#they should have done this with buffy the vampire slayer

[littlenastieswewhispered]

“buffy ended the show single :)” ok but only because her current love interest just DIED!! (he near quite literally died in her arms! in sacrifice for her!) her last words of the entire series were telling him she loves him and then saying his name in admiration. she isn’t single; she’s a widow.

[a-heart-of-kyber]

The Still Pretty podcast's read of Empty Spaces is...pretty off base. A big yike.

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie who asked me about the mass grave in Gaza, you're pretty close to the truth of it rather than the anti-Israel propaganda.

First of all, the mass grave next to the hospital in Gaza has been shown already to have been dug before Israel got there.

Now, it wasn't untouched by the Israeli army, but that is a result of two contributing factors, both of which linked to Hamas.

One is because of the bodies of terrorists, who were using the hospital, and were killed during the fighting. They had to be buried somewhere. This is the Nasser hospital, the biggest medical center which was still active in Gaza after the very biggest, the Shifa hospital, had to be raided twice, because Hamas terrorists returned and re-took it, after the IDF evacuated it to allow the place to function as normal. If during the second operation in the Shifa hospital, there were 200 terrorists killed there, and at least 900 more suspects arrested, of which at least 500 were confirmed terrorists as of the end of the operation on April 1, how many terrorists were fighting against the IDF from Nasser, the last big medical complex they could use, when we know the abuse of Gaza hospitals for murderous purposes by terrorists is systematic? (I'm not accepting any numbers claimed by "Gaza's health officials," where no terrorists are mentioned at all, because that's Hamas speaking) Where do people think all those terrorists went to, those who did not surrender? Do people think this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and if you stake a villain through the heart, then their body just goes "poof" into thin air, and there's no need to bury it?

The second factor is that Israel did exhume corpses that had been previously buried on the Nasser hospital grounds, to test them for DNA, in case they were what was left of murdered Israeli hostages, still held captive.

This has been done for a while, before this mass grave by the Nasser hospital started making the social media "headlines," so no one can claim this is an excuse made up now, because of this, and in fact, several bodies of Israeli hostages were returned to Israel thanks to the IDF's work, and the first one that comes to mind is that of 19 years old Noa Marziano, because her body was exhumed from the Shifa hospital grounds. She was held hostage in an apartment near the hospital, then moved into Shifa itself, and murdered in its basement. So yeah, guess where they buried her... Together with Noa, Yehudit Weiss' body was also recovered from the Shifa hospital grounds, and returned to her family in Israel.

If people don't like that the Israeli army has had to check bodies buried on hospital grounds for DNA, and then re-bury them together in a mass grave in the same place, then they should take it up with Hamas for murdering people on hospital grounds and for holding corpses as hostages in the first place. We're all living in the twisted reality created by Hamas.

And you know how we can tell that this part, about the bodies being exhumed to check for DNA isn't made up? Because we have regular Palestinians themselves admitting the bodies they're currently looking for in the mass grave are of their loved ones who were already dead by the time Israel got there.

Just to summarize this lunacy, we are being accused of massacring terrorists (who are legitimate targets, killing them was not a massacre, even if we were really successful at it) and already dead people. Make it make sense.

As for the added accusations that Israel skinned the Gazans and stole their organs... The anti-Israel crowd literally claims Israel stole organs in Haiti, when all we did was to send our military emergency medical staff to set up a field hospital there (to help the victims of the earthquake in 2010), and these lies are currently being repeated in print by The Palestine Telegraph (which is based in Gaza. You know, the place where nothing is published if it goes against Hamas interests). If that act of kindness and help could be turned into something sinister and monstrous just because the Jewish state was involved, it's almost a given the same would happen when Israel is at present dragged against its will into a defensive war. It's a recycling of the age old antisemitic blood libels, portraying the Jews as bloodthirsty and capable of any monstrosity. It's antisemitism, pure and simple. THAT is why the Jewish state has to be "comically evil in every way imaginable," like you said. Remember how for centuries in Europe, the 'bloodthirsty Jew' trope served to lie that we kill Christians to use their blood when baking our Passover matzahs? The following cartoon isn't from the Middle Ages, it's from 2018, and depicts Gazans, not European Christians (see the tire in one Palestinian man's hand? In Hamas-organized violent riots that aimed to breach Israel's border in 2018, as they succeeded in doing on Oct 7, many participants burned tires to create a screen of black smoke that would impair IDF soldiers' vision):

Meanwhile, the Islamist terrorist organization and Hamas' buddy, Hezbollah (which has been intentionally firing at civilian communities in northern Israel for months), has killed yet another Israeli civilian overnight, Sharif Suad, an Israeli Arab Muslim Bedouin. Watch the anti-Israel crowd ignore his murder, just like they erase all Israeli civilians victimized. Arab deaths don't count if they can't be used against the Jewish state.

I hope this helped! Take care. xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[slashingdisneypasta]

Hades x Reader || Drabble

Plot: He's a villain; So you would- could never, ever fall in love with him.

'Sooner or later you're gonna want it. And the second- the second that happens, you know I'll sup in; have myself a real good day.' - Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

... But he'll still wait patiently, for you.

Warnings: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mischaracterisation?

Tagging: @asperol-with-izzy , @disney-android-foundation , @lady-love88 , @marinerainbow , @miss_understood , and @yesthetrashbin .

The instant that you see the villain in your house, waiting for you again lounging on your bed, smoke spread all over the floor; you groan. "Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- "

Hades only shows a flicker or irritation by your obnoxiously drawn-out moan, before its snuffed out with a roll of his shoulders and he gets up from your bed. Now his head grazes the ceiling but he comes here so often, asking you on walks with him and bringing you dinner you couldn't have scrounged for yourself with a weeks pay despite how many time's you've told him no, never, so you're past the fear of him setting the house on fire. His yellow eyes glow in the dim room and, like always, it causes a little warmth to spready in the pit of your belly- you ignore it. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be gone in a sec, okay babe? I got places to be today, anyway. Just gimmie a minute, here."

"Why should I?"

"Uh- " This time real frustration passes over his face; settling for a few moments as he speaks. "Well you don't have that much of a choice, doya babe? So just shut up and listen, eh?"

Not-at-all scared, you just roll your eyes, setting your basket down on the side table and crossing your arms impatiently over your chest. "Fine. What do you want? I don't see any exotic fruits... another walk?"

Here, a smirk slips over his mouth; The flames atop his head give a happy crackle, and he gently shakes his head. "Not this time. Unless, I mean- you want to?? I can reschedule my meeting with the Fates, if you- " When he reads your expression, a familiar and cold 'hell no' written all over it, he sighs. Disappointed, but... not surprised at all, anymore. "Right. Right- uh, look babe. I just came here to let ya know, I... "

Hades? Lost for words?? That almost concerns you. Almost makes you lower your freezing cold exterior, and ask- ... but no. No. Instead, you tighten your arms over your chest and increase the impatient, expectant look in your eyes. Like, hurry up.

"... Okay. Look. I like you, (Full name). I might even go so far as to say I'm fallin' for ya- and thats new to me. I'm lost in some really unfamiliar waters, here," He chuckles, nervously, looking truly out of his depth for a moment. "Thats never happened to me before, this is new, and I- I- I'm tryin' to do it right. Sweep you off your feet; all that romantic jazz. Which I honestly think is kinda psychotic-... But uh... " His eyes lift from somewhere on the ground to your left, up to your eyes and he gives you another half-smirk. "I think we both know its not my thing."

... breaking your silence for a moment, you give a little tiny nod; not sure where this is going. "We do." You say quietly.

"Yea. Well, between you and me- its not workin' as well as you'd think, is it?"

"... no."

"Right, so," He rolls those broad shoulders again, giving his neck an uncomfortable stretch. "I'm uh- I'm gonna stop trying."

That gives you pause. " -What??"

"-not that I'm done here, exactly, no no no. I don't give up so easy, sweetheart. I'm gonna be here, or well- around. Waiting. And some day if... And someday when, you decide ya want me, then I'll come for ya. Just call."

Eyebrows furrowing, you suddenly remember something Hades said earlier. You'd almost forgotten it, because it seemed unimportant before, but now seems significant. "... Why are you going to meet with the fates?" Does he... know something? Is going to ask something?? What-

He just grins, infuriatingly. And his body begins to disappear into smoke, and your eyes widen- because- wait! "Remember what I just told you, babe. Keep it in mind, mull it over. I got nothin but time and I don't mind using it waiting on you. You're kinda worth it, eh?" -He didn't answer your question!

"But!- "

"Lookin' forward to your call, sweetheart."

"I'm not gonna call!- "

"Uhuh."

[prose-for-hire]

Evol (or, a backwards love story)

Pairing: Spike x reader

Request: Hey I love your spike x reader fics I was wondering if you could do one were like they both have a crush on eachother and he invites her over to his crypt but it's super fluffy and he makes it all romantic with candles and shit

Reader isn't a big fan of pink but doesn't like hate it or anything (just a heads up in case you love pink (like me) and it takes you out of the story).

Requested by: anon

A/N: Be kind please this is the first fic I've done in ages! Hope this is okay, love 💖

You had been in deep thought, your mind travelling ahead of you as your limbs tried to follow. But your wandering mind had led you down an unknown path. You had taken a strange turn somewhere and found yourself in unchartered territory.

You were at a crossroads, in almost pitch darkness. The streetlights had disappeared a couple of streets ago and you weren’t entirely sure where you were. You were fumbling through the dark now, trying to find something to hold onto, to anchor you.

You found yourself connecting with something, a figure in the shadows. You groaned, the last thing you needed tonight was to get eaten, your top was brand new. You recoiled slightly but a pair of steady hands righted you. He, of course, could see in the dark.

“What’re you doing round these parts, pet?” His voice came from the darkness, retracting his hands, a flame from his lighter ignited so that you could see.

“Got kinda turned around… I’m lost”

“Can’t have that, can we, love? If you’re not careful somethin’ nasty might eat you up” His eyes glinted with amusement, his lips curled slightly in that irresistible way he did. Even when he was being ‘evil’ he was attractive to you. You were doomed to fall for him.

“What did we talk about Spike?”

“Too much?”

“Only a little” you smiled despite yourself, now unable to look up from your feet. You were afraid that you would reveal too much, he could read you like a book. He always had, ever since you met a year ago.

It was tongues and teeth. Blood and sweat. You were backed against the wall, the vibrations from the music pulsing through you. You grasped the black t-shirt that clung to him so perfectly, the vampire you had only heard about.

You knew he and Buffy had faced each other on numerous occasions, you just happened to miss him each time. You had met them in college and had only known of the stories about William the Bloody at this point. But you always liked to judge people for yourself, anyway. And, well, you hadn’t realised how beautiful he was, you had been taken by him as soon as he stomped up to the bar and sulkily ordered a beer.

You heard voices through the crowd, through the headiness of that moment. Voices you recognised. You pulled away, your face a picture; as if you had seen a ghost. You weren’t supposed to be here,

“Go home” He had hissed, covering you as you slid away. Taking Buffy’s attention.

You should have known then he had a soft spot. Or, well, the potential for one. Usually he would have relished the awkwardness of Buffy walking in to find you kissing a vampire. Drinking with demons and beating them at kitten poker. But if he had the chance to do that again he wasn’t going to ruin it by getting the ultimate mood slayer involved, now was he.

But you hadn’t ever had any real time alone since. Sure, sometimes it felt like you were both the only people in the room but there was barely a chance to even allude to what you had done let alone reignite the moment again. Though he of course tried at every moment he got.

“Got have plans, love? My crypt’s only down the way” he spoke softly, almost tentatively if you didn’t know better.

“I’m late. I’m supposed to meet some… friends” You hesitated and you knew he caught it before you looked back into his eyes. Eyes you were slowly being lost in.

“Not those bloody losers again. You’re better than them”

“Those losers are actually my friends”

“Friends that you hide yourself from” He shrugged, not entirely able to drop it. He couldn’t hide his distaste for Buffy and the others.

Despite it all he gestured with his head, offering to take you to your friends. Even though you knew Sunnydale quite well after moving into your dorm a year ago and running around the town many times after (or often away from) demons, you still got lost a lot. It was a kind of running joke amongst the other scoobies.

He lit a cigarette as you rounded the corner, only pausing to offer you one which you declined with a soft smile. A smile that made him want to drop to his knees and declare his undying love for you. It pained him, how soft he was for you.

He shoved the other hand in the pocket of his duster, jaw tensing as he saw your friends speaking rapidly, apparently concerned about something. Willow noticed you first.

“We thought you’d been all ookified, we were worried!” She flung herself around you with a big smile of relief.

“You got lost, huh?” Buffy said with a smile, which quickly dropped when she noticed the company you were in.

“Yeah, Spike helped me get my bearings. Thanks, again” You grinned, despite Xander and Buffy’s distaste. Anya patted your head a little patronisingly at your habit of getting yourself lost.

“Anytime, pet”

“Yeah, right, evil dead is only good for being evil… and dead”

“Not that I’m not enjoying the boy’s wit, but I’ll be off now” He addressed only you, hoping to keep the barbs at his expense from the group to a minimum. Someone muttered something distasteful about Spike, which was of course in his earshot, but he didn’t turn back around.

“He’s, like, the lowest of the low.” someone agreed, shaking her head at the figure walking away.

You weren’t sure why that moment was the moment. Why you spoke something that had been so safely unspoken.

“Spike! Spike, wait-”

“Y/n, what’re you doing?!” your friends called after you, still in earshot as Spike ditched his cigarette and swung around to face you.

“Love, you go and do the friendship thing with the meddlin’ kids, okay? I’d rather stake myself than spend an evening with them”

“I know, I was wondering if the offer’s still on that is, well, I’m free tomorrow night”

He put both hands in his duster, rocking on the balls of his feet and looking down. It was as if he thought you were being cruel to him. Taking him up on his offer just to hurt him by rejecting him in the next breath with all your friends watching. He had to know you better than that, surely.

You reached for his arm, willing him to feel what you felt. Know what you knew. That you and him were meant for each other, that this chance that you were trying to take meant a lot. For someone you had kissed so passionately before it was strange how nervous you were suddenly at even grazing his skin.

“After sunset, tomorrow at your crypt?” You asked softly, though the vulnerability in your voice bled through. He saw it, he saw that your intentions were pure. There were some gasps and some vague unimpressed whispering from your friends behind you but you couldn’t bring yourself to take notice.

Instead you waited with bated breath for his answer. You knew he had offered earlier but there was always the chance he was doing it to tease you. That he had no interest in you. That he was playing with you, looking for something quick and easy. You could do that, of course you could, if it meant being close with him. But it may just break your heart beyond recognition.

This purgatory, which only lasted a second, felt like it lasted hours. Your grip on him tightened, as if you were afraid he would slip away from you.

He nodded, to anyone else it probably looked as if he wasn’t bothered. What he didn’t know was that you could read him in the way he did for you. You saw the slight upturn of his mouth before it disappeared, you noticed the way his eyes searched you with wonder for a fraction of a moment. You knew then, for sure, he felt for you as deeply as you had started to fall for him. Everything you had learned about him you held close, collecting it as the most valuable treasures.

You arrived the next night a minute after the sun set and promptly knocked on the door of Spike’s crypt. You could hear some scuffling about from behind the door and a lot of a British accent muttering ‘bloody bollocks’ every so often which made you smile softly.

You waited patiently until he swung the door open, allowing you to walk in. You gasped, he had transformed the main level of his crypt for the evening. There were candles everywhere, on every single available surface and surrounding the sofa where there was a couple of blankets piled up and a stack of VHS tapes.

There were wilted roses that had shed their petals all over the floor beside the TV set and you tried to ignore the high probability that these came from a few of the graves surrounding the crypt. Stuck haphazardly to the walls were pink and red hearts made from crepe paper and various strips hanging about.

I mean, it was a huge fire risk but you tried to ignore this fact as you appreciated his scattered decorations. You assumed that Spike was ensuring you were aware that he thought of this as a date.

“How was your night with America’s most haunted?” Spike asked, you could tell he was genuinely interested if you had a nice evening after he left you at the Bronze.

You told him everything in complete detail, you were a keen storyteller and he adored this about you. You spoke in such detail that he could picture himself there beside you as the night played out.

“Drink, pet?”

“Please”

You looked around as he started rummaging around with bottles and glasses. You read the words on some of the hearts, your brow furrowing slightly.

“EVOL? I think it’s spelt-”

“No, love, it was meant to be- they’re from the craft store. They, well, I didn’t want it to scare you off now did I?” He turned the heart around, the word was actually ‘love’. He hadn’t wanted you to think he was coming on too strong so he had hidden the word. Though the rose petals and the various pink and red crafts might well have done that if you hadn’t realised how deeply you felt for him.

You laughed, you couldn’t help it. You hadn’t been sure if he was making sure that all this romantic stuff didn’t take away from him being bad. Telling you he was ‘evil’.

He passed you a glass, different from usual where he would just drink straight from the bottle. You were surprised to note that it was your favourite drink. It was incredibly endearing that he had learned this about you, or perhaps it was his favourite and you just had that in common.

The glow of the candlelight accentuated his features, casting shadows from his cheekbones. You felt yourself leaning into him as he spoke animatedly, it was entirely involuntary. When you thought about it, you had done everything in reverse. You were tentatively courting after sharing a much more passionate moment the night you properly met. You much preferred it this way though, in some ways it cemented now just how much Spike had grown to care for you through the stolen moments you had together through the year.

Quick glances and lingering touches. The way he had thrown himself in front of a demon to ensure you would be safe. The way he always offered to walk you home, even if he was shot down every time by the slayer. He always made jokes in the hope that you would laugh.

The evening was lovely, you shared drinks and watched films together, while Spike made biting commentary on each scene. You were wrapped in a blanket while he stayed room temperature. He sat a little more rigidly than usual, seemingly unable to relax. He wanted the night to be perfect. He was concerned he might say something wrong, something a little too murderous and off-putting.

You hadn’t really been paying attention to the film. He had done everything to try and prove he was a man worthy of your love. You could sense he was holding back but you loved him for who he was, the flaws wrapped into the thread of his personality were just as important to you.

“I really like you, Spike. You don’t need to impress me, you know that right? I’m already yours, if you’d let me be” You spoke barely above a whisper. He turned to you, searching your face before a smile grew slowly on his lips. It was a smile you had only ever seen him give to you.

“You’re tellin’ me I can take all this sodding pink bollocks off my walls now then?”

“I mean, it’s a real improvement from the cobwebs but it’s not really my colour,” You grinned, pressing your lips to his quickly before pulling away.

You leaned against him as the night progressed, leaning your head into the crook of his neck. He shifted as you moved down the sofa so that you could comfortably rest against him. He inhaled, savouring your scent. It felt like home. He closed his eyes, focusing on your heartbeat thrum steadily. You were truly here, by his side.

Your body was made to fit beside his, you knew this as if it was fact. You couldn’t imagine a future where you wouldn’t hold each other. Or share moments such as this. The warmth from the candles and the care and attention that Spike continued to show you told you that his feelings at their core were clearly no act, his execution had been slightly exaggerated only because he hadn’t really dated in the usual way for a good few decades.

He slid his arm along the headrest behind you and you settled into watch the next movie. After a moment you realised his eyes were still trained on you, he couldn’t keep his eyes off you. When you looked at him, giving him a quizzical look, he just gestured back at the screen with his head a soft smile on his face.

If this was the first proper date, you were looking forward to the rest. In fact, as his arm snaked around you and pulled you close, you were not sure you would ever be ready to leave.

[raisedbythetv89]

Listennnnn to be loved is to be seen

Buffy is SURROUNDED by people who project and project and project some more onto her without ever truly seeing her and just trying to force her to be whatever they want/need her to be often leaving her feeling used, abused, and lonely.

And so while yes on the surface the Buffy bot is icky as hell and obviously irl all of us would be rightfully horrified if that happened to us. This is fictional and with a still evil but trying to be good but with no human soul to help guide him on how to be good Spike - who has been rejected and is honoring that rejection and finding a solution to leave real Buffy alone by giving him a place to put all his feelings for Buffy somewhere that isn’t Buffy herself - programs her so well and therefore showing how well he sees and understands her!! NO ONE ELSE could have programmed that exact Buffy that was believable enough to fool her friends. So yes it’s twisted but this is a vampire falling in love with the slayer if you want completely healthy truly go elsewhere lololol but so the bot is used to show just how well Spike truly understands her and more importantly what he loves about her which given the partner she had right before this was Riley who VERY CLEARLY hated how strong she was and that she was the slayer…

spike is like SHE NEEDS A DEDICATED SLAYER FOLDER

HE PUT THE YEAR WILLOW CAME OUT IN HER BIO 😭😭😭😭 angel and riley truly could never in a million years pay close enough attention to the people in her life that Buffy cares about to add info like that

The choice of “make spike happy” instead of something like “pleasing spike” feels significant because it’s able to encompass a wider range of things including her care for her friends since that seems to be the active folder when she’s accessing information on them. Buffy caring about other people makes him happy even though he’s morally grey at best at this moment 😭 AND TWO KISSING PROGRAMS ARE THE VERY FIRST THINGS IN THAT FOLDER 😭😭😭 he doesn’t just “want to fuck her” like people try to claim he wants to love her 🥲 he wants her kisses like I’m gonna throw up from how disgustingly tender and heartbreaking that is

Buffy bot calls both her and Buffy very pretty and tells Giles he “should listen to the other Buffy because she’s very smart”. Spike made sure the Buffy bot was a Buffy that loved herself and valued her intelligence like I cannot even begin to tell you how NONE of this is your run of the mill making just a sex bot of your crush because not being able to have sex with them upsets you. He wants to love her because he knows she needs it as much as he wants to give it to her

We have this moment where Buffy bot has finally found Spike who she’s been looking for and worried about the whole time and seemingly only cares about him and no one else and she sees he’s SEVERELY injured yet when Giles calls for help Buffy bot responds at the same time as Buffy does and runs to his aide leaving Spike like she’s still just so BUFFY at her core even if the superficial aspects have been changed 😭

if we compare this moment to the one in something blue where xander calls out for help in the crypt in an IDENTICAL situation yet ACTUAL BUFFY just continues to make out with Spike when he’s not even injured at all 💀 like Spike didn’t even give Buffy bot the “extra love sick” component Buffy herself exhibits for him on multiple occasions 😭

and of course - WE END WITH THIS KISS AND THE WAY SHE’S FUCKING LOOKING AT HIM BRO 😩 she’s like holy shit he was for real when he said he loved me no one has ever done anything like this for me while simultaneously showing how COMPLETELY loyal and obsessed they are and how well they know and love all of me AND my sister like

‼️I CAN DEPEND ON HIM‼️

So close to death even Xander is feeling sympathy for him yet clocks IMMEDIATELY it’s her and she’s just like hi 🥹 yes it’s me, I really just did that. I see you and what you did for me. HAVE HOPE KEEP TRYING DONT GIVE UP.

If Buffy loves you she forgives you pretty easily and I personally think that’s what we’re seeing here with Spike like kissing him in the same ep she learns of the Buffy bot is low key CRAZY 😹 but truly people who have done less for her have done far worse!!! The bot kept dawn and tara from being taken instead and he proved he would protect both of them with his life and like she already loves him which is why she even went for the kiss she was like REALLY THE SITUATION CALLS FOR IT WHAT’S A GIRL TO DO 🤷🏼‍♀️

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

Our victors, everyone! After over two months of polls, we have our winners, our beloved ladies done the absolute dirtiest. Writers, take heed: do not follow in their writers' footsteps! Learn from the pitfalls their writing fell into, and do better! Delightful characters, all three, who were mistreated by the narrative and written with misogynistic tropes that should not be replicated.

In third place, we have Misa Amane from Death Note!

In second place, we have Cordelia Chase from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series!

And finally, in first place, we have Bumble from Warrior Cats!

Stay tuned, everyone, the Misogynistic Media Tournament to determine the series we should replicate least when it comes to writing ladies and beat with a Respect Women bat most will be coming December 5, 2023 at 12pm EST over at @misogynisticmediatournament!

[aphrogeneias]

Luiza you have no idea what you’ve done because I’ve wanted to talk about this for ages.

Remember that scene in the bronze where spike and buffy are up on the balcony? And he’s fooling around with her (fingering or fucking her it’s left vague lmao) and he’s telling her to look down at her friends and saying she belongs in the dark with him????

That with Eddie.

do they know?

summary: eddie always knows exactly where to find you, even when you don't want to be found.

pairing: vampire!eddie munson x slayer!reader

word count: 1.2k

warnings: smut (+18), a little angst at the beginning. semi-public sex, fingering, dirty talk, hair pulling, biting.

It's quiet up here, the opposite of what a nightclub should be.

Some stubborn voice in the back of your mind tells you that you should be having fun. You watch your friends from where you're standing, the empty balcony of the club you've been attending for years, dancing and joking around, making up their own silly choreographies as tonight’s band played something groovy.

Robin and Nancy hold each other's hands as they dance, Chrissy spins around in her pretty dress, Barb watches them from her trusty place at your usual table, smiling and singing along. They don't seem to notice how long you've been gone, maybe because you've been doing that a lot lately.

Hiding, that is. Leaving places early, without saying goodbye. You don't mean to, you just don't feel much like yourself these days. Not like the girl you used to be, but something new, different — scarred, tainted by something dark, marked by it.

It isn't easy to explain, the shadow that death leaves on someone. You were way too young when you took on this job, and it took a while until the weight of it started to pull you down, but it was finally starting to.

Maybe it was also due to the fact that you'd recently fallen into a bad habit, who was currently staring up at you from the dancefloor. In the middle of the sparse crowd, the only pair of eyes looking up are a deep brown, finding you in your hiding place.

You're not exactly surprised. Eddie hasn't left town in a while, and you'd seen him a couple of days ago — throwing rocks at your bedroom window until you let him in, climbing under your sheets, leaving before dawn.

If you felt colder without him in the morning than with him in your bed, when he wrapped his body around you like he loved you, you told no one.

Eddie disappears into the crowd until you can feel him again, right behind you. You don't want to give him the satisfaction of looking back, and suddenly, he's there, shielding your body with his, his chest to your back as his arms grab the railing in front of you, surrounding you with his leather clad arms.

The smell of cologne and cigarettes invades your every sense, and you need to keep from inhaling deeply. You wish you could turn around and bury your face on his chest, nuzzle into the worn cotton of his shirt, breathe him in.

You do everything to avoid the strange comfort Eddie brings you. It almost hurts, the intensity with which he draws you in.

“Not exactly the life of the party, are you?” You can feel his eyes on the side of your face, his insufferable stare paired with a grin.

“You know me.” You respond, simply.

“Mhm. You're right, I know you.” His chest vibrates behind you as he hums, caging you in even more. “All work and no play makes the little slayer a huge bitch.”

Rolling your eyes, you finally force yourself to glance at him from over your shoulder. “You came all the way here just to insult me?”

“No, but you make it hard not to.” He chuckles. “Just wanted to check on you, actually.”

He surprises you with a kiss on your shoulder, over your top. The whiplash still hasn't settled with you, the hot and cold of it all. Does he hate you? Does he… No. He doesn't.

“There's nothing to check. I'm clearly fine.” You bite your lip.

“So, you're clearly hiding from your friends”, he keeps kissing you, from your shoulder to your neck, now dragging his lips over bare skin, “for no reason?”

“I'm not hiding.” Swallowing hard, you try to stand your ground, but you already feel your walls start to crumble. “I'm just… tired, I guess.”

“Tired of what?” The hands that were on the rail are now in your waist, grabbing and squeezing you, until one of them descends to your hip, and the other up to your back. It slides up your spine, and settles on the back of your neck, while he grabs you by the hair, pulling your head back. “Of keeping up appearances? Pretending to be a good girl?”

You feel it all. His curls brushing your skin, the roughness of the hand that is now on your thigh, rising to feel you under your skirt, his nose digging on your cheek. You're surrounded by him, and regretfully, you wouldn't have it any other way.

“I'm not pretending.” You’re already breathing heavily. “I am good.”

“You sure? I don't know about that.” He finally reaches the crotch of your panties, finding them already sticky with your wetness. His fingers tease you above the fabric, lazily circling your clit, as if he has all the time in the world. “I think you're a bad, bad girl, and you know It too.”

It's all happening at the same time. He's keeping you in place with arm around your waist while he pulls your panties to the side and finally allows you to feel him, “Look at them. Do you think they know?”

You don't speak as he forces you to look forward, down to your blissfully unaware friends. It's dark where you stand, but all they'd have to do was look up and see you in this position. Heat fills your chest, up to your cheeks, and you grab his wrist, attempting to stop him.

He doesn't mind, instead he keeps his hand there, fingers slowly working your clit, dipping to your entrance to collect the slick steadily dripping from you, and back to your little button, “Do you think they know how much of a naughty little slayer you are? Do they know how much you like getting fucked by the big, bad monster you claim to hate? How much you love my fingers in your pussy, how you beg for more?”

Almost as if on cue, you plead. “Please, Eddie. Don't do this to me.”

“Do what?” He whispers, leaning his head down again, locking his lips to your chin, leaving a tender, lingering bite there. “This?”

Finally, he starts fucking you with one of his fingers, and then two. Eddie doesn't waste time, keeping a steady pace, letting you grind your clit on his palm. “You can't deny it because you know it's true. You know you love this, your body claims for me.”

You're grateful for the loud sound of the band playing, drowning out your little whimpers and moans. It's almost embarrassing how close you are already, his voice doing almost all the work for you, his thick fingers caressing your inner walls and hitting that spot inside you over and over.

Delirious little whispers of “yes, yes, yes” leave your bitten lips as you clench around him, tiny white stars behind your eyes as you cum. He keeps whispering sweet nothings in your ear — all you hear is a vague “that's it, that's my girl” at some point — as you come down, still working his fingers inside of you, slowly at first, and then removing them.

When you regain your senses, you notice the bulge in his leather pants digging into your backside.

“Are you bringing stakes around with you now?”

“Funny.” He says, but doesn't laugh. “Find me in the bathroom downstairs in five. I'm not done with you.”

Again, you feel colder when he's gone.

[tyrantisterror]

A Dozen Or So Great Vampire Ladies

Ok, so, on a mostly unrelated post the topic of good vampire ladies came up, and @bisexualdaikaiju suggested/challenged me to do a top 10 vampire women list. As a self-professed lover of vampire women, it felt like a challenge I couldn't back down from. But it is kind of challenging, for two kind of contradictory reasons.

First, while there are MANY female vampires in fiction, most of them feel like afterthoughts, getting far less characterization than their male counterparts, who more often than not are the star villains of the show. When these supporting lady vampires do get something to do, it's generally the same role: make their human lovers sad when they rise from the dead as a monster that has to be killed, an emotional beat that is often undercut by a lot of these vampire women not getting much characterization to endear them to us before they died. Everyone wants to have the Lucy Westerna plot beat from Dracula but they don't want to do the work that Bram did to make Lucy lovable. The lady vamps who get to step out of Lucy's shadow are rare - but that just makes them all the more wonderful.

The second problem is that, since this is an obsession of mine that few seem to share (there are lots of vampire fans, but man do the boy vamps get to hog the spotlight among them), I've done a lot of scattered thinking about it and I just know I'm bound to forget at least one excellent lady vampire character that should be here. And whittling it down to ten, and trying to rank them? That's too hard! My thoughts are too mercurial to do that reliably in a way I don't forget!

So instead here's a list of, like, a dozen or so lady vampires that I think are just fucking stellar, many of which I think break the mold of what pop culture makes us expect lady vampires to be. It is not ranked - I love all these characters more or less equally, and think it's a lot more interesting to see how they take their archetype in different directions than to figure out which one is "best" of the lot.

Carmilla Karnstein

I'm going to start with the most famous literary female vampire, Mircalla Karnstein from Carmilla. I think she might be the first vampire to have an unhealthy obsession with using anagrams of her real name as aliases, though I'm sure now that I've typed that someone will find an earlier example to school me. She's also the one who popularized the idea of lady vampires being extremely sapphic, with an arguably genuine romantic affection for her female victims. She's got well-deserved clout, basically, and like Dracula has been adapted countless times and reinterpreted in some excellent ways. My favorite screen Carmilla is Ingrid Pitt's take, which captures her fierceness, passion, and tragic nature so well.

2. Amy from Fright Night

Ok, we're having one Lucy Westerna knockoff on this list, but as Lucy knockoffs go, Amy is one of the best. It actually helps that she spends 90% of her movie as a human, because we get to know and love her so much before she turns monstrous. And once she does...

It is pants-shittingly terrifying. I will never stop raving about the vampire designs in this movie - they made their "game faces" so fucking monstrous and I feel like in a better world this would be the standard ever since, especially since they still gave the vampires pathos while making them so ghastly when they've got their feeding faces on.

3. Drusilla

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a bunch of vampire characters, and to its credit they did a decent job of making the ladies just as distinct as the gents. Harmony and Darla could both have made this list, but my favorite was always Drusilla, who was so traumatized before she became a vampire that it kind of overwhelms the demon spirit inside her. Like, bare minimum thing to make a lady vampire more interesting than 90% of other female vampires in fiction: give her at least one personality trait, preferably an interesting one, outside of being a vampire. Drusilla's fun, and she survives the entire series after dumping her boyfriend to be a single female vampire. Good for her.

4. Ruby from Scary Godmother

Ok look I am a fake Scary Godmother fan but kudos to the artist of the books for making a lady vampire who's very clearly of the nosferatu mold and is also explicitly benign and sweet. A+ vampire lady character design. I hope it doesn't awaken anything in me.

5. Nadja

What We Do in the Shadows is excellent at finding new takes on vampires in general - it even made me actually like Psychic Vampires as a concept, a feat I thought was impossible - but goddamn do I love Nadja specifically. She's got a distinct personality as vampire ladies go, being very confident and self-assured while also being a complete fucking goober (it is a comedy, after all). She's perfectly capable of being terrifying AND hilarious, often at the same time. A vampire girl failure, in the parlance of our site. I love her.

6. Lady Dimitrescu

I know that she's apparently only in a fourth of the game, but it's still pretty great that Resident Evil 8 decided its mascot villain - its equivalent of the Tyrant, G, Nemesis, etc. - would be the hottest woman I've ever seen a milf an 8 foot tall lady vampire. She's not dainty and willowy like most lady vamps in fiction - not an ambush hunter - but rather HUGE and capable of tossing a human around like a rag doll. She's a physical powerhouse and she looks fine feminine while doing it. Despite being an unabashed blood-sucking monster, she still has enough depth and complexity to have important relationships (like a genuine love for her "giant mass of hive mind flies" daughters), and also she gets to have an awesome transformation into a fungal vampire dragon, which is rad as hell. Also goddamn, her fashion sense is immaculate.

7. Hecate from Hellboy

"Hey, she's not a vampire! She's a goddess! That doesn't count!" Fuck you, my list, my rules. Hecate posits herself as the progenitor and mother of vampires, she drinks blood, and her main form in the comic is as a sicknasty lamia version of the iron maiden used by Elizabeth fucking Bathory, if she doesn't count as a vampire, nothing should. She is the concept of a vampire amped up to maximum capacity, a major mythological figure and an awesome villain.

...also I lowkey shipped her and Hellboy when I was a teenager. They could have made it work!

8 - 12. Carmilla and her girl squad from Castlevania

I suppose I could have counted Castlevania's Carmilla as an adaptation of Miss Karnstein - they're both basted out of Styria, both sapphic, and it's clear she's meant to be an adaptation of the former, just as the Dracula of this show is meant to be a take on Bram's famous vampire. But ultimately they're VERY different characters in the grand scheme of things - Castlevania's Carmilla has none of the tenderness and vulnerability of her literary counterpart, instead being full of barely restrained fury. She is an excellent villain, complex enough to be interesting but thoroughly despicable enough to make it VERY satisfying when she bites it.

I also love her girl posse... in concept, at least. They've all got great designs and the groundwork of interesting characters, but of the the three, only Lenore, the waifish redhead, gets to do much of note. The two on the edges kind of just show up for a few scenes and then bail before the plot catches up to them, doing very little of note - though at least the big hunky one gets one of the coolest fight scenes in the whole show.

Back to Lenore though - she gets a really nice character arc, and manages to become one of the few sympathetic vampires in the series (while still doing a lot of monstrous shit - she is not a defanged vampire by any stretch). I think her death scene is one of the most moving moments in the series finale.

13. Seras Victoria

A good female vampire has at least one non-vampire part of her personality, right? Ok, so, Seras is:

the muscle in almost every scene she is, which is to say, the one absolutely beating the shit out of people while her allies run for cover

the perky henchman/morality pet of one of history's greatest monsters

the sole ray of sunshine in cast of edgy, cigar-chomping grizzled mercnaries and antiheroes she's been pressganged into fighting alongside

the victim of some HIDEOUS trauma even before her vampirization

the protege of a wise master who gets a full hero's journey arc, taking up his mantle at the end of the series

Like, I love her. She's the secret protagonist of Hellsing. She's got layers like an onion. The scene where she killed Zora Blitz reminded me why I love anime.

(yeah it's the TFS version fuck you)

14. Youko Shiragami

My Monster Secret is not a horror manga. It is a romantic comedy about a bunch of idiots trying to keep painfully obvious secrets hidden and succeeding only because almost everyone around them is as dumb as they are, just in very different ways. It is a manga where an entire chapter can be summarized as "all the characters race to get the last McRib, using their various supernatural abilities to try and cheat their way to the front of the pack." It is one of the funniest and most heart-warming stories I have ever read, one of my favorite romances of all time, and an excellent piece of long form story-telling.

One of the two main characters is Youko Shiragami, a vampire girl who can't let anyone know she's a vampire or else her dad will pull her out of school. She desperately wants to have a normal life with friends and, like, school shenanigans, but her fear of people uncovering her secret and hating her is so immense that she's been isolating herself from everyone, accidentally torturing herself by being close to what she wants but unable to actually have it.

At least, until Kuromine, the other main character of the story, discovers her secret while trying to ask her out on a date. He ends up promising to keep her secret, and the two of them form a real friendship that blossoms into a very sweet romance, where Youko gets to display all her incongruous personality traits that go against what you'd expect of vampires - namely, that she's kind of a ditz, with an unrefined style of speech and a complete inability to be suave and seductive. She's a sweet, flaky goofball with a big heart, who just happens to drink blood and tan really quickly in the sunlight. There is no other vampire like her, and the world is richer for her being in it.

15. Marceline, the Vampire Queen

This list isn't ranked, but if it was, I'd put Marceline at the top. I think she is not only the most unique and deeply characterized lady vampire in fiction, but ranks right up there with Dracula in how she redefines the idea of what a vampire can be. Like, look at the forms she takes!

There are DOZENS of different monstrous shapes Marceline takes during Adventure Time's 9+ seasons of television, and any one of them would be a superb and memorable vampire on its own. And she's ALL of them. Just on a design standpoint, she is a standout. I think only Dracula himself could compete.

But she also explores what the concept of what a vampire is in ways no other vampire in fiction can, in part because of the unique nature of Adventure Time's setting. In a world where humans are an extreme minority and most people are weird monsters, a vampire isn't that odd, so we get to explore what being a vampire means divorced from the comparison to "normal" human beings. There's the expected tragedy to Marceline, of course - she's a 16 year old who has been stuck in that adolescent state for hundreds of years, and much of her character arc over the show (including the magnificent vampire-centric storyline, "Stakes") focuses on the horror of being stuck in that transitional state, not quite a child but not quite an adult. Marceline struggles to mature, to understand herself and others, and her vampirism both keeps her distant from reaching those goals but also gives her a lot of time to figure out how to approach them when the opportunity arirves. Marceline goes from one of the most immature and selfish characters in the show to perhaps the most emotionally intelligent, blossoming into a sensitive and thoughtful person she could never have been without first becoming a creature that seems so inherently opposed to ever having those traits.

And she did it all in a children's show where she was rarely if ever allowed to actually drink blood - a problem the writers got around by having her suck the red color out of things, which is right up there with the Joker Venom from BTAS in terms of genius ideas spawned by children's show censorship.

Marceline is the GOAT.

[lovelytsunoda]

yule shoot your eye out // lance stroll

summary: it was supposed to be a relaxing getaway. instead, a snowstorm traps y/n ocon and lance stroll inside the mount tremblant cabin they had rented, and strands esteban and his girlfriend at the airport. so until the snow melts, she's trapped with her brother's best friend, and forced to reckon with her feelings.

pairing: lance stroll x female ocon! reader ( forced proximity, brother's best friend )

warnings: sexual tension, smut scene that really does nothing for the plot but i wanted to put it in there anyways, super brief mention of masturbation (one sentence), drinking, discussion of kinks (or lack thereof because y/n is like me and needs to constantly know she's loved and desires closeness and intimacy-), mentions of poor mental health, half-assed love confessions where they somehow both know exactly what the other was going to say, esteban walks in on lance and y/n making out on the couch. i use too many romance tropes.

mount tremblant, quebec.

y/n ocon had never seen snow this bad. and she considered herself a country girl through and through. or at least, as close to the countryside as one could get in normandy. she drove at a cautious pace, a sharp detour from the way that she normally drove, in an attempt to keep control over the rented toyota.

"lance, i can't even see three feet ahead of me." she huffed, phone resting in the cupholder at the highest volume. lance stroll, her brother's best friend of over a decade was on the other end of the line, chuckling to himself as he tried to calm the girl down.

"calm down, y/n. you should be almost there, if the find my friends app is working the way that it should."

"that doesn't instill me with a lot of confidence, sir lancelot." she rolled her eyes, taking a turn far too cautiously for it to have been safe if there were any other cars on the road.

it's not her fault she's never experienced a proper canadian winter.

"just take one more right turn, you're almost there. do you not see the road signs?"

"i can't see through the fucking snow! i don't understand why we decided to come up here instead of going down to dallas with mick."

"you're the one who wanted a proper winter getaway."

"i meant the swiss alps!"

lance laughed down the phone before redirecting the conversation. "okay, i can see your headlights, you're at the bottom of the driveway. give me like, ten minutes and i'll meet you in front of the cabin. why are you using your windshield wipers to fend off the snowflakes?"

the aston martin driver did nothing to hide the laughter in his voice.

"fuck off, stroll."

lance tried to stop laughing, but y/n could still hear the joking tone in his voice. "just park near the top of the driveway, i'll come out and help you with your stuff."

"you're an angel, lance. and when i say 'angel' i mean the fucker from buffy the vampire slayer."

"duly noted." the canadian laughs, tugging on his parka before stepping out of the cabin and making his way down the steps. "where's your brother?"

"we weren't on the same flight. no, dear old estie decided not to come and visit if we were all going up to the cabin together." she rolled her eyes as she hung up the phone, watching as lance braved the snow, stumbling towards the rental car.

y/n had been studying at the university of manchester for the last two years and was almost done her program. staying in continental europe had allowed her to stay close to her family, and kept her close to racing, which had always been her passion. she was studying mechanical engineering, with a student placement at carlin. of course, her ultimate goal was to be the first female race engineer in formula one, and being able to get in at alpine wouldn't hurt.

esteban and elena would be flying out of paris, but their flight was supposed to leave an hour ago and she hadn't heard anything. no confirmation that esteban had boarded the plane, no word on any delays.

she tried not to think about it as she stepped out of the car, the hood on her puffy white jacket pulled up against the harsh wind. "let me give you a hand."

lance shook his head. "you've been driving for hours, and your flight was what, six hours long? no, i am carrying your bags."

"at least let me take the suitcase, it's heavy." she insisted, although there was a fuzzy feeling in her stomach at the stroll boy's enthusiasm to help her out.

lance had always been a sweetheart, and she'd be lying if she said that in the last three years, she hadn't felt warm and fuzzy around the aston martin driver. he always went out of his way to make her feel comfortable and included, make her laugh when she felt down. when she had been having a hard time at university, lance had come up to visit her when esteban couldn't, or when she didn't want to worry her parents.

she'd be lying if she said that picturing lance stroll in her bed was the only thing that got her off when her hand was between her thighs. that the reason she was probably still single was because she never made it past a second or third date because she kept comparing every single suitor to her brother's best friend.

"absolutely not." lance insisted. "but you can take the backpack."

"all the backpack has in it is books, a travel pillow and a fucking water bottle. come on, i feel bad." y/n insisted, making grabby hands towards her hard-scheel suitcase, backpack slung over one shoulder. "lance."

"y/n. stop arguing with me, it's cold out here. let me help you."

"fine." the ocon girl caved, locking the car and trudging her way up to the front steps of the rented vrbo cabin.

the two stumbled inside, dropping bags in the foyer and stripping out of snow-covered winter coats.

lance would be lying if he said that his line of sight wasn't immediately drawn to the tight holly-green sweater that y/n was wearing, and the way it made her curves look perfect in the warm led lights.

"i haven't heard anything from esteban since i left manchester. has he called you at all?"

"i'm sure you're overthinking, y/n." lance tried to placate the girl in front of him. "he'd call if anything was wrong. i haven't heard from chloe and scotty either."

y/n laughed, slumping down on the faux leather couch. the cabin was cozy: all cedar wood and plaid accents, shockingly Canadian in the sense of décor. fairy lights hung from exposed timbers and she tried to allow herself to relax, tucking her feet underneath a thick plaid blanket.

"i guess that's typical younger sibling bullshit, isn't it?"

lance laughed, taking a seat on the couch next to the young woman. it was all he could do to keep a respectful distance, knowing that if he was any closer, he'd probably do something stupid.

like kiss her.

"i'm sure our siblings are fine." lance reassured, thinking about his own sister and her fiancée.

"hold that thought." y/n said, sitting up straighter as her phone began to ring, esteban's name flashing across the screen. "estie? where are you?"

"we're still in paris. our flight just got cancelled because of the storm. the airline moved us to a flight two days from now, so we're going to stay down the road from the airport." esteban sounded exhausted, his voice far off as it flooded through the small speakers at the base of her iphone. "they said they'd call if anything changed. did you land okay?"

"the flight was rocky, but i made it in one piece. lance and i are at the cabin now. there's still nothing from chloe and scotty."

"putain. listen, as long as you're with lance, you're safe from the storm. just hang tight and i'll call when i have more news."

"okay. estie? stay safe. i love you."

"love you too." the phone began to crackle, her brother's next words getting lost somewhere between phone lines.

"esteban? esteban?" the three beeps from her phone indicated that the lines had gone down, the simple 'no service' icon appearing in the top right hand corner.

y/n groaned, leaning further back against the couch, knees drawn into her chest as she dropped her phone on the cushions. "the lines are down."

she knew what this all meant. she was stuck in a log cabin with lance stroll and every fond feeling that she had ever harboured for the aston martin driver. she'd either lose her mind or do something freakishly stupid.

"is esteban all right?" lance asked quietly, gingerly moving closer on the couch. y/n took that as a cue, falling straight into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. breathing in his cologne.

she'd always loved that fucking cologne.

she sighed, closing her eyes. "his flight got cancelled. they're trying to get him on a flight in a few days, but he's not exactly hopeful. it's a miracle that i got here alive, if i'm being frank."

"it's not all bad. we may not have cell signal, but we do have heating, and there's a fridge full of food and wine. a dvd player and a stack of christmas movies."

"alcohol sounds great right about now." y/n agreed, pulling the blanket further over her body.

"red wine or white?" lance asked, getting to his feet and crossing over to the kitchen. "i've also got my mom's sugar cookies."

"red, please. and bring the cookies. tell claire-anne i think she's a bloody legend."

the canadian laughed, popping the cork as he switched on the small radio on the counter, oldies christmas music flooding the open concept main floor, elvis crooning about how he'd have a blue christmas without the one he loved.

me fucking too, mr. presley.

"don't worry, she already knows." lance beamed, coming back to the living room with two wine glasses and a tin of cookies shaped like christmas trees. "have you been doing all right lately? i never felt right about heading back home after that one weekend."

the french girl knew what weekend lance was talking about. she had been in a bad place that entire week, and esteban was worried about her. he was too busy with sponsorship events and couldn't catch a flight out of france soon enough, so he had called lance. the strolls had been at silverstone that week running simulator time at the aston martin factory. lance had driven the four hours from towcester to manchester, and had stayed with her all weekend. as soon as lance came inside the apartment, she had broken down crying in lance's arms. all she had been able to say at the time had been 'i want my mom', repeating it in both english and french while lance held her, whispering that everything would be okay.

"they've been getting better. the semester ended and think the break has done wonders for me. winter semester starts up in january, and my schedule is a little lighter. i'll be working with carlin again, so once the season starts, hopefully i'll be able to get out a little bit more. i'm supposed to be back at the factory three times a week after christmas." y/n started, taking a sip of her wine, still curled up in a blanket. "i'm thinking about getting a rabbit or something. just so i'm not alone in the apartment all the time."

lance nodded along. "that might be nice. how many years do you have left?"

"two years. stephanie carlin is actually really excited about signing me on full time. just as a junior engineer, not a race engineer, but one day i'll get there."

"i have full faith. you'll be coming for brad's job in no time."

y/n laughed, the sound bordering on a snort. "what, so you can tell me that you know the car is already on fire, or that i don't know that the 'pit confirm' and 'ok' buttons are the same thing?"

"you love listening to me and brad and you know it. you think it's charming."

she raised her eyebrows, taking another sip of her wine. "charming isn't exactly the word that i would use."

the duo didn't realize how fast time would fly. conversation flowed comfortably, the wine bottle already halfway empty, the tin of cookies now reduced to a few small crumbs at the bottom of the metal container. they were now sharing a blanket, their legs resting on top of each other.

"this is going to sound completely absurd, but i need to know." lance laughed.

"it's twenty questions. nothing is too absurd." y/n laughed back. "hit me with your best shot, pat benatar."

lance cocked an eyebrow "are you wine drunk?"

"maybe." she giggled, taking another sip. "was that your absurd question?"

"no, not at all. this is: what are you into? like, in bed? because i walked in on your brother and elena once right before a press conference, and i cannot unsee that shit.”

“try hearing him through the walls. our house was small as hell, lance. imagine hearing your older brother have an orgasm. it’s traumatizing.”

“come on, you have to be into something. stop avoiding the question.”

“lance stroll, you don’t ask a woman about her kinks before a first date!”

“what are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything!” she managed to say through laughter. “really, I’m not. I don’t have any kinks.”

lance raised an eyebrow. “everybody has at least one, come on now.”

“really, I don’t. my roommate in freshman year made me take an online bdsm test, and it came back a hundred percent vanilla.”

“a kink is anything that turns you on during sex, y/n. there has to be something.”

y/n rolled her eyes, staring at her almost empty wineglass. “there is not enough red wine in the world for this conversation.” she reached towards the coffee table, pouring the last dregs of the deep red liquid into her glass.

lance looked at her intently. “now I’m curious. what secrets is little miss perfect hiding?”

“I suppose if I had to pick something, because you seem so desperate to embarrass me today,” she rolled her eyes dramatically. “I would say that my kink is romance. some girls want to give up control and have someone tell them what to do during sex, or be tied up and shit, and that's perfectly fine, for them, but I just want to be loved and cared for. I want grand gestures and rose petals and hand holding. I want to be called sweetheart, and darling, and pretty girl.”

lance raised his eyebrow again. god, he shouldn’t look that good when he looks at me like that, she thinks to herself. “that’s it? that’s what you’re so ashamed of?”

“grand romantic notions get you nowhere in the real world. I know that men are going to get bored with me real quick that way.”

“I wouldn’t.”

her heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second, her breath caught in her throat. it’s the alcohol talking, she tried to tell herself. there’s no way he just said what he said.

“I’d call you ‘pretty girl’ all night long, fuck you as tenderly and lovingly as you wanted, and I’d hold your hand the entire time, as long as you wanted me to.”

she couldn’t form a proper response. her mouth had gone dry. she stared at the beautiful man across from her, blinking rapidly as she tried to comprehend what was happening.

“uhm, y/n? hello…earth to y/n?” lance said, confusion in his voice as he looked at her. “are you okay? I think your brain kind short circuited there-“

she cut him off by planting her lips on his, practically jumping into his lap. the driver gasped in surprise before gripping her hips and holding her close. her hands flew up to cradle lances face, moaning into his mouth at the rush of sensations, the buzz that she felt throughout every nerve ending in her body.

she was kissing lance stroll.

“that’s my pretty girl.” he mumbled between kisses, pulling the blankets around their bodies.

at the sound of the pet name spilling from the canadians lips, the lips she had dreamt would someday be spilling that same praise for her in a much more intimate context, she thought she would crumble under his touch, moaning faintly as she tried to press herself up against him. she was sitting on his lap now, legs hanging off the side of the couch and lips against his, her fingertips dragging through his hair as he gripped her thigh tightly.

“lance…” she breathed heavily, the french accent in her voice wavering as the driver began to press sloppy, open mouthed kisses to her neck. “lance, baby, please don’t stop.”

lance grinned against her skin. he wanted this as much as she did, if not more. “anything for my pretty girl.”

the driver leaned back on the couch, pulling y/n's body flush against his, sliding his warm hands up the back of her sweater. she shivered under his touch, only spurring him on more.

until the lights went out with a high pitched beeping sound, the entire cabin plunged into darkness as the battery-operated radio continued to eerily play 'baby it's cold outside' as y/n jumped, tripping over lance's legs as she slid off the couch.

"jesus christ" she groaned, leaning back against the couch, the floor a piercing cold through her jeans. "what happened to the lights? even the fucking string lights are out."

"shit. the storm must have taken the power lines out." lance groaned, pulling the blanket over his lap to hide the growing tent in his jeans. "so now we have no cell phone signal, and no power."

"fucking hell." she mumbled, getting to her feet. "and no power also means no heat. esteban and elena are going to find our frozen corpses huddled for warmth in front of the fireplace."

"you're so overdramatic." lance laughed, getting up from the couch and reaching out to stop y/n from picking up the empty wine glasses. "sit down, y/n. let me handle this, pretty girl."

he said it with a grin and a wink, an overall sense of cheekiness that sent shivers down y/n's spine. she was still struggling to comprehend what had just happened.

she had made out with lance stroll, and she was about ninety eight percent certain that he enjoyed it, if the tent in his jeans was anything to go off of.

"do you have any candles or anything?"

three hours later.

the power still hadn't come back on. neither had the heat, and the fireplace couldn't warm an entire cabin. a cabin intended for six that was currently only occupied by two. a bath and body works candle that smelled scarily like a christmas tree sat on the dresser, dimly lighting up a small circle against the wall that allowed her to see just enough to pull on her plaid victoria's secret pajamas. but the flannel fabric wasn't nearly warm enough for a cabin that was rapidly losing heat.

a shiver wracked her body, goosebumps sprouting all along the hairs on her arms as she reached for the plush blanket at the foot of the bed, draping it around her body before blowing the candle out and edging the door open.

she crossed the hallway, her hands shaking from the temperature drop as she knocked on the door. she could feel heat from inside the room, indicating that lance had somehow managed to get the old woodstove in the corner working.

she hadn't bothered to try with the one in her room.

"lancelot?" she said quietly, playing into the nickname she had always used for him. "can i come in?"

the door creaked open. a loud sound against the rusted hinges. nothing wd-40 couldn't fix. "is everything okay, y/n?" lance asked, a confused and concerned look on his face.

"i'm fucking freezing. and you managed to get a woodstove to work." she shrugged, laughing softly as she gestured at the blanket she was wrapped in.

lance opened the door wider. "come on in. i've got piles of blankets, and probably some body heat."

"how reassuring." she said sarcastically, crossing the threshold into lance's room. crossing a line that could never be uncrossed as she dropped the blanket, tucking herself into the left-hand side of the bed. lance followed shortly after, draping himself over her, his arms securely around her stomach as they spooned.

"lance?" she said softly, as they lay there in the quiet and the dark. "i'm in love with you."

lance inhaled, and she could feel his entire body shudder behind her as he leaned in the whisper in her ear, his breath hot on her skin. "i've been in love with you almost since i first saw you. when my dad was first thinking about buying force india and we walked in the garage and you were there arguing with otmar in that cute little top with the bell sleeves, insisting that you knew more than the team fucking principal." he laughed, his chest rumbling against her back. "you were such a little firecracker, you know."

"and i was on a gap year as well. i took time off to help my dad with the garage. god, i thought i knew so much. i wasn't even in university yet."

"otmar followed your strategy calls that race, you know. he was unsure at first, but he got on the phone with vijay and vijay told him to go for it."

"i know. otmar told esteban afterwards, told him to give me a fucking pandora gift card."

lance laughed, trying to hide a yawn. "sounds about right. get some rest, pretty girl. see you in the morning."

eight hours later.

the room was still dark when y/n ocon woke up. she could still hear the howl of the wind outside, but the room still felt cold, the piles and piles of blankets still pulled over her shoulders. she rolled over, eyes still closed as she nuzzled into lance's chest. the aston driver groaned, one of his hands slipping down her back to cup her ass gently.

"mornin' beautiful." his voice was husky and seductive as he leaned in to kiss her.

"good morning, handsome." she said softly, her face breaking into a smile as she kissed him.

their lips moved in tandem, the air punctuated with soft giggles and wide smiles as she threw her leg over lance's thigh, trying to pull him as close as she could as he playfully smacked her ass, rolling the pair over so that he was on top.

her hands slipped up the back of his heather grey t-shirt, sliding the fabric over his head while the canadian trailed kisses down her neck, the stubble on his chin grazing the delicate skin. she moaned underneath him before he pulled away briefly to get the shirt the rest of the way off his body, casting it aside before kissing her again. her arms came up to loop around his neck, his fingers dancing across her stomach as he slowly undid the buttons on her pajama top.

"lance," she breathed. "is that. . . "

"my hard cock against your thigh?" lance winked with a sly grin. "you bet. see how turned on you make me, pretty girl? if you had said something sooner, we could have been doing this for years now. maybe i'd have even managed to put a ring on your finger."

"i guess we'd better make up for lost time, then." she grinned, helping lance take off the remainder of her flannel shirt before urging lance's head towards her rapidly hardening nipples.

"you're so beautiful, darling." he crooned, kissing and caressing as much of y/n's body as she could, her fingernails lightly digging into his upper back as he swirled his tongue over her breast.

they easily could have wasted the morning away like that. in lance's arms, y/n felt safe and secure. she felt loved, and it all felt right. something that her mother said to her when she was eighteen stuck out in her mind: when you know, you'll know.

and as she and lance shed their flannel pajama pants, his arms around her, his hands in hers as he began to thrust into her, she knew.

but she had a feeling that she had known for a lot longer than that.

"that's it, pretty girl." lance groaned, thrusting deeper and drawing a loud moan from the girl underneath him. "tell me how good i make you feel, hey? i want to know that you feel just as good as i do right now."

"yes, god, yes." she whined, eyelids fluttering shut as she watched lance bring her knuckles up to his mouth, pressing kisses to each knuckle before trailing the kisses down her arm until he reached her neck, the pace of his hips never faltering. “oh, lance, you feel incredible, love.”

"yeah? yeah, you look so pretty like this, beautiful. my pretty girl."

"oh, god! i think i-"

"are you going to come for me, pretty girl? i've got you, baby, you're safe, let go for me. milk this cock."

"oh, lance!"

as they were laying together, a tangled mass of limbs and hair, fingers still pressed to skin, sweaty bodies pressed up against one another, the power came back on, dim lights filling the bedroom as lance kissed her gently.

"i love you, y/n."

she smiled. "je t'aime aussi, lance."

four hours later.

they'd wasted the day away in the shower (having more incredible sex while they were at it), cooking together and watching christmas movies on the vhs player in the cabin's living room ("who even uses vhs tapes any more!" "people who live in cottages, babe!")

as the end credits to 'deck the halls' played on the big screen, lance and y/n softly made out in the dim light of the string lights hanging from the ceiling, curtains still pulled shut.

neither of them heard the door creak open, but they all heard esteban ocon's disgusted shout.

"what the fuck!"

"esteban, i can explain." y/n tried to reason with her brother, aware that lance's hands were in a very compromising position on her body

the alpine driver stood in the middle of the living room, snowflakes melting on his parka as he blinked, trying to make sense of why his sister and his best friend were heavily making out on the sofa.

"are those hickeys on your neck? y/n ocon-khelfane!"

"lance!" she hissed, looking over at the boy. "really? how old are you, seventeen?"

"you didn't notice when you got out of the shower?" the driver asked, trying to avoid making eye contact with esteban. "i thought you said his flight was delayed two days!"

elena shrugged. she had been standing behind her boyfriend, making the conscious choice not to get involved. "we got an earlier flight last minute. we did try to call."

"phone lines are down." y/n said apologetically. "power was out all last night, too."

"and i bet lance kept you warm, didn't he?" esteban glared at lance, ready to destroy their friendship to protect his baby sister's honor. "you have until the count or three, strulovich."

lance's eyes widened. "count fo three for what?"

"one."

"lance, run."

"he's my best friend, he's not going to hurt me. estie, come on!" lance laughed nervously. "let's talk this out."

"two."

"i think she's right." elena piped up. "you can talk it out later."

"three."

lance was off the couch in a flash. "okay, running now!"

they did, in fact, talk it out later.

but not before they wrestled each other and esteban made lance swear not to break y/n's heart.

Tags: @magnummagnussen @libraryofloveletters @daydreamingleclerc @flannel-cures @sidcrosbyspuck

[coraniaid]

I guess I'm running the risk of sounding like a broken record at this point, but I don't think I'll ever not be deeply depressed by the way so many people on here talk about Joyce Summers.

I mean, I'm just thinking out loud here, but.  Maybe the reason that Giles was much more immediately accepting of Buffy's identity as the Slayer than Joyce was might have something to do with the fact that Giles has been training to be a Watcher for over three decades when he first meets Buffy? That his family sat him down and explained to him that vampires were real when he was a child, and that he's had over thirty years to get used to that fact? And that he is in fact literally paid to train Buffy and mentor her and prepare her for being killed in the Cruciamentum after she turns eighteen and he helps rob her of her powers her destiny? 

Whereas Joyce learns about the reality of vampires and Slayers and the supernatural for the very first time while in a state of extreme emotional distress, only hours after discovering that her daughter is wanted by the police for murder, and in circumstances such that Buffy simply has no time to sit her down and explain things in more detail in the manner they would both want?  Which is a turn of events that can be attributed in large part to the fact that Giles himself repeatedly told Buffy that she couldn't possibly tell her mother about vampires, even after (1) a vampire attacked her in her own home (in Season 1's Angel) and even after (2) the vampire Buffy had been dating, who had a standing invitation into her house, lost his soul and started going after the people closest to her, people explicitly including Joyce. (And note that Giles never offers a better argument for not sharing this potentially life-saving information than Xander's "the more people who know the secret the more it cheapens it for the rest of us".)

I mean, I know you're all pretty wedded to the popular competing theory that it's because *checks notes* Giles is a perfect dad who Buffy should have been much more grateful and sympathetic towards while Joyce is an evil bitch who never once did a good thing for her daughter (and Buffy must be stupid for ever thinking or saying otherwise), but the problem is that that theory is … uh, bad, actually.  Really incredibly cartoonishly bad. And dressing it up in pseudo-progressive language doesn't make it any better.

Wringing your hands over how poorly you think the show writes middle-aged women as if there's simply nothing to be done about it except conclude that they are indeed horrible people (and maybe give them some completely new flaws the show never did), while at the same time you write endless hagiographies and apologia for the show's canonically terrible (and often just as badly under-written) men is definitely a choice though.

And yes, it is definitely true that Giles matters more to the story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer than Joyce does. It is clear that the writers care about him more as a character than they care about Joyce, and that he is consistently used in a metaphorical way that Joyce normally isn't. At best you can perhaps argue that Joyce exists to vocalize and reify Buffy's own lingering desires to be seen as respectable and 'normal', but I don't think this is a reading the show ever commits to in the systematic way it does the Mind/Heart/Spirit reading of Giles/Xander/Willow. But on a less metaphorical level, thinking about the different characters of the show purely as distinct people in their own right, nothing Buffy says or does ever suggests she cares about her relationship with Giles more than her relationship with Joyce. Quite the opposite, in fact.

[theladycarpathia]

@hellcheeranniversaryweek Day Six - Third Date

“You look like you’re gonna puke,” Dustin says and Eddie resists the urge to thump him. 

“Isn’t this your third date with her?” Jonathan asks, playing with Eddie’s still incomplete Rubix cube. Eddie shrugs. He thinks that maybe it won’t matter if it’s third or thirtieth, he’ll always have butterflies when he knows he’s going to see her. 

“Yes,” he says shortly, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt. Jonathan shrugs. 

“Okay, so shouldn’t you be less nervous?” he points out, twisting a little in Eddie’s desk chair. 

“What I should be doesn’t really matter here,” Eddie gripes. He’s still half convinced that he’s going to fuck this up at some point. She’s perfect, she’s the best thing he could ever have dreamed of and when he inevitably makes a mess of it and she leaves, it’s going to crush him. 

“He really looks like he’s going to puke,” Dustin says bluntly, looking a little fascinated and horrified. “Is that normal?”

“No,” Steve says, without looking up. 

“You’ve had practice at this though,” Eddie retorts. Steve’s dated so much that he could probably write a manual about it but Eddie’s got maybe a paper napkin’s worth of experience. And he has even less on dating people like Chrissy Cunningham. 

He’s always liked Chrissy, even though he’d never admit it to himself. Even in middle school, she’d been amazing. Definitely not made for someone like him. But then high school was over and he ran into her outside the florists where she worked. 

And she agreed to a date. And a second. And a third. Which was kind of the problem. 

“Did he look this bad before the other dates?” Jonathan asks, abandoning the Rubix cube. He can’t have made it any worse than Eddie’s attempts at it. 

“He kind of looks worse,” Dustin says, scrutinizing Eddie carefully. Eddie looks down at his jeans and jacket, feeling mildly offended. 

“Face wise,” Dustin clarifies, prodding at Eddie’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer figurines. “Otherwise you look pretty good.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says and takes another look. He looks…a little not like himself. At least from waist to neck. His hair is the same mess, and the jeans and converses haven’t changed. But he’s taking her to a nice Italian place and he figures that he should look the part. 

“It’s just…” Eddie starts and then feels embarrassed. He shouldn’t be talking about this, especially not with them. Dustin’s a Goddamn child, for pete’s sake, Jonathan and Nancy have been dating for like six years and Steve is a little bit of a whore. They’re not going to understand. 

He’s had sex before, that’s the ridiculous thing. It’s not like he’s sixteen, with no idea of what to do. He’s twenty-two. He’s a fucking adult and his knees shouldn’t be shaking like this. 

“It’s our third date,” he explains and Dustin wrinkles his nose. 

“What has that got to do with anything?” he asks and Steve guffaws. 

“So that’s why you’re worried,” he says, from where he’s lounging on Eddie’s bed. Dustin twists anxiously between the two of them.

“What?” he demands and Eddie immediately regrets bringing it up. 

“Three dates,” Steve says, looking gleeful. Eddie’s…still not quite sure how they became friends. There are times when he can’t quite believe it either. “There’s a rule that you have sex after the third date.”

“I thought it was fourth,” Jonathan chimes in and Steve just rolls his eyes. 

“Either way,” he says, propping himself up on his elbows. “It’s not a strict rule. But a nice restaurant, third date…there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen tonight. Which is why Eddie looks like he’s going to hurl.”

“I just want everything to go well,” Eddie insists, even though the exact same thought had crossed his mind. They’ve kissed - polite pecks at the front door, when he’d dropped her off - but he’s aware that this is becoming something more serious. They text each other every day, they call each other every night and have done since their first date. And while their first date had been coffee and the second date had been a movie, tonight’s dinner and an evening walk definitely sets the stage for more. 

“Then don’t worry about it,” Steve says practically. “Trust me. The more you stress about it, the worse it will be. And she’ll pick up on it too.”

“Great,” Eddie says miserably. He has no idea how to calm down, even though he knows he’s putting too much pressure on himself. “I’d better go pick her up. Lock up when you leave and so help me, Henderson, if even one of those figurines is out of place when I get back.”

“What if you don’t come back?” Dustin asks, hands still wrapped around Giles. Dustin may envy Eddie's collection but they'd been his mom's from the nineties. He's not about to hand them over to Dustin so he can lose Giles' little sombrero.

“If I don’t come back tonight, you’ll have more time to make it to Mexico,” Eddie says bluntly, giving himself one last check in the mirror. He catches Steve’s smirk as he lets himself out of the door. 

But when he returns home the next morning, wearing the same clothes as the night before, every single figurine is still in place.

Because this is Hellcheer, honestly amazed they managed to wait until the third date they're down so bad for each other. I ran out of time to actually write the date. P.s. Chrissy was totally aware of the rule, kicked her roommate out for the night and wore her best underwear. Eddie never stood a chance.

[nimbusalba]

Neil Gaiman, my thoughts and my love for good omens

I already said something about all this deal with Neil Gaiman yesterday in another blog. But I still have Things To Say, so here it comes (with links to all the info):

Here is the article (thank you @procrastiel)

Here is a link to the podcasts for free (thank you @queermarzipan)

Here is the Xitter post with the accusations podcast thingy (thank you @embracing-the-ineffable)

Here is the transcript of the first podcast episode.

The Main Thing I Have To Say:

We need to separate the author from his work (and with this I’m not speaking only about Neil Gaiman). While we might not agree with some things about the author's life or thoughts, that doesn't mean we can not keep enjoying their work, as long as that work is not morally unacceptable, obviously. Let’s take the example of one of my favorite tv shows of all time (other than good omens): Buffy The Vampire Slayer (and with this I’m showing my age here, ahem). Buffy is a magnificent show, a wonderful exponent of feminism (strong female protagonist and secondary characters), diversity (one of the main characters is a lesbian), critical thinking, death, love, inner strength, battling your own demons… As we all know, accusations of harassment against Joss Wheddon appeared in 2020 and a lot of his work was left behind. I agree that knowing that the creator of something you love is an abuser breaks your heart. But that doesn’t mean that you have to stop loving that show, that it stops being a great work of art or that you should feel bad for still liking it. Buffy the vampire slayer is still one of my favorite shows and I still rewatch it from time to time (not on loop as I do with good omens, but that’s another problem). And why? Simply because in that show a lot of very talented people worked very hard to make it great, not just Joss Wheddon. And I appreciate it even more now knowing that the actresses and actors (and rest of the crew)  in the series didn’t have as good a time filming it as they should have. 

My take on this story:

I’ve already said that my first impulse is always to side with the victims in these cases, because they rarely lie and the accusations tend to be proven true in the end. In this particular case, for the time being, I’m waiting for developments, as the information that has transpired is fishy, to say the least. I’m not defending Neil Gaiman either, mind you. Maybe tomorrow we will find another 20 people accusing him of abuse. I don’t know him nor pretend to know what he��s done in his life. For the time being, as I said yesterday, this looks to me like consensual sex between consenting adults. That shouldn’t be news to anyone, even if the practices in themselves are not your kind of kink. It’s not on to have sex with someone who is working for you, of course, but still in this particular case that’s not exactly what’s happened. The woman in question (Scarlett) was a friend of the family, not strictly a worker. They already had a friendship relationship before turning it into a sexual relationship and a working relationship on top of that. With this I’m only trying to say that it doesn’t look like she felt forced to have sex with him in order to keep her job and she has said that the sex was consensual. The other victim has also said that even if she didn’t particularly enjoy the sex it was also consensual. 

It looks like both victims were pretty young when the relationships took place. It's true that younger people can have problems when it comes to place boundaries, and an older or more experienced partner could take advantage of that. It is also true that later in life, when that person is more experienced or has had time to think about things, they can think about what they did and feel uncomfortable with it, even though it didn’t feel wrong in the heat of the moment and they said nothing then. But, as far as I know, that's not sexual assault.

This looks to me as something that’s been designed to hurt Neil Gaiman’s public image. Maybe he’ll come out of it without any criminal charges, as he has already offered his help to the New Zealand police and they have refused to interrogate him for the time being, apparently because of lack of proof yet. But his public image has been tainted, not only because of the accusations, but because anyone who has their sexual life exposed and discussed publicly suffers a great deal of humiliation, even more so if their sexual practices are not exactly mainstream. With this I’m not implying that BDSM or any other kink is wrong, as long as it is being played by consenting adults. No judgment here, everyone has their own kink, and I don’t care as long as they don’t harm anyone (or if they want to be lightly harmed).

Keep also in mind that one is innocent until proven guilty and in this case there is not a lot of proof yet and the place the news is coming from is suspicious, to say the least. Wait for developments (and see).

Conclusion

So keep loving good omens, I know I still do, keep enjoying it, writing fanfic, drawing amazing art, writing metas and discussing about it. Because this show is still a brilliant show, in which a lot of very talented people worked very hard to make it the wonderful work of art that it still is and we shouldn’t dismiss all that work because someone wants to hurt one of the authors. 

(Edited because of wording)

[outofangband]

Compiling some of my thoughts on the impact of Urwen’s death on Húrin and Morwen

I love/hate the dual effects it has on Morwen and Húrin.

For Húrin this is one of the first great losses in his life. His father dies in battle and that's obviously awful but it's not shocking in the same way. (Though I think that Húrin’s attitude, even from a young age as we see in Gondolin, that his kinsmen including himself will die in battle is a tragedy in itself)

This is his young child and he is completely helpless. He's a warrior and he can't do anything against disease and death. No matter how many of Morgoth's orcs he kills he can't bring his daughter back I think about that line from Buffy the vampire slayer about the slayer being helpless against death and disease...Húrin is not a man who likes helplessness.

We see viscerally his devastation in his breaking his own harp when he finds himself unable to articulate his grief through song and then striding outside to declare that he should like to meet Morgoth and injure him "as my lord Fingolfin". , this can easily be interpreted not only as a desire to injure Morgoth but a desire to die in the process.

(note: I talked about the aftermath of this for him here in response to an excellent post by @middle-earth-mythopoeia :)

For Morwen this is a grief on top of innumerable ones she has already suffered.

She is the survivor of a massacre that has killed nearly all of her people. She is without her home, her parents, most of her family. She has to learn an entirely new language and culture.

At this point, Morwen has been in Hithlum for over a decade now and after years, has been able to find family and to have a hope at her people surviving in some ways through her children. I imagine the possibility of future loss was forever in her mind; because of the trauma she has endured but also because from that trauma comes the simple certainty that nothing is assured.

And indeed, this weapon of the enemy reaches her house once more. Her children sicken and Urwen does not recover.

Morwen is still losing family to Morgoth.

Is it any wonder she "met her grief in silence and coldness of heart". I think for Morwen this feels the only possibility.

“But you live, son of Morwen, and so does the enemy who has done this to us.”

There is no other choice.

(Second note: I have some posts already but I’m going to make another one about the legacy of Lalaith’s death for Morwen)

[moodyseal]

Finished the last ep of season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and gosh, what a tragic character she is.

I obviously haven't watched the later seasons yet but I saw someone mention in a comment on YouTube how in the series everyone expects so much from her while giving her barely any support in turn, and it's true specifically in the last scene, and in the entire episode.

Buffy had her whole world turned upside down in a day. She found out she was fated to die, supposedly alone, while fighting what was shown a couple of episodes before to be the creature she feared the most—all while being barely sixteen, with big dreams in her mind about a future she wouldn't even have.

She rightfully expressed those feelings, and all of a sudden Giles was acting so surprised, as if it were a given that she would save them all once again and accept to sacrifice herself, marching to her death like a soldier going to war. But the thing is—why should she have done that? She was born the Slayer, sure, but she didn't choose that life. She never wanted it. She shouldn't have been forced to take on such a big responsibility at such a young age. She was supposed to be a child. Live her life. Be a normal girl whose biggest problem was her History homework.

Then, once she did choose to do as foretold and go face the Master, only to "die" and be brought back and then kick his ass as she did with any monster of the week during the whole season, everyone just patted her on the back, said, "Whew what a day," and went on with their lives. "We should go to prom."

The gap between them and her was so obvious here, because while (albeit a bit shaken themselves) they were celebrating, she was left processing everything on her own. What happened to her, how alone she felt, what her role would be from then on. All of this while the others only spared her a single, "You died. Yikes."

Not a word about how she was feeling, except from Giles. Not a hug. Not a significant sign of acknowledgement.

She couldn't possibly tell them anything—they were traumatized just as much as her, so it would've been unfair to them. So she swallowed her feelings down, of course, as I'm sure she will do again somewhere soon, and just said she was fine, as if nothing happened.

Sure, let's go party. Sure, I'm okay. Sure, I'm not severely scarred from this experience.

Sure. Sure. Sure.

Always and forever.

[mistigrisunshine]

spuffy fic rec

part 1 - part 2 - part 3

(Unintended) You Could Be by ashcrashed [14k]

No, she hadn’t lost her mind. Because the reasons that made Spike the actual worst also made him the right one for the job.

Domino Effect by Anaross [15k]

Spike slips away unnoticed after Angel gives Buffy the amulet that might help in the final battle and runs directly into a tearful Buffy with a message from the future. AU after End of Days.

Monky Business by Girlytek [18k]

Retconning Dawn is harder than it looks.

In Remission by Quinara [19k]

In the five years Spike's been missing, the world around Buffy has irrevocably changed. The general population has woken up to vampires' existence and the kill count has dropped way down. She's sharing a house with a soulless vampire, still going by the name of Faith. But what does Spike have to do with it? And what does it mean for their future?

Devouring Time by Sigyn [20k]

An apocalypse has ravaged the world. Buffy has lost her friends, and her beloved Spike, and wants nothing more than to die, to rest, but immortality denies her that chance. With nothing more than her scythe and a hint of possibility, she seeks out a goddess of time, who offers her the chance to enter a universe of her own past, to choose a champion and save the world. Buffy knows who she would choose. But how can this Spike, paralyzed, filled with rage, and still in love with Drusilla, possibly be a champion for life, for light, and for the slayer he hates? Only time will tell.

Bring On Christmastime by bewildered [21k]

Welcome, Gentle Readers! Have you ever wondered the true meaning of Christmas? I know I have. But never fear, I, Andrew Wells -- having been privileged to bear witness to a Christmas miracle, in this the year Anno Domini Two Thousand and Two -- shall now share with you the answer, a tale that will warm the cockles of your cold, cold heart and fill you to the brim with tingly, pepperminty Christmas spirit.

There's something about Anne by Frillyria [44k]

Anne is just a regular girl until a not-so-regular boy gets a hold of her - she is thrown into a life outside her control, and has to do what she can to survive - and to choose hope over fear and distrust.

nothing safe is worth the drive (follow you home) by SummerFrost [61k]

Here's the deal: Buffy's got no idea how to beat Glory, or how they're gonna book it across the country in a moldy RV without anyone killing each other, especially now that someone broke one of the beds—and the thought of going home again kinda makes her wanna cry. The one thing she knows is that Spike would follow her anywhere, even like this.

The Key is Donnie Summers by Girlytek [121k]

Response to tempestt's challenge, what if Dawn were Donnie, if the monks had created a brother for Buffy instead of a sister? --complete through Season 5--

Liebestod by Iamblichus [149k]

They really should have known the First Evil wasn't done with them after Sunnydale… Enter: Time-travel, mysterious prophesies, and lots of poetry. BtVS Post-Season 7; Angel AU Season 5. All's well that ends well.