ฅ^>⩊<^ ฅ

no u 🫵

im glad it landed bc I was cracking up just as I was writing it.

There’s something fascinating (read: terrifying) about the sight of Maegor Targaryen yearning. He does not yearn, he corrects.

And yet, he lets you reload your account to some overpriced coffee shop that makes really good breakfast sandwiches with his card. Not the company card. His own personal card. It felt like a small weight in your palm the first time he’d handed it to you.

The sight of one Maegor Targaryen, CFO and resident boogeyman to anybody who lazed about and played games on company time, simply sitting in your own smaller office just because you’re there, freaked many of your department members out. He mostly just sat, quiet and contemplative at least as he looked out the window.

“Please do not scare any more interns, they need the college credits,” You admonish slightly.

Maegor grunts.

(He still scares a poor intern who had been trying to flirt with him with a look of disdain.)

There’s also the fact that Visenya Targaryen knew about you. That alone was frightening enough.

But it was the fact that Maegor had told her about you. So you nearly felt your heart stop when some of her own security came to escort you to a short lunch with her.

At least Aenys was there too. His penchant for easy conversation and the skill to keep it going were both blessings you did not know you had needed until this very moment. Even he managed to get Visenya’s attention more than once, but she would return her keen gaze directly on you.

You looked like a deer caught in headlights. You felt like it too, and this intimidating woman was the person driving the car that was about to hit you.

(It was nothing that scary, you don’t hear Visenya say as she meets with her son for dinner.)

Do you nearly faint when you learn that you made a good first impression? Absolutely.

I dont know who that is.

Bonus:

Eridan ==> Put on the fucking purrbeast ears I guess

· · · · ♡ boxer!max verstappen…

whoever it was causing this terrible racket by your bar, you were going to fuck them up.

you were not about to scamper off in front of some low-rent punk, red light district or not. not when you spent your evenings breaking apart all of amsterdam's hot-headed idiots, who still hadn't figured out the only place for a fight was the ring five meters away...

—oh. you stopped dead in your tracks at the end of the corridor, instantly recognizing the blond-haired man huffing and puffing by the sandbag, in a corner of the ring. maybe you were not going to fuck up max verstappen. your boss would not like a run-in with the four-time boxing champion, his clandestine ring's most lucrative stallion. neither would your nose.

you observed him in silence, leaning against the concrete wall as he dealt powerful blow after powerful blow, his taut muscles glittering with sweat under the tungsten lights. hard not to be appreciative of his strong frame splitting the air open with each thunderous strike. of his breathless grunts, barely audible over the loud thumps at the ends of his fists.

"pretty intense for a morning routine," you spoke after a little while, startling him out of his trance. his head snapped as he turned on his heels, narrowed eyes and parted lips. he was handsome, when his chest was racing after a breath. you'd never seen him up close—never talked to him; you led lives on opposite sides of the bar. him on straw mats and you between bottles.

"sorry for scaring you, champ," you said joyfully as you made your way to your absolute mess of a bar.

"no, you didn't... it's just... what are you doing here?"

"well, you know, i work here and all." you chuckled back. why was the infamous mad max's flustered stuttering so damn adorable? "and someone can't deal with a closing shift to save their fucking life, so obviously i get to pick up the pieces. what are you doing here? it's barely six in the morning."

"i like to train in the morning. it's calm."

max verstappen would train in the antichamber of death if he could, you thought to yourself as your eyes slid over to the bruises and lacerations on his toned arms. the price of legend, you assumed.

"well, don't let me distract you," you had ahead of you long hours of cleaning up broken glass and—was that puke?

you groaned. thump! of course, verstappen was back at it again, cold and precise like he'd never been interrupted in the first place. you took your head into your hands, as if that could make the retching go away. thump!

"max?"

"...yes?" you'd never expected the legendary mad max to sound so soft-spoken.

i am obviously upset, but i will now rationally speak. i am moreso pissed that whatever left of my faith i still had in the narrative, has since proven itself as fanciful, and was smitten away with the penultimate to this division’s finale. i will be honest—i am stubborn and i will hold onto even a thread of possible resolve in the future that could satisfy at least me, but the fact is, it has become apparent that i am not alone in my complaints about this arc, or how this plot and writing has progressed since 2024.

my detailed arguments are drafted—i just thought i could answer this as a preface. regarding fyodor, i already expected his «end» would be clumsily and inadequately executed many months ago, due to factors such as: 1) the complete combination and combustion of a dozen supernatural elements, both wielded by, and simply associated with him—not only would you have to tie off the antagonist’s character, but also, all of these outside complexities that require their own careful knots to not seem «cheap» or leave plot holes. that is already a complicated design. 2) his resurrection ability (which i’ve already teased my opinions on). 3) it actually ties back into the second, but my stance on asagiri straying from fyodor’s original «presentation», or appearance of his essence, as i like to term it. this last point is why i’ve held such a huge disappointment—it’s the handling of fyodor’s character. my beliefs were instantly confirmed upon receiving the news that bungou stray dogs is sectioned in parts, and this one was about to end. anyone could see: there was absolutely no way asagiri could sufficiently rectify fyodor’s position in two chapters (unless they were somehow, 50+ pages, each? of course that wouldn’t happen).

still, out of all the ways this inevitable event could have played out, the edifice of this chapter was highly unsatisfying to me, not only because of fyodor actually «dying», but because of how everything until now was built up for this moment, yet what actually happened appears so sloppy beside it. people might say that fyodor, as he is, deserved an «anticlimactic» death, but i am/will arguing here not that. instead, i am arguing the execution of the chapter itself as anticlimactic—there were aspects within 129 alone (independent of the greater arc/plot) that i saw had more potential (ex. fukuchi, fyodor, and their ideals—opposites of the same coin. if it was going to be fukuchi’s action in the end, its importance should have been emphasised). this flatness is something readers have dealt with for a while, and for it to not have improved at the very end is disappointing.