A few Heated Rivalry fic recs on the theme of parasocialism and media overinvestment ruining lives.
Halt and Catch Fire by mashawisotsky
In March 2019, gambling syndicates dump data from 7,500 hacked athletes online—the biggest breach in sports history. Shane and Ilya's years of private texts are buried somewhere in three million leaked files. A story about privacy, professional hockey, and what happens when the internet finds what you thought was hidden.
Initial Response by mashawisotsky
Nothing good happened on a Friday.
Someone tried to rob Ilya Rozanov’s house. Shane Hollander didn’t know the man in the kitchen, but he knew how to keep moving. How to take a blow.
By the time he hit the ice, the story was already out. Hockey, fear, loyalty, and the things you didn’t say all collided at full speed.
Gold Rush Fever by This_Witch_Writes
After settling his relationship with Shane and meeting his parents, Ilya faces a his last season with Boston while the fall out from the Sochi doping scandals and Russian exclusion from the Winter Olympics is tangled with the NHL banning players from participating. Facing moving to a new country for the second time, Ilya struggles with his own identity as a queer Russian athlete while accidentally stumbling across gay hockey players dealing with their own crises.
And some meta on the more-than-only-personal consequences to being openly queer (in Russia in the 2010s).
Heated Rivalry meta: timelines of show + Russian anti-queer laws by stele3
Crying because his relationship is so complicated that no matter what, there will always be people misunderstanding it. And apparently it does bother Caleb to an extent, as opposed to the "I don't care what others say as long as I have you" persona he usually puts on.
Hello, may i request lost siblings au with gn!reader and Lilia??? Like when they find out they siblings and the reader like turns back to their fae form and now is trying to get use to the sensitive ears and stuff.
Is my first time requesting so sorry if my explaining is bad, thank you!!
Gender : GN
Pronouns : They/Them
Type : Headcanon
TW : Bad English (Not the autor first language); Kidnapping by another world. Mention of War; Angst at the start.
Informations : You're Lilia's lost Sibling. Yuu is use. I'm pretty sure Lilia is taller in his real form. I saw someone saying he was 2m tall (6'6 feet), it's canon for me now, and in this universe too.
Raccoon's Note : Are you here with me ? Are you in my walls ??? I was about to start writing it before that ask pop up-
The war was a though time.
But it's the time you were born.
You were Lilia's little sibling, born in the war, and disappeared in it.
You disappeared overnight, without a trace.
Lilia thought the humans took you, and probably killed you.
But no humans he fought said anything about you, like they didn't know your existence or disappearence.
The only one who did was the king, mocking him for being too weak, not even capable of protecting his baby sibling.
Lilia needed a long time before accepting the fact that he will never see you again, or know why and how you disappeared.
When he saw his kids, Malleus, Silver, Sebek, grow up, he couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like if you had grown up with them, what you would look like...
But he would never know.
His dream during the Malleus Overblot also concerned you. You could see the grief he went through to accept your disappearance and possible death.
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It was short after Malleus' overblot that it happened.
Your head was hurting you, you could hear what Crowley and your friends were saying even when you weren't in the same room as them, even when they were at the other end of Ramshackle.
You could feel your limbs aching and growing at a rapid pace.
That was horrifying, and you couldn't even sleep because of the pain and Grim's snoring, was it always that loud ?
But, luckily, it stopped after a week.
A week of pain where the only moments of rest were when you were fainting from exhaustion/lack of sleep.
That was a horrible week.
And the reason was confusing and making you question your entire existence.
You were a fae.
Wait, let me rephrase it :
You were a fae, Lilia's sibling if the ADN test is true, that disappeared, ended up in another world, and your body changed to conform to the world you were in. Your magic was blocked because this world didn't have any magic, and you had the appearence of a human because it didn't had any faes in it.
So now you were in your true form, that was very similar to Lilia's one you saw in the dream.
Especially for the height. You were 6'6 feet now. You had to change all your clothes because of that.
You will always remember the face Ace made when he realized that he was now the shortest of the group (Grim don't count, he's a magical creature).
He wasn't even shock that you were a fae, he was just pissed to be the shortest now.
It was a very funny moment.
But, what wasn't funny, was adapting to your new size and hearing.
You have to wear earplugs to sleep the night because of Grim's snoring, sometimes even in the day when it get overwhelming.
Before you could walk under a tree without any problem, now you have to bend down. For some doors (like the ones in the Heartstanbyul and Pomefiore dorms) you have to bend down to avoid bumping into them.
You learned it the hard way. (You still remember the laugh of your friends every time you bump into things... they never try to hide it).
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When Lilia's had to do a DNA test, he was confused and unsure about it.
Especially when neither Crowley nor the nurse wanted to tell him why.
But he didn't regreted doing it, not when the test revealed that Yuu was his sibling he thought dead.
It was the happiest day of his life.
His sibling was finally back, and he finally had an answer to one of his question : where did Yuu disappeared.
But that lead to more questions : like how did Yuu ended up in another world ?
He didn't had any anwer to it, but he won't search the answer now.
No, for now, he had to help his sibling with their magic recently unblocked and new senses.
And their height now.
Lilia didn't realized he had to help Yuu with that, but he did after seeing them bump into the top of a door.
That was a little fun to watch, but he didn't laugh, not when none of your friends were showing just a little compassion to your situation.
So he took his real form, like that you two have the same height, and he decided to walk in front of you, bending down when necessary, and you imitate him.
He did that for two weeks, doing all the doors of the NRC, even the ones of the dorms.
For the ears, he honestly had no idea how to help. His ears were always like that, so he couldn't really help.
But he helped a lot with magic.
Like your brother, you had a strong magic. And because it was block for so long, you had no idea how to use it.
But Lilia helped a lot, Malleus and Silver too.
The first thing you did with your magic was using your unique spell. Don't ask how, because even you don't know.
A Savanaclaw was mocking you, and your first instinct was using your unique spell when none of your friends or adults were around.
That didn't end well for the Savanaclaw student.
Lilia was so proud when he learned that you used it. He wanted you to use it on him or on another Diasomnia student to see what it was.
Sebek was the unfortunate victim for that.
You are now the cool uncle/aunt of Silver, Malleus and Sebek, and most likely all of Diasomnia too. I don't make the rules.
Everytime Lilia do/try to do a prank on someone of Diasomnia, there's a 50/50 chance that they decide to hide behind you and beg you to stop your brother.
They also do that everytime Lilia try to cook.
Lilia is the sibling that is incapable of cooking, and you are the sibling that cook like a 5* chief.
You immediatly gained Sebek respect x30000000 when it was revealed you were Lilia's sibling.
You didn't know how to act around him when he started respecting you that much.
Malleus was the most normal about all this. He was just happy to have a new family member.
After that Diasomnia realized how bad Ramshackle was, they decided to literally kidnapped you and Grim.
And the only reason they took Grim was because he was your son.
They took all your things and move it to a room in Diasomnia. They even moved the mirror.
You didn't had any say in it btw. You're a Diasomnia student now, and Grim too.
You cook most of the time for the dorm.
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Lilia is the most happy man in the world now that you are back.
His family is finally complete, his sibling is here with him, they even have a son too, all his official and unofficial sons are here with him...
He just was sad that your parents couldn't be here, couldn't see it, that they will never know that their children are together again...
Well, unless some ghosts decide to tell them *look at the gossips ghosts that are the Ramshackle ghosts*.
To celebrate the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Revelation here is a totally official and confirmed by SQenix breakdown of Cloud Strife’s romantic life.
His first loves, Tifa and Sephiroth. Tifa the pretty girl next door that all the boys wanted and Cloud was going to be good enough to be with and protect half the reason he wants to be a SOLDIER. Sephiroth, the unattainable celebrity crush that Cloud isn’t really aware is even a crush, he wanted to be Sephiroth just as much as he wanted to be with him.
Then it’s Zack, he’s like Sephiroth but closer, he’s seemingly attainable for a bit unlike the larger than life Sephiroth and likes Cloud. At least until everything went wrong.
Then he goes insane and puts up the walls that don’t start breaking down until his fourth love Aerith shows up. Aerith’s spunky and forces her way past the walls cloud puts up because she wants to see everything she can especially Cloud, and Tifa as much as she loves him isn’t willing to push the way he needed to then. But just like she helps cloud Aerith helps Tifa by giving her someone to talk and bond with, that she can try and work out what’s going on with cloud, cause while sh can’t push back the way he needs yet she’s still worried for him and wants to help but she can’t yet. But then just like Zack Aerith dies and she’s ripped away from them both and clouds traumatised.
Then eventually he settles down with Tifa and they manage to move past the loss of Aerith. Even though as we’ll see when Aerith and zack come back to life in revelation they’re all going end up like Riverdale. And then there’ll also be the “bad” ending where Sephiroth does some weird psychosexual shit with puppet Cloud and fuses them together forever, finally being “complete” because he’s had a crush on him ever since Cloud killed him at Mt Nibel
So yeah that’s a brief definitive totally official listing of Cloud Strife’s romantic couplings, leaving out people that crush hard on cloud but he’s less reciprocal to like Rufus and Roche.
