbringer but in the first part of ROW, in Renarin’s vision of him as someone who protects rather than destroys. He responds with terror - it can’t be possible, it needs to not be possible, because if another course is possible then his actions are not inevitable and he is responsible for them. (I know this vision has been compared to part of the magic system the Mistborn books, but to me it’s far more intuitive for it to be the Surge of Illumination, which we’ve already seen used by Shallan in a similar way in her drawings of Bluth, Gaz, and Elhokar, among others.) He spends the rest of the book trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to extinguish that possibility.

And finally we have Szeth’s redemption arc. Szeth has never been in doubt that he is morally responsible for his actions, even when he did not concieve of himself as having a choice about them. I see his arc in the prior books as something much more nuanced than “just following orders” - that’s an excuse used by people who want to get out of making hard decisions, who prefer comfort and complacency. Szeth very much did not want to be in his position as assassin - he loathed it, and himself, and was willing to do anything within his power to avoid it; after killing Gavilar, he actively seeks out a life in obscurity as menial slave, concealing his abilities as far as he can, because that means he won’t be used to kill. It’s a life Kaladin spent years trying to escape from, and it’s Szeth’s idea of a best-case scenario. Szeth is in the position of desperately wanting choice, but conceiving of it as a privilege that he no longer possesses. I thimk this is connected to the meaning of Truthless - the underlying concept/rationale for the oathstone seems to be that literally anyone - any random person in the world - is capable of malimg better choices than you, so they, and not you, get to decide what you should do with your life. It’s near the end of his arc in Oathbringer - But it had always been nothing more than a rock - that he at last recognizes that he did have a choice about his actions.

Szeth, in his arc in Oathbringer, is very much motivated by the desire to do what is right and make right decisions, thpugh he is very out of practice at making any decisions at all. In the first test of the Skybreakers, he perceives that there’s something more important going pn that just chasing after wretched criminals, and that the warden’s immiseration of them is the worst crime of all. But it’s the second Skybreaker training session, with the practice fight using the balls of coloured dye, that gives us what I think is the heart of the theme of redemption both in Oathbringer and in the Stormlight Archive as a whole.

The contest feels a little out of place and low-drama - the recruits’ first test is killing criminals, and their second one is a game? But I believe it is absolutely crucial via the metaphor it communicates. Szeth starts out diing very well in the game - no one has hit him yet - and is actually enjoying himself for the first time in many, many years. And then he thinks this: He could not be happy. He was only a tool of retribution. Not redemption, for he dared not believe in such. If he was to be forced to keep living, it should not be a live that anyone should ever envy.

Other characters either accept both responsibility and redemption, or reject both. Szeth accepts responsibility, accepts guilt, tries to do right, even without the belief that redemption is possible.

And immediately after thinking that, he gets hit with the dye for the first time. He was doing well in the game when he was enjoying himself; now, when he rejects the possibility of redemption, he stops doing so well, and ultimately loses. Almost as if the universe were trying to tell him something.

And then, when he is bombarded with dye, runs out of Stormlight, and falls into the Purelake at the end of the exercise, he realizes something. It’s not actually about how many stains you have. He washes them off in the Purelake. And he wins the game.

To me, especially knowing Brandon’s religious background (and being a Christian myself), this is extraordinarily powerful symbolism of baptism, of the washing away of sin and entry into new life. It is stating the theme of redemption for the whole series. How many stains you have, what you’ve done in the past, doesn’t matter for redemption; what matters is whether you’re willing to accept redemption, accept the mercy that is offered, choose to be a new person. There is no such thing as being beyond redemption. The heroes of the story are not some perfect ideal, not the ones who manage to pick up very few stains. They are the ones who are willing to recognize that they have them and to wash them off; to recognize the wrong they have done and to change.

#brandon sanderson #the stormlight archive #rhythm of war #row spoilers #rhythm of war spoilers #dalinar #szeth #venli #moash #elhokar #redemption

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dayseternal-blog · 3 years

Note

If you ever finish answering all of yours awaiting asks...

45 questions for you 👀

https://myaekingheart.tumblr.com/post/650107314353897472/fic-writer-ask-game

Lolllll BADLUCKBREBIS, you are so funny.

Inspiration and Reading Asks:

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction?

It looks like I started writing in 2017. I've been reflecting recently on how there are so many regularly active writers now compared to in 2017-2018. It was the tail-end of some of my fave writer's activity within fandom. Utsus was posting less and less. The Tumblr NaruHina fandom seemed to disappear, a whole community of writers left for other things (matchaball, nekomamoru, magmawrites, cherryjutsu, spyder-m, tenney-shoes, eliphya, among others). 2018 was a very quiet year, but! I avidly read katarinahime and bunnyhoodlum's works! In 2019, quirrrky restarted things with NaruHina Week!

2. How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both?

Recently I’m primarily a reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because there's so many writers now!!!!!!!!

3. Are there any fics that inspired you to write what you do?

Yeah, let’s list them. “A Special Friend” by agitosgirl inspired “Nightdreams. “Medicine” by @grimmjowkurosakidrake inspired “White Lilies. “Torch Song” by @mmmbuttery inspired “About You.” The language in “Unless the World Were to End” by @bunny-hoodlum inspired the language in “That was the plan.” “In Between Drinks” by @peppercornpress inspired “In Between Drinks NH.”

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

“Operation: Bring Home Naruto” by Dragonwannabe - Rated T, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Complete. Hinata's been assigned the mission of getting Naruto back home safely after his last dangerous assignment. But can she handle the undercover identity as his girlfriend that she’d been given without revealing her true feelings for him?

“The Mission” by Lunawraythe - Rated M, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. It wasn't that Hinata never expected to work with Naruto, just never on a mission quite like this.

“The Loving Type” by @peppercornpresses - Rated M, Canon-Divergent, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. A few years have passed since the Fourth Shinobi War, in which...Rookie Nine steadily advances in rank. Naruto gets engaged. Hinata leaves Konoha. And Kakashi schemes for days.

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

ahhh. I do have quite a few pet peeves. If the fic is Canon-Compliant or Canon-Divergent, I expect Naruto and Hinata to behave like Japanese people. Say what you want, but the Naruto Universe is definitely Japanese in my book. So that means no shoes in the house. Nothing rattles me more than reading Hinata taking her sandals off before climbing into bed. Like, what? she was wearing her outdoor shoes indoors this whole time??

mmm... another pet peeve is when the writer describes Hinata in a kimono, but it sounds like an American Halloween costume, like the slutty version, instead of an actual kimono.

mmm... and the other big pet peeve I have is when it’s Hinata’s first time eating ramen because Naruto is showing her the wonders of ramen. lol. why. how. in what world would a Japanese person make it to their teenage years without ever eating ramen.

I have a bunch of other little pet peeves regarding Japanese culture in fanfics. But in general, it doesn’t stop me from reading the fic if I'm already in the middle of it. I’ll continue reading it and will probably recommend it to other people anyway. If I can tell based on the summary, then it's not for me, and I don't read it. If this makes anyone feel nervous about writing fanfiction, that's not my intention! I would also be happy to be a sensitivity reader if necessary.

6. How do you find new fic to read? Where do you primarily read fanfiction?

I primarily read fanfics on AO3 and ffnet. I find new ones by constantly checking the Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto tag on AO3 or looking into a writer’s favorites list on ffnet.

7. Do you prefer to read short fics or long fics?

Short fics.

8. How often do you reblog/comment on fics that you like?

I reblog pretty often. I don't comment as often as I used to😕 I used to comment on every fic I liked.

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community.

Uhh?? Idk. I think recently the writing group here is pretty tight, everyone seems to know everyone.

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

Naruto fandom and NaruHina.

Fanfiction Writing Asks:

11. How do you come up with your fic titles?

I usually take it from words used in the story or from the prompt.

12. Tell the author your favorite fic title of theirs (not the fic, strictly title). Author: what’s your favorite title you’ve come up with and why?

I think...maybe "Tell Me of Forevers" or "Nightdreams." I like those because they aren't taken word-for-word directly from the story, but touch on a theme in the story.

13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?

Yes, I outline. They wouldn't get a headache, I think. It's usually just a summary.

14. Do you have a personal word minimum that you hold yourself too? Why or why not?

Nope. I didn't know people do that.

15. Tell the author your favorite fic of theirs. What’s your (the author’s) favorite fic you’ve written?

My favorite fic continues to be "It's No Secret."

16. Do you research for your fics? If so, how deep of a rabbit hole have you gone down by accident when researching?

Yes, I do. I've done historical and folktale research for "Little Samurai." I did area/location research for "Last Chance." I did historical research for "About You." I did fairy tale research for "Catskin." I did a ton of astronomy research for "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl." And I did lighting research for "Inspo." I go pretty deep.

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback?

I don't. I usually have something else I need to do or I go to bed.

18. Do you have a WIP that you keep telling yourself you’ll eventually get back to, but deep down you know that’s probably a lie?

I actually think I can finish all of mine if I just try.

19. Do you edit your fics after you write them, or do you prefer to just hit post and run (because it’s someone else’s problem now)?

I always edit before posting to AO3. Anything I post directly on Tumblr might not be edited.

20. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

Posting!

21. What’s your least favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

Starting a new chapter.

22. Do you take fic requests? If so, for what characters and why?

On occasion. If someone sends me a request, I'll think about writing it. Sometimes I do write and post it, sometimes I leave them in my drafts for a better day.

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?

From what I already have posted, probably friends-to-lovers, secret relationship/forbidden love, or high school au. I don't think I have an intentional favorite.

24. What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write?

Public humiliation / public degradation.

25. Do you listen to music as you write? If possible, link your writing playlist.

No, not usually.

26. What’s your biggest distraction when writing?

Tumblr feed, all the pictures to scroll through mindlessly.

27. Do you like to give your readers some warning of what might be coming or just slap them in the face with content at random?

lol, whatever is fine.

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)?

Well, pressure to update is not a big deal to me. I do this for fun, so I don't think I unnecessarily pressure myself too much. With negative comments, I don't get too many of those, and I think I do my best to avoid situations where I might get negative feedback.

29. Have you ever written for an exchange or event of some kind? Which one(s)? Did you enjoy it?

Yeah, I like the events. My favorite was NH2020, the year-long one last year. I also enjoyed the Secret Santa last year since @badluckbrebis was my giftee.

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

haha😈

Ecstasy slides through his veins, blooming over his mind, cocooning him in pleasant sensations, cum shooting out in eager twitches against hot, milking flesh.

31. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

Naruto Uzumaki, always.

32. Copy and paste your top three favorite lines/jokes/sentences you’ve ever written. What fics do they come from?

Top 3 faves in order:

That was the plan: "She shifts in his arms, and cloth and cleavage come pillowing up to his face, and he’s certain that she’s scooped from the same puffy stuff his adolescent daydreams were made of."

Tell Me of Forevers: "What he wouldn’t do to inspire every blush, every smile of hers for an eternity when such moments already only speak “forever” to him."

White Lilies: "Whether at his feet, in his eyes, ears, mind, if not reaching his heart, she never landed anywhere. (It’s okay.)"

I consider "White Lilies" to have my technically best writing, so it was kind of hard to choose just one line from that fic! But I decided that one's my favorite line from the whole story.

33. What do you like writing better: one shots or multi-chapter stuff?

One-shots.

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?

A lot of my life experiences are in my writing. Hmm, I think readers probably think I'm...hmm...either empathetic or really perverted?

35. How much has writing fic changed your life?

I spend a lot less time on real-life social media than before.

36. Are there any fics or fandoms you’re embarrassed to have written or been part of?

I'm kind of embarrassed of "Honeymoon at the Hot Springs" lol. It's fine.

37. Give an update on your current WIP - if you don’t have one, give a sneak peek to a title or idea that you have and would like to write.

My current WIP is that A/B/O fic I started for February Smut Month Prompts: Sweet as Candy or Love Bites. I'm going to title it "Sweet As," and it'll be about how Naruto and Hinata become Alpha/Omega mates. It's really kinky, really smutty, and totally what I would want to read.

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?

uhh???? a 1?? I've never once thought of my writing process as chaotic. Ahh, then I think of bunnyhoodlum's multiple drafts for the same chapter, and I realize that there exist types of writing processes that I would not be able to handle...

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

My smut.

40. How did you come up with the idea for [x fic]?

41. What’s your most popular fic (with the most notes on tumblr, most hits/kudos on ao3)?

Idk about Tumblr,,, maybe White Lilies got the most attention here. My most popular fic is Nightdreams on AO3.

42. Asker: pick three of the author’s works. Author: rank them 1 (the best) - 3 (the worst) based on whatever criteria you want - this could be something totally random that isn’t quality related (like simply ranking fics based on how many trains appear in them) - have fun!

43. Talk about a positive experience with fanfiction or the fanfiction community that you will always remember.

I will always remember how people congratulated me for finishing White Lilies😭 Also, when peppercornpresses made that FIRST art of my story, I just, I just stared at it all day.

44. Rant about something writing related.

hmmm, I don't feel like ranting about anything. I just recently ranted about my pet peeves above.

45. Fic specific questions - if you have any weird questions about specific works, here’s your shot to ask them!

I did them all! Nice questions.

#anon #*anon*#fic writer ask game #i will send these questions right back at you

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alfredosauce50 · 3 years

Text

What makes me human [Cyberpunk! America x reader] 11

Wordcount: 5,150 Rating: M for strong language, ideologically sensitive and mature themes, gore “In a society that normalizes cybernetic enhancements, many forget what it is to be human. He never did.” Chapter synopsis: Allen and Arthur race to find you both, but it proves to be harder without knowing your whereabouts. Meanwhile, you've successfully helped Alfred find the chip. Before leaving, you have a long-awaited conversation with your father to realize he's more insane than you thought. The reader is referred to as she/her.

Songs to listen to while you read (in order as found in playlist): Cyberninja, Trouble finds trouble, Tower Lockdown, Me!Me!Me!, Pt. 2, Him & I (with Halsey), Atlantis. I have indented song titles throughout the chapter so you can change accordingly. Starting now:

Cyberninja

Before Arthur could even buckle himself in, Allen rammed his foot into the gas pedal. He was thrown back in a violent manner, and hit his head against the headrest. But the mechanic never complained. He looked stressed enough as is, continually scanning the road while murmuring to himself as if he’d really gone mad. “Hell, that motherfucker could be anywhere in the whole fucking city right now.” He hissed, pulling out of the driveway and into the main road.

“We can’t call him. Track him. Nothing. Same goes for (F/N). They’re off the map.” Turning to his companion numerous times in distress, he sped through the streets, though he had no particular destination in mind.

The indicator clicked. Allen cursed at the car in front of them, but never made a move to overtake. As Arthur became overwhelmed by these stimulants, he opened his mouth, defeated. “If you’re in such a hurry, why--why bother following traffic rules? You never have before, so why now?” He asked with a shake of the head, earning a loud scoff from the other.

The car windows glowed with a flurry of pinks and purples as they moved closer to the commercial district. They were near their first stop.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t give a damn if I didn’t have to.” The whites of his eyes reflected a mosaic of color as he never looked away from the road. “But that was when I was working for my boss. I had protection. I could do a hit and run if I wanted, and without the running part.” The redhead breathed. Then, he stuck his head out of the window with a huff. Immediately, he was choked by the city smog, and deafened by the blaring of car horns.

“Friggen’ prick...” He flipped off the driver in front of him. Sitting back into his seat, he flashed Arthur a grin, though the man couldn’t return the energy.

“Did you get fired? Or did you quit?” This wasn’t the best time to ask about the past, but he had been dying to know why he wound up half-dead on his doorstep. So what better a time to do it than now?

“I quit.” Allen answered point-blank. “Old man didn’t take it well. Decided to kill me. Didn’t.” Slowing the vehicle, they arrived at a parking-lot surrounded by backdoors of multiple piss-poor establishments. One of which was illuminated by a flickering red neon sign that read ‘no-tell motel’.

“He thinks I’m dead, so the rest of the city has to think that too.”

Arthur gawked at him. “That makes you no better than a fugitive! And it’s not just anybody after you--Allen, he’ll kill you when he finds out you’re still alive!”

“And that’s why he won’t find out.” Tapping the side of his neck for a flap to open, the said man slotted a small disk inside. “Disables cybernetic upgrades in a twenty foot radius. Means I can’t use mine, but it stops other people from figuring out who I am.” He dug through one of the compartments for a muffler, which he wrapped around the bottom half of his face.

What he did next was alarming, however. Sticking his hand further in, he pulled out a gun and cocked it.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hell are you doing--!?” Arthur exclaimed, fumbling with a face mask Allen tossed his way. He didn’t see a silencer anywhere either. “If I can call the police without any upgrades, so can everyone else!”

His statement couldn’t ring any truer, and yet, it never slowed down the other’s movements as he climbed out of the car. Unsatisfied by his silence, he wound up getting out to follow him. “Oi, say something! At least let me know you’re not gonna shoot up a restaurant!” Whispering that part out, he had to speed up a few steps to catch up with the man, now marching to the backdoor of a motel.

“Put the mask on.” Allen murmured without sparing him a single glance. But he paused briefly to process what he said. “... A motel, you mean. But I’m hoping we won’t have to resort to that.”

Arthur’s eyes went round. “You were considering--”

He could share the desperation to save Alfred’s life, but he had a hard time following how. Shooting up a motel? What was he thinking?

“Yes.” Attaching his hand to the door, it creaked open. Before Allen took another step, he faced him with a serious glower. “Now when we get inside, I want you to walk up to the receptionist. He’s programmed to greet you. Ask him for a room, and while you do, I’ll approach him from behind and deactivate him. Kapeesh?”

But then again, he was in the dark here. Arthur hadn’t the slightest clue on what Alfred’s circumstances were, as mysterious as the man was, so he had no idea how he was on the verge of dying.

So naturally, he wouldn’t know how to save him either.

But he trusted Allen to know what to do.

“... Alright. You better not make me regret this, you tyke.”

“You can call me anything you want, just not that. I’m not a kid anymore.” Those words would become apparent as they walked inside, where their plan went by without a hitch. They heard the automated voice of superficial kindness, which stopped abruptly to the sound of an android powering off. Its body fell to the ground to reveal Allen standing behind. Without wasting a second, he leaned over and typed furiously on the keyboard of the computer.

Trouble finds trouble

“Lemme see if this has a log of everybody who came by...” A few moments later, he started nodding at what he saw. “Bingo...” On their private encrypted server, stored the history of all the guests who booked a night. “Well, what do you know... Alfred checked out two days ago. But he’s on the move.” Pulling away to stand up straight, he jogged over to the exit.

“Even if someone tried to look for him in one a’ these places, he’d have to get behind the reception and do exactly what I did.” This someone referred to Matsumoto, but death already followed Alfred wherever he went. Not that Alfred knew that. “The perks of a no-tell motel. Even if they reek of piss, so long as there’s crime, they’ll never go out of business.” He beckoned Arthur to follow him with a tilt of the head.

“One down, twenty-seven more to go. And that’s only in the direction he’s going... And under the assumption he’s only staying at these motels. So, uh, let’s hope he didn’t try to be too unpredictable.”

The Brit huffed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“I think he’d be predictable to do that if you asked me.” He murmured. “But you call the shots. I’ll just be... Moral support.”

Allen already disappeared out the door, but his head poked into the doorframe at that. “Nah. You have the most important job outta’ the both of us.”

That was right. He didn’t tell him yet. He really should’ve a while ago, but he got caught up in the chase.

“Whether you remove a chip from his head or not will determine if he lives or not.”

Arthur paled.

“He’s the guy my boss wanted me to kill. Remember the dude I told you about? The one who tried to steal a prototype chip three years ago?” Now that he mentioned it, he recalled the conversation a few weeks ago. But wait a minute.

The mechanic felt his face scrunch up as he was hit with a major epiphany. That was Alfred? The terrorist Allen had been updating him about? He was the man who tore up three floors of the headquarters of Matsumoto Optics, and simultaneously, the same customer he had been serving for the last few years.

Before he could even process his shock, he was presented with even more appalling information.

“He stole it this time. That’s what he and (F/N) disappeared to do. But now that it’s in his head, it’ll overwrite his consciousness until he’s a fucking vegetable.”

Arthur was horrified. “Then why would he even--”

“Because he doesn’t know.” Allen cut in with a grim expression. “He thought the chip was supposed to give him immortality, so he wanted to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Like my boss. But no. It’s the opposite. It was all a ploy to kill him.” At this point, the blonde was at loss for words. As a doctor and mechanic, he was quite frankly terrified of how devilishly clever Matsumoto was. But he couldn’t expect any less from him, could he?

They made it back to the car, and he could only stare aimlessly out the windshield, paralyzed.

“That’s why we need you.” He heard him say. Turning to the man, albeit slowly, he felt a hand slap down on his shoulder. Allen gave him a lopsided grin. “You’re the smartest guy I know, second to my boss. You were always great at fixing stuff. Cars, enhancements, people--so what’s a mixture of all three?”

Arthur dug a hand through his hair stressfully. “... You’re kidding.” And yet, he already knew he was on board. “... Are you calling him a car?”

The other flattened his lips. “... He technically could be.”

“Just to be clear, I fucking hate you.”

Allen laughed. “Sure.”

“But otherwise, we’re wasting time.” He couldn’t believe the words falling from his lips. This was really happening, wasn’t it? After taking him in as an apprentice for his auto shop, the roles were finally reversed. He no longer took charge as the teacher. Or rather, he became the student caught up in the most difficult assignment yet. Having a taste of Allen’s work.

“That’s what I’m talking about!”

***

Tower Lockdown

You had all the reasons in the world to be anxious coming home.

On top of worrying over Alfred, who had hundreds of trained assassins coming at him all at once, during every minute of the heist, you had to face an aspect of reality you avoided until now. You were in the building, and he had already stolen the chip. It was slotted comfortably in his head, ready to leave the premises.

How come your father never appeared? Was he really just going to let you go just like that?

But the real question was this--should you stay or leave?

Yes, you hardly approved of anything he’d done. Done to the world like Alfred always mentioned, and to Alfred himself. But you weren’t prepared to abandon him yet. He was still your father, and the only family you had. If you had to make a decision, you needed some closure. If not, a discussion.

And you expected him to give it to you as the least he could do.

As Alfred stood among a pile of dead bodies bathing in red, his mantis blades trembled against a katana blade. Even with his hands full, he made the time to check on you. “(F/N)! Stay away from walls! Just hang on for a second longer!” He shouted, turning to you briefly before diverting his attention back to his opponent. “We’re nearly home free!”

Pulling away to give him a swift jab in the chest, blood sprayed onto his face, but he wasn’t fazed.

What did, however, was the sight of you being thrown over the shoulder of one of the bodyguards. Color drained from his face and he burst into a sprint.

“(F/N)! No!” Watching you disappear into an elevator, he slammed right into the closing metal doors. “Fuck!” He slammed his fist against them to hear a loud bang. Before he could linger too long, he hastily made his way to a door adjacent. The emergency stairs would take a hell lot longer, but as if he’d wait for the elevator to come back down.

Even if he needed to climb up a hundred flights to get to you, he would--all the way to the penthouse where Matsumoto was.

When those men approached you, there was no struggle on your end. You knew where they were going to take you. And you wanted them to. It could even be said you were relieved, because that meant your father was thinking of you. After a minute or so, the soft whirring fell silent, followed by a soft ‘ding’.

They moved outside the elevator, and after a few steps, they set you down on your feet. Right in the middle of your father’s office. At the very end behind a desk sat the man himself, and he was eyeing you with an unreadable expression. Upon returning his stare, came an onslaught of emotions. But the most prominent was incapacitating anxiety.

Even as his daughter, you could never see through him. He was impossible to read. So you had no idea what to expect.

“Dad... We need to talk.” You began, walking up to him warily. This was what you wished for at the start, cried for, even. To return home. And yet, the nervous pounding in your chest seemed to worsen with every step you took. It was jarring to confront how much had changed since then. So while you barely managed any words, you were already overwhelmed, struggling to choke back tears.

“For once, I need to know what you’re thinking.”

He inhaled deeply before responding. “I was under the same impression that we’d have this conversation.” Standing up from his chair, he furrowed his brows at the sight of you clenching the fabric of your pants. “Don’t look so nervous, child. You haven’t done anything to anger or disappoint me.” Reaching out to your head, he settled a hand on it.

“... Really?” You whispered out. Hearing his assurances calmed you down a touch. But when you saw the forlorn gaze he cast down at you, your heart was crushed. “... Dad?”

Me!Me!Me!, Pt.2

Any existing contempt for him melted away just like that, but you weren’t upset at yourself for it. Your father hardly expressed any emotion besides calm indifference. And when he did, it always felt like the world was ending.

“I’m the one who deserves your anger.” He clarified, lowering his hands to your shoulders. “I’ve left you by yourself for far too long, (F/N). I hope you don’t hold it against me that you had to come home yourself.” You hung your head, unable to meet his saddened gray eyes. If you were to hold a grudge at him for it, you’d start by avoiding his gaze. “And I understand why you would’ve wanted to help him. He has a way with words, and a naïve sense of justice. But it’s a warped perception of reality.”

You’d hate to admit it, but no matter how cruel he seemed to be, there was a method to his madness.

And you were perhaps the only person in the world to know it.

That was why you were so torn. Torn between hating him and understanding him. After all, you couldn’t have both. “You can’t blame him after what you did to him.” Glancing up at that, you felt bile rise in your throat. Then, your vision blurred. “I don’t know what you’re aiming for--for this company, and this world. But you can’t expect him to accept this world you created when you stole him from his. He had a life!”

Staring at him through hot tears, he breathed out a soft sigh before rubbing them away with a swipe of the thumb. “I’m not asking for your forgiveness. And I won’t expect you to forgive me even after telling you the reasons for my actions.”

He pulled away from you to begin walking back to his desk, but not to sit down. Instead, he stood by the window to watch the blinking lights of skyscrapers and small moving dots of cars on the streets. “In a society that normalizes cybernetic enhancements, many forget what it is to be human. He never did. So of course, he would reject the idea of immortality. The destruction of the most human quality there is.”

He paused briefly to scan the landscape.

“Mortality. One’s inevitable end gives everything they do meaning.”

Wrinkles creased between your brows. It was confusing to hear him speak so highly of death, frustrating, even. Wasn’t he the one investing billions into correcting it like a flaw? “If that’s what you really think, then why? Why would you make something that would take that all away?”

He held his hands behind his back. “To serve the greater good. A sacrifice, if you will.” The man turned to you, this time with a serious glower. “Alfred thinks I would commercialize it. Sell it to the public. But he’s wrong. Immortality will only be available to the leaders of the world.”

By leaders, you could only assume he meant people like him. Not politicians, but business men and women. Company owners. The most powerful forces of the present. “The inability to die is a curse. You never move on because you’re still breathing. But that may be just what the world needs. Stagnation. An absence of change.”

It was daunting to know this man was your father. You couldn’t say you were born with half as many of these attributes he had. Intelligence was easily passed down, but there was something else written in his genes you could never dream of having. “With every passing year, decade, and century, humanity frays like a rope. Society continues to deteriorate... All until self-destruction becomes a matter of time.” Facing the window again, he scanned the impressive architecture he was proud to call his own. And it looked as pristine as it did yesterday.

“The only way to stop this was to take control of it myself. And that’s how I came to found this company. I’ve found a way to govern the people. To invest in science as the world’s last and only hope. But it’s a job that will last eons, so I was prepared to do it until the end of time.”

He was right in saying that society was inevitably doomed with the direction it was heading. That technology was the only solution, along with a world government. Matsumoto Optics. A cosmocracy with jurisdiction over the whole planet. There would be no wars. No conflict. And with only one state to call the shots, things could be done so much faster on a global scale.

It was a radical concept to grasp, but you couldn’t say there was no logic to it. “Alfred was meant to do it with me. To reincarnate again and again as my closest aide on my quest to preserve the world. But he ended up being the opposite. My foil.” Matsumoto shook his head. “Alfred is a nostalgic soul. He’s too attached to the past. But the way of the old can never last with how fast it makes the world burn. Even if he realized that, he would want to exact revenge on me after what I’ve done to him.”

“So before he destroys everything I’ve created, I have to destroy him first.”

Him & I (with Halsey)

You tensed up all over, but before you could ask him what he meant by destroy, the doors burst open. The very subject of the conversation had appeared, and just in time for the conclusion of it. His arrival caught you completely off guard, successfully derailing your train of thought, but your father merely acknowledged his arrival. “Ah. Speak of the devil.”

“Speak for yourself, you fucking demon.” He spat, marching over to your side to pull you into his chest. Immediately putting his hands all over your face, he was riddled with concern as he inspected you. “You okay? I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you in time. What are you still doing here? C’mon, let’s go.” While he reached down to your hand to lead you away, you stayed put.

As relieved as you were to see him here, you couldn’t follow him out yet. You gave his hand a squeeze, then a soft smile of reassurance. Then, you turned to your father.

This time, you held him in a firm stare.

“Even if everyone thinks you’re crazy, I always knew you’d have some kind of justification for everything.” You started. Little did you know, you would take back this statement in the very near future. “But I can’t forgive you for what you did to Alfred. He never ended up doing anything you wanted him to, so giving him all those adjustments was pointless for you. But not for him. If you wanted to get rid of him, it wouldn't be easy.”

Matsumoto closed his eyes as if to agree. That was what you interpreted it as, at least. But unbeknownst to you, he was doing anything but. “I wouldn’t know what’s best for this world.”

“But what I do know is that I won’t let you hurt him.”

You spoke those words with a conviction so strong, Alfred’s eyes widened when he heard it. It wasn’t news you cared deeply for him, but to hear you say it to your father like that, and Matsumoto, no less, it made his mechanical heart pound more than he could fathom. You were actively disobeying him, a man you previously revolved your life around, for his sake. To say he was infatuated would be an understatement.

You felt his grip on you tighten.

“Say what you will, and I’ll respect your conviction. But I will come for him.” The bearded man murmured in a foreboding tone. A sinister light glinted in his dark gray irises. “And in the most unexpected way he could ever imagine. You will never want to see me again when that happens.”

“If.” Your voice was a little strained. As much as you wanted to hate him and move on, you couldn’t. Every single fiber of your being was urging you to find a reason, any reason, to not despise the man who raised you. “If, dad. Because if you did, I really will never forgive you. I’ll hate you forever.”

A grim expression contorted at his face. In his many decades on the planet, he’d never felt more dread. But one had to wonder if that was the right word. The regret had already arrived, because he’d already done something unforgivable. It was only a matter of time before you’d find out. “I’ve already done something to earn your unconditional hatred, child.”

That was right. He’d killed Allen, your best friend and only other semblance of family in your life. And perhaps, the person you held the closest to your heart. “Soon, you will learn what it is. So I’ll let you leave today because you will never want to come back. I’d imagine that to be more… Convenient for you.”

It was only your ignorance that blessed him this last moment. The last moment where you’d see him as your father with eyes unclouded by hatred. But it was short-lived.

It didn’t take long for you to put two and two together, and in your short silence, you came to remember someone that had been gone for a while. Allen.

Atlantis

You woke up in a cold sweat. For just one measly second as you oriented yourself, you weren’t tortured by a fury. Betrayal. Disgust. But it all came rushing back to you like the memories of that Godforsaken day you met with your father.

Sitting up with a deep frown, you felt heat build up around your face. It would be etched in your mind forever. The memory of Allen laying in the dump. Tossed out like a broken toy. Then, the stench of blood and rust as he was left for dead.

You always knew your father was mad, but he kept on surprising you with how mad he was. Turning to the figure beside you, tears only overwhelmed your waterline to see his chest rise and fall steadily.

He was still here. Alive and well. You could only hope the same for Allen.

It had been ten days since the heist. There hadn’t been a single sign of Matsumoto or his men, meaning Alfred really did do his research on the best places to hide. Climbing onto his form, you wound up laying on his chest. Then, you peered down at his sleeping face.

As you got comfortable, you felt a smile creep onto your lips. If the you from a few months ago saw what you were doing, she’d be flabbergasted. Since when did you like him this much?

Your cheeks grew a little rosy as you became self-aware of the position you were in. Full-on embarrassment hit you when he began to stir, but before you could get off of him, his eyes fluttered open. Uh oh. Now this warranted an explanation.

For a second, he was confused, but when he saw that it was just you, he grinned lazily. “Morning, babe. Care to tell me why you’re not sleeping on your side of the bed?”

He’d totally cornered you. And did he just call you babe? “Um... I, well... I woke up on you, so don’t get the wrong idea. I was just about to get off.” Sliding yourself off of him at that, you tried your damndest to simmer down. But he never gave you the chance. Rolling over to face you, he pulled you in around your waist much to your surprise. “Hey!”

You never got around to pointing out that pet name, either.

He caught you in a serious stare. “Don’t be so shy. We’re close, aren’t we?” Alfred was never one to beat around the bush. You knew that better than anyone, but that didn’t mean you were used to it. Lowering your head at that, you fixated on his chest.

“... I guess so. That doesn’t mean I can sleep on you like that, though. And plus, it must’ve been uncomfortable.”

“Nah. You’re light as hell.” He hummed. Sitting up with you on his lap, his statement became more apparent in how effortless he made it seem. “You’re like a few grapes, really. So don’t worry about it.”

Why he chose to focus on that part of your argument was beyond you. Did he really not see anything wrong with what you were doing? Or maybe he did, and didn’t want to mention it. He’d been hugging you a lot lately the past week, but that wasn’t as deserving of your attention as spooning you while he slept.

Wasn’t he pushing the envelope? It would make sense he was just trying to comfort you after your run-in with your father, and your discovery that he was the one who attempted to off your best friend. But wasn’t this a bit much?

He wrapped his arms around your neck. There was nothing between you both, and yet, he was holding you like there was. Like you were his.

"...” It was in his smile. It was different to how he always looked at you, as if there was finally something behind those electric blue irises. Something alive. Something hot. As you played around with the idea, you lit up like a Christmas tree and pushed his mouth away. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Almost as if he read your mind, he relented. But only reluctantly. Picking you up from under your arms, he set you onto the mattress so he could get out of bed. Looking back at you over his shoulder, he gave your cheek an affectionate pinch. “Whatever you say. I’ll be back after a piss.”

When he left the room, you were left to your own devices. As you brought your knees to your chest, you came to realize how tight it was. He’d only left for a few seconds, and you were already waiting for him to return. It was ridiculous to think about, but it was almost as if you missed him. Already.

Did spending all this time with him give you some kind of separation anxiety?

Or was it something more?

You couldn’t tell.

The fact that he mentioned ‘I’ll be back’ suggested he was aware of your attachment to him. You buried your face into your knees.

Turns out, you weren’t the only one having a hard time processing your feelings.

When he disappeared into the bathroom, he pressed his back against the wall. Reaching up to his chest, he scrunched up a part of his shirt as the pounding in his heart subsided--his metaphorical one. Alfred didn’t think it was weird to find you on top of him like that, let alone dislike it. In fact, he loved it. It gave him a shred of hope that maybe, you did like him the way he liked you.

But that didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t be with you.

This was the fifth motel he’d been to after the heist. There was no saying he’d be dead by the end of the day. Not when your father was after his head. So he wasn’t about to start anything. That would be too selfish, even for him--though one had to wonder if ‘selfish’ could even describe him anymore. He was anything but. At least, for you he wasn’t.

Alfred would only be proven right when he took a step towards the toilet. His vision started to glitch. Then, he lost his balance, falling over the sink and slamming his head against the mirror. “Fuck--!” Stumbling back onto his feet, he was engulfed in black for a few seconds. What the hell was going on?

His bout of disorientation lasted for far too long to be normal.

Before he would start accepting the prospect of going blind, his vision returned. He thought he would celebrate that moment, but he forgot what he was even fussing about. What happened? Lowering his gaze to his hands, he stared at them for a while before looking back up. What was he doing here? Where was he?

That was right. He was in a motel. With you. Running away from uncertain death. It took a minute or so to recall all of these things, and that was what alarmed him. It seemed like his body wasn’t accepting the chip very well.

Temporary memory loss and blindness was just apart of the transition, right?

Little did he know, it was anything but.

Outside that very district sat two men in a car. Bags hung under their dull eyes as they scanned the streets as vigilantly as their sleep deprivation let them. It had been two days since they slept, but they wouldn’t rest until they found him. There were only four days until the damage was done.

If they didn’t get to the man before then, he would be as good as dead.

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