#this post brought to you by the guilt of all the other posts I’ve been tagged in that I’ve let slide

[tsuchinokoroyale]

@ccommanick and @brother-spankus cursed me with the emotional burden of showing my incredibly embarrassing home screen, last played song, and a selfie. I’m in desperate need of a hair cut tho so please accept a gif of Joan Chen as a drawer knob instead thenk u

I’ll forward this cursed email to @theseangt and @quitmecoldturkey and @ anyone in seattle since your blogs ain’t coming up in the tag feature 😤

[flawseer]

In your last ask, you mentioned misgivings with Book 10's ending, and especially how it pertains to Winter. I absolutely agree, and I know why, but I wanna hear your thoughts on it, too: What's up with Book 10?

The following is a (very long) examination of my personal feelings with regards to the WoF second story arc finale. While it is based on what is in the text, this analysis will be interpretive and fill in blanks with my own thoughts. Keep that in mind.

Hahhhh... okay. Since mentioning it in my last post I’ve gotten several requests to talk about my feelings regarding the second arc finale. There’s probably no way around it then.

If you haven’t read that last post (it was admittedly very long, and so will this one be), I talked briefly about why I didn’t like that part of the story. I have to warn you now, this will likely be the most negative and dour post in the history of this blog. In a few parts it will sound like I hate Wings of Fire, and I want to say now, while I still have the chance, that I don’t. I love this series, thinking about its setting and characters brings me joy.

I also—very emphatically—want to make it clear that I have no ill will against Tui T. Sutherland. I’ve looked around other people’s stuff a bit and there are a huge number of posts wishing violence upon her or threatening her for doing things to her series that people don’t agree with. That is NOT what I am doing here, shit like that is NOT okay! While I will be critical of her choices, I still respect her effort of bringing this vibrant, wonderful world of dragons to all of us.

Also, obligatory last disclaimer: If you liked the finale, that is okay. You are valid for feeling that way. I’m here to share my point of view, not to demand people agree with everything I say. Just be warned that you most likely won’t enjoy what I have to say. If you don’t think you can handle that kind of criticism, this is your guilt-free opportunity to stop reading.

Otherwise, let's get into it.

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, depression, disease, and extreme acts of violence.

In defense of the finale

Before I start to systematically disassemble this narrative and get lost in a quagmire of negativity, let’s talk a bit about the circumstances that brought forth this part of the story. The plot of this arc was a mess from the moment animus magic was unshackled from the restrictions it had in the first arc, and from then on there was no longer any conceivable way to end this story in a clean way. Sutherland had created an invincible, unbeatable, omnipotent villain; he could read minds, see the future with perfect clarity, and anything he could imagine he could conjure into existence at any time with no cost to himself and no drawbacks. She was likely wracking her brain about how to resolve this impossible conundrum. What we got wasn’t good, but I believe nothing could have been. The foundation was rotting and by the fifth book it couldn’t bear the weight of the plot anymore.

The thing about animus magic in arc 2 is that it is so potent, so all-powerful, and so free of restraint that everyone who uses it also HAS to be a simpleton, or they would be able to break the plot immediately and become god. From the moment Darkstalker broke out of that mountain, he could have said “Any and all spells that are cast with the intention to harm me, interfere with my plans, or do something I don’t consent to will not work, from now on until forever”, and he would have instantly won. The strawberry would have fizzled out. The Darkstalker-blocking earrings would not have been created, and no one could have saved the Icewings. On the flipside, Turtle or Anemone could have said “I enchant the concept of animus magic itself to no longer obey Darkstalker”, and his threat would have been neutered. Point is, powers as potent and easy to use as this really need limitations, or they will quickly eat your plot alive.

I don’t envy the situation Sutherland was in at the time at all. If you’re an author, that kind of thing is a nightmare. It really is no wonder she decided to blow up animus magic for good in her next arc, even if I would have preferred it to get more healthy restrictions instead of killing it outright.

The Darkstalker age regression thing

Everyone has talked this part to death already, but if I am to write a thorough analysis of my feelings regarding this finale, I’m going to have to talk about it as well. I’m sorry if I end up repeating a lot of things you’ve already heard.

This final fate of Darkstalker, to have his memories wiped and be reset to an infant, is really uncomfortable. As far as I am aware, though correct me if I’m wrong, Sutherland said in an interview that she didn’t want Darkstalker to die because, in her view, he did not deserve to. We can debate here about the philosophical question of whether anyone is truly deserving of death, and the merits of “justice” and “punishment”, but in general, Wings of Fire did not seem to have any issues killing off its villains prior if they committed suitably terrible acts. That makes this moment stand out as noteworthy.

Who is Darkstalker then--and if we assume villains can be “deserving” and “not deserving” of death--what about him speaks in his favor, or against? The guy had a pretty crappy childhood, coming from a broken home (there is that inadequate parent theme again). He genuinely loved his sister and felt protective of her, and whenever he liked someone he wanted them to be happy and feel affirmed. The thing that Queen Diamond does to his mother is awful and he is justified in hating her for it. He is also portrayed as rather sympathetic in Moon Rising. When he asks Moon to find his scroll for him and not to leave him, he is not manipulating her, he is sincerely begging for her help. He is stuck somewhere underground, trapped in darkness, in a space so tiny that he can’t move. He remains that way for months, lonely and sad. If you just focus on these aspects, it’s easy to understand why he has so many fans who want him to see healthy and happy.

On the flipside, while he is dedicated to the happiness of his friends, he doesn’t always go for the most ethical way to achieve it. He tries to brainwash said friends without their consent whenever they exhibit behaviors he doesn’t like, or when he thinks he knows better and wants to “fix” them. He has very little regard for other people’s autonomy, lies to his loved ones with alarming frequency, and is unhealthily attached to the idea of power. Those things are certainly not good, but they are his character flaws. These are his demons; everyone has them and they make him a person. If this was all there was to it, he might still be a villain, but I’d argue he’d not be wholly irredeemable.

But there are things about him that take him beyond the pale. Things that go beyond the realm of just being misunderstood, or easily excusable.

He is possessive. He wants Clearsight and Fathom for himself, and for them to listen to him primarily. When Indigo makes it clear she doesn’t like him and cautions Fathom against trusting him, he deceives his friends and traps Indigo in a wood carving, just so he can isolate Fathom from his support network and manipulate him easier. He alters Clearsight’s mind to make her more agreeable and stop her from holding him accountable for his actions; while he thinks he loves her, he only loves an idealized version of her that is wholly devoted to and unquestioning of him. This is why, when he later forcibly overwrites Fierceteeth’s existence to recreate her (which is another horrific thing), he tries to excise the parts he finds undesirable to create a perfect version of his lover. But this caricature he has created in his head is not and can never be Clearsight, which frustrates his attempts.

He is vengeful. Not against people who have actually wronged him, like Queen Diamond. That would be questionable, but understandable. What makes this unacceptable is his frequent targeting of innocent people who just happen to be related to the person who wronged him in some esoteric way. He enchants a secret murder knife that kills random Icewings regardless of who they are or what they think about the Queen, just because the one who took his mother from him happened to share their tribe. He hates Turtle and wishes death upon him in Moon Rising just because he is a green Seawing, like Fathom was. And then there is the big one: He tries to kill all the Icewings who are alive in the present day, where Queen Diamond is long dead and none of them have ever even met her. Even his mother, who suffered from Diamond’s actions the most and has the most reason to hate her, is horrified and calls him out on that one.

And lastly, he is sadistic. He revels in torturing those he hates. He forces his father to disembowel himself, while the latter is fully aware and powerless to resist AND the man’s traumatized daughter is watching. Later he sends a magical plague to kill every single living Icewing sans one.

It should be noted that Darkstalker possesses virtually infinite magical power; whatever he declares, with very few exceptions, will happen. Even if he wanted them dead, he had the power to prevent unnecessary suffering. He could have said “Arctic, fall dead instantaneously”, or “Every Icewing will fall asleep and pass away peacefully,” but he didn’t. He wanted them to feel pain and pass away in the most wretched, agonizing ways he could imagine.

So what he chose to do instead is—and I want you to picture this for a moment—Darkstalker sat down, calmly, and said “Henceforth every living Icewing, excepting Prince Winter and those of hybrid blood, will fall ill with an incurable disease. This disease will cause heavy internal bleeding and make its victims cough up blood and waste away for a few days, followed by certain death.”

This spell does not discriminate with regards to who its victims are. The book glosses over the implications, but imagine the ramifications. Young children are notoriously frail, how many newborns got infected and died because of this? How many families were torn apart because they couldn’t get the magic earrings fast enough? Or accidentally got one earring less than there were family members and had to decide who has to die?

Most of the Icewings were physically cured by the earrings, but an experience like that sticks with you for the rest of your life. Somewhere surely, a dragonet watched as his mother put the earring on him and then slowly wasted away because she didn’t have one for herself.

It’s really easy to overlook how horrific this spell is because it isn’t shown or dwelt on. But the trauma, grief, and suffering it caused must have been immeasurable.

And none of those victims have ever even met the person Darkstalker wanted to get revenge on. None of those deaths meant anything to anyone.

The attempted death toll and scale of the calamity here puts even Scarlet to shame. The ones who come closest to it were Queen Battlewinner and Morrowseer with their attempted Rainwing extermination. All three of those died for what they did. Gives you some food for thought for sure.

Peacemaker’s burden

Despite just airing all of his dirty laundry and declaring him an irredeemable villain, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for Darkstalker still. His story is really sad. He was a child born with an amount of power that nobody should possess, and it corrupted him to the point where it destroyed his life before it began. His parents were always fighting and no matter how good his intentions were, he was unable to understand why he couldn���t hold on to his friends and relationship. He kept making mistakes, then made bigger mistakes to fix those, until his hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop anymore. My belief is that, after he wakes up in the present and realizes Clearsight is dead, he loses his reason for living and becomes completely lost in his grief.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would have been appropriate for him to die. If not to punish him, then to finally grant him reprieve from all that rage and pain, and let him rest. I think that would have been a dignified end.

But instead he got turned into a baby. ... And then they decided to magically erase his father’s blood from him? I don’t know what it is, but something about that Icewing erasure makes my skin crawl?

The thing that turns this baby twist from weird into highly unsettling is the context. Darkstalker’s mind is erased, then modified into a new person via animus magic. This is the technique a lot of this arc’s villains used to victimize Hailstorm, Queen Ruby, Peril, Kinkajou, Fierceteeth, and Winter. The same technique is now used again, by the heroes, which is a dangerous thing to have your protagonists do if you want them to remain morally upright.

It is also very reckless, because in almost all of these instances, animus mind alteration has been shown to be very unreliable. The spells seem to wear down over time and are susceptible to partial breaking upon encountering certain strong stimuli. Hailstorm—while trapped as Pyrite—seems to retain trace amounts of his former memories, which is why Pyrite is subconsciously drawn to Winter and clings to him all the time. Ruby is able to ignore half of her conditioning because her familial love for her son partially overpowers the magic. Qibli is just straight up able to reason his way out of it.

The thing to note here is that spells of this nature require a very meticulous approach; you can’t half-ass your reprogramming or the victim will just think their way past it. If you alter someone’s mind, the wording of the spell must be ironclad, lest you risk it wearing down over time and even break.

Luckily we have nothing to fear in that regard, because the spell that created Peacemaker was written by a Rainwing with a total of four days of literacy training. No one better mention the name Clearsight to the new baby Nightwing, or next month is going to be rather interesting.

But that’s just speculation on my part. Let’s assume that, somehow, this spell isn’t as unstable as all the others. Somehow Kinkajou threaded all the needles, and masterfully dodged every conceivable pitfall to pen the perfect incantation, despite having been illiterate just a few weeks prior. This one is built to last and Darkstalker is sealed away really thoroughly, for good.

That is still absolutely terrible and morally dubious, because now you have Peacemaker, who for all intents and purposes is a COMPLETELY innocent little kid, saddled with this huge burden of being the certifiable reincarnation of a genocidal ancient wizard. He’s gonna grow up thinking things like “Mommy gets real quiet whenever the topic of the Icewing tragedy is brought up,” and “Why does Auntie Moon look at me like that? One time she accidentally called me a weird name, who is Darkstalker?” “What is this ‘Clearsight’ name my mind-reading friends from the village found in Mommy’s mind?”

In a village that will be full of mind-readers soon, eventually the secret will come out, and Peacemaker is going to learn what was done to him. A huge, messy load of undeserved baggage was forced onto this completely separate, innocent entity. He will be devastated. Whether he then chooses to forgive them for this remains to be seen. To be honest, he would be well within his right not to, and turn resentful.

Poor kid.

Qibli’s callousness

I love Qibli, he is one of my favorite characters. This happens to be his book, and the fact that I fundamentally dislike half of it makes me rather sad. If anything, I hope this tells you that I’m not just hating on it for my personal amusement. I really wanted to like this. I tried to, and I couldn’t.

Qibli is really weird in this one, to be honest. He is suddenly made to be co-dependent on Moonwatcher, fawning over her every third paragraph, saying how much he loves her, how he is an incomplete and dysfunctional wreck without her, how it physically pains him to be apart from her, oh if only the stars would grant his wish and split the mountains apart so that he may fly to his princess, his muse, his goddess of ebony wit. It gets so old.

And it’s not Qibli. He never acted this clingy towards Moonwatcher. It’s more intense than even Winter gets about Moon, and Winter was actually depicted with a crush on her in book 6. Qibli was always just a supportive element, eager to befriend Moon but never desperate, like he is going to keel over if he is separated from his true love five minutes longer. These very frequent love declarations feel so forced coming out of him. It strikes me like it was just written in service of the love triangle. Maybe if we make him confess his love every four seconds readers will overlook the fact that they had no proper romantic build-up.

You might rightly accuse me of bias. I have previously admitted I am fond of Qibli/Winter as a romantic pairing, on the surface this seems like I am just not happy with my pet ship being blocked by Moonwatcher. But I assure you, I am actually pretty flexible and accommodating even towards pairings that contradict my preferences. I have no issues with Winter/Moonwatcher, for example, because the possibility was properly established and they have good romantic chemistry in Winter Turning. In theory, I would have no problem with Qibli/Moonwatcher either if it was ever set up as an interesting romantic dynamic. But to me, it seems like Qibli is written as a good, supportive friend to Moon for four books, only to pivot hard into “Moon moon moon moon moon moon swoon” at the last second, and it just reads to me as obnoxious.

I got distracted. This section is called “Qibli’s callousness”, and I haven’t even talked about the main part.

Qibli and Winter have excellent chemstry together, whether you read it as romantic or platonic—both of these interpretations have merit and are set up. They’re always the highlight of any scene they’re in. Throughout the story arc you get the impression that these two really get on each other’s nerves, but they bond and grow into really strong friends who bicker a lot but have each other’s backs when it counts.

Then there is a scene where Qibli casually tells Winter that he wouldn’t object if someone wanted to mind-control away some of Winter’s more objectionable traits.

This is genuinely a terrible thing to say to your friend. Like, it crosses a line and ceases to be harmless banter; you’re just telling them that there is something you hate about them so much that you wish they were someone else. Winter actually WAS mind-controlled earlier and felt (and proably still feels) guilty about having attacked Qibli in that state. And now Qibli says “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if someone did that to you again! Hue hue!”

It is awful, BUT I don’t necessarily object to Qibli saying this here. Qibli is in the middle of his character arc at this moment, so he is expected to be flawed. He is making a mistake by thoughtlessly telling Winter this horrid thing, and it seems like a believable continuation of his current character track. This is a reasonable development as long as the plot acknowledges that it’s a mistake.

Spoilers: The plot doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a mistake. Qibli never has a scene after where he reflects upon what he said and apologizes to Winter. When Darkstalker has Qibli trapped in his mountain jail and mind-wipes Qibli’s grandfather into a toddler (hey, wait a minute), Qibli gets visibly disturbed. Like, this is so off-putting to him that he gets queasy and Darkstalker hastily changes the spell. That could have been a great way to bring this back. Like in the epilogue, have Qibli track down Winter and tell him about disturbing baby grandpa theater and how he realized that wiping people’s minds is actually messed up and should have never said that to him.

But he doesn’t. He just lets Winter go, allowing him to believe he is broken and needs magical intervention to be tolerable. It leaves me to think that maybe he’s still okay with it, and fantasizing about rewriting his friend’s mind. Great.

Moonwatcher’s character death

You will find as this goes on that, I get the impression that the second half of this book takes all of the wonderful, endearing characters I have learned to love throughout the story and replaces them with really mean, or stupid, or otherwise inaccurate caricatures.

Moonwatcher’s relationship with Darkstalker gets plenty of setup and development in Moon Rising. You get the sense that these two could be great friends if their circumstances were a little different. It does a great job at making you think maybe Darkstalker is just misunderstood; maybe Moon should free him from his predicament.

Then at the end of Escaping Peril comes the emotional gut punch. Darkstalker actually IS a villain. He callously admits to Moonwatcher that he used his magic to make his own father gruesomely disembowel himself. Moonwatcher is horrified and disgusted that he would do that. There is no circumstance in which something like that would ever be okay. She ends the scene awash in tears because the person she thought was her friend is a murderer and a sadist. This is good, that is a natural reaction to what she was just told.

A few hours from there, in Talons of Power, Turtle finds Moon again and she is completely cool with Darkstalker walking free, despite crying her eyes out after feeling so betrayed earlier. That may seem strange, but this is still good because later, Darkstalker’s mind control plot is discovered. This scene was obviously written to set that up, Moon is mind-controlled into forgetting that Darkstalker could do something that morally reprehensible, and thus forgives him. This is also completely in line with his characterization in Legends: Darkstalker. It’s a kind of stunt he would pull to get Clearsight to shut up about him slipping into villainy.

In my earlier post I alluded to a moment where Moon is set to narrative auto-pilot and says something so rampantly off-kilter that it does irreversible, permanent damage to her character. It happens here, in the second half of book 10. Qibli gives Moon the Darkstalker protection earring, and Moon, somehow, says “I’m not being mind-controlled, Darkstalker really is my friend.”

I get what the plot tries to do here. It’s taking this concept of mind-control and adding a nuance, in an attempt to flesh out Darkstalker and give his character depth. He is ready to control everyone in the world, but for Moon, who is his best friend in this era, he wants her to remain herself. Perhaps this is his attempt at attonement for playing with Clearsight’s mind and driving her away from him. It is very touching in a way, viewed in isolation.

Unfortunately, it does not work with the full context of all the books. Because Moon is in auto-pilot mode right now, her main character trait is “Darkstalker=Friend,” so naturally she would speak in support of him. But this revelation has devastating retroactive consequences. The earlier scene that was written with Moon under mind-control is now altered into her having been in her right mind! She is completely okay with Darkstalker’s admittance to cold-blooded torture and evisceration, within hours of being so shocked by it that it made her cry and ready to denounce him. That is such a quick turnaround it’s giving me whiplash. And what’s more it turns Moon from a principled, upstanding girl into a sociopath who casually accepts gruesome torture and murder if it is committed by someone she likes.

Did Sutherland forget about the scene two books ago, where Darkstalker’s actions were so inconceivably horrid for Moon to learn of that she started crying? It baffles me that this made it into the final version. Her saying she was never mind-controlled makes Moon come off as so awful. This torture-excusing lunatic is not the same kind-hearted and insightful character I followed in all the other books.

Kinkajou’s character derailment

The world is a sad place when I have to question the way Kinjajou is written. Fortunately she is mostly fine, despite her having the biggest excuse to act out-of-character since she’s the victim of a mind-altering spell. Her only real moment of “what!?” comes at the end.

I already talked about her role in casting the spell that regresses Darkstalker into an infant. But I didn’t mention how her being the source of it is questionable in itself.

The clue is in the first paragraph of this section: She herself has experienced the effects of invasive mind-alteration. She was cursed by Anemone in the previous book to be in love with Turtle, and kind of half-struggles kind of not with it, it’s really strange. Turtle is appropriately horrified and acts like really awful things are happening, but then it’s mostly played lightly for some reason. My assumption is that Sutherland introduced this plot point, but then realized how uncomfortable this premise really is and tried to downplay it until the story got to a point where it could get done away with.

But I think the takeaway is still supposed to be that this was a horrid thing to do (which it absolutely is), and that Kinkajou will have to spend a lot of time trying to untangle her real emotions from the fake ones the spell created.

The point is: Kinkajou knows first-hand how awful it is to do something like that to another person. Ideally she should never even conceive of the idea to cast a spell like that, but if we’re really set on this Darkstalker baby thing and it has to happen, she should at least be a bit hesitant about it. And afterwards she should struggle with the guilt of having resorted to it. Not celebrate it and be proud, like it’s funny.

The assassination of Winter’s future

Now we come to the part I’ve alluded to previously; the part where all of these threads converge to utterly destroy one character and drive him to the brink of ruin. Let’s talk about Winter.

Prince Winter is the son of Tundra and Prince Narwhal, hatching in the same clutch as his sister Icicle. He spent his formative years being unfavorably compared to said sister—who easily took to traits that Icewing royalty considers desirable—whereas Winter struggled greatly to embody those same ideals. He was just a little too kind, too merciful, too gentle. As a result he often had to endure abuse from his parents, who made him feel like he was defective.

Because he was young and didn’t have any other frame of reference, he embraced this abusive narrative and began to drive himself with a vigor unreasonable for someone of his age. He scraped and cloyed for every bit of credit he could get, obsessing over advancing up the circle rankings in an attempt to “purge” the wrongness out of himself. To make his parents as proud of him as they were of Icicle.

This never worked. He was always seen as the runt, poised to embarrass the family name. Whatever he did, no matter how hard he strived, there was always something he could have done better.

The only real source of love and affirmation in his life was his older brother, Hailstorm. Where everyone else only saw what Winter wasn’t, Hailstorm embraced his brother despite of his “failings” and was openly affectionate with him. When Winter was with him, it was okay to not think about rankings all the time, and just be himself for a bit. I assume Hailstorm fulfilled a similar role for Icicle as well, which is why both of them love him dearly, and Icicle destroys her own life to bring him back.

Winter also has a fascination with scavengers, possibly because they are small and perceived as useless, like he himself is. He likely feels a kinship with them and observes them being craftier and more adept than everyone else sees them. This is therapeutic for him, to see that a thing can have merit even if no one wants to see it.

One day, he and Hailstorm sneak into Skywing territory so Winter can catch a scavenger as a pet. This excursion turns hostile when they are discovered by a roaming Skywing troop and faced with the prospect of capture, possibly execution. In a gambit to save Winter from this fate, Hailstorm mirrors the words of his parents, calling Winter pathetic and useless, so the Skywings will not think of him as a threat and show mercy. His act succeeds in convincing the Skywings, but it also convinces Winter, who does not understand Hailstorm only said these things to save his life. He returns home—believing his brother hated him all along—to face the wrath of his furious family for losing them “the desirable son”.

For all of his life, these themes have repeated themselves and haunted him. “I was born wrong and defective,” “I am unlovable,” “No one wants me.”

A few months after the war ends, Winter is one of the five Icewings enrolled in the newly founded Jade Mountain Academy. Shortly after departing, he unexpectedly returns home, having successfully rescued his older brother and bringing him back. He is made to believe that this erases his mistakes, his mother even pays him a backhanded compliment, an uncharacteristically “nice” gesture. He is promoted to the top of the rankings, finally his parents are proud of him.

But of course it is all a trick. The “adoration” afforded to him was all a ploy. Secretly, his parents abused power and tradition to arrange for Winter’s death. They force him into a lethal trial they intentionally rigged against him, all to finally erase that stain on their family’s honor.

Winter finally realizes the true nature of his parents’ opinion of him. Even when he succeeds, and does everything right, he is still defective, unlovable, and unwanted. He will never be anything else to his family. And so he leaves his homeland, pretending he is dead, resigned to live in hiding forever.

During this time, while at the brink of despair, Winter is able to draw strength from one source: His new friends from the academy. He vocalizes that, for all the abuse he suffered at the hands of his birth family, he fervently believes that THEY would never do anything like that to him. They chose to stuck with him, even when he was awful, and told him he was not hopeless. He was not a mistake; he could be deserving of love.

So naturally, he returns to them; they accept him readily, are willing to be his new surrogate family. When he almost burns to death at a later point, they fear and weep for him. When Qibli sets out to confront his own abusive family, Winter, despite being mind-controlled into a placid potato at the time, feels concerned enough for his friend’s safety to insist to come along (returning the favor of them accompanying him in his time of need in book 7). When Darkstalker’s mind control forces Winter to attack Qibli, he is shown ashamed and guilty of it once the control wears off again.

They bicker and struggle, and make mistakes, they break up but always come back together again. Time and time again the one thing that is always reinforced: When the cards are down, Winter loves his friends, and they love him. They would never intentionally hurt each other, or give up on each other.

I want you to keep in mind how wholesome, and loving, and mutually supportive this ramshackle band of misfits has been portrayed to this point... Because we’re moving on to the arc 2 finale, and it will do everything it can to corrupt all of it and consign Winter to a life of misery.

We arrive at aforementioned scene, where Moonwatcher receives her earring. Just a little bit prior, Winter had learned that Darkstalker unleashed a magical plague onto his people in an attempt to wipe them out. Now here is Moonwatcher, revealing that she is not under any spell, and has aligned herself with this guy willingly, speaking fondly of him as if he was a dear friend who never did any wrong. Winter takes this badly and accidentally breaks a vase; the narrative lingers on this moment and really tries to sell us on how unreasonable Winter’s reaction is, how he is overreacting, but let’s examine that interpretation for a moment.

Moonwatcher doesn’t yet know about the attempted Icewing genocide, but she DOES know about Darkstalker being okay with casting spells to inflict immeasurable torture upon those he hates. WE know that she knows this, so her stance here is already suspect. Yet she goes on to praise Darkstalker and refer to him as a friend. Look at this from Winter’s perspective. This “friend” of Moonwatcher just tried to kill his entire tribe, and he actually succeeded in killing his aunt, Queen Glacier, a person Winter greatly respects. Winter is currently unable to return to his homeland for fear of being branded a traitor. Even if he could return, he knows his obstinate and spiteful family would prevent him from attending the funeral, meaning he is not even afforded the basic dignity of saying farewell to his aunt. The aunt whom Darkstalker murdered by making her vomit her own blood until she withered away in her bed. And here is Moon, absolving the person who did this to Glacier from his appalling actions, despite knowing full well what Darkstalker is capable of and choosing to look away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can forgive the grieving, emotionally overwhelmed boy for shattering a little pottery after hearing his trusted friend—who held his hand when he was dying—say that the guy who makes people disembowel themselves and wipes out entire countries may be misunderstood and not so bad. I think I would have a similar reaction. In fact, I would never want to talk to her ever again.

There is no way I can read this scene in which Moon doesn’t come off as either an absolute lunatic, or critically stupid and callous. In fact, based on her earlier behavior I half-expect her to get over the news of the attempted Icewing massacre in a couple hours, saying “Eh, it’s kinda bad, but you just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, you know? I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Then there is the part where Qibli makes his off-color comment about how Winter’s brain could really use a good wash. I already went into how it could have worked but didn’t. But with the timing here, we’ve already had Moon spit on their friendship, so as Winter’s other closest friend, it naturally follows that Qibli also craps on his feelings.

Consider the context: Winter comes from an abusive household where his parents forcibly tried to change him away from who he was to purge the “wrongness” from him. When they betray him and he narrowly escapes their attempt on his life, he re-affirms his belief in his friends, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t treat him like that gives him the strength he needs to keep going. But now, Qibli asserts that Winter DOES need to be altered, thereby AGREEING with Winter’s abusive parents, rendering Winter’s affirmation from book 7 erroneous. Qibli WOULD treat him like that if it made Winter less “intolerable”.

Neither Moonwatcher nor Qibli ever make an attempt to repair this rift. Winter is left betrayed and alone.

Stuff happens, and the forces of the Nightwings and Icewings come to blows over Jade Mountain. With his two closest friends having written him off and his support network eroded, Winter relapses into thinking he is worthless, seeks validation in unquestioning patriotism, and realigns himself with his abusive family by throwing himself into the battle. Nobody wants him to, in fact his parents still hate him for it, but whatever. His father dies and his mother blames him for it.

Meanwhile Turtle, Anemone, and Qibli are cooking up a solution to the battle problem. They have the idea to make everyone’s minds connect in a huge empathy wave for a few moments, which I think is a pretty interesting idea for what it’s worth. But then they teleport both armies back to their homes, and the spell sweeps Winter up with them, taking him out of the rest of the finale and bringing him to the Ice Kingdom. The characters say “whoops” but aren’t further concerned with the situation. It’s all a big laugh.

Let me remind you that Winter is currently considered not welcome on Icewing territory. His family, whom he was sent back with, is extremely abusive and vindictive. His friends know this. Said parents have previously arranged for him to be killed, and are still on record as wanting him dead. His friends KNOW this. And now he is alone with them and a gaggle of other royal Icewings who all are extremely pissed off at him for ruining their sacred trial site.

It is very possible that he is being torn apart and mauled by an enraged mob right now. He could be forced into captivity and flayed. Maybe the interim regent is sentencing him to death and getting the rope ready. There is a million different horrible things that could be happening to Winter right now, while he is trapped alone with people who hate him, things his friends would be reasonably able to anticipate. And nobody is doing anything to get him out of there, to suggest bringing him back, even though it would only take a single spoken sentence to do so! They aren’t even concerned!

Then the climax happens, strawberry thing and all, and we get the coup de grâce. After all is said and done, the group decides that Winter is untrustworthy, and that they must protect the secret of Darkstalker’s fate from him, because they fear if he knew he would kill Peacemaker.

Moon, who read Winter’s mind in book 6 and reached out to him about how the “ruthless Icewing warrior” persona in his head is a facade and how she sees he has a gentle and good heart... Moon, who in book 7 finds out about Winter’s secret deal to kill Glory and STILL trusts him, who calls out his bullshit to his face because she KNOWS how kind-hearted Winter is and that he would never resort to murder... Moon who, again, held his hand while he was dying... thinks that the dragon she has reminded of his compassionate nature time and time again would kill an innocent child.

This is disgusting. Moon believing that is so far off the mark with regards to anything this group has embodied or done for any of the last 4 books, that my only conclusion can be that these are different characters. Maybe the Nightwing library collapsed on top of original Moon, and when Darkstalker magiced her back to health she came back wrong or something. I don’t know.

So after all of this, Winter is left alone. He somehow escaped from the Ice Kingdom; luckily there is a timeskip so we can just gloss over the horrible situation he was put in by his friends. He thinks about Jade Mountain. He reflects on everything that happened, how his parents never really loved him... How they hated him so much they tried to kill him... How he despaired, but found solace in his friends who loved him for who he was.... How those friends then betrayed him too and magiced him away... How they didn’t care about what happened to him... And he decides he is done. He won’t bother going back. A few people, probably Sunny, reach out to tell him he is welcome back, but he says “it wouldn’t be fair to other Icewings if an exile took up a bed”. The decision isn’t hard to make, after all there is nothing left for him there. Everyone has written him off, moved on and left him behind.

Kinkajou visits sometimes, tries to stay in touch, but that’s just how she is. Maybe the others sent her to check on whether he’s going to become troublesome. They don’t trust him. Better to keep an eye on him, he might kill the baby.

With nowhere else to go, Winter moves to Sanctuary, a place for rejects like him. I picture him standing there, at the edge of a cliff staring blankly into the distance. He is completely alone; no one wants to go near him or talk to him beyond the bare necessities. He could probably make new friends with the Talons of Peace if he tried, but there is no point. Why should someone like him have friends? It wouldn’t work. They’d just decide he is too inconvenient to be around. Sooner or later they would just tell him to leave anyway. It's better not to try, so he doesn't get hurt again.

And slowly it dawns on him. His parents had been right all along. It was never them, or the others, it was him. He is the problem. The Icewings said it, Qibli said it, Moonwatcher said it. There is just something fundamentally wrong with him.

He is defective. He is unlovable. Nobody wants him. He will never be anything, or have anyone. And so he stands at the cliff, looking over the broken vase fragments of his life... This is who he is. Prince Winter. A mistake.

And quietly, where no one knows or cares, he does the only thing he has left to do... he begins to weep.

As it is written, the tale of Winter is the story of a boy who is told he is wrong for being alive. He closes his ears and tries to keep walking forward, desperate to prove that he is not an error, that he has merit. But this book comes out and it unmistakably says that he doesn’t. He is nothing, and he deserves to have nothing.

And I just cannot accept that.

Why did this have to happen?

I think that the author was really struggling with the ending of this book. I’ve said before how much of a corner she wrote herself into with such an invincible villain. I think she came up with the strawberry idea as a solution to this problem. But as she was writing it, the characters kept fighting her. It was not a natural solution, not a decision the characters—as they were established—would ever make.

So concessions had to be made to force the issue. Established traits had to be bent slightly to make this plot work. The farther she went, the worse it got. The concessions piled up and turned into contrivances. Eventually the characters were no longer acting like themselves. Their bonds got stretched too far and some snapped. It’s a very tragic pitfall that occurs with long-running series.

I think Sutherland must have also been tired. Writing an entire book is a monumental task, and writing 6 connected ones even moreso. She also comes out with these things really quickly. Maybe she was burnt out? Maybe she wanted to be done and her attention lapsed. Maybe that’s why she forgot that Moon knew about the disemboweling. It seems reasonable to believe when you consider that the next story arc would make a relatively clean break from the problems of this arc, especially with regards to the magic system.

But I don’t know what ultimately happened, so I can only speculate. I reiterate, I bear no ill will against Sutherland for writing this. Even if I kind of hate everything about this finale, and very vocally wish it would be different, I don’t want this examination to generate (or reawaken) any hatred towards her, or to attack her personally. I understand the pain of an artist who gets trapped with something for too long and has to find the means, any means, to see it through to the end. I criticize the story, but I could never hate anyone for that.

But for me, I do not consider this half of the book as part of the story. The characters act too unnaturally for it to have happened. So to me, it didn’t. We don’t know what happened, maybe Darkstalker is still out there. Maybe they dealt with him. Maybe what actually happened is my crappy and self-indulgent rewrite of the ending which I will never show to anyone because it would be really embarrassing.

But whatever actually ended up happening, I am sure Winter never ended up at that cliff, pondering how worthless and meaningless his life was. He is currently at Jade Mountain, surrounded by friends who love him, and bickering with Qibli about the correct solution to their advanced calculus assignment that is due tomorrow.

Is there anything left to say?

Probably.

I didn’t talk about Anemone yet. You know, in the epilogue she enchants herself a bracelet that makes her “not be so mean all the time”. I find that creepy. To me it reads as Anemone voluntarily brainwashing herself with magic to erase her negative traits instead of growing past them naturally because she finds them undesirable and wants to work to change for the better. I would ordinarily assume that this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m just reading the scene wrong. But no, we just got through a part where the heroes brainwashing someone is treated as an unequivocal good and worthy of celebration, so I think my reading may actually be spot on. Why are we letting the little kid alter her own brain without supervision? Hello? Tsunami? Someone intervene maybe? This cannot be healthy.

Turtle stands out to me as the one bright spot in all of this. He (and Peril, but she’s mostly out of focus) remain as the only main characters of this arc who don’t have any mind-boggling out-of-character moments or sudden streaks of uncharacteristic callousness. I really like the part where Qibli goes to free Turtle from his captivity and plans to give him an earful about the comically unhelpful messages he’s been sending him. But when Turtle asks if what he did was helpful, Qibli sees how beaten down and exhausted Turtle is, and wordlessly drops his frustration to tell him “Yeah, they were helpful.” That is the true Qibli shining through for a moment, showing that he cares about the well-being of his friends.

Do I hate the pairing of Qibli/Moonwatcher? No. Well, I DO hate how it happened in the book, and how the story tried to assassinate Winter’s character to resolve the love triangle and make it happen. I don’t hate it on principle though. If you are a fan of Qibli/Moonwatcher and want to write fanfics about it, please do! I absolutely encourage you to do that! Maybe you can fix this mess and turn it into something that’s actually properly handled!

Mightyclaws keeps the power that Darkstalker granted him past the finale. That means all the spells that Darkstalker cast are technically still active. Does that mean the Icewings have to wear earrings for the rest of their lives? Do they get sick again if they take them off? Is Peril forever cursed to think of Darkstalker as a cool old uncle and has to somehow reconcile how everyone else thinks of him? How did the Nightwings relinquishing their powers work, do they have to wear the earrings forever too now?

And there is one more thing to mention.

My confession

You may have already intuited this, if you’ve been following the content of my blog. It is very heavily skewed towards the first and second arcs of the series. I would now like to confess something.

When I read the second half of book 10, I found it so disillusioning, Winter’s fate so upsetting... that I put down the series then and there. And I haven’t picked it back up since.

That’s right, I have not read arc 3. I don’t know if that makes me a fake fan. I know pretty much everything that happens in it, the controversial twist at the end, Pyrrhia coming back into the story later, Snowfall getting brainwashed by a piece of jewelry until she cares about a plot that had nothing to do with her or the fate of the Icewings, etc..

It’s not out of malice, or because it’s a new continent. The opposite in fact; I would have greatly prefered a clean break with a new setting—Bug-themed dragons in a slightly more contemporary, developed environment sounds fascinating and full of potential. I don’t hate Pantala or the new characters.

I just... I can’t really do this again. I can’t handle the thought of Pyrrhia coming back post-Darkstalker, with Winter showing up and talking to these guys again like nothing happened, seeming like a different person, joking around with them like his entire character wasn’t dragged through a mountain of manure to make the plot bend a certain way. I think as long as this is the ending that the story is continuing from, seeing that would just make me miserable.

Maybe I will just stay in the parts of the story that I fell in love with. And imagine a version of reality in which Pantala is allowed to exist on its own, where Swordtail was the fourth POV character of arc 3, where Queen Wasp stayed the villain throughout, and Snowfall got her own legends book about how she reformed Icewing society and fixed all the shit that poisoned Winter’s life, so future generations don’t have to suffer through the same stuff he did.

~~~~~

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading this far. I think this is everything I ever thought about the finale of the second story arc, so now I never have to talk about it again. Writing this was difficult. I found it crushing at times. This will probably stand as the only overtly negative post I have ever made on this blog. I love Wings of Fire, and I want to celebrate it. To add to it, not tear it down.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, or painful, or frustrating, or soul-crushing to read through. I’ll see you later, hopefully with a more constructive post.

[kazzattack]

make-up sex with Dick has been rotting in my mind lately :P

make up sex w/ ex bf!dick grayson… bc if i’ve noticed anything about him? he’s besties with all of his exes. like. every single one of them. he’d try to be particularly close with you because he’s not over you at all. still thinking about you 24/7, still wants to see you, definitely still wants to fuck you, all that good stuff. what’s pissing him off is that you’re sick of him. and because i’m you’re petty, you decide against blocking him just to let him know you’re choosing to see him and ignore him. you read all his stupid ass messages, he can still see your posts, and he knows you’re doing shit to piss him off. because nothing irks his soul more than being ignored, much less ignored by you. luckily enough, nothing’s stopping him from knocking on your door after texting you that he’s “coming back for his hoodie.” because duh, you kept all of those too.

you open the door against your better judgement and it’s obvious he has a few intentions once you get a good look at the flimsy tank top and sweats. “hi,” he smiles to hide the impatience in his voice.

“hi,” you respond with condescension and move to close the door in his face.

“you’re being a dick,” the smile easily fades as he catches the door with a quick hand, “just let me in.”

and against your better judgement, you do.

now he’s snooping around, and quite effectively, finding a way to dig through drawers and piles of clothes even though he’s spotted a hoodie or two out the corner of his eye. come to think of it, he’s interrogating you. asking you about that party from friday, that one guy he saw on your story, anything he can get. hell, he’ll go as far as to flash you a new pair of panties while he’s looking, asking who’re you getting all pretty for? now you’re irritated too, not giving him any of the invasive answers he’s looking for. you two go back and forth for god knows how long, all the way until he’s got you against a wall and muttering fuck you under your breath, followed by a clever remark of I thought you’d never ask.

finally, his hands are back on you. he can finally grab a hold of your face and get his tongue back down your throat after a long ass month of nothing. nothing like you, at least. “you’re such a little shit,” he groans and you laugh at him, letting him wrestle your legs around his torso and carry you to the bed. as if you could have fought against it anyway. he’s depraved of you, already groping your tits and ass after grinding his thigh into your clothed cunt. it’s almost as if he hasn’t fucked since the last time he had you. still feeling a little cruel, you tease, “those other girls just didn’t do it for you, huh?”

“there weren’t any other girls.”

“yeah right,” you force out a giggle to ignore the guilt.

“I’m serious. been waiting on you to cut the bullshit so I could fuck this cunt again.” his hand’s already eased under the waistband of your shorts to circle your clit and you moan right into his ear. “don’t need any other girl when i’ve got a whore right here, just for me, right?”

he sucks a hickey into the underside of your breast before flipping you over, seemingly back to his regular self. you’re easily repositioned face down and ass up, helping him pull your shorts all the way down. fuck, you missed him. the way he palms your ass and forces you against his cock, debating on whether he should really fuck you or just hump you til you’re begging for his cock and he’s coming in his boxers.

“already fucking me back,” he moans from behind you and it’s brought to your attention that you’re the one grinding on his dick through fabric. you can’t bring yourself to be ashamed of it though, keening when the next time you feel him there’s no barrier between you and the tip of his cock is slipping into your pussy. normally he’d be all sensual, rub at your cunt til it’s all messy and leaking before fucking you, but this time around it’s like he has no time for it. he’d rather force the arch in your back further into the mattress and fuck you full, have you whine into the pillows and beg for more of his cum like he knows you want to.

“still want me to get out?” he’s muttering into your ear after pulling your hair, knowing by now you’re too fucked out to give him some smart-ass remark. all you can give him are those whorish moans he hasn’t heard for so long as you cum on his cock for the third time. he’s skipped the theatrics he loves to fuck you deep and give you a good reminder that this is what you broke up with.

[greynatomy]

cindy lou who

alexia putellas x reader

social media + real life (no part two)

face claim - sabrina carpenter

———

liked by taylorswift, harrystyles and 2,648,826 others

yourinstagram made a little something special for the holidays

‘fruitcake’ is out now 🤍

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user AHHHH a christmas album!!!!

user nonsense (christmas version) 👀

taylorswift so proud!

↳ yourinstagram ty mother!

user guys… cindy lou who

—

Alexia was at training when she received a notification on her phone. Pulling it out, she sees a familiar notification. ‘yourinstagram posted a photo’

Clicking on it, she sees your new post. A new album.

“Hey, baby.”

Alexia quickly exits out of the app, putting her phone in her pocket.

“Hey.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Oh, you know.” Alexia shrugs her shoulders. “Just going through the socials, emails.”

“Oh, okay. Well, you wanna go to this restaurant I’ve always wanted to try?”

“Sure.”

At dinner, Alexia gets another notification. Seeing it, she acts like it was from her manager, excusing herself from the table.

—

liked by taylorswift, shawnmendes and 3,648,738 others

yourinstagram since you guys have blown up ‘fruitcake’ i give to you ‘santa doesn’t know you like i do’ music video! enjoy <3

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user mother is feeding us

user omfg is that shawn fucking mendes??

↳ greynatomy it’s not, but pretend it is

taylorswift on repeat!

↳ yourinstagram 🤍🤍

shawnmendes who’s that handsome fellow?

↳ yourinstagram lyle

↳ user can’t take her seriously

↳ user why am i shipping?

—

Alexia hasn’t had the chance to listen to the album, but from the looks of it, it’s become a hit in just a few hours.

Returning to the table, she sees that the desserts have been brought out.

“What did your manager want?”

“Oh, you know, just some football talk about the game soon.”

All her girlfriend does is nod, going back on her phone.

It’s been a year since Alexia broke up with you, but she couldn’t seem to stop thinking of you. Everywhere she looked, you were there, whether it was your songs or in posters and magazines.

You were everywhere.

You looked so beautiful in the pictures you posted, but she couldn’t help but wonder about that Shawn guy. Who is he to you? Alexia knew she had no right to be jealous, but she couldn’t help it.

Getting back home, her girlfriend was all over her, hoping to get lucky, but she wasn’t in the mood, pushing her away, giving a sorry of an excuse as to why she didn’t want to.

As her girlfriend slept, she stayed in the living room, putting her headphones on.

The first song, she remembers you writing it. The first time you let Alexia listen to it, it ended with you both back in bed. She grinned at the memory.

Getting to the fourth track, she carefully listens to the lyrics, quickly realizing that it was about her and her new relationship.

“Is this how you really feel?” Alexia asks herself.

She had met her now girlfriend a couple of months after the breakup when she went to Ibiza to let loose. She was aware of how quickly she moved on, so caught up in the new relationship.

She decides to sleep on the couch, not being able to bear sleeping next to her girlfriend.

—

liked by shawnmendes, alexiaputellas and 1,335,284 others

yourinstagram what’s in your wishlist?

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shawnmendes am i in yours?

↳ yourinstagram in your dreams

↳ user i need to know if they’re dating!

haileesteinfeld you’re in mine

↳ yourinstagram ily bby

user ugh she’s so pretty

—

It’s been two weeks since Alexia had listened to your new album. In those two weeks, she broke up with her girlfriend, much to her now ex-girlfriend’s pleas.

Alexia was the one to break up with you. No real reason given, just something about needing space. Remembering back to that conversation, Alexia realizes how much hurt she caused you.

Walking around the neighborhood, seeing all the Christmas lights, it reminds her of how the both of you would walk this very same path, looking at all the lights. Christmas has always been your favorite holiday.

Feeling guilty, she scrolls through her contacts, thumb hovering over your name. Clicking on it, she hears the call ring for a bit, some good news that you haven’t blocked her number. Eventually it goes to voicemail.

“Hey, uh, it’s Alexia. Um, I’ve, uh, just been thinking about you lately. I’m walking and seeing all the lights and I remember how it was your favorite thing to do. And, uh, it’s been a year and I know I have a lot to apologize for. So, if you do get this, please call me back… I miss you. Bye.”

[storiesfromafan]

Return - Buck x Reader

A/N: I have posted a story just about every day, so I had to keep it up for today. I return with the last part, which has a happy ending haha.

I've been thinking of doing a full story or a series of one-shots with the reader being one of the crew that works on the planes, and of course paired with Buck haha. See how I go...

Previous Parts: Pt 1 Rumours, Pt 2 MIA

Tag list: @strayrockette @redwitchbitch1

Being a prisoner of war was not something Buck had wanted, but he would take it over death. Though it felt like death at times. Yet it put a lot of things into perspective. What would be common necessaries, were a luxury now. Taking food for granted. Or having a conversation with someone he would avoid or them avoiding him, now something he longed for. Such as a conversation with you.

It was funny how you came to mind a fair bit since he was brought here. And Marge was an afterthought. Buck spent his sleepless nights thinking, and with it he started to realise how he felt for you. How he longed for your smile and company. How he racked his memories of you, trying to recall your eyes, your lips and your warmth. When he did sleep he dreamt of you, those dreams sometimes a reflection on memories together.

Yet guilt crept up on him, slowly eating its way at him. For he should be longing for his fiancé, the women he made a promise to before leaving for this war. And in a way he did, but no were as near as he did of you. The internal battle he was having was taking its toll. Buck felt drained and exhausted, but that was also due to the conditions of living in the camp.

But hope perked up in him. It was the day a bunch of new captured men were brought into camp. Standing around with the few men he had allied with, the call of Bucky caught his ears but he didn’t think much of it. But when it gained more men calling Bucky did hope rise in Buck. Pushing his way to the fence, hearing his friend ask where he was, Buck smiled.

“John Egan. Your two o’clock” he called, Bucky turning around without a second thought. “what took you so long?” Buck's smile widening, relief to see his friend.

Seeing Buck, it gave Bucky not only relief his friend was a live, but a sense they could make it out of here alive. Upon reuniting on the inside together, Buck wasted no time showing Bucky around, explaining it all to him. How he got there, what it’s like, how things were done and how they did things. Bucky was brought in without a second thought, and their time there was hard, exhausting and it messed with his mind, along with every other man there.

There were ups and downs. But one thing that kept them going was the will to get out and back home, along with the mail they could get. Today’s mail came in and to Buck's surprise, he had gotten a letter from Marge. Of course Bucky made a comment, saying Marge in a drawl and small chuckle. Buck forced a small chuckle, not always enjoying his friends jest.

Staring at the letter in his hand, that guilt like led in the pit of his stomach came back. Part of him would rather this letter be from you. In your delicate cursive. Words relaying your thoughts and feelings, your wishes of safety and return. But he wasn’t so lucky. Deciding it was time to see what Marge had to say, Buck opened the envelope and pulled out the few sheets of paper. Taking a seat on the bottom of the bunk, Buck read over the words. With every word, his brow furrows.

The last few sentences are what cleared up this letter, a dear John letter. I’m not sure what to say Buck. Since you’ve left it’s been hard, I’ve been struggling. And I did my best, writing you and holding hope. But the last five months I have been seeing another man, and my affections have grown for him. Please understand and forgive me, I can’t marry you when you return. It finished with wishing him well and to accept her apologies. Enclosed, Marge had put the ring he’d given her.

“What does Marge have to say?” Questioned Bucky with a smile. “How much she misses you and can’t wait till your home?”

Buck sat there quiet for a moment, looking at the ring. And as much as he should be devastated, a part of him was sad, yet he felt relief. That guilt lifting a good amount. Marge had spared him from breaking her heart, by her thinking she’d break his.

“Actually, she said she met someone else and has feelings for them" Buck said calmly. “She apologized and returned the ring". Between his thumb and pointer was the ring, showing it off to the men around him.

The room fell silent. No man knew what to say to that. What could they say? Other then apologise themselves, and tell him there were plenty of fish in the sea? For Buck, there was only one fish he wanted. And she had pushed him away.

“I guess that means you can pursue (Y/N) without any worry or guilt now" Bucky stated, breaking the silence.

Buck's eyes shot to his friend, seeing the knowing smile upon Bucky's face. He wondered what his friend knew exactly. As Buck thought he'd been smart and kept up a good poker face.

Getting up, Bucky crossed the room before taking a seat next to Buck. “You don't think I didn't notice you both getting close back on base? And when the rumours started, she distanced herself. So I figured her affections for you” Bucky stated matter-of-fact. “Then when you came back from talking to her, you looked pretty down. Factor in Marge just dumping you, and you're not as upset as you should be, I know how you feel back (Y/N)”.

Bucky smiled at the surprised face on his friend. Buck was stumped by the words just spoken to him. Amazed that Bucky could read him like he did. Moving to encase the ring in his palm, Buck folded the letter and put it back in the envelop. Followed by the ring, and in his pocket it went.

“She said to forget our talk happened...” Buck said softly.

Clapping Buck on the arm gently, Bucky said “I doubt that. If you'd seen how upset she was after hearing your plane had gone down...” Flashbacks ran across Bucky's mind, of you but also of himself and how you both handled the news.

Now Buck was invested, looking to the man beside him with concern. “H-how was she?”

Bucky sighed. “I was the one to tell her, just as she came out from working on the injured men. She looked so tired, and I...I had to burst her bubble. I could see...how devastated she was. I had to help her take a seat before she fell over".

Buck took a deep breathe, before shakily let it out.

“Also, I had to escort her back to her room too, so she could clean up. I know she cried, and had been for some time...as she found me later” – Bucky deciding to leave out his drinking – “well, I could see that she had been. We spent most of the night talking. I told her so many stories" he chuckled.

Buck softly laughed. “Hopefully nothing embarrassing about me".

Bucky laughed, “all the embarrassing ones".

Silence fell between them both. Various men in the room had either left or were busying themselves, not wanting to intrude on the moment. Buck's mind reeling from knowing that his plane going down, how you thought him dead, had upset you so. His chest hurting at the thought of you crying for him. But he hoped somehow news got back, and you knew he, and Bucky, were alive and were in a camp.

A small smile formed on Buck’s lips. “Why doesn’t that surprise me. You always did like to broadcast my worst moments".

It eased a bit of the sad tension. From there the conversation shifted to other matters. But in the back of Buck’s mind was you. And the renewed fire to get out of this camp and back to base, to see you and tell you everything.

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months. And you were still doing your part at the base. All the while wondering what happened to both Buck's. At first you were upset loosing them both, for days you were beside yourself over it. Then when you went back to working, you couldn’t help the tears that would come at random times, or when you were patching up and looking after the injured. But everyone understood, for they had been where you were.

Then you had a sliver of hope when there was rumours both Buck’s were in a POW camp. But without any solid proof, you were back to square one. Pilots came and go, either on their own accord or in a box. The amount of death was starting to get to you. Feeling a piece of you chip away with every man that didn’t make it. But you were hanging in the best you could, the need to do your part for the war drilled into you.

Periodically over eighteen months, the nurses that started the rumours warmed up to you, or guilt was eating at them. Trying to get you to join them in town for drinks, or the celebrations of the pilots. And you should have gone, to blow off some steam from all the work you had been doing. But you chose to remain separate from them all. Taking solace in the solitude. And with that reflecting on the happy memories with the two majors. A memory you were fond of was the celebrations where Bucky got up, after Buck trying to keep him in check, to sing and dance.

~~~~~

You laughed at the Major while remaining in the seat next to Buck, who was shaking his head while trying to hide a smile. Bucky was cocky, putting on a show for all. But when he turned his sights on you, you wish you could have made a run for it. Before you knew what was happening, Bucky had crossed back over to you, taking a hold of your hands and pulled you up.

“What are you doing Bucky?” You recall Buck questioning the dark haired male that had a hold of you.

“No pretty young woman should be sitting" Bucky retorted. “So, I’m going to dance with (Y/N). As you’re so true to Marge. Who would be understanding if you danced with a friend. But I’ll do it".

With that Bucky dragged you to the dance floor. In a fluster you recall telling him you were a bad dancer, but he was a good sport. And danced with you none the less. You’d never laughed so much, even when making a mistake. Bucky’s kind and funny words put you at ease. And before you knew it, he had you moving around the dance floor with a small ounce of grace.

You looked over to Buck, you cheeks hurting from the smile on your face. He was watching you both, a small smile upon his face. His eyes shining with warmth and laughter. You rolled your eyes with a chuckle. Which got Buck to softly laugh. You liked his eyes on you, enjoyed being his focus.

“Now, now" tutted Bucky. “I'm your dance partner, focus on me please”. His tone was light and playful.

You turned your focus back to Bucky, who said a quick good before sweeping you around the room some more. The Major was nice and playful, and a part of you could tell he was trying to flirt with you. But you didn't take his advances. And Bucky wasn't too hurt, in fact he knew he had a friend in you from it. The first women to turn his charms down.

Finally getting free of Bucky and his need to be himself. You returned to Buck in a laugh, as you fell into the seat next to him. You were warm from the dancing, and slightly out of breath. Buck looked at you with amusement.

“Don't say a word" you said with a sigh. “I didn't get a choice, Bucky held me captive!”

Buck laughed, his voice tickling your ears by how rough it was. “That's John" was all he said.

“Yes, as I have just learned" you laughed. “Was what Bucky said true? How you don't dance with any women because of your fiancé?”

He nodded. “Yes, she's the one and only".

You felt a little jealous of this woman. A woman who could get a man to be faithful to her, and doing so during a war. You envied her for having a good man like Buck. That was when you started to have a crush on him.

~~~~~

It was a surprise when the number of injured lessened through your doors. And in time you understood why. It looked like the War was coming to an end, which meant soon you'd be home. And all this would be a distant memory. You sighed with that knowledge. And slowly, you and the other nurses began to clean up and pack up what wasn't needed so much.

Yet there was a commotion outside – men calling out names and vehicles -  that grabbed yours and the nurses attention. They took off, while you stayed to finish what you were doing. You had an idea it had to be returning men from the POW camps. The noise outside didn't seem to die down. So once you were done, you decided to see what the fuss was about.

Stepping outside you could see the men crowding around, happy and joyous for those that had made it back. Grateful for more men to be alive then lost out there. Whipping your hands on your apron, you looked around. Part of you hoping to see either or both of the Buck's. And then you spotted one.

He looked relieved, yet exhausted, with faint bruises and cuts. His dark hair was messy from either his hat or the ride back into base. A small amount of comfort coming to you upon seeing Bucky. Yet, that pit in your stomach was back, at no sign of Buck.

As if sensing your gaze, Bucky turned in your direction. Taking a moment for him to register your form from the crowd. A bright smile crossed his devilish face, before he left the men he had been talking too and came right over to you. Without a thought, Bucky pulled you into a tight hug. Which you smiled upon feeling that he was actually there. A few tears rising in your eyes, a tear or two escaping and making their way down your cheeks.

You pulled back and looked over Bucky's face and torso. “You're really back, and in one piece".

He laughed and nodded. “Yeah I am. Should see the other guys".

You laughed, a real laugh in what felt for like forever. “I could imagine". Then you grew quiet, wanting to ask the question that was sitting on your tongue. Was Buck with you?

Bucky looked off to the side, a small humorous smile sliding across his lips. “I think someone wants to say hello...”

Confusion washed over your face at his words. But when he released you, turning you in the direction he had been looking, you got your answer. A couple of meters away was Buck. And he didn't look any different to what you remembered. Minus the exhaustion, need of three balanced meals for a while, and scars on his cheeks. Finally that pit in your stomach filled, finally having him back, you felt relieved.

Having laid eyes on you as Bucky held you at arms length, you both swapping words. The smile on your face warming Buck, glad to know you were glad to see his friend. And this was the moment Buck suddenly didn't know what he would say to you, let alone how you would react to seeing him.

When Bucky noticed him, he smiled before looking back to you. And before Buck knew what was happening, you were facing him. Recognition flashed in your eyes, and then he watched how you seemed to relax. He could tell you were relieved he was back, that they were both back.

Before he could stop himself, Buck took a step forward. Then another and another, slowly at first. Until he couldn't wait any longer, and with a blink he was standing before you. He looked down at you, while you looked up at him, only a ruler size gap between you both. Now up close, Buck noted how pale you looked and tired you seemed. But you were still strong. You just needed a good night sleep, and until the War was officially over, you would have to wait.

Buck cleared his throat. “Hi...” was the best he could start with.

You released the breath you were holding, it coming out shakily. “H-hi...”

All the words he wanted to say, none would make it to his tongue for him to say. So Buck did the only thing he could do. Grabbing your arms, Buck pulled you to him, against him. His arms coming to wrap around you as he held you closely. He had imagined this moment, longed for it. And finally it was real, you before him and him holding you dearly. Resting his cheek against your head, Buck let out a sigh in content. Finally feeling repose, feeling safe.

You were shocked. Not believing Buck was hugging you, holding you tightly like a life line. Buck had never looked at another woman, let one got this close. Yet he had instigated this. Confusion filled you. Unsure what was happening. Maybe he was glad to see a friendly face after what he must have gone through.

“I am so happy to see you" Buck whispered, wanting just you to hear him. “How I have waited for this moment...”

You pulled back, looking at his face with sadness. “Don't say that...don't say what you don't mean...”

Leaning in, Buck pressed his forehead against your own. “I wouldn't have said it, if I didn't mean it...and I meant every word of it (Y/N)”.

Your stomach fluttered at his admission, as well as hearing your name leaving his lips. Lips you wanted so badly to kiss. Even after so much time apart. “W-what about Marge?” You questioned softly.

Buck sighed. Taking a moment to sort through his thoughts before voicing them. “Well...you see, she wrote me while I was...you know. And she has met someone else...so she returned my ring". To prove a point, Buck pulled out the engagement ring. “So, I guess I'm unattached".

As his words, and the ring, sunk in you slowly nodded your head. “Oh...I-I’m so sorry Buck".

He softly groaned hearing his nickname slip from your lips. It was music to his ears, and spurred him on for what was to come. “Don't be, because I can now do this".

Swiftly he moved in, lips capturing your own in a tender, but passionate kiss. Surprised was an understatement. For Major Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven was kissing you, and in front of anyone who looked. Yet, part of you didn't care. You began to relax, eyes closing as you took in that you were kissing the one person you had wanted to see since his plane went down. The person you missed terribly, and spent nights crying for. For the person you prayed for to return to you. And he did.

Reluctantly Buck pulled back, his forehead resting against yours again. He watched as you slowly opened your eyes, a glossed over look in them. When your eyes met his baby blues, he hoped you could see everything he wanted you to know in them. Because he could see it in yours; the joy, longing and contentment.

“Buck...” you said so soft, that he could just hear it. “W-why did you do that?”

He chuckled deeply. “Ain't it obvious?”  you slightly shook your head. “I am crazy about you. Have been for longer then I could admit. I love you (Y/N)”.

Those words, all of them, set your heart soaring. As tears of joy rose in your eyes. This is what you had hoped for upon Buck’s return. You had wanted him to return your feelings, and sweep you off your feet. You got half of your wish. Maybe, if you marry, you'd finally be swept off your feet.

You sighed happily. “I love you so much Gale". And you leant in for another kiss. This one longer then the last. Which neither of you were against. Finally he had come back to you.

[mythmerth]

from my October readings, I’ve collected a few more merlin fic recs for the people…

For favorite long (80k+) fic, I would have to pick another fic by horsecrazy, this time All Things Loved and Lovesick. It’s 90k and GODD these idiots I love them so bad. They’re just trying to take care of farm animals, elbow deep helping animals give birth at 3 AM all the while desperately wanting each other. I screamed a bit when they finally kissed I won’t lie.

For favorite mid length (30k-80k) fic, there were a LOT of contenders (most of my extra recs could’ve fit here) but I would have to pick From Where You Stand by fifty_fifty. The concept there was one I haven’t seen a whole lot (body swapping their way into a magic reveal) which surprises me cause that sounds so merlin-esque??? really loved the chaos brought on by that

For favorite short fic (<30k), I would have to choose Into Perdition by athousandvictories. If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for it’s religious guilt themes, and if there’s a snarky merlin in there too even better. the tension and resolution in this is just Delicious and Merlin is so bold I’m living for it.

And here’s a few more rapid fire October reads that I enjoyed!

An Illusion of Sorts by lordvoldemortsnipple. looove the magician x magic crossover

Chrysalis by i_canz_kill_dragon, a very well done coming of age/personal acceptance story

Tales of Magic by amithia. The coffee shop subtle magic OOO i eat it up, i love the take on Merlin’s magic being just this little instinct.

Awake by corilannam and phoenixacid- this is definitely a great and unique arthur returns scenario, with all the questions and mystery and love involved

Arthur Pendragon VS the World by Ally_Oop. more modern than the last but yet another unique take on Arthur returning, very well done and makes you wonder what the hell is happening

Swans Lost in the Stream of Time by DracoWillHearAboutThis. reincarnation memory returning goodness

I didn’t reread anything in October which is crazy because it’s the first month since May of this year that I haven’t! instead, I will recommend one of my most reread merlin fics: Rule Number Four of which the account has been orphaned. I love the silliness and tension and multi identity aspect of it, just such a good work all around for whenever you want a goofy, modern, powerful merthur duo.

That’s all for October, I’ll be back in a few weeks for my November recs and then soon after that I’ll be doing my 💫yearly merlin fic reading💫 stats (of which are very very unhinged). 2024 has been diabolicalamazing for my merlin readings and can’t wait to share 😁

and if you’re still looking for more recs then check out my other posts ~

<< last month next month >>

[bitethedevil]

The Devil's Dinner Party (Raphael x Tav)

Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 (Finished)

Link to the fic on AO3

Summary: Tav accepts Raphael’s invitation to a dinner party after she had handed him the Crown of Karsus. None of her companions show up, so it is just her, Raphael, and a bunch of Raphael’s favored clients. Raphael is suspiciously kind to her, but everything might not be as perfect as it seems. (This is only the first chapter, it’s going to be a longer thing)

(AN: This isn’t super edited and it’s the first fic that I’ve ever posted, so bear with me. English isn’t my first language either, so there might be some odd words or weird grammar some places. I am an English major though, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad. This fic has just been gnawing on my mind since I started it yesterday. There will be more chapters.)

Tav took a deep breath to calm her nerves and adjusted her dress before stepping into the portal. She arrived in the foyer of the House of Hope in a swirl of embers and smoke. A tiefling servant greeted her politely when she appeared. Tav was ushered into the area where Raphael had brought them in the beginning of their adventure all that time ago. It looked the same, except the table in the center of the room had been switched out with a larger one.

She looked around the room in search of a familiar face. She cursed her companions internally when she noticed that she was the only one of them who had accepted Raphael’s invitation. She had thought that at least Astarion would have jumped at the chance to attend such a fancy event.

However, she was not the only person there. There were at least fifteen other people present who she had no idea who was. None of them devils. At least not as far as Tav could tell. Most likely, they were also favored clients of Raphael.

All the people around her were dressed in opulent clothing and jewelry. Tav felt grateful that she had decided on buying new clothes for the occasion, despite her almost attending in an old dress she had found in the back of her closet.

A drink was placed in her hand by one of the servants. She took a long sip to calm her nerves. She looked around for the one familiar face that she knew for certain would be attending, but the devil she knew was nowhere to be seen. Most likely he was somewhere waiting for the perfect moment for his dramatic entrance. Tav rolled her eyes at the thought and took yet another sip of her drink.

She suddenly noticed that a few of the other guests started looking in her direction. She jumped when she felt a hand being gently placed on her back.

“My, what have we here?” a familiar voice purred.

Raphael came up beside her. He was wearing his usual smug smile and even fancier clothes than she was used to seeing him in.

“I’m glad you came,” he said with a slight bow. “It shows that you have better manners than your dear friends, it seems.”

“So it seems…” Tav said, still feeling slightly bitter about the fact that they did had not shown up. “I apologize on their behalf. I’m sure they had good reasons.”

“I’m sure…” Raphael said with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. “But no matter. You are here. The guest of honor whose name went on the contract that ensured me the crown. Without you, there would be no celebration tonight.”

“Mm…right…” Tav said quietly while absentmindedly swirling the contents of the glass she was holding.

There it was again. That nauseous feeling of guilt and anxiety that she had also felt when she had handed the Crown of Karsus to him. It had been her name on the contract. It had been her who handed him an artifact that potentially could destroy worlds and gods know what else.

It had been the whole reason that she could not decline his invitation as her friends had. Most of her companions had wanted to turn a blind eye to the idiotic actions of their leader and forget about it. Tav needed to see. Her attendance was a desperate attempt to gain some semblance of control over the situation.

“And if I may be so bold…” Raphael said in a hushed voice, shaking her from her train of thought. “What a precious sight. To see you in proper clothes instead of that ragged armor you wore when we first met. You look wonderful, my dear.”

Tav blinked as she wrestled herself away from the anxious thoughts in her head to return to reality. She dumbly looked down at her dress and then back at Raphael.

“Oh, thank you,” she said and forced a polite smile. “You look nice as well.”

Raphael gave her a smile and briefly squeezed her shoulder before walking to the center of the room to properly welcome his guests and invite them to sit down.

The dinner itself was as one could expect when dining in the House of Hope. There was every kind of food that you could possibly imagine. There were also expensive wines from all corners of the realms. The servants constantly ran back and forth to make sure that no one lacked anything.

To Tav’s great relief, she had been seated beside a talkative stranger, so she did not have to sit through the dinner in silence. The stranger was a young half-elf, who introduced himself as Rolim. Tav could gather that he was a merchant of some sort. He was quite handsome with his sharp elvish features. He had blonde hair, brown eyes, and a bright smile when he talked.

Tav barely got a word in while he was talking, but she found that she did not mind. He talked excitedly about the success of his business and the new mansion he had recently acquired. No doubt with the help of a certain devil, Tav suspected.

The few times Tav turned her attention away from the young man, she noticed Raphael unashamedly studying her from the other end of the table. He did not eat, but simply drank wine while he looked as if he was barely listening to the two people on either side of him who were eagerly speaking to him.

“…Don’t you agree?” Rolim asked her and pulled her attention away from Raphael’s gaze.

“Hm?” she said, having no idea what he was asking her.

“That Baldur’s Gate might be a promising place to expand my business to. That is where you said you were from, yes?” Rolim said with a smile.

“Oh yes, it is,” Tav said with a polite smile. “Certainly. Although I have to admit that I don’t know a whole lot about how it is to run a business in the Gate.”

“I think it could be promising,” Rolim continued cheerfully. “Perhaps I could visit sometime, and you could show me around the city?”

Oh. He was flirting with her, Tav realized.

“Hm, yes,” she said with a forced smile. “Perhaps…May I ask you something, Rolim?”

“Of course!” he said.

Tav leaned a bit closer to him and lowered her voice so that no one else would eavesdrop.

“I hope it’s not rude to ask, but why is it that you were invited here exactly?” she asked.

“Oh,” he spoke in an almost exaggerated hushed voice to match Tav’s. “I can’t really tell you the specifics, but I am a client of Raph’s.”

Tav suppressed a giggle. ‘Raph’? No doubt Raphael hated that.

“Right,” she said. “I thought as much. Just curious.”

Their talk was interrupted by a clinging on glass. Raphael got up from his chair to hold a speech. He started out by thanking those who had attended. Then it turned into a predictably dramatic and theatrical speech about his desire for the crown and his eventual success. He then, surprisingly, also credited the person who had brought him the crown. He spoke warmly of Tav exclusively, completely disregarding her fellow adventurers, much to her discomfort since everyone was staring at her while he did. She forced a smile until it was over.  

She was beyond relieved when it was finally over, and the other guests had stopped staring at her like she was a monkey in a zoo.

“It was you?” Rolim asked once the moment was over. “You defeated the elderbrain? Why didn’t you say? You’re the hero of Baldur’s Gate!”

“It wasn’t just me,” she said a bit too harshly. It annoyed her that her companions had not been credited in Raphael’s speech. “It was me and a whole lot of other people that I could not have done it without.”

“Still, you did it!” Rolim said excitedly. “I’ve heard the bards sing of it even in my corner of Faerûn.”

To Tav’s luck, people were beginning to leave the table. She saw her opportunity to escape the conversation and did not hesitate to take it.

“I’m going to get some air,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Alright, but when you get back, I want to hear all about it!” Rolim called after her.

She walked through the house, desperate to get away from all the noise and curious looks for a moment. She found a balcony. She leaned up against the railing and closed her eyes for a moment while taking deep breaths.

All of it was just too much. She hated it. She shouldn’t have gone. She wasn’t a hero. A hero would not have handed the crown to a bloody devil. Baldur’s Gate might have been saved, but who could say what destruction the future might have in store with such powers in Raphael’s hands?

There was a reason why she had isolated herself after the defeat of the elderbrain. She never attended the events that she had been invited to by the city, because she could not look any of the people there in the eyes while they celebrated her. Her companions. Her friends. They were the real heroes. They had all suffered and overcome so much, even before the whole tadpole business. She might have wasted all of it by making one stupid decision.

She took another deep, shaky breath to calm her nerves and stop the tears that were threatening to fall. The view of the hellscape of Avernus did nothing to calm her. It was disorientating. It was night, but still it looked like it was day over the jagged and desolate red landscape.

“Enjoying the view?”

She jumped and turned around to find Raphael sitting down on one of the chairs behind her.

“You have got to stop scaring the shit out of me,” she said. “It’s getting old, Raphael.”

Raphael chuckled.

“Language,” he chided. “It’s hardly my fault that you are such a nervous little thing.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’m sure your guests miss you,” she said. “I will be back in a moment. I just needed some air. I’m not going to snoop around in your house or anything.”

“I know you wouldn’t dare,” Raphael said smoothly while studying her with a tilted head. “My guests will be fine. No doubt they can fill each other’s ears with mindless chatter instead of mine. Sit.”

He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the small table beside him.

“It’s fine, really,” she said. “I just needed a moment.”

“Sit,” he ordered again. “Something is clearly on your mind, dear.”

She could hear from his tone that he would not let it go, so she sat down.

Raphael snapped his fingers and a hookah appeared on the table. Tav raised an eyebrow and looked from the hookah to Raphael. They sat in silence for a moment as Raphael prepared it. Despite her restless mind, she could not help being slightly amused at the odd gesture.  

Raphael placed the mouthpiece at the end of the hose between his lips, took a long drag and exhaled the smoke smoothly. Then he offered it to Tav.

“For those pesky nerves of yours.”

“Oh,” Tav said and waved her hand dismissively at the gesture. “I’ve never smoked before.”

“There’s a first for everything, no?” he said. “Indulging once won’t kill you.”

Tav sighed slightly and took the hose of the hookah from his hand. She placed the mouthpiece between her lips and cautiously inhaled the smoke. She started coughing hard as she exhaled.

“Or perhaps it will,” Raphael chuckled as he took it back from her to take another drag.

As her coughing fit subsided, she felt light-headed. However, just as Raphael said, it did also make her feel somewhat more relaxed.

“Now,” Raphael said. “Tell me what it is that troubles you.”

“It’s nothing,” Tav said and shook her head.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said calmly. “I can see it in your eyes. I have my suspicions as to what could be bothering you, of course. Tell me and I promise you, I will not take offense.”

She looked at him. She did not know if was the effect of the wine, the hookah or the almost kind tone of Raphael’s voice that made her want to tell him everything. She wanted to tell him all those things that she had kept to herself and that had eaten away at her insides for months after the defeat of the elderbrain.

“I feel like a failure,” she said, her voice almost breaking at the confession. “We went through so much. Saved so many people back then. And for what? For me to hand over the crown to you. That was my decision…”

There was not as much as a trace of anger on Raphael’s face as she explained. He even looked somewhat sympathetic. He listened attentively while occasionally taking drags from the hookah.

“I saw it in their eyes, you know? I still do,” she said looking out over the balcony with an empty stare. “They didn’t say anything about it, but I know they were disappointed with my decision. I don’t blame them.”

“You are entirely too hard on yourself, mouse,” Raphael said. “You did what you had to do, as a good leader should. They are in no position to judge you.”

“No, they should. They should judge me,” she countered. “The defeat of the elderbrain was a product of their hard work as well. I robbed them of having a say in the final decision. I would never have gotten that far if it had not been for them, and I still spat in their face, and stupidly chose an option that might one day destroy all we fought to save.”

“Do not speak so low of yourself,” Raphael said in an almost angry tone. “It was your right to make that decision. You say that you would not have gotten that far without them, but that is where you are wrong. They would never have gotten that far without you. You made the difficult choices. You took on responsibility when no one else stepped forward.”

“But– “

“No, Tav,” Raphael interrupted.  “I will not stand listening to you speak ill of yourself in such a manner, when you only did what none of your companions had the sense of responsibility to do. They closed their eyes and handed the reins to you when things became unsavory, did they not? Is that not why none of them are present tonight?”

Tav hated what he was saying, but he did have a point. They had once again looked away and left the mess to her. She would also have been lying if she said that it had not been something that had irked her even back then. How they would leave the decisions to her, but still complain about it when they disagreed. She did offer them plenty of opportunities to take her place, but none of them ever stepped forward.

Raphael knew that he had hit a nerve and softened his tone.

“They don’t deserve you,” he said. “I meant what I said in the speech, when I said that you were the one to defeat the elderbrain. Without you, they would have gotten themselves killed long before they could even reach Baldur’s Gate.”

Raphael took one last drag and got up from his seat. He stood in front of her.

“As for my plans with the crown…” he said and extended a hand to her. “Come. I want to show you something.”

She took it and got up from her seat as well.

“You really ought to get back to your guests, Raphael,” she said as she held the crook of his arm as he brought her through the house.

“And neglect my very favorite guest? Nonsense,” he said with a charming smile.

He brought her to his archive. Artifacts were beautifully displayed on pedestals. Raphael brought her to the pedestal in the middle of the archive. She squinted at the paper displayed on the pedestal.

“Is that...?”

“Your contract, yes,” he said. “It still is one of my most precious possessions.”

She looked at her own signature at the bottom of the document. Then she read the sign beside it: ‘A most-cherished client.’  

It was sweet, in a way, that he would display it in such a manner, Tav thought for a brief moment. Then she immediately shook the thought away. This was Raphael, after all. She immediately became aware that she was still holding his arm even though they had stopped. She instinctively let go of it.

“Why are you showing me this?” she asked with curiosity.

“To remind you of our deal, of course,” he said. “You never did read it, did you?”

“It’s in Infernal,” she said with a shrug.

“Perceptive as ever,” Raphael chuckled. “Yes, it is. Though, had you asked, I would gladly have translated it…Would you like me to read it to you?”

She hesitated for a moment. Perhaps, it was better to not know. There was nothing that she could do about it now, after all. Still…she was curious.

“Please,” she said and gestured to it.

Raphael smiled at her before he started reading the first clause in Infernal. It shook her slightly to hear him speak in another language. Infernal being such a harsh and guttural language. Raphael spoke it with ease. Tav found it oddly attractive, which was no doubt an intentional effect that Raphael was well-aware of.

He went through each clause, first in Infernal and then in the common tongue. Tav found herself, not for the first time, lost in the way he spoke and that velvety voice of his. Especially because he made a show of looking at her while he did it. Impressively, he could recite most of the contract by memory.

When he was done, Tav surprisingly found herself more reassured than worried. It did contain all the things that they had agreed on. Raphael would not use the crown to dominate mortals and the crown would stay in the Hells.

“So, as you can see,” he said and gestured to the contract. “There is nothing to worry your pretty head over.”

She glanced at the contract again. She did feel less worried, but she also still felt like there could be something that she was missing.  

“I have never lied to you, Tav,” Raphael said as if he had just read her thoughts. “And I have always dealt fairly with you, have I not?”

“That’s debatable,” Tav said and looked at him. “We did exchange an insanely powerful artifact for a bloody hammer.”

Raphael laughed.

“An insanely powerful artifact that none of you would ever be able to harness the power of, in exchange for a ‘bloody hammer’ that your very survival depended on.”

“Hm,” Tav huffed stubbornly.

“Hm,” Raphael teased and mimicked her huff with an amused smile. “Come. Let us get back to those guests of mine that you seem to be so worried about.”

Raphael gently put his arm around her shoulders to guide her out of the archive. His little touches and his gentleness with her did not go unnoticed by Tav, but she found that she did not mind. Even though she knew better. She should be suspicious. She knew she should, but it was hard when the man was so damn charming about it.

[crazylittlejester]

honestly, the fandom dismisses wars trauma a little too much. Have you noticed it’s always never brought up in his character studies? And when it is, it’s totally brushed off him and cia had a WEIRDDD age gap. It’s also weird hyrule warriors never acknowledges this. I honestly don’t think it’s gonna be recognized in LU but idk. It’s just weird how quickly the fandom brushed over all that. What’s your opinion? Cuz you have cool opinions lol

Disclaimer: Everything you’re about to read is my opinion and my interpretation of a game. I’m not talking about headcanons (unless otherwise specified), I’m just talking about my experience with the game and everything else. All of this is from MY perspective interacting with the canon material from both Hyrule Warriors and Linked Universe. Also! I am dyslexic, my bad for oddly autocorrected words or weird spelling mistakes

A huge reason I started yapping so much on this blog was because I saw a lot of people either actively disliking Wars, making fucking INSANE comments about his body, overly sexualizing him, or just straight up dismissing him all together and it helped me get over my posting anxiety because it genuinely made me so upset. He’s been my favorite character since only a few posts into LU (i originally liked Twilight better based sheerly on design but it took like only a few posts before that changed), and I love HW Link in general, and I thought it was actually crazy that more people didn’t like him. I’ve written several of my own characters studies on him, some of which I’ve posted, others lay trapped in my old laptop in the form of a full on analysis paper, never to see the light of day

You can send a full grown man to war and he will come back with trauma, imagine what happens when you grab some poor teenager and tell him everything relies on him. Literally forget Cia for a minute, Link as a teenager was taken and shoved into a full on war where his men turned on him and in order to survive, he had to kill. Monsters and hylians alike, it was him or them, and he’s the one who made it out. Not to mention he was constantly running all over the battle field trying to prevent the hylian captains from being defeated, and he most certainly lost many people he cared about just because he couldn’t get there in time. He had to carry around the guilt that this war was started because some sorceress was obsessed with him ON TOP of that

This was said earlier by an anon on a post I reblogged, and I’ve been saying it myself for months but I will say it again: If Warriors had been a girl and been obsessed over that same way, I fucking GUARANTEE you people would be taking it more seriously

I literally just typed in the character name and the game she’s from and that is what google had to say about her. If an older man was described as ‘harboring serious affections’ and having a ‘desire to claim’ a teenage girl I literally don’t think it would’ve been glossed over or ignored like it is

I don’t think nintendo was ever gonna elaborate or really recognize it in the game, they never go super in depth on anything in Zelda games from my experience, and I doubt Jojo will really get into it in LU mainly just because she has so much going on with eight other dudes and potentially two more (based on the header on the linked universe blog)

I saw a lot of characterizations of Warriors and opinions of him that made me so confused and also a bit mad, such that he is a womanizer or a stupid twink (of which he is neither), and that’s a huge reason I started writing fanfiction for this fandom. Firstly to just create more content for my favorite character because I rarely saw any that focused on him, and secondly because I didn’t like some (NOT ALL) of how I was seeing him characterized. (i cannot emphasize enough: NOT ALL people in the fandom characterized him this way, I saw plenty of amazing and beautiful characterizations of Warriors)

I do not think he is a womanizer at all, in fact I fully believe his flirtatious behavior is a defense mechanism. I think his ‘woman problems’ are the fact that he’s afraid of women (especially older women) he doesn’t know or trust, but also that’s just my opinion. And I am genuinely a bit worried that now that people have stopped talking about how they noticed he seemed off a few updates ago and now that they’re saying he’s back to normal that people are going to start reducing him to a stupid dramatic twink again, as if Warriors was not the one who came up with the initial plan to fight Dink and was not the first one to fight him. As if this is not a man who lead a god damn army. As if everything he’s done and everything he is no longer matters because he’s ‘pretty’

anyways I have a lot of thoughts about him in general and im just glad the fandom has been treating him better as of late, but i am a bit worried it’s just gonna go back to how it was

thanks for the ask!! sorry i got a bit carried away 😭

[steppingstar]

Gun x Goo: shed your knuckle velvet (torn on my teeth)

(is this how u post fanfictions on tumblr?? i’ve never done this..)

Goo visits Gun in prison.

“You dick.” is the first thing Goo spits at him when he enters the visiting room, pressing a finger firmly against the glass partition, so close Gun can see the ridges and furrows of the skin of his index finger.

Gun, in his usual manner of answering Goo, rolls his eyes. He’s without his sunglasses now, so Goo can actually see him do it for once, and he has to bite back a smirk at the offended squawk he receives. His eyes don’t leave Goo as the blond sits down in the designated chair, fingers already itching for a cigarette as the other man leans in far closer than he needs to. There’s a glass window separating them, he has no idea why Goo is leaning closer like he’ll somehow be able to reach him.

“You have any idea how long it took for me to get them to let me come visit you?” Goo huffs, crossing his arms, like he’s talking about something as mundane as the weather, like Gun didn’t almost kill him the last time they met. Like nothing has changed between them. And, maybe, nothing has.

“I don’t.” He says dryly in return, and he’d really like to take a drag right now. He always found amusement in the way Goo’s face would scrunch up in disgust at the scent.

“Well, a while!” Goo scowls. “I’m not one to give up, though,” He’s grinning now, the smile stretched wide across his face in a way that Gun thinks makes him look uglier than usual. It’s admittedly his favorite smile on him. “It only took a little bit of bribery to convince them.”

“Bribery?” Gun sighs, straightening up in his chair finally, resting his arms on his knees. “Of course.”

“Yep!” He chirped, still grinning at him. “All on your card, don’t worry.”

“..How the fuck did you get access to my card.”

“The same way I always get access to your things.” He says in a singsongy voice. Gun wishes there wasn’t a glass wall between them so that he could reach over and hit him over the head.

They don’t..talk about. Goo chats his ear off, rambling about whatever new anime he’s been watching, about the new people he’s met, yada yada. Gun, like always, tunes him out, and takes a moment to observe the other man across from him. He seems unfazed, like he walked away from their fight the same man, but Gun knows him better. He’s broken him down and put him back together more times than he can count in their years together, the same way Goo has done for him, and he can recognize the smallest shift in his expression, the way he winces ever so slightly when he moves a certain way.

He’s hurt him. Bad.

Gun can’t help but feel a bit of satisfaction well up within him at the knowledge. He thinks he should feel guilt at the damage he’s caused to his body, but he feels as if this is the most suitable way to leave his final mark on Goo. They’ve always been violent people; it’s why they work so well together. If he thinks hard enough, he can even remember the way Goo’s hand fisted in his hair as he pressed painfully close to him, the taste of blood filling his mouth when he bit Goo’s hard enough to make him gasp and slip his tongue into his mouth like it was yesterday.

The conversation reaches a lull, neither of them speaking for a moment. They simply stare at the wall, stare at each other, Gun’s eyes catching on Goo’s lips and staying there a while.

Gun had always imagined since they had first met how their final meeting would go; his knuckles kissing a bruise into Goo’s unmarked face, his fingers clenched and wrapped tight around his slender neck, squeezing like he was trying to hold onto him, all the way until the warmth, the light, the life he always brought with him drained out of his eyes.

He didn’t expect this, the two of them uncharacteristically silent, gazing at each other through the glass that separates them with a soft look unusual of men like them.

He feels an inexplicable tenderness suddenly. The urge to wrap his arms around Goo and never let go, until their bodies meld into each other and become one. Like they were always meant to be. One in the same, two halves of the same coin.

“I love you.” Gun cannot say.

“Get the hell out of here, Goo,” He drawls instead, leaning back in the uncomfortable metal chair. His lips twitch just barely, the closest thing to a smile he’ll allow himself to direct at the blond.

Goo just laughs, unfazed. “I’ll leave whenever the hell I want to, you bastard.” He shoots back, grinning, eyes glittering mischievously beneath his glasses.

And this, Gun thinks, is the best possible outcome.

[aztarion]

If Sol is an anxiety-riddled cheetah, what sort of person or thing or addition to her (un)life would have the same effect on her that an emotional support puppy has on a cheetah?

ive been thinking about this and not getting anywhere j and im pretty sure it’s meant as no nuance but we’ve established im an overthinker v_v so i rambled for a while below, hopefully it’s entertaining LOL. i focused way too much on the relationships. tbh it could be her brother if she ever reunited with him

it’s so hard to pick out one particular thing or person or addition and keep it realistic!!! i’d otherwise say it was Julian during the fledgling years, but she didn’t have much in the way of anxiety then, not like it is now, and he was also partially responsible for what brought about triggering/exacerbating it in the first place. but initially what they had, if you could lift that younger slightly less bold Julian to replace present Julian, might have that effect on her

in some weird way i think Sol subconsciously likes being kept on the fringe or razors edge of her nerves in some twisted strain of excitement; ive been toying with this as a manifestation of her beast. so maybe she would vore a traditional therapy dog and sit there shaking and whimpering like she’s the victim 🧐

i’ve mentioned before she gets on really well with Elena and enjoys her dry presence and quiet competence and absolute loyalty, but the fact of what’s unnaturally behind that loyalty spikes anxiety if Sol dwells on it — Sol is also VERY protective and worries about everyone she has a connection with. she would develop feelings for the therapy dog. whatever it might be in this analogy, it would have to be some sort of stronger kindred/supernatural for her to have any peace of mind

so… Lettow comes closest in that regard, but i still don’t think Sol would be happy for other reasons. his demeanor, strength and reliability has the most inwardly calming effect on her — like a truly strange solid steadying comfort over a period of months that grow insanely chaotic. he offers comfort, forgiveness, acceptance, support — all the things she thinks she wants or needs. it’s interesting to me that in the base text a lot of his touches and embraces are described as being either ‘grounding’, ‘protective’ or ‘lingering’ because Sol often feels like she’s drowning — in guilt, in Aila’s memories, in loneliness, in purposelessness, in her own maddeningly unsatisfied hunger. like meeting earth after years at sea. he has big taurus energy to her underdeveloped scorpio. (contrastingly Julian’s are described as unexpected or split-second and leaving her off-balance… but again i think Sol actually likes that)

maybe Lettow could help her heal past Aila but i don’t think Sol would give herself that chance for forgiveness. and while she comes to really love and care for him despite the confusion Aila’s stirring brings, and her own impulsive feelings and actions, i don’t think she’s IN love with Lettow :( he doesn’t inspire or excite or wildly frustrate her like Julian does. so maybe that does make Lettow a good emotional support puppy… Sol needs a pet elder kindred just chilling in the background with a panama hat being extremely accepting of her stupidity to feel normal i guess. im thinking his willingness to forgive what she’s done would eat at her forever though, to a point that’s just utterly dissociative. and that’s not fair to Lettow; he doesn’t deserve another gf tapping out on him

present-and-post-night road Julian…sigh

Julian has this constant dichotomy of idealism and hypocrisy, patience and cool calculative manipulation. he would be that one therapy dog that wasn’t screened for occasionally barking unexpectedly and roughhousing. so like he’s very good for her in some ways and terribly triggering in others but now the cheetah is attached to him so everyone (me) is hesitant to take him out of the enclosure

more than anything Julian offers her assurance in his intelligence, adaptability, his purpose — and the purpose he gives her, which Sol can’t put to words. it’s less about providing a calming presence and more about inspiring and challenging her. he’s like enrichment LOL. more akin to a partner in adventure and crime rather than strictly emotional support, but i think Sol would end up heading in Aila’s direction without Julian stirring shit up for her

as for the emotional support… ok this is where i retreat to my fanfic but Marquis definitely threw a big bone at the end of Julian’s romance. they have a very deep connection; the sire-childe bond, were best friends/lovers/attached at the hip for a decade, he brings out the best (and worst) in her but he helps her discover herself… i think it’s special and could work as a foundation. of course ultimately the effectiveness depends on the progression of their relationship and the trust rebuilding between them post-night road, but i see that as a possibility. when Sol tentatively decides to help with Julian’s plan for the SI and 2100 long term instead of Lettow, something big is bridged there — in the ending scene with romanced Julian he in turn offers Sol half of the reigns on the program and lets her call the shots with whatever happens with the death cult in Monterrey, as well as joining her in the field. i love Kyle for doing that lmao… it’s a really nice moment that hints at Julian being willing to work to rebuild the relationship and trust between them instead of what you get in night road when neither of them wholly trust each other and are loathe to keep it 100. once Julian knows she’s in, he’s down, no holds barred. i think they'd both be for the long haul, in good and probably still some bad and very imperfect ways but that keeps it interesting

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK <3333 THANK YOU J <333

[lostloveletters]

Human Touch (Gale Cleven x OC)

Summary: By 1954, Gale Cleven's a widower, and Leona Spinelli's a divorced single mom, but a reunion brings the two lonely hearts together, thawing a mutual longing that had been on ice for over a decade.

Note: I’ve been wanting to write for Buck for a while and thought a post-war dynamic would be an interesting place to start! I hope I did alright with his characterization...Leona was featured briefly in Crimson and Clover. Title comes from the Bruce Springsteen song, but in all honesty, I listened to the I'm On Fire intro loop a lot. Do not interact if you're under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 3.8k

Warnings: Inevitable historical inaccuracies (I know flavored lip balm wasn't invented until the 70s but let me have this one thing). Some canon divergence. References to death, grief/loss, guilt, and period-typical misogyny. Brief mentions of past sex.

1954

Gale glanced across the bar in the hotel ballroom, and though Leona had no good reason to be looking at him, he hoped she was. Couldn’t exactly tell who she was talking to by the back of the guy’s head, but her hand reached for her conversation partner’s shoulder as she laughed. Gale took a sip of his ginger ale. With the distance, he wasn’t able to tell if her wedding and engagement rings were gone. He had heard as much from Holly, but wanted to see it for himself.

Leona’s profile always made his eyes linger on her longer than they should have. Two thousand years contained in her cupid’s bow lips and strong Roman nose. Whenever he walked into a museum, her face echoed in the clay and marble statues on display. She’d find the complement undoubtedly strange, but she had a knack for making him feel that way.

Like how his stomach flipped when she caught him staring, her dark eyes lighting up at the sight of him. He heard others say making eye contact with her was uncomfortable, a little too intense for their comfort, as if she could see something in them that they weren’t even aware of. In this instance, as he held her gaze, it made him feel awake, whereas for the past few hours, he’d been stumbling around the reunion in a haze of condolences and pitied glances.

She brought her attention back to whoever she was speaking with, said something accompanied by a parting kiss on the cheek. He quickly pulled the toothpick from his mouth and placed it on the cocktail napkin next to his drink. The room fell to a hush as she walked over to him. Or maybe it was the blood pounding in his ears.

“Hi Buck,” she said, giving him a hug, her lips gentle against his cheek. Her hair, the same dark brown as her eyes, brushed the tip of his nose with the gesture and he could smell it—gardenias, lighter and fresher than he remembered, but it’d been a while.

“Good to see you, Leona,” he said, squeezing her lightly against him. She felt almost plush beneath his fingers. Must have gained weight since the last time he held her so close. “Missed you last year.”

“The divorce was a mess. I just couldn’t make it out here.”

His gaze fell to the hand wrapped around her wine glass, the stripe of pale skin on her ring finger nearly matched his. He’d only just stopped wearing his own wedding band two months prior. Felt almost naked without it. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Can’t have it all, huh?” she sighed. “How have you been holding up?”

“Just…taking it day by day.”

“That’s the most you can do sometimes.”

He cleared his throat, placing the toothpick back in his mouth. “Seat’s open, if you want it.”

“Sure, thanks, Buck.” She smiled. “I’m gonna see if I can wave down the bartender from here.”

When she turned beneath the low bar lights, strands of gray shimmered in her dark hair like Christmas tinsel. His mouth went dry for a moment, and he brought his glass to his lips, drinking his watery ginger ale.

She looked good. Really good. About as good as she did in the summer of ‘43, when she basked in the sun the way her cat-like eyes almost implied she would—taking in the rays, her honeyed skin glimmering with a sheen of sweat whenever he saw her sunbathing, her blouse unbuttoned, black heels kicked off in the grass somewhere impossibly quiet. He wondered if, at the time, he had subconsciously gone out of his way to wander to one of her usual spots just to catch a glimpse of her.

He almost slunk into himself when she brought her attention back to him. He knew he looked rough. Bags under his eyes, sometimes would go a day or two before remembering to eat. Going through the motions did him no favors. But he came out for the weekend, if only to placate Bucky and Holly. He was trying.

The bartender refilled Leona’s wine glass, and she took a sip before turning back to Gale. Maybe not exactly liquid courage, but something to loosen her up a little before they actually got into a conversation. From the first day she met him, she thought he looked like an absolute dream, almost acted just like one, too, and the years had been kinder to him than to her. Thought the scars he returned from the Stalags with added a layer of rugged intrigue to his poster-perfect flyboy look.

Barely able to take the time off of work and find a babysitter for Luke, Leona was aware her appearance left much to be desired with the limited time and budget she had been working with. She decided painting her nails and waxing her eyebrows and upper lip took precedence over dyeing the grays that’d been popping up in her hair ever since the divorce. 

He motioned to her drink. “How’s your—“

“Merlot, and this is my second and last glass of the night,” she said. “I don’t even drink around Luke.”

“How is he?” he asked. “Luke’s gotta be three, now, right?”

“He’s actually turning five in October.”

“He’s that old?” Gale smiled. “Shoot, I remember when you showed us his baby pictures.”

“I still have the little hat Marge knitted for him, with the ducks on it and the ribbon,” she said. “Before he got too big for it, I put it on him all the time, especially back when we’d go to the Shore.”

“She was always making things like that. She really appreciated it when you sent the photo of him with it on. Probably still have it around the house somewhere.”

Leona sent a card when she heard from Holly that Marge died. Wasn’t even sure she had the right address at that point, but was surprised to get a response from Gale. A simple thanks, and good wishes for her and her family. Funny to receive in the middle of filing for divorce, but it had been nice to get something in the mail that wasn’t from a lawyer.

‘Best wishes to you, your husband, and Luke’ like he couldn’t remember Will’s name but wanted to be polite. The envelope was addressed to Mrs. Leona Deguire, so she suspected that had been the case.

But Luke. He remembered Luke. She had named her son after the Gospel, the news of her pregnancy the greatest she’d ever heard. The second best day of her life after the day he was born, followed closely by his baptism. 

And she wasn’t even allowed to take communion anymore.

She could forget about that for a few hours, though. Gale was more than good for that, had plenty of stories in his pocket that made her nearly howl with laughter. She noticed, though, that while she accidentally peppered in mentions of Will, however dismissively, Gale didn’t really bring up Marge. Made her wonder if she misstepped in mentioning the hat, if she simply shoved her finger into an open wound instead of sharing a fond memory. She nearly scoffed at herself. Of course she had. His wife had died suddenly and tragically. It wasn’t a contentious and bitter divorce like she had.

Luke was a safe conversation topic. Gale at least seemed interested in her little anecdotes about her son and his antics. In the middle of a story about Luke and some of his friends, the opening notes of an all too familiar song began playing, and a cacophony of groans and heckling was directed toward Bucky.

“Oh god,” Gale groaned.

Leona laughed. “Can’t say I missed that last year.”

“Do you wanna take this conversation somewhere else?” he asked, his voice nearly drowned out by Bucky’s off-key singing.

“That sounds perfect. Let me close out my tab.”

She got up from her seat to wave down the bartender. 

Gale’s attention turned to Bucky, half-serenading a giggling, blushing Holly—until Bucky nodded toward Leona and winked at him. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to thank or strangle his best friend in that moment, but Leona rejoined him before he had time to do more than shoot a playful glare Bucky’s way.

“They’re so funny,” Leona said, a slight smile on her face.

“If you mean funny–weird, then yeah, they’re funny.”

“Well, where are we off to now?”

“Is my room alright?” he asked.

She nodded. “Sure.”

Walking side by side to the elevator, she wondered if the heat radiating off of him was real, or just the buzz she had after two glasses of wine with barely anything else to eat or drink for the past few hours. Christ, she couldn’t hold her alcohol as well as she used to. Things looked almost sideways until she leaned against the wall on the far side of the elevator, watching as Gale pressed the button for the seventh floor. Her room was on the fifth.

“You okay, Lee?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said when the elevator doors finally opened. “I–I think I just need a glass of water or something.”

Almost felt like a sunburn, his hand on the small of her back, leading her to his hotel room with concern etched across his handsome face. She nearly insisted she was fine, but knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew for sure.

He sat her on the edge of the bed and disappeared into the bathroom for a few moments. Her gaze fell to her hands as the faucet ran, her nose crinkling in disappointment when she noticed her cheap drugstore nail polish already chipping. Should’ve dyed her hair instead.

Gale emerged from the bathroom with a glass of water before she could sink too far into the depths of self-consciousness. “You’re probably dehydrated.” It seemed he'd thrown away his toothpick while in there, too. Almost odd to see him without it.

He sat down next to her, rubbing comforting circles on her back as she drank. It was almost too overwhelming. She hadn’t been taken care of in so long, but she felt like her head was back on straight with something other than wine in her.

“Thanks,” she said, setting the glass down on the nightstand and wishing he hadn’t pulled his hand away from her when she did. “I really don’t drink. Especially not around—I already told you that, didn’t I?”

He smiled sympathetically. “Who's been watching Luke since you’re out here?”

“One of my neighbors in the building. He likes going over there anyway, they have a television and their son is about his age, so they play cops and robbers, or superheroes.”

“It’s good he’s made friends.”

“He sees—maybe sees isn’t the right word since he refuses to wear his glasses,” she half-joked. “Everything's an adventure to him. He hasn’t started asking a lot of questions yet—not the heavy stuff, anyway—so it gives me time to think of answers.”

“Must be hard on your own.”

“I manage. It took a while to find a job that paid halfway decent, but the alimony helps,” she said. “I think once we settle down somewhere, I’ll buy a television. Not that anyone in their right mind would give me a line of credit, but I can save up for one if I’m careful. I think he deserves it after everything.”

“He’s lucky to have you as a mother.” The sincerity in his voice made her breath catch in her throat. “You’re doing a lot for him, more than most people could handle. You’ve always been pretty tough, though.”

She couldn’t acknowledge the compliment or she’d start crying. Wasn’t something she heard very often, typically the opposite over the past year or so.

In Newark, the first day she showed up to work without her rings on was her last, as her boss brought her into his office and told her that as a family business, he simply couldn’t abide a woman separated from her husband working there. Humiliation and rage initially blinded her through the first few hundred miles of the drive to Nevada to establish the six-week residency required to file for divorce from Will. Making the move with Luke in tow, the reason she was certain divorce was the right choice in the first place, replaced those feelings with determination to make the messy situation work.

Money was inevitably tight on her lone income until the court finally ordered Will to back pay alimony. But she had a chance to really start over, without the judgmental stares and whispers from the people she’d spent her whole life around. Outright condemnation from her oldest sister, a nun, disapproval from her parents, and varying degrees of skepticism from the rest of her siblings. How could they expect her to grin and bear it, to allow her son to grow up in a home where his own father barely acknowledged his existence, hardly bothered to even pretend he gave a damn about him, so complacent in the casual cruelty. She felt almost sick thinking about it again.

“I don’t know if I’ll stay in Reno forever, especially with Luke starting school next year. It’d be like raising him in Atlantic City,” she said, quickly waving her hand as if to dismiss her own worry. “But I’ll figure it out, maybe go to a few different places and see where he likes best.”

“I’m back in Wyoming for a while. You two are more than welcome to visit if you want to make the trip.”

“How long is a while?”

“Till the end of the summer, at least.”

“Are you sure, Gale?” she asked. “I mean, Luke’s a good kid, but he can be a little wild sometimes. I just don’t want to put you out or anything.”

He smiled. “I’m sure he and I will get along just fine. I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it.”

“Reno to Wyoming…I’ll have to drive through Utah or something, won’t I?”

“We’ll find Croz tomorrow and get him to map it for us.”

She laughed. “Come on, I made it from Newark to Reno on my own, and I only got lost twice. Maybe three times, but that last one was because Luke had to go to some miniatures museum in Oklahoma.”

“Oklahoma?” He raised an eyebrow. “What were you doing driving through there to get to Reno from Jersey?”

“We mapped out a road trip ahead of time. I wanted to make it fun for him, not like he was stuck in the car for a week because…” she trailed off, sighing softly to herself.

“It sounds to me like you did the right thing.”

“That means a lot coming from you.”

His light scoff held a hint of nervousness. “It shouldn’t.” 

“Why not?”

“Come on, Lee.”

Her lips twitched a bit. “You were far from my worst, Gale.”

“The way I acted after was horrible.”

“You were scared,” she said. “We all were.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“I’ve barely even thought about it since then,” she lied.

“That’s funny. It’s always…been on my mind, somehow,” he said, fidgeting with his watch. “Maybe—maybe I made it out to be more than it was.”

“What was it to you?”

“Back then?” He hesitated. “Everything.”

Leona was silent for a few moments, her feline gaze sizing him up. “I would’ve never guessed.”

He only ever lingered, made himself known to her one time. The space had been murky, there was no other way for him to put it. Blindsided by a letter in which Marge expressed the desire to end things despite all of her promises otherwise, Gale spent hours pouring over her previous letters for some indication of her discontent, a tell he had foolishly missed. It wasn’t until Bucky pulled him from his cot, telling him moping wouldn’t do him any good, that he should embrace his singleness, as if he weren’t already head over heels with Holly.

Gale embraced Leona instead. He’d always liked her. Interesting, nice to talk to, but most of all, he wanted her to see him, really see him, and know for certain that deep inside him there was someone worth wanting, maybe even loving, despite everything else. 

Her buttery skin shimmered with sweat which lent a salty tinge to her usual gardenias, the foreign name of her perfume whispered softly in his ear when he sat next to her in the grass and mentioned it. Made him feel dizzy, her proximity and his heartbreak mixing into a heady impulsiveness that saw him placing a hand on her knee, and then a bit higher when she smiled at the gesture. Felt that smile against his own lips, fingers digging into her tender thighs in an attempt to steady himself. In that single sweltering afternoon, he fell a little bit in love with Leona Spinelli, and never quite fell out of it. 

And it did scare him, how quickly the taste of her cherry-balmed lips and sounds of her moans seared in his memory.

The sleepless night that followed found him scrawling an impassioned letter to Marge imploring her to give them another chance, to not give up on them (not as easily as he seemed to, though he never whispered a word of it to her in shame—perhaps not so much for doing it, but for finding pleasure in another woman so easily). She was worth fighting for, that one last desperate cry for the woman who was his one and only.

An alien sickness filled his gut when he confronted Leona after bringing the letter to be sent back Stateside. It was a mistake, he told her, he should have never taken advantage of her kindness the way he did, so intimately and impulsively. Her gaze cut through him like shards of glass, though her voice was cool when she assured him she understood and they could still be friends.

Miraculously, she didn’t hate him. He was almost certain she would. They didn’t speak much again after that, but just as everyone else had, she embraced him upon his escape from the Germans, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek and a ‘Welcome back, Major’ , his knees almost giving out at the gesture.

“Leona, I should’ve—“ 

Except she was asleep, lying on the bed like she did on the blanket she’d taken from the women’s barracks back then, during his last summer as a free man for nearly two years. 

He pressed a soft kiss to her cheek before lying down on the other side of the bed, a respectable amount of space between them. When he closed his eyes, he fell into a dreamless sleep for the first time in weeks.

The following morning, Leona awoke to a dimly lit room, a top sheet having been thrown over her at some point. Good thing, because her skirt had bunched up, and she awkwardly pulled it down before pushing the covers off. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw Gale standing in front of the nearby mirror.

She realized she hadn’t seen him in anything besides a uniform, as like Bucky, he continued his career in the Air Force following the end of the war instead of returning to civilian life like so many others.

“Do you own any other clothes?” she asked, her voice hoarse and judgment lacking from drowsiness.

He snickered. “Yes, I do, and good morning.”

“Morning,” she said, sitting up. The glass on the nightstand was full again, and she smiled softly at Gale in thanks before taking a sip of water. “What time is it?”

“A little after eight. You fell asleep around midnight.”

“Oh, you could’ve kicked me out.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Lee. Besides, there was plenty of room.”

She got up from the bed and made her way over to him, feeling a bit awkward standing beside him in her wrinkled clothes. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Better than I have in a while,” he said, adjusting his tie in the mirror before turning to her. “How about you?”

“I just have a little bit of a crick in my neck is all.” 

She tilted her head to the side slightly, trying to relieve the tension that had built up overnight but winced when she pushed it too far.

He placed his hand on the side of her neck, his fingers pressing tenderly against her skin. “Here?”

“Yeah.” She knew he could feel it, her rabbit pulse thumping beneath his touch.

His gaze fell to her parted lips. Each breath she took gently beckoned him closer, to close the distance between them. Either her sighing or his imagination rang in his ears with a whisper-quiet plea—‘kiss me’. 

She didn’t leave him any room for doubt or hesitation, kissing him back as soon as his lips met hers. Different from how she remembered, the combination of experience and longing made her a little weak in the knees. It’d been so long since she’d been kissed, and kissed so well, at that. She nearly whined when he pulled away.

“My address is the same,” he said quietly, his nose brushing hers.

Her brows furrowed. “What?”

“From when you sent the card,” he said. “I really wanna see you again, Leona, and I don’t wanna have to wait another year for that to happen.”

She hesitated, letting his words settle in her mind before responding. “Are you sure it’s not too soon?”

“Rather it be too soon than too late. These things…you never know.”

“Oh Gale,” she whispered, caressing his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t—don’t pity me. You weren’t doing that last night,” he said. “It was the first time in a while that I felt like I was having a real conversation with someone besides Bucky.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I have to square some things in Reno first, like telling Luke, most importantly. If you give me your phone number, I’ll call you when I get home and have a better idea of when we can visit.”

He nodded. “Anytime, Lee. I’ll be waiting there for you.”

“Maybe we should make it a surprise, then,” she joked. “Keep you on your toes.”

He smiled, pulling her closer and kissing her again.

She felt almost sorry when she reminded him that she still needed to go down to her own hotel room to shower and change clothes. Ten minutes of gentle coaxing and half a dozen kisses that were supposed to be the last before she slipped out, but not without swollen lips, hopelessly mussed hair, and the ghost of his hands squeezing her hips. 

In return, she had his phone number written neatly on the hotel stationary and folded securely between her fingers, and the satisfaction of finally knowing what he sounded like when he moaned without holding back.

[parasiterileymoon]

Yoo i just read your angel dust x reader in the 40s and it was great! If you ever need to write something in italian i'll gladly translate it for you (i am italian)

Btw are your requests open? If so then can i ask for a sort-of follow up to your aforementioned post? Reader goes to hell after getting shot by angel's dad, some years pass and angel dies too but they don't know they both went to hell and assume the other one is in heaven and one day they meet again out of luck and recognize eachother after having a conversation in a bar or something like that (btw if you could refrain from calling him anthony too much it would be greatly appreciated, nothing against that it's just that my dad is named antonio and it feels kinda weird to read a fic with my dad's name lol, but if you want to call him anthony anyway i don't mind at all), thanks for reading!

If my request violated any rules please tell me so that i won't make the mistake again

You are incredible! I adore how detailed this request is. I will use as little “Anthony” as possible lol.

Angel dust x reader (1940s follow up…or part two?)

C/W: cannon typical violence, grief, loss, mildly suggestive, survivors guilt, regret, crying LOTS of emotions.

~~

70 years. 70 years is how long it’s been. 70 years since you have seen him. It was startling at first. You never thought you would see him again. For a while you just held eachother. You sat there, your face nuzzled in his fluff. “Oh my god I have so much to tell you.” He smiled down at you. He began to talk about the family. You didn’t listen. You just stared at him. At how beautiful he is. You held his bottom set of hands and rested your head on his chest. You’ve never seen him so happy. This beautiful man you have been waiting for him for what it feels like an eternity and he’s finally here. You are in his arms at last. “Hey are you listening?” “No. I’m not. I’m sorry but…you look so happy. I can’t help but think…I mean it’s like- my whole brain is occupied by the thought ‘holy shit…this is it. This is what I have been waiting for. What I have been wanting.’ I’ve waited seventy years, my angel.” Tears well up in both your eyes. “Oh…oh my god.” He grabs your face and pulls it up to his. He kisses you. Not a kiss full of heat, but not with any less passion. A kiss filled with love and adoration. A kiss from a man missing the love of his life for 70 years. 70 years filled with pain and agony. For a moment, he forgot his pain, suffering, trauma, and tears. You are his everything. You are the reason he wanted to hang on. The shred of hope that you might reunite. “I thought you went to heaven” he said after he pulled away. You shake your head. “Why?” You laugh pitifully “I’ve done terrible things…” he sighs. “Because you regretted it. Every time. Every time you shot or stabbed you felt horrible. You brought flowers to their graves. You cried, tha-that can’t mean nothing!” He looks confused and angry. How dare they deny the love of his life entry to paradise? You are the kind of person to cry when Bambi’s mom died every time. Without fail. You put a chocolate smile on his pancakes once! “You’re too good for this shithole, (____)…too good.” His voice shakes as he said your name. You kiss him. Comforting, passionate, painful, sweet, and loving. “If I went to heaven I would’ve never seen you again.” You looked into his eyes. There were so many emotions swirling between the two of you that night.

I think the moral of this story is that…I don’t know hold on to the people that love you.

~~

I cried well writing this. Any feedback is encouraged. Thank you for reading🫂

[lovemesomeeddiemunson]

The Proposal - Part 3

Summary: When Steve Harrington is threatened with deportation, he blackmails his long suffering assistant, Eddie Munson, into marrying him. Steddie! The Proposal Au, Modern Au, Part 3 of 7. 5166 Words

Series Warnings: Blackmail. Food mentions. Mentions of unhealthy relationship with food. Cursing. Self harm (by means of tattooing.) Homophobia. Death of a parent. Abandonment by parents. Shitty parents. Homophobic parents. Parents with entitlement. Classism. Eventual sexual situations (no actual smut!) Brief allusion to a panic attack. Minor spoilers for Flight of Icarus.

Authors Note:  It should be noted that this is a fully completed fic, I've just broken it up for ease of posting. I can AND WILL be motivated to post faster, if readers find themselves engaged lol 😂

They had reached some semblance of normalcy by the time they landed. Slipping into their roles.

Wayne is waiting for them when they get off the plane, smiling huge when he and Eddie spot each other in the crowd, the latter immediately bolting for his uncle, leaving a bewildered Steve a few paces behind.

“Uncle Wayne,” he says happily as the old man receives him in a tight hug, and damn. It’s been too long.

“Hey Ed,” he greets with a chuckle, pulling back to get a good look at him. Clicking his tongue. “Don’t they have food in New York? You’re all skin and bones.”

Eddie laughs. “I’m eating good Wayne, promise.”

Wayne gives a shake of his head. “We’ll get you a Big Mac or something on the way.”

Steve, who's gotten close enough to hear now, is baffled by what he hears. In the Harrington home, Steve was often critiqued for how much he ate. Even in peak sports season - food was a means for fuel only, and carefully regulated.

Steve carried the guilt of it around with him even now - years later, and while he indulges himself in his morning lattes, he never let it go so far as to eat fast food.

But here Wayne offered it up to Eddie unthinkingly, the offer laced with kindness.

Steve finds it hard to wrap his head around.

Noticing him standing there in silence, Wayne glances his way, and Eddie whirls around then too. “Oh!” He blurts.

“Steve, honey, this is my uncle Wayne.” Eddie introduces.

Steve sticks a hand out to shake automatically, his smile plastered on as he tells him, “Pleasure.”

Wayne smiles back. “Well hello there…Now do you prefer to be called Steve or uh, Harbinger of Souls? I’ve heard it both ways…Actually I’ve heard it a lot of ways.”

Steve’s eyes widen as Eddie elbows his uncle, no malice to it. “Hey, come on now.” He complains.

Even despite this, the older man’s smile doesn’t falter, and he laughs good-naturedly. “I’m kidding. Mostly. It’s good to have you, Steve. I was surprised when Eddie said you’d be coming along.”

“Right, uh. I’m sure…Thank you for allowing me to be part of your birthday this weekend.” Steve manages.

Wayne waves his niceties off, wrapping his arms around his boy once again and ushering him along as they head to baggage claim.

Once there, Eddie rescues Steve’s things and piles them up neatly, muttering on the last bag for only him to hear, “You’re gonna wanna use your legs to lift that one,” Before turning and slapping his hands together.

“Where did you park?” He asks his uncle as he abandons Steve to his luggage.

Wayne looks miffed at seeing it, “Eddie! Help him with those!” He huffs, having thought he’d brought up a respectable gentleman.

Eddie pouts. “I’d love to, but he won’t let me do anything, uncle Wayne. He insists on doing it all by himself…So big and strong.” He sighs.

Wayne looks at Steve, unconvinced. Steve fakes a smile at him and gets his bags in hand.

Eddie chooses then to launch into a rapid-fire round of catching up with his uncle, telling him “Gareth and Jeff send their love, and presents, by the way.”

Wayne looks fond, “Ah, how are they? I ran into Gareth’s mom at Melvald’s the other day - she says since he left he never calls. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I know how well he’s doing since my kid keeps in touch.” He chuckled softly, the two of them talking more while the three of them head out.

Once they reach Wayne’s truck, Steve piles his things into the truck bed as Wayne offers for Eddie to get behind the wheel.

He takes him up on it, Wayne riding shotgun and Steve sitting in the back seat of the cab, melding silently into the seats. Answering when spoken to, in a friendlier manner than Eddie expected.

So far so good.

They do hit a fast food place on the way, and when it becomes apparent that Steve is completely out of his element, Wayne insists on getting a bunch of different stuff for him to try. Refusing to let Steve pay.

The three men sit in a booth with cracked red leather, Steve sipping a milkshake and downing so many fries that he’s sure he’ll die, but Eddie is feeding them to him, being all cute and domestic and Steve would rather perish than give Eddie a reason to stop.

Finally, Wayne clears his throat to interrupt the pair of them. “So uh, I was thinking…and uh, you boys don’t have to indulge an old man in his wishes, but-” And his voice is soft and humble, and Steve’s heart goes out to him.

“What is it?” He asks, at near the same time Eddie questions, “What is it, uncle Wayne?”

Wayne scratches his head. “Well now, I know you’re only in town for the weekend, but I was just thinking…that nice hotel you booked is a bit of a ways outside of Hawkins…and I see so little of you as it is…Well, I was wondering if you two wouldn’t mind staying in your old room. So we can spend the extra time together.”

Wayne gives Steve a look - like a kicked puppy, all sweet and innocent and Steve is helpless to turn him down. He looks to Eddie and finds that the other man is already looking at him - with a very similar kicked puppy look that makes his heart thud traitorously.

Not wanting to dwell on that, he dwells instead on a decision that was presented to him.

Considering that being in Wayne’s home means being under his scrutiny, he knows that the pair of them will have to be continually convincing. Something that Eddie doesn’t seem put off by, and so he chooses not to be either.

“Well, I don’t see why not.” Steve says finally before Eddie’s wobbly lip really does finish him off.

At his words Eddie whoops, and the sound, particularly when paired with Wayne’s crinkly-eyed smile, fuels a wildly unfamiliar fuzzy feeling in Steve’s gut. Something homey.

He could get used to it.

Later, Wayne uses the bathroom and Steve and Eddie toss their trash, meandering back to the truck as Eddie sighs. “I feel like I should warn you before we get home.”

Uh oh. “Yeah?” Steve asks him.

Eddie purses his lips. “When uncle Wayne said we would stay in my bedroom…it’s the only bedroom. We live in a single bedroom trailer. In a trailer park.”

Steve stares at Eddie - confused, baffled even, but not for the reason Eddie might think. “And…you’re telling me this…why?”

“I don’t want you to react poorly when we get there.” Eddie snaps back. And Steve feels that earlier feeling in his gut - the warmth - shrivel up and die. He clenches his jaw, back ramrod straight.

“I won’t.” He says quietly. Yanking the door to the back of the truck open and sliding in, shutting it aggressively behind him but not quite slamming it.

Eddie gets into the passenger seat and fiddles with his metal chain, Wayne hopping in the truck shortly after, oblivious to the mood between the two men as they get back on the road.

They arrive at the trailer park in the early afternoon, and Eddie’s spirits are lifted to see that everything is exactly the same, down to the ratty old couch he and Wayne used to share cigarettes on.

Steve, for his part, doesn’t bat an eye. Once they’re parked in the driveway he announces “I’ll get the bags,” going to grab them and taking too many in hand, his muscles flexing under his dress shirt that’s now got a dollop of ketchup on it.

Eddie isn’t too proud to admit how fucking sexy it is.

As Steve moves, Wayne heads around to the back of the trailer with a quick comment about watering his plants, but Eddie knows he’s really giving them both a moment alone to settle in.

Once they have, their things - or rather, mostly Steve’s things - piled into his room, they take it all in.

Even with all they brought, there’s space to spare, the room still mostly bare but for the bed. All cleaned out as Eddie had left it years ago, his posters lingering that Wayne must have kept up. Clearly never having resumed ownership of the room, something that stirs Eddie’s heart a bit.

Running from the thought of anyone loving him enough to save a place for him, Eddie clears his throat, taking advantage of the fact that they’re alone for now. Tells Steve, “I owe you an apology.”

Steve looks surprised. “What for?”

“When I assumed - about the trailer, it’s just…” he starts.

“Oh. That.” Steve waves a hand, dismissing Eddie as he often does. “You don’t have to apologize, I get it.”

Eddie’s eyebrow raises. “You do?”

Steve nods, “Yeah. I can be pretty…”

“Pretentious? Snobby?” Eddie volunteers.

“Particular.” Steve glares.

Eddie winces. “Right.”

“All in all, I can see why you said what you said. And now that the heat of the moment has passed, I’m not upset.” He swears.

“You’re not?” Eddie confirms.

Steve nods again, hums softly. “The trailer is fine. Really. And I mean, I’m not thrilled about the cancellation fee for the hotel-” he quips, but Eddie shakes his head in answer.

“Don’t worry about that. I canceled in plenty of time.” He promises.

Steve is confused at that, “You- but you only knew we would be staying with your uncle today.”

Eddie just smiled sheepishly, and understanding washed over Steve. “No you didn’t.” He says.

Eddie shrugs. “No, I didn’t.”

“How long-“ Steve starts.

“Wayne asked me about it before we left. But I knew you’d be all whiny about it if I asked you, so, I asked him to whip out some of the old ‘Munson-charm.’” Eddie chuckles. “I knew even you couldn’t say no to him. He’s like, stupidly endearing. Old bastard.”

Eddie sounds so fond, Steve can’t even find it in him to be mad. Or to correct him on how it was his puppy dog eyes that he’d found stupidly endearing. Even so. “That’s a rotten trick.”

Eddie gave a mocking curtsy. “I know that you are used to finer comforts, my lord, but I pray that my humble abode might please thee, until we might return to your luxurious castle.”

Steve is unamused, glancing around with a neutral expression. Changing the subject. “How long has it been…since you’ve been home?” He asks.

“Too long.” Eddie sighs.

He’s taking that in. Examining his surroundings. Eddie tries to soothe his worry, tells himself that this is fine, definitely not comparing himself to a bug beneath a magnifying glass, no sir…

Steve moves closer to the wall then, taking in the handmade Corroded Coffin banner proudly displayed. “This is your band. The one from the demo. You’ve been together this long?”

“Since high school. In some form or another.” He kicks his shoes off then, getting comfortable, slides them into the closet where a few hangers linger, and his old acoustic.

“Oh!” He pulls it out, the body adorned with ‘This Machine Slays Dragons’ in a crooked scrawl. “Forgot about this.”

He sits on the bed with it, tuning it to give himself something to do with his hands as his boss turns and leans against the wall of the bedroom he occupied in adolescence, arms crossed, scrutinizing him.

“This is good.” Eddie rambles at his piercing gaze, taking his guitar pick off his necklace to use. “That’s something you should know. You should ask me more stuff like that.”

When Eddie plays a chord, the sound that emerges is pure and clear and perfectly in tune. Walking his fingers up the fretboard, he picks out a bare-bones acoustic take on the intro to "Number of the Beast."

Steve stares at his hands. “Okay. So, why music?"

It's such an oblique question that Eddie has to give up on Iron Maiden for a full 30 seconds as he tries to figure out what he means. "Everyone likes music."

"Not everyone likes it the way you do." He cocks his head thoughtfully. "But I’ll rephrase. Why this music?"

Eddie laughs a little, strums some more. "Because it's badass,"

"Sure.” Steve dismisses, once the sound has died away. "But that's not the only reason, right?"

Eddie glances up at him, inquisitive.

He huffs a sigh. "Help me out here, Eddie. If I'm gonna sell this package, I need you to give me something to work with. Something real."

Ah. Leave it to Steve to be all business. Even now.

Fine.

Eddie could give him real. So he thinks…Why music? Why this music? He flips his pick around in his fingers as he tries to put his thoughts in some kind of order.

He'd never thought hard about it before Steve asked him. For 26 years of his life, music has just kind of... been. Like eating, breathing, taking a piss...music. Listening to it, playing it, talking about it. Grinding away for a chance to get it out there someday…It's a fact of life. But why?

"My mom." He murmurs. He’s not actually sure he means to say it. It just kind of comes out. He presses on anyway. "My dad was the one who taught me how to play guitar, but my mom, uh." He clears his throat. "She was living in Memphis when she met my dad. She'd grown up there, 19 years surrounded by music, everywhere she went. Country, bluegrass, rock...but her favorite was blues. Like, Chicago blues, the hard kind that gets into your bones, you know?"

Steve had relaxed a bit as he answered. "Yeah."

"So - when she left, when she moved up to Indiana, she took the music with her. It's like a nine-hour drive from Memphis to Hawkins, and she and my dad spent all of that time squeezed into a tiny car with 20 boxes of records. And then when I was born, she started sharing those records with me."

He’s still plucking out a tune, but it's not Iron Maiden anymore. It's a Muddy Waters riff, and as it fills the small space, Eddie can hear the static from his Mom's record player buzzing underneath, as familiar and comfortable as an old sweater.

His voice turns bitter as he recalls not having those records to listen to anymore. “She called them her plane tickets. Even when she was stuck in Hawkins," Waiting on her husband to come home from some dumbass scheme, Eddie thinks. "That music told stories. It helped her see the world."

He looks at the roof, water stained, and much safer than the man here with him.

"I didn't get it when I was a kid," he goes on. "All I heard on those records were people singing about sadness, about how shitty life was. And then, uh. She got sick and died. When I was like 6. I got it then."

Eddie pauses. Typically there's a chorus of sympathetic crooning following that reveal, one that sets his teeth on edge. But Steve is still and silent, watching him. Listening.

So Eddie gives him something to listen to. The guitar line for Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" trips off his fingers, half blues and half metal, and it might be his imagination, but Eddie thinks he can see the ghost of approval, of a smile, on the corners of Steve’s mouth.

"I like this music because it's about sadness and how shitty life is. And things are sad, life is shitty. It's real. But also, it tells stories. This music takes you on an adventure, to another world where you're, like, facing down demons. Traveling into the depths of hell. My mom's music was plane tickets. I guess that makes my music a portal to another dimension."

"You like it because it's badass," Steve fills in the blanks.

"I like it because it's really fucking badass." He finishes the riff and lets his hand fall away. "Is that real enough for you?"

Steve isn’t smiling, not really, but there’s a glow in his eyes, radiance that has nothing to do with the light. He says, “I think I can work with that.”

Wayne opens the front door more loudly than he needs to then, and a few beats later he’s standing in the doorway to Eddie’s old room, his expression soft.

“Now there’s a sight for sore eyes.” He says, seeing Eddie, in his room, with his guitar.

Eddie plays him an exaggerated song with full body movement, that Steve quickly makes out to be ‘Hot Cross Buns.’

Wayne laughs. “Feel free to get settled in kids, the party’s not for a few hours.”

Eddie and Steve offer him passable enthusiasm, and then Wayne is retreating to the living room. Eddie sets the guitar to the side. “You can hang in here if you want, we’ll probably just kick it on the couch. Watch some TV or something. I can tell him your jet lagged.”

“From a less than 3 hour flight?” Steve snorts. “No, but, thank you.” It sounds genuine.

Steve strides out of the room, beating Eddie to the couch, and taking a seat on it. At seeing where he’d chosen to sit, Eddie groans and Wayne winces.

Steve blinks in surprise. “What’d I do?” He asks.

Wayne’s expression becomes playful, “That there’s Ed’s seat.”

Steve raises an eyebrow, looking at Eddie with an almost smile, but not quite. Just enough to take the bite out of his words when he tells him, “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s optimal seating, Stevie.” Eddie whines. At his graveness, Steve moves to adjust himself, really wiggling into the cushion. “Huh. Now that you mention it, I see what you mean. Great choice on my part, really.”

Eddie gawks at him, spluttering. “You’re - you’re still sitting there?”

“So I am.” Steve is cocky. So cocky. Eddie loves to hate it.

“You’re not moving.” Eddie clarifies. Wayne is looking between the two of them with amusement.

A shake of Steve’s head. Eddie gives a faux gasp. “Not even for the love of your life?” He squawks.

Steve just raises an eyebrow, looking around. “Is the love of my life in the room with us?”

“Sacrilege!” Eddie shouts, before launching himself onto the couch beside Steve, gracelessly trying to manhandle the younger man out of his seat.

Steve is stronger than he looks though, and within minutes what should have ended with Eddie depositing him on the floor, makes way instead for Steve to maintain his ground, his powerful thighs locked around Eddie’s waist, keeping him from getting Steve off of the couch without taking himself out too.

Wayne is laughing nearly hysterically at watching them both wrestle, Steve spitting Eddie’s hair out of his mouth while Eddie wishes a plague on Steve and all his houses, tickling his sides, Steve fucking licking his neck to get him to stop.

And even then, it’s only when both men are on the floor, pushing and shoving to reclaim the lost territory, that Eddie knows he’s beaten.

Steve, powerhouse that he is, is fucking laughing. Actually truly laughing.

And damn it if Eddie doesn’t fall flat on his face, catching his breath yes but also - just fucking taking that fact in for a second.

“Victory!” Steve shouts as he sits once again in Eddie’s seat.

Eddie pops up, resting his head on his elbows, nearly panting like a dog. “You have bested me. I concede.”

Steve laughs again, face flushed and his once perfect hair all in disarray, and Eddie wonders if this is what he looks like after - Okay, nope. Nope. Between the wrestling and the neck licking - Eddie needs to think of gross, unsexy things, immediately. Lest he become visibly riled up in front of his surrogate father and his fake fiancé.

In that spirit, Eddie claims another part of the couch, groaning and oh yeah he’s in terrible shape.

Wayne chortles and flips through channels on the TV now that the commotion has died down, settling on an NBA game when Steve’s interest is piqued. “Oh, basketball, nice.”

“You’ like sports?” Wayne is surprised. Eddie is decidedly…not a sports guy.

Steve has the decency to look bashful. “I’m not like a super-fan or anything. We moved to the States when I was in high school and I got recruited for the basketball team. Coach would play us tapes. I only know the teams I like.”

“Who’s your favorite?” Wayne asks him.

“Probably the Knicks.” Steve answers.

“Get out of my house.” Wayne is not at all serious.

Steve laughs again. “Is that the wrong answer?”

“This here, is a Pacer’s family, kid. Ed, what are you doing? You dating your boss who’s run you ragged the last few years I can excuse - but I can’t tolerate a man who likes the Knicks.” He holds his hand to his heart.

Steve is starting to see where Eddie gets his…dramatic flair. He can’t wipe the smile from his face.

Eddie sighs, just as playful. “Well it’s a bit too late to kick him to the curb now, uncle Wayne.”

At that Steve glances at Eddie. Tries to communicate with his eyes. Is he going to…?

“Why?” Wayne chuckles. “You get’ him pregnant?”

Steve flushes. Eddie laughs. “Nah, nothing like that. But uh…we are getting married.”

Wayne freezes. Steve doesn’t miss it - for a solid few seconds the man has gone stiff, unmoving. Not even a dropped jaw or raised eyebrow. Totally and completely offline.

Steve can’t breathe. He vaguely feels Eddie take his hand. Squeeze. He inhales.

And then…Wayne smiles. Nice and slow, and fucking big. His eyes are twinkling. “Really?” He asks.

Eddie nods. “Really.”

Wayne jumps to his feet, smacking his knee. “Hah!” He’s absolutely fucking giddy. “Well how about that! We have double reasons to celebrate tonight it seems! My boy’s getting married!”

He wraps them both in a hug, and Steve is still fucking, just - paralyzed. No longer in fear, but something entirely different. Something that wants to creep up from behind his eyelids, wrapping its way around his throat.

Wayne pulls back from them, and he sniffles. Wayne clocks it immediately, “You alright there, son?”

Son.

“My uh,” he wheezes out. “My parents, they never…they wouldn’t have…I’m sorry.” He tilts his head back, unblinking and pinching his thigh, until he gets himself under control.

Then he smiles at Wayne with watery eyes, having missed the look the older man had given his nephew. “Sorry.” Steve laughs shakily.

Wayne hugs him again. “Don’t you worry about it, Steve. We aren’t worried about displays of emotion in this house. You should have heard Ed wailing when they freed Willy.”

A laugh bursts out of Steve, and Eddie gives Wayne a look of complete and utter betrayal, whining. “Wayne…”

To which his uncle merely offers him a shit-eating grin, Steve halfheartedly defending, “That scene got me as a kid too.”

“He was 19.” Wayne clarifies.

“Wayne!” Eddie is full on shouting now. “Oh my god stop talking or I swear when you get old I’m putting you in a home!”

Offended, Wayne barks back. “My new son-in-law Steve would never let that happen!” Shaking his head, he mutters in Steve’s general direction. “Unbelievable. Threatening to commit me, and on my birthday no less. Where is the respect?”

Eddie groans, but he apologizes, he and Wayne bickering quite happily, all while Steve’s gut feeling grows into an even more confusing tangle.

Thinking to himself that it was certainly going to be an interesting weekend here in Indiana.

That night as the trio arrives at a VFW that had been rented out by some of the gentlemen at the plant Wayne works for, Steve is mildly surprised to see the parking lot packed with cars.

Eddie glances at Steve’s expression with a little chuckle. “Small town.” He explains. “Everyone knows everyone.”

Add to that the fact that his uncle was also very well loved, and it makes for quite an uproarious slew of greetings when the three of them enter, the fake couple quickly losing Wayne to a swarm of hugs and well wishes.

By the time he’s passed back around, he’s got lipstick marks on both cheeks, in varying shades, and Eddie laughs and shoves at him playfully. “You dog!”

He rolls his eyes, “Come with me boys, there’s some people who want to say hi.”

Wayne leads them over to a table where Steve witnesses a gaggle of no less than half a dozen teenagers gathered. Most of them make no effort to hide how they lose their collective minds when they see Eddie.

The tallest of them, a teen with long black hair, is the most aggressive in his attempts to get to him, nearly elbowing a curly haired kid with a row of endearingly imperfect teeth, who complains extra hard at that because of something that he calls his cleidocranial dysplasia.

Whatever that means, it gains him the lead of the queue, the others groaning at his words and holding their hands up, letting him pass.

Behind them, a wide eyed girl looks on in amusement while her two companions - a redhead toying with a skateboard that probably shouldn’t be on the table, and another girl wearing an American flag like a cape, appear uninterested.

Eddie hugs the curly haired kid enthusiastically, greeting, “Henderson! You haven’t changed man.”

He scoffs. “Of course I haven’t, you specifically, asked me not to.” Eddie laughs at whatever that calls to mind, patting him on the back, and Steve decides that he likes this kid.

Eddie takes a half a step back then, and the kid squawks at Eddie’s shirt as he ignores it in favor of beckoning Steve closer. “Children, gather.” Never mind that they’re already encroaching on the men’s space as it is.

Eddie addresses Steve, “Allow me to introduce you to my…flock of little lost sheep.” He snickers, pointing as he introduces them. “This is Dustin, Mike, Will, Lucas - the one who looks innocent but could probably crush your head through sheer force of will is Will’s twin sister Jane - that’s Max next to her, and then there’s my undisputed favorite, Lucas’s sister, Erica.”

The kids all groan at his declaration, all apart from Erica who smirks in a familiar, bitchy way at them. And Steve likes her too. A fine choice in favorite, he thinks.

“Kids, this is Steve.” Eddie introduces.

“Steve.” Max repeats his name with a raised eyebrow, looking him up and down.

“Steve.” Eddie parrots as he nods, while Wayne adds proudly from behind them, “Eddie’s fiancé.”

The kids all stifle in shock - Mike blurting, “Wait. Evil-boss-Steve? Evil-boss-Steve is his fiancé?”

Steve wants to groan. His reputation precedes him.

“Hah!” Dustin, who is also the ‘Henderson’ kid, laughs. “Boom!” The exclamation echoes as he points at his friends. “Bada…bada…boom. I told you he had a crush on him. You guys totally owe me $20.”

“No one made that bet with you, man.” Lucas rolls his eyes.

“I’m happy for you, Eddie,” Jane smiles before looking hopefully at Steve. “Does this make you our new mom?”

Steve has to laugh, bewildered and also pleased to see Eddie flustered by not only Henderson selling him out - but by the question as well.

“Oh he’s such a mom.” Erica supplies. “Look at him. He has the hips for it.”

Steve’s laughter becomes a knowing smirk. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, Erica.”

She smiles - more of a show of teeth than anything. And Eddie has to skip over that interaction while the kids hit him with a million questions a minute. He waves them off. “Another time, kids. I’d much rather hear what you all have been up to.”

That starts another round of talking over each other, and Wayne gently grabs Steve by his elbow in order to lead him away from the commotion.

“Best give them a minute.” He chuckles. Steve tries to decide if he can ask - if he should know-

“Ed didn't mention his old club, huh?” Wayne asks him. He doesn’t sound surprised. Steve is mildly relieved, shaking his head.

Wayne sounds fond, “Yeah, used to run it in high school. They’d spend hours wrapped up in that tabletop roleplaying game - Dungeons and Dragons? Ed was the leader. The kids were devastated when he finally graduated and moved away. He left Dustin in charge, but it's not the same, you know? They missed him.”

Steve glances back - sees them animatedly talking and laughing with Eddie, and his heart. Oh his poor heart.

He would never admit it but…He’d always wanted six kids. Six little nuggets and a Winnebago to house them all and drive across the country, all crammed together, making memories…And here Eddie had fucking…seven children, who clearly adored him, calling Steve mom. It messed him up a little bit.

“Bob! Joyce!” Wayne calls, snapping him out of it. “Meet Steve, he’s Eddie’s fiancé.” Steve kinda likes how Wayne keeps saying it - proud, but factual. Like ‘he’s Eddie’s fiancé’ is his last name now.

He embraces it - out to charm the room. Working his way through it with Wayne, the whole place positively buzzed at the engagement news.

Besides the children, it seems that no one else was aware of his prior relationship with Eddie, and Steve is met with open arms and drinks bought for him just as readily as they do Wayne, who, unlike Steve, never declines, having the time of his life.

By the time Steve leaves him in a chair with a cup of water and makes it back to Eddie, he’s a little flushed at the effort he exerted to get Wayne settled there. That, and at all the well wishes being freely and genuinely offered. Those actually had left him feeling pretty good.

Eddie looks amused by it. “Having a good time?” He asks.

“Hawkins loves me, what can I say?” Steve shrugs in reply.

Eddie grins at him, voice spilling out sweetly as he says. “As do I.”

Steve does a double-take before he realizes that there’s an older woman lingering at a desert table within earshot, and replies automatically. “Love you too.”

That makes Eddie roll his eyes, where no one can see, moving in and leading Steve away from the woman with a hand on his lower back. “You’ll have to be more convincing than that, Harrington.” He purrs in his ear.

Steve is…affected. He clears his throat, asking. “And what would you have me do?”

Eddie has led them through the entranceway to a small hallway that clearly leads to the bathrooms, where they stop, Eddie leaning against the wall.

He’s looking at Steve, who can’t get a read on him, until he suddenly hits him with, “You should kiss me.”

Steve gapes at him. “What?”

Series Masterlist

Next Part: Part 4

Previous Part: Part 2

[illmoraineakoi]

An Attempt to Predict AvA11, Using All The Sneak Peaks We’ve Been Given

So, given the fact that it’s the final 24 hours to the Episode drop, I really wanted to go deep into what I think might happen in the upcoming episode, as well as some potential theories.

To do this, I’ve gone back to the Newsletters first, to refresh myself on their contents.

Warning! VERY long post!

For those who don’t know, around the start of every month, Alan and his team send out email newsletters to those who register on his shop site. Within these newsletters have been Sneak Peaks, a lot of neat Behind-the Scenes stuff, and just generally really interesting information about the production of the episodes. I highly recommend signing up for them, they’re actually really cool!

But the most important part of them, for AvA11, has been the 3 Sneak Peaks sent out with the October, November, and December newsletters. Here they are:

October’s is the one I find the most interesting, and it’s strangely, the one I haven’t seen discussed nearly as much as the others.

October’s Sneak Peak is clearly showing one of two things: a new black stick figure, or (much more likely) victim in a reanimated/flashback scene from AvA1. The reason why it’s more likely to be Victim in a redone/flashback scene is because Victim was recolored gray to avoid confusion between him and TCO. Why would Alan then go an add a brand new black stick figure? [omg that sounds so accidentally racist I’m so sorry.]

Additionally, the focus of AvA11 will most likely be on Victim. The close-out of AvA10, of the Cursor burning, is the perfect leave off for a delve into the past. To show WHY Victim is burning the photo, why he hates the Animator so much, why he wants to find him. It’s a logical narrative flow.

Plus, the Episode is literally titled “Victim”.

And Victim’s backstory is going to be important. It’s going to be by far the most important backstory in AvA, ever. Purple’s, King’s, hell even Dark’s if he comes back, won’t ever even come close to Victim’s.

Because Victim was the first. He STARTED AvA, the series, which makes him so goddamn important to both the story but also to Alan himself. Alan brought back Victim for a reason, and I believe that he wants to give Victim the character arc and attention he deserves. For such an essential stick figure to the AvA series and to Alan’s own life, he’s been neglected for too long.

So I think a lot of time and effort has been put into AvA Season 3’s story, and Victim in particular. You can only ever bring Victim back into the story once, after all.

(Unless they kill him and go ‘sike!’ again, but, y’know, it just won’t hold as much weight. And people would probably be expecting it, like they’re still expecting Dark to pop out of his grave.)

Which brings me to my first theory, or more like my first hope: The Animator as a character is going to be important, and his past actions are going to matter.

It’s rather strange, but the Animator as a character has largely been pushed to the side for a long time now. He’s sort of just become the occasional cameo character or relegated to JUST being the Cursor.

But The Animator is very important to the entire AvA narrative, and his absence as a character is starting to feel strained.

His story is undeniably linked with Victim’s; I thoroughly believe that Victim’s arc cannot exist without him. And not just as the object of Victim’s ire and goals, not, I think there NEEDS to be an interaction, an altercation, between them. Victim’s current character is far too entangled with the Animator for anything else to be satisfying.

As well, The Animator hasn’t really ever truly taken accountability for his past actions. The most we’ve gotten is the nod between him and TCO, and the assistance he gave to TCO during the fight with Dark. That is it.

That’s not good enough. Not for Victim.

That’s not an admission of guilt or remorse. That’s not an apology.

And there is a LOT the Animator should be apologizing for. Or at least held responsible for. Nearly killing Victim. Imprisoning TCO. Trying to kill TCO, via Dark.

The Animator’s past actions are terrible to look at from the current standpoint of the series, no matter the intended viewing perceptive they were originally made for. And I thoroughly believe that Canon should address this. It’s important, both for putting the past behind all of the characters, but also to fully solidify just how the Animator has changed.

His spur-of-the-moment decision to make a deal with Orange instead of potentially deleting him no longer holds up his character as well as it used to. It is woefully weak, now. He needs more. He needs to be shown doing more.

Especially since Victim’s story is pretty much guaranteed to take a massive sledgehammer to the audience's opinion of the Animator. We the audience have almost always been on the Stick Figure’s sides, during those early episodes. The Animator was originally the antagonist. And Victim’s backstory might remind us of that and shake our faith in him.

This, too, is also a topic Alan has one shot to nail. The Animator’s potential true redemption/making amends is such a critical thing for the narrative. There’s a reason why the fandom has dabbled with the idea of the Animator being forced to deal with the consequences of his past for years now. It’s because it could make or break The Animator as a character. It’s probably one of the most important things Alan could ever touch upon in canon.

The Animator needs to show how much he’s changed, and he needs to show it to Victim specifically.

He needs to make right his original mistakes.

Enough about the Animator, lets get back to the Sneak Peak.

I believe this sneak peak is probably depicting this scene from a slightly different perspective:

Which is why I think that parts of AvA1 (or potentially another one of the Animator’s early animations that weren’t posted online, but since I believe it’s Victim specifically, I believe it’s AvA1) have been reanimated in a different perspective.

Victim’s perspective, to be specific. Showing it from his side, not the Animator’s like the original technically is.

Of note, Victim and the Cursor are the only two things shown in this Sneak Peak. I think that’s probably significant, for a variety of reasons, most of which I’ve already gone over above.

[As a side note, I think it’ll be so cool seeing the original style of AvA1 being ‘mimicked’ in the current AvA. I am a sucker for that kind of a call back.]

I’ve recently talked about this in another post, but I’d like to restate it here: Victim was probably fine when the Animator closed Flash, because his .EXE had been automatically saved in Flash’s directories upon his very creation. His .EXE is a separate application process that is not dependant on Flash to run.

This means there is nothing to suggest that Victim’s fight with the Animator ended when AvA1 did. It’s entirely possible that Victim continued the fight on the desktop after Flash closed, potentially till he found an alternative method of escape or the Animator had done something to ‘get rid’ of him.

Next up, November, and the one that made pretty much everyone loose their minds.

November’s newsletter was interesting, because it wasn’t just the Sneak Peak image included that got people hyped and speculating, it was something they added towards the end pf the letter:

1 Truth, 2 Lies Want to know what will happen in the next AVA? Well, I’ll tell you! The only trick is that I like lying >:) Only 1 of the following sentences is actually in the next AVA. It’s up to you guys to find out which one is the truth! 1- We learn about Purple’s origin 2- We see the Mercenaries interact for the first time 3- Victim builds a chicken coop

Most people already reading this are probably well aware of this 2 Lies and 1 Truth ‘game’, as well as the fact that the option “Victim builds a chicken coop” became the most popular one. There were a wide variety of posts going around in November about people’s thoughts on these options, debating which one was most likely the true option.

The general consensus I saw was that the Victim one was most likely, given the general belief AvA11 will focus on Victim and his backstory, but also because of the Sneak Peak image included: they seemed to match to hint at something – mainly that Victim might’ve spent some time on a farm or at least near one.

[Another popular counterpoint to this theory I saw was that this Sneak Peak image could just be a random background or transition shot from the episode with little greater significance that was included in the newsletter to obfuscate the truth. This is something I don’t actually put past Alan doing, especially since it seems he wrote the 2 Lies 1 Truth thing himself. Just something to keep in mind, I think.]

There are two possible places this image could be depicting: The Outernet (which has shown rural farmland-y areas in both the start of “Wanted” and around the area where King lives, so there’s precedence.) or, an option tying into the December Sneak Peak, an animation on Newgrounds.

Both are possible, as we’ve already seen different styled sticks with the Mercenaries, so the sticks in the background not being the ‘usual’ looking ones on the Outernet isn’t a deal-breaker.

I personally think that Farmer Vic will be likely, from both the Sneak Peak and the game option, but also because of Victim’s clear skill with the lasso in “The Box”. I think this might have been some really clever foreshadowing that was also a callback to AvA1. Victim was quite good with the lasso to begin with, but he’s much better in “The Box” (lassoing Chosen while he’s trying to fly away is, admittedly, impressive.) so I think he could have honed those skills on a farm during his absence from the limelight. I’m hoping, anyway, it’d be so cool if there was a scene where he’s being taught how to use a lasso more effectively.

The most popular theory I’ve seen (and may have have accidentally contributed to) is the idea that Victim lived on a farm after somehow escaping the PC until TCO and TDL destroy his life in their terrorist rampages.

I’m gonna be honest: I don’t want this to be the case.

I think it’s a bit too much of a cop-out, to pin the blame for Victim’s villain trigger on TCO and TDL. It’s too easy and lazy. And it would also muddy the viewer's perception of TCO, in particular, which kinda doesn’t fit with the vibe season 3 has been going for for TCO. TCO has thus far been painted quiet sympathetically in season 3, very much a victim of Victim. Furthermore, adding a negative backstory point with TCO and TDL would distract away from Victim’s main complicit with the Animator. Having Victim be laser-focused on hating and wanting revenge on his Creator is a good character motivation. Suddenly adding two extra characters that he might hate and have a grudge against? It makes it feel sloppy.

(The only way I could kinda see it working is if Victim doesn’t realize it was Chosen and TCO. Even then, I doubt Victim wouldn’t eventually figure it out.)

There is also too much of a parallel, between Victim and TCO and Victim and the Animator with this idea. TCO and the Animator’s positions would be far too similar: person who did terrible things in the past having those actions come back to bite him in the ass.

(There’s also the debate on weather or not TCO’s shitty actions need to be delved into more or him being held responsible for them. This comes down to what potential things TCO has done that we’ve not seen yet; we haven’t seen TCO actually hurting any stick figures, unlike Dark. As it stands, his past actions currently don’t look “that bad” in comparison. And even if he should be held responsible...does it need to happen in Victim’s arc???)

I, personally, don’t like this theory. It feels like we’ve just defaulted to TCO and TDL causing bad evil shit because they’re literally the only ‘bad’ characters we’ve had in AvA thus far.

This being said, the theory does make sense, especially with Victim’s previous behavior towards TCO in “The Box”.

Victim is a very vengeful stick. He holds grudges. He’s terrifyingly dedicated to hunting down those who’ve hurt him.

I originally though that Victim didn’t seem to care about who TCO is in “The Box”, he just careed that TCO is more powerful than him and has information about the Animator. But upon reconsideration, Victim’s behavior in the Box feels VERY vengeful. It feels like Victim is only beating the crap out of TCO to make a point. To prove he can, to make himself feel superior and powerful, to prove he’s better. It’s to force TCO to submit. To hurt him, for no other reason.

Victim could have used the Memory Scanner at any point. He could have started with it.

He chose not to. He WANTED that fight. He STARTED the fight, and forced TCO to participate, and then pushed him until TCO was desperate enough to start fighting to kill.

This was a very calculated effort to back TCO into a corner he couldn’t get out of. To make TCO the victim.

It feels like Victim has something out for TCO, a personal vendetta. It’s so aggressive.

(On the flip side, Victim gives literally zero attention to Dark getting murdered in the memory, which, if he had a vendetta against him too, you’d think there’d be a reaction? Instead, Victim only seems pissed at Orange because Victim himself is the only Alan-created stick to not have powers. Perhaps that discovery overpowered his reaction to Dark?)

It begs the question why Victim seems to hate TCO so much.

Not much more to say about this Sneak Peak (for now) so onto December.

This is the one that stumped me, because I personally didn’t recognize this at all. However, this is Newgrounds.

This really bumped the ‘Victim was somehow involved/affected by TCO and TDL’s attack on Newgrounds’ theory in popularity. That’s the only time we’ve seen Newgrounds in canon thus far.

But Newgrounds has likely been important to the Animator in the same way it was for Alan irl. After all, the Animator’s username “Noogai” comes directly from Alan’s own Newgrounds account (which is still there btw. Inactive, but still there.)

And Newgrounds is probably also significant, because AvA1 was posted there. Not only that, but that was the FIRST place it was posted online.

I think there might be a connection to the Animator being active on Newgrounds at this point in the timeline, rather than a nod towards TCO and TDL’s attack. I think it might be possible that Newgrounds could be how Victim gets off the computer.

It’s at this point that I feel like the question of how stick figure life works becomes a little important. TCO and TDL’s attack on StickPage show stick figures fleeing their respective games and animations. This implies that they can leave, and that their original ‘home’ games and animations are their own little digital pocket dimensions. This is even the case with RGBY and their home website; their home is shown to be much bigger with rooms the user of a computer would never see from their perspective. It’s also clearly a safe place for them to store items, because in Green’s tour video, we see a bunch of their stuff there.

So each stick figure game and animation is kind of like it’s own little world. Or, potentially, all digital things are, not just stick figure stuff.

As shown numerous times with RGBY, external stick figures can also enter these little worlds.

Which implies that every single thing on the Sneak Peak image is it’s own space that could be entered from the outside.

Of the things show in the Sneak Peak, two have been identified as not actually existing on Newgrounds, (Apparently. I don’t have the energy to verify this.) “Shepard” and “Mitsi”.

Well, it seems we have one more thing to add to the ‘farming’ theme.

I think this makes it much more likely that November’s Sneak Peak is depicting an animation world, rather than a place on the Outernet, specifically “Shepard”’s world, though “Mitsi”’s isn’t out of the question. There must be a story reason these two things were added to the list.

And Mitsi, at least, is going to be significant, because of this:

The new plushie set, the mystery one of which clearly being Mitsi. There is no reason why she’d get a plush alongside two of the most popular characters of the series if she wasn’t inordinately important. I think she’ll probably have a connection to Victim, again because the episode is probably going to be a Victim-centric, but also because I think there’s a secret theme to this plushie drop: best friends. Dark and Chosen were friends before Dark fucked that up, so it’s possible Mitsi’s will be Victim’s.

[As an aside, for those of you worried about (or even expecting) her to be a love interest: I’m very skeptical because Alan has explicitly stated he doesn’t want to include that in the series. It’s in his 7 million subs Q&A livestream, which is still on his channel under the livestreams tab. It’s 5 years old at this point, so it’s not impossible that he could have changed his mind, but I really don’t think he has. Whatever relationship or interaction between the two will probably be platonic.]

Finally, the last Sneak Peak image: the community announcement on Alan’s channel:

This one is really interesting, but it’s also a little confusing, because it shakes up everything else.

The other Sneak Peak images have seemed like they’ve been hinting towards Victim’s past, but this one is clearly happening in the current present of Season 3, because Victim’s in his facility. This might suggest that this episode might be like “The King”, and split between Victim’s backstory and continuing the events of Season 3.

The most interesting part of this image is the green sparkles, which are almost the exact same color as Orange’s power sparkles. The scene also looks VERY similar to when RGBY were revived in “Showdown”.

But we’ve not seen this scene before, so how is Orange connected to it? Is he even connected? Are those his powers, or someone else’s?

I wonder if it’s possible that, when Orange did whatever he did to revive his friends, he might’ve revived OTHER sticks on accident too. He wasn’t exactly in his right mind or in control of himself, really, so perhaps his riving had been more widespread than he might’ve intended.

(or perhaps it was limited to the sticks TDL might’ve killed…)

[Side note: Dark’s not getting brought back tomorrow. It’s just not happening, guys. Probably not until Season 4, if at all. We’ve already got so much other stuff going on right now to be bringing in Dark’s resurrection too.]

I’m personally very confused about the blue and pink floor. Is that some sort of device? Or just a fancy floor? A portal of some sort? Is there a connection between it and Orange’s powers?

Are they somehow testing Orange’s powers? Or manipulating them for their own use?

I thought the arm in the scene might’ve been Victim’s, implying it was Victim’s own memory, but I’m not sure anymore. It’s possible it could be TCO’s, since they could have gone searching through his memories even more, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think TCO’s served his ‘use’ already, and Victim’s turned his attention towards Yellow. It could also be a random stick who’s memory they have.

(A particularly crack-y theory I have is that that isn’t Orange’s powers, but Mitsi’s. This could be Victim’s memories of Mitsi using her powers. The only real reason why I think this is that the floor looks like a dance floor and Mitsi’s animation description is a dance test.)

This image is just so mysterious, it’s hard to try to find a place to put it or try to figure out what it’s supposed to be showing.

And those are all the Sneak Peaks!

Currently, there are several important holes that AvA11 would need to patch up in Victim’s backstory: how he survived, how he got off the Computer and into the Outernet, what happened to trigger his villain arc.

(And also personally where the hell did the rocket logo come from; I need that answered too.)

(The last of those I feel is probably the most important, though they’re all very important to Victim. But giving reasons for why the antagonist characters are doing what they’re doing is a lesson that Alan and his team learned from Dark. Dark did not have a definitively stated reason or motive for his actions, and it left his character feeling incomplete and confusing to the viewer. Come King Orange, they’ve learned to put more attention and focus on this aspect, and they did so amazingly with him. The same will likely be done with Victim, as it should, because it’s very important to him in particular. )

At this point, I think I’ve got a fairly decent way of putting these pieces together, so allow me to propose my AvA11 theory:

We might see the events of AvA1 again, from Victim's perspective. Hence, October’s Sneak Peak image.

The fight might continue past when Flash is closed, on the desktop.

Something might potentially happen that causes Victim to feel the need to flee, to escape, instead of trying to continue the fight against the Cursor (as Victim doesn't seem the type to give up that fight unless he absolutely HAD to, to potentially save his own life. He never faltered or showed any signs of fear or inclination to stop at all in AvA1. He was laser-focused on beating the Cursor. There has to be an external reason to force him to stop.)

Victim might escape onto Newgrounds, which the Animator might have had open in a web browser because he’s a frequent user of the site, fleeing from the computer onto the internet. On Newgrounds, he (maybe accidentally?) tumbles into one of the animations, probably "Shepard", where he's found by the denizens of that animation. Perhaps he chooses to stay, to hide from the Animator, or maybe he doesn't know how to leave.

Hence, November's.

I think he chooses to stay. And I think, if he can leave that animation, he might hop between the animations on Newgrounds too. Perhaps making friends with other animated beings. Including Mitsi, who probably becomes his best friend.

Alternatively, he might fall into Mitsi's animation first, and be found by her. He might also potentially be taken care of by her, allowing for the possibility that she's a more maternal figure to him in this version.

(Though Mitsi gives off pretty young vibes so I think the best friend angle would be more plausible.)

There will probably be scenes of Victim’s life, which is probably where we’ll see him build the chicken coop, as well as build his friendship with Mitsi. Establishing and building her character, y’know.

And then, Chosen and Dark's attack on Newgrounds.

If Victim stays on Newgrounds long enough, it's inevitable that he'd be caught up in the attack, and Bad Shit is gonna happen to him. Namely, Mitsi's probably dying. Because we gotta have a death to make his backstory Tragic. She'll probably die in a way where he'll witness it, or even in his arms, in a way he's helpless to prevent.

(This is the part I'm hoping I'm wrong about the most, because honestly it'll just feel bland and generic, especially after King's story. I want the episode to make me FEEL something for Mitsi, and this ain't gonna be it because it feels too obvious that she's gonna die.)

Minirant aside: Victim becomes displaced from Newgrounds by the portals/tunnels TCO and TDL use to access websites, either by accidentally tumbling into one, getting thrown into one, or deliberately following after TCO and TDL as they leave.

This brings him to the Outernet, where his new loss and grief turns to boiling anger, and his quest for vengeance finally starts in earnest.

But, we have a problem: what makes Victim angry at Alan?

Why, after so long on his own, would Victim turn his aggression on him? It doesn't make sense for Victim to pursue vengeance just based on the events of AvA1, not after so much time, and certainly not after TCO and TDL fucked his life over.

The idea that Victim gets angry at Alan for Chosen and Dark’s reign of destruction doesn't make sense either.

Again, he’s vengeful. He’d target THEM, not Alan. But he didn’t, not until “Wanted”, which is YEARS after the attack on Newgrounds. Even if we be conservative and say the Newgrounds attack happened a year before “Showdown”, it’s still been six years in between then and “Wanted”.

But the two of them didn't seem to matter that much to him. Not like Alan.

So why? Why is Victim targeting Alan?

Alan must have done something else to piss Victim off. Something that Victim KNOWS is Alan's fault, specifically, that’s pushed Victim over the edge and motivated him to come after him.

But if the Animator hasn’t had any contact with Victim since Victim escaped, what could he have possibly done?

It just doesn’t make sense.

[As a side note, I did have a theory that perhaps the Animator might do something to Mitsi that might enraged Victim, but again, the lack of contact after Victim escaped. The theory was that Mitsi would convince Victim to give the Animator a second chance, to return to try to make peace, and things go terribly bc it's before Alan's change. A tragic idea, but one that doesn't make any sense.]

This is where my ability to try to put the tiny pieces we've been given together breaks down.

As for what happens to continue the present day events, I think Victim’s attention might have turned towards Orange’s powers, though in what way I’m not sure. Orange’s powers seem to be hinted to be an important thing, by that last community sneak peak image.

Victim hadn’t seen Chosen’s memory of RGBY being revived for him to know that's one of Orange's abilities, but maybe they discover that another way, perhaps through another stick’s memory. Maybe it’s enough for Victim to make the connection between the two, and realize that Orange could revive sticks.

Maybe that’s why he seems interested in Orange’s powers; maybe he thinks Orange could revive Mitsi...

There might also be Yellow being forced to summon the Cursor. Which hopefully won’t include any torture [Yellow’s getting tortured enough in the AvG thumbnails.]

There’s also a question that’s been left unanswered at the end of “The Box”: Were Red, Green, and Blue captured too?

The workers look to be walking away from them. If not, what could they potentially do? Their efforts at infiltration have already been thwarted once. If so, how would they fit into things?

I honestly have no idea. And I’m running out of steam, so I’ll just end this here.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Regardless of what’s revealed, it’s guaranteed to be amazing.

See you all at the premiere!

[arpstail]

Day 1827 of, these sharks live SUCH a tragic life

hi guys!!! I was just rereading castle swimm- OH MY GOD?

do they not usually get fed everyday…?????? (No, the answer is no..)

This is actually a point I’ve BEEN making, the sharks were starved, no question about it. I mean even hunting their food has a high risk of either lots of injuries, or actually DYING..

Walk with me for a second

INFACT??? THEY FEEL LUCKY WHEN NOBODY DIES WHILE HUNTING..??

Which this also implies that when they DO eat, it’s not a lot. That creature they killed was considered to be a big meal for everyone, which…hmm..REALLY..?

and I mean… And if we wanna go and be Marine biologist!!!! Sharks can go up to like six weeks without eating, and that’s just blue sharks! And ANOTHER FACT, sharks are omnivores so they can infact eat plants and stuff, however….have you seen the castle and the environment they live in…

the whole castle is actively…CRUMBLING.. and even the curse takes part in this. Going outside to hunt is basically life threatening, and I doubt they hunt often because of this. Especially considering the fact that their numbers are diminishing, there’s only a few hundred of them.

now obviously this may be a small..reach considering the portions they all get were pretty decent in size. though this doesn’t mean they get that daily, or often at all. And again future maybe marine biologist here! They’re sharks… they’re probably not eating to the recommended standard anyways.

There was actually some REALLY nice head canons that inspired me to share these from my notes a few months ago by @hopeful-puffin that shares most of my thoughts. (Please check it out they’re SO GOOD. I love you hopemwamwanmwah)

anyway

I actually thought I’d share a few of my own head canons as well! Not sure what more I could say I haven’t already.(I hope it’s ok to use this screen shot..)

I’ll make a more head canon centered post some other time hopefully maybe

I feel like siren not caring about food at all is really essential to his character considering the fact a large part of his character is centered around the guilt he carries. The worst part is? He can’t do anything to help, he isn’t allowed to. He can’t complain. And also taking into account that this guy has literally never gone outside for the first 18 years of his life???? This is literally the only thing he’s known. Hunting, to him, is life threatening no matter how skilled you are. He doesn’t know any other creatures other than 1 the ones brought to him and 2 the ones already in their environment. For siren, I’d imagine he doesn’t care what creature it is as long as it’ll feed the people.

now! Hold my hand for a moment.. picture this.

Seasons! Are there seasons in the castle swimmer universe? I mean..probably..I dunno, I’d have to go check after I post this.. BUT! Creatures are skittering around getting ready for..uhhh they’re equivalent to winter! So they aren’t obtainable at all this time of year.(assuming the sharks can’t hunt very far away, I mean they would surely die so) so..what do the sharks do? They can’t hunt, their resources are already as scarce enough as it is, and there really isn’t anything else around the castle..errrr..cave(?)

so what do they do? They have kids and elderly to feed! Sure they can could a bit without eating, but then what?

this is when it gets all edgy, and boo me all you want yeah IM CRINGE SURE WHATEVERRRRR

Sharks are known to eat each othe- NO DONT CLICK AWAY JUST HERE ME OUT… sharks can be!! Cannibalistic.! I’m sure you can tell where I’m going with this but I’m going to lay it flat just in case

The sharks resort to eating….,well I’m not sure if they’d be already dead, or dying, sharks. Either way! They’re suffering! They’re sharks! And they’re starved for food.

Now another way this headcanon can go is a little bit more morally gray, as we’ve seen sirens parents be(um maybe?) not sure if I’ve already talked about my shoal theories here BUT ANYWAY! Picture this, sirens dad, canonically, is a nurse. And siren is just lets say like 7 or 8, before he leaves(or maybe this is what drives him to leave) regardless, it’s winter, and shoals family is starving . So..what does he do!! as lightly as I can put this, he just secretly feed them the remains of others. He has the ability to do it I mean he’s a nurse. He can like do that…I guess. Point is, sometimes (actually ALL the time) nurses are forced to do things others won’t agree with based of their morals. And in a situation where they were all desperate, this doesn’t seem that far out of the question. We ALL SAW THE END OF EPISODE 169.. castle swimmer has not shied away from being dark

If you made it this far I’m i love you.. MWAH! And hope if you too read this I LOVOVEEEVEVE what you do

Bonus cause I love him to death @linaisfunny @dumblond-ie

[silverview]

below the cut is a long and overthinky post about in9, mostly

i need to start by talking about sitcom finales, which fortunately is a straightforward place to start. i've probably written this exact bit before, so i'll recap it as briefly as i can

when creators are knowingly bringing a sitcom to its end, they use the final episode(s) to ask and (usually) answer the question: are we getting out of this situation? since the characters aren’t going to be onscreen anymore, they don’t need to be funny anymore, so they have the option of ‘graduating’ out of whatever sit(uation) has been keeping them hilariously unfulfilled. (the sit might be a literal location or simply a social circle, pattern of behaviour etc.) they have the opportunity to be happy, offscreen, after the show ends

characters can graduate by changing their circumstances: for the worse e.g. death (blackadder) or for the better (cabin pressure). if they don't graduate, they're doomed to remain in the sit indefinitely (peep show). or they might realise that the sit has become a place where they feel fulfilled, and they have no need to graduate (spaced). how to classify any specific show can be up for debate & i won't go into detail justifying these examples, but broadly speaking and for the sake of argument, these are the categories

you can mix and match these endings for different characters within the same show, so that some graduate and others don’t (community). this will often be the case when there is a ‘striver’ character who has consistently shown greater ambition/potential to escape than the others. this is going to be bittersweet, in fact all graduations are going to be bittersweet, because – no matter how awful the sit and no matter how nice the graduation – the audience has come to know and love the sit, and the characters/relationships within it, and we’re sad to see that come to an end. the characters left behind will inevitably have strong feelings about a split ending, one way or another – either supporting or attempting to sabotage the striver's graduation

so i’ve been thinking about plodding on as a sitcom finale. as you can tell, it's clearly using this framework. it takes the emergent meta-characters of 'steve' and 'reece,' largely implied presences up to this point, and puts them up onscreen for a very traditional sitcom finale. the show itself is the sit, and we get all the classic struggles to escape, all the ensuing clashes brought on by guilt/resentment/the pain of separation. through this lens, the ending is... well, either a peep show or a spaced ending, depending on how optimistically you read it. but those are just two sides of the same coin – the 'nobody graduates' coin. 'the adventure continues indefinitely.' they move on to a new show, but their circumstances are effectively unchanged, for better or worse. the audience are invited to enjoy the cosy feeling that this is for the best. they know we love the sit, that's only natural, and we don't want it to end. so they very kindly wrote an ending that keeps it alive forever, even if that leaves their characters somewhat unresolved/unfulfilled in some respects

tlog apocalypse is also a sitcom finale, in a sense. it uses a curiously similar formula – manifesting the meta-characters 'steve,' 'reece' and 'mark' onscreen for the first time, and making tlog itself the thing from which they want to escape. like plodding on it even shows us a fictional 'next' project to represent their escape attempt. the difference is that they are not the protagonists; the residents of royston vasey are, represented by lipp & geoff & briss. those guys get their own unique graduation arcs, which all fit the traditional sitcom model to a greater or lesser extent. some are aborted and some are fulfilled, but overall, we get a similar ending to in9: the town goes on, the sit goes on, the adventure continues indefinitely. ('it was all a dream' ambiguity notwithstanding.) because that's basically what the audience really wants.

in both these cases, what we're really rooting for is The Show; The Work Itself. i've said this before, but one of in9's favourite themes is the danger and difficulty of creative work/entertaining people, the damaging effects on the body and soul. but in the end, despite all that, it comes down in favour.

if psychoville had run its course, would the r&s meta-characters eventually have made an appearance? i suspect not, for two reasons. 1) unlike tlog & in9, psychoville has a substantial recurring cast of other actors, so the r&s meta-characters are not such a ubiquitous implied presence. 2) maureen & david are (or ... were) a prominent stable unit that can easily stand in for the creators, i.e. represent their respective aggregate presences on the show. (tubbs & edward can fill this role for tlog; they just didn't in the movie. in9 doesn't have a version of this, or it didn't until the finale.)

i'm talking about meta-characters all the time. i linked to my original post about it above, but i want to try & expand on it. r&s, the implied actors/writers. they're a sort of thin layer between the explicit fiction of the show and the reality of the actual guys. they're emergent, unscripted, unseen, unheard, and largely unknowable. they're made up of the viewer's conscious & unconscious impressions as she watches the show. the easiest way i've found to think about it is this: they're the same as the actor characters on the show that goes wrong – recognisable characters who are actors, themselves playing a variety of characters – the only difference is that 'reece' and 'steve' don't ever break onscreen. we always know they're there; we always know we're watching 'reece' & 'steve' playing tommy & len; we are never just watching tommy & len. we build up a familiarity with 'reece' and 'steve' just by watching them act, and that inevitably shapes our perceptions of the individual explicitly fictional characters

the meta-characters are who the audience is tuning in for week to week, to see what they do next. not the explicitly fictional characters who change every week (although once we know & love them, we return to see them again of course<3). not the real human men, because those are too far removed for audiences to develop an impression of them from the show alone. there is a fictional construct of a man which is never intentionally written or acted, but which nonetheless accretes organically in the viewer's head, until she has a vague sense of a character behind the characters. that's the meta-character.

many such cases, when actors repeatedly work within the same circumstances/ensembles. very similar effect in the carry on films, for example. hancock's half hour features an odd version of the same phenomenon. sketch shows like mitchell & webb look and jfsp repeatedly bring their meta-characters onscreen, and in fact both explicitly acknowledge what they're doing by having the meta-characters point out that their lines are scripted. especially in jfsp, this creates ANOTHER layer of fiction – there's the fully fictional character simon kane is playing, there's the 'simon kane' who has scripted lines in a fourth-wall-breaking sketch, there's the meta-character 'simon kane' who is implied to be reading those lines, and finally there's the flesh & blood human man. this is all getting a bit much

anyway, imagine if in9 had included more ‘backstage’ scenes/episodes throughout its run. imagine how plodding on would hit if you’d been seeing those guys interact onscreen for the whole ten years, sloooowly building their meta-story to its finale