#she was done so dirty I’ll never forgive the writers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

touyasdoll · 3 years ago

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From the Ashes

BNHArem's Mythology & Folklore Collab Masterlist

So excited to present my contribution to this month’s bnharem collab! Please be sure to check out all the other writers & artists who are part of this collab and their pieces, because they are all so incredibly talented.

I’ve never really done any AU content before, so I am very nervous about posting this one, but I’m absolutely in love with all things mythology and this idea of doing a modern take on Cupid & Psyche (also known as the basis for Beauty & the Beast) for Dabi struck me immediately, so I had to give it a shot! I hope you enjoy it 💙

Minors DNI

Pairing: Cupid!Dabi x Psyche!Reader

Genre: hurt/comfort, smut

Word count: 6.8k

Warnings: contains dark content, kidnapping, mentions of violence & homicide though none is depicted, manipulation, toxic family members, arson, enji fucking sucks in this bc I’m still on the endeavor hate train if you can’t tell, the slightest yandere vibes from Dabi, drugging, stalking, language, derogatory terms directed at females

AU Background: In the modern day world, quirks are incredibly rare and the powerful families who are lucky enough to possess them are regarded as gods; the type who are quick to anger and reluctant to forgive. The Todoroki family has a long, historied lineage of remarkable quirks that has allowed them to amass great wealth and influence. Nothing happens in their city without them knowing about it and no one dares to question their authority, lest they face the wrath of their rumored to be psychopathic patriarch.

“I didn’t ask for your fucking opinion. I told you to take care of the bitch.” Enji barked at the perturbed man before him. “Do I need to remind you of what happened the last time you thought you had a bright idea? Or are those disgusting scars of yours enough?”

Dabi pressed his lips together, closing his eyes as he bowed his head in submission, “I’ll handle it.”

“Good. Don’t return until you’re sure she’s gone,” the fiery tyrant brushed past his despondent son, taking a seat at the large wooden desk within his lavish office.

Dabi spun on his heel, pushing the door open with his eyes cast down before fisting his hands into his pockets. The brief sound of a high heel clicking across the floor drew his attention to the hall, where the one he barely regarded as his mother anymore stood cowering behind a corner. She opened her mouth to speak, her tongue heavy with good intentions and her eyes watering with a sense of sympathy that she never dared to convey out loud, but nothing became of either. A common pseudo-interaction between them these days.

With a huff, he continued on his way strolling through the dark, ornately decorated hallway. He was so tired of this. He’d quickly grown weary of behaving as his father’s lapdog, doing all of the dirty work that the prestigious Enji Todoroki couldn’t risk being seen sticking his hands into. He’d considered telling his old man to shove it, but whenever he considered his next move, he didn’t know where he would go. His father expected as much and took full advantage of his begrudged servitude, all the while treating him as less than ever since the accident. Not even his siblings had ever come to treat him the same as they had before, but he suspected that was largely due to parental influence. Though that didn’t make it sting any less. He knew that his mother was petrified to put herself anywhere near the matter and he couldn’t exactly blame her for that. Not when he knew the feeling all too well.

He wanted to run, to start his own life somewhere new. Somewhere far from the influence of his father and the painful memories that put an ache in his bones every time he set foot within the family estate. But again, where could he go? His father would know long before he set foot across the county line and he knew that he wasn’t his only lackey. There were some far more gruesome than he and he shuddered to think of having to outplay one or more of them as a means to escape.

At least it wasn’t all bad. He’d have to remind himself of the bits of good fortune he did have when his mind threatened to slip too far into despair. He had a home of his own to seek reprieve when his services weren’t necessary. A means of living, even if it wasn’t admirable work. Even if it tormented him. He had everything that he needed to keep him alive to see another day. Though most days turned out to be lonely, he was still a breathing, thinking human being. One with the capacity to hope that one of his tomorrows might be a little less lonesome.

He could return to his pity party later. For now, he had a job to do, though he had rolled his eyes at the request. His father was certainly slipping into a deeper shade of madness as of late. That was evident upon his demand that he run some poor young girl out of town, simply because he had deemed her too attractive for her own good. Well, run her out or simply dispose of her, as Enji had phrased it. He never shied away from advocating for the most final of solutions, but Dabi couldn’t ever bring himself to do it. He already looked like a monster, he didn’t want to complete the transformation in that regard.

He already felt subhuman considering the things that he’d done in the past. The smell of singed flesh and the screams of Enji’s enemies were burned into his psyche. He hated resorting to violence. Most of the time when he showed up, the target would take his warning at face value. Everyone knew the rumors about what the Todorokis were capable of and most didn’t want to find out if they were true, so they ran without a second thought. Others, the stubborn and the woefully ignorant, had to be persuaded. Unfortunately for them, Dabi hadn’t inherited his mother’s patience.

Maintaining power was easy when your family held the city in their pocket. Politicians were purchased. The police were on payroll. It was insane how much you could get away with when you had the right amount of cash. Of course, if the bankroll from the family business wasn’t enough persuasion, there was always the promise of ice and fire coming to claim you. That alone was convincing enough for most. The financial compensation was Enji being generous to his collaborators for never batting an eye when a would-be competitor’s building went up in flames that burned so bright they blazed blue.

A heavy sigh left his chest as Dabi sank into the leather seat of his black Mercedes. He understood that he was seated in the lap of luxury and he often felt sick for being so resentful of it. It could be worse, he supposed, letting his mind drift back to ponder his unique situation as he navigated his way through the city streets. But he was unwillingly shackled to this splendor. Dragged along in the darkness, crawling in the shadows cast by the picture perfect image of his family who he could no longer claim was his own, by his father’s own order.

He shook his head, an attempt to shirk his pathetic stream of consciousness and put himself in the proper headspace to do what he did best. Terrorize. Intimidate. Subdue the threat.

But were you a threat? He narrowed his eyes in your direction, watching you from the parking lot as you sat sipping coffee in front of a local cafe with two women who looked too much like you to not be your sisters. Though they didn’t have quite the same striking features that attributed to your ethereal beauty. They would have looked average had they not been seated beside you, but the direct comparison made them look almost embarrassingly plain.

He hadn’t understood Enji’s insistence that you were too pretty for your own good, but he did now. You were the most beautiful sight that he had ever laid eyes on. You looked so harmless. So soft, innocent, and sweet. He felt compelled to you. All you’d have to do is say the word and he would happily do your bidding without explanation. He’d do anything to catch your favor. And therein lies the problem. You had that effect on most men.

Which wasn’t a crime, until you’d caught the attention of Fuyumi’s betrothed at a work function. Apparently seeing that pretty little face of yours had struck enough doubt in his mind to call off the engagement that Enji had worked so tirelessly to make happen, because he wasn’t above coordinating a merger through means of his only daughter’s hand in marriage. In Enji’s eyes, you were the only thing standing in the way of his ultimate goal, so you had to go.

But looking at you now, Dabi didn’t think that he had it in him to run you off, let alone approach you. He didn’t deserve to be in your presence and he surely didn’t want to cause you any harm. All he wanted was to sit there and look at you. To watch your delicate features scrunch up as you let out a giggle that could easily pass as a song to his ears. He’d listen to it all night long if he could, but it was cut short by the handsome man who approached you. The obvious attempt that the man was making instantly wrought Dabi’s lips into a scowl as he kept a careful watch over the exchange.

The stranger had his best smile on his lips, an attempt to charm you as he sauntered up to where the three of you were seated, but you would’ve thought your sisters were invisible by how he seemed to pay them no mind when he interjected himself into your conversation. The smile disappeared from your lips while worry creased your brow and Dabi felt his palms grow warmer as he gripped the steering wheel. He cracked the window to see if he could catch wind of what the man was saying, but all he could hear was you politely telling him that you were busy having an evening out with your sisters before he nodded and backed off with an apology. At least he wasn’t a jackass, Dabi noted.

Your sisters, however, seemed to be more affected by the interaction than you were. Their attitudes shifted as soon as the stranger stepped away, both of them sneering in your direction, taking turns making asinine comments about how the only reason you got so much attention was because you looked like an easy fuck. How you had nothing between your ears, but thankfully you were at least pretty enough to maybe have a chance at snagging a husband. Otherwise, who would want you once your youth faded? You were worthless without your face.

Dabi’s blood boiled. He couldn’t bear to listen to another disdainful lie from their petulant mouths. He pulled on the door handle, popping it open to slip his leg out, but he halted when he saw you rise, hurriedly pushing in your chair to make an escape from their vile words.

He slipped back inside, watching as you half-jogged to your car, leaving the cackling witches behind you. Nerves bloomed in his chest. This was it. He was supposed to handle this, he was ordered to handle this. His mind jumped to the thought of abandoning the plan altogether. He could just turn and run now, leave you be and try to finally make a break for it. But in the back of his mind, he knew that was futile.

His father would run him down. He’d only maim him further and force him back to work or worse, he’d just have him locked up and throw away the key. Not to mention, Enji Todoroki wasn’t one to give up on something once he set his mind to it. He’d have you removed from this city one way or another and Dabi had serious doubts that anyone else would treat you with any modicum of respect or restraint. No, any other one of his father’s goons would likely have their way with you before they either snuffed you out or ran you screaming out of town and he couldn’t let that happen. There was only one viable option. He had no choice but to take care of you himself.

///

It was a song and dance he’d performed many times before, ambushing someone when they were most vulnerable, alone and in the dark of the evening. He followed you at a safe distance, though he doubted that you paid enough attention to check if you were being followed home after a coffee run. He weighed his options, considering what he would ultimately do the whole way there. Contemplated whether or not he’d be honest with you or just take you the way he took everyone else. It might be easier if he just subdued you first, right? You were sure to scream, especially if you saw his face.

His face. He couldn’t let you see it. He’d be too disgusted with himself to even face you. That settled the debat; he’d just wait. Bide his time until he was sure you were asleep and then he’d break in and knock you out before you even had the chance to awaken. He didn’t want to frighten you, certainly didn’t want to risk hurting you. He didn’t want to do this at all, but in all the time that he sat waiting in his car, only a few houses down on the quiet street, he couldn’t think of another option.

His heart was thundering when the time came. Thankfully, everything went smoothly. He entered without incident. No alarms, no dogs. No signs that you had even stirred in your sleep by the time that he crept into your room. He took a moment to stop and admire your beauty up close.

You were even more breathtaking at this proximity. There wasn’t a single flaw that he could find hidden within your features, which looked truly heavenly under the romantic blue light that the moon cast through the sheer curtains hanging over your bedroom window. He readied the syringe in his hand, fighting with himself as he lifted the point to your neck and closed his eyes, unable to bare to watch as he pushed the sedative into your veins.

Tentatively, he opened his eyes to study the rise and fall of your chest. His heart skipped a beat as he waited for your lungs to inflate again; he was petrified that he’d hurt you somehow, but then your chest rose, the gentle sound of your slow, steady breathing filling the still air of the bedroom. He breathed a sigh of relief, gingerly scooping you into his arms to whisk you away.

This was anything but romantic, but he couldn’t help but to let himself pretend that he was your knight in shining armor for just those few seconds. Standing in the pale moonlight, staring down at your peacefully sleeping face. He allowed himself to pretend that this was a tender moment between lovers, instead of some insidious act performed by a monster.

///

A thick fog clouded your mind when you awoke. You struggled to crack open your eyes to peek at the sunlight pouring into the room. Struggled even harder to keep your lids afloat. You felt strange, like there was a film crusted over your brain that you couldn’t quite break. Your hands felt around for your cell phone within your sheets, but these—these didn’t feel like your sheets.

Your eyes snapped open, painfully adjusting to the light as you tried to take in your surroundings, which you were certain now that you didn’t recognize. The air was robbed from your lungs, you clutched at your chest, pulling on the nightshirt you’d worn to bed the night before as you contemplated what to do next, but you came up empty. Your mind was racing at a million miles a minute, but your body was frozen where you sat.

Glancing around the expansive room, you could see that it wasn’t some dank, dark dungeon, but a well-decorated modern space. The walls were a pale gray and all the expensive looking furniture and decor only seemed to exist in black and white. A deep voice suddenly shook your from your observations.

“I know that this sounds terrible, but please don’t freak out. I’m not going to hurt you.” You searched for the source, finding it on the far wall, near the large french doors that you assumed led out to the hall. “I’m trying to help you. I know how fucked that sounds, but I just need you to hear me out. Okay?”

Your breathing became ragged and uneven as your eyes remained trained on the little white box, until the disembodied voice rang in your ears once more.

“I can hear you if you press the button. Are you okay to walk? If not, there’s a mobile intercom in the bedside drawer.” The voice sounded almost..concerned? But this..this had to be your kidnapper, right? Kidnapper. Oh my god, you’d been kidnapped. Fear seized your heart yet again as you scrambled out of the bed, rushing to the little white box to slam on the button and scream, “What do you want from me? I’ll give you anything. Anything, just please let me go!”

Dabi’s eyes shut tight, his brows knitting together as guilt ripped through his chest. He stared at your frantic motions in the monitor, watching as you beat your fist against the bedroom wall. He couldn’t see the tears, but he could hear the sobs spouting from your lips as your forehead fell against the drywall.

“Listen to me,” his voice shook, he cleared his throat and tried again. “Listen to me. I didn’t want to do this. I’m so sorry, but you have to believe me when I say that this is the best alternative to what could have happened to you. I’m trying to protect you, Y/n.”

“How do you know my name?! Who are you?!” You wailed, growing more frantic by the second as you slammed your palm against the wall, tears streaming over your cheeks.

It was destroying him inside. He didn’t want this. Never wanted to hurt you. He’d made every effort to avoid that, but he understood that you must be terrified. He couldn’t even imagine what was racing through your mind, but he wanted to do what he could to soothe you, so he offered you bits of the truth.

“My name is Dabi. I work for Enji Todoroki.”

The name sent ice through your veins. You stopped colliding your hand with the wall and lifted your head to shake it, now trembling in an even deeper sense of fear, “N-no. No, please tell me that you’re lying. I..I-I’ve never done anything to them! Please, I-I’ve heard all the stories.” You sobbed, your thumb shaking as you held it to the silver button. “Th-the disappearances, but I’ve never..I don’t even know them!”

“Ssh, ssh,” he hushed gently, your trembling frame and fear stricken voice would have driven tears of his own over his mismatched cheeks, had he still had the tear ducts to produce them. “I know. But your boss does. That office party a few weeks ago. You were there, weren’t you?”

You wracked your brain, searching for the mundane memory. “Y-yes..I wasn’t supposed to be. His wife couldn’t attend. It was just for the higher-ups and their spouses, so they could socialize and do whatever fucking bullshit they do at those God-forsaken get togethers. I..I was only there because he’d insisted. But I hardly spoke to anyone! What could I have done wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything, doll.” He swallowed, taking a deep breath to steady his voice. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Enji’s daughter recently got engaged to your boss’ boss. He took such a shine to you that night that he called off the engagement, which in turn, upset my boss. Unfortunately, Enji has gone off the deep end, but I’m not him. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to protect you from this mess. I didn’t know how else to keep you safe other than to bring you here. I’m sorry, princess. I know this is..a lot, but I’m telling you the truth here.”

You blinked, letting your thumb slip off the intercom as you stumbled back to the bed, sinking down into the soft mattress to stare off into the gray paint on the wall. You sat there, running the events over in your mind. Trying to picture who you had even spoken to that night. There was nothing of note in your memory. You were just a secretary, you had no business being there, no reason to be spoken to. And here you were, held captive who knows where, because the boogeyman was out to get you over something that you didn’t even do? It was crazy. Insane. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable. That’s the word that rang through your mind, over and over as a laugh bubbled in your throat. Unbelievable. You scoffed, laughing heartily as you tried to shake the unthinkable from your mind. The most powerful man in the city wanted you gone and this stranger on the other end of that little speaker box was your only hope? It read like an overdone novel, but you didn’t have much choice aside from turning the page.

You blinked back to your sordid reality, remembering the instructions about the mobile device in the drawer, which you pulled open to find a small, white remote. Simple controls. Push to speak and a couple volume buttons. You pressed the silver button in the center.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m the only hope ya got, doll.”

///

The first few days were the hardest. Despite Dabi’s overwhelming attempts at hospitality, you chose to stay curled up in bed for most of the first week. He had explained time and time again that you were more than welcome to explore the grounds, so long as you never entered his room.

Apparently, you were nestled in a mansion, far beyond the city limits. His personal home. There was a fully stocked kitchen, a library, a cozy living room, an impressive backyard complete with a pool, and even a private garden, according to him, but you hadn’t ventured outside the room.

He’d taken the time to describe your captivity activity options in detail, insisting that if there was anything at all that you couldn’t find, he’d retrieve it for you. He’d already ensured that your closet was full of an impressive wardrobe and pestered you to learn your favorite meals, so that he could ensure he obtained the correct ingredients for them.

He'd even successfully made some of them for the meals that he would leave outside your room like clockwork, three times a day. He’d check in on you from time to time, promising that he had shut off the security monitors in your room, which he had. He insisted he’d only had them active to watch for when you’d first awoken, because he didn’t want to leave you panicked in a locked room, which you weren’t sure if you’d believed, but he had seemed rather remorseful when he explained himself.

It seemed like he was trying. Between the various gifts he’d leave at your door and the little tidbits of himself or the world outside that he would share with you from time to time in an effort to make conversation, despite how stupid he felt whenever he tried. It seemed like he was telling the truth about his intentions after all, but you were still reluctant.

He sounded remorseful anytime his voice rang through the walls. Always apologizing. Always trying to explain that he only wanted to keep you safe. Telling you how vehemently he disagreed with his employer. How he was so desperate to leave, but he was trapped himself. In a different manner than you, of course, he confessed. He swore up and down how he wished that he could just let you return to the life you knew, but he knew that you wouldn’t be safe outside of these walls, where no one would think to look for you.

You didn’t know if those words brought you comfort or inspired more fear. The wrath of Enji Todoroki was nothing to laugh at, but you missed your home, your life, and your family, despite the way that your sisters treated you.

In a moment of weakness, you’d clutched the little white remote tight in your hand. Crying into the receiver about how even though your family were so cruel to you sometimes, even though your life was nothing spectacular, and even though your house didn’t feel quite like a home with how empty it felt having you as it’s only occupant, you still missed it. You still longed for what you knew, because at least you had hope when you had options. Here, you had nothing.

You weren’t sure if he had heard you. If he was waiting on the other end of the line, until you heard him clear his dry throat, followed by a confession of his own. Another apology poured from his lips, but not because of something that he had done. He offered up a sincere apology for the way that you felt about your life back at home and made a promise that he understood precisely what you were feeling. That peculiar notion of missing something that you knew wasn’t all that great to begin with, but you couldn’t help but be affected by its absence, because it was all that you’d ever known. He whispered his condolences to the hope that you had been holding onto and admitted that he’d had to let his own hope die a long time ago.

That was when you first genuinely considered that he was telling you the truth. Maybe it was the Stockholm syndrome hooking it’s claws into you or maybe it was your self-detrimental need to see the good in people, but you wanted to believe him, to commiserate with a soul as sorry as your own. So you tried.

“C-can I see you?”

He balked at your question, you almost repeated yourself, unsure of if he’d heard your query until he sputtered, “N-no.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I mean, ugh. Listen, I’m not..I don’t look anything like what you would expect, doll. I don’t want to scare you anymore than I already have.”

“I doubt that you could,” you scoffed, daring to let yourself genuinely laugh for a beat. “I’m not going to try and run or trick you or anything, I just..I just want some company.”

He paused, closing his eyes as he mulled it over, or pretended to, rather. He couldn’t fool himself, he didn’t want to say no to this. You were asking for his company. His. Sure, you didn’t have very many other options at the moment, but it meant a great deal to him nonetheless.

“Okay. On one condition.” He agreed, inevitably.

“What’s that?” You perked up, sitting up straighter in the bed as you cradled the device in your hand.

“You can’t look at me. Lights out. You turn one on and I’m gone. Okay?”

“Okay,” you smiled, and though he couldn’t see it, he could certainly hear it, feel it. Feel as it spread the first bit of warmth into his chest after such a long drought without anything of the sort. “That’s fine. I can do that. I promise.”

///

That evening, a gentle knock came to your door. You sat up in the bed, clicking a few buttons on a remote that killed every light source in the room, leaving you stranded in inky darkness.

“Come in,” your voice was more timid than you intended. A symptom of the nerves.

One side of the french doors creaked as it swung open and then shut again. You couldn’t see the figure in the room, but you could hear them; the quiet sound of socks on hardwood.

“Hi,” his deep voice was even smoother than it was over the intercom. It sounded the feeling of running your hands over thick velvet, leaving your skin pricked with goosebumps with only a single word.

“Hi,” you responded meekly, drawing your knees to your chest to wrap your arms around them as the man shuffled across the room to sit in the chair along the far wall. “Thank you for coming.”

“You’re too nice for your own good, aren’t you?” He spoke suddenly, his question sounding more like an accusation.

“W-what?”

“You’re thanking me, the man who’s keeping you here, for coming and paying you a visit in the dead of night.” He explained, a scoff leaving his throat. “Why? How do you know I’m not here for my own selfish reasons?”

“I..I-I don’t know, I just--,” you paused, anxiety bubbling in your chest. Was this a good idea? “I mean if you wanted to hurt me, you’d probably done so already, right? And what you were saying earlier, about how you understood what I was talking about, I just,” you shrugged, as if he could see. “It didn’t sound like you were lying.”

Silence fell. There was nothing to stimulate your senses while you held your breath, anxiously awaiting a response that finally came when he let out a long sigh.

“I wasn’t,” he smiled sadly to himself. “And I won't lay a finger on you, doll, I swear. I guess I’m really just asking myself why I’m even in here at all.”

“Aren’t you lonely?” You shocked the both of you with your inquiry and quickly tried to rectify your rudeness. “I’m sorry. I just mean, I know that I have been. People aren’t meant to be this alone, you know.”

A bitter laugh greeted you from the darkness, “I’ve been alone for a long, long time, sweetheart. I’m used to it.”

“Being used to something and being okay with it aren’t the same thing.” You brought your knees down, shuffling in the bed to bring yourself to sit on the edge.

Dabi’s eyes snapped to where you sat, wishing he could catch just a glimpse of you. His jaw fell open, but no words met yours. He didn’t have them.

“I should know,” you swallowed, tasting the sour memories crawling up the back of your throat, clawing their way to your tongue, begging to be relived.

“Your family isn’t very kind to you either.” He stated empathetically, “I know. I heard your sisters that night.”

“You..y-you were there? At the coffee shop?” You clutched the edge of the mattress, nervously wrestling with the sheets between your fingers.

“Yeah,” he sighed, feeling like a creep once again as he rubbed his face, kicking himself for saying anything. “I overheard the awful shit they said to you. Which was all incredibly incorrect, by the way. At least from what I can tell. Obviously, they’re jealous, but I don’t know where they get off thinking it’s all right to be such fucking bitches about it.”

You laughed quietly, unable to stop the sound as you listened to him gripe on your behalf. It felt good to make such a joyful noise after a week of barely making any noise at all.

He was pleasantly surprised to hear the melodic sound, smiling softly in your direction as he clarified, “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t really know ‘em, so maybe I can’t judge. But from my own experience with shit family members, it just seems like an accurate call.”

“Oh, no, you’re spot on.” You laugh again, but there's a twinge of malice behind this one. “They’re cunts. That’s, uh. That’s no secret. But they’re still my sisters,” you sigh. “My family really believes in that whole blood is thicker than water adage, which is a crock of shit, because no one can stand one another. It’s like they’re all just resigned to be bound to these people who they can barely tolerate when they have to and they’ve roped me into the same con.”

He scoffs, “That is a con. One that you don’t have to subscribe to. Forgive me for sounding like reprobate yet again, but from what I can tell, you’re a sweet girl. Smart too. You don’t need cunts like that dragging you down, family or otherwise.”

“Thank you,” you dangle your feet, shrinking yourself at the praise that stirs something inside your belly. Something that you certainly didn’t expect to feel this evening, warmth. “What about you though? You haven’t said much about them, but it sounds like you don’t exactly look forward to family gatherings.”

“Oh, if only you knew, princess.” He chuckled, deep and dark, and you could feel the vibrations across the hardwood floor as your toes touched down. “My family is a horror story and somehow I always end up being pegged as the monster.”

“I’ve always believed that most monsters are just misunderstood, personally.” You rose carefully from the bed, taking a cautious step forward. “Are you a monster like Ted Bundy or a monster like Frankenstein’s?”

“W-what do you mean?” He readjusted in his seat, clearing his throat to evict the waver in his voice.

“I mean,” you ventured closer, unable to ignore the strange, alluring pull that drew you nearer to the mysterious figure in the chair, “Are you an irredeemable predator who uses his charm to prey on young women for pleasure?”

You were almost close enough to touch him now, near enough to hear the way his breathing became unsteady. “Or were you only made to believe that you’re the monster when you’re really just a victim of someone else’s crimes?”

“I..I don’t--,” he shook his head, his voice breaking in two as he contemplated your words. He wanted to accept the salvation that you were offering to him. He never wanted to do the things that he had, but he’d still done them.

That was enough, wasn’t it? To make him the monster that he'd always believed he was? Why weren’t you afraid of him? Why were you standing so painfully close to him now? So close that he was able to recognize the perfume he’d gifted you wafting off of your neck, adding to the dizzying spiral in his brain.

“Frankenstein’s monster still did terrible things..” he clutched the arms of the chair, his knuckles paleing at the force of his grip.

“To the real monster of the story,” you knelt before him, blindly reaching out to find his hand in the darkness to ghost the pads of your fingers along his knuckles. “But he helped those that he could. He even saved some poor girl that he didn’t even know.”

You lifted your hand away when he flinched at your touch, speaking softly as you continued. “I’d sooner call him a hero for that. He wasn’t a monster at all, he just needed someone to save him from himself.”

He swallowed the sob bubbling in his chest, grateful for once that his tears could never come. His fingers spread out, cautiously trying to connect with yours again. When he found them, he wove his digits through yours and instantly felt as if he could breathe a little easier. Like an immense weight had finally been lifted off of his chest as he let out a breath that he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and almost broken.

You smiled sadly, looking up at the silhouette of his frame that you could just barely see now that your eyes had adjusted to the dark. Why was he so afraid to show you his face?

Your pressed your palm to his and had to catch yourself before you let a gasp slip from your lungs when you felt the cool, metallic ridges. He flinched again, trying to slip his fingers out from between yours, but you held fast, tightening your grasp.

“It’s okay,” you whispered, swiping your thumb against his, unfazed by the metal that you found there as well. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m not afraid of you, Dabi.”

“You would be if you saw me,” he whispered, feeling forlorn and fragile, smaller than he ever had. But he allowed a small spark to light in his chest as he replayed the sound of you saying his name in his mind.

“Looks aren’t everything, you know. They don’t matter to me. Not in the least,” you brought your other hand down carefully atop his, sliding your fingertips over the back of his hand, moving to begin to drag them over the differently textured skin. “May I?”

He inhaled sharply and paused, his hand trembling between yours as he let out an anxious sigh, “Yes,” he agreed, gripping the arm of the chair tight within his other hand as you let your fingertips glide along his arm.

You moved slowly, delicately soothing the skin beneath your touch. You dragged your fingers along the sleeve of his shirt, over the soft skin of his collarbone, then cool metal and scarred skin again.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” You stood slowly, hunching over him as your fingers danced over his neck to slide along his chin.

He could hardly breathe. He could feel your breath on his face as your warm hands skimmed over his cheek to slide behind his ear and into his hair, so that you could hold his jaw in your palm. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” he sighed, closing his eyes, letting himself finally relax as you held his face in your hand. He leaned into it, letting his desperation to be touched in this way show and he didn’t seem to care anymore. He didn’t care to question it either; he just needed more of this. He felt like he would always need more of this.

You smiled softly, bringing your other hand up to assume the same position on the other side of his face and he didn’t hesitate to wrap his hand around your wrist, stroking his thumb against it slowly as you leaned in, giving in to that mysterious but powerful pull that drew you into him. You kissed him tenderly, half-expecting him to flinch away, but he didn’t.

He drew you closer, wrapping a thoughtful arm around your waist, bunching up the nightshirt that you wore as he pulled you into his lap, leaning in to the kiss to deepen it as he helped you settle across his thighs, your knees pushing into the plush upholstery of the chair when you straddled him.

Then he couldn’t ignore the thoughts permeating his mind, threatening to soil this perfect moment. He didn’t deserve this. He ought to push you off of him and head back to his room, but he couldn’t find the will to do so. He was lost, plummeting into unfamiliar territory that he never thought that he’d tread.

It felt so good just to be touched without someone jerking away from the texture of his skin, but to be touched like this, so gently. And to be touched by you? He was gone. Falling headfirst into the deep well of a daydream turned reality that he’d somehow stumbled himself into and he had no desire to climb back out.

Your arms encircled his neck while your fingers knit into his hair, moving up from his nape to cradle his head in your hands as your lips moved against one another’s. His hands found purchase on your bare thighs and you shuddered, moaning into his open mouth as his thumbs pressed on the innermost part of your thigh.

He pulled your lips back to his by taking your bottom lip between his teeth, sucking on it briefly while he let out a groan as you ground your hips on top of his, sending blood rushing to the tent in his sweats that was rapidly growing against the front of your dampening panties.

“Dabi,” you mewled breathlessly, earning another wanton groan from his chest that vibrated against your own before he claimed your swollen lips once more. He slipped his hands over your thighs, hooking his fingers beneath them to carry you to the bed.

“You don’t have to do this,” he panted, pressing his forehead to yours as he hovered above you.

“Please,” you implored him sweetly, splaying your fingers across his cheek while you lifted your lips to crash into his, speaking against them between breaths. “I want to.” You sigh softly, brushing your bottom lip along his, “Let me show you that you’re not the monster that you think you are.”

He sighed through his nose, a soft groan reverberating against your lips as his tongue slipped between them. You took that as permission and then it was a race to have the other undressed, your mouths barely parting as you stripped each other down in the darkness, using your hands to explore one another’s bodies, to become familiar with the uncharted territory that neither of you could wait to lay claim to.

Your blood was boiling, pooling in an unbearable heat between your thighs that you were desperate to extinguish. You couldn’t wait any longer, but he still seemed hesitant, despite how your bodies were writhing unabashedly against one another, so you took control.

You pressed your palm to his shoulder, pushing him on to his back, so you could straddle his hips. Leaning down, you sat forward to stroke his throbbing member, angling it just so as you kissed him hard and dropped your hips onto his length.

“Oh my God,” his back arched as your walls claimed all of him, his hands flying to your hips. His fingertips dug into your supple skin as he held them, thrusting up into you while your hands fell on his chest.

“Dabi,” you moaned, throwing your head back as you rutted your hips to meet his thrusts. You were so completely full, your walls contracting around his girth while the inertia amplified the way the head of his cock kissed your cervix. It was all so much. Too much, too soon.

“Dabi, oh fuck. O-oh my GOD. I-I’m gonna--,” You whined desperately, hurtling towards a full-body orgasm, a sensation you’d only felt once in your life before, but one that you recognized immediately.

“Fuck, baby, I know. ‘M so close. So fuckin’ close,” he growled, slamming into you even harder as you bounced helplessly on his cock.

Your orgasm hit your like a freight train, every nerve set ablaze at once as you wailed, a sinful song of transcendence that echoed off the walls like a celestial chorus.

He joined you in nirvana shortly after, your spasming walls catapulting him over the edge as he cried out and spilled into you, fast and fierce. The mess dribbled between your intertwined bodies, leaking out of your quivering hole and onto the sweat-soaked sheets beneath you as you collapsed on top of him.

His arms folded around you as if it were second nature, like something you’d rehearsed a thousand times before as you both lay there breathless, no longer able to consider yourselves strangers.

Thank you for reading! There is more of this story to tell, so I will be making a part two. Please like/comment/reblog if you enjoyed 💙

And please go & check out the other works from this collab! Masterlist is linked in the intro 💙

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evethemnm · 2 years ago

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WARNING: Before reading this please prepare yourself for a long rant from a very devoted Farah fan lmao

You cannot convince me otherwise that Farah and Bloom are not mother and daughter. Now I know that it probablyyyyy is not going to happen *sighs* and Farah probablyyyy is not coming back *sighs again* but I have read too many good fanfictions and watched the show too many times to not fully believe in this theory. I mean come on. The signs are everywhere!

Bloom: “You hid me from Ms. Dowling!”

Rosalind: “The guidance is you needed was love. Farah couldn’t give that to you. Vanessa and Michal could.”

What is the meaning behind this conversation? I’ll admit I’m slightly biased when it comes to Farah, but even if you had never watched Fate you’d probably think Bloom was… stollen from Farah? There are just so many signs pointing to something deeper than only student/headmistress. I mean the hug, the maternal nature Farah has towards Bloom, their relationship in general. There is SOMETHING there. My personal opinion is mother/daughter but it could be something else. There was so much potential that the writers had at their fingertips and it all went to waste. Plus the death of Farah was, forgive me, utterly stupid. Not particularly the devastating aspect of losing her, but…

1. The unfinished business her character had. Killing off a character, even a main character, is not unheard of by no means. But usually those characters have given the show everything needed from them, not to say there’s nothing more could give but they’ve done what was needed of them. They’re missed but it doesn’t drastically change the show. But killing off Farah made no sense. She played such a major role in the show and in Blooms story that it messed the show up for me. And don’t even get me started on the downfall of Saul’s character and the disappearance of Ben *shakes head*

2. The way they killed her! Farah was one the the most powerful fairies we saw and knew Rosalind better then anyone. She had 16 years of planning to cook up something, knowing someday the day would come where Rosalind would be freed somehow. We all know Farah is always prepared and is anything but naive. So it doesn’t make sense, that she wouldn’t have had something prepared. Plus if it was a matter of Eve not being able to return, which I know it mostly was (at least her not being in season 2 at all) because of house of dragon, I’d have gladly waited longer for the season 2 release or waited to see her again in a possible season 3. But that’s another rant.

All this to say I am salty with the writers for how bad they did Farah dirty and I will not forgive. Thank you

#farah dowling #just ranting #theory #bloom peters #fate: the winx saga writers #fate: the winx saga #this makes no sense #i hate my liiiiife #just why

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enbyprentiss · 4 years ago

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Little brat

Genre: Smut, pure filth, zero plot

Pairing: Hotch x Reid

Warnings: Sub!Spencer, Dom!Hotch, Spencer in panties and makeup, bratty Spence, spanking, penetrative sex, degradation, daddy kink, some praise, slight aftercare, oral (male receiving obviously), face fucking, and I think that’s it but lmk if I missed anything!

(and no @sparklinspence, if you’re reading this, i REFUSE to incorporate Hotch’s supposed foot fetish)

Also, Hayley does not exist in this story because that woman deserved so much better. And instead, she got murdered. Yes, I am still salty about it and no, I will never forgive the writers for that.

Spencer liked being a good boy. He lived to please. However, he loved being a brat even more. He always looked forward to things that were supposed to be punishments. He liked Hotch to yell at him. Tell him what a dirty boy he is. He liked being fucked like a bitch. So, he planned on being the biggest brat today.

It started when Aaron called him in for a case. And instead of telling him that he’d be there within 20 minutes like he usually did, “What if I don’t?”

“Spencer...”, he warned.

“What? What are you going to do?”, he always knew just how to push Aaron’s buttons.

“If you don’t, I’ll have no choice but to terminate you.”

“You would never.”, and even though he couldn’t see Spencer, he still had a smug look on his face.

“I better see you in the next 30 minutes.”

Reid huffed, crossing his arms and hanging up the phone. He reluctantly pulled himself out of bed, putting on the pair of panties he knew drove Aaron crazy and quite possibly the tightest pants he owns so that Hotch would be the only one who would recognize the outline.

When he arrived at the office, his eyes flicked straight up to Hotch’s office. And god, just looking at him made his pants become just a little tighter. He had to strategically pull his satchel closer to his body, quickly seating himself and tucking his legs completely under the round table. Spencer purposely made sure that the seat next to him would be empty. And, of course, Aaron took the opportunity to sit next to his young lover. At first, it was just a sweet gesture that wouldn’t expose their relationship to the rest of the team. The problem only arose when Reid placed his hand on the older mans thigh while JJ presented the local case. As his hand traveled farther up slowly, Hotch could simply not wrap his head around how Spencer was possibly this turned on at 10:00 AM. Regardless, he knew Spencer’s little game and grabbed his wrist, wrapping his much larger hand around it as a subtle warning. He watched as his face turned a light shade of pink, and he obeyed for now. But not for long.

The team spilt up, half of them in the field and half of them staying back to work from the bullpen, which left Aaron and Spencer alone in an SUV. Spencer took this opportunity to act up further, he leaned over the console, kissing Aaron’s neck gently before moving to open mouthed kisses. He would’ve left it at that if it wasn’t for the apparent bulge in Aaron’s pants. He rubbed him over his slacks the best he could before Hotch broke his trance.

“What has gotten into you today, Spencer?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”, he shrugged and smiled in faux innocence.

“Oh, so you want to be a filthy little brat today? We’ll have to fix that later.”

Spencer didn’t respond, just squirmed in his seat, fantasizing about all the possibilities of what awaited him. And luckily for him, the case was solved pretty quickly. The unsub stabbed random people repeatedly on the street, the only thing is he did every 27 minutes on the dot and was extremely sloppy, making his fairly easy to catch. Though, Spencer still managed to slip in some more trouble-making behavior. When they weren’t actively trying to put the profile together, he spent time flirting with both the male and female officers but only when he knew when Aaron was watching. Of course, Aaron noticed and it only made his blood boil more.

When they got back to the BAU, he pulled Reid into his office, demanding that he follow him to his apartment. And he obviously wasn’t going to deny, this was what he wanted all day.

As soon as they burst through to the door to Aaron’s apartment, their lips met in a heated kiss. Spencer licked against Aaron’s bottom lip, but he quickly gained dominance over the kiss. He moved to kiss down the younger mans jaw and the exposed parts of his neck, making Reid whimper.

“Such a desperate little slut. Go to the bedroom and strip. And you better not be touching yourself when I get in there.”

Spencer nodded, now ready to obey every word that was said to him. He stripped of all of his clothing, leaving them in a crumpled pile as he rushed to sit on the bed. Aaron waltzed around his apartment for roughly 10 minutes just to tease his lover, and he only entered the bedroom when he could hear him audibly whining. He pulled the frail figured man over his lap silently, palming over his ass gently.

“Do you know why you’re being punished, baby?”

“No, daddy.”, Spencer shook his head the best he could with a small pout on his face.

Aaron landed a harsh smack across Spencer’s ass, “Really? Because I think this is exactly what you wanted. Teasing me all day, wearing this pretty pink little panties. You’re just so desperate for my cock, aren’t you?”, he landed another hard smack.

“Mmhf! Yes, daddy!”

“Count for me. And that’s the only thing I want to hear from you, since you were such a bad boy today.”

Spencer whined anyway, which only earned him more spankings, each harder than the last. Eventually, he had counted all the way up to 25 with tears in his eyes and a few slipping down his cheeks. Aaron helped him sit back up, wiping some of the mascara stained tears away.

“T-thank you, daddy.”, he sniffled.

“Oh, sweetheart, you really think I’m done with you. Get on your knees.”

Spencer scrambled to get in position in eagerness. He rubbed up the older mans thighs, and he expected to be pushed away since he didn’t ask for permission, but instead Aaron was focused on ridding of his pants.

“Since you want my cock so bad, you’re gonna let daddy fuck your face, ok?”

He muttered a small ‘Mhm’ while nodding his head with an excited smile. Aaron lifted his hips into Spencer’s awaiting mouth, immediately hitting the back of his throat and making him gag. But Spencer relished in every action Hotch made, pushing his head down by his light brown curls and then pulling him back up so he could focus on just the tip, swirling his tongue around and over his slit.

“You love this don’t you, brat?”, Hotch groaned as Spencer’s throat tightened around him and he moaned around the cock in his mouth, confirming Aaron’s suspicions wordlessly. He continued pushing the younger mans head down roughly, watching more tears fall down his cheeks and watching how perfectly his plush pink lips wrapped around his tip. As Spencer licked down the prominent vein on the underside of Aaron’s cock, he felt the warm white liquid shoot down his throat, gladly swallowing all of it.

“Let me see.”, Hotch demanded. Spencer opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue slightly, revealing that he truly did swallow all of his lovers cum, “Good boy.”

Spencer’s eyes lit up at the praise as he bounced on his knees slightly, “Fuck me now, daddy?”

The dark haired man sat in front of him, acting as if he was pondering the idea, “Fine, get on the bed. Hands and knees.”

He moved frantically to get in position as Aaron retrieved the lube from his not-so-hidden drawer. He kissed down Spencer’s spine while applying a generous amount of the substance to his fingers. He continued planting soft kisses wherever he could reach, slowly pushing one finger into Spencer, making him yelp.

“Oh, daddy!”, Aaron took that as a good sign, pushing another finger into him, scissoring them to stretch his boy further.

“W-want your cock instead, daddy.”, he whined.

“I don’t know. Can you take it?”

“Yes! Let me show you, daddy, please!”

“Ok, baby, give daddy one second.”, he answered, applying a fair amount of lube to his cock.

Aaron put both his hands around Spencer’s petite waist, pushing into him slowly, making his sub moan out shamelessly. He hadn’t even pushed fully in as Spencer began to squirm and arch his back.

“Mm, so big, daddy!”

“Oh, come on, baby. I know you can take it.”

Spencer’s hands balled up in the sheets, scrunching up his face while simultaneously begging Hotch for more. Eventually, he had pushed all the way into Spencer, setting a ruthless pace knowing he liked it rougher.

Spencer’s moans quickly devolved into little ‘Thank you, daddy’, and mindless babbling.

“Aw, look at you, baby. I fucked my little genius dumb.”, he groaned. He reached around to stroke Spencer’s cock, knowing that he wouldn’t last much longer.

“Fills me so good, daddy!”

“I know, baby. So tight and warm for daddy. Such a good boy.”

“Oh, oh, oh! Can I cum please, daddy?!”

“Go ahead, sweet boy, cum all over my hand.”, as soon as he was given permission, he came all over Hotch’s hand and his own tummy.

Aaron continued slamming his hips into Spencer’s, making him whine from the overstimulation. He pushed his hips so much harder than before, releasing as Spencer tightened around him, “Oh! You make daddy cum so hard, baby.”

“T-thank you, daddy.”

“Of course, baby.”, he pulled out slowly and began to walk away.

“W-wait! Will you um--”

“Will I what, baby?”

“W-will you plug me up. Want to keep the mess in.”

“I don’t know if you’ve earned that much of a reward.”, he said, cracking a rare smile.

“Please! I promise I’ll be good, daddy!”

Of course, Aaron knew this was a lie, he was bound to act up again but he simply couldn’t deny when Spencer looked at him with those signature puppy dog eyes. He pulled one of Spencer’s favorite plugs out of the drawer and slipped it slowly into him as Reid’s hips bucked up involuntarily, placing a soft kiss to his lips.

“I’m going to get some clean pajamas for us, ok? I’ll be right here, baby.”

Spencer nodded with a small pout. Aaron handed him his favorite pair of pajama pants as he went to get him a glass of water. He reluctantly took a few sips before placing it against the night stand. Aaron got into the bed next to him, pulling Spencer close, knowing that he needs skin to skin contact after scenes like that.

Reid fell into the spell of sleep first and Aaron watched how his chest rose and fell slowly while brushing through his soft locks before burying his head closer to Spencer and falling asleep himself.

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Creation”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Oh man, oh man, oh man. I think I'll need to steer clear of the general RWBY tags this week, simply because I know the sort of responses I'll see to this episode. From smug celebration at Ironwood's downfall, to bad takes about what makes us human, this episode is a petri dish of sensitive material handled insensitively.

Let’s unpack it, shall we?

We open on an action that feels like a summery of the last three volumes: a grimm attacks an airship from the front, no doubt killing its pilot, while the other grimm conveniently ignore our heroes, no masking in sight. The group looks a little sad at the destruction around them, but ultimately ignore it because they have bigger, heroic things to do. I could write a whole, additional essay on how the huntsmen code — to protect the people — has been warped and abandoned by our protagonists in their effort to do what they think is right. It's a tale that might have been compelling if only RT knew they were writing it.

We get a shot of Atlas drones unloading the bomb before one is taken out, presumably by Qrow and Robyn. Segueing to Ironwood and the Ace Ops, they're waiting for Penny to arrive, the former carrying a massive gun presumably capable of capturing her. Despite the horror we saw on their faces last episode at the realization that Ironwood would kill Marrow for speaking up, it seems that now the Ace Ops are entirely in agreement with these measures. A week ago the implication was that they fell back in line out of fear, but now Harriet talks passionately about "putting down" the group if they were stupid enough to accompany Penny. "The General gave his terms." Vine sighs at this, but doesn't actively disagree. He's just "retracing the steps that led us here."

So, congratulations on introducing four new characters, not bothering to develop any of them, killing one off while ignoring Qrow's hand in that, and having the other three become all, "Yeah! Mass murder is a perfect solution!" off screen. Marrow is the only one with something resembling development and, as covered in these recaps, that's been pretty badly executed too.

Ironwood sends them to deal with Robyn and Qrow after Winter reappears to "assist" him. That gets quotation marks because most viewers at this point have realized that she's who our two birbs spotted in the elevator. Winter isn't on Ironwood's side anymore, she's just skillfully clearing the field for the final attack. Indeed, we get a moment where she hesitantly brings up the bomb and Ironwood responds that he hopes she's not going to try and talk him out of it. No. Winter doesn't think that's possible. This was her final attempt at peace.

One of the reasons why I think I'll stick to my own blog for a while is because the fandom has a tendency to paint broad personality traits as evil when applied to some characters, yet simultaneously heroic when applied to others, when really it's about how that those traits are used. What I mean is, I've seen a lot of Ironwood critical posts that emphasize how stubborn he is. He thinks he's right and he won't back down. He wont listen to others. He's going through with this plan and if anyone tries to stop him? That's their mistake. Totally evil, right? Except, this is the exact same behavior Ruby displays, particularly in Volumes 6 and 7. She was stubborn about stealing from Argus and continuing the fight to the point where it endangered her and her teammates, to say nothing of the rest of the city. She refused to listen to Qrow, or Ironwood, or the Ace Ops, loudly announcing that she was right about, well, everything. If they didn't agree with her, the options were to leave the group entirely, or fight her. The actual difference here is that the writers have taken Ironwood to an extreme, one that's incredibly easy to understand as bad because it is bad: bombing Mantle has no defense. Ruby pulls the exact same nonsense, it's just not to that same extreme and her actions are followed by scenes that are meant to make us forgive her: a sad look because she didn't mean to get a city attacked by a leviathan grimm, a cry on the staircase because she didn't mean to risk the lives of an entire kingdom... even though she did. Ironwood is the bad guy because he's been written to take specific, OOC actions like shooting unarmed kids. He's not the bad guy because when other characters go, "Don't do this" his response is, "I have to." Because that's been Ruby's motto ever since she "had" to use the Lamp to rip Ozpin’s life story away. RWBY introduced those extreme actions of shooting the youngest in the group (for no reason) and threatening to bomb a city (for no reason) or shooting a councilman (for no reason) because when you remove those you've got a man who looks exactly like our hero. Ironwood's arc has been peppered with these confusing, unpersuasive actions because if you just keep the story as him stubbornly keeping to a plan he thinks will save the world, you're left with the reminder that all Ruby has done lately is stubbornly keep to plans she thinks will save the world. This moment with Winter just highlights how ill thought out Ironwood's descent has been because he does everything Ruby does... with a few, tacked on, “and randomly shoots people!” moments to ensure we understand that he’s definitely evil. No comparison to our heroes here, folks!

Ironwood is a bad guy now. That’s certain, but he was made that way so the story never had to grapple with the question of what that means for Ruby if we really start condemning things like lying, secrets, stubbornness, or endangering others for the greater good. Well then damn, if we strip away the hypocrisy then she might not be a good person after all. Or the people she’s simplistically labeled as bad might not be the devils Ruby claims they are.

But that’s a level of nuance RWBY would rather pretend doesn’t exist.

All of which is highlighted by Ironwood’s reaction to "Penny." He sighs and sags over the gun, immediately putting it aside. With his hand on her shoulder, Ironwood tells her she's "done the right thing." Precisely the same way Ruby would lower Crescent Rose and give someone a smile when they decided to fall in line with her.

Which, of course, is the moment when Emerald reveals herself, dispelling the Penny illusion and revealing Team JNPR The Second behind her. She gives a quip about it feeling "weird" to do the right thing before disappearing.

From there the action picks up fast. I really enjoyed this battle simply from a choreography and energy standpoint. It gets the blood pumping, Ironwood's hand-to-hand is spectacular — especially that moment against Ren — and the group actually displays teamwork for the first time in what feels like forever, all of them needed to land a hit on Ironwood. As always, out of the context of the rest of the show it feels and looks great. My primary issue is that we get this fantastic fight against Ironwood. Not Salem, not Cinder, not Watts (like last volume when Ironwood was still a hero), not even Emerald as a means of transitioning from murderous villain to the group's best bud. No, what's arguably the best action sequence in the volume thus far goes to beating up the guy they betrayed from the start. There's no catharsis for me here, only frustration as we watch Ironwood stand in shock as Winter powers up Nora — who's fine now, I guess — and she slams her hammer into his face.

It never should have come to this and when a good character is done so dirty, their downfall doesn't evoke the emotions the writers are looking for. Watching Ironwood fall doesn't generate feelings of victory, or even tragedy at a course of events others were powerless to stop. It's just frustration at watching years worth of bad writing, sprinkled with fantastic ideas that never go anywhere.

Oscar gets a few hits in, Ironwood snatches his cane, and just as he's about to throw a punch, Winter arrives with the most dramatic sword slash I've ever seen.

Ironwood's aura breaks and he falls, unconscious. We cut to an image of a droid's head separated from its body, one of Robyn's arrows through its skull. That doesn't have meaning or anything.

I suppose I should be grateful they didn't rip Ironwood's arm away during the fight, or outright kill him, though I'm still expecting him to die before the end of the volume.

Hmm. Wouldn't that be something? If after Salem's arrival, freezing cold, a Hound attack, grimm soup, a giant whale, a massive army, and a hack ending in self-destruction, the one character who actually dies is Ironwood.

It's looking more and more likely.

Honestly, beyond all the obvious, what's so frustrating about this fight is that characters are only now using their impressive abilities to their fullest. Emerald creates an entire fantasy of what's happening and then straight up disappears, but she only does a half-assed version of that when fighting against Penny. (And really, she put more effort into helping the heroes she just joined over Cinder, the woman she's been obsessed with since the start?) Marrow refuses to use "Stay" against a group they wanted to peacefully arrest because that's just too horrible an act, I guess, but he'll do it on his own teammates the second Qrow and Robyn don’t want to fight.

This is what I mean when I say the rules of the world bend to assist the protagonists in absurd ways. It's not nearly as egregious as Amity suddenly being up and running, but the fact that characters become substantially more powerful while fighting for the protagonists than they do against them is still a significant problem.

So Ironwood is down and out. As much as I hated watching that and didn't necessarily want more, am I the only one who felt like it was... a bit lackluster? I mean, the action was great, yes, but relatively short. There was no dialogue, such as another delve into the moral questions that led to this fight in the first place. There certainly wasn’t any hesitance against fighting a former ally. (Again, we’re meant to believe that the Ace Ops won because they just couldn’t bear to fight the group seriously, but every former ally here is capable of wailing on Ironwood without a single pause or pained look?) Ironwood just skillfully blocks for a while, is blindsided by Winter's betrayal, and then falls unconscious. Given that we learn he and Jacques will be evacuated after the rest of the kingdom, it's possible he'll escape somehow and we'll get a fight 2.0, but if not that feels like a rather tame end to the guy forced into the antagonist seat. Plus, what was the point of having Qrow frothing at the mouth to kill him this whole volume? I never wanted that to happen, I'm glad it hasn't, but I'm nevertheless left to ask why we bothered with that eleven episode side plot if we were going to erase it with one sentence from Robyn about Qrow being better than this. If that's all it took, let them work through Qrow's irrational anger while sitting around in a cell.

Winter tells the group to move onto "phase two" which is when we're treated to a flashback. We return to the ending of the last episode, with Ruby realizing that opening the vault is an option. Jaune, all smiles, goes, "We never considered using what's inside!"

This is what I mean about no consequences! This is what I mean about it all being a meaningless circle that ends with undeserved praise for the group! We started this horror show with Ironwood going, "We don't have a plan to protect the people, so I'm going to take what people we do have to safety" and the group going, "We don't have a plan either, but we're going to stop you implementing your plan because it's not perfect, risking a kingdom's worth of lives in the process." Now, the group has used two plans, one of which two characters knew about at the start and another they could have devised with the information they had. Oscar and Ozpin's, "We have an all powerful magical blast in our cane" and the group's "What if we used the Staff for something other than raising Atlas?" are both things that could have come up in the office debate. These were both always on the table! Instead, Ruby grew furious over the mere thought of cutting their losses, betrayed Ironwood again, attacked his people, denounced him to the world, and then two days later goes, "Oh wait! We could do something now that we could have easily done before if we hadn't made a needless enemy!"

Everyone realizes how much worse they made things, right? Turning against Ironwood, bringing everyone left in Mantle directly under Atlas, sitting around while an army was devoured, drawing it out until Penny was hacked... all of it would have been avoided if the group had thought and discussed things for a few minutes, not jumping straight to violently resisting what Ironwood came up with first. "We never considered..." Ruby says. Yeah, you didn't, except that's not something to smile about. The group made the situation a thousand times worse with their reaction when they could have just magically evacuated the kingdom from the start. “Maybe we could use it to save Penny and get everyone in Atlas and Mantle back to safety." Nothing has changed! They had this ability the whole time! Nothing about the last twelve episodes led them here, they just randomly thought of it after RT had padded the volume with needless drama. Considering that they're heading to Vacuo now, we could have just made this the finale of Volume 7 instead: big fight with Ironwood, revelation, get everyone evacuated while Salem attacks, leave her behind, then Volume 8 begins in Vacuo with the group knowing Salem is out there looking for them. This entire volume has been pointless. What did they accomplish?

Oscar got kidnapped and beat up, Nora was scarred, Ruby and Yang realized horrible things about Summer, and the whole world is panicking about a witch. Good things are... Ren and Ruby unlocked some semblance stuff? Weiss loves her brother again after he proved himself useful to her? Great work, team.

So this one moment makes everything they've done up to this point useless and, of course, once thought up the plan goes off without a hitch. Note that the summary of this episode says, "It's risky, dangerous, and nearly impossible — but it's the only plan they've got." Nearly impossible? That's a whole lot of talk for a plan that was implemented perfectly.

There is, admittedly, one snag, but one that is likewise made meaningless just seconds later. We'll get to that.

We see Winter call Weiss who also smiles at hearing from her sister. Obviously interactions like the group's with Emerald are the bigger concern, but it's still an issue that no one reacts as they should to people reappearing in their lives. Rather, RWBY continually confuses audience knowledge with character knowledge. We know Winter is on their side now, but Weiss hasn't a clue. Last she saw, she and Winter were agreeing to head down different paths. She has no reason to think her sister isn't loyal to Ironwood, so why isn't the group treating this call with suspicion? What if it's Ironwood trying to mess with them through a presumably safe party? I swear to god, with any consistency in the story this group would be dead ten times over because their decisions are so stupid. Oscar decides to believe in the guy currently beating him to a pulp, the group decides to trust a villain over a flawed ally, and now they see Ironwood’s second calling and are like, “Great, big sister Winter is checking in!” There’s a difference between a hopeful story filled with second chances and characters whose reliance on the narrative bending to assist them makes them come across as insanely naive.

None of which even touches on characters forgetting that other characters are presumably dead. Ironwood shot Oscar off the edge of Atlas, but doesn't react to learning he was kidnapped, or when he shows up to the fight. Thanks to Marrow's comment, Winter thinks YJOR have perished in the whale, but also has no reaction to them appearing to help with this plan. Absolutely nothing is followed up on.

We then get a flashback within the flashback (fun) of Winter — shock — not arresting Marrow. It's precisely as I assumed, with Marrow angrily asking why she hit him and Winter responding with, “Because you were about to get killed if I didn’t do something!” As I said last recap, I feel like I should let the marginalized groups lead this discussion, but I do want to add that no matter how well intentioned — or strategic, as I mentioned last time — the imagery itself is still harmful. No matter the context, we were still left with white woman Winter putting her knee on black man Marrow's back to arrest him, and it’s an image that everyone in the U.S. should be familiar with the horror of. Far more of a problem than the (presumed) ignorance of this scene is, I think, the choice to make Winter entirely unrepentant. I think some of this discomfort could have been alleviated if RT had written Winter as apologetic, contrite that it came to that and asking Marrow to understand that she only did it as a means of assisting him. Asking his forgiveness. Instead, we get this

So what, the only emotion we have room for is gratitude that Winter beat him up? Yikes.

As a lighter side note, I find the animation here unintentionally hilarious. Winter's assistive device makes her shoulders look too high, making this gesture more, "Woman exaggeratedly pouts about not getting ice cream for dinner" and less, "Woman sternly closes off during a disagreement about saving lives and betraying their general." Gotta find our humor where we can, right?

What's intentional, but far less funny, is the needless animation to show us that, yes, Marrow is peering at Winter calling Weiss. Oh, the shenanigans.

The elevator opens where Qrow and Robyn spot them. "Speaking of help," Winter says, as if she has any reason to believe Qrow didn't kill Clover. He and Robyn lower their weapons a bit, as if they have any reason to believe Winter and Marrow aren't still loyal to Ironwood. Would it really be so hard to have Winter immediately throw up her hands in the face of their almost-attack, blurting that she's not their enemy and needs their help, please listen? Again, RWBY can't remember which characters know what, let alone what their motivations and reactions should be.

We then enter the third part of the flashback where everyone piles into the Schnee dining room and discusses doing the things they could have done from the start. I'm metaphorically banging my head against that table. In RWBY's favor though, we also get a long shot of Jaune continuing to boost Penny’s aura.

Though it's only one of many issues, just the other day I asked, "Hey, why has Jaune always needed to hold onto the person he's assisting, but now suddenly he can touch Penny once and the boost remains?" It still doesn't explain why he was letting go before/why him needing to boost her continuously didn't put a hard time limit on their plan — not that Mantle's hour limit meant a thing — but at least they're showing more of that here.

Oscar notes that Atlas has enough gravity dust that it won't fall immediately when they use the Relic, but they will have to move fast to ensure no one is underneath. Yeah, like all the civilians you put there. He also cautions that the Staff isn't a "magic wand" that they can just wave to make all their problems go away... even though that's precisely what they're going to do. Ozpin gets some lines that aren't apologies or followed by attacks — hallelujah! — about how the Staff's spirit is a "character" and requires that you be able to precisely explain anything you want him to make. Blueprints, examples, a firm knowledge of how this will be accomplished — all of it is required to actually get what you're after. That's a cool limitation. It's just too bad we didn't know about it episodes ago, forcing our heroes to find ways to meet those requirements. Instead, they already have everything ready to go the moment they learn about it: Penny has her own schematics and Whitley apparently has knowledge of the entire kingdom after sending some ships out. Normally I'd go, "Really?" but I'm still just struck by how much good he's done compared to everyone else in this room. Your show is seriously broken when the side character the writers didn't even want the audience to like until a few episodes ago is more active, mature, and sensible than the heroes.

From there we see the group implementing the plan. They fly up through the hole Oscar left, straight to the vault. Penny opens it without any trouble and Ruby uses her speed to grab the Relic and stop time, halting her self-termination. I do like that combination of skill and their knowledge of how this magic works. That felt like a smart move. What's interesting though is that the Relic appears to stop time in the entire kingdom. We see people in Mantle and Atlas slowing to a halt too. I assume no one remembers that happening after time restarts, otherwise people would be freaked out by suddenly being frozen in place.

Wouldn't that have been cool though? The group often takes a while to use the Relics, either deciding what they need, or watching Jinn's information, so what if you had a population that blinks and suddenly, from their perspective, half an hour has passed? How long might Ozpin have sat on his knees after Jinn told him he wasn't able to defeat Salem? How long was that space frozen? We could have had a world built around rumors and fairy tales. Not the random stories Ozpin brings up to make a point and that we never hear about again, but tiny details that foreshadow these revelations. A Beacon where the kids tell each other spooky stories of people suddenly losing time, once a whole day. The wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces who disappear, or wake up one day with horrifying, unnatural powers. We see magic influence the world around it, but we've seen very little of the world reacting to that influence. The one time I can think of is Blake reading a book about "a man with two souls," the fiction clearly inspired by knowledge of Ozpin. And indeed, it felt great to recognize that as a significant detail and then be proven right years later as the lore was revealed. We could have gotten so much more of that if RWBY was better planned out.

I'm getting off track though. As time stops we see a series of images: Ironwood being led to a cell with Jacques, Penny succumbing to her hack, Team JNPR The Second preparing to contact the kingdom about what's going on. Then everyone is distracted by the giant, blue, buff Ambrosius who comes out of the Staff.

...there's a lot of innuendo in that last statement lol. At least RWBY is committed to the crazy design they chose? I was never particularly comfortable with the image of characters gaping up at a giant, naked woman in chains, so it's nice to balance that a bit with an equally giant, naked dude in chains.

From here things get confusing. In all honesty, I'm not sure if this is another moment where RWBY is trying to pass off a retcon as the group being brilliant, or if I, as an individual, simply didn't follow the logic. I won't bother to rehash the slow, meandering way that Ruby reveals their plan — that certainly didn't help with the clarity. Not in an episode where we didn’t even know these rules ahead of time — but it boils down to this:

The moment they have Ambrosius create something new Atlas will start to fall. Two of his creations can't exist at the same time.

He needs clear instructions about what he's making in order to create it.

The group has brought him Penny's schematics so that he understands how she's built.

They want, specifically, "a new version of her... using her exact robot parts."

They can't just create an exact duplicate of Penny because that would carry the virus with it.

They can't create an exact duplicate without the virus because that Penny would cease to exist as soon as they used Ambrosius to make an evacuation plan instead.

So they essentially want Ambrosius to create a new Penny by removing all the robot parts from the Penny that currently exists, carrying the virus with them, and leaving only the human parts of Penny behind: her aura/soul. Then, the purely robot version is destroyed when Ambrosius creates something new.

Except... this new Penny, this human Penny, still needed a human body. That's what Ambrosius created and that's the snag I don't understand. They want a version of Penny that's just her aura, just her soul, but that soul still needs something to be housed in. Ambrosius himself notes that. At first I thought the group would just have some wisp-like version of Penny they'd have to find a new body for — perhaps leading to a new one for Ozpin too — but she's just... given a human body when he takes the technology away, something she absolutely didn't have before. That is Ambrosius' creation. That is what should have disappeared along with the removed parts of Penny, leaving only her soul — what Ambrosius didn't touch — behind. Instead, the plot oh so conveniently has Penny get a new body for free and it's untouched as they move onto the next task.

Ruby drops a casual line about Ambrosius not being able to kill, or destroy, or something, which I think is meant to be the justification here. The rule (which, again, we JUST learned) about not killing anyone supersedes the rule of two creations not allowed to exist, allowing Penny to stick around. But even if that’s true, it’s a load of bull. What, does the magic think no one in an entire city might die if the floating mechanism is removed and it plummets to the ground? Ambrosius didn’t say, “Sorry, can’t stop floating Atlas because thousands of people are still here and they’ll die if I create something new,” but we’re supposed to believe the group skated by on, “Sorry, can’t destroy the last creation like everything else because there’s a single person still using that body and she’ll die if I create something new”?

Seriously, did I miss something? Or is this another, "Amity is ready because the group needs it" situation? The rule of creations ceasing to exist is bent because the group needs to have their friend around. Ambrosius is certainly enthusiastically complimentary, saying how "smart" the group is and that they've "done their homework," but I'm not so sure. It feels like a moment where the show is (once again) insistent that the group is far more talented and brilliant than their actions actually imply. It's only the rules of the world twisting and turning that allows for their success. To say nothing of how the episode dropped all these rules on the viewer in a ten minute info dump, ensuring we didn’t have any time to think about them before the deed was done.

It doesn't add up for me and honestly, even putting that aside? I hate this. I absolutely despise it. Look, if it turns out this really does make sense then props to the group for coming up with that plan. Our snag aside, the rest is a legitimately well thought out wish. I don't have a problem with the execution so much as the message. I've been saying since Volume 7 that RWBY has done Penny a disservice in terms of her "real girl" narrative. Whereas before we had a firm message that you don't need "squishy guts" to be human, to be real, Volume 8 continued to carry us further and further into the idea that it is necessary. That Penny's body is entirely inhuman, something to hate, but at least her soul is human and good. That's what the virus arc taught us: your terrible, technological body might be betraying you, but hold onto the parts of you that are really human. I hated that too, but I never thought RWBY would go this far. They made Penny fully human and went, “THIS is the version that always should have existed.”

And this isn't just me reading into the implications. It's right there in the text. Blake says that they're looking for “Penny, the girl who’s always been there underneath." Meaning, underneath the metal. The girl exists trapped in the robot body. Yang holds up her arm and says that the metal is only "extra," it's not really who you are.

That gets into two perspectives on disability that RWBY just doesn't have the nuance for: what's an integral and celebratory part of one person's existence can be seen as something separate and discomforting to another. Though there are many people with disabilities who would happily cure themselves with a magic Staff if given the chance, there are just as many who say no, this is a part of my identity. I don't want to change, I just want the world to accommodate my existence. However, RWBY takes a hard stance here, saying that any metal in your body is intrinsically bad. We didn’t use to have this take, but now the show has embraced it. Blake says the real Penny is trapped in there. Yang's words implies that she'd get rid of this "extra" bit of her if possible. Mercury with his metal legs is the enemy. Ironwood with half his metal body is the enemy. Whereas once difference was truly accepted, now it's shunned and fixed whenever possible. Those who can't be fixed, like Yang, must simply deal with the lot they've been dealt, reassuring themselves that the metal isn't really them. But Penny? Penny they can fix.

So they do and the very first thing Penny does is hug Ruby, exclaiming, “Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? Wow. More!” and proceeds to hug all the others.

What's the underlying message there? Penny didn't understand hugs before this moment. She never experienced the "warmth" of them while an android, despite the fact that here warmth is entirely metaphorical and has nothing to do with a literally cold body. RWBY really went and said that the "real girl” android was never actually real at all — not as real as she could be — because it's only when she's given "squishy guts" that she understands the true happiness of a hug.

Wow.

I mean seriously, wow.

Never-mind that, you know, we've seen that happiness and warmth since she was first introduced.

RWBY is really rewriting all the core themes introduced in Volumes 1-3 and it sucks. The show is absolutely the worse for it.

To say nothing of all the other disservices to Penny's character here. There's all this buildup about whether she'll still be the same Penny once the wish is complete, but of course she is. We wouldn't want to have Penny struggle when she becomes something other than what she's always been, would we? After all, it took Yang an entire volume to work through the shock of a metal arm, but taking away a metal body for a human one is in no way traumatic. Having a normal, human body is intrinsically a good thing! Of course Penny accepts it with nothing but smiles. Becoming human is celebratory, but becoming more machine is a horror.

She gets to watch her body self-destruct, glitching out and collapsing in front of her. But again, nothing to unpack there that can't be covered with a hand over her mouth.

There's no discussion of whether Penny still has the Maiden powers, or whether a wish like that would mess with the transfer in any way. How did the group know this action wouldn't register as a clear-cut death, forcing the power out of her and into someone new? Obviously they couldn’t know, but no one even thought to bring it up?

And the entire time they're formulating their evacuation plan, there's no talk of whether these portals will appear before everyone currently alive in the kingdom. I mean, if they do then Ironwood and Jacques can just waltz through and escape into Vacuo. If they don’t, then Maria and Pietro don't necessarily have a way out. We still don't know if they're stuck floating in Amity, or if Amity crashed, or if they made their way back to Mantle or Atlas. More importantly, the characters don't know. I have no problem with RWBY keeping that a surprise until the finale, but I absolutely take issue with Pietro's daughter walking through a portal, seemingly not to care whether her father is going to make it out too.

It's been the same with Qrow and his nieces' relationships. The show is good at insisting that these families love each other because they hug and smile while on screen together, but when shit is actually going down, none of them care about pesky things like disappearances, arrests, or “The last time I saw you, you were with an old woman on a damaged station after a villain attack, potentially stranded in deadly cold if life support failed.”

So yeah, this entire arc with Penny has been a disaster. From throwing away her framing subplot, to giving her a virus that did absolutely nothing, to giving her the Maiden powers which she's also done nothing with, to erasing her android status for a “She's really human now” message, Penny has been done dirty by the show these last two volumes. Not nearly to the extent Ironwood has, but still. At this point I wish they'd just kept her dead dead. Why do I want her back when that resurrection produces no reaction, her conflicts lead nowhere, and one of the core things that made Penny Penny has now been magically erased?

I've been saying for weeks that killing Penny off and keeping Penny around each had serious downsides attached, yet I never expected RWBY to do BOTH.

Also, I'm warding off any, "But Pinocchio was made into a real boy too" defenses. RWBY is not Pinocchio. Penny is not Pinocchio. I thought the allusion was going to be the Pinocchio inspired girl heading into the whale, not the show forcing the exact plotline — down to a blue, magical creature — onto a character whose entire journey has been about accepting herself as an android. Congratulations, RT. You just obliterated years of work.

Again, if you'd like an example of how to do this far better:

As Penny's character falls apart, Atlas shakes, alerting Jaune and the other that a new wish has been granted. Jaune pecks at the screen and realizes "That did, uh, something…?” but doesn’t realize that there's a giant, red "LIVE" up in the corner.

Jaune tries to warn the entire kingdom about their plan, but what he actually says is

“Atlas is falling, but — !”

And then the communications cut out.

Watts, perhaps?

Our heroes are really good at saying things that make large populaces panic, huh? This is the one (1) snag in their "impossible" plan, but as said above, it doesn't amount to anything. We get a shot of Nora, horrified at the thought of kingdom-wide communications being down, but literally seconds later Team RWBY has made portals appear that everyone can walk through. So... why do we care about communications? More importantly, why does the show try to make us care? So much time is spent getting the viewer invested in problems that never come to mean anything.

Including the problem of Salem herself.

Because the group successfully creates that evacuation plan. This is it. Everyone is leaving while Salem still reforms.

Yang asks if they can use the vaults themselves as a single point for everyone to go to and Ambrosius agrees. So everyone is going to pile into the Vacuo vault that can only be opened by an unknown Maiden? They're going to put an entire kingdom's worth of people, including their enemies, into the vault where the Relic of Destruction is? Yeah, that's great. Prior to this — like if this had been the plan at the end of Volume 7 — I would have 100% agreed that these risks are better than death by Salem/grimm/cold. Now though, Oscar as axed Salem for an unknown length of time, the cold is having no impact on the civilians outside, and the grimm only attack background military personnel that supposedly no one cares about. They couldn't have spent another few minutes (especially with time stopped!) to figure out a means of getting to Vacuo that doesn't involve revealing and providing access to the location of a super secret vault? To say nothing of what they're going to do if Salem wakes up and snags one of those portals for herself. Two kingdoms for the price of one!

But that's what they're going with. Weiss gives Ambrosius a schematic of the kingdom, I guess, and he makes branching pathways appear with numerous portals for everyone to step through. They'll enter through one and, when they exit another, will be in Vacuo. Easy peasy, right? Especially since Ambrosius doesn't seem to have any limitations about how often his power is used. Is it three creations every 100 years like Jinn? We're not told, at least not to my recollection. However, I was expecting there to be a waiting period, that they'd fix Penny, go to evacuate the kingdom, and learn that sorry, I can't make another creation just yet. It feels like the sort of shit move these beings would pull — "Don't cry to me when it's not what you wanted" — it would have been another commentary on the group's insistence on putting friends over the people's safety (like demanding the Ace Ops not bomb the whale because of Oscar), and crucially, would have kept the action in Atlas. Isn't that what this volume is? The battle for and potential destruction of the Kingdom of Atlas? We have two episodes left and, unless something unexpected happens, we're moving that action to Vacuo. Why?

Meanwhile, Penny's corpse is just chilling in the background 😬

While all this is going on, Winter reassures Jacques that he and Ironwood will be evacuated too, though she makes it clear saving him was Weiss' idea. It checks out, considering Weiss is the one who turned her father's arrest into a joke last volume. Winter still takes his abuse seriously.

The group prepares to leave with a celebratory, "We did it!" from Weiss. I'm still banging my head against that dining room table. Before they can pass through the portal though, Ambrosius leaves them with one, dire warning: "Do not fall."

In any other story a line like that is a neon sign announcing to the audience that someone will absolutely fall, and maybe they will, but RWBY has dodged consequences so often I wouldn't be surprised if this was merely another way to string us along. Remember all the hype surrounding Salem? The cold combined with her army and magic? How she was going to decimate Atlas and leave our group broken in a Fall 2.0?

I mean, we still have two episodes left. Forty minutes of content. Salem might still decimate them, especially since something has to happen in the finale. But god, it's a problem that we've come this far without a payoff. Salem randomly decided not to attack anyone, was stopped by a weapon added in solely for this purpose, and now the whole kingdom is being evacuated with a plan the group could have used at the start. This volume really is meaningless.

“We go to vacuo and hope we’ve thought of everything” they say as the camera zooms in on Cinder's smiling face. For the second week in a row.

Bingo time!

Winter betrayed Ironwood, the group used the Staff of Creation, and I'm axing Maria on behalf of Pietro. You can't have the guy's daughter become human — after he was killing himself to give her his aura?? — and magically walk to Vacuo, not knowing if he's even survived since she last saw him, and expect me to think he hasn't been forgotten. Same with Maria. Has the group mentioned her since Amity cut out, notably for reasons they couldn’t explain? Of course not. Did they care to find out what happened? Of course not. I have no doubt they'll both re-appear in the next two episodes, Pietro crying over how perfect his girl is now and Maria congratulating the group on their actions, but we're still marking it.

This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever created, I hope you all are enjoying it :D

Another week, another couple feet added to the hole we’re digging. I know I keep saying I have no idea what's going to happen next... but I have no idea what's going to happen next. A Vacuo ending was not in the cards, not outside of them miraculously showing up in ships. Maybe they have been on their way to Atlas (somehow...) and will arrive precisely when everyone has left! Anything is possible at this point.

See you next Saturday, everyone. Hold on until then lol. 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby creation

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papers4me · 4 years ago

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Fruits Basket, Se03. ep 7 (part 1)

Just to clarify, the only thing I didn’t like abt this ep is tohru, the rest is so good. kyo’s mental state is at its lowest & you can feel for him! ugh!, surprisingly akito’s own lid was so well-done!, Ren & shigure were epicly disgusting & fascinating!, kureno was so well-written, the final scene of tohru & kyo rightfully setting for the climax! Before moving on to the good part, I’ll quickly go over why torhu’s character was once again the most inconsistent character in the show:

Ep,6 ending showed us a completely broken kyo in full display in front of tohru, best furuba cliff hanger to date hands down, followup: tohru laughing, cooking & wondering if kyo is asleep!!!. Complete detachment & extreme insensitivity to what she witnessed earlier. Not an ounce of wonder if kyo is okay or if sth is wrong with him. Not a single inner thought of “ I hope he’s okay” or “ oh momiji don’t call him, He’s a bit tired” while flashbaking to his traumatized face. Honestly, all they needed to do was a small quick inner thought to connect the scenes. No need to write new scenes. Alas, Tohru’s complete lack of compassion struck me deep. I was told ep6 ending was an anime original scene, I don’t mind any diversion from the original since I don’t know the it, but those writers who wrote a complete new scene didn’t feel the need to transition from it to the rest of the manga? really? It’s hard to believe.

Choosing the kitchen’s happy scene after of kyo’s nightmare is not bad as it shows that nobody either care or know abt his issues, fair enough. However, choosing the kitchen’s happy scene after the PTSD in tohru’s own bedroom & not modifying tohru’s happy go lucky, let’s cook yay face to a realistic concerned expression is absurd! It really takes plenty from tohru as a character. This comes after tohru’s long awaited background ep which returns tohru back to square one.

Just last ep, tohru opened her lid in front of kyo & he comforted her, While she still yet to overcome her fears, she failed miserably in doing the only thing that she’s been doing since se01, ep1, being compassionate & thoughtful. Oh well, adding a light scene in the midst of kyo & akito’s dark sequence is more important than tohru’s character consistency & growth.

moving on from tohru~~~

-Kyo’s suffocation: (guilty or not, it doesn’t matter)

we get kyo’s nightmare really gave me chills & was visually well-done. it brilliantly conveyed the feeling of suffocation, blinding fear, & intensified trauma. The nightmare’s horror vividly showcases kyo’s deepest insecurities & trauma:

It started with his mother’s “ it’s not your fault” sth kyo craved to hear from her very badly. Yet, it contradicted her action: Choosing death over staying with him.

His mother brings salvation: the cat’s cage. The cat’s room parallel’s kyo’s real life at his parents house. In se01, eo24, kyo said, he wasn’t allowed to play outside or watch TV, while his bracelet ”handcuffs” were routinely checked by his mom. Just like a prison. His mom sentenced him in the new prison fitting for more horrible sins. The cat’s cage for the rest of his life.

While kyo looks panicked & horrified but on the verge to refuse, kyoko appears. “I won’t forgive you” solidifying his mom’s judgement.

They both warn him of the consequences of living & be forgiven: tohru’s death. Go on, kyo. Add one more victim to suffer in your behalf while you roam free. You might think that you can escape the cat’s cage but your hands remain dirty with blood. Others might not see the blood on yoyr hands, but YOU do.

Kyo is torn between being an actual sinner or a victim, between causing intentional harm or unintentional hurt, between being guilty or not. It all doesn’t matter & kyo knows it. What matter is the punishment has been going for years now & he’s tired, broken, lost & just wants it all to end. Death. Slow death in a tiny cage is so fitting for all the pain he caused others, for all the pain he suffered.

Kyo knows (a) suffering in front of tohru is hurting her. (b) Accepting her love will lead to hurting her: confessing of kyoko’s death. (c) Abandoning her is hurting her. (d) kyo knows that he doesn’t deserve her, not after he caused all this pain. (e) Above all, kyo can’t live with himself anymore. being close to her hurt so much.

-Akito’s lid: ( broken home & broken self image):

I must say they did an excellent job of presenting akito’s past! (a) It was a mixture of narration through (shigure & Ren), (b) actual animation of her parents causing her pain & traumatizing her (the scenes of Akira’s last words, her mom’s accusations), (c) Actual animation of the origin of her parents (Ren & Akira’s relationship), (d) akito herself confessing abt her pain in front of kureno. Tohru’s own lid on the other hands was presented through (a) excessive narrative with minimum animation (the grandpa’s endless exposition of tohru’s background quickly wrapped up), (b) no real animation of kyoko actually hurting tohru or how she did it, just again the grandpa narrating that kyoko “went away”. (c) tohru’s own self recall of her past being cut into pieces & divided throughout the ep, once after running from shigure & another in the sheet scene. Tohru’s ep wasn’t bad at all, it was good, but it was evidently shortened & summarized lazily. Oh well. What both eps serve is painting tohru & akito as foils of each other:

Both are attached toxicly to their parent. Tohru: kyoko & Akito: akira.

Both were welling to create a fake persona or an image that keeps this toxic love alive & cling to it no matter what.

Both hurt themselves the most & are struggling to let go of this bond.

Both have parents that hurt them. Akito: ren & tohru: kyoko, altho it is not clear how kyoko hurt tohru but kyoko is more a ghost than a real character.

Both cling to a dead object that represent their deceased parent. Tohru & the photo frame & akito & the box.

Kyoko existed to be this perfect mother with no sins, the character that tohru embodied to “fix” & “ heal all broken kids”. She lives only in memories. Even other characters think of her as this holy being. It is alluded Kyo seemed to know her as a real person who can commit mistakes, therefore, to kyo, kyoko isn’t an angel or a holy being. However, thanks to their encounter at her death & her “ I won’t forgive you” words, kyoko now is a haunting ghost to kyo. Akira on the other hand, existed as this sickly, pale & fragile head of the house, treated with so much aura & holiness. He died but his sins remain in how he raised akito.

Both must let go of their toxic bonds. Tohru of her deep attachment to her mom & akito to the zodiacs.

Both must learn to form healthier relationships.

However, there are striking differences between them! tohru never abused anyone nor attempted murdering someone by throwing’ em from a terrace, or locking them & torment them or stabbing them with a knife!! Tohru’s sin is torturing herself which by consequence tortured kyo, too. Cuz there’s is a theme of a loved-one’s pain is mine as well. Kyo’s mom hurt her own self & ended her own life. This resulted in her son’s years of immense pain, trauma & self-loath & similar suicidal tendencies, se0, ep16 “ I’ will yuki & then kill myself”, & se02, e9 “ mother, if only you killed me instead”. tragic.

Side Notes:

I will say this with a broken heart....... Tohru must learn to let go of.... kyo. She is suffocating him. Not on purpose. I want them to be together! so bad! they’re so perfect for each other, but also, right now is NOT the time for this. Kyo & tohru’s character issues is NOT abt romance. They have real traumatic issues that are hindering their growth as independent characters. Tohru’s growth might not be well-written or well-presented, but kyo’s growth is still not explored. Next ep is where his lid opened! it must be painful. A person suffering from extreme self-loath & suicidal tendencies shouldn’t be presented so lightly in favor for the love cures all fairy tale! PLZ! NO!

Tohru must learn to not repeat her mistake again & live only for one person. She must let go of kyo in order to gain kyo back. Right now, She can’t have him! kyo is suffocated by his own trauma & adding tohru’s guilt on top of it is devastating. I mean, This could go differently & kyo might accept her love on the spot, & tohru might save him again or sth. I can see this being going deeper or shallower depending on the desired theme. Which of furuba’s heavy themes will be given to climax?

why is momiji doing a rabbit burger? he’s not cursed anymore. I know he’s keeping it a secret, but I thought momiji’s whole growth was abt letting go of the past. he still identifies with the zodiac rabbit?

Ren is hella sexy! & her Japanese VA deserves an Oscar! The way she expresses sexiness, seductive, anger, hate, contempt, sarcasm, delusional screaming, pain! EPIC!

“I thought I was created to receive others contempt” ugh! this hurt, kyo.

Shigure’s line abt looking at Ren to fantasize how akito will look if she were allowed to be a woman, ewww!!!! hella disgusting! imagine sleeping wth someone & fantasizing abt her daughter or vise versa!

Honestly, this ep while not excusing akito’s crimes & abuse of others, it did paint her in a human light. I really don’t want her to end up with shigure. Akito’s whole life is abt misunderstood love. Give her time to discover herself. A guy who slept with her mom is never a reasonable partner even if he loves her for eternity. but oh well~

Shigure indirectly caused Isuzu’s near death abuse by Akito. all in his attempts to free akito from the curse. I love how disgustingly selfish he is. I remember his “ you mom told you to not interfere, kagura” in se03, ep3. shudder!!! if hiro never met haru that day & confessed to him, if kureno never noticed the maid! Still, he went & visited isuzu after her 4 moths imprisonment in the cat’s cage her hospitals discharge & recovery!

ngl... Shigure & Ren’s sexual tension is the biggest in furuba. Eww!

I’ll talk abt kureno & akito more in part 2. but I felt nothing watching kureno get stabbed lol. this is due to the trailer spoiling it & the ED having him happily in love -_-’. bummer!.

I love tohru & kyo’s outfit in the ep cliff hanger. lol. Tohru really dressed up to confess.

Tohru read the room! Even if you magically forgotten how sickly & out of it he was in your room earlier, remember this: Kyo always have bad mood in the rain! Then again... he did hug her for the first time & called her by her name in the midst of a rainy storm. se01, e024. >_<!

#Fruits Basket #Anime Only #part 1 #sleepy paper

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pluviophile-bookworm · 4 years ago

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High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Rewatch pt. 1

I realised earlier today that I have nearly no memory of season 1, so I thought it necessary to fix that. And since I'm obviously not going to get any work done today, here we are!

Now, I did post my thoughts on episodes 1 and 2 way back when they were new, but I will still be commenting briefly on them from my present perspective - it might even be interesting to compare my thoughts then with my thoughts now.

Ok, now, without further ado, it's time to dive into season 1 of HSMTMTS! (Gosh, I'm excited like it's my first time watching!)

1x1: I think I kinda... remember why I had the opinions I had way back when

Wait... were those Ricky and Big Red bumping into Miss Jenn on their way in? I never noticed that the first time... then again, I didn't know them the first time. This is exactly what rewatching is for.

And here we go again... well, I guess, here we go for the first time — Ricky is totally ignoring the amazing friend he has because he's obsessing over Nini. Will he ever learn? Anyway, from a writer's point of view (not that I am really a writer), this is a really good Establishing Character Moment for Ricky.

And here goes the Rini awkwardness... why did I ship them again? I genuinely don't remember.

'Did I talk about Nini the entire time? Absolutely!' — I mean, it's like you don't have a personality beyond her, Rick. Get a grip!

This rewatch is making me realise the superiority of the season 2 soundtrack... putting things into perspective, I guess.

Listen, I was all for Kourtney 'dismantling the patriarchy', but, first of all, she didn't really do much dismantling in retrospect, and second of all, she has no right to talk to my boy Reddy like that! No one has.

I still don't get Carlos' thing about the HSM sequels. I mean, I heard it was supposed to be a joke about how they don't really take place at East High, but... in-universe, what are his reasons? I mean, I think, nay, I know he would have loved I Don't Dance.

Also re: Carlos, I can totally relate to the fact that he basically attached himself to Miss Jenn's side because he had no friends and she gets him... I was like that in most of my school days, including an embarrassingly long period in my last year at school. It's sad in retrospect, but back then I was having the best time.

'Is there somewhere you're supposed to be?' — 'Broadway.' — this was the moment I knew I would be a Carlos stan. Even if I'm feeling kind of conflicted about it now, in light of his recent actions...

I mean, you'd forgive me if during Nini, EJ and Kourtney's conversation I was paying attention only to Seb and Natalie in the back, right? Because that's what I was doing.

I can't with Ricky! Like, Big Red is literally discussing Ricky's problem, not even bothering to try talking about himself this time, and Ricky is still snapping at him. Like, we get it, you've got issues... but it's not Reddy's fault! It's just weird... there's something that draws me to Ricky (guess it's the relatable fact that he's got issues and he talks about himself all the time — though please tell me I'm not quite like this), and yet if I were rooting for him right now, I'd have to be doing Big Red very dirty. He's done nothing to deserve being ignored like this.

'The one person I go to for advice'... oh please, Ricky! If there were just one person you go to, then who is sitting beside you and listening to you moan and sigh right now? Gosh, I feel bad admitting it, but I hadn't really given Big Red much thought until 1x3 — and now I can't stop thinking about him. Guess the writing wants us to forget there are characters other than Nini and Ricky and maybe EJ at this point.

'But we hate musicals' — forgive me, Reddy, but I've got to laugh here. You? Hate musicals? Try again, dearie. I mean, look at me — back when I was watching this for the first time, I wouldn't have given Big Red a second thought (because the script didn't really seem to want me to) — and now he's literally one half of my patronus visualisation, quite literally helping me survive and stay sane (or as sane as I can be). This is what rewatches are for.

The way Big Red words the plot of HSM... it makes me feel like he's hinting at Ricky and himself and Nini. Gosh, the poor boy is just trying to make himself heard without being pushy about it... maybe he should be a little pushy.

I just realised that neither Ashlyn nor Gina has been given the slightest amount of focus yet... they do not deserve to be ignored. Shine a bloomin' spotlight on them, please and thank you!

We've got to appreciate Gina's character development, though. S1 Gina would have chewed Lily up alive. I kind of wish we could have seen something like that, but... I love Gina 2.0.

Ahhhh it's Ashlyn time! You know, I didn't want to slip into personal stories too much in this post, but... the way Miss Jenn seemed to stare into her soul just reminded me of my favourite uni exam I've ever sat. So, personal story time, I guess: It was my first semester and the exam was one of only two oral ones we had (fortunately; I hate, hate, hate oral exams); it was in British Modernist literature and each of us would be given a work to talk about. I was really nervous because I hadn't had time to read up on everything we'd covered, so you can imagine my relief when, as soon as I walked into the exam room and my favourite prof ever just kind of... looked me in the eyes and, much like a Sorting Hat, as if reading my thoughts, said 'Lord of the Flies'. Now, you don't know this about me, but that is literally my favourite book we did that semester. I was in my element. I absolutely aced that exam. In the other oral, Literary theory, I didn't do nearly as well. So yeah, end of personal story. The point is, I don't know what Miss Jenn did just then, but she totally nailed Ash's casting!

Also, I just noticed that, when asked about playing the piano, she was like 'I dabble.' I remember her saying that about something in early s2, though for the love of all gods I can't remember the context of that. And, well, does she ever dabble — in everything!

Ok, but Nini would have made a very fine Kelsey, all things considered. Just saying.

I said it back then, and I'll say it now — I love EJ, but he's way too polished and technical to be Troy. Ricky, on the other hand, didn't even need to act — he was being Troy at that moment. Too bad the same method did not work for the Beast... and yet he still got the part somehow. Oh well, he's still got time to get a grip on himself and deliver. I hope and pray he does.

'Troy would have arrived on time' — ermmm, Carlito? Did you and I watch the same HSM, cos I don't think we did. Troy literally rushes in after Mrs Darbus says auditions are closed. And then he gets the lead. So I'd say that was pretty in-character on Ricky's part. Idk, maybe you need to watch the movie again? 38th time's the charm, or something...

Miss Jenn needs to stop spilling her coffee all over the place.

Ricky's audition speech is so emotional, it makes me laugh instead of cry. Go figure.

And I just remembered why I loved Ricky. It was because of this scene. Like, you can really peek into his soul. If I were Nini, I would have got back together with him right then and there. Hey, I just realised why I was a Rini shipper. It all boils down to Ricky's audition, I guess.

'She thinks I'm a Chad?' — Iconic. Absolutely iconic. But why did I just have a vision of Seb going like, 'She thinks I'm a Chip?'... yeah, I will not shut up about this.

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts: the rewatch #ricky bowen #nini salazar roberts #gina porter #ej caswell #big red redonovich #ashlyn caswell #carlos rodriguez #seb matthew smith #hsmtmts miss jenn #kourtney greene #jnk

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whump-town · 4 years ago

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Beth

I feel like I never see any Hotch/Beth stories so here is my contribution. Beth got done so dirty by the writers and I’ll never forgive them for that. She could have made Hotch happy...

It doesn’t take long for Beth to realize that her perfect man-- come on, how often do they come tall, handsome, sweet, athletic, and as good fathers?-- isn’t all that perfect. He’s strange and it’s just as enchanting as his goofy laugh but there are just elements to him that she can’t understand. She finds herself itching to pick him apart but something tells her she’s messing with Pandora’s box. Is breaking him worth understanding him?

He freezes.

It’s like a glitch in his hardware. There’s this spot where the kitchen meets the living room of his apartment and it’s the only place the glitch occurs. She’d noticed it about a month into dating him and the first time she’d laughed a little, surprised by the look on his face. It was a shock factor kind of laugh, inappropriate, and wrong enough to make her cheeks flush. He hadn’t noticed. His eyes were glued to the carpet.

His face was pinched in concentration. Dark brows furrowed and shoulders tightly pulled back. It’s complete unease and tension like she’s never seen before. For a moment, it kind of scares her. He’s got this lost look in his eyes. Wherever he is when he’s looking at that spot in the carpet, he’s not here. He’s not anywhere she can reach him.

The thing is, no matter how many times she looks at that spot… she can’t see what he sees. There’s a bit of a disturbance in the fibers that form an edge. It looks like someone might have replaced a section of the carpet but it’s nearly impossible to tell or even be certain.

As curious as she is, she also can’t find the courage to ask. Something… Something tells her she doesn’t want to know.

Still, she can’t help but turn a curious eye to this perfect man. He’s got flaws, like anyone. It’s hard to get past his defenses and it’s a slowly learned lesson forming an understanding of his love. When they argue, he gets desperate. Voice hoarse but he never raises it, not even when she wants to shout. It’s hard to place her importance to him but whenever she starts to doubt his love he swoops back in. It’s a tiring thing, being pushed and pulled away.

He catches her smiling at him and his heart leaps to his throat. It’s hard being Hotch here, with her. So hard to keep the emotions at bay or within his control. “Wh-What?” he asks. His cheeks flush, unsure of what to do under her attention and not used to anyone really looking at him. Not with the love, he thinks he sees in her dark eyes-- but maybe he’s just imagining that.

She kisses him. Smiling when he works a hand to the back of her head, pulling her closer.

Another thing she’s noticed… he never takes his shirt off. The sex is amazing. No matter how “rusty” he’d claimed to be. He also never initiates sex. It’s not a subject to talk about or even one they really dwell on. Unless she starts putting on the “moves” nothing happens. She really can’t complain. Men can be pushy and demanding, a huge turnoff and red flag. Not Aaron.

She smiles into their kiss and playfully runs the back of her finger across the little bit of stomach his shirt has risen up to expose. He reacts as she expects, shirking away with a choked laugh. It’s positive reinforcement. Deepening their kiss, she sneaks her hand the rest of the way under his shirt. Gently, waiting and feeling every bit of his nervous inhale, she places her hand against his fluttering stomach.

“Okay?” she asks.

He nods.

She’s not sure what she’s expecting to find.

“They--They,” his chest keeps it’s panicked rise and fall. Not quite full breathes. “It’s just-- they’re just… I can’t--”

George Foyet. He won’t ever tell her much more than what she has to know. That he hurt Aaron and killed Jack’s mother Haley. She’s seen glimpses of the scars. He’s very good at hiding them. She’s very aware of his medicine cabinet, even if she’s not aware of the scars.

Clomipramine. She’s aware of the panic attacks and compulsivity he can fall into. The way that he checks the locks four times every night before he can fall asleep. Some nights venturing back out two more times to make sure. Hypervigilance but also if he doesn’t do this, he knows he’ll wake up and they’ll all be gone. Beth. Jack. Dead. She’s seen the nightmares.

Xanax. A medication that’s supposed to bring relief in 30 minutes but she’s sat on the bathroom floor while he’s sobbed. Choking on the air his lungs struggle to bring in. 30 minutes is a very long time to watch someone you love panic in pain. Convinced of something that you can’t even understand and they can’t explain. The AS NEEDED label had once convinced her it was of less importance. She’s certain that over the course of the last few years she’s nursed him through taking the medication more times than she ever has anything else.

He’d taken Lexapro for two years. It’d stopped working and that had been an awful thing to watch. She’d sat with him through the detox, trying to convince him to eat and shower when his brain slowly tried to kill him.

That’s not even the beginning. There’s an entire cocktail of anticoagulants and common over the counter things that he has to take. Some for old wounds and others for his forever skewed blood pressure and damaged vessels and arties. She just knows-- five in the morning with his coffee, three at night before bed.

But he’s… better.

He’ll make little jokes about her profiling abilities. The way she’ll steady his hands in her own and softly encourage him to go take a Xanax. Often just pulling him to her chest, stilling his anxious movement until his breathing has slowed and he never gets the chance to panic.

That’s why she stops. Hands drawing away from his chest, she cups his cheeks. “Aaron,” she whispers holding him close. Keeping calm while his hands move over her back. A motion she understands. He’s trying to reassure himself that she’s real. She’s here. She won’t let him forget that. “I love you,” she whispers.

He pulls back to look at her. Eyes darting between hers so really place what he’s seeing. To pick up on the little cues she exhibits when lying.

“I love you,” she says again, conviction strong and palm warm against his cheek.

He averts his eyes but turns his head to her palm. “You sure?” he asks teasingly, tear streaking down his cheek.

She brushes it away. “Most of the time.”

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #tw medication #aaron hotchner #beth clemmons #hotch x beth

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fantasysamsclub · 5 years ago

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so the adventure zone was recently picked up for an animated series.

hooray! good for the mcelroys. i’m glad they’re getting more mainstream. i’m glad they’re able to financially support themselves and their family with this fame. i’m glad taz has a chance to get new fans! i’m glad fans get to see some of the most iconic balance moments animated!

i also think it’s a monstrously bad idea.

(this is long and this may seem pretty mean and radical, but please read before fighting me on any of this. also this isn’t an attack on anyone that’s excited for any of this adaptation stuff! it’s good to be excited for this success. but also there are some things to consider.)

okay! so, up front: i think the taz animated series is a bad idea. i also think, retrospectively, the graphic novel was a bad idea. also i think the vox machina origins comic and animated series are bad ideas.

okay so this is going to get. a little long and rambly. but i’ll try to keep it organized.

1. TAZ Graphic Novel

now, when the first book was announced, i was excited! i’m still excited for the next one. aside from the blue/green elves thing, which i won’t ever forgive, carey’s doing a great job adapting this piece. i’ve met her before and she generally does know what she’s talking about, comics-wise, so i do think she was a very good choice to pick up the graphic novel

there are still problems! oh, are there problems. for example, i think everyone in the novel is characterized in a wildly different way than the original podcast. i can also get into this later if people want to hear about it, but! people have picked at that one before.

out of all the adaptations i’m going to talk about, this one is the best!

2. Vox Machina Origins

alright. context. i don’t know if i’ve said this on this platform before, but i’m a comic book artist (my big project is coming out this year, i’ll announce it on here, that’s not the point of this rant). and i bought the comic on a whim! it was a christmas present to me.

now, i know a lot of people read it and enjoyed it! and that’s great. i’m happy you got joy out of the book, really. i think every piece of art means something to someone, no matter its popularity or quality. and it did well, as far as i know! so that’s very good for CR and its fans. also i think pike is hot.

all that aside, the comic does suck very much.

i could go into a deep analysis of it (i CAN, if enough people actually want to see that?) but tldr: it’s rushed, both in production and story pacing. the character art is good! but you can see the shortcuts. the lettering is. awful. (that’s mostly a problem of modern comics in general though)

and i’m not blaming anyone at CR for these problems! really, if dark horse wants to pick up an adaptation, any writers from the original project should be heavily coached on how to write for a new medium. i’m not blaming matthew for that one! i know from firsthand experience that comic writing is different from anything else you will ever write, and is so difficult to get correct. as far as i knew, matt had never written for comics before! it would be really nice if he had some more resources to get this done right.

but that would cost money.

and that brings me to--

3. The Vox Machina Animated Series

wow! look at all that money everyone raised for this animated series. this animated series that the creators said they were raising money for so they could do it independently. hope they don’t go pitch it to a bigger company to do m--

and, it was sold to Amazon.

like, it didn’t even take them a month.

and in the current climate of how animation is bought and sold, i understand the need to sell it to a streaming service! you need a platform to let people view it, and youtube is in the shitter with its copyright stuff lately, so it makes sense to go private to keep your show safe. and then, you can maybe make more episodes after you run out of kickstarter money. i don’t hate that idea!

but amazon...hm.

it’s probably fine, right?

3.5. Wendy’s

haha remember when CR got sponsored by wendy’s and played their shitty rpg that wasn’t even balanced properly and then people called them out for it and then they donated all the money to a cause wendy’s hated to make up for it (good on them!) and then deleted the VOD off youtube? gosh, good times.

money makes people do strange things.

4. TAZ Animated Series

so, peacock has taz. sure! that works. it’s not the best company to pick this up, but it’s also not the worst. i’ll take that. i looked up the guy that’s slated to direct this and i don’t think he’s ever directed an animated show? which isn’t great, but that’s not what i’m worried about.

you know what i am worried about?

these big corporations don’t care if these adaptations are any good. they just want to cram as many iconic moments from your quirky, small-owned d&d podcasts to get you to give them money. for the mcelroys and the CR crew, it’s a passion project. to amazon and dark horse and NBC, it’s an investment.

you’re going to buy the book to see vax and vex bicker!

you’re going to tune in to watch magic brian!

you’re going to want to read pike meeting scanlan, of course!

you want to see “phantasmal and resplendent” animated!

here’s the other thing. when i see people talking about the animated series, this is exactly what they’re looking for.

“i want to watch merle dirty talk the plants on screen!”

“i want to see the taakitz date!”

“i want to see magnus do the julia scene...”

now, this mindset isn’t bad! no, if you’ve been thinking this, that’s okay! it’s really not my personal thought (i think adaptations are best when they DO change things in the story to better fit the new medium they’re going on) but it’s fine.

we might get tom arnold!

but you know what we’re not going to get?

we’re not going to get apologies and revisions when something goes wrong. we’re not going to get cute extra scenes because that would require more writing. we’re not going to get the same respect for the LGBTQ+ characters on screen. the people working on this show will not get paid what they’re worth.

we’re probably not going to get a trans actress for lup.

we’re probably going to see less of carey and killain.

we’re probably going to see even fewer black and brown characters than we already have.

why’s that?

because it’s a money project. they’re doing it for money. and they want to reach as wide of an audience as possible, right? “really, we need to cut back on this gay stuff so that straight people aren’t uncomfortable. we need to stay more moderate on this project so that more people will watch it!”

(that was sarcasm)

now, NBC has had some good shows! but that’s really the responsibility of their individual writers, and it’s usually in spite of the companies they work for, and not because of them.

once an author or an artist sells their project to a company for adaptation, they often lose all rights to input from it. i don’t know what the mcelroy’s or CR’s contracts are, but unless they have better lawyers than NBC or amazon.....they probably got shafted somehow.

it’s not a mcelroy product. it’s not a CR product. don’t pretend like it is.

you can enjoy it, but please be cautious. this is just a pile of money in a cheap taako costume. don’t trust it as much as you would the podcast.

tldr: individual creators are always going to make more genuine content than corporations that buy those creations for larger adaptations. it’s okay to enjoy these adaptations, but please be aware that it’s not going to have the same spirit or heart as the boys talking about masturbation on a filler show they did quickly so justin could go support his wife in labor.

#taz #the adventure zone #taz balance #taz animated

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period-dramallama · 4 years ago

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Spanish Princess episode 4 thoughts

In chronological order. With extra swearing!

WE’RE HALFWAY THROUGH AND THERE’S STILL A FUCKTON OF EVENTS THAT HAVEN’T HAPPENED YET AHHHH

-so we open with a voice we’ve never heard before and no visuals on this new person and then Bessie addresses the speaker as Anne so the viewer will automatically think Anne Boleyn, but then it’s Anne Hastings? I’m a history nerd and i was so confused i had to rewind. That’s bad direction/editing, imo. Was it really too hard to film Anne’s lips moving?

-”the blasted yew tree in the gardens” blasted as in by lightning, or as in he wanted to say bloody but can’t because his wife is there and she’s eight?

-”that’s a terrible idea” Catherine that is not how you manipulate Henry! You should be like “but if you make wolsey chancellor :( and archbishop :( he will be so :( overworked :( and it wouldn’t be good for his health :( he has enough to do :( and as he’s archbishop of york :( why shouldn’t he be loyal to you :( in York :)”

-COCKBLOCKED

-something darkly funny about archibald pulling on his clothes in the background like his main concern is not dying naked

-look i love meg but c’mon the rules did stress she’s regent UNTIL she marries like she knew that! it’s not like they hid it in the small print!

-also if you’re having sex on the sly, post guards on your door! with halberds and shit. Preferably Douglas men, so they’ll be less likely to gossip. There should be guards on the doors anyway, that’s how royal palaces work. (Granted, the whole Rizzio situation...)

-Don’t write to catherine, write to a functioning human brain. Wolsey, More, YOUR BROTHER*

*alright, semi-functioning human brain.

- bit rich to blame henry for not helping when you didn’t ask him and went to his wife behind his back instead. Sure, he should have helped anyway, but she could have been smarter about it

-”an army coming in peace, how do I show that?” Never heard of a flag of truce, Henry? Also, there was something in the Borgias about holding a spear that represents invasion

-”she risks your health” bish she said she wanted an army not KoA in preggo armour again

-Compton’s less of a weirdo in this episode. Inconsistency, or maybe he’s a bit more normal with Maggie because they’re now at ease with each other’s company? Yeah no it’s inconsistency isn’t it.

-Thomas More looks so done with everyone’s shit. Me too. I hope he has no more stupid lines, but just looks bored in the background of every single scene. and occasionally the camera cuts to him for a good “i’m surrounded by idiots” face.

-”finer minds than many men I know” yeah but that’s a low bar in this show, everyone’s on stupid pills. Also Wolsey and More were at least cordial IRL. There was mutual respect between the two, even tho they didn’t agree politically all the time. Then again, Wolsey is evil in this ‘verse, and the real TM was an ally of the queen, so...i guess they can death glare now.

-”I would have thought court politics no longer surprised you” “tell the scriptwriters that.”

-”you are too good for us all” just because someone loves their kids and thinks toadying is gross, it doesn’t make them superior lmao. It’s called being normal.

-Maggie Pole: ugh the court is full of schemers and manipulators they’re all disgusting

also Maggie: *manipulates Compton’s emotions, albeit for partly selfless reasons*

-like I get it, I like that she’s using her brain, she has good reasons for the scheme even though it’s dishonest, I get that she wants to break up her betrothal as well, but she could be less black-and-white in her view of court politics. It feels like whiplash when both scenes are in the same episode.

-the court feels less depopulated this episode. That’s one good thing. It feels like an actual institution.

-Georgie Henley’s poor back... she is the saving grace of this episode. She can do so much with just her facial expressions.

-”I will not be my sister” bold of you to think you can ever be as cool as your sister, Catherine.

-Maggie you were doing so well at not wearing that stupid blue hood thingy. Bring back the halfway decent green one.

-”Wolsey is shameless in his machinations” look I can forgive the dudes being rude about Wolsey- they’re the king’s BFFs, they can be as rude as they like. You, otoh, Maggie, are on thin fucking ice. Don’t say that, at normal volume, at the dinner table. Where Wolsey’s like two seats away from you!

-Thomas More whispering like he’s David Attenborough in a nature documentary. At least he knows to keep his fucking voice down.

-”it’s late you should go home,” Ah, yes, Tudor London. Famous for being a place where a woman could safely travel through pitch black streets all on her own while wearing extremely expensive clothes and jewellery. You mean to tell me she can’t sleepover on banquet night? FFS.

-”we can’t be together” someone tell this couple that they can hang out without arguing or having sex. Play chess. Play cards. Play hungry hungry hippos, i don’t care.

-oh look catherine’s practical for 2 hot seconds.

-”you bog dwelling fuckers” THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE EPISODE’S TITLE, WE WERE MCROBBED!

-she-wolf is not a compliment! She’d be offended! Call her a lioness if you want to praise her...y’know because the lion is England’s emblem??

-”Sir Compton” this is literally a mistake bad fanfic writers make.

-Maggie being cunning! Yay! I would never see that coming bc she’s a dumbass for the other 23 hours of the day.

-Bessie already being Henry’s mistress but she still genuinely helps and supports Catherine in her confinement and during the birth and looks genuinely stressed when things go wrong, when she could just be downstairs dancing and having fun with Henry like Anne Hastings is...Bessie I love you ditch Henry and elope with me instead

-DROP THE FLAMING TORCH LINA JFC

-do you have a clue how flammable tudor buildings are? Don’t run with it like it’s the fucking Olympics.

-So the heir is so important Catherine has to go into confinement, but you don’t keep midwives 24/7 in her chamber, on standby?

-”Prince Charles has a ring to it” I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE

-Bessie’s face when the baby’s a girl...comedy gold.

-”I’ll speak with someone who sees sense” you’ll be looking a long time, Meg

-the issue should be Compton kissing a married noblewoman. Nobody would give a flying fuck if it was a married washerwoman.

-’flowers of England’ :) yes they are :)

-”if i had 100 men with a heart like yours I could have conquered the world” that’s actually an excellent pick-up line you DILF now use it on someone who deserves it

-Tourette’s syndrome confirmed!

-dirty baby nappies go in a laundry basket you freaks

-why is the Queen of England carrying washing to a laundry? why why why why?

-also the king of england would not have sex in a laundry. Looks dark, damp, cold, probably smells. AND IT WOULD BE FULL OF WASHERWOMEN AT ALL TIMES. Laundry in those days was a big chore, especially for a laundry that has to wash the entire court’s fancy clothes. You could have just had them banging outside in the grounds where there’s pretty flowers and green grass and then catherine of aragon could turn the corner and spot them. He doesn’t have to hide his adultery, he can have bessie brought to his rooms as usual.

#the spanish princess

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ihavelovednone · 4 years ago

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Mayans MC S03E10 - thoughts and predictions

This is an old post that’s been posted from my old blog. Written after S03E10.

So. The season finale. It wasn’t good. Sorry. It wasn’t. It was so messy I had trouble following along. It had the messiness of season one, if you know what I mean. To many things happened and nothing really got resolved. Accept for maybe the Palo-problem. And Isaac dying. Maybe. God, I’m so confused. I wrote down my thoughts below.

Gaby & EZ (& a bit of Filipe) Eh. Where to start? I’m glad Gaby left ‘cause she’s clearly not accepting of EZ being in that lifestyle and her going against her values would’ve been, I don’t know, contradicting? Shows and movies like these also have a bit of a tendency to go the route of killing the woman associated with the male lead to drive his plot forward, and honestly I’m kinda sick of female characters having to endure violence to move a male characters plot forward. So I’m glad Elgin went another route with Gaby’s and EZ’s storyline.

Filipe really told her some home truths, which she needed. I liked that. I think she needed to understand the severity of EZ’s inner self. What I am still curious about and have alot of thoughts about is the fact that EZ gave up pretty easily. He could’ve gone to Lodi if he wanted to. He’s an adult, he doesn’t need daddy’s permission. In the end he chose the club over her. Strange.

I wonder what this will do to EZ’s and Filipe’s relationship? Maybe create some tension, but I have this idea that EZ will accept that he is who he is and forgive his dad. He never stays mad at him for long.

Taza, Laura & Palo Thank God Laura killed Palo (even though he was a great villain). She might actually be the only female character that I really enjoyed this season. And Erin maybe. Laura had great scenes, great character development. She was awesome. I hope she comes back.

Adelita, Linares & Potter I don’t even know what to say. I think Adelita going after Potter is good ‘cause he’s the antichrist and he needs to die. There’s also that twist of, is the baby dead or is it alive that’s really interesting but also really, I don’t know, redundant? Like, just finish this already, you know?

Adelita was really given some purpose in this episode though, which I’ve felt has been lacking throughout the season. Wondering, why would Linares lie to her about the baby being dead? Unless it’s her having the baby in her custody?

Angel & Nails Honestly, is she so blind that she can’t tell how bored he seems during sex? I’m judging her, I really am, which I shouldn’t because it’s awful. God, this is going to end so bad for her. And Angel, he’s a disgusting man-child. It’s not cute or quirky using women like that, he’s irresponsible and pathetic. Grow up, Angel! Just grow the fuck up!

Emily Oh wow, that was a wild ride (ep. 9 and 10). Now, there are things that Emily’s done that I haven’t been a fan of. The writers really did that character dirty when they did that total personality change in season 2, but this.

This.

It was a really good episode for Emily’s character in my opinion. I thought they got some things out in the open, I got to see parts of nice Emily which was really needed, and it also gave an idea of Emily and EZ as high schoolers which really gave them both a bit more background story. I’ll write a post about my interpretation of their scene in a separate post. I can’t fit everything I want to say in here.

Miguel Delusional. Hopelessly in love with his wife. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. Did he really think she was going to go with him after what he did? He’s also really bad at being a criminal, honestly. Probably because he’s never grown up in the cartel but was raised in America and went to Cornell.

Also, when is the paternity gonna be revealed? When Dita revealed it to Filipe it was like a soap opera episode and I want them to do something with it.

Bishop I can understand his anger, honestly. I don’t think he’s a homophobe. I think Taza’s confession of killing Riz spurred Bishop to the use of homophobic slurs. He killed a brother after all. That gotta stir some anger. But apart from that there’s something about Bishop’s brooding and thirst for power that’s making me not like him as a character anymore. Get over yourself. He was so much better as a character in season 1 and 2.

Gilly, Coco, Hope & Letty I skipped most of this ‘cause it’s so boring. Snooze fest 2.0. The only thing I liked was Gilly’s comment about Isaac. If Hope and Coco get clean it could be good, or toxic and co-dependent. We’ll see how it goes. Letty’s scene was so short, I don’t really have much to say.

Wishes for season 4 Miguel & the Reyes family - paternity reveal - it’s been foreshadowed this entire season, yet nothing’s happened. Do it or don’t, but if you’re not going to reveal who his dad is, stop with the foreshadowing. A new love interest for EZ ‘cause Gaby nor Emily is working for me. I want someone who’s a mix of the two women. More like Laura, I like Laura.

Gaby I don’t know. Bringing her back and dating EZ again would be like if the writers put all of her values and ideologies and just created a huge dumpster fire. Not totally unlike Emily’s very much disliked personality change of season 2. It would totally defeat the purpose of her persona. And isn’t it why she’s so well liked by many? That she has values, stands up for them and refuses to back down?

She’s not cut out for the criminal lifestyle, because she doesn’t want to be in it. That toxic environment would probably not change her for the better. Unless the writers do a total 360 and make her okay with it? I don’t think the writers should have her go against her own ideals and sacrifice her own well-being for a man, no matter how much she loves him.

I think she should stay in Lodi and get her nursing degree, find a nice wholesome man who hasn’t shanked, strangled, shot or blown anyone up and get married. Maybe have some babies. Maybe they could find another cool chick that’s more accepting of his current lifestyle. Because, let’s face it, the club means alot to him. Emily I don’t know. I want Erin and Emily to stay but Emily’s gotta change though. Go back to OG Emily who was a really great female character. I want to explore more of her childhood and the relationship with her parents more. How she fits in with the show, well, Miguel’s not gonna just divorce her. I bet you she’s sitting with a ton of information about his illegal dealings after she immersed herself into his work after Cristobal got kidnapped. It could be really interesting.

Potter Maybe he catches on fire, maybe he gets called back to the mothership, maybe his hard drive shuts down. Or his battery could run out. I don’t care, just get rid of him.

Indifferent Coco and Hope. Honestly, they could just disappear into the sunset and I wouldn’t notice. If you’re gonna shed characters so to make the storytelling more compact, Coco and Hope could go. I wouldn’t mind. Also, Bishop. As he is now, I think he could go to.

Angel, Adelita, Nails, Hank + Taza, Laura & Creeper Angel gets an STD because he needs to learn about sexual health and it’s consequences, and when Nails finds out she was his back-up plan she kicks him in the balls. And Hank marries Nails and they raise the baby together. Angel honestly, I don’t really know what your purpose is on the show anymore. Adelita gets her baby back and moves somewhere peaceful and quiet.

I also want more backstory on Hank and Creeper. Also, storylines involving them front and center. Now they’re mostly in the background. Taza doesn’t die and Laura stays, that’s all I want. He’s growing on me and I want to know more about him.

#ihavelovednone writes #mayans mc #mayans mc season 3 #mayans mc season 4

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Ruinenlust, 1/2 (Max/Violet) - Puppy

A/N: Oh, wow it’s been a while since I posted. It’s good to be back. First of all, I’d like to thank @artificialpuddle for beta'ing; your comments are much appreciated. Second of all, I hope you enjoy this.

AO3 Link

Summary:

Ruinenlust - German. To take pleasure in ruin.

A few weeks after the events of “Peripeteia”, Violet and Max try again at another escapade with a little more preparation this time.

“If only you knew what you looked like right now…” The mistress smirked, putting one of her vinyl-booted feet on her kneeling, blindfolded submissive’s shoulder. The other was placed between her submissive’s feet, the top of the boot growing slick with arousal. The room was nearly quiet, only the sounds of heavy breathing filled the silence.

Laura kept as still as possible; her mind focused on keeping still, not letting any more of her neediness show. The ambiance alone could push her past her limits; the combination of the slow, sensual music and the nearly degrading naughts being directed towards her nearly made her burst. If only she could get some more friction against her goddess’s boot. She only stopped as she felt her love’s breath go hot against her.

Her Goddess, her Mistress, her Everything leaned towards her, bit a hickey into her neck and then whispered into her ear,

“Max, did you get in my smut stash?”

The grey haired girl, startled by the shift in volume, quickly clapped the paperback shut as she nearly fell out of the loveseat. A copy of Tainted by the Chains of Love ended up at the shorter girl’s feet. It was originally found in a thrift store as something to fill the bottom shelf of Violet’s pin-up magazines and other pulp novels.

She could have lightened the conversation, but they both knew she was never one to sugar coat things. There was no use lying to her either, especially over something so trivial as a book. “Do forgive me. I was under the impression the bookshelves were communal?”

“You’re good. Just tell me before you’re gonna borrow anything from that shelf, kay? I was worried I lost it.” Violet bent over and picked up the novel, recognizing the bookmarked page. “Oh, you’re at a spicy part too.”

Max’s lips pursed into an awkward smile as her girlfriend further through the pages. She half expected her to read an excerpt aloud. “That is… definitely a word I would use to describe it.”

“Didn’t realize you were into this dime store stuff. I figured this was too raunchy and dirty for your tastes.” She scrunched her nose in fake disgust.

Max didn’t respond as she slumped back onto the loveseat. “I… I figured I’d try something different?”

“And that’s completely valid. I guess I should ask what you think of it so far.” Violet stared into her girlfriend’s eyes that waited for a response. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, baby.”

“Well… um…” Max flexed her finger repeatedly, as if she was reaching for the right thing to say. This type of literature wasn’t in her radar; hence it was harder for her to review. Most of the time she veered away from those types of books, but there was something about this one that made her want to keep reading. Was it the fact that the woman she loved so dearly had read it?

Nevertheless, she decided to humor her and still give her opinions. “I think it’s good so far…”

“Maxie, you’re a good chunk into it. Surely you have more to say… About the plot, how much of that there is.” She slightly raised the pitch of her voice, clearly getting some satisfaction from the secondhand embarrassment.

Max nodded her head, swimming through her thoughts to find coherent sentences, as she straightened her posture. “The writer seems to definitely know what they are talking about. The dynamic between Laura and Rachel isn’t just a thinly-veiled excuse for abuse, unlike some novels I can name. There is open communication and safe words and Rachel listens when her sub says no or when she wants to stop and… Yes, I know it’s basic human decency, but it’s just so…” She squealed with excitement. “And the dynamic… it’s just perfect and-”

“By god, you’re a nerd.” Violet couldn’t help but let out a laugh. There wasn’t a response this time. “Is something the matter, booboo? I’d normally get, like, a slap on the wrist for that.” There was still no answer. “Come on, I don’t hate it as much as I used to. I’m a masochist now, remember?” She shimmied closer towards Max, the pink silk from her robe brushing against her love’s skin and her breasts nearly at eye level.

She sighed, holding her head in her hands. The embarrassment crept from her face into every fiber of her being. The reminder of the last time they did something of this sort, plus Violet’s remark about her infodumping, rubbed her slightly the wrong way. “Yes. About that. I’ve still been thinking about the other week, and-”

“While we’re on the subject of that, I’m still surprised at how well you did for your first time domming. I’ve been thinking, and-”

“Do you want me to do it again?”

“No.”

“If I was that bad, you can just tell me. Honesty and all…”

“Far from it. You were great!” Violet complimented earnestly, or as earnestly as she would allow herself to get. Apologizing, nor vulnerability for that manner, was never really her strongest suit; it was still too early in the relationship for that sort of thing. “I want to thank you for that… I’m sorry if that whole experience made you uncomfy and… I want to make it up to you.”

“Really?” The silver-haired girl blinked at her girlfriend, staring as if she had grown an extra head. Was she being serious? After all of the things she had said and done, Violet was still proud of her. “But… I hurt you!”

“But you didn’t harm me, and that’s what mattered. Also wasn’t topping that one time your idea? All because of those goddamn cat ears.” She chuckled, thinking about the situation in hindsight.

“And I kept spritzing you with that bottle,” She ignored the compliment and got slightly more defensive.“that must’ve been annoying.”

“Isn’t that the point? What matters is I liked it, you hear me? You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for. Now shut up and let me return the favor, okay?”

Max nodded her head, suddenly growing timid at her girlfriend’s demeanor. “What is it you want to do?”

Violet’s face grew a mischievous smirk; she’d been planning her strategy the moment she saw Max reading on the loveseat. She leaned into her girlfriend’s ear and whispered, “How about we recreate one of those scenes from this book? Would you like me to ruin you, Miss Maxine. I bet you’ve wanted to be in Laura’s position from the moment you picked up that.”

“Yes…” Max blushed even more scarlet. She stopped herself as the logical and modest parts of her brain took over. “No, wait… shouldn’t we go over safe words and limits first?”

“We’ll get to that! I just wanna confirm if that sounds like a good idea. Granted it’s one of mine, so it’s good by default.”

“Violet!” Her lover chastised.

“Okay, I deserved that. Do you want me to do those things to you? We don’t have to do it exactly by the book.” Max nodded her head. “Perfect, let’s get playing! But first, have you eaten anything today?”

There was silence.

Violet sighed as she cupped her girlfriend’s face. “Max. My darling. Love of my life and-”

“I’ll be fine…” Max interrupted, slightly whining as she slowly got out of the loveseat. “Please don’t worry about me. Besides, I’m not hungry.” She lied through her teeth.

It was still quite early in the afternoon and she had been too engrossed in the literature to think about bare necessities. At least she remembered to shower; that’s always a good start.

“For all the times you fuss at me about not eating, you should take better care of yourself. I don’t want you passing out.” Violet pulled Max close, then sat her down at the kitchen table. “I’ll fix something real quick and then we’ll get to it. I promise.”

The two further negotiated as they had their meal. They set limits and safe words, and it seemed as if nothing had changed since last time. Max was a little unsure about hickeys since she had a presentation the next day, but Violet calmed her down. When in doubt, there were always clean turtlenecks on standby.

“Now, last thing. Do you want me to be kind or cruel?”

Max took a bite of her salad and contemplated, as if her partner had asked a trick question. One could easily be disguised as the other given certain circumstances. “Kind,” she swallowed, unsure of her answer. “But also cruel. Possibly both? I’m sorry; I still don’t understand.”

“Let me rephrase that. How far do you want me to go? I mean, there’s a big difference between calling you a cumslut and calling you stupid.” The black-haired woman clarified, drumming her fingers on the table as she waited for an answer.

It wasn’t hard to tease Max; there were many things about her that were practically a bullseye for bullying. She was the kind of girl who would take too long to get ready, yet look like she barely had any makeup on. The kind who’d talk during a movie she’d seen ten times before just to spout trivia, quietly going on until shushed. She was practically a grandmother when it came to social media and she was just so… rigid out in public. It was too easy to make fun of the things bullies had told Max for years (her hair, her height, and the way she spoke to name a few), plus it was wrong.

Yes, Violet was a bitch, but she still had standards.

“As far as you want.” Max continued, starting to protest yet not sure of what. “I swear… I can take it.” A hush fell over the kitchen. “I’ll safeword when I feel uncomfortable. I promise.”

Violet swallowed a mouthful of spinach and sighed, “I know you will. I trust you, but will you remember when the time comes?” A hush fell over the kitchen. “It’s just- in the past it was hard for you to come out of your subspace and I don’t wanna make you cry. Well, at least in a bad way. We should have discussed this earlier, but I got distracted by other things and-”

“Now look who’s being fussy.” The grey-haired lady teased as she finished up the rest of her meal. With a small grunt of protest from her partner, she continued. “Well… calling me stupid or worthless is a hard no, and other things in that vein. Nothing negative about my body. And… I think that’s it.”

“Perfect.” Violet shot up and took her and Max’s bowls. “I’ve got to get ready, but remember. As soon as I see you next, your ass is mine. Give me about thirty-ish minutes and I’ll be ready for you. I have some research to do.” She strode towards the door, flipping through the pulp novel’s pages for emphasis.

“Sounds good to me, darling.”

“Then it’s a date!” As she pulled herself into the bedroom, the newly appointed mistress quickly stuck out her head and winked before closing the door.

Max could only imagine the preparations at hand.

#rpdr fanfiction #violet chachki #max malanaphy #violax #lesbian au #s7 #fluff #ruinenlust #puppy #tw kink #kink negotiation

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