#the attempts at hard hitting phrases do not actually hit all that hard. not even a bit

[sylvaridreams]

I really do want to rewrite my first few GW2 fics from years ago.... I know I could do better with as much as I've improved even just in the past 3-4 years alone. but I also have so much writing on my plate right now I'm like... is that a Good idea? #think and #learn.

[thesilmarillionblog]

𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭: 𝟐

Click here to read the first part.

Summary: You and Soldier Boy want to create a family and move on from everything, even the Vought, but you also know that he has to face Homelander one last time to keep his vow to Butcher. However, nothing turns out as you had hoped.

Pairing: Soldier Boy / Reader

Warnings: Heavy angst, hurt, memory loss, Soldier Boy gets hurt, reader gets hurt, established relationship, trust issues, reader is manipulated, everyone is a liar, suspense

Word Count: 4107

A/N: English is not my first language.

This is inspired by the song 'Remembrance' by Memoria Futuri.༊

Butcher hidden what had transpired months prior from the other members of the team while he waited for you to fully heal in the same room, guaranteeing that Kimiko and Frenchie would never discuss your abortion ever again. Butcher had told them nothing about you other than that you had amnesia.

He did not want to listen to other people discuss something they did not completely understand. He knew there was no other way for you to live your life without putting yourself in danger, even though he wasn't particularly fond of making such a brutal decision about your body. In the end, it was him who first made you inject Temp-V into yourself. Thank goodness you didn't die at that time. Furthermore, considering your circumstances with Temp-V, it would be impossible for you to continue a pregnancy while carrying a supe fetus.

That was for the better.

After the operation, three months had gone by, and Butcher had told the physicians to get you as much sleep as possible to avoid showing any obvious scars and to avoid raising any suspicions. He also erased anything that was online about you, including your videos, images, and anything else that may have been obtained by cameras, all with CIA assistance. He was aware that the game he was playing was risky.

You were so exhausted that you wanted to close your eyes again and grimace at the sight of a white light shining straight into them. 

When you saw him playing with his phone on the chair next to your bed, you said, “Butcher?” 

“Hey,” he said as soon as he touched you gently and slipped his phone into his pockets. “All right, darling, let me talk to the doctor. Try not to get up or do anything.” 

You groaned in agony as Butcher exited the room, attempting to make sense of what was happening. There was a great void in your mind, even if you forced yourself to recall the things that had happened to you. All you could recall was that you, Butcher, and Hughie were in some filthy room trying to talk to Translucent. 

When the female doctor began to examine your eyes and everything else, you opened them again. “You appear to be in good health. How do you feel?” she inquired softly. 

You muttered, “I actually don't know. How long have I been sleeping?”

She smiled and added, “It's okay; you just need some more rest, and it's been three months.”

You mumbled, “What?” amazed at how much time you spend sleeping. Butcher nodded at you when you looked at him to see how he responded. “What happened to me?”

The doctor opened her mouth to speak, then gave Butcher an odd look as if she was having trouble coming up with the right phrase. 

“What's the last thing you remember, doll?” Butcher asked while closely inspecting you. 

You muttered, trying to force yourself to remember something, but all it did was give you a terrible headache. “I...Translucent is all that I remember from that time. I had been trying to talk to him with Hughie.”

Butcher took a deep breath and gave the doctor another look. 

You inquired, perplexed, “Did something very bad happen to me? Is Hughie okay?” 

“Of course, nothing horrible happened,” Butcher said with a smile. “You just gave yourself a really hard head hit on the table. Very hard one. You'll feel well very soon, right, doctor?”

“Yes,” she responded quickly. “You just need to rest a little bit more.”

You said, “Can I leave though? Would you let me, please? I believe I can walk, and I don't think I can feel my limbs here anymore if I continue to sleep. I'd better not spend any more time in this place.” 

“Of course. I was about to say that. You are allowed to go,” she said, maintaining her grin and turning to face Butcher after she had carefully placed some clothing from the wardrobe on your bed. 

Butcher said, “Okay, you change your clothes while I talk to her, right?”

Nodding to him, you watched them as they left the room.

Carefully closing the door, Butcher said, “You think her memory loss is temporary?” in a low voice to make sure he wasn't being heard.

“There is no certainty when it comes to medical issues. Especially, not when it’s about brain.”

“That's not my kind of conversation, doc. Just advise me on what not to do, and she will remain that way.”

“Make sure there is nothing—not a photo, document, or anything else—that would prompt her to recall someone or something you don't want her to. That's the best advice I can give you; otherwise, you can push her to constantly recall other fake memories, which will give her a headache and possibly worsen her trauma as she tries to recall. I'm not promising you anything, though; she might not even need them to remember someday. Even something small, unimportant can trigger her memories.”

Butcher sighed and replied, “Well, that's enough. Is there anything more I should know?”

“Butcher, you have to understand that you are powerless to stop what is about to come. If she ever finds out, she is going to hate you. I'm not even going to question which Supe got her pregnant. I don't want to know. This is a pretty dangerous game that you are playing in a very messed-up setting.”

“I paid you good, didn't I?” Angered by her words, Butcher spoke up. “I completed the tasks at hand, and moving forward, everything will be OK. All I'm asking is that you simply never discuss what happened here with anyone, as you are told.”

“I would never,” was her quick reply. “I hope to never have to deal with anything similar again, and I hope you will stay away from me for a very long time.”

Butcher winked meaningfully at her and said, “Okay, call me when you're needy or high, love.”

When Butcher knocked on your door and you told him to come in, he asked, “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah.” 

He informed you that there were new members of your team in the car when he noticed you were deep in thought. “In three months, a lot can happen, you know. We still had to work about Vought and the Seven.”

“Oh,” you replied, unsure of how to reply appropriately. “Are they reliable?” 

“They are, of course. However, there is one new thing that may surprise you. One of them is a member of the Seven.”

You exclaimed, “No way,” sounding both shocked and thrilled. “I thought our purpose was to kill them all.”

“Well, not every one of them is a total asshole who loves to be bitchy around. Starlight is an excellent and smart young lady.”

“Oh my god,” you said in a whisper. “It seems like I may have missed the whole episode. However, how did she learn about your team and decide to join so quickly?”

“A lot of things change every day. She's fucking Hughie. Love wins at the end of the day, doesn't it? She claimed that before joining the Seven, she was ignorant of Vought's true face.”

You just said, “I understand.”

“What happened to Translucent, by the way?”

“He's in the grave.”

“Oh my god!” you exclaimed, shocked, putting your palms to your lips while Butcher continued to stare at the road. “And how did you even manage to do it?”

“When you passed out, Hughie blew up his invisible cunt. That's it. Don't you think you have way too many questions? Nothing further significant occurred. That was all.”

“All I want is to stay up with the team. I've been asleep for so long that I cannot remember anything at all.”

You said, “I feel like I disappointed you and Hughie,” while he remained silent and kept staring at the road. “I'm sorry.”

Butcher touched your shoulder and said, “Hey, don't you talk like that silly again. I am myself a big failure and a mess in fact.”

He went on without letting you say anything. “You're doing well. I'm happy to see you back at The Boys, and be sure, there's still much to do. Please, don't

worry about anything.” He gave one of his sly smiles. “Everything's going to be alright.”

Everyone was staring at you when you hesitantly went inside the house. You felt awkward trying to decide what to say. Soon after, Butcher was the center of attention for everyone, which simultaneously made you feel foolish and embarrassed.

When at last you succeeded in saying “Hello,” you said, “Butcher told me about you. Since you're all new here, I suppose it would be best if we introduced ourselves right away.”

You gave Butcher an odd look after introducing yourself, and then you cautiously sat down on the couch because you were still feeling a little lightheaded. The worst was the headache. An uneasy tension filled the air.

Ignoring the accusing looks from Frenchie and Kimiko, Butcher began to sip whiskey and tried to forget about the incident, similar to you, but voluntarily. 

“Yeah, I mean, she's Kimiko, and I'm Frenchie.”

You were taken aback when Kimiko came down next to you and gave you a strong hug before you could respond, but you soon went back to give her a hug. 

Annie looked at Butcher and continued, “I suppose you're familiar with me already. I am Starlight. However, feel free to call me Annie.”

“Yeah, he told me you and Hughie are a thing, right?”

Annie nodded to you and smiled.

You felt a little better because everyone appeared friendly and welcoming. You were worried that during the months you were asleep, you had missed a lot. To feel like you have a place, it would be a good idea to make connections with new people. 

Butcher stated, “Well, I have to leave for the time being. Let's give everyone a little rest. Unfortunately, even your lazy ass cheeks deserve a vacation.” He then turned to face you and said, “And you can rest a bit more, doll.”

As if you haven't had enough sleep. You didn't reject him, though.

You said you wanted a little more sleep when Butcher left the house and got up. The way everyone looked at you was weird and strange somehow, but you didn't give it much thought. Soon, you would grow accustomed to one another. 

Though your footsteps led you as if they had their own memory, you were unable to recall which room you had been sleeping in when you took the stairs. 

You shut the door and turned on the lights. You pushed your memory to recall even a single, insignificant detail, but it was blank. But when you took in your surroundings, a feeling of sadness and regret overcame you, as though you were recalling this place. You were unable to comprehend the misery in your heart as you listened to the room's silence. 

Although it seemed like you had been in this room for months, you could sense the presence of another person. It was difficult to define. 

You touched each piece of furniture as you moved around the space in the hopes that something, no matter how small or pointless, would remain in your memory. You looked through the closet, but nothing was there. Everything seemed intentionally empty. 

With a heavy heart, you sit on the bed and run your fingertips over the soft sheet. The inside of your head was hurting like crazy the harder you tried to remember. You gave up and laid on the bed after making a few more attempts. As you inhaled, the comforting scent of the cushion beneath your head slightly eased your discomfort. 

You had the impression that you belonged here, and vice versa. 

In your heart, you sensed that something was missing. You simply couldn't tell if it had to do with something in the room, a sensation, or something else entirely. Whatever it was, your heart and feelings understood it, even though it was hazy and no longer in your recollection. You were yearning for something that was beyond your memory. 

You hugged the pillow under your head and wept uncontrollably as you curled into the bed even deeper with a heavy heart. Your heart squeezed in pain as you continued to cry, and you did not even know why. 

Someone patted your arm and said, “Hey, want to have dinner? You fell asleep here hours ago. You must be starving.”

“Frenchie?” you asked in a sleepy voice. 

“Yes, it's me. Are you hungry?” 

You rubbed your head and nodded to him. Your head ached from weeping so much. 

“Well, I suppose,” you muttered. “Frenchie, who is staying in this room, by the way?”

Just as he was ready to add anything, Frenchie abruptly stopped talking, as though he were trying to think it through. “Not in particular. I mean, everyone. What happened?”

You said, “I don't know,” as your gaze wandered the room. “Just a feeling.” 

“It's just an empty room,” Frenchie simply said, assisting you in standing up. “Nothing else.”

Annie called your name three times in a row; you were unaware that you had not even touched your meal. 

You apologized. “Sorry, I couldn't catch you.”

"Hey," she muttered in a worried tone. “You know, it's best not to overthink things. Everything will work out. We are with you. You only spent three months there. You didn't miss too much. Actually, thanks to you, we didn't have to put in as much effort because Butcher watched for you till you healed.” 

“I'm not sure,” you simply said, giving her a ghostly smile. “I sense that something is off. I'm not really sure what it means, but it seems like I lost something.”

Your face turned red with guilt as she remained silent. “I apologize; I didn't want to give you a negative first impression. I know I sound weird right now.” 

Kimiko, who was seated next to you, comforted you by resting her chin on your shoulder and smiling sympathetically. She was somewhat serious and genuine, which put you at ease, and she was communicating with you using sign language. In fact, you needed to speak with someone like her. 

“No way,” Frenchie grumbled, continuing to eat the pasta rapidly. “You don't leave a negative impression or anything; we work as a team. You are at least more civilized than MM and Butcher's nasty asses. That's good enough.” 

The way Frenchie talked badly of Butcher made you all laugh. 

He winked at you and pointed a finger at your face, saying, “I think there is a way to solve your situation, Y/N.”

“What is it?” you inquired immediately. 

“I honestly believe that after the past few months of exhausting work, we all deserve to relax and enjoy ourselves. It wouldn't harm the CIA's ass to take a little vacation. Ladies, what do you say?”

Kimiko grinned and gave him the thumbs up, and you agreed. Perhaps engaging in some pleasant activities might help relieve the oppressive sensation that has been troubling you since you got up. 

“And after that,” Frenchie continued. “I've got to work on this virus a little bit more.”

“What virus?” you said, startled. There was too much to catch on to. 

“A virus capable of causing the murder Homelander. It's a supe killer.” 

Annie and Kimiko looked at one another worriedly. 

You said, “Oh my god,” looking shocked. “Is that even possible?”

“If I can figure out how to generate the virus, then it should be possible. Homelander cannot be killed by a simple virus. It's difficult to construct anything so strong because that motherfucking is just too powerful to kill, but hope is the last thing that dies in this world.”

As you watched Hughie give Annie a sad face, you couldn't help but wonder, “What if Annie is infected with this virus as well? If in the wrong hands, it would be genocide.”

“We'll simply kill Homelander and the remaining members of his team. Not Kimiko or Annie, of course. We already have enough blood on our hands. This must finish quickly.”

“Let's avoid talking about such things today,” Annie said, appearing visibly uncomfortable. It made sense. 

Annie wanted you to dance at the club instead of spending the entire evening sitting down, but you told her you weren't feeling well enough to be active and all that. You were fine physically; you just didn't want to at that particular time. 

You smiled at Hughie and Annie as you watched them dance. There was no denying their obvious chemistry. It pleased you that Hughie could choose to move on. No matter how harsh and cruel life is, it always continues because every day brings with it a fresh start. 

Perhaps that was how they had each other's backs throughout the worst. You wanted to have something so strong and intimate as well. 

Kimiko touched you on the shoulder, and her expression changed to one of concern, as if she wanted to know how you were doing. 

You said, sipping the whiskey, “I'm okay.” You didn't want to drink since you thought it would worsen your situation. Still, a glass or two wouldn't harm you. “I just can't get over this headache. Perhaps I'm pushing myself too much.”

Kimiko communicated with you via her phone because you were completely unfamiliar with her unique sign language. However, you made a self-promise to learn it as soon as possible.

“Avoid pushing yourself. You have to maintain patience. You'll be fine soon enough, I'm sure.”

You also brushed Kimiko's shoulder and said, “I hope so. Thank you. I'm not sure why, but I just can't get over the sadness that I feel. It makes me want to cry. What if something terrible happened and no one was telling me? God, please don't think I'm some sort of paranoid person. Butcher isn't here, and I simply needed to talk.”

“What makes you feel sad?”

“When I went into the upstairs room today, I felt really bad about it. Do you know someone who stays there? Perhaps I was staying there, and my memory is not helping.”

Kimiko nibbled on her bottom lip and briefly looked around. then displayed her phone to you. 

“Yes, you were staying there sometimes.”

You were about to speak, but you changed your mind and decided not to share what Frenchie had told you. 

Kimiko again held up her phone and said, “I just want you to be okay,” as she noticed you lost in thought. “Perhaps it would be best not to push yourself to bring back memories. If those memories are strong enough, they will find a way to get back to you. No matter what”

“That felt better, Kimiko. I appreciate you listening to me. You're right. There's no need to worry if they are unimportant; in that case, it's preferable not to remember.”

Kimiko smiled a little and offered you a hug. She looked at you, and you gave her a nod as soon as she noticed that Frenchie was grinning at her. As if the team was made up entirely of romantics. 

Just as you were all about to head back home, Frenchie pulled over, and you all gathered around the large screen to see something. Based on the large Vought symbol that was displayed on the screen beforehand, you could presume that it must be about the Seven. 

“What's happening?” Annie questioned, perplexed. 

Everyone on the street had been glued to the large TVs. 

Frenchie muttered, “I guess there is some latest news. I wonder what Homelander did this time.”

As you left Frenchie's van and joined the other people on the street, you glanced at one of the screens. 

The Vice President claims that Homelander himself ordered the release of Soldier Boy, who was found not guilty hours ago. Homelander discovered that the CIA had attempted to use Soldier Boy to bring down the president and Vought. We've been informed that the release of Soldier Boy will bring Americans together once more during these days of change. The public will soon get further information. 

You stared at the massive image of Soldier Boy on television as the reporter filled you in on the latest events. 

“Oh, no, no,” Frenchie mumbled to himself. Annie gave him a scared expression. 

“What is going on” You uttered, “I thought Soldier Boy died a long time ago,” not fully grasping the gravity of the situation.

“I suppose we should give Butcher a call. Now,” Annie spoke harshly.

You gasped when Frenchie pushed you to go and get in the van before you could say anything, but you continued to stare at the image of Soldier Boy.

“Hey, what's happening?” As they exchanged glances, you repeated the question, speaking louder. “Why have you all turned pale?”

Annie opened her lips to say, “I-,” but she suddenly changed her mind. “Let's speak with Butcher first; he can guide us on what to do. Butcher just sent us a new address, Frenchie. Let's go there.”

“Alright.”

You followed up with more questions, but when you realized they wouldn't discuss them, you closed your mouth and lost yourself in your own thoughts until you reached the location Butcher had instructed you to go to. 

Butcher was smoking when you walked in, and he had his eyes fixated on the wall.

You patted his shoulder and said, “Butcher,” to get his attention. “What's going on?”

He said, simply, “We're staying here from now on.”

“And it's about Soldier Boy,” you asserted firmly. “How about him? I assumed he was long gone. What are all of your concerns? I guarantee I'm well now and I got enough sleep, even though I know you don't want to push me or anything. So, will you kindly simply give me the details? Did something occur when I wasn't present?”

Butcher inhaled deeply and got to his feet. “Well, I suppose we must begin someplace. A few months ago, Soldier Boy was released. We were the ones who did this. Eventually, he promised us to help kill Homelander.”

You responded, “So he wasn't dead,” and he nodded in agreement. “And?” 

“It came out that Soldier Boy had betrayed us, and Homelander is his son. With the assistance of the CIA, we were able to cover his face with a mask and send him back to sleep. With the help of his father, Soldier Boy, it appears that Homelander is eager to work with him from now on and will be undefeated.”

“Oh, my god,” you muttered. “We can't even kill Homelander; how are we even supposed to deal with both him and Soldier Boy? Why the fuck you even released Soldier Boy?” 

"I fucking don't know," Butcher exclaimed as he became angrier. "But we'll be cautious and stay here. Frenchie will work on the virus, and together we'll develop an efficient method of killing them both." 

You said, “Maybe we can try to talk to Soldier Boy. He is our nation's first superhero. He is undoubtedly beloved by the public, but perhaps he will reconsider if we can persuade him that Homelander committed atrocious crimes, like mass murder. Don't you think?”

“Stop being naive,” Butcher sharply remarked. “You are mistaken if you believe Soldier Boy is innocent and not like Homelander; they are a father and son. He killed a lot of people in New York on the day we let him go. He just knows how to kill, betray, and deceive. Soldier Boy must die.”

Next Chapter

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A/N: Comments are very much appreciated. I’d like to know what you think about this one. ♡

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[witchhazelevesque]

I often see Calypso’s curse described as ‘she’s forced to love anyone that comes to her island’ but that’s not exactly what happens:

“You asked about my curse, Percy. I did not want to tell you. The truth is the gods send me companionship from time to time. Every thousand years or so, they allow a hero to wash up on my shores, someone who needs my help. I tend to him and befriend him, but it is never random. The Fates make sure that the sort of hero they send…” “They send a person who can never stay,” she whispered. “Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can’t help…just the sort of person I can’t help falling in love with.” … “The Fates are cruel. They sent you to me, my brave one, knowing that you would break my heart.”

Battle of the Labyrinth, 223

The most pertinent bits are in color.

It’s not that she’s magicked into loving someone against her will, it’s that the Fates handpick people she would have loved anyway. As in, they have qualities she admires/values and finds herself able to love (big asterisk here). And the Fates make sure that of those people she could love, they pick ones that can’t stay with her.

This isn’t exactly retconned in House of Hades, but she does shift the blame more to the gods and doesn’t mention the Fates in this exchange:

“They were all the same! The gods send me the greatest heroes, the ones I cannot help but…” “You fall in love with them,” Leo guessed. “And then they leave you.” Her chin trembled. “That is my curse. I had hoped to be free of it by now, but here I am, still stuck on Ogygia after three thousand years.”

House of Hades, 378

But the focus is still on the fact that the people who come to her island can’t stay. The way it’s phrased here, it does makes sense how it could be taken as ‘she’s forced to love anyone’, but that’s not what’s happening.

Her curse is centered around being abandoned while stuck on her island. It’s only a curse because she’s imprisoned. She cites that as the reason she isn’t free from this curse. It’s not a set-and-forget work of magic that controls her emotions. It’s more of an active situation for the gods or Fates, where they orchestrate the delivery of the source of her pain each millennia, and then the rest comes in Calypso dealing with the aftermath of her companions leaving.

That big asterisk: Percy and Leo should not be included in this category. They’re children.

So, why is any of this even happening?

Blame Riordan and his weird, failed attempt to depict Calypso as a teenager; he did a horrible job.

Granted, it wouldn’t have worked no matter what he did, just by the nature of immortality. But he, for some reason, keeps shooting himself in the foot by hammering in her age. I don’t have access to the ToA books but some examples: Apollo saying she was old enough to be his babysitter, the way she got dreamy eyed at remembering things that happened before her imprisonment, the fact that she was there when Zeus was a child (by immortal standards).

Calypso is aware of time passing, and she retains all her memories of the thousands of years she existed, both on and off Ogygia. Time is weird on her island, but it does still move forward. She is literally, emotionally and mentally thousands of years old.

The only leg work RR does to depict Calypso as a teenager is to make her look like a teenager and then try to set up romantic situations with actual teenagers. For comparison, RR has Hestia take the form of a child, but no one acts like she actually is a child.

Later, RR has Calypso do things like want to go to high school and band camp, but that doesn’t make sense. Her wanting to have new experiences does, yes, but not ones that are for teenagers. That’s not indicative of her being a child, it’s more of RR’s lukewarm effort to make her a teenager.

I don’t have some hard hitting point to this distinction, I just think it’s important to know what’s actually being portrayed and how it’s being done. Calypso isn’t forced magically, in universe to fall in love, but she is forced to narratively.

My overall point though is, as usual, be critical of Riordan’s choices. He set up this thing where he wants the audience to believe that Calypso is so compatible with Percy and Leo that even the gods take notice, but it doesn’t work because she isn’t a teenager like they are.

[annabelle--cane]

im listening to mag again and damn do the archival crew HATE jon. listen i get it supposedly your lives would be normal if he hadn't brought you here... but he didn't? (minus og archive crew, jon requesting them and all) if anything he was just kinda there when you made decisions, bro wasn't EVEN THERE when melanie got hired like??? like how r u gonna wish him pain rn, he's ltrly sopping wet and on the verge of dying💀

like another anon I got a month or so ago, this is one of my sleeper agent trigger phrases, so this might be another marina monologue moment.

as I'm also in the middle of a (for my standards) incredibly slow relisten, I've been thinking about this topic, too, but I've been coming at it from a slightly different angle than I normally do. in tim's case, we don't get an actual look at the circumstances under which he transferred to the archives, it is theoretically possible that jon laid it on a bit thick in asking him to come with him to the department and tim wouldn't have even thought of it otherwise, but with melanie we have several scenes of her hiring and onboarding where jon is not present and she continually rebuffs people who tell her she's making a mistake, so the text very clearly sets up that her blaming jon for being trapped there doesn't make sense. and, even with tim having been requested by jon, he still had to make the ultimate decision to switch departments himself, so, yknow, what gives?

most people, I think, and myself in the past, have come at this question from a very jon-centric pov because he's the main character and it's a jon-centric show, but I think putting it down to "they lash out at him because he happens to be there and stops defending himself after a while" misses something, as does "they lash out at him because elias sets everyone up to think they have an adversarial relationship to jon." more than that, I think it's about the rejection of agency.

tma is a show that's very much About agency and choices, so it's important to keep track of where characters suddenly balk and try to offload their choices onto other agents. martin, despite being very proactive and efficient when he sets his mind to it, has a consistent habit of thinking of himself as fundamentally unimportant and unable to affect real change. jon, someone who is usually culpability_acceptor_4000, really tries to convince himself that the web made him pull statements out of strangers. and melanie and tim, on realizing that they've gotten themselves stuck in the archives, have similar reactions of trying to retroactively make those decisions jon's.

they hate being stuck there and they can't bear the idea that it might be their fault, and they don't know how to reconcile the choices they did make with the greater forces outside of their control that shape their lives. tim swings right from seeing jon as fully responsible to seeing everything as the result of cosmically inevitable bad luck, and this hits him so hard that it leads directly to his suicide. post-bullet melanie gets a better handle on it; accepting that she chose to fall further into the slaughter opens her up to accepting that she made other choices, like joining the archives, as well as accepting future choices, like quitting the archives.

and yes, in the moments where tim and melanie are most vulnerable and just starting to realize how deeply screwed they are, jon (at least from their pov) does something to make it worse. when jon tells tim that jane presntiss wasn't his fault, tim says "well you sure made me feel worse afterwards! and then everyone had to pay attention to how you were feeling to get you to stop stalking us!" when melanie goes in for a second assassination attempt on elias, elias makes jon talk her down instead of doing it himself, presumably to try and get the slaughter mark done with. neither of these are the inciting incidents for tim and melanie's situations, but they stand out. and because jon is culpability_acceptor_4000, a man who feels like the weight of the whole world is on his shoulders and is even right some of the time, the accusations stick. tim and melanie don't want anything to be their fault, jon thinks everything is his fault, and it's a bit of a vicious self-fulfilling cycle.

[tvseries-writings]

Bad addiction

Plot: After an interrogation gone wrong, it is hard not to fall back into old habits and make questionable choices

TW: alcohol addiction, past suicide attempt, depression

Wandanat x Bioquake (Jemma x Daisy) x Bobbi x reader

Many people say that silence is the most deafening sound, more so than any other sound, even more so than the sound of a mine being blasted to extract the precious minerals it contains. And now, as you sit in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, looking down at the still-unbroken bottle of vodka in the complete silence that surrounds the room, you realize that these people are right.

It is 3:45 a.m. on a dreary Saturday morning, and that boy's face, imprinted in your mind, has kept you from sleeping and at the same time made you open the bus locker that Jemma had diligently locked as soon as she learned of your "not-so-little" problem.

In your world, everyone has tattooed on their body the first words their soul mate will say when they first meet.

You have to admit that in the unhappy and violent family you grew up in, it was no big deal to have five different phrases tattooed on your back due to some hideous flaw in the system. Two soul mates was abnormal enough, but five? Inconceivable, and Mark, your stepfather, had reminded you of it over and over again until one fine day he died of a heart attack. Of course, the moment he had collapsed in front of you, you hadn't run for help... Besides, they say there is no such thing as karma.

Bobbi was the first of the five mysterious soul mates you met and fell madly in love with. It was Bobbi who brought you into S.H.I.E.L.D. shortly after recruiting Daisy (then Skye), and who finally put a face to two of the people whose words she had tattooed on her right forearm.

"I want to be your sponsor, I want you to get better."

It was Bobbi who helped you out of the maelstrom that had engulfed you, who helped you to what would become six full years of sobriety. Six years without a single drop of your trusty friend alcohol in your stomach. She became your sponsor, was with you day and night, held you while you puked your guts out in the filthy bathroom of a bar at five in the morning, and whispered tough words to you when you told her you wanted to quit. You don't know where you'd be without her. In fact, you don't know where you'd be without all of them. Jemma, Bobbi, Daisy, Wanda, and Natasha are your rock and always will be. But today, today you have to forget and they may be your rock but unfortunately they have far too many demons to face and yours you might as well keep to yourself.

With a knot in your stomach and nausea, you uncork the bottle. The pungent smell of vodka burns your sinuses as you carefully place the cap on the counter. The concave side facing down, just like at the bar. Your fingers tighten around the thinnest part, the contact of your skin with the cold glass makes you shiver, and for a moment, just a single moment, you think you don't want to throw away these six long years of sacrifice, and then... then the boy's face hits you like a slap in the face. Actually, the slap would hurt a lot less.

He was just a boy, a young soldier molded by Hydra who had killed himself to give in during your interrogation. You had been too harsh and too slow to stop him, and you had not stopped him, and he had broken his right cheekbone, causing the small cyanide capsule placed there, just below the surface, to rupture. That boy was walking around with a time bomb between his eye and his nose, and he had done it voluntarily, killing himself with that same bomb. He had killed himself in front of you, his name was Gideon and he had just turned nineteen. And he was dead, he was dead because you were not focused enough, because you were the one who pushed him to do it and now he was gone. He should have had his whole life ahead of him, he had just been subjugated, but now, now there was no chance of redemption for him. So you punished yourself, nothing new, the bullet in your right leg is proof of that...even though you had stopped the bleeding by now. You just needed to punish yourself, that's all. And the bottle you hold in your fingers serves the same purpose as the bullet.

"What are you doing?"

The sound is so sudden and unexpected that you let go of the bottle and it shatters on the floor of the bus. The plane continues its course as if nothing had happened. How fascinating machines are, so emotionally numbing and yet indispensable.

Bobbi approaches you slowly, as if afraid to frighten you. Her hair is disheveled and her expression is a mixture of concern and weariness. You swallow, begin to shake your head and fall to your knees, repeating the words "I'm sorry" and "I'm sorry" as you fiercely pick up the shards of glass from the bottle.

"Stop or you'll get hurt."

The blonde girl is not even in time to say these words before a piece of glass gets stuck in your hand, causing a deep cut that begins to bleed profusely. You don't notice and Bobbi is scared to death. You don't feel the pain and, on the contrary, you continue to clear your mind.

Perhaps you have become a machine too, emotionally numb. Damn, how you want it; to feel no more pain - isn't that the human dilemma?

Bobbi snaps forward, tired of seeing you hurt again and again, and grabs your wrists with her hands to stop you; it works. You suddenly freeze, avoiding eye contact and not saying a word. Bobbi never loses sight of you for a minute as she gets up to get a cloth to dab the wound and stop the bleeding.

You stay like this for about ten minutes, in silence, while Bobbi bandages your wound with two stitches for "safety". He wraps your hand, but when he is done, he does not pull away, contrary to what you expected. Instead, she tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, making your eyes meet before breaking the silence.

"Do you ou want to tell me what happened?"

You always said that Bobbi, as an alternative to super badass spy, might as well have been a psychologist (as well as a model, of course). In fact, her tone is exactly what one would expect from a psychologist; gentle but detached. In a warm but cool clarity of action. In the art of weighing words that only Bobbi is capable of, and in which she is the first even to Jemma.

When she realizes you have no intention of answering, her hand quickly finds your leg.

"Have you been drinking?"

You bite your lip and shake your head slowly.

A small smile curls her lips as she leans in to plant a kiss on your forehead.

"Well... you did good rockstar."

Bobbi rests her forehead against yours, caressing your cheeks as if you were the most precious thing in the world.

"We're both tired and need to sleep, especially you. I'm not dropping the subject, and it's definitely something we'll discuss in the morning, but until then, until then, we're going to bed with the others. And I don't want to hear any objections."

You follow her, whatever she wants, you're going to give it to her. You owe it to her after the shit you wanted to do tonight; not that you wouldn't have done it if you had gone back. But now, now is a thought that has to be put off until the morning.

Bobbi tucks you in and wraps her arms around your sides, hugging you from behind. Your nose breathes in the lavender scent of Diasy and the vanilla scent of Wanda as Nat's soft snoring and Jemma's recovered words accompany you into the world of Morpheus.

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

As soon as you wake up, the weight of the conversation you're likely to have with your soul mates hits you harder than you'd like. And if you hate getting up on other days, today is even harder.

You get out of bed and walk down the hall with the same agony as a condemned man on his way to the gallows.

No, a condemned man is better off than you. At least he has the consolation of death; you, on the other hand, have only the certainty of a head-spanking from your girls.

It's barely 10 a.m., and your girls' voices echo down the narrow, cold hallway leading to the kitchen. As soon as your head pokes through the door, the voices stop.

"Hey."

Your stomach turns as you sit down in the only empty chair.

Wanda is at the stove, Natasha behind her, trying to help, even though you all know the Russian spy is anything but a good cook. Instead, Daisy, Jemma and Bobbi are all three at the table. Needless to say, all eyes are on you.

Wanda places a stack of pancakes on a plate in the middle of the table and with a shy smile invites you to help yourself to her delicious masterpieces.

You are not hungry. The silence between you is so strange, so different... that it has created a knot in your stomach. You are sure that if you even tried to take a bite of Wanda's pancakes, you would immediately run to the bathroom and throw up.

It is not you who breaks the silence, nor is it Bobbi; contrary to what you might have expected, it is Daisy who does so. Well, maybe you should have seen it coming.

"How could you even think that?"

You know very well that it is not a question. The others know it too.

The young superheroine wants to know the reason that almost made you break your promise.

Not that you could forget that promise. How could you?

It's hard to forget the feel of your girls' damp, heavy clothes and the sting of their deeply disappointed stares as you limped into the foyer of your simple, unassuming Manhattan apartment, staggering around with a bottle of vodka in your right hand and a gun in the other with only one bullet in the clip. It is hard to forget the look of terror on her face as you squeeze the trigger three times in a row, the cold metal of the barrel burning your temple. It is impossible to forget their screams as Natasha lunges at you, at the exact moment when you pull the damn trigger for the fourth time in front of their disbelieving, frightened, terrified eyes, and the bullet lodges on the wall behind you; inches from your head, as the gun, now unloaded, is kicked away from the Russian spy. It is impossible to forget the promise you made to them about never touching even a drop of alcohol again.

Over time, you have learned so many terrible things that you have trouble falling asleep at night. And when they say that addictions of any kind don't change a person...they lie. Fuck, how they lie. Lying bastards in an age of lies. An addiction changes you. No choking.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I - yesterday was hard, the mission - I'm sorry."

You don't look up, you don't meet the eyes that you learned to love and accept only after a long time. You don't have the courage, you can't look at the most important people in your life, knowing that you made them suffer again. How many more times will you have to hurt them before they realize they no longer want you in their lives?

Bobbi sighs and shakes her head slowly. He gives you a small smile, just a hint of the one you loved before anyone else. She squeezes your thigh and reaches her hand out from under the table.

"We're not mad, we're just worried rockstar."

"Bobbi's right, Detka, we are scared that what happened years ago might happen again."

Wanda plays with the rings you exchanged when you all decided to move in together.

Natasha doesn't speak; she just watches you in silence. So does Jemma.

Daisy, on the other hand, seems on the verge of exploding, and that's exactly what she does.

"You can't do this to us again, okay? Do you know how long it took us to get over that? We still have nightmares about that night and you know it! How could you even think of drinking? You had to talk to us about it, you had to..."

Bobbi interrupts the inhuman, wrapping her arm around her hips and holding her close as she plants small kisses on the top of her head.

"He killed himself right in front of me, Daisy! He was a young boy, he had his whole life ahead of him and I didn't stop him!"

You slam your hand down on the kitchen counter, carefully away from your soul mates, using so much force that the deep cut you made the night before reopens and the bandage quickly soaks with blood.

A small grimace crosses your face as soon as your hand hits the marble surface.

"Y/n!"

Jemma takes your hand between her own, examining the wound medically and glancing at Bobbi as Wanda runs to the first aid kit in the bathroom.

"Honey, it's not your fault. The only culprit in all of this is Hydra. Yes, the boy was young, but he was aware of his choices."

Natasha strokes your back as Jemma uses needle and thread to sew up the cut on your palm. Jemma is about to put the fourth back on when you pull your hand away from her loving care and turn away from your girls.

"Y/n, please come back, I'm not done yet."

You look away; your left arm falls back at your side and small drops of blood run down your hand and fall to the floor. Your only desire now is to hold on to the bottle and drink until you see the empty bottom. You do not deserve their love, let alone their understanding.

"You're thinking very hard, detka," Wanda whispers, holding out her hand to you, and when you don't take it, intertwining your fingers, the hurt look on the Sokovian's face makes your heart clench.

"I thought I had overcome my addiction, and yet when some event shakes me, I am still in the grip of my emotions and it sucks....You want to know if I still want to drink? Yes, it gets stronger and stronger and it will never go away. That's the problem, I... I don't know if I can live with that for the rest of my life.

You all feel the small gasp that leaves the telepath's lips as she looks into your mind.

"Last night I... I took your gun," you whisper, turning your gaze to Natasha, "I know the password to the safe where you hide it; besides, it's not hard, just remember the day you first came into my life, and yes, yesterday I took the gun and put it to my temple, but I didn't pull the trigger, I didn't, okay? Just like I didn't touch the bottle of alcohol in front of me, so yes, I'm not okay, I'm shaken by what happened and part of me will always want to end it, but I'm not going to make you go through this again. I love you too much to hurt you like that again."

You scratch nervously at your wound, pinching your stitches before a gentle hand stops you. Jemma takes your hand back and makes the final stitches as the girls surround you.

"It's going to be okay honey, we're going to get through this too, but you need to go back and see Dr. Garner."

You sigh and shake your head before being stopped by a rather pissed off inhuman.

"I don't think you have a choice, so you're going to do what we say, okay?"

You sigh, nodding slightly as you begin to find the steel floor beneath your feet particularly interesting.

"Y/n, where did you leave the gun?"

Bobbi whispers and the question that has been hanging in the air until now is asked.

You teleport to your bedroom and retrieve the gun from its hiding place, where it had been masterfully concealed among some of your old clothes, and then Teleport back to the kitchen and hand the gun to Bobbi. The blonde takes it and slides the magazine out of the black Glock she holds in her hands, and when she does, your heart stops. You didn't think he would check.

"Y/n...? One bullet is missing-"

Daisy grabs the clip before Bobbi can finish her sentence,

"Are you fucking serious? You did this? You lied to our faces?!"

"I, it's not what it looks like."

Your throat goes dry as you look for the nearest chair to sit in; you wrinkle your nose as the bandage you've been so busy tightening around your thigh rubs painfully against the wound. And while the other girls are too busy trying to figure out what's going on, Wanda reads your mind and her eyes go wide as she falls to her knees in front of you. The other girls look at her with confusion and concern before the Sokovian speaks.

"Detka, Detka, where is the wound?"

Your breath catches and you freeze. They can't take away the pain you feel, they can't - you don't deserve the relief, you don't.

"N-no! Me, it's okay, I took care of it, I'm fine."

Natasha, who had been silent until that moment, steps forward and pulls your pants down before you can even think of stopping her.

The blood-soaked bandage shifts to reveal the bleeding, red wound; an ongoing infection, most likely -- after all, you didn't put any disinfectant on it, and the only thing you cared about was wrapping it tightly with a bandage so you wouldn't lose too much blood. You don't even know if the bullet got out, but considering your teleportation skills, it probably did. The only reason you don't stay naked every time you teleport is because Fitz made all your clothes out of a dwarf material that apparently allows you to stay clothed.

"Damn it!"

Natasha says, leaning over your thigh and looking at Jemma, urging her to get the first aid kit. The biochemist runs to the bathroom and returns in less than a minute with the kit in her hands. You kneel down next to the former Russian spy before putting on your gloves and cutting off the now completely useless blindfold.

Bobbi walks over to you and places a hand on your forehead to check your temperature before asking Natasha to hand her the thermometer.

"She's warm, I think the wound is giving her an infection."

Bobbi puts the thermometer to your lips, and when you make it clear that you are not going to take your temperature, Bobbi raises her right eyebrow and looks at you intently.

"Rockstar, I don't want to force you to open your lips, but you really messed up, your health is not the best right now and we're really worried, so please, please... help us help you, okay?"

Bobbi's voice breaks as her look of pain and concern finally makes you realize how much this, how much YOU are costing them...so you do everything they tell you and a full twenty-five minutes pass before you are finally patched up and lying on a cot in the infirmary.

"Why did you do this? Are you... do we have to take you off missions? Are you trying to hurt yourself?" Natasha approaches the edge of the bed, resting a hand on your good leg.

"Obviously, considering what he did."

Daisy blurts out, and the fact that she relies so heavily on her sarcasm lets you know that she is genuinely worried about you.You bite your lip, a small sigh rippling the air around you as you trace the bandage on your hand with your thumb, distracting yourself from the conversation you are about to have.

"I... just wanted... I needed to feel physical pain, and not the kind of pain that tears you up inside. I just needed to feel nothing, just for a little while...I'm sorry."

Jemma squeezes the IV bag and, after a final glance at the monitor showing your blood pressure and heart rate, sits down in the empty chair to your left before taking your hand between her own.

"We're going to help you, okay? It's going to be okay, we're going to be with you every step of the way, and we're going to get through this, just like we did before."

"But we need you to help us, rock star."

"And you need to tell us how you feel, especially if it makes you do things...dangerous for yourself, detka" Wanda comes over and gives you a small smile with eyes full of concern, just like the other girls.

Daisy crosses her arms under her breasts and you see worry and anger distorting her face and then, to the surprise of you all, the inhuman bursts into tears. Sobs shake your body and your need to embrace her makes you get out of bed and reach out to her, hiding a grimace of pain.

"Dee, Daisy, hey, it's okay love, I'm sorry, I know how that night left a deep scar on you, I... when certain thoughts come, I can't think straight... I can't think at all, damn it. I don't... I don't think about how much damage what my mind is telling me to do could do to you. I'm sorry, my love."

Daisy throws herself into your arms, causing you to fall back onto the cot as the inhuman wets your shirt with her tears.

"I know what it feels like to want the pain to stop, many of us do it”. Your body stiffens at the thought that at least once both Natasha and Wanda and Daisy felt exactly what you felt and are feeling now, "but you are not alone, I know you feel alone but you are not. We are here and we love you so much it hurts..."

"I am so sorry...I, I will try to get better, I want to, for you and to finally be well without having to resort to pain or alcohol."

You whisper, leaving kisses in Daisy's hair as you hold her close. Your girls stand still, letting the inhuman vent before they too join your embrace.

They say nothing, they don't need to. The fact that they are there, their warmth is more than enough and they bring you a slight relief and the burden you have been carrying for so long finally lightens... at least for now.

Thanks for reading! Spoiler: some poly!aos x wandanat x reader is coming! Comment, like and support me on ko-fi. Have a great day!

Taglist: @wandanatsbaby @bioquake-archives @bioquakeweek @daisyjohnsonx @wandanatsgirlfriend @chaekhan @station19 @resilientpendragon @so-no-kissing-then @thearchpitbullmx @ashadash0904 @kingshitonly @alwaysgoodnight @callistic @xjule @yuleni18 @simpforwandanat @alexxislexi @mrsdanversromanoff @coollemonsaresour @hushed-woodsman @razorscooteer @eponine-xx @maniacallinc @michelle170 @classyig @elenaguarnieri @scarletwidow @tati3001 @cristin-rjd @your-my-mission @mr-nicely @hi-i-1 @anniethurs @ktstwice @scarlet-raccoon @maria-403 @goldfishthegr8 @wandanatfan @looiegirl-blog @bioquake-blog @daisyjohnsonx

[the-sky-is-my-home]

idk if anyone is here for hq analysis text posts in 2023 nor do I know if something like this has been made before but. it wouldn't leave my head so here. my attempt at a cohesive analysis of the kageyama/hinata/atsumu/osamu dynamic (note: this isn't meant in a shippy way at all. any relationship as complex and narratively juicy as this is great shipping material I know but for this post I wanna keep things canon)

for the sake of something like brevity (lol), I won't delve into the kageyama/hinata partnership here. I assume you watched/read the series and I don't need to explain how they're both partners and rivals. it's the core relationship of the story, after all. also, the twins are twins, and aran spelled out their dynamic and relationship pretty nicely in their flashback, so...

let's start with kageyama and atsumu, the first ones who cross paths outside of their partnerships. as we know, they don't exactly get along great at youth camp. they don't fight, but atsumu makes himself seem like an ass immediately by calling kageyama's playstyle that of a goody-two-shoes. to the reader, this feels like an incredible insult because the way kageyama plays has been developed through some hard-earned character development spanning the entire series so far. we're meant to conclude he's wrong and will be proven so in a future game.

except this is not at all what the interaction is about, or what it will lead to. we don't actually understand the conflicting perspectives here until after the timeskip. what this is is a misunderstanding between two very similar people whose experiences differ in one key aspect. both of them are setters who are incredibly talented and extremely dedicated to volleyball. both are blunt, and not afraid to point out other people's shortcomings. both of them have essentially been friendless and outcast on their middle school teams because of this.

there is just one key difference: kageyama has been desperately looking for someone better ever since his grandpa promised he'd find them, while atsumu has spent his entire volleyball career with "someone better" right at his side. at this point, kageyama only knows failure and rejection in that regard. his sister quit volleyball. his grandpa died. oikawa and iwaizumi had their own thing going on and were never really in his reach. kindaichi couldn't keep up, and kunimi absolutely wasn't willing to.

he's got hinata now, but the harsh truth is that while he's kageyama's partner, he's not "someone better" at this point. this is because he kinda sucks at volleyball even if he's rapidly learning. and this one, simple difference changed everything. when kageyama is too arrogant and demanding, his team rejects him, and he's alone and unable to play. when atsumu does the same, he still has osamu who will sit with him and make an effort to pull him into the group. and he's always got proof that he's not asking too much, because of course osamu can hit all of atsumu's sets. when kageyama is too harsh on his hitters, nobody can really handle it and people get scared, so he tones himself down. when atsumu does the same, osamu yells at him and fights with him, until atsumu gets his point, and the rest of the team sees it as a fun twin squabble, endearing rather than scary.

but the thing is, neither of them know anything about the other, and atsumu speaks with the absolute confidence of someone who only knows volleyball like this. he's got "someone better" privilege and he just doesn't know that's a thing one can have. (he actually has this over others, too, including hinata before he had a team. having to run alone is a common thing among the volleyball obsessed.) but with his perspective, unexplained and badly phrased as it may be, kageyama manages to grow yet again, with hinata crowning him king of the court again as he realizes he can demand things from his hitters and they'll answer him (and to this day, atsumu is totally clueless he kickstarted it, and also that osamu taught him the same).

but as the years pass, even as they remain rivals, they do start understanding each other on a level no one else can (see atsumu explaining kageyama's thought process of "the points I score are mine, the points my hitters score are also mine" to hinata)

but while I do think these parallels are fairly well understood, people are sleeping on the osamu/hinata parallels. probably because they seem so much more different at first glance, with osamu looking calm and disinterested while hinata is, well, hinata. all bouncy and loud and sunshine-y. but they're as much the same as kageyama and atsumu. both were excited kids who like volleyball and, even seeing and understanding how cool setters are, just didn't vibe with it because spiking is just cooler.

except hinata was alone in his desire for so long it went nowhere for years, while osamu could always play as he wanted, with the best and most dedicated setter right there at his side. the way osamu plays is what hinata could've/would've been if he could've played for years and years. (I love this cover page it says like yeah look they're the same just with vastly differing levels of experience)

we know this, because hinata's playstyle actually turns out a lot like osamu's after the timeskip. but even with those differences, regardless of pre- or post-timeskip, again osamu seems to just instinctually get hinata in ways nobody else seems to. from his "he plays like he's eating good grub" to being absolutely unimpressed by hinata simply expecting the ball to be there - because isn't that just the natural state of things? doesn't everyone have a setter who will bring the ball without fail? why wouldn't you expect it? it's not unreasonable or too demanding, it's just how it is - that everyone else clocks as special.

when hinata gets intense, people tend to get scared, but osamu plain isn't, because he's the same in too many ways, and the familiar isn't scary.

and years later, when even atsumu is surprised by the timing of hinata jumping for the freak quick, osamu isn't. this is exactly where he'd jump for it. just like hinata knew osamu would jump for it at the last point of their game in high school (and like kageyama knew atsumu would answer the spiker, both times, because he would, too).

but their arcs end in complete opposites, unlike their setters, because their starting points were more different, too. to go with the food metaphor introduced by osamu, he's someone who always got to eat his fill, while hinata was starving for years and only gets hungrier the more crumbs he gets to eat.

when hinata does get his fill, finally, he can never give it up. but what's a feast to him is just a normal meal for osamu, and he needs other spices to be happy. and I can't really make this fit in the food metaphor but. hinata shines the brightest on the court, but osamu gets eclipsed by atsumu because he's just not hungry enough for it. so it's only fitting hinata pours his all into it while osamu quits and finds his place somewhere else. hinata finds fulfillment in challenge, in teammates and rivalry (with kageyama), while osamu finds his in support (of atsumu) as opposed to competition, and pursuit of something that's entirely his own.

and then there's the relationship between atsumu and hinata. the first match they have is defined by atsumu first writing hinata off as a scrub (to be fair, the first impression he leaves is jumping for a toss and plain forgetting to hit it. it's hard to come back from that), but throughout the game, atsumu comes to understand hinata, and by the end of it, declares he'll toss to him one day.

even at this point, it's pointed out he's good news for hinata in the sense that he won't need kageyama forever. there's someone else who could be his setter and make him shine just as brightly.

what the coaches can't know is that atsumu will be in sore need of a partner just a few years down the line, and that by that time, hinata will be perfect for the position. yes, atsumu can give him the freak quicks. yes, he's the kind of setter hinata can expect the ball from. but post-timeskip, hinata can toss the ball to atsumu just like osamu used to. he can do all the fun, reckless, perfectly coordinated plays that atsumu used to do with his twin.

they're the perfect partners for each other, united even in their desire to beat kageyama, who's both of their main rival at this point, the one who hinata wanted to beat since his first game, and the one who's in the way of atsumu getting the serve trophy and the sole spot of setter on the olympic team.

I know this is a very anti-climactic last dynamic but. unfortunately, kageyama and osamu never really interacted. but for the record, I think it's a shame, we were robbed, and they'd absolutely get along great.

idk if there's a conclusion to be had here tbh, but the post-timeskip arrangement really is ideal for them all, exactly what they wanted. hinata gets to shine and continually improve himself, he gets to stand on the court as a force to be reckoned with. kageyama has finally, finally found the "someone better" he was promised, and through him, continually gets to play the challenging game he was sorely missing in his early years. atsumu gets to play exactly the kind of volleyball he likes, too, with the kind of partner at his side that made volleyball so fun for him from the start. all three of them get to play again and again and again, always learning and growing, winning and losing, and never getting tired of any of it. osamu, while he's not playing, gets to do his own thing that he loves just as much, and he's certainly not losing his dumbass happiness contest with his brother.

so. yeah. I may have thought about all this a little too much. leave me alone. (no don't please talk to me about this actually)

[yuniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie]

The world is yours.

Tony Montana! Soft reader. Innocent reader. Preteen! Reader. Reader has childhood trauma. Reader being overstimulated(stressed) Soft! Tony. Slightly manipulative Tony - Out of plot (a little -) Platonic! Tony + mentions of guns, death, kidnapping? Reader has amnesia. Foreign reader! (You can choose where.) reader isnt good at english. Bold = native language.

(Tony himself deserves a warning!!)

Around the World

———————————————————————

Barely really turning 14, just now about to end the second and final course of the 7th grade, you were just now getting into 8th grade after the summer/ winter break schools were giving.

But overall you had a complex relationship with your family. Being oversheltered, barely actually leaving your house other than going to school was all. It was that bad,

It was only when you went around the world after meeting him. But before

You almost failed english because it was so difficult. You always talked in native. Never english, when you had only really learned a few simple phrases in english, you and your parents had taken a trip to a state nearby the country, maybe the coast or wherever it took you by car, but no. Instead. Or by plain,

To America.

But it was only after a freak accident. The car crash had caused memory loss, the car flipping parents were fortunate enough to only really suffer with a few bruises yet you had hit your head and maybe even almost flew out the car but the worst thing was hitting your head somewhere a little, too hard.

So it was where after you discharged from the hospital you just tried regaining memory, as best as possible. Your father was an aristocrat, he had taken you to Cuba with him to do his business with him there, he worked in a business. With him being the CEO of it however.

He had involved himself with the underworld, the gangsters. And he had picked the wrong man to fuck with,

“Montana, his name is montana.”

———————————

But you wished you were home, letting a soft tear run down your ear. Looking at the rugged man before you cooing in spanish,

You almost believed it you gave up feeling the tenderness he was giving you, “I never expect to be so lucky n shit.”

“I get a innocent flower.” He paused. “To myself,”

His finger ran down your tear soaked face. A hand holding your head steady, “Your shitbag of a father aint here,” He wiped your tears away, looking at how you wouldnt stop shaking, even when you seemed so hesitant you werent pushing him off. Incoherent , mumbles of broken english didnt reach him, his arm going around your shaking shoulders he pulled you next to him,

Until you broke down.

You were sobbing, the ache of feeling the anklet harsh against your ankle,

He had you captive since he drugged you, breaking you into being his now, he had taken you by force, all the way back to this mansion. No one was ever going to find you ever again. If you escaped he’d use the anklet, to shock you.

But you were good,

Never once scrunching your nose or face at him, not moving away from him when he comforted you. When he gave you food you sat and ate. You were polite in asking him to go use the toilet, you were kind, he remembered before he drugged you. The way you played with the stray kitten near the park he found you alone in near where your father seemed to be taking a phonecall.

Even when he set you on the bed, you didnt hit him. Or scream. Or push away, you only ever defied when he would be sudden. Trauma reaction;

But he soothed he wasnt here to hurt you. And your scumbag of a father was at fault.

All of them were dead. He put a bullet to your fathers head afterall. You didnt have to go anywhere ever again. A trip to all around the world.

Anything or anywhere you want or want to go.

He would give you anything as long as you stayed and never attempted to escape. He wouldnt want to hurt his sweet girl.

But deep down he didnt have any intentions for you. Nothing ill, only good. He kidnapped you, he knew what shit environment you were in.

In his beliefs and twisted feelings he believed kidnapping you meant protecting you from the world.

His pretty mija was all safe with him now. Even if he didnt have a valid reason, why he kept you captive.

He had you now.

(Short fic)

[anthurak]

Okay so, thematically speaking, the reason why I think they'll use the Staff instead of Ascension for Summer is because the Hound, while smart, did not have the faculties needed to actually take ascension, and as shown with Alyx, dying in the Ever After just means you end up as a ghost forever instead of ascending, so the Staff is just about the only way they'll be able to de-Grimmify Summer.

(This is also why I'm thinking Summer being saved would mean Penny coming back for Round 3, or vice versa, given Penny's aforementioned thematic parallels with the Grimmified SEW's. If a dignified death is the closest to a happy ending Penny will ever achieve, then they'll have no choice but to mercy kill Summer. It's just a matter of whether Penny's return or Summer's rescue would come first.)

On somewhat a related note (given how my last two asks were combined), I'm also thinking Cinder's ascension would mark a good point to close out the penultimate Volume on, that way the Final Volume would have time to develop her next incarnation alongside Team RWBY, since they'd kind of have to flesh out her new identity.

Regarding Summer, I think the assumption that you’re making is that Grimm!Summer is going to be just like the Hound. And I really doubt that’s what we’re going to see.

Largely because I think Grimm!Summer simply being a raving, mindless monster would not be nearly as interesting, nor hit nearly as hard emotionally, as if she was fully cognizant.

As I’ve gone into in other posts, I think Summer is in fact fully cognizant and self-aware after having essentially become the SAME kind of Light/Dark hybrid that Salem is after a dip in the darkness pools. Though at the same time completely psychologically broken by Salem into being her willing follower. And that the Hound, the other hybrids and even Cinder herself have been part of Salem’s research and experiments into trying to replicate what happened to Summer, and herself.

Again, I think this would hit WAY harder than Summer just being a mindless monster. I mean just imagine Ruby, Yang, Raven, Qrow, etc. expecting a Grimm!Summer to be some raving monster just like the Hound… only for some mysterious armored humanoid grimm to unmask herself to reveal Summer, who ISN’T mindless and straight up says she’s serving Salem WILLINGLY.

For one, this allows Grimm!Summer to be an actual CHARACTER instead of just a big scary monster. It lets Summer be an actual VILLAIN who can have conversations and debates with Ruby, Yang and the rest of her family, rather than just spouting creepy disjointed phrases.

Most importantly, it allows Summer to be a proper antagonist and foil to RUBY. An actual character to properly represent and embody Ruby’s self-destructive hero-complex taken to its inevitable conclusion. A way for Ruby to confront and battle, both physically AND ideologically, this part of herself she struggles so much with.

Finally, it allows Summer to be saved not through esoteric magic, but through Ruby and Yang and Raven and the rest of her family getting through all the pain and trauma she’s suffered and convincing Summer to come back to them. And for Ruby in particular, to save who essentially represent a broken version of herself.

Which in turn, going back to your point, means that Summer is actually fully cognizant and able to attempt ascension herself.

Regarding Cinder, I do more or less agree with you on that. Particularly if we end up getting another volume or two after Salem’s defeat to deal with the Gods. It would certainly be good to have some actual time to explore and flesh out Cinder’s new identity.

[kittlesandbugs]

FHR: Past connections Pairing: Sidestep (Riley) & Danny Warnings: TFW you don't get along with someone but they want to get along with you lol Word Count: 541 Prompt: write an interaction between your blorbo and a character you've never (or not much) "made them" interact with yet.

"Hey, um… can I ask you something?" 

Has Ortega been coaching him? That's his line to weasel in through your defenses and get you to open up about something… or at least consider it. You give Herald a narrow look over the top of your sunglasses, but decide to throw him half a bone since he actually managed to land something of a hit on you in training today. "Fine, you can ask, but I don't have to answer."

"Yeah, those are the rules," he agrees too easily, and now you're certain Ortega has been coaching him. He nods to himself as he considers how to phrase his query, blue eyes bright and inquisitive under his bouncing golden bangs. "So, I met someone, a young girl, a few years ago. She said she knew you before you became Sidestep, and that you saved her from being kidnapped."

You freeze, cookie forgotten halfway to your mouth as you gape at him before snapping your mouth shut. How on earth could he possibly know about Sadie? 

"She said she couldn't ever forget you, and I was wondering if you remember her?" 

"Of course I do…" Fuck, she must be in high school now. Maybe even college. The first person you ever saved of your own volition, your own choice. The first step into actually living. Free, mostly. Still chasing human approval and acceptance like a dog, riding high on gratitude, reliant on gratuity. You shake your head, rattling those chains of the past loose. You're no one's dog now. 

"... that okay, Riley?" 

You jerk with the realization that he was still talking to you and scrub your face roughly with your hand. "Yeah, sure," you mutter before sinking your teeth back into the soft cookie he bribed your time with, not willing to admit you didn't hear a word he said. 

"So, what was her name?" 

"Why do you want to know that?" The growl of your tone makes him flinch just a little. Good.

"Well, I mean…" He flounders, trying to figure out where he misstepped with you. "It's kind of hard to find someone again without even a name to go on?"

Oh. Fuck. That was what he asked? To track her down? Reunite you? He's as big a meddler as Ortega. Bigger, maybe. Ortega, at least, has stopped stepping in your past like dog shit. Mostly. 

"No." You say it with the flat finality of a closed door, shutting it in his face. She doesn't need to know how far her hero has fallen. Bad enough that he still clings to what you were, despite your attempts to divorce him from such idealism. "Leave that girl alone." 

"But you said I could—" 

"I changed my mind!" The bark is punctuated with a smack to the table that startles him into silence. As all eyes in the café turn to you, you just as quickly turn them away as you rise, slapping some bills on the table. 

"Sidestep is dead," you hiss the stark reminder in his ear as you pass, resisting the perverse urge itching under your skin to shatter the window of his hope and reveal just what crawled out of that particular corpse. "Let her stay that way."

[denimbex1986]

'If you’ve ever read an interview with the Irish actor Cillian Murphy, you might think him shy, irritable, or even neurotic. Journalists love to write about how closed-off he is, that if you ask him anything too personal he’ll shut down and give one-line answers. This makes their job very hard, they say. But what those interviews don’t tell you, is that if you let Murphy talk about a subject that he actually wants to talk about – such as his epic new film about the father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer – he’ll go on for ages. And he’ll be very open and interesting while he’s doing it. He might even make a joke.

He does this when NME meets him at a posh hotel in Soho. We’ve just walked into the room. Murphy is sat down, wearing a black v-neck jumper over a white t-shirt, black trousers and a pair of very pointy Chelsea boots. He seems relaxed, and greets us with a cheery “hello!”. Then he recognises the thick paperback tucked under our arm as a copy of American Prometheus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography from which Oppenheimer is adapted. We’d intended to read a quote from the book later but Murphy cuts in on our explanation. “No, you brought it in here to be pretentious,” he grins. “Would you like me to sign it for you?”

There are people who would sell their grandmas for a mere glimpse of Murphy, let alone an autograph. He’s been dogged by screaming fans since the early days of his career – when he broke out as often-shirtless apocalypse survivor Jim in Danny Boyle’s 2002 horror hit 28 Days Later. Brummie gangster series Peaky Blinders made him a global star, but his most famous film roles are notable because they’ve often come from collaborations with the same director. Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi blockbuster Inception, war thriller Dunkirk and his Batman trilogy all featured Murphy as the supporting curio – a side character that pops up every so often to steal your attention from the main protagonist. But in Oppenheimer, the duo’s latest creative partnership, he finally is the main character.

And he’s a good one too. Oppenheimer was an American scientist who made vital discoveries in quantum physics during the 1920s and ‘30s, going on to oversee the creation of the atomic bomb for the US Government – two of which were dropped on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing an estimated 220,000 people. Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life campaigning for disarmament, appalled at the weapon (his preferred term was “gadget”) he had helped to give the world. He also drank heavily and had a reputation as a womaniser, despite being quiet and sometimes socially awkward. Murphy calls him “contradictory” and “complex”, which is like saying Suella Braverman doesn’t like immigrants. “I do think that he believed it would be the weapon to end all wars,” Murphy continues, attempting to explain how a left-leaning humanitarian could spend two years perfecting the ultimate killing machine. “He thought that [having the bomb] would motivate countries to form a sort of nuclear world governance.” Murphy pauses. “He was naive.”

Was that naivety a choice though? Oppenheimer had an explosive ego, once attempting to poison a university professor who chastised him when he was a student. Could his desire to achieve such as historic breakthrough have led him to ignore his own better judgement?

“That’s an interesting take,” says Murphy. He runs his hands through his hair, which is styled into wavy curtains. He does this a lot when thinking a question over. “Chris used this amazing phrase. We were talking about Oppenheimer’s arc and he said, ‘You know, he’s dancing between the raindrops morally.’ That unlocked something in my mind when I was preparing.”

To play the role of Oppenheimer, Murphy went very deep. He read the Bhagavad Gita – a 700-page Hindu religious text that the physicist famously quoted from (“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”) Then he started “skipping meals” in an effort to slim down to Oppenheimer’s rail-thin frame. During the actual shoot, Murphy smoked so many fake cigarettes that he worried it harmed his health. “They can’t be good for you,” he told The Guardian. Oppenheimer himself died of throat cancer in 1967.

On top of the physical strain, Murphy delved into some pretty dark emotional places. He had six months to research before filming began in February 2022, and during the 67-day production he often worked 18-hour days. War, genocide and the nuclear holocaust are unpleasant to think about at the best of times, never mind your every waking moment. It must have been brutal.

“You always have to take a holiday after a job,” he concedes, as though being a Hollywood actor is no different from plumbing toilets. “It’s not because… as some journalists like to think, you’re a method actor or whatever. It’s because you give so much time to the job and then suddenly you stop. You have all this displaced energy, you know, so you kind of don’t know what to do with yourself… But I’m a very easygoing sort of person. It doesn’t weigh me down.”

We suspect Murphy isn’t being entirely truthful here. Such is the intensity of his performance – all simmering discontent and wide-eyed panic attacks – that it’s difficult to believe he just shook the weight of global armageddon off each night before climbing into bed. Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty in the film, has said Murphy regularly skipped cast dinners because of the “monumental” pressure he felt. “Of course he didn’t want to [eat] with us,” she told People magazine. Matt Damon, brilliant as mustachioed military boss General Groves, agreed: “His brain was just too full.” When we push Murphy on the subject, he reveals a little more. “I didn’t go out much. I didn’t socialise much, mainly because of the amount of work I had to do… I became so immersed in the role.”

To make the experience yet more profound, cameras rolled only “a couple of days” before Russia invaded Ukraine. The West united to impose stringent economic sanctions on Vladimir Putin and his people. The value of the Ruble plummeted, Russian billionaires were booted out of London and Moscow became a cultural ghost town with the likes of Green Day and Iron Maiden cancelling gigs. Putin’s response? To start lining up tactical nukes along his borders. Armageddon seemed closer than at any moment since the Cold War. Murphy (and his castmates) felt the heat. “It was everywhere, and we were fully aware of that,” he says. “The threat [of nuclear war] has escalated and receded over the years since 1945… and now it’s back. It’s always there, this Sword Of Damocles that is hanging over us.”

Murphy, 47, knows what it’s like to exist against the backdrop of conflict. He grew up during the Troubles in late 1970s and ‘80s Cork, Ireland, where reports of sectarian violence in the north often dominated the news. His mum was a French teacher and his dad worked for the civil service. As a teenager, he was obsessed with music. He read NME and loved Frank Zappa and The Beatles. To illustrate his fandom, he tells us about a trip he took to Liverpool, later in life, to see the legendary Cavern Club, where the mop tops first cut their teeth on stage. “I walked down to [the street where the Cavern Club is supposed to be],” he says, “and it wasn’t there. It was somewhere over there!” He gesticulates with his hands. “It’s not the real Cavern. It’s just a mock-up!”

Inspired by John, Paul, George and Ringo, Murphy and his brother formed a band: The Sons of Mr Green Genes, named after a Zappa tune from the avant garde groover’s 1969 album ‘Hot Rats’. The songs were similarly experimental, filled with “wacky lyrics and endless guitar solos”. Eventually, an indie label based in London, Acid Jazz, put a five-album deal on the table. He and his brother turned it down, citing reasons of artistic independence, but for a while rock and roll appeared more inviting than the movies.

Murphy is often disparaging about his songs to journalists, but they must have been doing something right. He’s also self-deprecating when we bring up the underrated 2002 short film Watchmen, which he co-wrote with BAFTA-winner Paloma Baeza – his only attempt at a screenplay. “I just never thought that I was good enough really,” he says. “It’s why I haven’t, you know, pursued the music either… I like to do one thing quite well.” He adds that it’s unlikely this will change in the future.

Murphy will be far too busy to write songs or screenplays for a while anyway. The first reviews for Oppenheimer are out, and some critics have him earmarked for an Oscar. He’ll charm his way through awards season no doubt, just as he does at the Paris premiere the night before our interview. Done up in a black suit with mustard shirt and matching oversized tie, he looks a bit like the handsome English teacher your best mate had a crush on. Walking the red carpet, he is happy to answer questions, speaking at length about Nolan’s genius and the “amazing” reaction to Oppenheimer so far. You can tell he’s enjoying himself.

Murphy’s not on duty tonight though, with London’s premiere scheduled for the day after our chat. Then he’ll be waiting to get on with his next gig, the dark indie drama Small Things Like These, adapted from Claire Keegan’s bestselling 2021 title, in which he’ll take the lead role. Following his breakthrough blockbuster with a low-key Irish drama is typically understated of Murphy, so not unexpected. More box office projects loom on the horizon – a standalone Peaky Blinders movie and the long-awaited horror threequel 28 Months Later – but he says he has “no new information” on either.

It’s difficult to say what Oppenheimer means for Murphy. He is a household name in the UK and Ireland, but less so in the States, where some still see him as a ‘TV actor’. In a recent interview to promote the film, Robert Downey Jr. talked of Murphy’s life “changing” after Oppenheimer, as if he’s a fresh actor on the scene. In a sense, Downey Jr. is right. This is Murphy’s first lead role in a sure-fire smash. And the parts he gets offered now may be a bit starrier. But don’t expect to see him in spandex on a Marvel soundstage anytime soon.

“I like unknowable, ambiguous, kind of enigmatic [characters],” he says. “To me that’s human life: the knotty, weird grey areas… A good man’s life is wholly uninteresting.”'

[tmwcs]

help now I can't stop imagining about reader piercing heelels nipples that would be so daring like-girlie-ur actually about to arouse the devil 😭😫

Rough smut implied, there is some serious masochist stuff here, and a small reference at the end to the originally story (heelels most infamous phrase).

“you want me to get my nipples pierced to match the ones I gave you?”

You nod. He rolls his eyes to the side as he crosses his arms, a mischievous smirk forms on his lips. “I don’t think my brother would dig that.”

“Can I pierce them?”

He’ll look at you for a second and smile widely. “Of course you can.”

He then around and stars to uniform his jacket and the white blouse, and you’ll witness all of this while staring at his broad shoulders and back muscles. He slings his jacket aside and keeps the white under shirt on but completely open at the front. Laying down, he locks his fingers together and raises them to a natural bed as he rests his head against the palms, while also crossing his feet. Man is super relaxed. “Whenever you’re ready, I’m all yours.”

You pierce them, having to redo the session a couple times since you weren’t as skillful as his brother. But heelel didn’t seem to mind since he felt no pain. Not even wince committed, he merely laid there and gazed at your face while watching you do the deed. God you are so beautiful. To him, there was nothing more illuminating than your face. “I promise this is the last one.” You sigh out in frustration and nervously.

“Take your time. I’m not in a hurry.” He’ll say in a very mellow voice, without ever breaking his sight away from your eyes and lips.

Finally done, you look and admire your work. It wasn’t too bad. It may have taken you a handful of attempts, but you finally got it down. “All done.”

“No you’re not.”

He pulls your wrist and rumbles you over, rolling you underneath as he shifts and changes the position. He hovers on top of you, placing your hand on his bare chest, palm flat. “Touch me some more.” He says in a deep and dangerous tone.

Your breathing pauses and you witness his iris shrinking as he grows a menacing wild look in his face. Taking your hand, he places a small claw-blade in your fingers and holds your wrist steady. “Where did this come from?” You inquire with a panicked tone. He does not respond, only smirks as he holds your hand in place and leans in, subtly piercing his pectoral muscle at will. The curved edge of the claw goes in only about an inch or so, just enough for the tip to disappear into flesh. He expresses no sign of pain, instead, an amused look of adoration takes place as his blood drips and decorates your cheek. “Red looks good on you.” He mumbles. Leaning in, he places a soft kiss against your ear before whispering…

“Let’s see if it looks as good…on me.”

A sharp sting on your neck hits your nerves, followed by the sensual comfort of his tongue caressing the wound he caused you scream and yelp out his name, begging for him to stop. Another sharp sensation, hits, and another, and another. Each jolt of pain is quickly followed by softness. An insane mixture of pain and pleasure taking turns, hitting you out of nowhere. He lifts his head after the fifth bite, forcing you to witness the display of the mad Devil. Lips stained blood red, dripping down his chin. “Tell me baby…is red my color?” A game of Russian roulette. If you answer ‘no’, he’d scoff and smirk, tweezing more screams out of you as he digs in and ravishes you, finding your reluctance adorable. If you answer affirmatively, he’d be so pleased and would take you anyhow. The wild emotions of your affection and surrender drives him wild, and hard.

You stay silent and turn your face away. Of course red looked good on him. As did every other color that exists on the wheel. You remain indifferent and shallow. Big mistake.

“It is, isn’t it?” He smiles against your ear, chuckling darkly as he squeezes soft kisses against your cheek. “Wonder if we both look good in it…together.”

You raise a brow, curious as to how he possibly intended on satisfying his curiosity. When suddenly he pulls you by the tip of your chin and absorbs your gasps. A rough and passionate kiss ends with a hard bite on your lip. It hurt. He made sure it would.

The pain stung, causing you to rains your hands and dig into his shoulders. The rusty taste of blood hits your tongue, and his. You burrow your nails into skin until it finally breaks and bright red streaks appear. Lifting his head, he admires the bloody wound on your bottom lip, while you view the red coating that smeared outside his own lip line, along with the red marks near his collar bone. “Oh yeah baby, make me bleed. Do it. And I’ll fuck you till you’re red and blue.” He swipes his tongue over your lip. “You know you love it when I do that.”

He wasn’t lying. You knew what his statement entailed. When he did it to you in that way, it was the most intense pleasurable pain you’ve ever felt, and it was addicting. Nothing could ever cure you of that raging knot and yearning pulse deep in your gut, except him. Yeah, you loved it when he fucked you till you were red and blue. It didn’t matter that the bruising near your womanhood became sore afterwards, it was all a beautiful result of the constant slamming of skin on skin contact whenever he thrust into you. The squelching sounds of your fluids mixing together as he stuffed it inside, pulling out, then thrusting it back in, all of it nearly made you faint from raging desire.

“You want it, don’t you?”

You don’t respond. Not a single movement from head or mouth. But he’s not fooled.

“I can see it in your eyes, y/n.”

Caught red handed.

“You want me?” He asks rather playfully but calmly.

“Yes…”

He closes the distance. The tenderness in your voice softens him just a tiny bit. His eyelids grow heavy and fall halfway through, leaving a little bit of his iris to stared down as he tells you…

“Come here…sit on it.”

[baravaggio]

actually story time

when I was in college I had a period of time where I would hook up with this guy every once in a while, it was the worst kind of situationship where there were like. a lot of heavy family issues involved and we weren't really friends, he definitely saw me as a convenient source of emotional support with a side of pussy lol...I was like, riding all the way out to coney island late at night to meet him so he wouldn't hurt himself, that sort of thing. at the time I was going through my own shit wrt starting to understand my sexuality, won't rehash how agonizingly drawn out & painful that was for me, but I got to a point where I thought I had a little clarity on it and had decided to tentatively call myself bisexual (for like a week lmao). and - very very stupidly - I told him this in the interest of reciprocity, because he had shared so much with me about his situation and at the time I saw that more as an honest display of vulnerability than like. him indiscriminately using me as an emotional crutch

looking back the 180 he did on me was pretty awful, it started with like, gross fetishistic curiosity, which I cautiously tolerated within limits because it was new for me too and I was honestly grateful to speak openly about things after a lifetime of keeping it all padlocked in a secret compartment in my brain. he wanted to know where I was & what I was doing all the time, which annoyed me because we weren't together or anything, and even if we were that wouldn't be cool. he even outed me to some people, usually when I ignored him for too long, and tried to convince me it was no big deal

sex was obviously where shit really hit the fan, I won't get into details outside of saying he suddenly would get physically rough with me without asking after having never done that before. again, no details but one of my worst memories was when he started saying disgustingly homophobic things to me about me in bed. I ghosted after that. shortly after he started spam texting me with homophobic slurs & rape threats until I blocked him. I was very lucky that this coincided with the end of the semester and his move & transfer, and that it didn't escalate to physical stalking or anything.

of course I literally never told anyone this, I compartmentalized it for a long time (10 years LOL) when I started IDing as a lesbian because I wanted so badly to make it irrelevant to my life and frankly was very embarrassed by how I let it go that far. but it's really been haunting me since I reassessed all that. it can make figuring out how I go about navigating certain types of sex and even platonic relationships painful and complicated. aside from logistics & other preferences, it's a big reason why I feel the need to keep things casual and unromantic, even as I've managed to work through some of this & have healing and transformative experiences with specific people. last year I had a terribly hurtful argument with a younger gay woman in which I was told the stuff he did to me would've hurt even more if I didn't have the capacity to be into him at all, which has thrown me back into a place of deep angry silence about all of this yet again.

idk. I try to not be so sensitive about dumb bullshit I read but it's very hard when I've experienced the dismissive attitudes and callousness irl. I do my best to hold my head up and do my thing but the routine dehumanization & lack of sensitivity upsets me. I'm angered by the way so many people think they have nothing they could possibly learn from our experiences and thoughts about how these systems affect us, that there's nothing we could share that they don't already know. it hurts my feelings that so many people automatically take our attempts to share these thoughts as an attack on them, regardless of how carefully we phrase things. and on a personal level it hurts to currently have nowhere irl or online where I feel like I can talk about the pain of what I've shared here (or even the healing moments I've experienced) without someone telling me off for not behaving the way they think I should lol.

anyway. I really do wish I was strong enough to let this all slide off my back just for the purposes of my own well-being. I'm trying to limit what I see about these issues so I don't feel tempted to mentally engage. when I see sentiments that clearly want to make me & those like me feel like less than nothing, all I can think about is how there are girls even more raw and vulnerable than me seeing this stuff and it makes me heart ache. even so I know there are people out there who will understand me, I hope to find them one day so I can move through everything with more grace

[blondiest]

Strange ask, but what if Near was shy in bed?

mm. in a sexual context i don't usually think of near as shy so much as awkward / stilted, or occasionally bashful / self-conscious -- all of which can be elements of shyness, i suppose, but i think his character calls for some nuance here. i guess i mostly hesitate to describe him as simply shy in this case because i do not see him as innocent or naive (which i feel the phrase "shy in bed" can obliquely imply), but rather inexperienced and understandably nervous.

once he and mello are a solidly established couple / once near is no longer quite so inexperienced i can imagine he might affect some sort of demureness in. uh. a kinky way (<- thinking in particular of holdyouhostage near but possibly applicable to any number of universes) and i also think he probably has a bit of a thing for (mild) humiliation / degradation which -- that isn't the same thing as shyness, exactly, but there's a degree of embarrassment involved, so it feels linked? i guess?

i think it's probably easier to explain what i mean by examples, so i'll be including below the cut some snippets from already-posted works (plus one from an unposted WIP)

from i want to hold you hostage:

Near, despite his flushed cheeks and shaking hands, manages to give him an amused look. “I thought you said you weren’t going to be gentle with me this time.” Mello glares. “That doesn’t mean I wanna fucking injure you.” “Ah.” Near pauses awkwardly. “No, I wasn’t too sore.” “Good,” Mello says. “You could’ve just answered the first time instead of being a brat about it, you know.” Near pushes himself up onto his elbows and affects what Mello guesses is meant to be coquettishness. The actual result of the attempt is a comically strange expression, looking mostly like a mixture of clumsy flirtation and confusion, the oddness of it all enhanced further by Near’s very obvious erection tenting the front of his boxers. “Are you going to punish me?” He asks, and— it’s clearly meant to be a joke, and it’s meant to be a fucking stupid one at that, but there’s a thread of blistering vulnerability strung through the middle, one that wraps itself around Mello’s heart and tugs. The rush of unwilling affection quickly sours into frustration, so he pushes Near down flat on his back, then crawls over him, leering. “I’m going to ruin you,” he vows, a mean flash of glee hitting him when Near’s eyes dilate and the line of his throat bobs. “Now take off your underwear, and open your fucking mouth.”

from shot in the dark:

“Relax,” Mello mutters, pausing his assault on Near’s mouth momentarily. “I don’t bite. Or— not as hard as you do, anyway.” Near watches through his lashes as Mello smirks, amused by his own cleverness, and closes in again, nipping Near’s bottom lip. It’s a joke, but Near can’t tell if he’s being laughed at or if he’s meant to find it funny, too. Though he does try to relax, he fails quickly and miserably— if anything, he grows stiffer, more uncomfortable as he wallows in the knowledge of his own ignorance. Less than ten seconds into the renewed bout of attention, Mello withdraws, frowning. “What’s wrong with you?” He pokes Near in the cheek with the barrel of the gun. “It’s like kissing a fucking plank of wood.” Near bristles and turns his head, breaking Mello's grip on his face. “I don’t know what to do,” he says, irritated. The smug look that Mello gives him in response to this confession does not reduce his irritation. “Aw. You’re blushing.”

from nothing hurts like you do:

“You’re even pretty here,” Mello teases. Then, without warning, he presses a wet kiss to Near’s entrance. A stuttering, shocked gasp escapes Near, his fists tightening in the sheets. He was expecting to maybe feel Mello’s thumb, slicked with spit, not his tongue. “Mel— Mello,” he turns his face to the side to say, openly scandalized. Mello just hums and licks at him again, slow and languid. Near goes hot all over.

from early arrival:

The instant Mello’s fingers wrap around him, Near makes a sound. It’s too loud, but he can’t stop it. He can’t stop from thrusting into Mello’s grasp, either, or from shuddering and spilling over the older boy’s fist before he can stroke him even once more. When Near manages to open his eyes a second later, his first instinct is to be self-conscious over it. He’s twenty-one, and coming with little more than a single touch, keening and whining, seems immature, unbecoming, but— “Holy shit,” Mello hisses. “Near, holy shit, that was so fucking hot, I—”

and finally, from a mysterious mysterious femslash WIP:

“What do you think about?” Mello asks. Near has never felt so shy, but she’s eager enough to please Mello that she stammers out an answer anyway. “I— k-kissing, and— touching.” “Touching where?” Mello asks, batting her lashes coquettishly as she ever-so-lightly traces the slight curves of Near’s body through her baggy clothes. “All over,” Near says hoarsely. “You’re so cute, getting off just thinking about kissing and touching me,” Mello smiles coyly, a little condescending. “That’s barely even dirty.” Mello is absolutely patronizing her, but Near doesn’t really mind because she sounded like she meant it when she called Near cute.

[ultimateissuessimp]

Rota

One shot

Word count: 616

Warnings: My stupidity (Meaning crack fic)

Four men were out in the club in Madripoor. Who could that be? Why, Zemo, Bucky, Sam and Y/N of course! They've been there for half an hour and already there were dudes and girls alike trying to get into either of their pants. Unlucky for them, two of them were off limits and the other two while single, they were not there to mingle. Yet that didn't seem to stop the swarm. Especially that one German guy, who seemed to be eyeing Y/N all night long since they've all had walked inside. He was persistent, not giving up until he got what he wanted, oh how ironic. The only thing he didn't account for was how unhinged Y/N could be at times and that a certain baron was highly unamused with his attempts, shooting him distasteful looks and groaning each time the guy said something so stupid he almost lost braincells.

-Oh come on, cutie. Don't be like that, I'm much better of a company than those dimwits that came with you - the guy said, his German accent heavy in his voice as he spoke, leaning uncomfortably close towards Y/N on the bar, staring at him like he was the finest piece of meat on the market.

-I highly doubt that, mein Freund. One of those "dimwits" as you called them is my husband and I would really suggest you stop hitting on me. Well, unless you'd like to leave this building in a body bag - Y/N said, rolling his eyes before take a sip of his drink, turning his head towards Helmut to observe his reactions.

-Yeah? I bet he doesn't treat you right, you could go for a guy so much better, like me perhaps and keep those empty threats to yourself, we both know that if I give you just a little taste, you won't be able to get enough of me - the man kept going, pushing and pushing like a bulldozer. He even dared to touch Y/N's bicep. Moments before Zemo could interfere, smoke almost coming out of his nostrils, something in Y/N snapped and he suddenly stood up and face the man completely, taking in a pose that could only be described as an anime fan doing the stand for their Attack on Titan anthem.

-Nie będzie Niemiec pluł nam w twarz, ni dzieci nam germanił! Orężny wstanie hufiec nasz, Duch będzie Nam hetmanił! - Y/N started singing a Polish song from the times of World War II, a one that he had learned some time ago, not knowing that one day he would actually use it, but holy hell did it feel good to see the absolute shock and confusion on the German's face. He was truly stunned. So stunned in fact that he couldn't even form a coherent answer, further on making a fool of himself and after finally realising that, he simply walked away, leaving Y/N alone.

Over the loud music, he could hear his husband absolutely losing his shit, laughing hard and almost doubling over because of it since he understood most of what Y/N just sang, the two languages, Polish and Sokovian being somewhat similar, letting him catch out certain words or phrases and actually understand them. Y/N turned to his husband with a cheeky grin on his face, leaning back on the bar before taking his drink into his hand and downing it in one go.

-I fucking can't deal with idiots… - he muttered, proud of himself as the grin never left his face for the next minutes they've stayed near the bar, chuckling from time to time as they've reminiscened about the guy's facial expression when he started singing.

[agentnico]

Fallout - season 1 (2024) review

The evolution of the phrase “okey dokey” throughout this show says so much for the good old fashioned writing of this season.

Plot: Over 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse devastates America, a violent raid by bandits on an underground fallout shelter forces one of its residents to set out into a barren wasteland filled with radiation, mutated monsters, and a lawless society of those who remained on the surface.

For a very long while in the cinephile and gaming community there has been this shared agreement over the video game adaptation curse. Video games have been plagued with adaptations that end up being met with terrible reception due to a combination of bad writing and poor visuals that don’t live up to the original game. To this day this fact arguably still continues with the likes of Resident Evil and Uncharted. And look, I love Hiroyuki Sanada as much as the next person, but that Mortal Kombat flick from a few years back was not great either. That being said, in recent years there has also been a trend of genuinely successful attempts that have translated surprisingly well. Detective Pikachu banked a lot on Ryan Reynolds sarcastic persona and the Pokémon creatures were utilised well; Netflix’s The Witcher has done pretty well for itself, well until now when they’ve swapped their lead actor for one of the cheaper Hemsworth brothers; Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic flicks I’m not a fan of myself, but evidently from the box office numbers and audience reactions they seemed to have hit the right spot in the fans’ hearts. Then there’s The Last of Us. The original game won people over for its heart-wrenching human drama against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, and the TV show has done a perfect job of capturing that. Every episode has recreated the game down to the last detail, and even when things are changed, the spirit of the source material is still kept alive. All of that makes it a rare adaptation that succeeds in giving people a new version of the original game and then some, giving it plenty to offer for old and new fans alike.

Now it seems that positive trend continues, furthermore underlining that the video game adaptation curse is now a myth. Well maybe, as that upcoming Borderlands movie is a looking suspiciously clunky but we’ll see how that one turns out. As for presently, Prime Video has shocked us all by giving us a truly fantastic show in Fallout. And I say shocked as the last time Prime Video adapted a famous property was The Rings of Power series and they butchered that one hard! I mean I’m sorry, but making an entire over-bloated season about the mystery of who is Sauron, and at the end the reveal is he’s some teen-Twilight-era dude and we’re supposed to all gasp in awe?? Look, I get that it’s not Prime Video themselves to be blamed, but the show runners and writers, but naturally Prime has left a sour taste in my palette. HOWEVER - Fallout is actually genuinely a good time!

I’ve never really played any of the Fallout games. Never appealed to me, and I have always found it difficult to get into any Bethesda games. My fiancée however tried Fallout 4 half a year ago and apparently gave up as she found it too confusing and she got stuck at a monster boss fight early on. I do hope she wasn’t stuck fighting one of those tiny little bugs, surely not. That would be embarrassing. So I went into this show without being a fan of the games, though I was aware of its post-apocalyptic backdrop. One of the best things about Fallout the TV show is that it’s very accessible whether or not you’ve played the games. Yes, fans of the games will notice a lot of fun stuff from the source material, but even if you’re a total newcomer, you can watch and follow along without any issues.

The story revolves around three main characters 200 years after a nuclear war basically destroyed everything, driving some survivors into underground bunkers called Vaults. Ella Purnell (that’s right, one of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children!) plays Lucy MacLean, a Vault Dweller who, through unfortunate circumstances, leaves the relative safety of Vault 33 and travels to the surface on a life or death mission. She’s joined by Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) a squire in the secretive Brotherhood Of Steel - Power Armor-wearing knights who roam the land looking for lost technology. Maximus is almost as green as Lucy, venturing out on a quest he’s not very well prepared to tackle. Finally, rounding out the main trio, we have Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a gunslinging bounty hunter and mutant who’s managed to live for well over 200 years. We learn more about his past as celebrity Cooper Howard through a number of flashbacks. Naturally more characters pop up along the way. I just want to urge anyone sitting on the fence to give this series a shot. It’s great fun, with plenty of humour, action and mystery and its creators clearly put a lot of effort into making it true to the game universe, while also being inventive with their storytelling.

It’s also really gory. You get to see a lot of human flesh out on display (heck, there are even zombies in this thing!) and it’s all visually looked really well done. Again with Bezos’ Amazon budget, like The Rings of Power show, Fallout looks like an expensive series. It just so happens that unlike Rings of Power this one happens to also have good writing, characters and narrative. There’s some impressive world-building, with every shot filled with various details that I’m sure will please the game fans. The story is really engaging, and I loved getting into the politics of this world and how companies like Vault Tec have more to them that meets the eye.

The primary element that works for Fallout is that’s its easy. As in it’s really enjoyable and straightforward and makes for a solid binge watch. Walton Goggins is superb as the Ghoul. Johnny Pemberton as Thaddeus, a squire for the Knights, was a great use of using a comedic actor and making them play things straight by simply trying to survive in this world, so that when the funny lines did come up they hit strong. Oh, and did I mention that Agent Dale Cooper himself, my boy Kyle MacLachlan is in this show?? Honestly, Fallout is a great time! Amazon, I still haven’t forgiven you for Lord of the Rings, but this is a good attempt for an apology.

Overall score: 7/10

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Anniversary

Once there was a man whose wife was killed in a car crash. This man, a minor celebrity in the field of anti-depressant psychopharmacology and the father of three very small children, found himself in this state for roughly twenty-three hours. During this time, he experienced nothing. He was frozen, in every sense of the word; his mind was like a halted computer program, even more so than an actual computer would be, and he could only think in terms of what was being said to him and what he was doing at that moment.

The man's mind slowly returned to him during the next day, his memory showing him the tragic event, the cars, the survivor's guilt, the depression, the suicide attempts, and finally the triumphant epiphany that he had arrived at during the trip to the hospital after he received the news. All of these things seemed to belong to some other person, that very person, as it happens, who had thought, briefly, about committing suicide.

Now that he was able to think in the long term again, the man soon found himself wondering about the event. Was he alone in finding it puzzling? Of course, the circumstantial evidence was plenty. It was not difficult to piece together a story that made sense. The man's wife went to the pharmacy to pick up a necessary medication, only to be hit by a delivery van while crossing the street.

The man went on to have a very difficult time seemed to resume its rightful course. As his children grew up, he neglected to mention the incident to them, because it felt somehow too private. As time went on, the man's friends and colleagues devised increasingly elaborate reasons for why he was acting strangely. He was still acting strangely, if that is the right phrase for it; though he had all but forgotten the details of the event, he still maintained a stunned silence in response to any information about it. He often had difficulty maintaining eye contact with people during long conversations, and would sometimes give the impression of looking right through them.

His graduate students, none of whom had seen the man without his goatee, came up with the hypothesis that his wife, whatever she had been before her demise, had somehow returned to haunt him.

The man's nonspeaking stare seemed to reflect both the memory of what he had been in the moments before his wife's death, and the current state of his frozen mind. Why had it been frozen at all? After all, in the days following the accident, he had to do what little work he could; there were still colleagues to impress. The man's unspoken explanation was that he wanted to tell his colleagues what he had seen, but he knew that if he did, they would react exactly as if he were a member of the Invisible Insurgency.

Over time, the man developed increasingly effective tactics to keep his secret, such as acting as though he had seen the event, and only then freezing up, and was now able to maintain a largely normal life. He did feel vaguely disappointed whenever his graduate students made their conjecture that he was haunted by his wife; he found the idea hard to argue with, though, since it was as though it came from their own suspicions.

The man, by his late forties, began to regret never having said anything about the thing he had seen. But he knew, by now, that the concept of saying something was not one that he could comprehend. When he was unable to comprehend things, he became quiet, a state which could be likened to the man's nonspeaking stare.

Over the years, the man had heard about the antidepressant-induced memory lapses that are a fairly common side effect of his field. This is not what the man had experienced, though, and he would explain as much at every opportunity. No, for him, it had been a whole other kind of thing.

When the man turned fifty, his son asked him about his wife's death. Perhaps he had seen it, the son suggested, as he was talking about it. The man became quiet, and stared at the floor.

The man attained retirement when he was sixty. In his defense, he had not been entirely awake when the doctors put him under the knife to remove the goatee. The retirement ceremony was attended by a few of the man's friends, some of his colleagues, and most importantly, the man's children. The man spoke at length about what he had seen, and the world he lived in, and what might be done to change it. He said all this without a trace of his normal stare, or the usual kind of silence.

The conference's organizers, who had managed to secure a rather famous keynote speaker just days before, were upset by his speech and its brevity. On the bright side, they could claim that they had a famous person at the conference. When the man's colleagues wondered why the man had not told them about the event years ago, he answered that it had been too hard for him to explain what he had seen.

Many things became clear to the man during the next twelve years. He made a study of the supposed cause of his wife's death: a delivery van. The man's son, no doubt now realizing what a mistake he had made, put aside his own pride and brought back the memory of the thing that he had seen. Together, they disproved the most popular theory, which held that the accident had been caused by a rare misstep by a newly hired delivery van driver. In fact, the man's son collected evidence showing that the accident had been caused by the man's former colleague, a man who was now an emeritus professor of mathematics, who had mistaken the man's wife for the delivery van. The man's son went on to work at a local newspaper, a job which had been partly secured with the help of the same man who was now on trial for his wife's death. It