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elegyofthemoon · 1 year ago

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MORE GUSH PASS FOR YOU BC YOU'VE BEEN ENJOYING THEM SO MUCH AND I'VE BEEN ENJOYING READING THEM!!! 🎟️🎟️🎟️

also thank u for ur tags on the kylilah wedding fic i'm ;A; waAaAaAAAA meliora crying.png ilysm

TY I LOVE YOU and i love abusing these gush passes so much when i'm like "i need to write a whole essay right now to express my feelings or i will set myself on fire" so guess what you're about to get.

But anyhows~ of course!! ^7^ kylilah wedding fic was just so cute how could I resist reading all of it and commenting? the writing was just so beautiful and so perfect ;; v;;

I accidentally went off to Sophia about Birthright!Leo specifically and yes, sure, I haven't touched Fates in a while (last time I did I'm pretty sure it was for. March? OR FOR LEO'S BIRTHDAY ACTUALLY.), and I genuinely thought I forgot everything tbh because of fixation on coughs Other Matters coughs but talking to Sophia and watching myself slip a bunch of thoughts made me go "ohhhh oh no you're still insane about Fates and Leo specifically... cool cool cool cool-"

Something that'll always come to mind when it comes to Leo is just how much internal conflict the guy must have with feeling like he has to Fit A Specific Function to matter to anyone but also wanting to have someone to talk to - someone who wouldn't put him down for being "weak." And when the "fitting a specific function" is the "reliable one" or the "strong one", then it becomes hard to really allow himself a chance to really allow himself to be vulnerable. He basically creates his own issues this way and it sucks more because I feel like this only gets worse for Birthright!Leo who later becomes king and now the whole country's relying on him. Like how does that play out for a guy with his whole complex exactly?

There was a "work in progress" fic that I had wanted to write that basically was supposed to be a snapshot of his life growing up, following after him and this Need to be Needed, coming from his time with his mom and the way I thought about how she must have raised him and how that plays into who he is today, but I think that fic got shot up in flames due to New Knowledge Acquired That Made Me Want To Stab the Fic With a Knife. normal. real normal snow. Which I will not get into because I actually didn't finish the whole context because I was just eheh~ a littleeee~ mad but that's fine lmao we're fine lolololol we're totally cool 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼(sobbing on the floor)

He's very fun to write for this reason though. Finding ways to balance out between this internal struggle at a given situation makes him very very attractive to write lol At least I try my best to do so anyhow haha I don't necessarily feel that my writing does him a disservice, but I do feel like it borders between weighing in too much into certain aspects of his character instead of holding the true weight he has, but that's a conflict I'm willing to put up with if it means getting to explore his character a little more in my head lmao

And sorry to track back, but I also think a lot about like. the affection with his family. I think a lot about how in his support with Corrin and Camilla, he expresses how much he wished to have the same attention that Corrin does; he just isn't sure how to do it unless the emotions were bubbling from his mouth and he speaks at a breaking point, to which he'll try to mend it with a "Apologies. That was unlike me. Anyways-" and tries to move onto something else LITERALLY JUST TALK DUDE!!!!!! COMMUNICATE WHAT YOU NEED!!!!!!!!!!

But he doesn't. He doesn't because time's told him that if he voices his own weakness he will get punished for it. It's something that I had contemplated specifically about how he was raised by his mom, and only to find out that that is also something he was raised to believe within the royal family (via the voice drama that I had to actually stop watching because I was just sad). He can't allow himself to be weak because he is always expected to be strong.

And for that reason, the name "Leo" is very fitting for him, I think. There's a really really good fanartist's comic on his name and it definitely contributed to the way I appreciate his naming and temporarily served as inspiration for the way I was going to take the fic, but you know. Didn't go anywhere.

I also just wish he knew he was loved. It's very clear his family loves him, but the way he was raised misconstrues this "love" for "shame". Yes we all tease Leo because he's so strict on himself and it's nice to see him have little flaws here and there. We poke fun at it and all, but how does that feel for Leo who's probably had his flaws shamed most if not all his life? It's the reason why he's so strict on himself after all, and they wonder why it is he's so strict on himself.

Anyways. Long story short, and quite the winding road, I love Leo's character a lot. I kinda forgot how much I did until Sophia and my conversation kinda wandered over to Fates talk and then Leo and I had to sit down and cry for like. Several paragraphs apparently about it

And the thing is, I'm not exactly sure if this is all intentional writing or if I just fixated so hard and made stuff up that this is the version that makes the most sense to me for his character. At the very least, all of this serves as the backbone to the way I write him. And as I said: it's very fun :)

But anyways, TY for the ask

#anyways this is all stream of conscious by the way. theres no structure to this i just let myself maul the ask #because i couldn't hold myself back #now imagine if i had the confidence to talk about current interests bro. if i had that confidence i would become God :)#but no~ alas the heavens have nerfed me with social anxiety #it is only when i'm REALLY feeling it that i have little moments of slipping into godhood weehee 🤭🤭#answered #sowwy friend ik u rb my gushes but not this one im scared LOL #tullaytullahs #i need to find a way to save this for myself too #mostly so i can go back and look at it and go 'sir what the fuck are you talking about'

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kai-skai · 2 years ago

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Somehow multiple people on my dash have gotten into Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb, and it's been recommended to me as well. Having read the first two books, I ... can't really get into it. Here's my review (with some spoilers for those two books). (Also, this turned out more negative than I intended. Sorry about that if you like it, no offense intended, maybe just skip reading it.)

Gideon the Ninth was mostly fun. The writing is a bit too slow for me sometimes (detailed descriptions of settings/fabric/other stuff that I don't really care about), the worldbuilding a bit too vague/little, but okay. Gideon doesn't have much going on spends most of the time ambling around somewhere beside the plot being unhelpful, and since this fits her character perfectly and we get plenty of snarky commentary out of it, this is fine by me. The plot itself starts off very slowly and then kind of happens all at once at random. Maybe I've missed clues or important details - I guessed that Dulcinea was not all she seemed, but not much else. The characters' actions don't have much effect either: pretty much everything except for the final standoff would have happened more or less like it did with a completely different set of characters as well. This fits with Cytherea's powers and (apparent) agenda, so alright, but it also means that I spent a lot of the time just going "huh? well... alright, I guess this might as well happen" in slightly confused tones. The character or perhaps rather relationship development of Gideon and Harrowhark was savory and delicious, very nice, no notes (except maybe for “more of this pls”). The rest of the characters stayed somewhat flat for me (in some cases due to dying off early), with a few notable exceptions (Palamedes and Camilla, but... that's basically it). Overall I'd give it something like 3.5/5 stars, finished it fairly entertained and with both curiosity and some reservations for the next book.

Harrow seemed like a driven, systematic, and fiercely intelligent character in the first book, not to mention a necromancer with (necessarily) a good grip on the mechanics of this essential aspect of the world. I expected this to mean that the second book would have a stronger (tighter, more coherent) plot influenced heavily by the main character's actions, that it would contain more explanations of necromancy's abilities and restrictions and more analysis on what the various necromancers were doing, and that it would probably be more my usual speed in terms of how the main character thinks (albeit less funny).

Given these expectations, Harrow the Ninth was disappointing.

* Harrow's internal voice, to the extent it even existed, was bland. She seemed to sleepwalk through the first two acts completely, with no more emotional reactions than some dislike for basically anyone and anything around her and no discernible thoughts. To some extent that was to be expected given the traumatizing ending of the first book, but it just went on for waaaay too long. If she had any particular kind of feeling about her past self locking away some of her memories, if she ever sat down to think through whether to trust her past self or not, we didn't get to see it. If she ever suspected that the memory block was involved in her difficulties with her Lyctoral abilities, and perhaps even re-evaluated whether to follow her past self's wishes in light of this information (which her past self could not have had!), there was nothing of that in the book (including the later acts). I kept waiting for her to wake up, only to be frustrated chapter after chapter. This got somewhat better in/after the third act, with at least some thoroughly satisfying soupy (heh) action, but... honestly never to the extent I had hoped.

* Characters: ugh. Everybody is assholes. Mercy? Asshole. Augustine? I wasn't entirely sure about him for a second there, but yep, asshole. Gideon the First? Asshole from the start, a hot second of maaaaybe in the middle, oh and then he's dead. Ianthe? Asshole, relationship with Harrow seems to develop for a while, except then apparently she deliberately gaslights Harrow about something important (maybe! unless Gideon is wrong about Cytherea's body beneath Harrow's bed being real! which is a distinct possibility, given that Gideon only has Harrow's eyes to look through, but this is never resolved and potentially irrelevant anyway and this is immensely frustrating to me.) Harrow desperately needs a hug, but is surrounded by assholes, so that only seems even remotely possible for like five sentences spread out through the book. God actually had me rooting for him and hoping for a bit, but proves to be Actually An Asshole Too around the start of act three. Oh, and then at the end all of them turn out to be a slightly different shade of asshole than they seemed to be for most of the book. Which I genuinely cannot bring myself to care about, at all. And I actually really hate all of this, because... these are near-immortal beings who have spent ten thousand years more or less with each other, through high-stakes situations, set apart from the rest of their universe, and there are these tantalizing glimpses of genuinely complex and deep relationships and an interesting view of the world, but they fizzle out in assholery and are also mostly ruined by/at the ending. So yeah. Then there are also the dead characters, which are actually not completely dead, but most of what they do happens in that space of "this might be an elaborate false memory, although it's probably something else, but I have no way of knowing what" which puts a real damper on getting invested (at least for me, YMMV).

* Plot: in all the frustrating sleepwalking of the first two acts, Resurrection Beasts are set up as the Big Bad for later, one of them coming for God with potentially Houses-ending consequences. Then there's also a mystery threat that may or may not even be real in any meaningful way throughout the Canaan house parts. Then, the Resurrection Beast happens (and turns tail) offscreen while characters are busy doing Other Stuff (e.g. going “no u want Harrow to like you more than she does” at each other, eavesdropping on assholes), the mystery threat is explained but mostly after it's been made irrelevant by killing (and also is part of a whole other group of baddies we don't really know anything about but that are mentioned here and there throughout the book), and also Harrow - you know, the main character - spends most of the actual action sitting around watching/listening to other people doing things, and so does Gideon. The potentially House-ending consequence of God's death turns out to be no biggie because he can't die anyway, right before he's put into a completely different danger (let's call it superhell) that was kind of offhandedly introduced along the way, and then he gets away anyway. I just... look, I can't care about any of this. Nothing has been set up in such a way as to make me care. I don't care whether Mercy and Augustine are traitorous assholes in addition to regular assholes, because they're assholes either way, and because the asshole they betrayed is someone I also don't really care about. The Houses ending seems sort of vaguely bad in a "there were characters from there that seemed nice" way, but they’re offscreen and the on-screen characters don’t seem to care all that much about them, so the emotional impact is limited. The New Group of Maybe-Baddies is pretty much a complete unknown - they apparently toss around nuclear weapons and try assassinations but also a couple of non-dead characters are there now for some unexplained reason? (Which we learn in a completely random encounter that sooort of drops a clue or two about later happenings, but that stays... jarringly random.) Once again, most of this is - as far as I can tell - impossible to figure out or anticipate in advance. While I got the Ortus/Gideon switch, that wasn't much of a mystery given that we already knew Harrow had altered her memories. The River's possibilities are not really clear early enough that I could guess at what's going on with Canaan house, and they are disjointed from the main narrative (with no indication that Harrow is reliving/dreaming/thinking about any of it). Harrow's existence doesn't make much - if any - difference to the plot at any point, only Gideon’s eyes are important for Betrayal Reasons. I suppose there are some things I've learned (Gideon's parentage, a bit about Alecto's wards), but these were... not actually questions I was all that curious about, and learning it almost incidentally from assholes yelling at each other doesn't feel very satisfying. A mystery that I thought was getting solved when Abigail brought up Harrow being haunted (namely, What The Fuck Is Up With The Body Following Her) was un-solved again when the haunting turned out to be a new character. Another mystery (why God would lie about how to become a Lyctor) doesn't get solved because somehow nobody asks.

* There are some meme references sprinkled throughout the book (I caught none pizza with left beef, jail for mother, and... I think another one?), which some people like, but I mostly found them incongruous with the rest of the tone. Which makes me wonder if uncaught and slightly-incongruous references are further negatively affecting my opinion here. I was promised that the Cool S would be important somehow, but as far as I can tell it was just randomly on a piece of paper beneath a Harrow hallucination and irrelevant otherwise.

I dunno. Maybe these books are better at a second reading, when you already know what's going on and can pick up more clues? Maybe there is some actual content in Harrow's hallucinated notes that I didn't get because I didn't have enough context yet? At least it would put some of the soundbites that are just unintelligible due to missing context at the first read in, well, context. But I don’t really want to reread them.

Aaanyway. Might get curious about the other books via fanfic/fanart, but at this point I’m leaning more towards reading synopsis (synopsises? synopses?) online than towards reading the actual books. I don’t really trust that the payoff from reading the actual books would be worth the effort for me.

#actually let's not tag the books/series/author here #let's keep the tags for positive stuff

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e-the-village-cryptid · 1 year ago

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Yes!!! "Portraying women in a way which allows them to be heard but not misunderstood" — I really enjoyed the part of the podcast, especially her discussion of rage and how that rage is both necessary and allowable, and can lead to people dismissing you. She says something along the lines of "Electra's right to be angry, but people also see that rage as permission to dismiss her. But you also have to go through that stage of anger in order to mature into it and articulate it more clearly. I would love to play Electra as growing into that rage throughout the play, not denying her anger but allowing it and learning to articulate it in a way that allows her to be heard." and that was just *chef's kiss*

I'm so glad you brought up Lady Macbeth, I wrote about her (and was fascinated with her) in school. (I was SO hoping that Denise Gough was about to bring her up as an example of "women who wanna destroy the world" as she'd just said, but alas. Lady Margaret works too.) We got to write a research paper on any theme within Macbeth we chose and I went ham digging through psychology journal databases finding stuff on guilt and thought suppression trying to psychoanalyze Lady Macbeth haha. I was also interested in the notion of her as powerful— in particular, the way her power feels so tenuous and sort of breaks down throughout the play. My thesis was basically that Lady Macbeth's deterioration throughout the play followed the track of her obsessive suppression of any thoughts regarding her fear or guilt or other negative emotions, and of course, attempts to suppress thoughts only make them grow in their power over you until they overwhelm you. I didn't get into the gender politics of it because I had no idea what to do with them at the time, but if I were to do it again now, I absolutely would. She suppressed so much of herself so strongly because she felt like any sign of anything anyone could take as "womanly" would be a sign of weakness. Looking back, I was definitely inventing an internal world for her that Shakespeare was probably not thinking of at all, because I just couldn't get behind the incompleteness of leaving women as only one of two extremes with no complexity behind them.

I haven't seen Arcane but I'll have to check it out! I'm sorry you haven't found other shows that portray women as equal in internal complexity to men, there's definitely a pervasive problem of women being portrayed that way but it's by no means everything out there, especially in more recent years and with a rise in women writing and directing. It's always a work in progress— even Andor isn't perfect on that front, I was unimpressed with the way they portrayed (or rather, didn't portray) Bix's internal world and complexity in the second half of the season especially. But there is definitely plenty of media out there with amazingly written women if you go looking for it, and overall, it's gradually getting better. And in the meantime, I will continue to latch onto women whose internal worlds felt incompletely written to me and write pages and pages constructing them for myself lmao why do I frustrate myself like this

Agreed! I love the way that with characters like Dedra and Mon and Cinta and Vel and Kleya and really every morally grey character, Andor doesn't sink into "positive" stereotypes of women being warmer, more nurturing, more emotionally intelligent, less capable of evil, etc. Positive stereotypes are often disregarded for the harm they cause, but they can have just as harmful an impact as negative stereotypes and often fly under the radar when it comes to avoiding stereotyping in a piece of media. I appreciated Andor's in-your-face showing you that NO, women can be equally corrupted by power, equally cold and ruthless (on both sides of the war), equally faced with difficult decisions and equally likely to make questionable ones as men, because women are just people. And I appreciate Denise for not shrinking from that for Dedra at all, for showing that Dedra can BOTH face gender discrimination within the Empire AND STILL BE fully accountable for her actions. Denise put it best: "She is not just a woman in a man’s world, but a fascist in a world of fascists. It was important to see that power corrodes women as much as men."

I need to talk to someone about this podcast episode for like 3 hours

no specific fandom or context necessary, just a really amazing conversation on addiction, recovery, treating your past self with understanding and respect, the value of rage, acting roles of "unpalatable" women with compassion and honesty, and the importance of truth in telling stories

I listened to it and then immediately went back and listened to the whole thing again and that is the only time I have ever done that, it's a beautiful episode please consider giving it a listen

and if you do listen. please. talk to me about it. I am bursting with things to say and questions to ask. I'm losing my mind over this. I'm begging you

#THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT THIS WITH ME <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 I WILL CHAT ABOUT THIS FOR AS LONG AS YOU WANT #denise gough #dedra meero #original post tag

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kasztanisagod · 3 years ago

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gilethen headcannons because I really don't want to write a third fanfiction about them and my obsession only grows stronger with each passing day:

gilan and selethen get together after gilan's first mission in arrida, but nobody notices (halt suspects something but he isn't quite sure – he saw gilan talking to jenny on his wedding and it misled him)

surprise: jenny and gilan are just besties, also she makes the best plum pie, so gilan just follows her around with his puppy eyes

gilan and selethen exchange letters, of course. when he becomes the corps commandant (I still can't get over the fact that crowley died and duncan is still alive, like, come on, flanagan) it becomes more frequent as they have to discuss international matters as well as their undying love confessions

about love confessions: I like to imagine that they first said they love each other during the fifth brotherband book – that's how the herons found out (although I still quite like the idea that hal found out because gilan had a wedding ring on his left hand)

as I have wonderful and truly outstanding math skills (that is an obvious lie) I managed to figure out that during RA, gilan is in his early twenties (I think twenty one or twenty two), and in brotherband there is a mention that he is not yet thirty. assuming that brotherband happened somewhere between the lost stories and the royal ranger: a new beginning, gilan, during the whole TRR series would be in his forties (this might be completely wrong but anyways). where i'm going with this: gilan and selethen got married when gilan was thirty eight.

so, we all know that the herons visited araluen on several occasions, but I am thinking here specifically about the one visit when maddie was already an apprentice and they helped her with saving cassie or something (forgive me for the lack of details here, but I erased the whole TRR series from my brain as it caused me some serious emotional damage). now, if I remember correctly, halt wasn't around and the herons left before he returned and they never actually met, but: what if they did?

I think that one of the herons would mention the relationship that gilan and selethen have, because they've known about it for quite some time and they just generally like to tease gilan. (I am assuming that gilan did not propose to jenny even once and they were friends, of course) and while halt was just like 'yeah I knew it' (he actually made a bet about it with crowley, but… you know), will was. well. caught off guard.

now, moving on from writing gilethen into the plot (it basically wrote itself I am so sorry, this was supposed to be short). time for more specific headcannons about them

they like to hug a lot, I think. or hold hands. sometimes, during a fight, they hold hands (selethen is very glad that gilan can fight with both of his hands). they don't have assigned pet names, but selethen probably calls gilan his sunshine sometimes. (gilan repays with calling selethen 'my love' to which he just melts)

gilan introduced selethen to blaze just after they started dating. selethen was very nervous about this (he found it quite ridiculous at first, but he quickly got over it when she bit him), and he almost had a cardiac arrest when gilan told him that he has to try and ride on blaze, and if she accepts him, she won't throw him off the saddle. of course, he didn't say a word about the special password, so we all know how it ended.

gilan still laughed at him because of that even ten years later.

this is getting out of hand, I have to finish now or else this monstrous thing will reach 3k words for sure

last but not least, after gilan's sudden death selethen couldn't stand living so close to the desert – it was his home, but it was also full of sunshine, and how was he supposed to move on if his sunshine was long buried under the green hills of araluen?

I am terrified that flanagan will actually kill gilan off so that will can be the corps commandant. that thought keeps me awake at night (and this, my fellows, is why I have two gilethen fics written)

alright that's it I'm finishing

selethen gifts gilan plants on every occasion he has – mostly ones that can be found in the desert, and gilan adores every one of them

no more headcannons that was the last one (...for now)

I would love to hear your takes on gilethen, so feel free to share!!

#rangers apprentice #gilan davidson #john flanagan #gilan x selethen #gilethen #selethen #brotherband chronicles #seley el'then #i lost my self control while writing a second gilethen fic #but now i'm certain it's not coming back anytime soon #send help

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cinnamonest · 4 years ago

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Y’all are too nice to me I swear… here I am being horny and nasty on main and I’m getting encouraged, damn. But for real ( ´ ω ` ) thank you so much!!

I’m gaining more confidence to post more smutty stuff and the kind of dark shit I like, so I might go back and make more nasty Childe content later on too… After Albedo, I got Razor and Zhongli coming up, and a few ones I just worked on for fun. But yeah, just in case it wasn’t clear for anyone who followed me, I’m going to be writing almost entirely dark content and some really nasty stuff, so just be aware of that, and don’t consume my writing if that’s something that may be harmful to you.

Albedo is so pretty… and such good dark content material… He treats you like a science experiment but has the audacity to make it hot smh

I haven’t seen a whole lot of him outside the cutscenes, so potentially ooc (as if yandere content isn’t already ooc, lmao)

Albedo - Yandere Profile

tw: general yandere content, obsessive behavior, stalking

tw (below cut): smut, noncon (seriously, you’ve been warned)

What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?

Very much aware. In the beginning, it frustrates him. He’s never been particularly attached to anyone, outside of his former instructor. He’s always enjoyed being out on his own, spending extended amounts of time by himself – the desire to be around someone is a foreign feeling for him. He immediately notices how bizarre the emotion is for him, how it changes his behaviors. His self awareness combined with perceptiveness makes him able to acutely recognize not only how unusual this emotion is for him, but also how the extent of his feelings, the types of desires they ignite in him, is unusual even for “normal” people who aren’t social recluses.

He’s frustrated by his own actions, feels embarrassed at how attached he is to you, how easily you make him flustered and trip over his words. As he is a very aware yandere, he’s definitely afraid of rejection to some degree. He has no idea how to navigate feelings and interactions with other people, he’s never really had the desire to form a particularly strong bond with anyone before. As such, he’ll come across as very awkward, and he will interact with you less than most yanderes – he knows he’s just going to embarrass himself if he talks to you, right? He’ll just mess up and say something strange, so instead, he opts to watch you from the shadows, go to places where you are, but keep a distance from you, just being able to watch you makes him feel fluttery and overwhelmed.

He will definitely be one to collect things from you. He collects plenty of things for the sake of science, this is no different. Or so he tries to tell himself, but he can’t delude himself even if he tries. He knows its weird, he knows its wrong, but the overwhelming urge to have things of yours is too great to resist. He’ll start off with more innocent things, but it will gradually progress to not-so-innocent… items of yours.

It may not be obvious, but he’s actually a fairly sensitive person, at least regarding you. He places a lot of value in what you think of him, and wants to ensure you’ll respond positively to him. He views it like a science – there should be some formula by which he can put in the correct actions, and produce a specific result. Unfortunately, unlike real science, there’s not much room for trial and error – he feels he only has once chance.

How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?

It will take some time, as he’s got to get over his own nerves first. He’s torn between the fear of you hating him for such a thing, it would be the end of the world for him, but also the desire to pull you away from the world, to keep you hidden from others, to have you all to himself, to be the only person that gets to look at you. If you start showing positive signs, reacting positively to his gifts, expressing interest in conversation with him and going out of your way to see him, he’ll start to get more confident, think that he can afford to do something that might sour your opinion of him, hoping it will merely be temporary.

He’ll probably start to do so several times and back out. He’ll set out at night, make it all the way to your room and stand over your sleeping form, and he’ll start to worry, wonder if someone saw him, see holes in his plans, he gets too nervous and bolts. He’ll persuade you into being alone with him, and although its the chance he’s looking for, again, he’ll get nervous, worry about being caught, run through all the what-ifs, and miss the chance. Honestly, when he does finally take you, it will probably be not planned, but in the heat of the moment, a rash decision from desperation. Something like you coming to visit him to tell him you’re leaving the area, came to say goodbye, and he’ll panic, ultimately grabbing you by the arm as you try to leave and dragging you back inside, silently, but forcefully.

How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape?

Moderately difficult. Your best bet is to take advantage of his tendency to be absent minded when he’s absorbed in his work. He gets very lost in his thoughts, to a point where he’ll completely zone out and be oblivious to the world around him. On the downside, this means you won’t have much time to cover distance, he’ll be close behind the moment he realizes you’re gone.

The route he’ll probably take is actually one where you won’t need to be too restrained, because you’ll be taking… a little research trip. Out to the most freezing, desolate areas of the mountains. He’s convinced the knights he needs to stay there for his research, but in reality, he’s internally panicking, as he tries to figure out how to make this work – after all, you two can’t stay here forever. You’d be foolish to run out of the little cabin he’s bought, out into the perilous freezing cold and jagged, high slopes. At first, he thinks there’s no way you’d try it, so he’s content letting you have free reign to walk around as you please. If he has to leave for whatever reason, he’ll probably lock you into a single room, but he won’t chain you up, as again, he's really trying to avoid making you hate him.

If you prove to be determined to leave, he’ll be hurt, but mostly concerned for you. He’s actually not one to get too mad over an escape attempt – he’ll blame himself, or theorize it’s just a natural response your brain triggered. Against his first choice, he’ll end up having to get more strict with your restraints. If you get too whiny, though… you might trigger one of his more frustrated moments.

“I didn’t want to have to do this… I’m sorry. I can’t risk anything bad happening to you. Tell me if it’s too tight… I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t blame you. I know you’re probably panicking over all this, but you’ll get adjusted to it, I promise. Just… just give it some time… it’s not so bad, living with me, I promise.”

“Don’t be like that. You’re only tied up because you tried to leave. You should understand why you have to be kept like this… If you don’t want to be restrained, you shouldn’t have run out, trying to get yourself killed.”

How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?

For all his academic intelligence, he’s not highly skilled with people and socialization. He’s not too good at being able to tell when he’s being lied to, and he definitely won’t pick up on subtle manipulation. It’ll be pretty easy to wrap him around your finger, he’ll do what he can to make you happy.

Once he finds out you’ve lied to him, though, he’ll get pretty upset. He likely won’t trust you again, and will require proof of anything you say, or set out to find out if you’re telling him the truth or not.

How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?

He’ll try to accommodate you, giving you things you ask for, but he has limits. He’s too paranoid to let you have any contact with the outside world. You do have him wrapped around your finger to an extent, though. Whatever he’s doing at the moment, he’ll drop it in a heartbeat if you want to spend time with him in any way, even if its just you asking for food or to take a walk. He’ll be willing to take you for very short trips outside, no further than a few yards from the lodging, if only because he knows sunlight is vital to your health.

What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?

The basics will be there – don’t try to leave, don’t be difficult with him, try to cooperate, be obedient. However, he’s also particularly overprotective of anything that can hurt you – even yourself. Under no circumstances can you handle anything that can hurt you – that means no cooking, no knives, no lifting anything heavy, no going outside without him. If you’re determined to cook something, he’ll have to stand right behind you, and watch while you do it. If you get so much as a little cut or burn, he’ll take over, insisting you go sit down after he tends to your “wounds.”

At the very beginning, he’ll be hesitant to punish you too much, as part of his plan to get you to like him. However, he can be a little easily frustrated, and your safety and well-being comes first, even if it means he has to make you upset. He will have to restrain you, take away what little privileges you had. If you try to bolt while you’re outside, no more going outside. If you try something foolish like attacking him with a knife when he gives you cooking privileges, you will lose said privileges. Really, the worst part of it all is the humiliation, being treated like a dumb, incapable baby that can’t do anything for yourself. He insists on doing everything for you, even down to bathing you and dressing you, even feeding you if you can’t convince him to take restraints off your hands. He’ll talk down to you in that way, too, talking to you as if you were a child.

How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?

It’s a situation he’s not prepared to handle, and he’s unsure of what to do. It strikes fear in him that you might have someone else interested, so he has to get rid of them as quickly as possible. He’s not opposed to killing, if it comes down to that, but initially, he’ll try to work behind the scenes – expose something that will ruin their reputation, get them accused of a crime. This would also be one of the possible aforementioned situations that might cause him to kidnap you a bit earlier than he normally would, as well. If he can’t get rid of them easily, he’ll just take you away from them.

He will absolutely try to make you hate them, try to ruin your image of them, and he’s rather good at falsifying evidence for his claims of their behavior. With his alchemic skills, that sort of thing is easily possible.

How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?

He gets more frustrated than anything, when you’re being difficult. This is mostly just him sighing quite a bit, speaking a bit harshly, even pouting and sulking a bit if you’ve offended him. But true anger in him is not pretty, and almost never happens. It’s a buildup, a slow rise that has a boiling point. If he reaches that point, he can definitely get mad enough to hurt you, it’s actually kind of terrifying in how sharp of a contrast it is to how he normally is. It’s a side of him that’s very difficult to draw out. He’s not one to yell or shout, no, his anger is a suffocating silence, he slams down whatever he’s holding as he stomps over to you, grabbing you by the arms hard enough to bruise, and dragging you by the hair to whatever he has planned.

With mild frustration outbursts, he will feel justified, but if it reaches that intense anger, he’ll usually give at least a little apology, tell you he didn’t mean to go that far. He hates to think of you fearing him, but ultimately, if that’s what’s necessary to keep you safe, then he can live with it.

Do they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?

It’s an odd mix. On one hand, he sees you as utterly fascinating, the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on, more than any landscape or art he’s seen or made, an invaluable treasure to be kept on a high pedestal. Simultaneously, however, he will treat you like a child, thinks you can’t do anything for yourself. It’s a bizarre duality, but one he is consistent on. You’re precious, so very precious, and he’s undeserving of you, but at the same time, you need him to be safe and sound.

How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?

Of the genshin boys, he’s one of the most determined. He’s not good with people, and he doesn’t really have anyone particularly close to him left anymore. He tends to keep people at a distance. You sort of fill an space inside him that he never knew was empty, a void he wasn’t aware he had until it was consumed by thoughts of you. He doesn’t need anyone or anything else, so long as he has you with him, but he really, really wants it to be true that you love him. He doesn’t need you to even love him as much as he loves you – he doesn’t even know if that’s possible – but he just wants to know that, even if only in the slightest, his feelings are returned. He’s so distant from everyone else, but you wormed your way into his heart, even if you didn’t intend to, with your smiles and softness and kindness towards him. For the first time, he feels weak around someone, but in a way, it’s a good feeling. He wants to be able to be vulnerable, be weak, and not have anything to fear by doing so.

He’s lucid, though, so he doesn’t expect you to love him immediately. As he’s not good with words or displays of affection, he’ll get you all sorts of gifts. Rare items that you wonder how the hell he obtained them, beautifully crafted little trinkets from all his searching and time traveling, more clothes than you could ever wear. You’ll start to feel a little guilty, it’s so much, and you’re certain he doesn’t have that much money. He’ll blow it off, say it’s no big deal, but if you insist, he’ll have to start finding new ways to convey his affection. In captivity, he won’t stop trying, but he’ll understand why you might be angry. In that case, he will utilize what he’s learned from research in books he’s read. He knows that eventually, with him being the only one you have, the only company, the only one to talk to, the only source of touch, you’ll eventually have to cave. You’ll become attached to him, bond with him, whether you like it or not. He knows how powerful the affect of touch can be, and will make sure to hold you in his arms, keep you on his lap, make you crave the only source of human touch you can get. Dependency, he thinks, is the gateway to you loving him.

Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?

Drawings. So many of them. Much like his drawings he uses in notes, he’s found he tends to start scribbling a familiar face when his mind drifts off. He’s memorized every little detail of your face, every curve on your body. If you’re ever snooping around, you’ll eventually uncover a book of sketches he has solely dedicated to drawings of you. Drawings of you laughing, smiling, sleeping, drawings that you’re certain were of real events you were at, that you didn’t remember him being at. Every bit in perfect detail. If you confront him about it, he’ll be horrifically embarrassed, insisting they’re no good, or, if you’re upset, trying to reassure you it was all from his mind and totally not him lurking in the shadows as he watches you.

Also, if you want to make him happy, get him on one of his spiels about his work, his interests, anything that he can catch onto and go on and on about. He’ll catch himself rambling and apologize for being “annoying,” but if you reassure him, and express interest, that will make him feel particularly appreciated. It would be a primary way to get on his good side and manipulate him, or lull him into false security to make your escape, if that’s what you’re looking to do. But be warned, it will only work once, and he’ll be far too hurt to let himself indulge in sharing these things with you again.

General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?

Publicly, definitely highly reserved. He’s easily flustered, and thinks of sex in a very scientific way, for the purpose of procreation. For fun? He knows it’s enjoyable, but can’t separate it from his very analytic, scientific way of viewing things. It’s a formula, you touch this here and pull that there, and the result is supposed to be orgasmic bliss. He just isn’t very familiar with pleasure – he doesn’t drag out masturbation, even, as that would be a waste of time. He gets it over with quickly, taking short breaks during his work. He is a fairly high drive, though, and gets the urge fairly frequently, about once or twice a day.

He’ll be hornier with your presence, having to leave more frequently to get off to the little things you do, quickly getting himself off while recalling the mental image of you holding a pen in your mouth, the little moan when you stretch, the way your clothes fit to your frame.

Prior to abduction, he’s not particularly touchy at all, in fact, he’s very jumpy if you touch him. Once he’s gotten you alone with him for the foreseeable future, isolated, dependent, he’ll gain more confidence, be willing to give into his cravings to touch you, hold you, eventually progressing to groping you, moving his hands up and down your body, under your clothes, slowly peeling them off.

He’s initially a bit ashamed of his urges towards you, feels guilty every time he gets off to you, but will likewise gain more confidence once you're his.

A guy can only fight off the urge for so long before he cracks, before he can’t continue to care about the consequences. For him, that point is when he knows he finally has you all to himself – his worries fade, and while the guilt is still there, it’s far outweighed by desire.

How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?

He does care, but as stated previously, it’s hard to fight the urge for so long. It will be torture, but for the first few days, he wants you to “adjust” to your new “home,” and not add to your panic. After that, though, he’ll try to assess your reactions. If you’re extremely resistant, he’ll give you more “adjustment” time. He can’t really hold off forever, though, and eventually, maybe a few weeks in, comes to the conclusion that if he just does what he wants, so long as he’s gentle and reminds you he loves you, it will help you get past the mental barrier in your mind. He’s convinced there’s simply a psychological issue, and that sometimes, people need a push. It’s like having a friend who can’t swim – sometimes, you just have to throw them into the water, help them get over that mental hurdle, and they’ll be grateful in the end. That’s what he tells himself to justify it, anyway. He has enough… anatomical prerequisite knowledge to know what’s good and what’s bad, and will take your body’s positive reactions as a sign of what you really want. Is definitely the kind to use that against you, holding up his fingers to your face after you cum on them, as if to prove a point.

“See? I told you, you just have to let go and give in to what you want… if you didn’t, my fingers wouldn’t be dripping like this, now would they?”

What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?

He wants to experiment on you. This manifests as him being something of a service top without really intending to be, even if you’re not exactly happy about it. He likes to watch your reactions, watch the way your body moves, test the pleasure you get from different things, discover what it is that you like, even if you weren’t aware of it. In particular, he’s fascinated by the fact that girls have so many types of orgasms. He’ll want to try them all, watch and see which ones are more intense than others, which ones make you convulse, makes your toes curl, your eyes roll back. Which erogenous zones make your breath hitch, make you twitch and whimper. Probably the type to be determined that he can make you cum just from something like sucking on your nipples, and he won’t stop until he achieves it. He’ll also want to try everything. At least anything that he thinks has some potential to appeal to him, mentally. He’s a busy man and hasn’t really taken the time to explore his own sexuality, and has virtually zero experience.

Edging, overstimulation, forced orgasms

Experimentation also means testing limits and thresholds. He’ll bring you up to the edge, learn to watch for the slightest of signs that you’re close, listen to your breath, watch your face, wait until you’re just so close and then draw back, stopping just short of letting you catch that high. Then he’ll let you drift back down, and bring you back up again. No amount of begging will make him show you any mercy, you’ll only cum when he’s decided he’s observed enough. He wants to push the limit, see just how close to the edge of orgasm you can get without spilling over, just how much it takes to drive you insane. He’ll also want to see how far you can go after it as well. Orgasm won’t be the end of his ministrations, no, he wants to see how much stimulation you can take. You won’t be able to get away from his tongue, he’ll grab you by the hips and slam you back down, continuing to lap at you even if you’re so sensitive it’s painful. Watching you cum will just make him rut into you harder, bruising and abusing your insides to a point that they’re so sore you can feel it long after it’s over. At first, he might feel a little guilty, and may very well after it’s over, but in the heat of the moment, he can’t fight the insatiable urge to listen to you squeal, feel you convulse, watch the tears from overwhelming pleasure run down your face.

He’ll make it his personal mission to see how many orgasms the female body is capable of within a given amount of time - per day, per hour, how quickly you can have them in succession. For scientific purposes, of course. Anatomy and human biology isn’t really his main field of focus, but he likes to expand his research horizons.

“Just one more… cum one more time for me, then we’ll be done. Come on… I know you can, just one more.”

How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?

He’s actually good with children, usually. He has a calming effect on kids. He isn’t sure how he feels, though. To some degree, he fears his capabilities to parent, thinks he would be too cold to be a good father. But he also likes the idea of a protege, an heir to his title, one he can teach everything he knows. If he does end up having one, this fucking nerd man will read every book on pregnancy, birthing, and parenting that he can get his hands on.

Also, he’ll absolutely be one to track your cycles, even better than you can. He’s researched enough to know exactly when you’re most or least likely to get pregnant, and you can’t help but notice how much more he seems to cum in you when you’re at your most fertile. Nor can he deny how satisfying it is to watch his cum slowly drip out of you, watching you twitch with aftershock and slowly drift off in exhaustion.

What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?

Unfortunately for you, since overstimulation and edging are already normal and everyday for you, he’ll have to amp it up a bit if he’s trying to make you regret something. He might get rougher, abusing more pleasure spots on your body, keeping his hands, mouth, and cock occupied all at once with driving you over the edge until it’s painful. But if you’re exceptionally misbehaved, you might not ever get a release to his edging, instead left to suffer from being so close, tied up so you can’t finish yourself off.

In moments when he’s really, truly angry, the peak of it, and that blends with arousal, he’ll really, really throatfuck you. Grabbing the back of your head and shoving his cock down as deep as he can, holding you there as you gag and choke, feeling your throat convulse around him, desperately trying to pull back for air. The movements are harsh and brutal, pulling harshly on your hair, moving at a pace so fast you barely have a second to breathe. Thankfully, when it gets like that, he won’t last long, emptying out into your throat, holding your jaw shut and demanding you swallow. If any spills off on your chin, he’ll gather it up on his fingers, hold it to your face, and command you to open your mouth, suck it off, and swallow again. That’s at the peak of his anger, though, and you’ll have to substantially piss him off to reach that point. He’ll apologize later, holding you close, but his guilt doesn’t change the fact that it’s one of the most intense orgasms that he’ll have, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t sometimes think of doing it again, even without provocation. He’s restrained enough not to, but the thought is there… and deep down, he’ll entertain the idea.

What body parts of their darling do they like the most?

The curves of your body, no matter how defined or faint they are, no matter the general shape of your body, to him it’s the most beautiful thing. He’ll definitely want to draw you, even if you’re not too keen on posing. He’ll run his hands up and down your body, squeezing every little bit of flesh he can, moving his palms over every little curve, every inch of your skin.

#yandere x reader #yandere genshin impact #yandere albedo x reader #tw: extreme content #tw: noncon #yandere albedo

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biggest-stupidhead · 4 years ago

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more modern au levi x reader!! is it okay where reader makes petra jealous???

Just a reminder: WE DO NOT CONDONE PETRA SLANDER IN THIS HOUSE!!!

with that said, I will write this heavily focused on Petra to make it a lil angsty, hope you enjoy!

Summary: Petra watches her ex fall for another

Word Count: 1.7K

It had been two long years since Petra and Levi ended things. It wasn’t messy but it was painful, she had seen it coming from a mile away. He had grown just as distant as he had been when they first met. Staying late at work, texting her dryly, and using terrible excuses. Although she had known it was coming, she still was a wreck when he actually ended things. She spent the months following the break up drinking wine and crashing at Oluo’s place regularly. After two years she was finally feeling better, dare she say, ready to get back into the dating scene? Or at least that’s what she thought, she was scrolling through her instagram feed when she stumbled across Hange’s page. It was someone’s birthday, someone she wasn’t familiar with.

A woman with bight eyes and an even brighter smile was in the center of the group photo. On her right was Levi, who had an arm thrown casually over her shoulder, the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. Petra pinched the screen to zoom into Levi’s side, where she saw a feminine hand on his waist. She stared stupidly at the image. She shouldn’t feel jealous, she had no right. It had been two long years since the break up. But the picture only dredged up old memories of times when she would hold Levi that same way. When that smile was directed to her. She then turned her attention to the caption, which read:

Happy Birthday (Y/n)! 24 never looked so good!

She then scrolled through the comments, many of them consisted of birthday wishes and support. She lost interest when she didn’t see Levi’s username and instead went back to the collection of photos, three of them in all. The group one that she assumed had just been taken, the second one was a picture of Hange and you on the beach, Petra felt a involuntary wave of self consciousness wash over her at the site of you in a swim suite. The final picture was the one that hurt the most though, it seemed to be a very old picture of you, maybe from your early years in college? You were sitting on a couch with younger versions of Hange, Erwin, Levi, and Moblit. Levi’s arm was casually thrown over your shoulders. Why had he never mentioned you before? Were you the reason that they broke up? No Levi had assured her that it wasn’t like that, said he wasn’t seeing anyone else. She tried to stop herself from going down that rabbit hole, but she couldn’t seem to. Before she really knew what she was doing, she had clicked on your profile which she was almost disappointed to find as public. This meant that there was nothing stopping her from judging every perfect image that was posted, and to her pleasant surprise, there was only one photo of you and Levi. The photo was posted the week prior, the two of you were hiking in the mountains, the dusty trial behind you. Your face was flushed from the exertion of the climb, Levi seemed cool as a cucumber, his face blank and void of emotion. She scrolled through the post and found a video, the sound of your shoes crunching and Levi talking behind you were clear as day.

“I mean come on, who uses fucking Lipton? Have some god damn class.” Levi spat, as you snorted in amusement. Petra found herself chuckling along with you at Levi’s little rant. She felt a rogue tear slide down her cheek when you showed the phone to Levi, who’s face fell from being mildly animated to apathetic once more. You cackled as he swiped the phone and the video ended abruptly. It was so innocent, it was clear from the rest of your page that you were a private person, much like Levi. With little indication that you were dating him, it left her wanting to know more. More about the girl that had taken her place, had managed to worm her way into Levi’s heart of stone and make herself comfortable. As soon as these thoughts crowded into her head, she deleted instagram all together and powered her phone down, determined to wipe her memory of the images she had seen.

The music was a nice distraction from the awkwardness that hung in the air. You had arrived uncharacteristically early to Hange’s party, and consequently meeting a whole group of people that you had never met before. The new people were about your age, three young men and one stunning young woman. It was early fall and Hange’s annual bonfire bash as you all had dubbed the event. Basically you lit a massive fire, when you were younger it was your past assignments from your pervious school year, then it became just regular old wood. You tapped your finger against the cool beer bottle as you leaned up against the counter, the men were laughing obnoxiously as they dropped the alcohol that they’d brought into one of the many coolers. The woman was looking at you almost nervously, she seemed extremely on edge, shifting her weight back and forth, eyes wandering around the room in a jittery manner. You frowned, wondering what was bothering her, but ultimately deciding that it was not really your business. Erwin shimmied behind you, his hands on your shoulders as he slide past you into the kitchen. You caught his arm, clinging to his familiar presence.

“Erwin.” you hissed as he stooped to reach your level.

“Who are these people?” you asked as you held his bicep firmly in your grasp. He pulled away and looked at you with a confused expression.

“You mean Levi didn’t tell you?” He said slowly, clearly he was unsure if it was his place to speak on the relationship between Levi and these people.

“No....” You said carefully, not wanting to make Erwin uncomfortable.

“Oh well they used to work in the same department before Levi switched.” He said, he looked over to the men and motioned for them to come over, they ambled over with curious expressions.

“What’s up Erwin?” the dark haired man asked as he looked between the two of you.

“Just thought I’d ought to introduce you to (Y/n) here, she’s an old friend of ours from high school.” Erwin explained, his hand still comfortingly placed on your mid back. You waved shyly and smiled at all of them, including the girl.

“Pleasure to meet you.” The blonde with a ponytail said, outstretching his hand to shake yours.

“I’m Eld, this is Gunther, Oluo, and that fine young lady over there is Petra.” He said, pointing at all of them respectively.

“It’s so nice to meet you guys!” you said sweetly as you struck up a conversation with Oluo about what they thought about the department that they worked in. It didn’t go unnoticed that Petra remained nearly silent, her amber eyes wide and a bit fearful. When the interns arrived, the men were quick to go help them carry in the alcohol that they brought, leaving you and Petra alone in the kitchen. You cocked your head at her as you poured some pretzels into a large bowl. The warm glow of the setting sun cast a halo over her head and you couldn’t help but voice your admiration for her.

“You’re really pretty.” you gushed as she blushed at your words and turned to look at you with wide eyes.

“So are you...” She returned the compliment and you smiled, feeling more at ease now that the two of you were alone.

“So how long have you known Hange?” You asked conversationally as you crumpled up the bag and tossed it into the trash.

“Hm let’s see...about four years now?” She responded with a bit of a wistful tone.

“Really? I’m surprised we haven’t met sooner!” you chuckled as the two of you opened a bottle of wine and poured it into two large glasses. The two of you strolled out into the bark yard, where Hange and Moblit were chucking large pallets of wood onto the fire pit. You and Petra sat down in two lawn chairs watching as Hange and Moblit bickered over if it was safe enough to light the fire with gasoline.

“I am too, you seem....like a really nice girl.” Petra said a bit downcast as she looked deeply into her wine.

“So do you! We should grab breakfast ooo or maybe even brunch sometime!” You said excitedly and Petra sat there in awe, wondering if there was even a mean bone in your body. Or if you had any clue that she had dated Levi.

“Yeah...this is kind of random but...are you dating Levi?” She blurted out, her face turning to look at you with a flushed expression. You nodded nonchalantly and took another sip of your wine.

“Yeah we just started dating about a year ago.” You said with a shrug, Petra inhaled, readying herself for the next words that would either make or break the future relationship between the two of you.

“Did...you know we dated?” she said, cringing when the words left her mouth. She sounded crazy and she knew it, but she felt obligated to clear the air between you before it got bad.

“Hm I think he mentioned it once or twice, and Hange told me about you when you first started dating.” You said looking up thoughtfully, your tone held no malice or any sign of ill will.

“You’re not...”

“Insecure? Nah, and don’t take that like I’m being cocky! I just mean that...”

“No, no let’s just not do this. I’m sorry for bringing it up. God I’m such a bitch.” Petra went to stand and you followed her, catching her wrist.

“It’s alright really, I don’t care about what happened between you and Levi. It’s frankly none of my business, I just...wanna be friends with you.” you smiled at her sheepishly as she looked at you with wide eyes.

“Oh” She managed to say dumbly.

“That is if you want to be friends.” You said, letting go of her hand and giving her some space.

“Yeah...I think that I’d like that very much.” Petra said with a bright smile.

In honor of Women’s History month, I couldn’t bare to write something that was a stereotypical jealous ex, so I did the next best thing and wrote this more geared towards the reader and Petra bringing each other up instead of tearing one another down. As someone who was apart of the fandom back in like 2014 I am way too familiar with writers turning Petra into a psycho bitch, and I don’t like that. SO I hope that this is good enough to fit the prompt!

#levi x reader #levi x y/n #levi x you #levi ackerman fanfiction #levi ackerman #jealous petra ral #modern au #erwin smith #hange zoe #moblit #aot fanfiction #aot fandom #light angst #fluff #women supporting women #no petra slander allowed #womens history month

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greensaplinggrace · 4 years ago

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honestly THANK YOU for saying all that abt baghra bc i thought i was going crazy from not liking her??? bc i haven't read the books and only summaries of them on wiki and like. i dunno why ppl like her actually even in the show bc this guy, her son, is like "i wanna make the world better for us grisha" and she's just like "no." even tho he sees that she's MAKING HERSELF SICK from suppressing her powers! she's literally like in bed coughing in the flashback yet seem much healthier at the little palace. also like after everything, after her disapproval, after the fold, after centuries of waiting for the sun summoner.. he never abandons her. he makes sure she's cares for. he doesn't harm her. and i have to wonder if baghra has ever thanks him for that, for just not leaving her alone. like i dunno how im suppose ro believe aleks is a heartless villain when he still cares for his abusive mom like this. like has baghra even told her she loved him (honestly she reminds me of a classic emotionally unavailable asian parent but maybe that's just me). also im wondering if baghra ever told aleks that he had an aunt.. bc like.. now that u bring up her isolating him it's like hmmmm...

not at me being like alina... why do u trust the bitter old woman who literally beats u with a stick and verbally abuses u every chance she gets.. just bc she showed a bad painting... like.. pls use two braincells to see that who u figured out as his mother... is also using his protection..

like baghra could've upped and left with alina. but no. she stayed bc she knew she was safe under aleks's protection.

alsoim just impressed that after his first friend tried to drown him and harvest his bones... he didn't go into hiding???? he still wanted to make a safe heaven for grisha!!! HE STILL WANTED TO PROTECT GRISHA EVEN AFTER HIS GRISHA FRIEND TRIED TO KILL HIM FOR HIS FUCKEN BONES. like... this is the guy im suppose to believe is the villain???

honestly i feel like part of the reason why LB's plotlines seem so bad and disconnected (and sometimes outright racist but that's another rant) and why darkles is disproportionately more violent and villainous in the later books is bc she didn't expect the darkling to be so popular and wanted to stick with her guns of making him the villain. but also wanted the money from aleks's popularity. but like you can't have ur cake and eat it too.

Well thank you for sending this ask! It's very sweet and very passionate. I'm glad you liked my post! I didn't put as much thought into it as some of my others lol. I kind of just talked. But it was nice to be able to finally talk about some of the problems I have with both her character and the fandom/author's perception of her.

HERE is the post this is referring to, in case anyone's wondering.

👀👀 You've hit the nail on the head for so many things, here!

Baghra is extremely emotionally unavailable, basically to the point of neglect. She's also verbally and physically abusive, traits which I doubt were only reserved for her students and not her son. Baghra claims she would do anything to protect him, but I've known a lot of parents who have that mindset and yet still harm their children because they think it's "good for them".

Aleksander stays at Baghra's side for years, and even when they're opposing each other she's never too far away from him. Idk if you've read the books but he does eventually hurt her. And as much as I don't like Baghra, I think his actions were horrid. But I'm also honestly kind of surprised it took him so long lmao.

Yeah I mean, in terms of isolation, let's not forget that she never wanted to introduce him to his father, either. Baghra's sense of eternity clouds a lot of her judgments on relationships, which means she views most people as dust and therefore teaches her son to as well. The problem with that is that he's a growing child, and he needs those social and emotional attachments for healthy development.

I would bet quite a bit of money that Baghra has either never told him she loves him or she has told him so few times it's practically forgettable.

And everything becomes more complicated because so many of Baghra's actions are understandable because of her life and her history, but the impacts they have on the people around her, especially Aleksander, are permanently damaging. And the fact that that's never gone over in critical depth in the books or how it's glossed over in fandom is just very disconcerting. Like, acknowledging Baghra's failings doesn't mean we're excusing Aleksander's actions, it just means we're holding Baghra liable for her own. Which the fandom should be doing, considering she's the epitome of an abusive parental figure.

And Alina trusting Baghra over Aleksander is even more confusing! Especially in the show!! This is the woman who beat her and abused her and tortured her friends when they tiny little children (and who probably still does so now that they're adults). This is the woman who mocks you and harasses you and insults you on a regular basis. Why does Baghra revealing she's Aleksander's mother make Alina change her mind?! Like fuck, I'd just feel bad for Aleksander. No wonder he kept it a secret, I would too! And that painting is enough evidence?! Really?! A random painting shown to you by this abusive mentor that's been making your life hell. That's what you're going to betray your new lover over?

The friends trying to harvest his bones thing is a good point, too. I think Aleksander, especially show Aleksander, is incredibly idealistic. I think he cares too much for others - those he's deemed worth his care (a sentiment given to him by Baghra). Despite everything she's tried to teach him about hiding and abandoning others and never caring and never doing anything to help or reach out or connect with people, Aleksander still continues to do so. It's likely because he never got it from Baghra growing up, and so is desperate for those emotional needs to be fulfilled elsewhere.

His turning point, when Baghra tells him it was understandable that those kids tried to kill him because the world is such a hard place for them - that's crucial. And the reason it's possible as a motivating factor is because of that idealism and that desire to help and that desire to be everything his mother isn't. Baghra tells him this trauma he just experienced was because of the oppression of his people, and instead of following her lead and accepting that, going into hiding and abandoning everybody to their misery, he goes I can do something about that. I can make it so this never happens again. Which is usually how trauma like that combines with one's core personality traits at a young age, especially when there's none of the essential support systems in place to aid in recovery (ie, the role Baghra should have been filling but wasn't, because she decided to exacerbate the problem instead).

And yeah, one of my biggest problems with the ham-fisted "beating you over the head with a sledgehammer of evil deeds" look-how-bad-this-character-is! portrayal of the Darkling in the later books comes from the impression I get that Bardugo doesn't trust her readers. She's so desperate to have us hate this character and think him an irredeemable villain, not trusting any of her readers to engage critically with a morally gray character, that it feels quite a bit like condescending fucking bullshit. Which ew, I know how to engage with literature, thanks.

She really does seem to look down on a large part of her fandom, and imo, the infantilization of the female characters in her books seems to carry over to her impression of most of her female readers as well. Which is why the Darkling's character arc gets fucking destroyed. But he's still a good cash grab, of course, so she'll shake his dead corpse in front of the fandom for money every time she wants something from it.

Also! Another reason I think her plotlines feel disconnected (I'm sorry Bardugo I respect you as a person, but shit-) is because the writing in SaB is just bad. I mean, nevermind the absolutely nauseating implications of the way she portrays the Grisha as a persecuted group who's situation is never actually fully addressed as it should be, considering Grisha rights is what her main villain is fighting for (imo for a series called the Grishaverse, LB seems to be pretty anti Grisha), but her characters and story alone are just wrong for each other. They don't fit together.

And the ending is one of the main pieces of evidence in that regard! You can’t say the ending where Alina isn’t Grisha anymore is her “going back to where she started” when she’s always been Grisha. She just didn’t know she was Grisha because she denied that part of herself that she was born with.

Alina is reluctant to move forward or change, she struggles with adapting, and she’s very set on the things she’s grown attached to throughout her life. She also has some latent prejudices against the Grisha, and so denies the possibility of being Grisha for those reasons as well.

Alina’s lack of powers in the beginning of her life because she willfully doesn’t learn about them to avoid change versus her lack of powers at the end of the book when she’s accepted them and then they’re stripped away from her by outer forces are two entirely separate circumstances. You can’t make a parallel about lost powers and lack of Grisha status bringing her back to the start when she was always Grisha and she always had powers and she simply refused to come to terms with it because of personal reasons.

The first situation is an internal conflict that indicates a story about growth and a journey of self acceptance. Denying herself the opportunity to learn about her heritage and to find acceptance with a group of people like her because she’s tied to the past and because of the way she was raised is the setup for a narrative that tackles unlearning prejudice and learning how to connect with a part of her identity that was denied her and learning how to grow independent and self assured. It’s the setup for a different story entirely. The second situation is an external conflict that centers around the ‘corrupting influence of power’... for some reason.

In a world where Grisha do not have social, political, or economic power and they are hunted, centering your heroine’s journey of self acceptance and growth around an external conflict about... the corrupting influence of power (in a group of people that don’t actually have any power?!) just doesn’t work. It is literally impossible to connect the two stories Bardugo is trying to push in Shadow and Bone without seriously damaging the main character’s developmental arc.

The only way a narrative like this would work, claiming that she has gone back to where she started, is either a) if the Grisha weren’t actually a persecuted group and instead were apart of the upper class, or b) if the one bad connection between the two instances is acknowledged - that Alina denied a part of herself crucial to self acceptance and growing up, and that losing her powers at the end has also denied her. It is a tragedy, not a happy ending.

Alina suffered because she didn’t use her powers. She grew sick. It was bad for her. This was not a resistance to 'the corruption of power and the burden of greed', it was her suffering because she couldn’t fully accept herself.

Framing the ending as a return to the beginning can’t be done if you don’t address how bad the beginning was for your main character. You brought her back to a bad point in her life. You regressed her. This should be a low point in her arc. It should be a problem that’s solved so she can finish developing organically or it should be something that is acknowledged as a tragedy in it’s own right, for the future the world (the writing) denied her.

This is a ramble and it makes no sense and I’m really sorry, but my point is that Bardugo put the wrong characters in the wrong story. The character arc required for organic development doesn’t match the story and intended message at all. The narrative doesn’t fit the cast. She's got two clashing stories attempting to work in tandem and she ends up with both conflicting messages that fans still can’t comprehend in her writing and an ending that doesn’t suit her main character to such an impossible degree that it’s almost laughable.

So yeah, there's a few reasons why I think the story and the plot feels so bad and disconnected. I hope you don't mind me making this answer so long! 😅 I was not expecting to write this much.

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nights-legacy · 4 years ago

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Not What You're Thinking-Todoroki

First time trying to hold their hand. Does it go right or wrong?

MHA Masterlist

+ Everyone knows how Todoroki is with emotions. He is aloof, unemotional, and unfortunately, cold. It was no surprise to anyone with you two haven’t ever shown any physical part of your relationship. What no one knew was it never happened when you two were on your own either. As a result, you start to think he doesn’t really have interest in you after all.

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

Things between Todoroki and I were moving slow and I mean really slow. A slow as a glacier, no pun intended. We were currently walking towards lunch and I was walking towards Todoroki like normal. I wanted to hold the boys hand very badly but I didn’t want to rush him.

“What are you going to get today, L/N?” Uraraka asked me. I smiled and thought about it.

“I don’t really know. I am not really hungry right now. My stomach is upset.” I said truthfully. She looked at me worried.

“Really? Do you need to go see Recovery Girl?” She asked. I shook my head.

“No. It’s nothing to bad. I’ll probably just get some rice so I have something in my stomach.”

“Are you sure?” She was really worried. I stopped her and the others went on.

“I promise. If I start to feel worse I’ll go to Recovery Girl immediately.” I assured her. She relaxed, believing me.

“Are you okay girls?” Midoriya called out. We looked at them. They were stopped a few yards ahead of us. We nodded and walked to catch up.

“Are you alright, L/N?” Todoroki asked. “I heard you say that you had an upset stomach.” I could see the tiniest bit of concern in his stoic expression.

“Yes. It’s only a little thing.” I said, smiling. He nodded before glancing down for a second before looking forward again. He went forward and I looked down to see what he glanced down at. I saw nothing. I shrugged, following.

I stayed true to my word with Uraraka and got rice. Iida and I were waiting at the table for the rest to come back from the line. Todoroki sat down next to me while Uraraka and Midoriya sat across for us. I smiled at them being cutesy together.

“Is that all your eating, L/N?” Todoroki asked. I nodded. He stared at me with an expression I couldn’t read for a little longer before he turned back to his food.

Mindless chatter of training, course work, and other things swirled around the table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Todoroki move his hand onto the table. The thought of holding his hand ran through my head. I took a breath trying to build the courage before taking the chance.

I place my hand on top of his and lightly gripped onto it. I held my breath waiting for him to return, but he never did. I let out a silent, shuddering breath. I took a sly glance at his face and saw no difference then normal in his expression. I bit the inside of my lip as I slowly pulled my hand away and into my lap. I gripped my hands together tightly.

What was I thinking? He’s not really a touchy person in the first place. Why would he want to hold hands? I chided myself. My stomach felt even worse now. I pushed my bowl back away from me when I caught onto Midoriya nearly hanging off of Todoroki. Maybe he just doesn’t want to do that with me…

“I’ll be back.” I said getting up. All three of them looked at me.

“Where are you going?” Uraraka asked.

“Recovery Girl.” I said quietly and walked off. I heard Uraraka call after me if I wanted her to go with me but I didn’t answer. As I exited the cafeteria. I felt tears run down my face. I went in the complete opposite direction of Recovery Girl.

3rd POV

Todoroki watched as Y/N walked away. You couldn’t see it on his face but he was extremely chiding himself. He basically froze and was internally panicking when Y/N had placed there hand on his. He only started to panic more when they pulled away and grew tense.

“What was that?” Midoriya asked after a few minutes of silence. Everyone at the table but the one was wondering the same thing.

“Well, they weren’t feeling well. Their stomach was upset so maybe it got worse?” Uraraka said more in a question then a statement. “They told me they would go to Recovery Girl if their stomach got worse.”

“It would be wise if one of us went to check on them.” Iida suggested.

“I’ll go.” Todoroki said without missing a beat, rising to his feet. He pushed in his chair.

“Excellent. It would be better if it was you anyway due to your relationship with L/N.” Todoroki only answered by nodding and walked off. He walked to Recovery Girl’s office. He walked in and paused when the only person he saw was Recovery Girl.

“Oh, Mr. Tododroki. Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Has Y/N been here?” Todoroki asked. She thought for a second.

“No, they haven’t.” Todoroki’s eyes widened. He thanked her and walked out.

I didn’t pass her did I? She said she was going to Recovery Girl but… He stopped and thought about it. She probably went to the courtyard of the dorms. He took off running, not caring that lunch was going to be over soon. He ran without breaking his stride or stopping. He ran into the Heights Allience and straight through to the court yard. He finally stopped when he saw their figure sitting on the ground.

“L/N?” He called out. They tensed and looked over their shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” They said in a meek voice. He sighed and looked around before walking over and sitting in front of them.

“No you’re not. And I know it’s my fault.” Todoroki said.

Y/N’s POV

“No you’re not. And I know it’s my fault.” My gaze shot to his face. I saw only slight emotion his face. He took a big breath before looking up at me. Guilt and remorse were written on his face. “I am not good at showing emotions. I only recently learned that it was okay to show them. My damn father and his…”

He stopped taking another breath, closing his eyes in annoyance. I set a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and gazed down at my hand. Slowly he reached up and grabbed my hand. He gripped it tight before bringing it up to lightly kiss it. My eyes widen.

“I’m sorry. I froze up when you tried to hold my hand. My mind went completely blank but I knew I wanted to hold yours too. He set his hand that was holding mine in his lap and laid his other on top of mine. “I don’t know what I made you think but whatever it was it wasn’t true. I promise.”

“Thank you.” I whispered. I set my other hand on top of ours.

“I wish I was as confident in our relationship as I am in my hero training.” He admitted. “I didn’t have the best role model for relationships.”

“I know.” I said. I reached up and held his cheek. “If you are unsure of anything or need to slow down or whatever, don’t be afraid to ask. I won’t be upset. I understand that this is all new to you. I was just…earlier, it went through my mind that you didn’t want to do this with me even when I know that this isn’t something you know.”

“I do want to do this. Especially with you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked you out on that first date.” He leant closer to look at me in the eyes. “I am ashamed of myself for making you feel this way.”

“Don’t be. I understand why you reacted that way. I just wish I remembered that in the moment.” I gripped onto his hand. I looked up and sighed. “We better get back to class. We’re probably going to get in trouble for being late.” He nodded. He pulled back and got up smoothly. He reached out for me. I grasped onto his hands and he pulled me up easily. I yelped a bit when I fell into his chest.

“Are you alright?” He asked, with a slightly blush on his cheeks. I nodded.

“Yes, I just forget how strong you are sometimes.” I admitted shyly. He chuckled, which I found out was my most favorite sound in the world.

“Come on. Time to go.” He said, pulling gently on one of my hands. I nodded and followed. After a few minutes of walking and getting back into the school building, he seemed to remember something. “Oh, how is your stomach?”

“Oh…” I was surprised, not only at the question but at the fact that the discomfort from earlier was gone. “Much better. I even realize the discomfort went away.”

“That’s good.” He said. “I hate seeing you unwell. How about after school, we got out to get something to eat? Anything you like, it’s on me.” He led me up the stairs and the classroom came into view.

“Alright. Sounds good to me.” I said. He brought my hand up to his lips again, kissing my knuckled ever so slightly and I noticed, a bit unsure. He looked at me, checking to see if it was okay. I gave him a smile and we got lost in each other’s eyes.

“Come on you two.” We jumped at the sound of Aizawa’s voice. We both looked to see the tired man in the doorway to the class. I blushed as Todoroki flushed a little. “You’re late but Uraraka, Iida, and problem child explained what happened. I guess you’re off the hook this time but don’t make a habit of it.”

“Yes sir.” We chorused as he disappeared in the room. I looked over at him with an amused smile. I covered my mouth and tried not to laugh. He smiled too before shaking his head and pulling me into the classroom.

Tags: @spicy-therapist-mom @dxnaii-rxse

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atlabeth · 4 years ago

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fever - sokka x reader

this has been sitting in my drafts half finished for 3 weeks so i thot it was prime time i actually finished it

this is kinda based off the song w dua lipa and angele so you can listen to that if you want

summary: sokka's convinced there's a mystery illness keeping you from focusing, but somehow he's completely oblivious that the only 'sick' you are is lovesick, and he's the reason you can't focus.

a/n: i have never written a sickfic. but this is like. a fake sick fic. its an idiots in love fic. i mean this is coming from mr "is he taller than me? is he better looking?" himself so. it makes sense. as usual, this is not proofread bc im a lazy mf

also im sorry for being vague with the calc but i was NOT about to do math during summer who do you think i am? ??

wc: 1.7k

warning(s): mentions of being sick and 🤢calculus 🤮 but otherwise tooth rotting fluff

How could the smartest man you knew be so, so incredibly stupid?

You thought that you were being obvious, so obviously that you were sure he knew. It was embarrassing how obvious you were.

You had met Sokka in your calculus class at the start of the new semester after you ended up sitting next to each other, and it wasn’t a stretch to say that you were immediately smitten. With eyes like the ocean and a face that had to have been crafted by the gods, you were almost too distracted to respond when he asked you for a pencil. But when he winked at you after giving his thanks, it only solidified what you had already suspected: you had known this man for all of five minutes, and you already had a crush on him.

Little did you know, it was going to turn into the most infuriating crush you had ever experienced.

You and Sokka became fast friends even though calculus was the only class you had together. Unfortunately, it was also something that you completely sucked at. Bad news, it was required for your major. Good news, Sokka was some sort of genius and offered to tutor you — Wednesdays in the library turned into a weekly occasion, and served as an opening for your calculus skills, your feelings for Sokka, and your exasperation to all grow stronger.

You normally weren’t someone to beat around the bush. If you started to like someone, you told them and dealt with whatever happened after, but something about Sokka just kept you from spilling your feelings outright. You knew that if he didn’t feel the same way, your relationship likely wouldn’t change, but there was still that tiny voice that said it’s better to stay like this in case things do go wrong — and this was the first time you listened to that voice. You simply valued your friendship too much.

But that didn’t mean you were going to be completely quiet about it — you hoped that if you did enough, he would be able to realize you liked him and do the whole process for you. A bit of a dim hope, but crushes make people do stupid things.

Things like bringing an extra coffee to every session, laughing at all his jokes (even the bad ones), sitting a little closer to him than usual, not dropping out of this wretched class so you could spend time together (it might’ve been required, but you still counted it). He didn’t make a point to object to anything, so you knew you weren’t making him uncomfortable — but you had concluded after nearly a whole semester of working and studying together that he was the most oblivious person in all of Ba Sing Se. He could teach you all kinds of formulas, but had no idea that you liked him. Grand.

Today was arguably the most important session out of any of them, seeing as your next class was the final, so it was only fitting that Sokka unknowingly made himself more interesting than any material you could’ve been working with. His arms were going to be the death of both you and your calc grade. You swore that the heat rushing to your cheeks was actually emanating off of you.

“Hey, Y/N!” Sokka grinned as he saw you and raised a hand in greeting, a sentiment you would’ve returned had it not been for the coffee cups in your hands. You settled for mirroring his grin and settled down in the seat across from him. You slid his coffee cup over, set your own down, then shrugged your bag off all before taking a seat.

“You ready to study ‘till your eyes bleed?” he asked, prompting a nervous laugh from you.

“You jest, but my eyes might actually start bleeding depending on how long we go,” you sighed. “There’s a reason I got an extra shot of espresso today.”

“Come on — by now you should know that you have nothing to worry about! I am the best teacher there is, and you got me all to yourself.”

Your eyes widened momentarily and you coughed, purposefully averting your gaze to give yourself some time to recover. Okay, he was going to make it really hard to focus today. “Let’s just get into it.”

He nodded and flipped open his notebook, beginning to talk as he rifled through his bag for a few extra things. “Okay, we’re just gonna start with going over the basics, then we’ll work our way up. There’s a couple practice problems on that page, so you can go ahead and answer those as a warmup.

You slid the notebook over in front of you and after approximately five seconds of looking at the first problem, found yourself studying Sokka rather than the material. Who could blame you? In the battle of cute tutor boy versus calculus, he was going to win every time.

He turned around and you immediately averted your eyes once again, trying to appear extremely involved, but you found that your mind was empty on anything to do with math. “Hey, uh— how do you do this first one? I’m totally blanking here.”

“We use limits in everything — this is actually something you’re really good at!” He studied you intensely and frowned. “Are you okay? Like, you’re not sick or anything, are you? You seem kinda out of it.”

You choked out a laugh and shook your head. “No, no — I’m fine. I guess I’m just a little tired.” As if to demonstrate your lie, you took a sip from your coffee and cringed internally. Love had turned you into an idiot.

He seemed to buy it as he nodded and picked up the pencil, scribbling a couple of notes as he explained the first problem to you. “Does that make sense?” You nodded and he handed the pencil back to you. “Okay — the other ones follow the same kind of process. It should be easy enough.”

You managed to get a little further in the second problem, but your lovestruck mind would not stop focusing back on Sokka every time you tried to do, well, anything. Curse him and his perfect arms, and eyes, and hairstyle, and everything.

You shook your head and set the pencil down once more, letting loose a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” Yes, you did. “I just can’t focus at all.” Because of you. You picked up your cup once more and took a sip, hoping it would do something to get you back into the math state of mind.

Sokka frowned once more as he put the back of his hand against your forehead. “God, you’re hot.” You nearly choked on your coffee as your eyes practically bulged out of their sockets — he had to know what he was doing by now — how could he not? “Like, you’re completely burning up. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, I swear— I just…” you set your cup down on the table and heaved a sigh that was a touch more exasperated than necessary. “Are you telling me you seriously haven’t noticed? Like, not a single thing this whole year?”

“I’ve noticed a lot of things this year,” he chuckled. “It’s kind of our whole job, so you’re gonna have to be a lot more specific.”

You finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Sokka, I’m not— I’m not sick! Haven’t you noticed that I’m only ever flustered, or running into things, or forgetting info, or— or just a complete idiot when I’m around you? I like you, like, a lot, and I have for an embarrassingly long time! The reason I can’t focus is because I am hopelessly attracted to you in every single way.”

His brows creased for a moment and you clamped your mouth shut, worried that you had just ruined everything. It was only after a pause that felt like a century that he finally responded, the hint of a smirk on his lips.

“Well, why didn’t you just say something?”

You stared at him, eyes wide and lips slightly parted in pure surprise before the annoyance set in. You set your jaw as your brows furrowed and you hit him lightly on the side of his arm with the back of your palm. “You can’t be serious! You— you’ve gotta be messing with me by now. I really can’t believe that you can be that smart but this oblivious!”

He finally let the grin play across his lips in full force and he shrugged nonchalantly. “I mean, I don’t know how you don’t expect me to mess with you when you scrunch up your face all cute like that every time you get mad. Besides, I started liking you after that fifth class; I offered to help you out so I could spend more time with you! I didn’t realize you felt the same way. I kinda just enjoyed the free coffee and getting to look at you all the time.”

“I can’t believe you!” you cried as you hit his other arm. “You’re telling me that I had to deal with this- this mental turmoil about whether you liked me back, while you were just enjoying the free eye candy and coffee the whole time?”

“You have nothing to worry about! I enjoyed the company far more than the coffee,” he joked, a certain twinkle in his eye. “But, you are probably out a couple twenties after all of that. So, what do you say about this Saturday, the cafe by the shoe store? My treat.”

“Damn right it’s your treat,” you shot back, though you couldn’t stop the smile forming on your face. “You owe me a lot — you have to make up for those coffees and all the emotional distress you caused.”

“Oh, I think I’ll have plenty of time to make up for lost time. After all, we do have a lot of coffee dates to get through.” And when he winked at you just like that first day, you remembered just how impossible it was to be angry at Sokka. “But first, we kinda have to get through this study date. The final’s still happening tomorrow.”

You responded with a raised brow. “This is a study date?”

Sokka shrugged and grinned. “They’ve all been study dates. You just didn’t know it.”

idiots in love idiots in love idiots In LOVe

perm tag list: @dv0412 @siriuslyslyslytherin @maruchan77

atla: @marianne1806

#sokka x reader #sokka x you #sokka x y/n #sokka fic #atla #avatar #avatar the last airbender #avatar the last airbender fic #avatar x reader #reader insert #sadie writes

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bbq-hawks-wings · 4 years ago

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Chapter 316: BBQ is capable of critiquing BNHA and… Oh boy.

Let's start this off properly, Horikoshi's typical quality of writing has been diminishing in recent chapters, but this week it was so different that it didn't even feel like Horikoshi was the one who wrote it.

To be clear, I'm not blaming Horikoshi for the issues I'm about to bring up. The man is criminally overworked, usually doesn't even get the final say in what makes it in the final drafts, and even in his other rough patches he's still produced decent chapters that hold up amongst the grand scheme of things. This feels like something else is going on behind the scenes, and while I have my suspicions on who/what might be the culprit behind it, I choose not to share it at this time because if I name names some people might go off on a crusade, and that's not what I want.

I just want to be clear that I'm not blindly firing off shots in the dark, but despite my frustrations I want to wait to see if this gets resolved down the line, and while I do I can complain about the specific reasons this chapter left such a bitter taste in my mouth.

Buckle up, buttercups, because we got a lot of points to cover.

Where's the Gun?

Not a literal gun, but I mean Chekhov's Gun. It has always been a staple of Horikoshi's writing and the reason so many of his long-standing plot lines have paid off so well.

Chekhov's Gun is a writing principal that if you see a gun on the table in the first act of a play, it will be used in the murder that happens in act 2. Basically, the author should include details that are relevant to the story and not betray the audience by leading them in one direction and at the last minute pull the rug out from underneath them to go in another direction.

Horikoshi has done this to phenomenal success in the past. Just as one example, he dropped hints about Nomu being human experiments early in the series but held off explicitly stating it for a while. He hinted at the loss of Shirakumo in the main narrative and that he was important to Aizawa and Mic as well as approved it for Vigilantes so when it was revealed that Kurogiri was Shirakumo's body, not only did it narratively make sense but it also pulled in Eraserhead and Present Mic's emotional stakes into the battle with the Doctor, and then when Ujiko reveals he was after Aizawa's quirk the whole time it made the payoff for Mic punching him in the face all that much better and brings the weight of his crimes and the impact they have on the victims full circle.

That's 3 different guns paying off in the long run: the Nomu, Shirakumo, and both Mic and Eraserheads' personal arcs past the loss of their childhood friend and that they could finally finish processing their grief and avenge him in full righteous fury instead of chalking it all up to cruel chance.

He has left details, some particularly innocuously, in plot lines like the Touya Todoroki reveal, Hawks' backstory, Shigaraki's blood connection to Nana Shimura, even with Mr. Compress's backstory, and more. When re-read, these details become more obvious and usually leaves us with a greater sense of satisfaction in the plot knowing that twists and turns were not only planned, but built up to and hinted at for us to find so the payoff is that much better and it feels purposeful instead of just shock factor.

None of that happened this chapter.

Lady Nagant has zero business being in this plotline. She was never hinted about before this arc, and her existence does nothing to tell us about the plot moving forward or the world that they're trying to change. Nothing her existence provides actually has any bearing on the universe or tells us anything we don't already know. But that's not how she was presented.

In the beginning we're given a glimpse of her helping Overhaul escape from Tartarus. The focus on her was odd enough to begin with as a new character, and the fact that she didn't look like she fit the profile of someone who belonged in Tartarus was like a flashing neon sign saying, "Pay attention! This new character is important!!!" She then shows up later with Overhaul in hand to attack Deku out of the blue. We get her talking about how she thought Overhaul might be useful and her disillusions with Hero Society. We catch her mannerisms with eery similarity to Hawks only to find out immediately after she was a senior colleague in the HPSC. Never once to my knowledge has Hawks referred to any of his senior colleagues as a "senpai" - not even his fellow heroes - and when he catches her in midair, he uses the words, "Don't die on me, senpai!" as if she's near and dear to his heart.

The entire character arc is set up for her to have known about Hawks and grapple with her desire to help people and her fear of re-creating what she hated, and this also set up Hawks to be the successor who succeeded where she failed and helped bring her to a place where she could be a hero without guilt again. What actually happened?

They're strangers.

They have never actually met before, and while he seems to know a lot about her, she doesn't even seem to have any idea of who he was - at least as far as being another hero under the thumb of the HPSC. So ALLLL that setup, all that gesturing, and all of the potential themes that would be right at home in an arc like this goes completely out the window.

Her story doesn't tell us anything new. The HPSC bad. We knew that. They're not above throwing innocents under the bus to achieve that goal. We knew that. They preyed upon young hopefuls with powerful quirks with the intent to maintain the status quo. We knew that even if the fact that Hawks isn't the only one now makes more questions than answers. We know that these young heroes can never say no under threat of steep, life-shattering consequences. We knew that already.

So what does Lady Nagant even bring to the table?! The entire "you're just a puppet doing what you've been told" angle is a little tired and out of place in this point and time with actual anarchy in the streets (not to mention hypocritical considering she was a blind puppet following orders and offers zero actual solutions that supposedly fall in line with her heroic nature), and it could have been left to any number of other villain characters who could have executed on the theme better - you know, like Shigaraki who's justification this entire time has been, "hero society doesn't make people safe, it just makes them feel safe" from the moment of his inception.

So from that angle she's unnecessary.

Her presence messes with the continuity of the series as well. If Hawks is supposed to explicitly replace her, that would mean that he wasn't just a fluke find on the commission's part and grabbed to mold into their own special superweapon; and that also would mean that her killing of the former president was before he was discovered which should put her at least in her forties. If this isn't the case, and he was meant to simply replace her in a "special agent" case, that still begs the question of how many more gifted children the commission preyed upon and are still out there.

And maybe the worst kicker for me is that something stinks. The way the art in this chapter is presented, if you completely blanked out the speech bubbles, is the same setup I had before - Hawks reaches out to his former mentor and pulls her from the brink of despair with a moving message about why he never gave up hope in being a hero who could actually make a difference.

Again, this is not what we got. He claims he knows her, and it's implied to have been a deep, personal character witness; but at best he only knows about her from secondhand sources. Even his reasoning as to how he never lost hope doesn't vibe with his character.

We have gotten so many cool one-liners for Hawks, but there has always been a consistent tone and imagery with them.

"Those who can fly, should."

"I don't belong in a cage."

"I'm free of my shackles."

"Can I be a shining light, just like him?"

What we got was, "I'm an optimist to a fault" which was the wording the official release went with and was by far the best iteration I have seen, but even this falls short of being truly in character for him and answering her question properly.

@mikeana made an edit of the titular panels for us Hawks stans this week with dialogue we and a few other friends felt was more fitting not only with the imagery of the chapter itself but internally consistent with the specific expressions Hawks uses in his heartfelt, personal dialogue. I just tweaked it a little bit more to fit what I was going for in our original conversation.

Which brings me to another concern.

2. What's the point?

There was no use for Nagant in the series as she's been presented so far. But more than that, Hawks has no business in this fight to begin with. He literally did nothing to earn this emotional moment, and this should have been Deku's moment.

We were teased in an interview with Horikoshi that Hawks was going to get a special moment as an important end-game character as a "shining light" of hope for others to follow as well as promises for Ochako to have another moment in the spotlight to make a difference.

If this was Hawks' shining light moment, it wasn't necessary, and it does nothing to move the plot forward or develop characters in any true or believable way. It just happened because plot. This should have been Deku's victory through and through, and even he is the reason BOTH Hawks and Nagant made it out alive instead of painting the street below them.

Deku's victory was stolen from him, too. It sours the other promises made to us about other characters moving forward, as well, if this really was Hawks' "Shining Light" moment.

By the way, did you forget about Overhaul? Me too!!! What was the point of getting our hopes up about reintroducing this beloved character with the implications this was a major arc setup to have him scream about pops and then get detained with no clues about what's going to happen to him besides, "Say you're sorry to Eri, and you get to see pops"?!

All this posturing and clumsy narrative flailing only actually succeeded in getting Deku in front of AFO again for plot when we already know Mr. Potato Head could summon, show himself to, or find Deku at any time he wanted. But instead we get this time skip with a bunch of heroes completely mended walking into a big, spooky mansion for AFO to evil monologue at Deku for… *counts*

FOUR PAGES!!!

Only to then give him the "I want YOU!" point over a pre-recorded message and the final nail in the coffin to me that something is off.

3. Ex-pu-LOOOO-SHUN!

It's become almost a game among friends to count how many explosions have happened since the end of the war arc - and specifically fake-out explosions. In the end of 311 we get All Might's car attacked via explosion and Deku cornered by Nagant only for All Might to be fine in the next chapter. In 315 Lady Nagant herself explodes in a blaze of glory to once again not be dead.

Gee! I wOnDeR if aLl the heroes were AcTuAlLy cornered and KiLlEd in that explosion in the mansion!

None of us do. They're fine. We're going to see it first thing next week. The shock has worn off, and it's repetitive and annoying at this point. There is no cliffhanger despite how the framing might try to tell you otherwise.

It's BAD WRITING.

The writing has been moving far too quickly and clumsily with no explanation in sight, and even character interactions are being cut short to the point of them being meaningless and empty.

This doesn't even feel like Horikoshi's bad writing. It feels like someone else is trying to call the shots and rushing him through these final bits of the series, and he's run out of things he's previously set up for months and months to reappear so someone is trying to get Dabi-reveal levels of attention with arcs and storylines that don't have the build-up to result in a satisfactory payoff.

4. At least it can get better... I hope.

Maybe those who share my suspicions or know what particular suspicions I have are with me in believing that this is a temporary disappointment and we haven't seen the last of the writing that's captivated me for years. I don't blame Horikoshi for these glaring faults that all came to a head in this chapter.

It CAN get better later, and I think it WILL- we just probably are going to have to wait for it. Until then, I'm going to enjoy the Hawks panels we got, maybe edit the last few chapters to be more in line with something more like the BNHA I know in a "fix it fic" fashion so I don't groan in anticipation of how long it might take us to get there.

See you all next week, hopefully on a much brighter note.

#she speaks #chapter review #bnha 316 #bnha chapter 316 #bnha manga spoilers

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miracleonice87 · 4 years ago

Text

1,000 Nights

a/n: in honor of Sid’s 1,000th career game. congratulations, SPC. you’ve come a long way, baby. story set in a non-covid-riddled universe.

warnings: swearing, alcohol

word count: 3.5k+

“I’m sorry I won’t be there tonight,” you sighed into the phone with a frown, tossing a stack of media briefings on your desk. “I just… I feel awful.“

“Baby, please, don’t apologize,” Sidney said softly, but so sincerely, on the other end. “Trust me, I get it. I mean, look, I wasn’t there for the thousandth press release you wrote, eh?”

You chuckled lightly, appreciative of your boyfriend’s efforts to make you feel better about missing the one thousandth game of his NHL career — a milestone that would come only once.

“It’s not quite the same,” you mumbled. “I just hate to miss it. But Kelsey promised me she’d FaceTime me the whole time.”

You heard the smile in Sid’s voice at the mention of his teammate’s wife, one of your closest friends, as he replied, “That’s nice. Listen, I don’t want you feeling bad about this, okay? We’ll celebrate when you come down next weekend.”

You drummed your fingers on your desk, then spotted your boss, Brendan Shanahan, quietly knocking before wincing, realizing he had interrupted your phone call. You shook your head, signaling it was no big deal, and waved him in.

“You got yourself a deal, Crosby,” you said as Brendan sat down in the chair across from you, a grin on his face.

“Alright, baby,” Sidney spoke. “I’ll let you get back to it. I love you, sweetheart.”

A weak smile crossed your face at his words, but you were certain you felt your heart splitting within your chest, the sting of missing him more painful today than most days.

“I love you, too,” you replied softly. “Call me after the game. And, hey, Sid?”

“Yeah?” Sid prompted.

You paused, knowing tears would likely be streaming down your cheeks if not for your friend and colleague seated on the other side of your desk.

“Congratulations,” you said solemnly. “I’m so proud of you.”

Your chest swelled at Sidney’s appreciative hum in response.

“Thank you, my love,” he said. “I’ll call you tonight. Bye.”

You said your own goodbye and dropped your phone to the oak desk, tipping your head back, emotionally exhausted.

Brendan gave you a sad smile. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

You heaved a deep breath, leaning forward to rest your elbows on your desk while rubbing at your temples.

“I guess so,” you began unconvincingly. “Just basically feeling like the worst girlfriend in the world today.”

Brendan offered an understanding nod, pausing before sitting straighter in his chair, sniffing casually. You’d known him for years now, since you started as an entry-level social media team member with the Leafs following your graduation from Pitt, before working your way to communications director three summers ago. The two of you had formed a near-instant bond, and now, you could read him like the back of your hand.

Which is how you knew he was up to something.

You folded your arms in front of you and narrowed your eyes at him.

“What?” was your only question.

Brendan couldn’t keep the smirk from his lips as he cleared his throat and reached into his inside suit jacket pocket for a stack of papers, folded together in thirds. He placed the parcel in front of you and nodded toward it, signaling you to open it.

Your eyes never leaving his, you reached for the papers and pulled them toward you. Your gaze eventually dropped to the stack and swiftly fell to the Air Canada logo printed in the upper corner. The breath left your lungs in a flash.

“You didn’t,” you whispered, looking back toward Brendan, who was now smiling widely.

“I might’ve,” he admitted.

You attempted to restrain your emotions, but your eyes burned with tears as you looked more carefully at the papers, scanning them furiously for more information.

Toronto (YYZ) to Pittsburgh (PIT) - First Class

Saturday, February 20, 2021 - Departs 1:38 p.m. EST

You shook your head repeatedly, blinking back the wetness that now blurred your vision.

“Brendan, I can’t-“

“Don’t finish that sentence,” he warned, pointing sternly at you. “Consider this an executive order. I already told the Pens staff you’d be there, and they’re emailing you over a pass. Family comes first here — you know that. That man is your family. You need to be with him tonight to celebrate.”

Tears fell freely down your cheeks now, and you quickly stood from your chair to round the desk and wrap your arms around Brendan’s neck.

“Thank you,” you whispered simply.

Brendan patted your back affectionately before you stepped back, standing up straight as you dabbed at the fallen tears on your cheeks.

“You’re welcome,” Brendan replied as he stood. “We’ll handle things here tonight, and we’ll see you back here for tomorrow night’s game, eh?”

You nodded furiously, a stupidly big smile on your face as you returned to your desk.

“Absolutely,” you confirmed. “And don’t worry — I’ll finish what I have going now and I’ll brief the interns before I go.”

Brendan nodded once and sent a wink your way as he neared the doorway.

“Please give Sidney my best, and congratulate him on behalf of us all,” Brendan requested. “He’s one hell of a player and one hell of a man. I’m glad I have the opportunity to know him better because of you.”

Overcome by emotion once again, you opened your mouth to respond, but decided against trusting your voice. You closed your mouth and nodded at Brendan one last time before he patted the doorpost and left you to finish your tasks at hand.

_____

“Shit, shit, shit,” you muttered upon realizing that traffic had stopped completely in the two blocks leading up Center Avenue to the arena.

You’d come through two airports in two countries, but the most vile threat to your seeing Sidney’s recognition ceremony was now two measly city blocks of Pittsburgh traffic.

Your Uber driver groaned. “Sorry, dear,” he said. “Looks like we’re gonna be backed up for a while.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” you assured, glancing at your phone to realize that it was already 6:42, giving you about ten minutes to get inside if you wanted to witness your the pregame festivities honoring your boyfriend.

You had only one option.

“You know what?” you began, unbuckling your seatbelt and reaching for your bag. “I’m just gonna run. Thank you so much for your time. I swear I’ll leave you a nice tip. ‘M sorry for leaving you stuck.”

You watched your driver’s eyes widen in the rearview mirror. “Miss, I don’t think that’s a good idea!” he tried to protest.

“Don’t worry,” you said. “I know my way. Again, thank you.”

With that, you jumped out of the car and set off toward the arena, walking briskly up the hill leading to the entrance. Your breath created small white puffs in the frigid air, and you pulled your coat around your waist more tightly, thankful that you had grabbed the woolen scarf hanging on the back of your office door at the last second before departing. You rushed up the sidewalk, burying the bottom half of your face within the warmth of the fabric, and retrieved your phone to pull up the pass that the Penguins’ front office had sent over earlier in the afternoon. You sighed in relief when you found it, and once more checked the time — 6:47.

You just might make it.

As you finally approached the arena doors, you made a beeline directly for the club level entrance, smiling when you saw a familiar face.

“Hi, Manny,” you said to your favorite arena attendant as he pushed the door open and welcomed you in from the cold.

“Well, look who it is!” Manny exclaimed, hugging you briefly. “I didn’t think you’d be here!”

“I didn’t either,” you panted, smiling. “But I made it.”

Manny patted your arm and looked toward his colleague.

“Joey, I’m gonna escort this young lady down to the tunnel so she can get a better view of tonight’s little event,” Manny said with a wink, pressing the button on the elevator in front of you.

“No, no, that’s okay,” you protested, shaking your head as he ushered you into the elevator. “Really, I can just go up to his suite and watch from there. I don’t need to go down to the tunnel.”

Manny laughed and shook his head, nodding to the elevator attendant. “I don’t think so, hun,” he chuckled. “Not on my watch. We’ll get you down there and give you an up-close view.”

You sighed, shrugging off your jacket and scarf and folding them over your arm.

“Thank you, Manny,” you said with a grateful smile. Manny nodded, just as the elevator doors opened to reveal the depths of the arena.

“Come on,” Manny motioned toward himself. “Give me your things, and you go.”

Acutely aware that the clock was really ticking now, you didn’t put up a fight and passed your belongings to Manny, who silently pointed toward the tunnel outside the home locker room, where you caught a glimpse the tail end of the line of Sidney’s teammates, with Geno bringing up the rear as the men made their way to their bench for the presentation.

At that moment, Geno happened to look to his right, spotting you immediately.

“You’re here!” he exclaimed, still walking behind his team. He threw his hands atop his head and laughed in disbelief. “Oh, my god, Sid will be so happy you’re here!”

You smiled at Geno’s excitement, nodding as he pumped his fist once before disappearing from sight.

As you reached the locker room doors, you took a deep breath, knowing that only one player was still behind them.

Sidney stepped out of the room, and you noted that his shoulders sagged slightly, his eyes downcast as he sighed softly, turning in the direction of the ice before pausing as the PA announcer started his introduction, rattling off Sid’s lengthy list of accomplishments.

You took that as your cue.

“Hi,” you uttered quietly.

His head whipping toward you, Sidney’s eyes found yours after the briefest of moments, wide and gleaming. He breathed your name; you only grinned.

In a heartbeat, he was in front of you, gathering your face in his hands as he kissed you feverishly.

When he eventually broke the kiss, he hurriedly whispered, “What are you doing here?”

You smiled, resting your hands on his shoulder pads. “Same thing everyone else is doing,” you answered. “Celebrating you.”

Sidney giggled incredulously. “God, I can’t believe you’re-“

“And now, please welcome to the ice, your captain-“

You shoved at Sidney’s chest with a gasp, pushing him toward the ice where the announcer’s voice echoed and the crowd roared.

“Go!” you shouted.

Sidney immediately reached for your hand, pulling you along as he passed the spot where you had planned to stand and watch, hidden from view.

“You’re coming with me,” Sidney said firmly even as you shook your head. He firmly nodded his own.

“Yes. My family’s out there already. Stand by them,” he instructed, eyes glimmering with joy.

Your ears began to ring — not just because of the crowd noise, but because of the intensity of it all. Parading you in front of the entire Penguins organization and 18,000 of his fans was not something Sidney took lightly, and you knew that. You’d been in attendance for milestone games before, sitting in the stands with his family, or with Mario in the suite. And, of course, you were aware that you’d been spotted in public by Sid’s side before — at dinner dates on Mount Washington and at bars on the North Shore — but this incredibly public gesture was something entirely new in your relationship with him. It was overwhelming, but somehow still felt right. And if Sid felt ready, then so did you. You’d do anything to make him smile the way he had when he first saw you tonight in the tunnel — especially on a night that was so sentimental, one that you’d look back on together for a lifetime.

And even if you had been hesitant, it didn’t much matter, because without a second to resist, you were walking out onto the unrolled carpet while Sidney skated alongside you, parallel to your path, as fans applauded. Troy, Trina, and Taylor were visibly stunned as they watched Sidney enter with you at his side. The crowd cheered Sidney louder and louder with each passing moment, and he waved and nodded in acknowledgement, while you reached the end of the carpet and were embraced by each of Sidney’s family members.

“When did you get here?!” Taylor asked through clenched teeth as she tried to remain composed, despite the signature Crosby laughter bubbling from her lips.

“Literally minutes ago,” you answered in the same manner as Trina murmured your name tearfully, shaking her head in astonishment.

Troy smiled warmly down at you, squeezing your shoulder.

“This is gonna mean the world to him,” Troy spoke softly.

You nodded in acknowledgement, incredibly thankful to be able to share in Sidney’s special moment next to the people who raised him.

When the crowd’s volume eventually faded enough for the PA announcer to begin the recognition, you still barely heard the words echoing from the loudspeakers. Instead, you focused on the man standing next to you — the one you’d loved since the day you met; the one who left you in awe each day, not because of his unmatched talent on the ice but because of the resolute goodness of his soul; the one who would, in time, surely be the person you decided to step away from your career for, to settle down beside, and to start a family with. Before him, you were sure that you would never slow down for long enough to get married and have children; after him, you thought about doing so every single day, and you were surprisingly thrilled by that very thought which used to send you into a panic.

This man meant so much to so many — this night was proof of that — but he meant the most to you, and you knew without a doubt that he would be the one with whom you built your forever.

But, for now, on this night, he continued his own building, that of his hockey legacy — a fairy-tale story that started in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, and continued more than a thousand miles away in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a thousand chapters so far and much still to be written.

_____

“A little birdie told me you might be here this evening,” a distinct French-Canadian accented voice said softly as his fingers curled around your shoulders.

You snickered, finishing your sip of merlot, and turned to face Mario’s towering figure. You leaned into his chest and were immediately wrapped into a warm hug.

“Was that little birdie named Shanny by any chance?” you asked with a grin. Mario simply shrugged coyly, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

“In all seriousness, sweetheart, I was so glad when I heard you were coming,” Mario said, his voice even and serious. “He wants to share it all with you, especially the big stuff, like this. I can’t imagine how happy he was when he saw you.”

You smiled, cognizant of the common sentiments coming from the two most influential men in Sidney’s life. You knew how much you meant to your boyfriend, but hearing that Sid let both Troy and Mario know the same brought a warmth deep within your chest.

“It was pretty incredible. I’m just so pleased that it worked out,” you said fondly. “I want to share it all with him, too.”

Mario nodded, squeezing your bicep softly.

“Come on,” he encouraged with a smirk, nodding toward the bar at the back of the suite. “Let’s get another drink and celebrate.”

_____

“What a night,” Sidney murmured warmly into the dim master suite, lighted only by a few candles on the end tables that you’d lit upon returning home, signaling that it was time for your and Sid’s own private celebration in the comfort of his home.

You hummed in acknowledgment, circling your fingertips on his bare chest.

“I’m so glad you were there,” he added, placing a kiss in your hair.

You smiled up at him and reached to peck his lips.

“Me too,” you said. “This day couldn’t have been more perfect.”

An ornery smile tugged at the corner’s of Sidney’s plump lips.

“You don’t think so?” he began, making you furrow your brow in question. Seeing your confusion, he added, “I can think of one thing that would make this day even better.”

Leaving you lying in his bed watching him, propped up on your elbows, Sidney pulled on his sweats at the foot of the bed and crossed the room to his chest of drawers, reaching into the top one, his fingers moving all the way toward the back of it.

And there, even in the darkness, you knew exactly what he’d retrieved.

You sat straight up, pulling the red velvet-shaded sheets around your bare form. Tears already formed in your eyes, and you covered your mouth in utter amazement as Sidney walked toward you with a look of determination and knelt at the side of the bed.

“Sidney,” you whispered, splaying your hand across your chest.

“I was gonna wait until you were here next weekend to do this, but I honestly can’t wait anymore,” Sid began, his serious expression giving way to a joyful one. “This day has been all about me, and don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful to be where I am in my career,” he continued. “But the whole day, knowing you weren’t going to be there, I just felt... empty inside. It felt like a waste. I was just plastering on a smile and saying all the right things, but in my heart, it just felt meaningless if you couldn’t be a part of it. That’s how every day feels when I can’t be beside you.”

You were sobbing unabashedly now, your hand resting on Sidney’s neck as you listened to him.

“And I know you love your work, and I would never dream of asking you to give that up. But someday, in the not-so-distant future, my days of playing hockey are going to come to an end. And the second that happens, I can promise you this — I’m going to come to wherever you are, just to be near you,” he spoke, his voice quivering just slightly as his emotions became evident. “Because someday, whether it’s ten years from now or five years or a month or tomorrow, I wanna marry you, baby. I want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side. So...”

Sidney cleared his throat and lifted the box he held so that you could see it, flipping open the top to reveal the loveliest marquis-cut halo diamond ring you had ever seen. Your breath caught in your throat, and before Sidney could ask the question, you let out a firm “yes!”

Sidney threw his head back in laughter — your favorite song.

“How do you know what I was gonna ask?” he teased, leaning closer to you with one brow quirked.

“Sorry,” you muttered halfheartedly. “Okay, okay. Ask me.”

Sidney beamed. “Sweetheart, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” you confirmed the second he finished the sentence, grabbing his face with both hands and kissing him urgently. Both of you smiled into the kiss and continued your embrace for several moments, parting only to stare at each other and giggle incredulously.

“I love you,” you whispered. “And trust me, it won’t be ten years or five years from now. I’ll be ready very, very soon. I promise,” you assured.

Sidney’s smile grew even wider, and you knew he was somewhat taken aback by your assertion.

“Really?” he asked, smoothing his hand over your hair. You nodded.

“Give me a season or two,” you replied. “I know I can always go back to it. But this... us... nothing is more important to me, Sid. I want to spend all of my days with you, too.”

With that, Sidney grasped your jaw and kissed you with a fervor that told of not only his passion for you but the relief he felt in hearing your statement.

“I love you,” he panted when he finally pulled his lips from yours. “Can I put the ring on you now?”

With a laugh, you joked, “Well, I suppose so.”

Sidney shook his head in amusement and pulled the ring from the box, sliding it onto your left hand. You wiggled your fingers and admired the perfect fit of the ring, not to mention its exceptional beauty.

“Wow,” you whispered, looking back to Sidney. You held the back of your hand up to him and teased, “A bunch of 1,000 game gifts and a fiancée all in one night. Not bad for you, eh?”

Sidney reached for your hand and left a long kiss on your knuckles.

“Not bad at all,” he answered earnestly.

#1000 for 87 #my writing #sidney crosby #crosby #sidney crosby writing #sidney crosby fanfiction #hockey writing #hockey fanfiction #nhl writing #nhl fanficfion #sidney crosby fanfic #sidney crosby fic #sidney crosby imagine #sidney crosby one shot #pittsburgh penguins

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