#or rather it would if the writers weren’t such cowards

[adhd-as-my-personality]

So what you’re telling me is that John Winchesters move for Mary was to tell her he knew the words to every Zeppelin song, and Dean decided totally no homo to record a mixtape of his 13 favorite Zeppelin songs and give it to Cas. Peak besties behavior. Excuse me while I go cry in a corner.

[draguta]

.a court of fate and fortune | eight.

pairing: lucien vanserra x fem!reader

summary: | book two | lovers separated, powers that won't be controlled, a doomed wedding. with the threat of war looming over prythian, lucien, Y/N, tamlin, and rhysand's inner circle must scramble to find allies and prepare themselves for what is to come. but Y/N only has one aim; to find her way back to lucien, and protect him at all costs.

chapter warnings: mentions of violence

chapter word count: 2178

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Yield

You closed your eyes, and schooled your face into calmness, your heart into serene and level beats.

The dark light danced before your eyes. ‘Touch me,’ it whispered. ‘Let me consume you.’

Reached out, you forced peace over your body as best you could. But your head began to roar, began shouting at you, telling you that peace was not an option for you. You faltered, snapping your hand away from the light.

Your eyes flew open, and you heaved in a great breath of chilled mountain air.

With everything that had happened since Feyre and Tamlin’s wedding, your heart hadn’t been in it, not in the way that it had been before. Because it had all felt so futile. So many weeks away from Lucien, away from your home, had left you wondering whether or not you were even worthy of your mate if you could not train these powers as you were meant to, to keep him safe.

Then again, you weren’t even sure the Spring Court was your home anymore. Lucien had played his part, and it would seem, from what Feyre had told you, he had played it well. He kept the High Lord of Spring on his good side, had done his best to keep Tamlin from looking too far for you, from storming the borders of Rhysand’s court in search of you. Yet, the place that you had once thought of as the only home you would know for the remainder of your immortal years, now felt like a cold prison, as cold and harsh as the cell that Amarantha had kept you in once upon a time. The idea that you had, for five years, dreamt of returning there almost made you want to laugh at your stupidity, your naivety.

Although, it wasn’t the place exactly that made you feel like a prisoner, but rather the male who lorded over it. The Spring Court remained as beautiful and luscious as the day that you had arrived in Prythian, but the High Lord was no longer the brother of choice that you had made.

You had come to that decision the second he had clamped that faebane collar around your neck, although you were sure the realisation had dawned on you long before that.

Because the male who had returned from Under the Mountain was different, was plagued with such a ferocious temper - a ferocious paranoia - that he could not even realise that his methods of protecting those he loved bordered on endangering them in the first place.

You knew, of course, how that time in Amarantha’s court could change a person. You had witnessed it, and experienced it, first hand. You had seen the way Lucien had become more open and honest, knowing that the way Amarantha had singled him out as a plaything in her torment could have spelled his final days, even if it had taken him a while to accept that change. You had seen the way Feyre had become so haunted by what she had done, no longer the strong and determined girl that you had seen stand on shaking legs before that dais in the throne room and tell Amarantha exactly what she wanted, exactly how much she loved Tamlin, despite her fear. Now there were no signs of that strength, only of ghosts that seemed to infiltrate her very mind - the ghosts of those that she had killed.

And you had seen it in yourself, that change. You had become stronger and fiercer. You had learnt to fight so that you knew you would never become the simpering coward that you had become at her hand. You would never again be the whore that she had titled you as. Your body and your mind were your own, and you would worship them yourself, as they so rightly deserved.

Although, you and Rhysand had never used that word since slipping out of the dank caverns of that mountain. Neither of you, you nor him, were whores any longer.

You hadn’t spoken to him - hadn’t even had the guts to look at him - since your meeting in his office. Days had passed, and you had avoided him like a plague. You couldn’t be sure, exactly, of what he would say to you if you did speak to him. Couldn’t be sure if there would be understanding behind those purple eyes of his, or pity.

The last thing you wanted was his pity.

Instead, you had spent your days wallowing away with Feyre as she attempted to learn to read at Rhysand’s command, although you had been informed rather viciously like Nuala and Cerridwen, the shadow-like fae handmaidens to Rhysand’s mate, that you were not to help her under any circumstances, for then she would not learn herself, an order that likely had come from Rhysand. You couldn’t see his logic, but after your spat you had little want to argue with him again.

Rhysand had Feyre staying at the Moonstone palace, meaning that besides the times that you were with Feyre, and the handful of times that Azriel had come to check on you, you had been almost completely alone, spending most of your time trying to hone your powers on your own.

Your training had become almost entirely useless however. Your powers were more unruly than ever, and you had grown too scared to even summon them at all, never getting close enough to that dark light for them to come to the surface. Training with Cassian had come to a halt too - you couldn’t trust yourself.

You had no doubt that Azriel and Cassian were reporting everything back to their High Lord.

The same High Lord who appeared at your door, watching you from the threshold of your room as you pushed yourself from the floor of the balcony and leaned against the railing.

“You’re too much in your head.” You glowered when Rhysand’s voice sounded behind you, but you didn’t turn to look at him, refused to give him even an inch. His footsteps sounded through the room, and a moment later he was leant against the railing beside you. You kept your eyes trained on the view.

“I was hoping you’d forgotten I exited,” you muttered, voice laced with snark. “Shouldn’t you be with Feyre, teaching her letters and generally just annoying the fuck out of her?”

He huffed out a laugh. “You’re trying too hard.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You asked, finally looking over to blink up at him in confusion.

“It means you’re trying too hard,” he said again, and you shook your head - it didn’t make any more sense the second time. “Your powers follow you. They are commanded by your emotions.”

“Yes, I already know that,” you snapped, rolling your eyes. “That’s why I’m trying to make myself-”

“You can’t force yourself to feel something,” he interrupted with a small shrug. “If you’re angry, then you’re angry. What you need to do is remember why you’re angry. In the dark there is always light, so try to find the light that you already have. Find the reason for your anger, remember what’s at stake, and harness that, instead of trying to create it from scratch.”

“I have to remember what I’m fighting for,” you said slowly, quietly, more to yourself than him. He looked down at you, just as you turned to look back out across Hewn City below.

“Can I show you something?”

You were surprised when Rhysand took you to his study and motioned for you to join him at the desk. He pointed down to the papers and maps that were strewn across the tabletop, and looked back at you expectantly. Your eyes drifted over the various hand-drawn maps of Prythian, red inked lines showing different possible routes from somewhere called ‘Hybern’, a little island off the West coast of Prythian.

“What exactly am I looking at here?” You asked, shuffling some of the papers to look at those beneath; lists of names and territories, none of which you recognised.

“The reason that I gave you that spell book,” he said almost nonchalantly. You frowned, looking at him askance. “Did you really think that I would entrust you with these powers to only defeat Amarantha? I told you, there’s something bigger coming.”

“Something like what?” You asked slowly, your stomach lurching at the thought. Rhysand licked his lips, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.

“War,” he said finally, and you were sure your heart stopped beating in your chest, were sure every ounce of blood drained from your face. “Amarantha and her court were just the beginning. She was just a General, and now her King is plotting to reclaim the lands that he believes he is owed; the Mortal Lands.”

Your hands began to shake, and your head dizzied. “How can-”

“He’s been planning this for centuries,” Rhysand explained. “And the only way he can get to the Mortal Lands is through Prythian.”

“What can be done?” You asked quietly, glancing back down at the papers. One particular route, the thickest of the red lines - a possible route of attack on Hybern’s part - ran straight through the Summer Court, into the Spring Court, and down to the Wall. You felt sick to your very core.

“We’re going to stop him.”

“How?” You asked, looking up at him in surprise. “You mean the other courts, they’ll fight?”

“Perhaps,” Rhysand said, shuffling slightly in his spot. “But we all must play our part in this war, including you.”

“Me?” You asked, dumbfounded. Then it hit you, the realisation. “You gave me these powers, the spell book, for this.”

“I would have used that spell on myself,” he explained, “but with the power that I already held, it would have been too much. It would have overwhelmed me, and either the power would have won and I would have become a…monster, or it would have killed me on the spot.”

“So, you gave it to me instead,” you said - not a question at all, but rather a fact. “I am to be a weapon.”

“No,” Rhysand corrected and when you looked up at him those violet eyes were boring into yours, flashing with something - something akin to belief. “You are not to be a weapon, you never were. You, Y/N, are our hope.”

You closed your eyes, and found that anger within you, just as Rhys had told you to. Flashes of pain and torment and memories that you would rather have forgotten played through your mind, and there in the centre of it all floated that dark light.

You reached out to it, and once again it whispered to you. ‘Touch me. Let me consume you. Let us rule.’

For the first time, you whispered back. “You will not consume me. You will yield to me. I am your master, and I command you.”

And then you touched it.

That tingling sensation washed over you, now so familiar that it no longer terrified you. That light seemed to wail, seemed to cry in torment. The memories around you - the nightmares that had been living in your mind for years, had been eating away at all that was good - began to change, to melt into smoke and reform into something more.

A blood-soaked floor, a single russet eye rolling against the stone, became Lucien with his golden eye smiling broadly at you as Spring sunshine danced through his red locks. An ash arrow pierced into your gut became Lucien and Tamlin removing their masks for the first time in forty-nine years, the feeling of Lucien’s skin under your thumb. Twenty lashes against raw and bare skin became me falling asleep on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, skin sweaty from love making. Days in a cold, black cell became sitting in the meadow with Feyre. Rejection became love. Companionship became friendship. Loss became whole.

All of the pain that you had felt was replaced with something lighter, something brighter.

And through it all, you echoed one phrase through your head, one phrase that Lucien had spoken to you.

‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’

Suddenly that dark light changed, no longer cold and eerie and ominous, but instead golden and ethereal, the rays that shone from it the same colour as Lucien’s eyes, as the strands of his hair when it was kissed by the sun. Because you knew what you were fighting for. You were fighting for him. For Lucien. For Feyre. For Rhys, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Mor. Even for Tamlin. You were fighting for their protection, their safety, and that was the reason for your anger.

When your eyes snapped open, Rhys would tell you that there was something else mingled in the blood-red of your irises; something shimmering and gold cutting through the scarlet like shard of glass. And your smoke clung to you, wrapped around you, but did not lunge for him, did not try to fight back.

You could feel it then.

You were in control.

Taglist

Complete: | @loveshineslikethesky | @elleclairez | @lostpirateinwonderland | @judig92 | @old-enough-to-know-better73 | @atrashsith | @chanaaaannel |

Lucien Vanserra: | @luna-foxglove | @lumos-barnes | @cumuluscranium | @dreamlandreader |

[badolmen]

“Everyone is a monster to someone. If you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it.” vs “If you insist on making me your villain, I’ll play the part.”

[mrv3000]

What I've picked up from posts about Star Trek Voyager: Threshold rather than watching it myself:

A couple of main characters get turned into lizards.**

(Even though people in the Star Trek Universe do not get paid in general, they still do not get paid enough for this shit.)

For reasons the lizards zoom off to a planet after the lizardification. (Why the absolute hell is 'lizardification' in my dictionary?) I'm not sure what is responsible for the lizarding (holy shit, why, dictionary???), but it is most likely Space Nonsense.

Anyway, since these main character coworkers are now lizards they have sex with each other. As you do.

The result is more lizards. (Presumably at this point Space HR has decided to call in sick rather than deal with the paperwork this clusterfuck would require.)

I'm going to be honest. I know nothing about the gestation of lizards. So maybe one of them spent a day as a pregnant lizard or maybe it was a year. In either case "Pregnant Lizard" is a life experience one of them has now.

By the end of the ep they either turn back into humans or will be turning back shortly because of the Space Nonsense. (And because it's mostly episodic TV. If the writers weren’t cowards they would have gotten them a tank and a heat lamp and carried on.)

In a showing of extreme parental and scientific incompetence, neither of these former lizards or the former lizards' coworkers really care to keep their baby lizards. I'm guessing there was something said about Lizard Rules applying but did they even check what these baby lizards would do to the ecosystem of the planet they left them on? Seriously. Tank. Heat lamp.

So what was the takeaway of this episode? Was there a broader theme or some sort of sci-fi-couched commentary on society?

God, I hope not.

**There is a whole reptile vs amphibian debate about this, which is a bit like getting into a discussion about fin size after someone slaps you in the face with a wet carp.

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

Hi, Ary, very inactive ex-mutual(i think???) here. Good to see you thriving! ♥ It's been a while since I've dipped my head into cockles stuff. Could I perchance maybe ask uuuuum tf is going on??? lol I see Mish apparently confirmed he used to stay over at Jensen's in Van, and heard newbs were apparently freaking out about it and getting a bit messy, which I get that, business as usual. But I'm also seeing shit about spin-offs? And Jared getting in a twitter fight with Jensen, causing/resulting in stans to going feral and sending hate?? I know you're not as big a fan of Jar, but that's part of why I figured I'd ask you, you usually have a really level head about this kinda stuff. If you don't wanna answer publically, or at all, that's totally chill!

Hey, Rhi! We're still mutuals! Of course we're still mutuals! When I saw the notification of your ask, I was like "Hey! I haven't seen you in a while!" and my husband was like "???" and I said "Tumblr" and he said "Oh."

It was a wild time haha.

In any case, welcome back to the dumpster fire! We are obviously still a mess. So to catch you up, I guess I will start by summarizing both before and after the finale (not sure where you left off so this might be redundant for you) ... basically, it became obvious as the end of the show neared that Jensen was not on board with the plan for the finale; although Jared never stopped singing its praises.

We got confirmation of this during a zoom interview where Jensen said that he actually went into the writers room as well as called Kripke to basically voice how he didn't agree with the direction the final season was going, but he was shot down on all fronts. In another interview, he was asked "What would you tell your younger self going into this career?" And Jensen responded with: "I would tell myself to just keep your head down and do the work" meaning, "Don't try to change things because you can't." I also think that this whole situation is what he wrote "Let Me Be" about for his first Radio Company album, but that is just my own speculation. All of his reluctance, even though he always followed it up with "But I eventually saw the value in the script" or "I came around in the end" (which never sounded sincere, and I don't think he was really trying to sound sincere) made us all very nervous about what was to come for 15x20; and of course, when the last two episodes aired, we saw just how badly they fucked it up.

After the awful finale, the entire fandom became aware of the CW's heavy handed role in the thing, basically squeezing all the life out of SPN to shape it into a ramp from which Walker could launch itself. They not only erased all the love and joy and representation that Cas's love confession gave us, they also tore apart the things that made sense about the bond between Sam and Dean, making it really just about Sam-- and therefore Jared, which of course, Jared seemed to be fine with ... even though no one else was. Misha barely said anything during the finale, and a few of the other actors talked about the show ending in various posts, but Jared tweeted up a storm ... and Jensen? Jensen just sat in sexy-silent resentment of the whole thing. He didn't tweet, he didn't post, he didn't say a word once he no longer had to, and I think that's because he was already going full-steam-ahead on his plans for redemption.

Which brings us to Chaos Machine-- Jensen and Danneel's new production company that is being run by a queer creative director and has a mantra of inclusivity and representation woven throughout it's fabric; and apparently, the first story that Jensen wanted to tell through this new platform is the origin story of Sam and Dean's parents; so last week (?) he announced the upcoming production of "The Winchesters" -- the untold love story of John and Mary. Obviously, John is not the most likable character from the show, so the idea was met with a lot of resentment when it was first announced, but Jensen has gone on to say that he is excited to take on the task of telling the "true" story behind these characters-- the one that makes sense with the pre-established canon and doesn't reject it. So, given that, the idea is being mulled over with a bit more optimism from the fandom.

Who isn't being optimistic though?

Jared Padalecki.

When Jensen made this announcement on Twitter, many of his friends and coworkers congratulated him, but not Jared. Jared responded with a passive aggressive: "I'm happy for you, man, but I wish I didn't hear about it through Twitter." This of course, sent all the die-hard Jared fans into a tizzy and they immediately began asking him if he was serious (hoping it was just a joke-- we all hoped it was because there would be fallout no matter what one's opinion on Jared is). Instead of leaving it there though or just deleting that tweet, Jared went on to tweet some more, saying that he was being serious that he didn't know about the plans for the prequel, and that he was "gutted" that Sam apparenlty wouldn't be included (mind you, this a prequel to SPN... meaning BEFORE Sam and Dean were even born, so how could Sam be included? But Dean is apparently narrating this story so maybe Jared thought Sam should be helping to narrate it? I don't know). But Jared being Jared couldn't just leave that there, he then went on to tweet at Robbie Thompson who was announced as a writer for "The Winchesters" so then Jared went off on him too, calling him "Brutus" and a "coward" acting like Robbie betrayed him (speculation is-- Robbie refused to write for Walker, so Jared is pissed that he essentially chose Jensen over him). He did fairly quickly, remove that tweet attacking Robbie, but of course the damage was done at that point. And it truly only took his first tweet calling out Jensen for some people to be like "Jared-- that sucks if you didn't know but why are you saying any of this publicly?"

As you might know, Jared has had issues in the past with posting hurtful things on social media, and has even used it as a tool for attack before-- calling out customer service agents and public workers that he felt have wronged him, which is bad enough ... but for him to then do the same thing to his best friend of well over a decade? Many people who had once liked him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt (I used to ...) stopped after this latest twitter tantrum.

However, some people have suspected for some time that J2 had a falling out either shortly before the finale or just after. Their public/social media interactions have seemed awkward, stilted or even non-existent in moments that they normally wouldn't be. In the past year, when Walker premiered, Jensen didn't say much about his friend's new venture other than a "Congrats. buddy" here and there. Later, we learned that Jensen refused to work on the show ... Jared said he make him do it, drag Jensen to the set "kicking and screaming" which made many fans quirk up an eyebrow because, why would Jensen put up a fight unless the two weren't as close as they used to be? And then Jensen moved his family to Colorado (either permanently or for an extended period at least) which is notable considering how he moved to Texas seemingly to be closer to Jared, even buying a house that was near his. All this was just speculation though; but it wasn't until Jared's tweet complaining about not knowing about the prequel that the theories behind them falling out, became less theory and more fact.

The day after his twitter tantrum, Jared tweeted again-- not retracting his statements or apologizing, but instead saying that he and Jensen "talked" and were "all good". Jensen then tweeted too, parroting this statement to some degree, which only made the whole thing even more sour in the mouths of the fans. The fact that Jared didn't apologize for his outburst and throwing his friend under the bus, and also the fact that Jensen-- Mr. Sexy Silence, Mr. Never Tweets, Mr. Tech-Ignorant-and-Proud, actually had to POST SOMETHING saying that he and Jared made up, it just screamed OPTICS. It was obviously the work of agents and PR firms and lots of people going "Look, if you two keep beefing, that will mean the death of both of your projects. Even more people will stop watching Walker, and this SPN prequel will never get picked up due to the scandal." So, the two "made nice" publicly to quell the chaos, but in my opinion, it's all too little too late. Jared started a storm that he can't contain now with a little tweet, and it seems like he knows that too because before he talked about him and Jensen making up, he asked that people "not send threats". He could have just as easily said that he shouldn't have made this a public issue and that he's sorry, but instead, he continued to play the victim and stoke the flames by alerting us all to the damage he's done.

Now, like I said before-- I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he's an awful human or that he deserves to be attacked or anything, but he is an adult man with very poor judgment and an obvious selfish-streak a mile wide. He should know better, and he should have more respect for his so-called "friends" and "brothers" than to make them targets to public ridicule. I have a hard time believing that Jensen still sees Jared the way he used to, and I wouldn't blame him a bit for wanting to pull away-- especially when he's moving on to so many new and exciting things. Jared certainly deserves happiness just as much as anyone else, but he went on twitter and basically asked for a scandal, and he got one.

The question is now-- was there a motive behind it? Was just looking for a reason to bring his and Jensen's falling out to light-- while making himself looking like the victim in the process? Or did he genuinely not know about the prequel and just decided to go about "not knowing" in the most toxic and hurtful way he could manage?

In any case, that is the drama ... that is the J2 insanity in a rather lengthy nutshell ... that is the tea ... and I hope it all makes sense.

But the good news out of all of this is, Cockles is thriving-- they are happy and in love and Jensen calls Misha "Babe" and Misha misses waking up to see Jensen in the morning, and they are just as cute and wonderful as can be.

So, I will end that there. I am so glad to see you back, and I hope I answered all your questions in a way that made sense ... I tried anyway!

💖💖💖

[artist-issues]

Hello yes, new daily dose of Rebel Without a Cause obsession

This is a photo of the cast of the radio soap opera show “‘Life Can Be Beautiful,” which started airing in the late 30s and continued through 1954 for it’s popularity. In it, a troubled girl, Chichi, is taken in by a kindly old bookstore owner and given opportunity after opportunity to turn her life around. The episodes often were introduced with positive quotes about living life with a positive mindset. The bookstore character always had advice to give to Chichi, voiced by the writers of the show, and intended for the young audiences of America. The main theme of the show was to “take charge of present circumstances and turn them into something valuable.”

In Rebel Without a Cause, Jim Stark is a character who’s parents move him to a new town every time he does something bad or gets into trouble. Jim’s mother, an overbearing woman who tramples over her husband and dominates the household, and Jim’s father, a weak-willed, easily-confused coward, would rather do that then have to face Jim’s flaws, or their own. 

When Jim Stark encounters his new next-door neighbor while they are both taken into juvenile hall for separate delinquent behaviors, he takes note of her. The next morning, on the first day of school, Jim sees her on her way to class and tells his parents he has a feeling they’ll stay in this town this time. He also later tells Judy that after seeing her, he said to himself,  “Boy, this is gonna be one terrific day, so you better live it up, because tomorrow you'll be nothing.”

Jim rushes to catch up to Judy and make her acquaintance but she isn’t impressed and responds sardonically to his friendship by making pessimistic remarks, alluding to her troubled life. She doesn’t recognize him or realize that he already knows she’s troubled in some way from seeing her at juvenile hall the night before. They have this interaction:

So basically what I’m saying is, Jim’s whole problem is that he wants to be better and do better and figure out what’s wrong with him and how to be a good man, but his parents aren’t showing him how and would rather run away. So when he meets Judy and she snarks something about how difficult her life is instead of being friendly, he responds by quoting the radio show that insists young people should “take charge of present circumstances and turn them into something valuable.”

That’s all the rebel without a cause wants to do, but his most valuable examples of how to do anything—his parents—can’t be trusted to show him how.

Anyway. Stewart Stern is awesome. Rebel Without a Cause is awesome. That is all. 

P.S. actually that is not all because I want to add, as speculation:

It seems like even though Life Can Be Beautiful was quoted sarcastically by many in those days, the context of the film and what Jim Stark really wants and what he’s lacking would imply that not only has he heard of the popular radio show, but maybe he’s listened to it and liked it.

Back in the 1950s, soap operas weren’t considered cringey or mocked as much by the cool kids. They were very popular, especially considering the fact that this was radio’s Golden Age. 

So basically I think it’s really cool that Jim Stark probably listened to Life Can Be Beautiful, because it explains why he doesn’t like the way his parents behave. Most of us grow up believing our parents, and the way they live, are the norm. After all, they are our closest and, often, most-present examples. Even absent mothers and fathers teach developing kids what absence is. So I always wondered why, of Jim’s father is a coward and his mother is a bully, Jim himself was dissatisfied with that. He clearly knows that his father should stand for something and be a man of honor, because that’s what Jim tries to be. So where did Jim get this idea of idealism and honor from, since it’s clearly not his parents?

I guess maybe he got it from listening to things like Life is Beautiful on the radio. After all, if he didn’t have a dad who would “give him a straight answer” about what’s right and what’s wrong, the wise old character Papa David Solomon’s advice on the radio might have been all he had to base his own ideals on. 

[fadedneonzzz]

It has been confirmed that Cinder’s backstory was originally supposed to be revealed in V5 and to be honest it was for the better that it was delayed until V8. V5 as we know it today was a mess of a volume that should’ve been delayed but was rushed beyond belief. In my opinion, if Cinder’s backstory was shown in V5 it probably would’ve sucked. I have heard people say they would’ve enjoyed her backstory more if it was shown off earlier, but I disagree. I’d rather it have been delayed and done well then for it show up on time but bad.

I think thematically, Cinder’s backstory fits with the themes of V8 more than V5. V5 is way more Raven centric, while Cinder does share some similarities with her, it just doesn’t tie together very well. Their biggest conflict so to speak is that they are just as bad as one another, however Raven is trying to hide the fact that she is a coward while Cinder is trying to play up her persona of being a powerful person. Cinder wants to be feared by all and well-known, Raven would rather live in hiding and doesn’t really seem to care about her reputation.

It also doesn’t help that Cinder ends up losing this fight. If we did get her backstory in V5, I’d feel it would’ve been a waste to have Cinder lose here. 

It works better in V8 because Cinder’s arc is a complete contrast to Penny’s arc. In the Amity fight, Cinder often projects her own insecurities onto Penny, calling her a “Tool to be used” or saying “I don’t serve anyone! And you wouldn’t either if you weren’t built that way!”. From her formative years to now, Cinder has always been treated as if she was just a tool who doesn’t deserve love and compassion. In contrast, Penny who was born a machine for the sole purpose of exterminating Grimm was always treated like she was human. Another interesting thing is that Cinder loses everyone she had and may or may not have cared about and was left alone by the end of V8

Whereas Penny is surrounded with friends that love and care about her.

(The Penny part was something pointed out in the V8 commentary, I just thought it could be seen as the polar opposite of Cinder’s arc)

They have the opposite character arc, though Cinder does use the power of faux friendship to win in the end with the aid of Neo and Watts but as we also know she disposed of them. 

Like I said earlier, V5 was pretty stacked but somehow not at the same time. Blake’s arc in Menagerie was going full-speed, Raven’s character arc was going on, and Yang’s character arc as well. However it also felt like they didn’t know what they wanted to do with RNJR and Qrow until they got to the Battle of Haven. V5 was also rushed, made obvious by one of the writers (Kerry I believe, but don’t quote me on that) finished the script weeks before the finale was supposed to premiere. This tells me Cinder’s backstory was most likely pushed back due to time constraints. 

Now do I think they could’ve made Cinder’s backstory fit in V5? Absolutely. However this would require V5 to not be rushed and made to fit the themes of both Raven and Cinder. The V5 we got was written mostly around Raven, Cinder doesn’t really play a huge role in the volume until the climax. It was also written around the White Fang subplot, which just adds another layer of complications on top of all of that. It’s also generally accepted that Volume 5 was one of RWBY’s weakest volumes, but it was due to a lot of outside factors, some of which were out of their control. I think it was better from a quality and thematic standpoint that Cinder’s backstory was delayed. Though I think V6 could’ve potentially worked as well. 

[gffa]

To answer this (and, as always, if anyone disagrees, that’s fine! when i speak with a strong meta voice that isn’t the same as getting mad if people see things differently!), I think it first helps to establish what the Force is, how it works, and what the light and the dark are, which is covered more thoroughly here, but basically:  balance is not an in between of light and dark, but instead that the light is the balance.  That we all have darkness within us and we must work to train ourselves away from it, to face it and let it go.  That is the Force according to Star Wars’ worldbuilding. This isn’t Jedi teachings (though, that is what they teach) but that George Lucas directly says, “Only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline.“  The characters are absolutely meant to overcome it, to be brought face to face with it and defeat it.  Not to never have it, not to never deal with it, but to choose the light again and again. This is why the Jedi younglings are taken to Ilum and shown their fears in the caves, this is why the Jedi Temple on Lothal shows Kanan and Ahsoka their fears, this is why Yoda talks to Ezra about the anger and fear he has in him and Ezra is willing to admit it and work on it, when Yoda says, oh, you might be a Jedi yet, this is why Yoda has to wrestle with and defeat his dark side in the immortal arc, this is why the Jedi teach their younglings in the creche that the dark side is part of them,  “[Qui-Gon] knew [the dark side] was a thing all beings carried within them, a part of himself he would learn to guard against—the crèche masters had taught him all that.“ I argue that even Mortis, which on the surface looks like “equal light and equal dark is balance” is more about trying to get Anakin to face the darkness within himself and defeat it, that the dark side will always be there, but he has to learn to acknowledge it before he can overcome it. So, having Anakin be the in between of the light and the dark is not balance.  I mean, that’s the role Bendu has in Rebels (immortal beings are not vulnerable to the same consequences of the dark side that mortals are--the story group has reiterated that mortals cannot use the dark side without consequence) and Bendu doesn’t bring balance, he sits on the sidelines and does nothing.  His last appearance is Kanan yelling at him that he’s doing jack all to help the galaxy, that he’s a coward for not actually doing anything.  The middle of the light and the dark has a role in the galaxy, but it’s not the balance or to the health of the galaxy in the way the light is. Further, we don’t really know much about the Guardians of the Whills.  In the canon, Qui-Gon learns about immortality from the Force Priestesses who do not appear to be the same thing as the Guardians of the Whills, we see Yoda’s journey with them which brings it back to--face the darkness within, overcome it, and then you can start on the path to immortality. So, what do we know about that path?  It requires overcoming the darkness within you, but it also requires (and word of god supports this, about how Anakin’s final moments were about selflessness) absolute selflessness, you have to be able to reach a place of caring completely about others--which is precisely what the ultimate light side is: “The core of the Force–I mean, you got the dark side, the light side, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody … because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether it’s a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience. [….]    “Only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline. The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate.”  --George Lucas, The Clone Wars writers meeting “Not by the cave you were but by your mind. Lessons, you have learned. Find courage, you did. Hope, patience Trust, confidence, and selflessness.” --Yoda, “The Gathering” “The Jedi choose the light for all that it reveals.” --Jedi texts, Poe Dameron comics Ultimately, I think the Jedi were probably the best place for Anakin, their philosophies on the Force match him very well with George Lucas’ explanations of how the Force work, their teachings echo his beliefs on happiness vs joy, his beliefs on the best way to teach (and GL believes that education is THE most important issue, compared to how the Jedi are fundamentally teachers at their core, etc.) and because they weren’t just the most famous users of the Force, but they tended to be the strongest. We don’t really even know much about the Temple of Kyber, if the people there are Force-sensitive (I know, I hate it, too, but canon says Chirrut wasn’t Force-sensitive) and the Church of the Force definitely seemed to not be Force-Sensitive, if Lor San Tekka is anything to go by. Which is important because there is a very, very key difference between strong Force-sensitives and lower level Force-sensitives/non-Force-sensitives:  The Force literally works based on the emotion and mindset you put into it.  What you put into it is what you get back out of it. The Force is an echo chamber, it’s a sponge that absorbs all of that, it holds onto those feelings you’re pouring out of you when you use the Force with it, so if you’re a high level Force-sensitive and you’re pouring out anger into the Force, into your kyber crystal, into the very walls around you, as Kanan tells Sabine in Rebels, their thoughts and actions become part of the blade, then that is staying with you, it’s always whispering in your ear, it’s dragging you down into the dark side. For someone like Anakin, who has this connection to the Force that’s stronger than probably any Guardian could possibly understand, he would be hearing those whispers as increasingly loud shouts just because of the nature of the Force and his incredible connection to it.  He would have had an even harder time not being dragged down into the dark, he would have had a harder time overcoming it, if the teachings he received weren’t about letting all of that go as best he can, if he wasn’t being trained to overcome the dark. The whole way Force-sensitivity works is that it’s based on your mental health and that you have to get past the darkness within you to embrace being selfless, to embrace loving other people rather than your own desires and fears and possessiveness, and the stronger you are in the Force, the more that’s going to be screaming inside your head and you have to work even harder to choose the light because you’re going to hear everything so loudly.  And the Jedi understood that, but, as GL said, “[everything changes], which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally”. Anakin’s problem isn’t the light isn’t enough, it’s that he didn’t want to accept that things change, he didn’t want to accept when he needed to be able to let go, rather than burning the galaxy down because of his own fears and desire to hold onto something even when it was time to let go. The Jedi were the best place for someone like Anakin, even GL says, “If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them. “ --George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary which says that the Jedi methods are actually pretty in line with How The Force Works.

[kiwi-the-first]

The Best Lover In The Parsec

Oneshot

Pairing: Din Djarin x GN!Reader

Fandom: Star Wars/The Mandalorian

CW: Fluff oh gods so much fluff, *slaps roof of the fic* this baby can fit so much yearning in it! Salt bae angst action, guest appearance of one(1) line of having the word "making love" and including one corny joke.

TW: mention of near death experience,self loathing,body image issues,canon-typical violence.

A/N: I keep mentioning it, this is my first piece of fanfiction writing. So I really really hope you guys like it. I am scared shitless. Never thought I'd ever write this but 2020 said fuck it you're writing fanfics now. Special thanks all of my writer friends for encouraging,helping and inspiring me everyday into making this happen. Iysm!

Enjoy!

- Kiwi

Masterlist

You.

He didn't know what to do with you.

He couldn't explain what you made him feel.

He couldn't explain how you made him feel.

But he knew the answers, he knew the words to describe it. He knew the scent of you and the dreamy sigh that escapes him everytime,he enters the fresher after your shower. 

He knew the sound of your voice and how it soothes his longing soul and fills in for the silence of the crest, or "home" as you liked to call it.

How he instantly melted after hearing you speak his name for the first time.

You knew it was sacred due to his creed but he had insisted that he trusted you well enough to tell you.

“Din Djarin?” you asked and he nodded. 

“What a beautiful name” you smiled.

He breathing hitched and swore to the Mythosaur he never saw anything as pure as that. Well maybe the kid but he was your foundling so of course.

You two are the most precious purposes to him.

Your eyes, so beautiful that he couldn't stop looking at them, a colour picked by nature itself and poured in by artists. Filled with a cacophony of emotions he willingly drowned into.

He knew the curves and nicks of your body.

You trusted him,let him be near you and patch you up when needed. He knows your loathing regarding it,knows the borderline ambiguity and acceptance you have towards loving yourself.

He knows how you confine yourself in the mere image of a fighter.

He knows it well because he does it too. Still he thinks that you manage to be kinder than he could ever be.

You. He keeps falling for you. Deeper and deeper in an infinite pit of ecstasy that most would call love. 

You're all on his mind lately. Still he doesn't know what to do.

--

He knew your actions.

He knew how you fight, how you patch him up,how you show your affection in silent gestures. Ways you cradle the kid and play little games with him but also scold him when it’s needed. The way his chest tightens with that one particular feeling, seeing the two of you like that.

The three of you are safe,laughing just enjoying each other’s presence and looking like a perfect family,an aliit.

Everytime he associates the word with you two he feels a wave of calmness crash over him.

But he’d be lying if it also didn’t make him want to be disintegrated by his own pulse rifle. It was too much how you constantly took care of the two of them.

How you silently admire him when you think he's looking at the stars. When in reality he's looking at you.

He’s always looking at you, looking out for you two.

But do you feel it too? He doesn't have the courage to ask.

He never did. He'd die a thousand different deaths as a coward than be left alone without you beside him.

Your soul, the purest most perfect thing to him deserves someone better. That is what he constantly told himself.

He never intended to be vulnerable with a stranger yet there you were and here he was. But only you weren't a stranger,not anymore. 

If he hadn't known any better he would go as far as calling you his soulmate. Silly it may seem.

A big,bad Mandalorian bounty hunter believing in soulmates, but it was the truth.

You're the one holding his heart. But still he doesn't know what to do.

--

But then it changed, years of travelling together and months on the run raising the little green bean whom you both love and protect with your entirety. Maybe this was where it all ended.

He has been in bad situations before, true. But death was something he never thought he'd have to possibly greet in front of you.

 He first noticed your eyes, all the other emotions were set aside as they made room for fear and hopelessness of losing him. Your pretty lips that he always craved to kiss were trembling as you held him close to you.

One hand holding his as tightly as possible while the other cradled under his neck.

He knew he should've told you, he wanted to, desperately. But surely, he couldn't do it now...right? You didn't deserve a last moment declaration of love but lose said lover and live in vain for the rest of your life.

But the maker played him again. Surprise!surprise! He didn’t die.

After the chaos and dangers were all done, the three of you left Nevarro, and the crest jumped into hyperspace he started to prepare himself.

You barely spoke to him as you were down in the hull with the kid.

After you tucked in the kid in the sleeping compartment and came to the cockpit to sit down he started preparing.

He didn't know how much time had passed but he was still silent and...well he scoffed at himself, still ‘’preparing’’.

But suddenly you got up from your seat, fumbling a little, clearly trying to say something.

"I need to talk to you" his entire body froze. 

Whatever it was, it scared him. He felt nauseous all of a sudden.

"...about today". 

Oh, his anxiety got the best of him. He was always the rusher and in the moment of weakness he couldn't control himself.

"Mando I think you shou-"

"I'm in love with you" he felt his voice slightly crack.

--

You blinked once,twice, mouth slightly agape. Tears started pooling in your eyes…

Shit shit shit shit it wasn't supposed to happen like this!!!

You were probably telling him how you'd much rather be without him and be safe far away from him and he fucked it all up.

Again he was gonna ruin something because he had no self restraint.

He was confused when you lurched your body to his chest, hugged him tightly and started sobbing.

Was this normal? When a person wants to leave you they don't do thi-

He heard your shaky voice let out a breath and then a

"I love you too" 

Huh?

Oh- 

OH!

He could faint right now. He could die and be alive again. If someone told him to befriend a jedi right now he would. 

It took him a while to process your words,probably because of that brain injury IG informed him about, he thought to himself. 

He was irrevocably happy.

Just...happy...and sated, but he also felt like someone ran over him with a mudhorn.

You loved him. You loved him.

You loved him back.

You-

--

He looks down at you. Sleeping silently curled up against him, holding him close.

This has been like that ever since. 

Ever since you both declared that all those touches were indeed electrocuting,that all those late night heart-to-hearts weren't just conversations to pass the time,how he longed to take your hands in his. 

Or how you wanted to take off his kriffing helmet so that you could see his eyes and what they hid, or kiss his lips yet you resisted.

It’s been a while, he thinks.

Since you settled down for your happy ending...or was it a beginning? He likes to think it's a little bit of both.

It was something he'd never thought he'd have. Since you learnt that the kid’s people were gone. Since the kid truly became your own in every sense.

But frankly if he was being honest Din didn’t ever want to give him away and neither did you. Your son,your Ad’ika. You now had the privilege to call him that with the permission from The Armorer.

Since your Riduurok.

Since he was allowed to take off his helmet and finally, you finally got to let your emotions run free.

To finally see his face and hold him close. To feel his lips and his warmth. 

The memory of your tears of unsung victory and joy still elevates his heartbeat.

Since you had made love and you laughed at his messed up curls in the morning after.

"Thanks for letting me in" you kissed his knuckles and he sighed contently.

"You did too" you furrowed your brows "I-"

"Literally" he winked, "oh? waiT YOU- EWW!!!" he was laughing hard as he dodged the pillow you threw at him.

"And to think! Your'e a responsible father!"

"Make a pervy joke again and I'll murder you" you grumbled. You kept laughing in each other's arms as he held you close

He still chuckles at the memory.

Now baby didn’t mind having a stable life with his buirs either.

You sighed in your sleep. The morning lights were seeping in through the slightly opened windows.

Sunbeams slowly making their ways into the room and enveloping your bodies. 

Your eyes crinkled in your sleep and you mumbled something and cuddling closer to him, if that were possible.

The kid will be up soon too and the thought alone makes him smile.

Yet another day with the two of you.

It was a free day for both of you and between your magnificent existence and snorting at Ad’ika running around,babbling and being the cutest menace. He knew he’d survive.

He looks down at you again and he's reminded of all the things that he loves about you. 

Now including how much you also love him. He could feel your heart beat,it is the best genre of music to him.

He felt the warmth again, not from the sunlight but from his infinite loop of affection for you.

“Ner Ali’it” he called you.

He'll bask in this for as long as you'd allow him and gladly, you promised to allow him forever.

He may be the best bounty hunter in the parsec but he never tried to be the best lover.

He simply couldn't!

For that title already had an owner,

You.

----------------

TAGS: @dindjarindiaries

@spacegayofficial

@lady-of-nightmares-and-heartache

@dindjarinsleftvambrace

@mitchi-c

@the-real-xhorse

@hdlynn

@deafmandalorian

@cheesecake-madness

@duchessnibenhu-ofpyromania

@oloreaa

:)

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

O’Donnell’s Test

Fandom: Stranger Things

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Wade (Original Character)

Writer: @writings-of-a-hufflepuff​​ aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long​

Rating: T - Teen

Warnings: References to sex, swearing,

Summary: It’s just his luck that on the morning of O’Donnell’s big test his van won’t start. Good thing he knows someone with a working car...and an ability to terrify Jason Carver

Notes: Cassie’s Design can be seen in the googledrive I have for her here

Feel free to draw/write for her if you want, just let me know. Any questions about her let me know, it’ll help me develop her more!

Takes place in Eddie’s third repeat of senior year in 1986. Cassie is 19, Eddie’s 20. Cassie has already graduated. 

Art is mine.

“Shit, shit, shit! C’mon!” It’s just his fucking luck, the year he’s trying not to be late for class, the year he’s actually trying to graduate and his fucking shitty piece of crap van won’t start on the morning of O’Donnell’s big test. He’d already woken up later than he’d expected too, had to rush to throw on some clothes and grab random junk for lunch, he did not have time to fix his fucking van. He needed to be on the road like 10 minutes ago.

Eddie slams his forehead into the steering wheel, jumping back in the seat when his horn blares out into the trailer park, heads peeking out of front doors, already glaring at him for disturbing the quiet this early in the morning.

“Fuck…” He grabs his lunch box from the passenger seat, yanking his keys free from the ignition and sliding out of the door, slamming it shut behind him. There’s no other choice really but to begin walking. He’s miles from school, knows he’ll miss the fucking test if he walks, but it’s either this or not go in at all, he hopes at least this way he might be able to convince O’Donnell to let him take the test another time, that he’d tried to be in on time, but the universe fucking hated him. He just wanted to fucking pass this year, finally wanted to see the back of Hawkins High. Not that the universe seemed to want him to. It was just his fucking luck, of course it'd be now that his stupid ass van decided to die on him.

“Fucking shitty ass piece of van, fucking O’Donnell setting a test first thing, fucking stupid fucking universe…” He’s muttering, kicking rocks as he goes, eyes down on the ground. He doesn’t notice the beaten up red Chevrolet rolling slowly up to him on the wrong side of the road until a window is rolled down and red lips call his name.

“Eddie?” Cassie’s leaning out the window of her car, blonde curls flying in her face as her brown eyes dart between him and the road despite the slow snail's pace with which she’s driving.

He stops and she does too.

“Need a ride?” She doesn’t go to Hawkins High anymore, graduated last year, while he got left behind, but she knows Eddie’s been trying this year, and she knows what he looks like when nothing is going quite right. Besides she’s got time before she needs to be in her lecture on ‘Great Feminist Writers’, always giving herself more time than she needs to get anywhere. Eddie’s organisational polar opposite as it were.

“You’re a fucking lifesaver, sweetheart.” The relief is palpable, his shoulders drop, his head leaning back as he feels like he can breathe for the first time. He could kiss her, would kiss her, if they weren’t just friends, if she wasn’t on the other side of a car door, if he wasn’t such a coward.

Eddie’s quick to get into her car and Cassie’s quick to get back onto the right side of the road, the soft sound of Kiss filters from the stereo, a familiar mixtape stuck inside the cassette player. He was still working on her next one, piecing it together bit by bit. “

So…?” She’s side-eyeing him. He looks flustered, if possible his hair looks even bigger and wilder than normal, big dark circles sit heavy under his eyes. He avoids look at her, rather uncharacteristic of Eddie, who usually gives her the most intense stares, the sort that make her feel like he can read her mind half the time. She's often very glad that he can't.

“Fucking van died…O’Donnell set a test first thing…can’t be late, really need to fucking pass it..”

"This the one I helped you study for last week?” She’d taken to tutoring Eddie when she wasn’t at college or working on assignments or working at the arcade. It meant a lot of late nights for the both of them, her falling asleep more often than not on his bed and making her way back to the trailer she shared with her grandma in the mornings. She was only getting away with it because her grandma really liked Eddie, if she stayed round any other boy’s trailer she might well have had a death sentence.

“Mmhmm, the very same…” His knee is bouncing in the passenger seat, the old car basically rocking down the road in response. Cassie reaches a hand out, resting it on his knee, the bouncing calms a little. She turns her palm upwards and doesn’t say a word when he slips his hand in hers, fingers interlocking with her own and squeezes three times. She doesn’t let go of his hand, even when she changes gears, just uses the sides of their palms to shift the gear stick into the correct spots. He’s worried, she knows just how tough O’Donnell’s class is and he needs to pass this year, he doesn’t want a fourth go at senior year, three was enough. He's been working so hard too, despite his previous laissez faire attitude to schooling, he'd really bucked up, almost gave her a run for her money how hard he seemed to be working.

Her grip on his hand stays through the whole journey. They pull up outside the school with time to spare, in fact a whole 15 minutes before the bell was set to ring, thanks to a few familiar shortcuts that Cassie took. She tugs on his hand, turning in her seat to lean towards him. For the first time since Eddie got into her car, he looks her in the eye, worry swimming deep in those brown pools and she tugs him a little closer still.

“You’re going to do great. We did that practice test, remember? The one O’Donnell set me last year? You passed it. You can pass the real thing. You can do this.” She knows he can do it, knows he has it in him, knows he’s worked hard…but there’s only so many failed tests and failed seniors years you can take before you start to believe you’re not capable, that you're just an idiot, just worthless and stupid.

“What if I fail?” He’s so quiet, not like the Eddie she’s used to. Not loud and brash and ostentatious, just quiet as he tightens his grip on her hand and bounces his legs with anxious energy.

“Then…then i’ll storm into O’Donnell’s class and demand she give you extra-credit to make up the grade, i’ll show her the practice paper, I’ll..I’ll…” There’s a furrow in her brow that shifts her glasses as her nose crinkles in thought, “I’ll fight O’Donnell if I have to.”

“You gonna go to jail for me, princess?” It’s silly enough to have him smiling, her goal in the end, because they both know she’s not fighting her old high school teacher, but she knows she won’t have to. He’s going to pass.

“If you’re nice to me.” Eddie wonders if Cassie knows that when she smiles wide like that her cheeks bulge and her dimples come out? He often wonders if she realises how pretty she is…he’s pretty sure she’s been the prettiest girl he's known since sophomore year. Stupid it took him that long to notice it when he’s known her their whole lives.

“I’m always nice to you, I bought you pizza last week.”

“Mmm, yeah, you did.” She smiles wider at the memory, pizza and the latest slasher flick that she could barely watch, too busy cowering into Eddie’s shoulder, ever the horror movie wimp.

There’s a brief pause before she leans forward and for a brief moment, panic fills Eddie’s lungs as he thinks she might just kiss him, and he is so not prepared for that, no amount of daydreaming could prepare him for that. She doesn’t, much to his disappointment and slight relief, lips landing on his forehead in a reassuring gesture, her free hand cupping his cheek like he might just break. She’s the only person who’s ever been gentle with Eddie since his mom died, always tender, careful. She’s the only person who treats him like she fears he might get hurt rather than hoping, wishing to inflict it on him. Even the girls he’s slept with, the ones who hang around after Corroded Coffin stop playing or when they want to feel a little rebellious and get with the freak, they’re all sharp nails racking his back, teeth biting at his lip, harsh and rough, prepared, nay, eager to draw blood. Cassie’s never like that with him. All soft touches, the delicate drag of fingertips across his cheek, mindful of her nails, the careful press of lips to his forehead, cheek, a soft squeeze around his waist in greeting.

And her words? Her words are softer still, “You can do this, I believe in you, Eddie...”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He’s kind of speechless, not really sure how to respond to that because, fuck, she’s so sweet to him, so kind and so fucking pretty.

A banging on the top of the car, has them both jumping away from each other and Eddie’s smile drops the moment Jason Carver peeks his head in through the window with a sly grin. He wants to punch the younger man’s smug little face, tell him to piss off and let him get to his test, but he still has time till the bell rings and he can’t get suspended for fighting. Not again.

“Ohoho ohhh, the Freak’s got himself a little freak girlfriend?” It’s like he doesn’t really see Cassie, too busy winding up Eddie that when she peers around him to look at the jock he almost looks shocked. As if he didn’t know that Cassie Wade, prior valedictorian and good girl, was friends with Eddie Munson.

“Hello, Jason.” There’s a sickly sweet smile that Cassie gives the jock before it drops, cold taking over her face, eyes hardening.

“I used to babysit your sister? Cassie, remember me?” She waits for him to nod, a nervous sort of look on his face that Eddie isn’t used to seeing from Carver. Always so arrogant. The tone Cassie continues with is so casual that the words just don’t feel right, there’s some sort of disconnect that has Eddie in shock, “Do you think your mom would like to know about those porn mags underneath your bed? Or maybe she’d like to hear about how you drank so much at Brad’s party in freshman year that you threw up all over his mom’s new couch? Think she’d find that interesting?”

“C-cassie, hey! Didn’t…didn’t realise it was you…sorry.” There’s a palpable nervousness from Jason, to the point Eddie can almost see the comical sweat drop falling down his temple. The jock leans back away from the car, and Eddie can’t seem to understand how Cassie, his Cassie, sweet and kind, has Jason by the proverbial balls right now. It’s both scary and kinda hot.

“Can I make a suggestion, Jason, as a friend?” Eddie’s not even sure he’s breathing, afraid to even slightly interrupt the show that’s happening over his lap. Cassie’s all out glaring now, any pretence of a friendly conversation gone. “Leave Eddie the hell alone or every little dirty secret I know about you gets published in the school newspaper. You know Nancy Wheeler, right? Well, I happen to be decent friends with her and she’s always interested in the next big scoop. So, back. Off.”

“I was just messing around, Cassie, all a joke, right Munson? I...I have to...I have a test to get to..." He's inching back away from the car with every word, almost tripping over his feet to get away from the situation.

“See you later, Jason!” She’s sweet again as she waves him off, but a fake sort of sweet that’s almost sickly in its design. It drops the moment he’s far enough away and mutters something about Jason being a dickhead under her breath.

“Did…did that seriously just fucking happen?”

“Sorry…about that.” She’s kind of embarrassed at the thought that Eddie just watched her being kind of mean to Jason, it’s not her normal behaviour and she shys away from him, looking out the window at some of the familiar faces in years below her walking into school. It’s a hand on her wrist dragging her back that has her facing him again, an apologetic smile on her red lips.

“Sorry? Sorry? You just fucking annihalted Jason Carver, douchebag of the year. I could fucking kiss you! I…I mean you’re really fucking scary sometimes, hot, but scary.”

“You’re such a perv…” It’s said with humour, an old joke that’s been going since puberty hit and she found a dirty mag in his room. The sort of humour used to deflect from the reality that they’d been getting closer and closer to crossing the line between friends and something more as of late. That both of them had considered kissing the other far too many times in recent memory.

The moment is broken by the school bell ringing shrill and loud and Cassie smiles sadly at him, always sad to lose his company. She’s never happier than when she spends time with Eddie, silly how much of an effect he seemed to have on her emotions.

“You need to go…” There’s a pause before he’s sliding out of the car and leaning back through the window.

“Yeah…thanks, for the ride, Princess…”

“Anytime, Freak.”

“See ya, sweetheart.”

She watches him go, till she can’t see him anymore and crosses her fingers that he passes that test…and that Jason Carver leaves him the hell alone. Funny how even after she graduated she couldn’t seem to leave high school behind.

[resident-of-storybrooke]

Nothing Good Happens After 2AM (Ch 4)

Rating: M (finally earning that for this chapter)

Words: 2900

Read: ao3, ff.net CH 1 CH 2 CH 3

Summary: Emma took Killian home for the holidays as a fake date. Things seemed to be going well…until it didn’t. What happens when two fools in love didn’t confess their love over the holidays like they planned and have to go back home to reality? This. This is what happened…(A twist on fake dating during the holidays)

AN: Well....shit lol here we finally are! I wish I had a good reason for the year and a half delay. Honestly, I got one not so great review and it shook me a bit and I was already iffy about writing. But thank you to so many incredible souls being so encouraging and supporting me to get back into writing. Thank you to @kmomof4​ who read all four chapters and edited them (make sure to check them out). I really hope you enjoy this last part as I’m so happy to finally have this out for you all. A very late and final contribution to @csjanuaryjoy

tagging some of the fam squad (please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed): @kymbersmith-90 @let-it-raines @artistic-writer @hollyethecurious @hookedonapirate @carpedzem @nowforruin @kmomof4 @wellhellotragic @thesschesthair @teamhook​ @winterbaby89​ @zaharadessert​ @stahlop​ @ultraluckycatnd @blowmiakisscolin​ @peggyswan​ @jrob64​ @klynn-stormz​​ @tiganasummertree​ @batana54​ @pirateprincessofpizza​​

ALL THE LOVE

Ruby made her way back up to the party, excited to see how the rest of the night would play out after her phone call to Emma. As she made her way back into Killian’s apartment she saw the Nolans as they gestured rather animatedly. Then Ruby rounded the corner and looked in to see who they were yelling at. 

Shit. 

It was Killian. 

And from the looks of it they were letting Killian have it. And he was just standing there taking it.  

What the hell did he get into in the last five minutes to warrant this? Ruby was both concerned, but mostly entertained because the sweet sunshine Charmings never yelled. She strolled into the kitchen with a grin, figuring she would enjoy the show. That was until the furious couple saw her - apparently she was their new target. 

“Ruby Elizabeth Lucas! You have a lot of explaining to do.”

Ruby was confused to say the least. How the hell was she involved in... whatever this was? 

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

“Bullshit, Ruby!” She was completely taken back, Mary Margaret never swore. “You just told me that Emma thought Killian was dating Elsa. And last time I checked Killian and Emma have been together for the last three months. So please, explain yourself. Now.”

“I feel like it’s not really my place,” she said, darting her eyes toward Killian, but she could tell no one was buying it. “Listen, Snow White and Prince Charming, your poor sister felt pressured to bring a date home for the holidays. She and Killian decided to go to Ruth’s and tell y’all they were dating so you’d back the hell off. And it worked and everything was fine. Then Elsa showed up and spooked Emma because she thought she lost her chance with him. Because shocker,” she looked fiercely at Killian and had to restrain herself from smacking him upside the head, “they’re both in love with each other and are being absolutely idotic and not telling the other the truth.” She turned back toward the stunned silent Charmings, “And you two are not helping the cause!”

Killian looked up in complete shock, his eyebrows nearly reaching his hair. The Nolans stood gaping at her, obviously not expecting her brutal honesty. 

“Listen,” Ruby took a deep breath. “Cut them some slack. You two were acting like Emma was going to turn into some crazy old spinster if she didn’t find a date soon. Also, you two act as though you are a literal fairytale couple.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard to live up to your kind of love.”

As David stood in shock, Mary Margaret finally spoke up. “We went too far, didn’t we?” That’s when she turned to Killian. “We’re sorry, Killian. We shouldn’t have ever put you in this situation. We love you, we love Emma, and that wasn’t fair...I hope you can forgive our behavior this evening.”

Just as Killian was about to speak up, the door opened revealing an out of breath Emma Swan.

Emma was confused by the odd looks she was receiving as her welcome. She should be used to their bizarre behavior at this point, but this felt different. 

As she made her way over to the group her nerves set back in. She was here to tell Killian the truth. She was going to finally confess her love for her best friend. On his birthday. What could possibly go wrong?

“Right, well, this has been fun. Perhaps we should give these two some alone time.” Ruby elbowed the couple so Emma and Killian could have a moment.

As Emma walked towards Killian she finally took in her surroundings and realized how packed the apartment was. “I wish there were less people here…”

“Why, Swan? I love large parties, they’re so intimate. At small parties-”

“-there isn’t any privacy. I like it when you quote things to me.” Looking at him, she realized how close they were. She wasn’t even aware of her own movement toward him. Then she looked into his blue eyes. She missed them. 

She missed him. 

They stood there, taking each other in. It’d been weeks since they’d been together, really together. Neither one knew how to start. 

“Emma, you came.”

She wished in that moment she had something poetic to respond with, but that wouldn’t be Emma. “That’s what she said.”

The two instantly burst into laughter, the tension dying with every laugh. 

“I missed you, Swan.” Killian reached his hand out to tuck a loose strand behind her ear, Emma leaned into his touch. 

“I missed you too. I’m so sorry I ran…I wish I had a good excuse, but I don’t. I wanted to tell you so many times how I felt. I was going to tell you. On New Year's Eve. I was finally going to tell you. I had this whole plan. It was a good plan. And then Ruby fucking decided to be Chef Julia Child and give me food posioning. And then...I saw how happy you looked with Elsa and I thought, I thought, I’d lost my chance with you.” Emma finally found the courage to look up when she finished.

Killian’s eyes were full of unshed tears. When Emma opened her mouth to try and say something to break the tension Killian wrapped his arms around her. Emma finally took a breath. A breath she had been holding for weeks. He didn’t hate her. 

“Emma, my love, I promise nothing happened with Elsa. She was Liam’s fiance. She’s an old friend and nothing more. You though...you’re so much more than that. I’ve been a coward. I’ve hidden behind our friendship, behind the lie we told your family, and I will not do that any longer. I’ve had three words on the tip of my tongue since the night we met, I swear, and I will not waste another minute without you hearing them.”

Emma extracted herself from his grasp. “Before you do, I have something for you.” 

Killian lets out a sigh, “Really? Right now?”

Without another word Emma pulled the small red box from her clutch and handed it to Killian. He looked at her with curious eyes. “It’s your birthday, open the damn thing, Jones.”

“So demanding. Now what do we have here? It's a-” 

He stopped.  

Mistletoe. 

It was the most infuriating object that haunted his dreams - well, besides Emma. That trip to her home, the infernal garnish was everywhere. 

There was that kiss.

God, that kiss. He relieved it daily, prayed that it wasn’t the last kiss he’d ever share with Emma. Up until this moment he was convinced that would be the case.

“Well, Swan, this is quite the gift. I don’t know exactly what to say.” He scratched behind his ear, a nervous tick they were both well aware of. 

“I, um, do you wanna see if it works?” Killian’s eyes shot up to Emma.

“Well, love, seems only right I try it out with you since you were the one that gave me such a generous gift. Shall we...”

Emma cut him off with a bruising kiss, it caught him a little off guard, but it only took a moment for him to catch up. Killian didn’t give a damn that there was a party going on around them. He finally had Emma in his arms. Emma’s hands wandered to the nape of his neck, holding on for dear life. Killian’s hands roamed down her sides before anchoring on her hips, holding her tightly against him. He cursed the fact that Emma was wearing a dress, even if she did look bloody gorgeous in the tight red piece. He couldn’t wait to have that blasted thing on his floor.

They finally broke for air, still clinging to one another, foreheads touching. Killian was ready to dive back in when he looked up and remembered they weren’t alone. Mary Margaret was crying, Ruby was cheering, and David looked slightly annoyed but Killian saw the small smile he was trying but failing to hide. 

“Come on, love. I think it’s time we faced the vultures. And I’d like you to meet Elsa, if that’s alright with you?”

“Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good idea, Captain.” Emma reached down and grabbed Killian’s hand before they walked over. 

Maybe the trope board wasn't wrong after all. 

CSCSCSCSCSCSCSCS

As the party went on, Killian and Emma were inseparable; the two constantly touching the other. At one point, while talking to Mary Margaret and David, Emma laid her head on Killian's shoulder, something she'd done a million times, but this time Killian placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. 

The two were in their own happy bubble. They pretended to be engaged with those around them, but they couldn't ignore but feel the sparks ignited with each touch.  

"So, Emma? It's nice to finally meet you. I'm sorry for the miscommunication. I feel as though that was my fault." Emma was confused on how Elsa seemed to be privy to their issue, but then she saw Mary Margaret across the room and assumed her friend had filled her in.

"Please, don't be. I was...scared I lost my chance with Killian."

"Oh, honey. I don't think you could ever lose this one." Killian squeezed Emma closer to prove her point. 

Turns out Elsa was hilarious and had wonderfully embarrassing stories about Killian. Emma had a feeling the two were going to be good friends after tonight. 

The party eventually wound down a little after one, slowly the various couples left. That's when Emma realized she was alone with Killian. 

Finally. 

Suddenly, Emma felt her nerves grow. They'd declared their love and haven't left the others' side since, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't nervous. She absentmindedly threw out some empty cups as she tried to plan her next move.

"Love," Killian called for her from the living room, "can you come here?" Emma slowly made her way into the room as Killian stretched out his arms to embrace her. 

"Emma, I...I know that tonight has been a lot. Our relationship has always been a lot. And I know the future is uncertain, but there's one thing I want you to be certain of - I will always be by your side. For as long as you'll let me, my love."

She didn't even know a tear had slipped until Killian pulled back to wipe it. 

"I haven't always made things easy. I get spooked easily, but I'm tired of running. I want to be with you, Killian. I love you."

"And I you, my beautiful Swan." 

The kiss started off slowly, different than the one earlier, but no less passionate. Emma brought her hands around Killian's neck, playing with the nape of his hair. As Killian kissed down her neck, Emma didn't recognize the noises that escaped her mouth.

As their kisses continued, Emma was surprised when Killian's legs hit the couch and he fell down. She hadn’t been aware that they moved. Emma said she was tired of running, and she was ready to show him. So she straddled his legs and hovered over him for just a moment.

They felt like teenagers again, making out on a couch like this. She could feel him harden beneath her, driving her wild. But, it wasn't enough, she needed more. Emma started unbuttoning his shirt, the bastard already had the top three undone. Without a second thought, she began to rake her fingers through the coarse black hair. 

"I've been dying to do this since we first met. So soft," she murmured. Killian found a spot behind her ear that made her mewl. Emma brought her lips to his ear, "I've always wondered how it'd feel against my breasts." 

With that, Killian pulled back. "My love, are you sure? We can wait. Because once I have you, I'm never going to let you go." Emma nodded slowly. As she looked into his eyes, she could barely see a trace of blue. His pupils were blown. 

Before Emma could stand, Killian wrapped his arms around her to carry her to his bedroom. He only ran into the wall twice as Emma was no doubt leaving marks on his neck. Killian gently placed her in the middle of the bed. 

"I always swore that if we got here, I would worship every inch of you."

"Killian, please, worship later. I need you now."

"Just a taste. Patience, darling." Killian was beyond thankful at that moment Emma had opted for a dress as he quickly removed her thong.  

Before she could speak, he brought his mouth to her sex. "You're already drenched for me. You..fuck...you taste delicious."

Emma couldn't speak, he was overwhelming in every sense of the word. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, not that she needed to guide him; he knew exactly what he was doing. 

Killian replaced his mouth with two fingers. "That's it, Emma. You look so beautiful like this. I want you to come for me, darling. Come and then I'll give you what you really want."

His voice was deeper, accent thicker. Emma had a feeling she could finish from his voice alone, but right now, it was his fingers and mouth that were going to do the trick. 

Emma lost all control of her limbs as he sent her over the edge. He didn't let up though, he continued slowly licking as she came back down. As her breathing returned to normal, Killian kissed up her body. 

"Worship later, Killian,” she moaned again. “Please. I need you. Now."

"So demanding, Swan,” he observed, taking his pants and boxer briefs off. “I think I like this side of you, all in a commanding voice, chills really." 

He climbed back on top of her, but instead of responding, Emma hooked her legs around Killian and flipped him, so he laid on his back. He looked up in awe, he had never been so turned on than in this moment. 

Emma decided she was tired of waiting, but before she could sink down Killian stopped her. "Give me a moment, let me grab something, I -"

"I'm clean, and I'm on the pill. I...I don't want anything between us."

"Gods, Emma. If you're sure? I'm good too, I haven't been with anyone since...since we met." 

Emma dove down to meet his lips as she sank down onto him. Killian swallowed her gasp as she adjusted to his size. Of course, he lived up to every innuendo, and Emma couldn't be happier for that than in this moment. 

For first times, they were both surprised with how easy it was to fall into rhythm with the other. There were only a few slightly awkward moments, but that didn't stop them from enjoying this moment. Emma's hips met Killian's with each thrust, quickly driving the other wild. 

"So fucking glorious, Emma. You're so tight like this. Ride my cock, such a good girl. I want to feel you come around me this time. You're stunning when you come. That's...fuck... that's it Emma, take what you need, darling."

Before Emma could even respond, Killian decided it was her turn to be flipped on her back. "Now, if I remember correctly, you wanted to know how it feels with me on top."

"That's, ugh, that's not exactly what I said. But I'm not complaining."

Emma felt that familiar sensation growing in her stomach as Killian's pace intensified. "Killian, I'm close. Together, I wanna -"

"Aye, love, together."

Killian felt her tighten around him as she moaned out in ecstasy, pulling him right after her. He gave her a searing kiss as he spilled himself inside of her. Killian fell on top of her, too exhausted to worry about crushing her for a moment. 

"Killian? As much as I love how, uh, close we are now, do you think you can move? I can't breathe, and I need to clean up."

"Oi, you're gonna give a man a complex!" Killian slowly rolled off her, in awe of the glow Emma radiated at the moment. Emma couldn't help but giggle as he was being an annoying ass, but mostly he was still...Killian. 

They were still them. Except they just had mind-blowing sex. 

She could get used to this new addition to their relationship. 

"Stay here, love. Let me." Killian was back in a moment and helped clean Emma. When he finished, he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, just like before. 

"What is it, Swan?"

"Nothing, I'm just happy. It's just so surprising."

"Aye, love, me too. But this doesn't change anything. I've loved you for years now, and we'll go at whatever pace we both see fit, but I'm in this for the long haul."

"As am I, Captain."

The two laid in bed, cuddled close, and shared lazy kisses. When Emma looked at the clock, she saw it was nearly three in the morning. A few weeks ago, Emma had thought nothing good happened after two am; it turns out she was wrong. 

"Swan? Can you tell me what the bloody hell a trope board is?"

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[chatwithana]

Your true form hm? That's rather interesting. I suppose it would make sense for you all to look rather humanoid since us humans are also apart of the grand dream of existence. It's only fair for us to look like you, but inferior no? Well, then again. Azathoth's creator, which is turn, yours. Was human after all. The name Lovecraft ring any bells? He was the first to create your world, while many writers expanded upon it. Like hastur I do believe. He only existed in name within one of Lovecraft's stories. But eventually was fleshed out by other authors. I suppose this could be said for most mythologies, humans giving their ideas a voice and body to grow into something big.

You meant no ill will, and yet The Great Dreamer’s face turns harsh at the mention of the name. Mayhaps the search for Ana is getting to him quicker than anticipated. “On paper, humans should technically be ‘inferior’, but— personally speaking— there is nothing to gain from such black-and-white thinking. As for him… I’m aware of That Writer and his wretched disciples. The one who broke his contract should not receive such credit.”

He steals a breath. “Imagine my fury, while I was finally about to die, when I found out that the stories written weren’t what I had agreed upon.” His deep voice sounds so much more threatening now. “I shared with him such great knowledge of my plans and of the Old Ones so that they could be recorded, and it turned out to be my greatest mistake. In the event that my children assimilated to the Earth and understood the human tongue, they were to have multiple sources at the ready for them. I myself recorded texts in R’lyehian, and made sure the Father of Worms and his subjects would teach them everything they needed to know.” None of those worms taught Dagon anything about his kin, though. In fact, the knowledge he was given was limited and inconsistent. Did those texts he wrote even survive past his end? “That coward instead wrote tales of historical fiction, and the faith that generated from it…!” His failure to account for the humans’ faith was the last, disgraceful nail in the coffin for him. Through their collective faith, he was kept unknown, an enigmatic figure who remained interminably incomprehensible and horrifying. The mask he wore would now be glued to him forever, no matter how hard he tried rip it off by the end of his miserable life. His children would never get to know who he was (even his mate had a limit to what they could teach them) after he finally died. Cthulhu sighs once more, and the rage dissipates.

“… He was so afraid of everything, yet he still pursued his fear with such… morbid fascination. Because of that, I thought… I thought he’d be a good candidate for such a task. I was a fool. Only one of us got something we wanted out of it, in the end.” To be fair, Howard likely didn’t want cancer, but the price was small in comparison to the legacy he ended up leaving as an author.

[razorblade180]

Overall thoughts on V8? Assuming you didn't answer this already.

I meant to do a volume wrap up review but I got incredibly busy and it fell to the waste side. The thing about me judging RWBY I have to come at it from two angles or I won’t feel like I judged it appropriately. There’s the casual, first time seeing the episodes and seeing this through the lens as a casual watcher who probably only sees the episodes once or twice. But then there’s the other side to that coin. I review these episodes, write aus, theorize, check extended lore, listen to the music, etc; that means I have to go back and watch episodes several times for any given reason and that’s when you start noticing the holes or picking up on things you didn’t before.

As a casual watcher, I’d give this an 8/10. There’s plenty of moments where characters do things that got me excited and plot points I wanted explored. This volume actually gave a decent amount of things I wanted for quite some time and some things I didn’t know I needed. Certainly there are things I don’t like in this but I’m open and curious to see where RT takes their storie because it’s their story.

Okay, now as a someone who’s had to deep dive and take a step back multiple times for a variety of reasons. 6.5/10 maybe a 7/10 if I’m being generous. A lot of my problems with this volume are problems that aren’t new to RWBY and that’s just how surface layer portions of arcs are and how a variety of choices/bonds don’t exactly make sense with what we were previously shown, or they only make sense because the writers don’t want introduce other complexities even though they should be there realistically. I’ll give a couple examples of these and yes, I’m aware what I say doesn’t bother everyone but it bothers me.

Qrow was never angry at or brought up Robyn being the reason their airship crashed in the first place because she started the fight; which aids in Clover dying.

Emerald follows Cinder, not Salem. Even if Cinder is working under Salem, why would Emerald be so willingly to complete shift to the side that actively goes against Cinder? There’s been no grand revelation to make Emerald believe Cinder doesn’t give a damn about her. Leaving made sense because she was about to get tortured. Going full turncoat right now doesn’t. No change happened. Emerald always hated being near Salem but adored Cinder no matter the crimes and the show hasn’t done anything to switch that view point.

I’m happy Whitley and Weiss had a touching sibling moment that implies they’re okay and making/made up, but there was never a conversation about the actual problem and thoughts that had them at odds in the first place. Weiss saving his and Willow’s life shouldn’t be the thing that smooths things over. It would’ve been terrible if Weiss do something to save their life. Whitley helping Penny is okay I guess because he really had no reason to contribute but did anyways. Even so, a person doing a morally correct thing doesn’t automatically warrant the conflict between him and Weiss’s resolved.

We got Cinder’s backstory; it didn’t tell us anything about how she eventually came into contact with Salem. Honestly her back story felt more in line of her main goal through the series was an absolute freedom by the means of breaking down the systems that trapped and didn’t give a damn, rather than her quest for power. Yes you can argue gaining power means it���s easier to maintain her freedom to do whatever she wants but I personally think that’s a little off the mark when you gave her a story that involves her trapped by rules and time rather than being too physically weak to gain freedom.

This show has built up that the Schnee family has suffered various types of abuse because of Jacques and uses Weiss as a medium to build towards breaking free from that. Not just overcoming but confronting the abuse by cementing it’s place below you. We don’t really get that. There will never be a moment where the siblings and mother truly get to break out of Jacques grasps emotionally and then put him in his place because he’s dead! Yeah they never have to worry about him again but even last volume they showed Winter still having turmoil and being able to get strung along by him. We don’t even really know how Whitley perceived his father. It feels so lackluster. Then they care to mention how it’s Weiss’s idea to save him like it’s an empowering moment when in actuality, it would be against her character, values of a huntress, and morality to let a person die in cell when you’re the reason they’re in a cell! Letting him die in there would just terrible. I don’t even know why he wasn’t let out in that scene! He’s a coward! He’d follow their orders to save his skin. All he has to do is shut up and walk through a portal.

Ironwood and Oscar both knew they could remove that staff to use it and Atlas wouldn’t drop immediately. Why did nobody have any kind of compromise with one another since there’s nothing stopping them from using the staff for something and then putting it back? They had this morally gray thing going on which I liked but then they decided to make Ironwood go full evil. I’ve never had to say this before but the song he got in V7 and the character they made him be in V8 just don’t connect. I got upset listening to that song recently because I liked that Ironwood.

Clover’s importance. RT tried making a character who had no more than 9 minutes in the series and one meaningful line of dialogue into the cornerstone of a side plot. Clover is such a nothing character. Vine did more than Clover. They try to make him have such a profound impact to the people around him but we never see him bond with his team; Harriet specifically. We get one scene of Clover telling Qrow the kids are fortunate to have Qrow even if he doesn’t think so. First, I doubt Clover knows Qrow decided to get drunk in a ghost town and the kids nearly died and cellar while he did it so that compliment doesn’t hold much weight for me. Second, We see nothing meaningful between the two. V7 has a time skip and just expects viewers to be on board with Clover being this influential change on Qrow without showing anything outside of a witty remark and Clover flexing his semblance. I would’ve bought it more of Qrow almost relapsed and Clover stopped him then had a real meaningful conversation.

Ruby goes against Ironwood only to then want to do a plan that’s aligned to longer term thinking than even his, talks about how everyone should be working together, but then adds a part in her video to actively antagonize and vilify Ironwood. Afterwards, she wonders where everything went wrong and doesn’t think of a plan or do anything to immediately help either kingdom until the final hour between the ultimatum being made, to everything getting destroyed. The inciting incident was disagreeing Mantle should be left in favor of Atlas but the main character didn’t do anything to help Mantle 90% of the season and hindered Atlas’s safety up until the final plan.

Yang is used to be the devil’s advocate in a bunch of situations, but she’s wrong most of the time or her lines just don’t make any sense. They weren’t doing just fine before Atlas. They almost died every step of the way. The team didn’t beat a Leviathan; silver eyes and a robot take credit for that. Why would Blake think less of Yang for wanting to go save people immediately? Blake was never mad at anyone to begin with. Yang consistently calls out people for following orders as if it’s objectively wrong, but is never called out on the fact she hasn’t followed anybody’s orders but her own and added discourse to every situation. I get RT is making her ask questions because that’s what Raven told her to do, but all she’s really doing is picking fights and disobeying every order. Yang states to Ruby they accomplished more than they expected. That’s false, getting Oscar back is correcting a mistake caused by her own plan that she didn’t even complete.

It took 6 volumes before Yang had anything to do with the Summer Rose subplot again and 7 volumes before her and Ruby had a sister to sister conversations; 5 if you wanna count Yang telling Ruby to leave at the end of volume three. The reason I bring this up is because in V8 , they treat their argument as if it’s a big deal but then have every character say it wasn’t that big a deal; but then have two circle back to that conversation later after having neither character discuss to anybody that the argument actually did weigh on them. Yang doesn’t think about Ruby until she sees her again and the closest we get with Ruby is Blake reassuring her that people need her and how Blake admires her. I like that scene but it’s not the same as Ruby actually airing out the specific point that Yang said something that Ruby found hurtful. Vol8 in general people trying to comfort others but nobody ever actually addresses what made them uncomfortable to start with. Except Ren.

This one is a nitpicking but I’ll say it anyways. Penny getting hacked only served as a purpose to go to the vault, a thing Ironwood already wanted them to do. Nobody got her because she was hacked. You can’t even say her getting hacked is the leading factor to her actually dying because Penny became a vulnerable human afterwards that can’t be rebuilt. Pietro was gone, and already stated last volume he doesn’t have the aura to build Penny again. If she died as a robot then it’s still permanent death. No core, no Pietro, and no aura; hacking her was just to create a Hound reveal situation and make them go to the vault on a different set of terms. I’m not exactly upset with this, but I don’t understand why the extra steps. The Hound was hunting her anyways. I would’ve brought some kind of value if she hurt a friend and it caused them to potentially hinder the plan later on or remove them entirely. Penny could’ve rekt Yang and it only adds value to Yang getting one shot later. I don’t know. I’m rambling.

I think I’ve wasted enough people’s time. Honestly, I do like this volume. I’ve enjoyed a bunch of it. But there’s things that legitimately make me think it’s not as good others and makes V7 even worse.

[bellasweetwriting]

Fix His Broken Heart

Jess Mariano x f.reader

(not my gif)

masterlist

request: Hiii, i want a jess fic🥺 theres not enough jess mariano fics here, how about after rory goes to visit him at truncheon he meets the reader and she helps him move on from rory and he falls in love with reader. 💞💞

requested by: @beautiful-thinking

note: I’m a big literati shipper so this was hard but also fun to write I really love this

warnings: movie references, drinking, gilmore girls s2,s3 and s6 spoilers, some fancy vocabulary, Logan hate

word count: 1,7k

reading time: 7 min

And he saw her walk away to his arms. She found comfort in another guy. She moved one.

He hated himself for realizing that after all these years of knowing this person, still, it isn't enough. He and Rory evolved separately, they don't have the same goals or the same resources. As much as they try, it seemed like destiny didn't want their paths to cross one another.

He realized that he lost her as soon as she walked out of that door. She was gone. What now?

He'll probably see her again at Luke and Lorelai's wedding; hell, he'll even see Logan there also. The way he despited that guy. He cheated on her, and still, there she was, madly in love with him.

Logan is better than him in Rory's eyes, and he couldn't do anything to change that. He was a forgotten part of her story, an item locked inside a box that she opens when she feels lost. She probably doesn' think of him anymore like she used to.

But he thinks of her at least once a day. When he walks through the bookstore and notices the new edition of Dawn Powell's My Home Is Far Away, or when his friends bring coffee and offer to him, reminding him of her slight coffee addiction. Who's he kidding? There's nothing "slight" about Rory Gilmore's coffee addiction, it's concerning.

Any little thing reminded him of her and the fact that now he's sure she doesn't think of him anymore... saddens him.

Everyone was celebrating the success of the event that day, while Jess drowned his sorrows in a cold beer, also glancing over the girls that walked past him.

"I should warn you that if you are planning to Kurt Cobain on my bar, don't." That expression provoked an immediate reaction on Jess's face. "Not a fan of dark humor?"

"Not when it comes from the mouth of a stranger, not," he replied, making the girl chuckle. "Do you always attend your costumers like that, Rick Blaine?" Asked Jess naming the main character of Casablanca, who happened to owned a bar/restaurant in the 1940s.

"Rick Blaine? Don't tell me you are one of those guys who listen to The Clash on repeat and think they are better than the rest of the world because they know references from black and white movies and have read at least one book by Bukowski in the last three months." Jess drank from his beer, making the girl opened her mouth widely. "Oh, God, you are! A living Danielle Steel novel main character drinking alone in my bar." He laughed.

"I used to be that guy," Jess corrected her. "I've changed."

"A girl?"

"A breakup with a girl, to be fairer. I work at a little bookstore called Truncheon. We are all independent writers, and to give you some credit, some of us do look like Danielle Steel's characters. Not that I have read anything by her, though."

Jess wasn't like that. He didn't tell people he doesn't know about himself or his personal life, but for some reason, probably the effects of the alcohol in that beer were making him loosen up a bit with this complete stranger. Yeah, a significant event has happened in his life. The girl he thought he was going to be with forever decided to be with someone else rather than him, and he hasn't thought of anyone else romantically. He's so used to being alone, so used to not having anyone to actually talk to, that, maybe, liberating his internal thoughts and regrets with someone he isn't going to see again is probably for the best.

Not a therapist or a friend, just, someone external who isn't going to dig dipper in his subconscious to understand his situation and actions or someone who is involved in the story; someone who just―listens.

"You read one, you read them all." She commented. "Independent writers, huh? Have you published anything I have written?"

"Probably not," he said with that typical modesty he has earned through the pass of the years. "I just have one book out, is a self-published, so..." She nodded. "I actually did a little road trip, trying to make independent bookstores like mine to put them in the store. Probably, by the end of the month, I'll have twenty bucks and a sticker that says: «keep trying, champ.»"

"How poetic," the barista murmured, and both chuckle.

"Do you have a copy of your book?" She asked, and he nodded, giving it to her. "The Subsect, by Jess Mariano. Truncheon Books," she read before turning it around and reading the back cover. "«A self-published, prominent and dark-humored coming of age short novel following the unique life of J., a seventeen-year-old with no place to call home.» That's dark. How much for it?"

"Twenty bucks and a sticker," she chuckled, "or, a free beer."

"Sounds like a fair deal, Jess Mariano." He smiled at the mention of his name. "I'm Y/N."

"Nice to meet you, Y/N." She placed the book inside her apron with a tiny smile. "So you work here."

"Oh, you said that because of the apron and the fact that I'm behind the counter? No, I'm just a big fan of... college bars in Philadelphia." The sarcasm in Y/N's voice made Jess grin. "My brother owns the place. He lets me live upstairs while I go to college, and I pay rent by working here. The books you see behind me are mine. I study on my break."

"What are you studying?"

"English. I want to be a screenplay writer." He sighed before shaking his head. "What?"

"A film writer? Why?"

"I love films. I love watching them, reviewing them, analyzing them. I want to write masterpieces. What's wrong with that? At least I'm not writing coming of age short novels."

"It's not a coming of age novel, that's just the hideous synopsis that my poet friends come up with for the book. It's actually a lot deeper than that."

"The only way of finding that out is reading it, right?"

"Right."

Both looked at each other for a few seconds before she asked for his glass to refill that free beer she offered him.

"How about... if I come tomorrow, take you out, and you buy me that beer? How about that?" Y/N chuckle before agreeing.  He didn't believe it actually worked. He had tried to ask girls out in the last two years, but they've always said that they weren't interested. But there was something different and intriguing about Y/N that had caught the young writer's attention. "At what time do you finish class?"

"Pick me up at eight here, I'll wait."

"Cool."

"Cool."

...............................................................................................................................

He was nervous.

A date. Jess has never even been on one before. Not even with Rory. He never took Rory on a date like a dinner or a movie before they started going out. He used to tease her, and she fell for him, God knows why.

He took Rory on dates when they were dating, although if you count the car ride as a date. No, it wasn't a date. She was Dean's girlfriend at the time, and he crashed her car.

Why did she even like him? He crashed her car for God's sake. If he was Rory, he would have hated himself.

He hated himself already.

It wasn't like in books. Girls are complicated, and the male writers he is so used to reading about usually don't talk about dates and how to get a girl; the girl is already in love with the main character.

She did mention Danielle Steel. Did she read that kind of dramas, like Nicholas Sparks and John Green, where the characters just die in each other's arms like a shoddy Shakespeare tragedy imitation? Did she like that? He didn't know how to be a "romance" kind of guy. He still used the "bully her because you like her" technique, and maybe that's the only part of him that hasn't changed with the years.

He still didn't know how to communicate and express himself. He still wasn't used to talking about his emotions or being in a healthy relationship where there's no such thing as privacy. He wasn't born to assist to cotillions and balls, wear tuxes like James Bond and use fancy words gentleman-like, such as "Farewell," "Luxury," "Eloquent," and "Hope you had a marvelous evening, thanks for joining us in our humble and splendid gathering."

But that was Rory's world. Probably Logan used words like that without even knowing the meaning of them.

He quickly noticed that thinking about his ex-girlfriend before a date wasn't a good sign.

Maybe he should stand her up? No, that is an old Jess move. He is a changed man, he doesn't treat girls like that anymore. He is better, he is more mature, he wants to achieve something, actually becoming a better and selfless person who thinks about the consequences before acting. He wasn't going to stand Y/N up.

By a quarter past eight, he was standing on the bar's entrance, making eye contact with the barista from the previous day. Y/N smiled at him before saying goodbye to the guy next to her, grabbing her purse and walking towards Jess.

"Thought you wouldn't show up, Romeo."

"Can't believe you took me for a coward."

"In my defense, I saw you drinking your problems away yesterday." He nodded before putting her coat on her shoulders for her, making Y/N smile. "What a gentleman."

"There are so many things you don't know about me. You would surprise yourself."

"Oh, let me guess: you've never been on a date before."

"What? Why would you say that?"

"Well, because we are walking instead of driving."

"I have a dark past with cars and girls. You wouldn't want me to be behind the wheel while you are inside the car after you hear it, believe me."

"Good to know." Both laughed as they walked under the streetlights of Philadelphia. "I've never been on a date either," she admitted, taking him by surprise, but not as much to make a comment about it.

Jess has never felt more comfortable. Next to her, he felt like he was free of judgments. Starting a new story, blank page, blank notebook. He felt safe, and he hasn't felt safe in another person's arms in such a long time.

This was good for him. To finally... move on.

And who better than her to fix his broken heart.

[gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights]

Rating: T

Chapter Summary: A month after Chat Noir learns Marinette's identity, they're just vibin'

Word Count: 4388 | Chapter 2/2

Notes: Written for @chatnoirinette​ through the @mlbforblm​ charity drive!  The donations go directly to Color of Change, an organization for racial justice.  I highly recommend checking them out and reblogging/donating the mlbforblm posts if you’re able!  I have two fic request slots left as of 7/17/2020, and many other talented writers and artists are offering incentives as well

XXX

Marinette glanced over her shoulder for what had to have been the thirtieth time.  Outside her bedroom window, stormclouds were gathering over the glittering skyline. What if the weather was too dangerous for Chat to come visit tonight?  Or what if he’d gotten held up with something in his civilian life?  That happened too often, though he probably spent every moment he could with her now.  It was oddly comforting that he wanted to be around her so much, even if it was just keeping her company while she worked on homework, or deciphered the grimoire, or let the kwamis out for some fresh air.

Despite seeing him practically every day, she still managed to miss him.

“He’ll be here,” Tikki said from her perch on top of Marinette’s mannequin.  

She sighed.  “That obvious, huh?”

“You almost pinned the collar to my leg.”

Oops.  As it was, the she’d bunched up the collar of Juleka’s dress all wrong.  She’d have to remove the pins and smooth it out again unless she wanted the fabric to pucker in her sewing machine.

“Sorry Tikki.  I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.”

She’d survived with only seeing her partner during akuma attacks and patrols for two years now.  But in these few weeks since she’d accidentally revealed her identity, she’d come to rely on him more than ever.  Maybe too much, honestly.  She had no idea what civilian responsibilities he was carrying on his own.

Well, she had a guess, but that was better left unsaid until she knew for sure.

You could always ask him, she thought for the thousandth time, but banished it just as quickly.  

A tap at her window made her jump and prick her finger.  Even startled as she was, guilty relief flooded her.  Tikki was right; he’d shown up anyway.

She sucked on the sore spot as she ran to open the window.  “You know Papa would let you in the front door.”

“But then I’d miss getting to see you in your natural habitat, Bugaboo.”  Chat Noir grinned as he swung himself in.  Luckily it hadn’t started raining yet.  She didn’t want her room smelling like wet cat.

“My ‘natural habitat’ has too many pins on the floor.”  She scrambled to pick them up before he ended up stepping on one.  His boots would have protected his feet, but he was polite enough to remove them every time he entered, even though she’d never asked him to.

At least, she’d never asked Chat.  That was one of her flimsier evidences for his identity, though.

“I like it.  It’s cozy.”  He plopped down on her chaise, which he’d claimed for himself weeks ago.  Not that she minded.  She kept that space clear for him, even when fabric and thread was piled on every other surface.

“What about your room?  Is it this ‘cozy’?”  She asked.  It was an innocent question, not overtly fishing for information on his identity.  

“Nah.  I’m not allowed to… I have to keep things tidy.”  He frowned.

Another piece towards her theory.  She’d add that note in the conspiracy page she’d webbed out in her diary.

“Oh!  I’ve got something for you!”  He untied a plastic bag that he’d hung from his belt.  “It, um, might be a little bit squished, but hopefully it’ll still taste good.”

Her eyes widened at the small box of cupcakes he presented to her.  The frosting was pale pink, with wobbly dots of chocolate arranged to look like the spots on her yo-yo.  They were a little smushed, but still in remarkably good shape for having traveled with Chat across Paris.  She popped off the box’s translucent lid, giggling at the tiny pigeon stickers at each corner of it.

He winced.  “They look terrible, don’t they?  I know I’m not as good at baking as you, but Mr. Ramier helped so I thought they might be kind of okay—”

“They’re perfect.”  She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.  “You didn’t have to make me anything, Kitty.”

“I know, but I wanted to.  Since you’re always sharing your delicious pastries with me—”

“Maman and Papa make most of those.”

“—and because you deserve something nice, and you refuse to let me buy you anything.”

Her face warmed.  Before she’d put that rule into place, he’d tried to bring her a present every time he visited.  Considering he visited a lot, that would have taken a toll on his wallet.

Unless money wasn’t an issue for him, of course.

Stop that, she told herself.  She could hardly deny her feelings for Chat anymore, but she couldn’t keep muddling them with feelings for her first crush.  Not until she knew for sure they were one and the same.

Now if only she could stop being a coward and ask him.

“W-well thanks,” she said quickly.  “You better help me eat them.”

He winked.  “Can do, Princess.”

Before they dug in, she bundled her fabric away and pulled out the Miracle Box from its hiding place next to her sewing machine.  It was the perfect spot, now that she’d learned how disguise it as an extra sewing box rather than that Ladybug-themed egg-thing.  She’d never have been able to keep that a secret.

“Who’s coming out today?”  Chat asked.  He’d sprawled on the chaise with his hands propping up his chin.  Tikki had nestled herself in his hair, eating half of a cupcake and scattering crumbs in his golden locks.  

The kwami would probably enjoy Chat Noir’s visits more if Plagg was allowed out for her to play with.  Plagg would devour all of her parents’ cheese-filled pastries, and Marinette… Marinette would have to look into her partner’s unmasked eyes and admit she was still half in love with someone else.

Unless she wasn’t.  But what if she was?  A few hardly-lucid dreams and wishful evidence weren’t proof that Chat Noir was actually Adrien.

She shook her head.  That train of thought could do donuts in her brain if she didn’t pull the brakes.

“I was thinking Kaalki and Pollen.”  She wasn’t up for any of the rowdier kwamis tonight, even with Chat helping her “babysit.”  Plus the two of them liked sweets; they’d appreciate the cupcakes.

She pulled out the hair comb and glasses, and Chat Noir excitedly put them both on.  The miraculouses somehow managed to make him look both dorkier and cuter at the same time.  Maybe that was just because he was at his cutest when he was being a dork.

Tikki smiled wide as Kaalki and Pollen appeared in flashes of light.

“Oooh, someone glorious and famous.” Kaalki flew in circles around Chat Noir’s head, nudging a few of his tufts of hair with her hoof.  “You would make a fine holder.  Plagg wouldn’t be up for a trade, would he?”

Chat blushed beneath his mask, making Marinette giggle.

“Uh, sorry, but I’m going to have to say neigh to that.”

Pollen covered her laugh in her hands. Kaalki just harumphed.

“Fine.  Your sense of humor is far too unpolished anyway.”

Glorious and famous.  Kaalki might have been talking about his status as a hero of Paris, but Marinette still made note.

They fell into their usual routine, Chat Noir entertaining the kwamis by answering their questions about the world while Marinette went back to work.  The steady conversation was a better backdrop than any white noise or instrumental music playlists.  She only wished she had time to join them.  Unfortunately, she’d put off this dress for too long.  She only had a week before Juleka wa supposed to model the floral sundress at the school’s ameteur fashion show, and who knew how many akumas would strike between now and then?

Marinette was just getting ready to transfer the fabric from the mannequin to her sewing desk when she heard Pollen ask Chat, “How are things between you and your Princess?”

The pins slipped from her hand.  She barely noticed a couple pricking into her slipper.

Chat had sat up straight since the last time she’d glanced back, and the nervous yet hopeful smile on his face threatened to melt her.

“Uh—well—how are things between us, Marinette?”

Her mouth briefly forgot how to make words.  She knew what Pollen meant; Tikki and her gossiped about Marinette’s love life all the time. Maybe she shouldn’t have let the bee kwami out tonight.

“Well, um.”  Her fingers twitched nervously against the fabric of her pajama pants.  Say something, Marinette! “We’re—we’re best friends, right?”

She wanted to shove her fist in her mouth.  How many times had she died inside over Adrien calling her just a friend?  And no matter who Chat was beneath the mask, she didn't want to obscure her true feelings for him.

But his face still lit up even brighter.  “I’m your best friend?”

“Of course, Kitty.”  She sat on the chaise, scooting close to him.  Probably closer than even a best friend should, but it wasn’t like Chat was shy about personal space.  “I don’t let just anyone climb in my window, you know.”

“Awwww,” Pollen sighed while crossing her hands over her heart.  Tikki gave Marinette a knowing look, which she pretended to ignore.

Then Marinette shoved a cupcake into her mouth before she could say anything more incriminating.

Chat blinked.  She wondered if he was impressed—that cupcake had been about the size of her fist. Guess she could’ve fit her fist in her mouth after all, but at least the cupcake tasted better.

“Thesh ah really goo’.” 

...Well, she said she wouldn’t say anything incriminating.  She’d never ruled out saying anything stupid.

Chat Noir laughed.  “For a Princess, your table manners could use some work.”

She swallowed about half the cupcake.  It was really good, thick and chocolatey with a hint of strawberry.  It probably would’ve tasted better if she’d taken the time to savor it.  But the loss was worth it for the look on his face.

“No table manners allowed.  Only vibes.”

He blinked before bursting out a real laugh, fuller and brighter than the one before.  One that she was sounded strikingly familiar—especially with the backdrop of rain hitting the window behind them.

That truth cracked like a flash of lightning.

“You’ve been hanging out with Nino too much.”  He wiped a claw under his eye, flicking away a few drops of water.

It was him. It had to be him. She’d recognize that laugh anywhere.

“Princess, what’s a ‘vibe’?”  Pollen asked.

“I believe it’s like a, like a feeling,” Kaalki answered over the sound of Chat’s cackle.  “Perhaps there’s a kwami of vibes?  Or would that fall under Duusu’s domain?”

Marinette was too stunned from the whiplash of Adrien’s laugh and Pollen’s question to actually answer.

“Sort of,” Tikki interjected instead.  “Marinette and her friends sometimes talk about vibes like they’re feelings, but they also use ‘vibing’ as an action.  I’m still not really sure what that means though.  Maybe we should Google it?”

When she sat on Marinette’s computer keyboard, the desktop collage of Adrien’s photos flashed on the screen.  Marinette almost lunged for her kwami in horror, but Chat was still laughing too hard to notice.

“Princess—what’s a—what’s a vibe?”  He got out between tears.

Then he actually doubled over far enough that he toppled off the chaise—which made Marinette laugh so hard she choked on her remaining cupcake. 

Adrien was dressed in a catsuit, literally rolling on the floor laughing.  That was more hilarious than even the kwamis trying to understand teenage slang.

“Marinette?  Are you okay?”  Tikki hovered up to her face, her blue eyes filling Marinette’s vision.

She giggled again, coughing out crumbs stuck in the back of her throat.

“I’m—I’m straight up vibing!”  

With that, she too rolled off the chaise and fell on top of Chat.  He yelped before giggling again, wrapping his arms around her.

“Spare vibes, Princess?  Spare vibes for a poor vibeless kitty?”

“Ack!”  She flailed as he tickled her sides.  “Nooo, stop!  You’re stealing all the vibes!”  

“Were vibes in the cupcakes?”  Pollen whispered to Kaalki, prompting another giggling fit from both Marinette and Chat Noir.

“Maybe it’s a secret,” Kaalki replied.  “Like a code.  For when the two of them want to do… whatever this is.”  She waved a hoof towards where they were tangled together.

It was only then that Marinette realized what this would look like.  And the fact that the floor wasn’t that thick, and her parents might hear something any minute.

Not to mention the fact that Adrien was tickling her.

“I, um, need some air!”  She burst, scrambling off from his chest.

“Huh?  Wait, Marinette!” 

He reached out a hand, but she’d already bolted up her ladder and shoved open her skylight.

Which, of course, let rain dump right into her bed.  Oops.

“What was in those cupcakes?”  She mumbled, climbing onto her balcony shutting the skylight behind her.  

She pressed her palms to her cheeks, trying to cool the heat there.  The rain wasn’t doing a quick enough job of it, even though the spring shower chilled the rest of her to the bone.  Had she flushed her last brain cell down the toilet?  What was she thinking? 

Of course, she was stupid with Chat Noir all the time.  They’d challenged each other to handstand contests, dared each other to eat spicy peppers, even one-upped each other’s Hawkmoth impersonations.  Chat might be Adrien, but that meant Adrien was still Chat. Knowing his identity didn’t change the fact that he was her ridiculous partner.

“Marinette?”  A blond head poked out of the skylight.  The glasses were askew on his nose; the golden hair comb had almost fallen out. “If you want me to leave, I can.  You don’t need to stay out here and get soaked.”

It was a bit late for that.  Even though she had ducked under the awning, the rain was blowing practically sideways.  She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.  Why had she worn her pajama tank?  Not that it mattered; Adrien had seen her in it before.  She could hardly embarrass herself more than she already had.

“N-no, of course not!  I just thought, we were being kind of loud, and it’s late, and since you didn’t come in through the front door…”

Chat winced as he climbed out onto the balcony to stand beside her.  Just a few seconds out in the rain, and his hair was already plastered to his forehead in a wet mop.  The glasses were too splattered to see through; he removed them and the bee miraculous with his free hand and put them in his pocket.

As for his other hand...

“Well, at least use this.  It might work a little better than your awning.”

...He popped open the umbrella.  Black and slick with rain, it brought her back to a moment two years ago.  Different green eyes, but the same soft gaze.  

“Of course you’d grab that one.”  She couldn’t help smiling.  It was the only umbrella she owned, and it had been sitting by her desk, but it still felt ironic.  

She reached for the umbrella, but Chat pulled it back at the last moment.

“Wait, it’s broken, isn’t it?”  He squinted up at its underside—

Just in time for it to snap shut on his head.

A laugh burst from her like a crack of thunder.  “Come on, Ad—Kitty.  It’s drier over here.” 

He disentangled himself from the umbrella and followed her to the corner of the balcony, where the rain hadn’t quite snuck under the awning.  

“Why do you have this old thing anyway?  Looks like a piece of junk.”  He twirled the now-closed umbrella like his baton, but fumbled it under her folding chair, where it promptly exploded open.  Chat scowled.  “Oh, I see how it is.  When I want you to open, you only know how to stay shut.  But when you’re out on your own you’re ready to party.”

The umbrella rolled slightly as it began to fill with rainwater.  Marinette laughed as Chat continued to glare at it.

“Be nice to that umbrella.  Someone very special gave it to me.”  She stretched out her legs, letting her heels dangle in the puddles in the brick.  Her fairy lights reflected in the water, casting the two of them in an ethereal glow.

“Oh, really?  Should I be jealous?”  He playfully wrapped an arm around her back.  Every place he touched burned, even though she knew the gesture was just part of his jealous act.

She hummed as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“...Oh.”  She felt him deflate, though he infused his voice with fake confidence.  “Well, good.  I’m a pretty territorial cat, you know.”

Gently, she tugged on the bell at his neck until he met her eyes.

“You don’t need to be jealous,” she clarified, “because I know he’s you.”

Chat Noir’s—Adrien’s—eyes widened.  But then his gaze softened, and he shook his head with a smile.

“I should’ve known you’d figure me out.  You’ve already done it once in your sleep.”

She blinked.  “I did?  And—and I’m right?”

She’d been sure, but it was still another thing to hear him admit it.

And it was yet another thing to hear “claws in.” To see green lightning crackle over over him, unmasking Adrien’s tender face.

The electricity had barely faded before she flung her arms around him.

“Woah!”  He laughed before hugging her back just as tightly.  “You know, I think I should be jealous.  You never hugged Chat Noir like this.”

“That’s not true.  I definitely hugged you tighter after we fought the Scrambler last week.”

“Huh.  I guess it just doesn’t have the same effect when I’m covered in egg whites.  Or maybe it’s because the suit isn’t in the way now.”

She was all too aware of that.  His bare hands were warm on her back, even through her pajama shirt.  Her face was tucked in the crook of his neck, where she could drink in his scent unobscured by the leather suit.

“Sniffing me again?”  He wiggled his eyebrows.

She flushed at being caught.  Adrien her friend from school might not have called her out for it, but Adrien her partner of two years would.  Well, two could play at that game.

“Oh, like you haven’t sniffed me before.  Besides, I can’t help it that you smell radiant, carefree, and dreamy.”

He looked mortified.  “That commercial was over a year ago!  Even Wayhem forgot about that!”

“Wayhem probably didn’t watch it two hundred and fifty-five times.”

“...I can’t tell which one of us should be more embarrassed about that.”

“Probably me,” she admitted.  “What was your point again?”

“Either we both get sniffing rights, or neither of us does.  That’s fair.”

She laughed, nuzzling deeper into his neck.  “Fine.  But I probably just smell wet.”

He buried his nose in her hair and breathed in, tickling the part of her hair.  “Don’t worry.  You smell perfect.”

Maybe it should’ve been an awkward compliment, but he still found herself giddy over it.

“Thank you.  You smell like cheese.”

“Hey!”  He pouted.  “What happened to ‘radiant, carefree, and dreamy’?”

“She gave you a compliment, kid. What’s more radiant than cheese?”  Plagg asked.

Marinette nearly screamed.  She should’ve realized he was there, but he’d blended into the shadows in the wake of Adrien’s detransformation.

“Plagg!”  Adrien hissed.  “Go inside with Tikki.  We’re having a moment.”

“Yeah, whatever.”  Plagg dismissively waved a paw.  “You got any cheese in there for me, Pigtails?”

“Uh—Tikki can get you some cheese-filled pastries from downstairs.  Don’t let my parents see you.”

“They’ll never know I was there.  Unless they notice a plate of those delicious treats is gone.” The kwami grinned and dove through the floor.  

Well, that was about all she could expect.  Hopefully Tikki could keep him under control.  If not, Marinette might have to fake a rat infestation.

“Sorry about him.” Adrien sighed.  “He’s always like that.”

“Could’ve been worse.  Imagine if you were stuck with Xuppu or Roarr as your kwami.”

He laughed.  “Pretty sure my father would have grounded me for life if he saw the mess.  Or he would’ve found out my identity.  Probably both.”

Chat had been there the one day Marinette decided to let the monkey and tiger kwamis outside of the miracle box.  She’d actually had to transform and use her Lucky Charm just to undo the damage.  

“Speaking of which… I knew it was only a matter of time, but how did you learn my identity?”  He asked.  “If I need to be more careful…”

She shook her head.  “It’s not that.  I… I don’t know if I can even explain it.  At first I thought it was just wishful thinking.  Ever since we spent the night at Mr. Ramier’s apartment, I…”

She blushed and bit her lip.  Getting caught sniffing him might have been embarrassing, but admitting this somehow felt more personal.

“What?” He asked.  “Is it because I smelled the same as Chat and myself?”

“Huh?  No—well, sort of?  Maybe subconsciously.”

“Oh.  That’s what you said while you were sleeptalking.”  He shrugged.

“I guess that makes sense, since… well, I’ve been dreaming about you.  Both of you.”  

She took a deep breath.  He was still waiting patiently, his hand softly stroking her back.  If he didn’t think she was crazy yet, she guessed this wouldn’t change his mind.

“You were always the same person in my dreams.  You’d switch back and forth between Adrien and Chat Noir.  “Chat” would sit in front of me at school, or “Adrien” would help me bring down a scary akuma. Either way, it was always you.

“And then I couldn’t help looking for similarities when I was awake.  I—I started writing down all the evidence I found.  The time “Chat” almost beat me at Ultimate Mecha Strike was when I started to actually believe it.  But what finally convinced for sure me was your laugh.”

She laced her fingers together in her lap to keep from fidgeting.  All of it sounded weirder when she said it out loud.  Almost like she’d been stalking him, sticking all of their casual interactions under a microscope.

“Wow,” he breathed, leaning back against the wall.  “I’m flattered that you went through all that effort, but I don’t get it.  The only reason I didn’t reveal myself sooner was because I was afraid it would put more stress on you, and you were already dealing with so much.  Why didn’t you just ask me who I was?”

She stared into his eyes, watching the pastel lights reflect in them.  He still didn’t know.  All these secrets shared, all these weights lifted, and she still hadn’t revealed the one secret she’d wanted to confess all along.

“Because…” she licked her lips, “because I didn’t want to be wrong.  If you weren’t Adrien—I didn’t want to project my old crush onto you.  You deserve better than that.  Though I guess it doesn’t matter now, since I wasn’t projecting after all, it is you and so I should. Just be able to say this.”

He blinked at her, but then his lips began to part in a slow smile.

“Are you saying…?”

“I’m saying I’m in love with you,” she blurted before she could lose her nerve again.  “First Adrien you, then Chat Noir you, then just, well, you.  So—so jot that down.”

A startled laugh escaped him before he squeezed her tight again.

“Consider it jotted.”  He kissed the top of her head, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  As if she wasn’t going to dissolve at the faintest sign of lip-on-hair contact.  “And in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m in love with all of you too.  So you can jot that down.”

It shouldn’t have undone her.  Chat Noir had confessed his love to her countless times.  Granted, all of those times had been before their battle with Miracle Queen, after which he’d obviously tried to move on.

But he still loved her.  She wasn’t too late.  

Maybe that relief was what pushed her to grab the collar of his shirt in both hands and press her mouth to his.

Her brain screamed, but her lips slowly figured out what to do, particularly when Adrien got over his shock and kissed her back.

Adrien. Holding her in his arms. Kissing her back.

She wasn’t sure if the sound she heard was the rain or the roaring in her ears or just her internal screaming. But it didn’t matter. For the first time, they were really, finally together, no secrets or fears between them. That truth was just as sweet as the kiss.

He finally pulled back, the front of his shirt damp where he’d been pressed against her. From the wide grin on his face, he didn’t mind.

“Will I get that kind of kiss every time I tell you I love you?”

“I don’t know.”  She tapped her lips. “It might be worth finding out.”

“I love you, my La—”

She cut him off with her mouth on his.

All that time waiting, every failed attempt at confessing her feelings, slipped away like the rain off the slick balcony railing.

When the sky finally cleared, she woke to them tangled together, slumped against that same railing.  She had a crick in her neck, and she’d probably end up with a cold from sleeping in her wet clothes.  But it still felt worth it to look up into Adrien’s blissful face.  Somehow she’d woken up before him—probably because her clothes had been more uncomfortable, since his were dry where his suit had covered them.

“Are you going to give me any juicy secrets in your sleep?”  She asked before kissing the side of his jaw.

His only response was to hum and hug her.

“I guess that’s a no.”  She chuckled.  “No fair.  I shouldn’t be the only one embarrassing myself in this relationship.”

Relationship.  She could’ve exploded into confetti just thinking about it.

“Mmm… love you… m’lady.”

Her breath caught at his slurred voice.

“...Well I guess I can’t complain about that.”

She rested her head back on his chest, and let the dripping remnants of rain from the gutters lull her back to sleep.