#i wanna know how this trope manifests in other places

[invye]

I love when (fan)fiction does this thing when a non-magic character first hooks up with a magic character and they kinda expect all this weird kinky magic stuff to happen and they're equal amounts nervous and excited.

And then it just doesn't. Oh sure, there is magic in bed, actual magic, but its the most mundane and unsexy quality of life type of magic ever.

Examples, MCU edition:

Doctor Stephen Strange, world renowned surgeon turned world renowned sorcerer: uses just enough magic to steady his shaking hands so he can feel more confident about touching back.

Wong, the Sorcerer Supreme, highest ranking person in the entire magic society: summons any kind of required supplies with the same casual countenance as if it was a sleight of hand card production trick instead of actual magic.

Wanda Maximoff, fearsome Scarlett Witch, master of the most volitile Chaos Magic: uses telekinesis to pick up the pillow that fell to the floor during the initial shuffle to make herself more comfortable.

Loki Laufeyson, God of Mischief, shapeshifter, alive long enough to have tried everything the Nine Realms have to offer (and some things they don't): only uses his magic to clean up after. Because he's Royalty and cleaning is Beneath Him.

They all know the weird kinky magic stuff is something that has to be properly negotiated first. So non-magic character better be ready for next time---

#feel free to add your own fandoms & ships #i wanna know how this trope manifests in other places #non-magic/magic character #fanfic tropes #magic in bed #never strop dear writers #writing #ships i thought of writing this: #ironstrange #wongstrange #wandavision #lokius #but also all the x reader ships: #doctor strange x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #loki x reader

[llondonfog]

Hi!! I was an anon from quite some time ago, saying that Mr. Plover would be a cute name for Sebek's dad :) Your response definitely raised some really fun questions, and I had some thoughts to share if you'd like to entertain them :) but also, feel free to ignore! I dont wanna bombard you lol. Your posts are so fun to see, and are awesome for world building. Thank you for your little corner of the internet <3 Anywho, I wrote a little thingy...

To be a Zigvolt is to love bravely.

Truly.

Unafraid, and without condition.

Who is Sebek to contest his exalted family legacy?

And the Zigvolts, mother and father, hold tight with conviction. Not the conviction of heavy-fisted mandates, nor the snarl of battle-torn declarations. Not the conviction of a judge, or a king, or a soldier. Their conviction is of tea-time weather observations, of the kiss of tide at sea, the fact that is sunrise, and the moon that trails after. Something simple, and mundane, and unfailingly honest. And above all else, above murmured insults, and booming jabs at rounded ears and smaller magics, the Zigvolts believe, know, that their son loves them.

Truly, bravely, and without condition.

It follows in him placing away the mugs after washing, and knocking on the dentistry's door with that huff of his. In the glances behind an unsheathed sword, eyes searching for a familiar truth.

And the Zigvolts smile, for he knows.

And Sebek turns his face, embarrassed.

Emboldened.

Dude. Sebek as a character????? MUWAH. His inner conflict of human vs fae is so complex and compelling. That type of conflict, obviously, doesn't arise just out of nowhere. The Valley of Thorn's general society obviously had a heavy impact, and I believe that Sebek's grandfather was a primary influence as well. So Sebek's parents, OOUGH. It really gets you wondering about how they feel, especially his human father. But? His parents? Are just so? Loving? They truly, and deeply love their son, and I think that they know Sebek loves them back, even if he himself doesn't really understand his own feelings. This manifests in a variety of ways, but a definite drawback is that because they know that their son loves them, they don't really adress the antagonism he holds towards human kind? Towards himself. I think that the Zigvolts believe that Sebek will come to understand with time, and that their love for each other is enough. Especially with fae culture, their lives long and full, learning and growth seems to be something that also develops over time. (Mr. Plover is someone who seems to adopt fae culture, and wonderfully open minded, so I think he adopts this kind of attitude towards Sebek as well?) There is no rush to correct Sebek, and maybe with fae culture, a lesson learned by oneself over time is more valuable than a one forced upon them. If that makes any sense. So his parents belief in his love and intelligence and future, almost feeds into this conflict? But it's... fine bc he's half fae? Obviously not fine, but, ya know? Anyways😂😂😂 I love their family so much😭😭😭 if you made it here, thanks for listening to my ramble! :) Especially with the Silver stuff coming up WHICH I AM STOKED FOR I AM EATING YOUR WRITING I AM CRYING😭😭😭

I hope you have a wonderful day :)) <3

@estcaligo // i felt morally obligated to tag you in the most wholesome sebek ask i've ever received

first things, oh my goodness, hello again!! i'm so glad you enjoyed that response and you're more than welcome here anytime to share your twst thoughts and questions, i really enjoy answering them and interacting with you guys!! it means so much to me that you enjoy my silly content corner!! <3

secondly, YOUR LITTLE PROMPT HAD ME TEARING UP OH M YGOD. i don't know if you guys understand how much i adore the trope of big huffy characters showing their love and affection through small gestures of care and intimacy rather than grand displays and the way you described that!! sebek's little grumpy noises that even if he says he doesn't understand his father, he's still going out of his way to be with him at the office!! the way he goes to put the dishes away (most likely on the tallest shelves!!) for his family aaaaaaa

and just the overwhelming theme that the quality their family prides themselves most on is their conviction WHICH IS SO TRUE OF SEBEK AS A CHARACTER AND WHAT WE KNOW OF HIS MOTHER AND FATHER!!! conviction to their love, conviction in his liege i literally am obsessed with the mundane little observations that when placed in this context ARE SO INSPIRING AND MEANINGFUL!!!

i really hope we get to understand more about sebek's life and past, especially in ch7 if we get the backstory on lilia and baul (sebek's grandfather) and how he views humankind. and if not there, then i really hope we get a briar valley event where we can see the zigvolts in all their glory!! the dentist office, sebek's siblings, the home where he grew up!!! but you raise such a good point about how their belief that he will mature with time could also be a hinderance since they're not stepping in to facilitate his personal growth BUT I HAVE FAITH IN SEBEK!!! from what we've seen so far in ch7, he's had his foundations shaken considerably, and how he comes out of this is going to be a huge testament to his love for diasomnia

#lettie's asks #THIS WAS SO PERSONAL TO ME #thank you so much for the kind notes and sharing your own writing!! #i'm so glad that my blog can be a fun and safe space to share all your ideas and excited thoughts <33 #HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY/NIGHT YOURSELF!! #didn't want to get too much into spoilers in case you havent seen anything but ooOF #SEBEK'S DREAM #IYKYK

[andiwriteordie]

i finally listened to that gracie abrams song you recommended to me on one of my other asks, and you were right it's very will byers!!! anyway another song rec for you, next to me by assuming we survive is very byler, specifically the s3 ending akdjdf

THIS IS SO BYLER OH MY GOD

'Cause I need you, do you need me? And I can feel you from miles away

this right here. it's mike. ugh. kill me.

I know I left you mid-September Summer's gone and the leaves are falling off again

*cries in s3 ending* that's it. that's literally it

I think the hardest part of being home Is feeling so alone tonight I wish I was by your side

IT'S HAWKINS IT'S NOT THE SAME WITHOUT YOU *CRIES IN S4 BYLER*

Hold me, you make me feel at home

OH MY GOD IT GOT WORSE I'M GONE

Would it be wrong tell you the things that make you want to stay And is it my constant silence that makes you want to scream Can you just tell me one day that things are gonna change 'Cause I need you next to me, I need you next to me

excuse me what the actual fuck. what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck? let's just unpack this for a second, line by line. rori what have you done

Would it be wrong tell you the things that make you want to stay

it's the way that will has been associated with "should i stay or should i go" and the way that mike keeps on seeming to lose people (especially will because he loses will over and over again) and so this is literally just like. mike thinking about all the things he could do, all the things he could say, all the things he wishes he was brave enough to say? all to ask will to stay. to not leave him. to go back to how they both used to be.

And is it my constant silence that makes you want to scream

god this is the s4 miscommunication trope. the way they both thought the other one was purposely ignoring them. the way they both so clearly wanted to reach out but didn't and it hurt them both so deeply. GOD.

Can you just tell me one day that things are gonna change

this line is so layered, because mike and will are both such intriguing characters to me? they both are shown to hate/fear change though we see it manifest in different ways. but change has become such a large part of their relationship over the course of the show—which i can imagine, for such a long-term friendship would be so so hard to suddenly go from things being the same for so long to changing rapidly in such a short period of time? at such an impressionable age? ouch. but then like. at the same time, we both see them wanting things to change between them as well, whether they wanna admit it or not? they have deeper feelings for one another that they're working through, and it is going to be so beautiful and so satisfying to see ultimately that they reach a place in understanding change isn't inherently bad, that it can be good too and bring new and beautiful things to their lives

'Cause I need you next to me, I need you next to me

*gestures manically to literally how mike and will don't understand personal space, also gestures to [i] need you mike, and [i] always will* it's just the way that mike receives love by feeling needed. and how will not only needs him in his life, but will wants mike in his life. because he loves mike and just loves getting to be with him. and on mike's end, we see again just the overall theme of loss and love in the show how every time will is gone from him? he's searching for ways to get will back.

GOD. rori. why did you do this to me. how dare you?

#andi's asks #byler #byler songs #everyone go listen now #a+ work rori #gold star

[mangacat201]

𝐓𝐀𝐆 (𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄) 𝐏𝐄𝐎𝐏𝐋𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑

Got tagged by @hedgewyse whom I was very happy to get to know better via this tag game, thanks a lot! Sorry it took so long to respond, I needed to get on tumblr on the laptop where I can actually type up text and I had a lot of things going on this past week that kept me LOL.

Favourite colour: Blue.

No explanation, not particular reason why, it’s just always been blue. All shades from deep purple to almost white. But I have a special place in my heart for the word ‘turquoise’, which I feel is just so the most. 

Currently reading: Oh good gosh, my open doc reading list is so long, I will constrain myself to the most recent things...

“(Love is)The second oldest profession” The 9-1-1 Buck/Eddie pornstar!AU I knew I needed but kept for a special occasion

I’m also reading “Achtsam Morden” a national German bestseller and the first actual like physical book I’ve picked up in probably four years. It’s hilarious and murdery and perfect

I’m listening to “Blood & Paper” by Kevin Hearne (whom I recently got to meet at a book signing event when he was visiting here and a friend asked me to spontaneously tag along - best decision in ages) Love the audiobook version read by Luke Daniels, he’s a whizz with the accents.

“Hide the drums (there’s fire in the sky)” latest installment of the Magical Marriage Ribbons-Verse, the Untamed Mega Saga, for which the author starandrea has been posting a chapter every day since May 31st 2020, so 805 consecutive days as of now without missing ONE. It boggles the mind. (I’ve started reading when the verse was ... oh I think about three parts in, I haven’t missed one too since then)

Last song: “The Greatest Show on Earth” - Nightwish, it’s my soundtrack for my daily yoga practice (no I am in fact not joking), so it doesn’t really count last leisure listening was the soundtrack of ‘Robin Hood - Das Musical’

Last series: Ooofff... ok, so many balls in the air at the same time. I’m watching “The Sandman” of course, as you do and loving it. Also “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” which is THE MOST(tm). Recently finished my rewatch and catch-up of “Manifest” and rewatched a couple of episodes of The Devil Judge with a friend who just started and that I got into it, remembering why I can’t be normal about those boys (and how delightful it is to rewatch with someone experiencing sth for the first time). Of course went down the magnificent and batshit crazy rabbithole that is Kinnporsche. Also, “Tomorrow” which is definitely my fav K-Drama of 2022.

Last movie: Day Shift - Fun and a nice remix of vampire tropes that you don’t really see on top of each other a lot. But it felt more like a set up to a movie trilogy I don’t know if it’s made enough impact into getting, so the premise might have been served better as a mini series? ...The Gray Man, which was solid and enjoyable and absolutely bonkers with how hilarious it was to watch Chris Evans have a ton of fun playing straight up, no holds barred, unredeemable villian. Ryan Gosling can stay... Ana de Armas is queen bee.

Currently working on: My last day of vacation :sob: and of course my WIP/plot bunnie enclosure excel spreadsheet (yes, I do not do things by half until I halfass writing them). Anyway, actual words or plotty thinky thoughts were put into:

- The Devil Judge a/b/o PWP (that has, so far, about 5k of set up and no porn) with a Jung Sunah made them do it scenario and non-traditional dynamics (yeah, idek...)

- Vincenzo Inception fusion - Jang Han Seo wakes up from getting shot to a curious set up of sleeping people around him (really really wanna write this one but the premise is so vast I’m afraid of flaming out again)

- three separate 9-1-1 Buddie fics of varying size and scope that reaches from one’s in love the other isn’t and confessions make things complicated (or do they), the fall out from the truck bombing goes the other way for Buck & the “Eddie deals with his 5B-issues by discovering shibari”!AU (do NOT try this at home-therapy)

- The Untamed - Blades of Glory!AU

pheeeeew. hooookay, wow, that was interesting, hope your learned something about me. I’mma tag some people, but please, feel free to participate at your own leisure. @hattalove, @the-marathon-continues-nip , @iskarieot, @themostglorioushour, @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels , @fondofeveryprickle, @ahhhnorealnamesallowed, @sam-t-a, @b612sunsets

#tag game #get to know me #lol

[smollestskele]

Hello tumblr-void.

As I have the insatiable need to vomit my emotions to a population that'll never know me irl, I'm only left with this place to put this that they won't see it:

I wanna get back with my ex so fuckin bad.

They and I literally only broke up because of

Family sabatogue

Undiagnosed and severe metal illness

FUCK YOU MOM, YOU GET YOUR OWN BULLET POINT FOR TRIGGERING THEIR BPD TO MANIFEST. FUCK. YOU. YOU AND YOUR UNDIAGNOSED-BPD SHIT.

Aggressive inability to read each other's autism

Not understanding how the other one showed how aggressively horny they were

And select psychosis-related lack of communication

All of which we've finally communicated and talked over in a healthy way, finally.

This is so stupid. I was the one pining for like a year and knowing I couldn't say anything til they figured some things out about themself in college. "Hey, ik I'm a lesbian and ur a transman, so we can't date cuz I can't see myself with a man even though this is the first genuine crush i've had since my first ex in high school!" followed by silently screaming in joy when they trusted me first to talk about how they might really be non-binary and me learning that burying my feelings to not invalidate their gender and my desires for anyone not a man may have been uneeded. 6 months of waiting to make sure they didn't rush to conclusions and were comfy being NB, of hoping they'd say they were even though I'd support them no matter what.

And now here I am FUCKING AGAIN! FUCK THIS, MAN!! (Granted we mutually pined, but I held off saying stuff cuz I didn't wanna interrupt their self-discovery and jump the gun on some things so it counts). THE FIRST TIME WAS ENOUGH AND NOW I GOTTA HOPE, DESPITE BEING LIKE 99% SURE, THAT THEY HAVEN'T MOVED ON AND WANNA TRY AGAIN TOO?? AND HOPE THEY DON'T FIND SOMEONE WAY BETTER SUITED FOR THEM THAT THEY TOTALLY DESERVE OVER MY ROCD ASS??

WHAT THE FUCK KINDA GOD MADE MY LIFE ONE NEVER-ENDING ROMCOM!?!

I know, I get it. I asked for a romance novel type relationship. But I DID NOT ASK FOR SOME BL-TROPE, BURNED OUT TOO HARD AND THEN FELL BACK IN LOVE AFTER TIME APART PLOT-LINE BS, GFY GOD!!

#Ignore me #Or don't #whatevs

[obeysword]

for all the deserved salt i give marie. there’s serious no worse written character who is so shoehorned in and forced on a protag as there is her. i didnt even romance her and on v-day she implied to have kissed me after giving me chocolate and telling me to close my eyes. there is so much about her that DEVALUES what persona 4 is and means. there is so much about her that shouldn’t exist within this game. she was never a thought from the original, and so obvious with how shoved on you and the rest of the team. don’t wear the colors you like, that’s green that’s still red. i’m not going to learn your names. i’m not going to be nice to any one of you. also i’m so gorgeous i’m going to make the least implied sexual character try to sneak a peak at me in the bath. and then i’ll create a lightning storm bc aren’t i just that amazing? “i hate you all. i hope you die” girl you make me wanna die having any scene where you’re in? i don’t know why anyone would tolerate the literal abuse this character puts on others. none of the IT would like her? she’s the most entitled character to yu’s time and affection despite the fact that each time i can be mean to her i was. i’m basically implied to be dating her from our first meeting. it’s kinda sick tbh. but she’s just so important to my destiny.

why does izanami even have to exist when perfect, i’m wearing my bargain bin hot-topic, is here to do the job for her? izanami is a terrifying character in every aspect of her role. but no, marie comes along and says: i’m a caged bird. you have to let me die. i came in here to die. pls don’t save me. i love how she stole from 2 female characters in this one timeslot alone, a third if you count izanami. naoto’s character has little screentime and her reason for going into the tv knowing she may die in the process of being kidnapped to discover the truth was reworked into marie. then, we’re going to use the same motif yukiko had on marie too. marie marie marie, you’re just so lovely. everyone loves you so much. it makes no sense? there’s no build up. there’s no depth. she’s a terrible character based off of my immortal and i hate that yu has to be the one to suffer her affections.

Kusumi-no-Okami is the only boss besides Izanami to have defeated the entire Investigation Team. i’m not even sure how to call bullshit here. bc there’s so much wrong with this statement. The fight ends with Yu using Izanagi-no-Okami to impale the shadow and free Marie. if you were gonna stab her, she wouldn’t exist anymore. izanagi-no-okami stabbed izanami, she died. it’s literally a metaphor for the righteous sword of god purging evil. marie is the evil from mankind. if she was going to kill everyone, yu would have awakened to his power a month earlier to save everyone. i don’t think he would ever spare marie for doing it. he takes things too personal. kill his friends, kill yosuke, well you can just die. it’s bullshit.

p4 is a coming of age story if there was one. the fact you add a character who is done up with anime tropes, make other characters suddenly super OOC to fit her in. she takes away from so many. including the sagiri and why adachi and namatame were picked in the first place. she is constantly insulting the velvet room, a manifestation of YU’S HEART. for a guy you’re said to love? you’re really an asshole. it hurts so much having to hear that with all the time and things i’ve poured into the velvet room. the amount atlus did for akira and minako/minato. it’s not even funny. you are literally insulting a person’s true emotions and true feelings by calling it cramped and stuffy. teddie has a scene in the limo, and it’s one of the sweetest moments of his character bc he says he never wants to leave it’s warm and nostalgic. there’s nothing good about marie’s character so i don’t see why fandom just adores her to the degree she is. she’s terrible in every scene to every single character even to where she’s literally the implied love interest? if that doesn’t make me sick idk what does. they do the same with sumi in 5, but somehow it feels worse with marie. bc even if you’re dating someone, you’re still dating marie. how fun.

#▼ OOC △ #idc if you wanna attack me over it #go ahead you cant justify how awful her writing is #i dont care anymore here's my i hate maire rant in full #bc there's no character who has such bad writing and couldnt be more garbage #you cant fix her #if there's a mod to erase marie from the game #give me it lmao #bc i seriously rage quit bc of her #she isn't under appreciated and she's not cute? she's just awful #she's another reason to give yosuke susano-o too #and if that doesn't get my goat idk what else will #anti marie #never thought i'd use that tag

[itsapapisongo]

STEPPING UP | Bang Chan

Starring: Bang Chan and Ok Taec-Yeon

Featuring: Ok Taecyeon | Seo Changbin | Hwang Hyunjin | Mark Lee

Genre: Action | Superhero

Concept & Tropes: Captain America!Chan | Non-Idol AU | Superhero AU

Word Count: 7.1K

Warnings: Language and sequences of action and violence.

Summary: When a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are held for ransom by terrorists, the Captain—Bang Chan—is tasked with aiding in their rescue.

Context & Notes: This is very much influenced by the Lemurian Star sequence in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This ties-in with Webbed Surveillance and Measure of a Hero in that these stories are set within the same fanverse. For the sake of simplicity, Chan is not the Captain America, but someone picking up the mantle and is referred to as the Captain since he’s Korean-Australian. He’s a super-soldier, been through some shit (i.e. fighting in the army, losing friends, being put on ice) and getting used to modern life after a couple of years of cryogenic sleep.

This one goes out to Lina ( @scriptura-delirus ) and Ivy ( @chogiwow​ ) for sharing my enthusiasm for idols as superheroes. We need heroes. Now more than ever.

THOUGH THE QUINJET had cloaking technology, it wasn’t needed as it lurked in the dead of night with ease. It flew undetected across the Pacific Ocean, slicing through the clouds and inching closer to the rendezvous point.

Aboard this state-of-the-art jet, a S.T.R.I.K.E. squad prepared for the mission. Among them, was a living legend. Not the one the rest of the world knew but one that nonetheless stood in high regard.

Bang Chan—otherwise known as the Captain, a name that had caught on but he quite hadn’t accepted yet—was clad in a stealth suit and carried a perfectly round shield on his back; it bore a star and muted tones of silver and blue. He adjusted his earpiece and turned to the squad, giving the team a cursory glance.

Some of his fellow agents checked their weapons while others began to huddle around the squad’s leader, Ok Taecyeon, as he began the briefing. A monitor displayed images of an aircraft carrier stranded at sea. Coordinates appeared on the lower portion of the screen, followed by the vessel’s manifest.

“Eyes on me,” said Taecyeon, clapping to get everyone’s attention. “The target’s a mobile satellite launch platform. This ol’ beaut is the Levanter. It has a skeleton crew aboard, no more than twenty people. They were about to send up their last payload when—” he tapped the monitor’s touch screen with his index finger, zooming in on a satellite image of the carrier. “—terrorists took her over. That was over ninety minutes ago.”

Chan frowned before he asked, “Any demands?”

Taecyeon grimaced. “Pretty hefty demands, if you ask me,” he replied, raising an eyebrow. “They want a billion and a half.”

Shocked was visible in the Captain’s eyes but it disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. A billion and half? It seemed like an inconceivable figure. Back in the day, it would have been a number to scoff at. It was too high a price for a simple aircraft carrier, he thought, but the world had changed in the past century so what did he know? Even if he believed that by modern standards that was an exorbitant amount of money, he had to know.

“Why so steep?”

“It’s S.H.I.E.L.D.’s,” the team leader replied, as though it were a no-brainer. “Which means it’s worth more than the ransom itself. If they get paid, the info can be sold to the highest bidder. They’d be making bank for a while.”

Chan clenched his jaw, his hands unconsciously settling on his belt’s buckle. He titled his head to the side and scoffed, not wanting to entertain such a possibility. When he spoke, it was with a tone of disbelief—

“If they get paid?”

“They won’t.” Taecyeon shook his head, pursing his lower lip down as he swiped a finger across the screen. “Trust me on that, Cap.”

These days—an age of answers and curiosity—information was power. Those that were willing to obtain it would do so through whatever means necessary. Chan understood why someone would attack and capture the Levanter, but he couldn’t quite conceal his disbelief.

How had S.H.I.E.L.D. allowed for this to happen? Ships like these weren’t supposed to be vulnerable. If they were, it would be a major liability for the organization and the ransom proved such a point. Not because of the economical factor but because of a potential loss or corruption of whatever data was stored within these ships.

“So it’s not only a rescue mission, we’re recovering whatever data might be in there,” Chan deduced, crossing his arms across his chest. Even if the suit was padded and close to his skin, his muscle definition was nonetheless impressively visible.

“Apparently so.” Taecyeon nodded.

Chan glanced at the monitor and motioned with his chin at it. “What about our extremists friends?”

“They’re with R.A.I.D.”

“Who comes up with these names?” one of the agents.

“It stands for Radically Advanced Ideas in Destruction,” Taecyeon explained. Chan could tell he was doing his best not to roll his eyes. “In essence, they’re HYDRA lite.”

“Hmm,” Chan grumbled. “That’s not very comforting.”

Taecyeon gave in and rolled his eyes. “No shit.” He pushed the monitor forward so that everyone got a good look at the mug-shot of a tall and bearded middle-aged man with a hardened face and malicious brown eyes. “This is their leader: Vladimir Korda.

“Sokovian-Russian, born in Southern Russian but raised in Novi Grad. Sokovian Armed Forces, dishonorably discharged. Our friend here was part of a covert kill squad named EKO Scorpion. Nasty piece of work.” Taecyeon glared briefly at the man’s dossier. “It seems he got fed up and decided to go from military man to mercenary to—”

“Terrorist,” Chan finished for him. “And the kind without a cause.”

“Don’t know or care if he has a cause.” Taecyeon sniffed and motioned a gun with his right hand, pointing it at the monitor. “I just know I’d like to put a bullet between his eyes.”

Chan shook his head, meeting the team leader’s eyes. “We’re not neutralizing anyone. This is a standard CSAR mission,” he said in a stern tone.

Taecyeon tilted his head then gave a small nod of understanding. Chan could tell that he wasn’t happy about it but orders were orders and the man often did his best to do things by the book. CSAR—combat search and rescue—were in-and-out S.H.I.E.L.D. operations that required not only efficiency but the highest of discretion. Contact with hostiles was to be kept to a minimum thus “neutralizing” targets was an acceptable option unless completely necessary.

“Wanna hear about the hostages?”

Chan raised an eyebrow, taken aback by Taecyeon’s casual tone.

“Sure,” he answered, hesitation palpable in his voice.

Taecyeon pulled up the hostages’ photos. There were two civilians. The rest were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as their dossiers showed they had been stationed in the Levanter for over six months. Chan recognized a handful of them and felt a knot tie itself around his throat; two or three of them he’d been with on different assignments. His hands fell from his belt and settled behind his back as he clenched his fists; under the gloves, the knuckles had turned white. As he studied the faces of innocent people caught in an undesirable and undoubtedly traumatic situation, Chan thought of how important it was to accomplish the mission properly.

“They’re being held in the galley.”

“How many?”

“Nineteen people. Mostly techies with the exception of a Level 4 agent.”

With an idle flick of his wrist, Taecyeon swiped the screen and the photo of a bespecalted young man with black hair and indigo highlights appeared. He wore a suit and sported an expression of confused exasperation.

“Seo Changbin,” he told them, grimacing at the agent’s photo. “Good at what he does but not made for field work.”

Chan raised an eyebrow, prompting Taecyeon to motion a hand over his chest, as if to say how-to-say-this-politely. “He’s good at being behind a desk,” he replied, albeit not unkindly. “Which begs the question of why he’s aboard the carrier.”

“Did Fury mention him at all?”

Taecyeon gave him a weary look and shook his head. Why would a Level 4 agent be aboard the Levanter? There was nothing there for someone who sat behind a desk. If he were part of the tech-team, Chan wouldn’t have questioned it. Yet there was a vital piece of information missing and it was beginning to bother him. They people upstairs always asked him to step in and save the day but besides telling him how, they seldom ever told him why.

I feel like a glorified janitor, Chan fretted as his brow furrowed and transformed his handsome features into a scowl. Someone handed him his helmet and he nodded his thanks, silently placing it on his head. Between the Quinjet’s dim-lighting and his helmet, it was hard to read his face.

“So, Cap, how are we going to do this?”

Chan blinked once, twice, then cleared his throat. “I’ll clear the deck, you find the hostages,” he affirmed, pointing a finger at the Levanter’s layout on the monitor. “Get them out and into the life pods.”

“I’ll find Korda as soon as I clear the deck.” Chan turned to Taecyeon. “We don’t want any casualties so we’re incapacitating anyone we come across.”

Taecyeon nodded firmly, saluting the Captain with a wink. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he acknowledged. “No neutralizing. Duly noted.”

The Quinjet went dark then lit up under a red light. An alert turned on. The jet’s back hangar doors opened and a strong wind whipped through the hull. The cool night air nipped at their exposed skin but each and everyone of them shrugged it off. No one had more experience with the cold than Chan. As the rest of the team prepared for the jump, the Captain and Taecyeon walked over the hangar doors’ edge. They looked down at the dark ocean below, felt the wind howling in their ears.

“Captain!” Taecyeon leaned in, yelling over the noise. He shielded his face against the wind with an open palm. “What do you say if I buy us chimaek after this is over?”

“Chimaek, huh?” Chan yelled back and titled his head, a hand unconsciously adjusting the shield on his back. “That sounds tempting.”

“Up to you, old man.” The team leader shrugged, smiling as he caught a glint of exasperation in Chan’s eyes. “I understand if you want to rest. Sit in, fall asleep, drool all over yourself in your rocking chair, y’know?”

“As long as you’re paying,” the Captain half-smiled, fist-bumping his partner.

Taecyeon chuckled, knowing he had won him over as he yelled, “Give the man some space!”

Chan put some distance between himself and the hangar doors. Without hesitation, the Captain cracked his neck, ran the length of the jet, then leaped out of the Quinjet. The S.T.R.I.K.E. team paused, awestruck. No one or spoke for a few seconds.

They all realized something at the exact same time.

“Was he—was he wearing a parachute, boss?” an agent asked, visibly concerned.

“No,” Taecyeon confirmed, half-smiling. “No, he wasn’t.”

LIKE MISSILE SLICING through the sky, moving faster than the eye could follow, Chan hurled headfirst toward the Levanter. Just as he was about to crash on the Pacific Ocean, he flipped then dived into the dark depths below. He was less than a hundred yards from the ship so swimming to the carrier was easier than expected.

The Levanter floated in the calm water, the moonlight reflecting on its deck. An armed man kept watch and heavily yawned. He was looking out to the sea when Chan was climbing the ship’s steep anchor. Feeling movement, the guard leaned in over the rail just in time to catch the Captain’s ascent and made a sound between a gulp and groan when he was grabbed by the collar of his bulletproof vest.

“What the—” he managed to mumble before he felt his forehead make contact with the railing and was subsequently thrown overboard.

Chan propped himself up and jumped the railing with ease. Gathering his bearing, he looked left and right then reached and took the shield off his back. He parkoured his way across the deck, dispatching another armed man with effortless speed and skill. Several more men patrolled the perimeter, armed to the teeth and blissfully unaware of what was to unfold.

He stood in the shadows and surveyed his surroundings. Out of the four, two were huddled together and carrying a hushed conversation. The other two were on opposite sides of the deck, looking out to the ocean. Chan counted to ten, his grip on the shield tighter, then sprung into action.

He whistled a tune that suspiciously sounded like Arirang and got their attention, emerging from the shadows when the quartet whipped round to look for the sound. The man farthest to Chan barely had a second to register something—was that a saucer?—flying right at him. With a resonating clunk, the shield smacked him right in the chest and knocked the air out of his lungs; he collapsed, instantly incapacitated.

Having practiced for years and learned how to find the proper angles for the perfect throw, Chan blindly outstretched his left hand and closed it around the shield as it ricocheted back to him. He sprinted towards the nearest threat—the chattering duo—and tackled them both without breaking a sweat. The three of them struggled on the ground for a second but were on their feet as quickly as they’d fallen down.

The Captain lifted the shield and, gripping one of the leather straps, punched it; the round vibranium shield slammed into one of the men’s forehead and his knees gave in; he collapsed with a huff and a pained moan. Chan whirled and avoided a kick to the chest; though he was fast, he wasn’t fast enough to completely avoid the attack because he felt the man’s leg grace his ribs. The guy wouldn’t quit, though, because he kept kicking. Even when he missed he managed to have minimal contact.

I’m wasting my time, the Captain mentally groaned.

This guy was fast but the Captain was faster. When the man threw yet another kick, Chan intercepted the attack by grabbing the man’s ankle and twisting the leg with a flick of his wrist. A loud snap-crack confirmed he had effectively fractured the entire limb. The man toppled over and was about to scream when Chan knelt, chopped at his throat, and broke his windpipe. He heard whimpering and glanced over his shoulder to see the other man was shaking from head to toe; the guard had spread his arms out to display his surrender.

Chan straightened and was about to continue clearing the deck when he remembered there was still a man left. In all the commotion, as quick as it had been, he’d been too hyper-focused on disabling any threats that he forgot to not underestimate the enemy. When he turned to search for the last man standing, he felt the barrel of a gun against the back of his neck.

There you are.

“Clear,” the Captain whispered on his comm.

The man cocked the gun but never fired. A low pfft-pfft echoed in the night and he collapsed; tranquilized but not dead. The sound of parachutes alerted Chan of his team’s arrival. Six skydivers slapped their chest releases, their chutes billowing above then behind them. The team landed quietly, already used to these types of operations, sidearms at ready in their capable hands.

“Thanks, Taecyeon-ssi,” said Chan, half-bowing..

Taecyeon waved a dismissed hand. “Don’t mention it,” he said with a devious smirk. “I know you’re helpless without me.”

Chan clicked his tongue, passing the shield from his left to his right hand. Now that they were huddled together, he gave the perimeter a cursory glance and nodded when he found the comms tower. “Have the feeling I’ll find Korda there.”

“Seems like a good place to be in,” said Bam, one of the agents.

Taecyeon followed the Captain’s gaze. “Sure does,” he mumbled, his voice stern and low. “Call it, Cap.”

“I’ll go for the comms tower. The three of you—” Chan pointed at Taecyeon and the two agents beside him. “—find the hostages. And you three—” he pointed to the remaining members of the team. “—secure the engine room.”

“You heard the man. Spread out.” Taecyeon unslung the rifle off his body, wrapping the strap around his wrist. As the Captain nodded and started to walk off, he whispered, “Watch your six.”

Chan winked. “Always.”

THE COMMS TOWER was taller up close as he used a large pipeline to aid his ascent. Chan balanced himself on the line and he removed a pocket-sized surveillance launcher from a pouch in his belt. He aimed high and fired it at the Levanter’s comms room. A cord arched through the air and a microscale microphone stuck to the comms tower’s window. Initially, there was nothing but white noise until—

He could make out a conversation: two men talking over each other as they argued about something Chan had no context for. A man spoke Russian in a soft voice that was laced with malice and contempt. The Captain raised an eyebrow, taken aback by the dissonance between Korda’s voice and his cutthroat appearance.

Closing his eyes and pressing a finger on his earpiece, he focused on what was happening in the comms room. He was glad Fury had convinced him to learn a thing or two after being thawed out besides martial arts and catching up on politics and the world’s current and complicated status quo. Though he wasn’t fluent in Russian, he knew enough to get by and what he was hearing didn’t bode well for the mission.

“They still haven’t responded to our demands. We’ve been here for—”

“It seems like you’re in a hurry, Anatoly,” said Vladimir Kora, sounding bored. “They know what we want and they know we’re not bluffing.”

“Sir, if I may—”

“Nyet.” Korda grumbled. “You may not.”

A phone rang and Anatoly immediately answered. He mumbled then passed the call to his superior, mentioning it was coming from the galley.

“As soon as we get the money, this boat moves.” There was a pause and a heavy, irritated sigh. When Korda spoke again, he barely raised his voice but the Captain could tell he didn’t know need to because his tone was laced with seething anger. “Move them to the engine room. They’re not gonna be much of use once the ransom is paid.”

Chan scowled. There was no way in hell that was going to happen.

THE GALLEY WOULD have been immaculate if not for the droplets of still-fresh blood on the floor. The tiles were white, the walls silver, and almost everything was made of metal. The room was cold and smelled of dinner—ramyun, cooked vegetables, stir-fried beef, rice, something spicy—and none of Korda’s men could really resist glancing at the pots and pans where the food had been left unserved.

The Levanter’s crew was silent. They had been ever since they had been hijacked. Tears had been shed and mumbled prayers had been uttered but no one really dared speak up. Their minimal training dictated that they were to disclose nothing and to keep an even temper.

But for Seo Changbin keeping an even temper was the bottom of his priorities. He was tie-strapped to a metal counter. His legs had been tied too so his movability was limited and painful. Changbing had no other choice but heave a sigh and endure the aches and bruises the hijackers had so generously given him. His back was bothering him but it was his shoulder that was really driving me off the wall. Out of instinct, he’d intercepted a blow meant for someone else and was beginning to regret not being more cautious.

Every little movement hurt and made him wince. Enduring someone thrusting a rifle’s stock in between his shoulder and collarbone was no easy feat and nothing he’d ever wish on someone—except, perhaps, on the asshole who did it—but he’d rather take the hit than have his fellow agents be hurt.

The galley’s door opened and a grey-haired man stepped in, clad in a maroon uniform. He didn’t carry an assault rifle or body armor and the only sign that he was a man of authority was the ivory Heckler & Koch P7 holstered in his left thigh. Changbin could make out a familiar insignia engraved in its grip: a macabre skull with six tentacles below its jaw.

Great, Changbin grimaced, these guys are back.

Grey Hair spoke in Russian to one of the three men watching over them, his voice hoarse like that of a smoker’s. He glanced at them, smirked, then kicked at the legs of the two women to Changbin’s far left. The women—Lina and Aibi—leaned into each other but didn’t show fear. To Changbin’s chagrin, they glared at Grey Hair and hissed in annoyance.

“Aish,” they whispered, eyeing Grey Hair up and down in disgust.

Grey Hair scowled and reached for his gun, the ivory losing its splendor in his calloused hand. He aimed it at Lina’s forehead. If she was scared, she didn’t show it. Instead, she stared him down and clenched her jaw, leaning forward so that her head was pressed against the barrel of the gun.

“Go ahead,” she whispered in Russian. “See how that ends for you.”

“You speak—” Grey Hair blinked. Confusion was apparent in his eyes and he hesitated, the gun being pulled away from his victim’s forehead then returning to it with strengthened resolve. “Then you know what’s going to happen. You’ll be dead now or in the next twenty minutes.”

Aibi snorted. “Yah!” she yelled, sounding fierce, outraged. When Grey Hair turned to her, she lowered her voice and spoke in Korean, enunciating every word with thin-veiled vitriol. “Don’t drink your kimchi soup first.”

Changbin scoffed and failed to suppress his chuckle. His father used to say that often and he could never take the proverb seriously. And yet it gave Grey Hair pause as he didn’t understand Aibi and hadn’t counted on their defiance.

“If you’re wondering, I can translate,” Changbing interjected in English, leaning forward so that Grey Hair could see him properly.

“Translate.”

“She said . . . don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Bitch,” Grey Hair grumbled in English and motioned to hit Lina but relented when he saw Changbin struggling against the straps. “You want to be hero?”

“Not really, no,” the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent shook his head then shrugged. “But I’d preferred if you didn’t hurt anyone.”

“You want bullet in your head?”

The gun was aimed at Changbin. His eyes widened as he recognized the present danger. He kept calm and titled his head to the side. “Again, no,” he replied in an aloof tone, as though he was having a conversation about the weather. “I just want you to know, tovarishch, that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

Grey Hair flinched. “We are not comrades.”

“Thank God for that.” Changbin lifted his eyebrows and relented from rolling his eyes. “We’re already your hostages. I don’t see the need to be smacking us around.”

“We’re in control.”

Lina lifted her chin, holding back a smirk. “Not for long, comrade.”

“HOW LONG WILL this take?” Anatoly fretted, leaning on a console with crossed arms.

“As long as it takes,” said Korda.

“We’ve been here—”

“If you have anything to say, just spit it out.”

Anatoly opened his mouth to respond but immediately closed it. Suddenly, he couldn’t form a coherent sentence. Questioning Korda’s leadership wasn’t encouraged but it wasn’t frowned upon; one simply needed to know how to do it. Unfortunately for Anatoly, he didn’t know how to explain the knot in his stomach.

Korda scoffed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It seems the cat caught your tongue,” he sneered as he leaned on the captain’s chair, giving his back to the bridge’s rectangular window. “We stick to the plan.”

“This was not part—this was not the plan.”

“Adapt or die, tovarishch.” Korda cracked his neck, unholstered his side-arm, then pointed at Anatoly’s chest. “You’re not afraid are you?”

Eyes on the gun, Anatoly trembled. “I’m not,” he answered, but his voice was shaky.

“In our line of work, fear is useless. Toughen up, son.”

Anatoly nodded. “I will—” he began but didn’t finish, his breath caught in his throat. He gestured a hand over his boss’ shoulder but before Korda could react something burst through the room’s window and hurled Anatoly backwards. The sound of something light and sharp cutting through concrete and reinforced steel echoed in their ears; it was followed up by the crunching of glass under heavy footsteps.

By the time Anatoly gathered his bearings, Korda was already on his feet. He caught his boss’ silhouette sprinting out of the control room. Anatoly blinked and saw a man clad in dark blue, his face concealed by a helmet bearing a white star on the forehead and stylized wings by his ears. The man glanced at Anatoly, grimaced, then disarmed him by tossing away his holstered side-arm.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized and sounded genuinely remorseful. “We’ll get you some medical attention once you’ve been taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.”

“You’re Captain—”

“Yeah, that’s me.” The man nodded and placed a finger in his ear. “I got a man down in the control room.”

Anatoly reached out and gripped the man by his forearm. “Am I going to—am I going to die?”

The man—the Captain—knelt and helped him into a sitting position. “Not if I can help it,” he reassured Anatoly with a small nod. “Now, if you excuse me . . .”

The Captain stood to his full height and walked past Anatoly, wrenching something off the wall and clasping it on his back. Anatoly realized what had burst through the window: a shield. That had graced his left arm and knocked him off his feet so it was no wonder he felt like his arm from the elbow down had fallen off.

Before everything turned dark and the pain overwhelmed him, Anatoly couldn’t help but feel relieved that he wasn’t going to die.

“KODRA IS ON the move!” Chan alerted Taecyeon as he sprinted after the terrorist leader. “Have you secured the hostages?”

“We’re on it, as we speak,” Taecyeon answered, his voice a mere whisper in the Captain’s ear. “We’re thirty seconds from clearing the galley.”

“Clear it and secure it. No one comes in, no one comes out. Not until I’ve subdued Korda.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Taecyeon-ssi? That’s getting annoying.”

A muffled chuckle came through Chan’s comm. “More of a reason to do so,” said the squad’s leader. “And Captain? Go gentle on the guy. I want to roughen him up a bit.”

Chan clenched his jaw. “Yeah? Get in line.”

THE GALLEY’S DOOR burst open with a bang and the room exploded with violence.

Changbin recognized Ok Taecyeon leading the charge, his aim eerily accurate. In the blink of an eye, Grey Hair and the remaining hijackers were effortlessly disabled. Grey Hair had been shot four times, his chest decorated with tranq-darts. Aibi kicked him squarely in the jaw, groaning as the straps chafed her heels and impeded her movements.

“We told you, didn’t we?” Lina tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “S.H.I.EL.D. doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“Galley secured, sir,” said one of the agents, her voice that of a woman’s.

“We’re clear here,” Taecyeon relayed to the Captain and nodded when he heard the man’s response. “Bam, cuff these assholes. Yuna, help me untie our friends here.”

Bam removed his mask, tossed it aside, and pulled a handful of plastic tie-strips from a pouch in his belt. He went to work without wasting a second as Yuna unsheathed a tactical knife and began to cut tie-strips off hands and legs.

“Are you alright?” Taecyeon knelt in front of Lina, slashing the tie-strips in her legs.

Lina stretched her legs, leaned to the side so that her arms could be untied. “As best as I could be,” she retorted with a blank expression. “I think I speak for everyone when I say we’re glad to see you guys.”

“No shit,” said Aibi.

Taecyeon smirked, swiftly moving to free Aibi and the two technicians between her and Changbin. He patted backs and offered a comforting smile. “You’re a-okay now, folks. We got your back.”

“Now what?” Changbin heard himself ask and cringed when all eyes were on him.

“We wait. It won’t take long. We got a man upstairs getting things done.”

Changbin knew they were safe. The Captain was a force to be reckoned with and one would have to be out of their mind to not yield in his presence.

FOR A MAN in his mid-seventies, Bang Chan moved with athletic grace and a keen awareness of his surroundings. But as he turned to check a corner, he was unprepared for the steel-booted kick to his lower back. The brunt of the attack was absorbed by the shield, which echoed with a distinctive high-pitched ring. 

Chan stumbled forward, a low grunt escaping through gritted teeth. Out of instinct, he reached for the shield. He gained his balance and whirled so fast that he caught a look of mild surprise in Vladimir Korda’s face. The man was emerging from the shadows and took slow steps forward, scrutinizing the Captain.

“I should count myself lucky,” exclaimed Korda in English, laughing derisively. “The Captain, as I live and breathe!”

Chan sensed he was being measured both in size and skill. He narrowed his eyes and focused on controlling his breathing before giving in to his anger. He narrowed his eyes and winced at how stiff his right hand—from his forearm to his palm—felt as his grip on the shield tightened. It was light in his hands—light enough to be thrown with impeccable aim and malicious intent—but he lowered it. Using it would have to be his last resort.

“The Symbol of a Nation, they call you!” Korda chuckled and pacing back and forth, stretching. He paused, bowed, then took a fighting stance. “It’s going to be an honor tearing you apart.”

“You certainly can try.” Chan glared.

“I’ve heard you can’t live without your oversized frisbee.”

“Uh-huh.” The Captain nodded dismissively. “Who do you work for?”

Korda shrugged. “Why does that matter?”

“Not anyone would hire an man like you for something as risky as—”

“Hijacking S.H.I.E.L.D. property? Please, Captain, I don’t know whether to blush or be insulted.” The Russian placed a hand on his chest and lowered his head, feigning embarrassment. His face darkened when he straightened and glared. “Who hired me doesn’t matter. You’re not asking the right question.”

“Not who but why?”

Korda clicked his tongue as if to say bingo. “You’re perceptive, kapitan. And here I was thinking you were just a shield.”

“Just a shield?” Chan pursed his lips and removed his helmet. He was a young man—handsome, dirty blond, brown-eyed, with a fine jaw, and a fair complexion—and the anger that glistened in his eyes made him look older, jaded. His next words were spoken in Russian: “We’ll see.”

Korda growled, unleashing a fury of punches—jabs, hooks, uppercuts—with deadly precision yet Chan was too agile for him. The Captain was dancing around him, moving out of the way of each attack so swiftly that Korda was beginning to give into anger.

Whack! A high kick to his collarbone, drove Chan back with a groan. He could hear Korda cackling.

“Is that all, old man?”

Old man? Chan reloaded his biceps and assumed a fighting stance, ready to bring this entire ordeal to an end. Yeah, I’m not gonna let that slide.

Korda made a guttural sound akin to a roar and threw a kick above the Captain’s head only to find himself losing balance. Chan held and pulled his opponent’s leg higher, kicked him in the stomach once, twice, then punched upward on the man’s groin. Kodra collapsed on the ground, groaning and mumbling expletives and swearing he’d kill the Captain.

Chan picked up his helmet and said, “I can do this all day.”

“Fuc—”

“Nope.” He lightly tapped Korda on the nose, knocking him out. “That’s enough out of you.”

Breathing hard, Chan sat on the ground. He hugged his knees against his chest and looked up to a starry night sky and the moonlight enveloping him in its glow. The cool breeze nipped at his skin, a reminder that he was still wet from diving in the Pacific Ocean.

The night was beautiful. When had been the last time he’d done this? He couldn’t tell but he wasn’t going to let this moment pass. Unfortunately, despite wanting to be in the moment, he was stirred from his reverie when Taecyeon’s voice came through his comm.

“Cap?”

Chan sniffed and stood up, stretching. “We’re clear,” he answered, lifting then tossing Korda over his shoulder. “Is everyone accounted for?”

“Bad guys have been subdued. Our folk are safe.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“Meet us on the life pods.”

“Are we in a hurry?”

Taecyeon made a sound between a scoff and a snort. “The quicker we’re out here, the quicker we can get our chimaek on.”

“Roger that.”

FOUR HOURS LATER, they were debriefed and back in Seoul. Upon their arrival, Deputy Director Bae had made the necessary arrangements for the Levanter’s crew to be treated for any medical injury or emotional trauma.

Bam, Yuna, and the rest of the S.T.R.I.K.E. squad were stationed in a safe-house near Itaewon. They were given orders to rest and report twelve hours later to Seoul HQ. As an elite S.H.I.E.L.D. counter-terrorist special unit, they were trained to be the best in a world where the unexpected happened every day. Their work never stopped. Rest was a luxury and it was indulged whenever the opportunity arose.

During the war, sleep was sacred. Just because the day turned into night that didn’t mean getting some shut-eye was guaranteed. Anything and everything could happen. Then again, anything and everything did happen. So Chan knew what it was to be sleep-deprived, going from one mission to another to another to another. When Taecyeon told his team to call it a night, they obeyed without protest.

Yet Taecyeon rarely ever slept. Chan had seen him napping but never sleeping and he seemed like the type who was a light sleeper—a butterfly flapping its wings might wake him up. But as they clinked their soju glasses and celebrated yet another accomplished mission, Chan could see Taecyeon was concealing his exhaustion.

They were in Chan’s dimly-lit studio apartment—the type that was considered spartan with a bathroom, kitchenette, and living room that doubled as a bedroom—and sat on the floor. There was a single rectangular window with a modest view to a modest street outside; it was open and allowed a soft, rain scented breeze in. Empty bottles of soju and beer were strewn in the ground-level coffee table Mark and Hyunjin had gifted Chan when he moved in.

“Got any plans for tomorrow?”

Chan smiled. “Not really,” he replied, lifting the shot glass up to his lips. “What about you?”

“Geonbae.” Taecyeon downed his shot, clicked his tongue, then chuckled. “I got someone waiting for me. I’m thinking I’ll take the weekend off.”

“Oh?”

“Or, y’know, a least a day off. Vacations in our line of work are . . . complicated.”

Chan chuckled and rubbed his neck. To say that working for S.H.I.E.L.D. was complicated was the understatement of the millennium. One thing was being a soldier, the other being a member of an organization so vastly secretive that Chan wasn’t sure how much power they wielded or how many resources they had across the globe.

Complicated, Chan thought, as if that doesn’t sum up my life. “I assume Eddie’s missing you,” he added, smiling ruefully.

Chan knew with certainty three things about Ok Taecyeon: he was a S.H.I.E.L.D. legacy, he and his sister were the grandchildren of a highly decorated agent; he had a fondness for chimaek; and he was absolutely “soft” for his dog. So it was no wonder that a fond smile spread across Taecyeon’s face as he refilled their glasses then dropped them on their beers. He was beaming and it was contagious because Chan couldn’t suppress the half-smile that tugged on his lips. It was strange yet pleasant to see such a change in his usually snarky demeanor.

“I bet he is,” Taecyeon agreed. “I’ve been missing the shit outta him for over a month now.”

“I say take the weekend off.”

“So should you.”

Chan frowned. “And do what?”

Taecyeon scoffed. “Take a walk. Hang-out with friends. Go on a date. I don’t know but just—aish—just step out and smell the roses.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Aish.”

Chan shrugged, taking a sip from his drink—somaek, as it was referred to—and found himself uncertain about how it tasted. It was an odd mix that somehow worked. Taecyeon drank his own calmly, already used to the beer cocktail’s unique flavor. To Chan’s surprise, it went well with chicken since they had devoured not one but two family-sized boxes of hot wings and fried chicken.

“You do anything Saturday?” Taecyeon queried, his tone casual yet coaxing.

“Do sit-ups count?” Chan scrunched up his nose. He didn’t like people interfering in his personal life so he played dumb. “‘Cause if they do . . . that’s how I spent my Saturday.”

Taecyeon clicked his tongue. “Good Lord, you’re boring,” he blew a raspberry and leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table’s edge. “Look I get it—work’s important and we can’t always enjoy time for ourselves—but you’re more than just a soldier.”

“It’s not that.” The Captain looked away, eyes drifting to his half-consumed drink. “Schedule’s just a little tight these days.”

“Hyung-nim . . .”

Chan blinked, mouth agape at the honorific. He opened his mouth to reply but was too shocked to form a coherent thought.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. needs you, hyung-nim. You’re the Captain, for fuck’s sake, but—” Taecyeon bowed his head and passed a hand through his hair. He straightened and met Chan’s eyes, smiling a weary half-smile. “The world’s complex and uncertain but the least you could do is find the good within it and enjoy it. You can’t live solely for work—you must live for something.”

“I don’t know.” Chan rubbed his forehead. “Family, stability? The guy who wanted all that was on ice for far too long. I think someone else came out.”

“And what do they want?”

Chan grimaced. “I don’t know.”

“Then, Cap, take tomorrow to figure that out.”

AFTER BOWING PROFUSELY and apologizing for being drunk and speaking informally, Taecyeon left an hour later. Chan called him a cab and was surprised when received a text from Bam, relaying his commander’s arrival to the Bunkbed—the Itaewon safe-house—and giving the man shit for not holding his own against the Captain. 

After all this time, Chan found it funny that others used honorifics around him. It felt strange being treated like a senior because he still felt like that twenty-something kid that joined the army to fight the good fight. He could be their grandfather but he didn’t look like it.

Despite feeling accomplished, he didn’t sleep that night. Taecyeon’s words echoed in his head—you’re more than a soldier . . . live for something . . . figure it out—and it felt like being hitting with a brick wall. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been pulled from the cold and into this bold new world. Yet he hadn’t taken time to fully immerse himself in it.

Work had impeded that from happening and he was oddly thankful for that. Adapting wasn’t always easy and the times, for better or worse, demanded change. Chan sensed he wasn’t ready for change. Given enough time, he would be . . . but not yet.

The weight of the conversation stuck with him and it was beginning to bother him. still Taecyeon was right. Chan couldn’t keep himself isolated . . . waiting for the next mission . . . letting time pass right by him when he had just returned to the world of the living.

He sighed and reached for a flip phone Jackson had gifted him on his birthday. His contacts were limited since he rarely communicated with anyone outside of work. The selected few that had his number were people he trusted unconditionally. In the off-chance of losing the device—and because he still didn’t trust technology enough—Chan had memorized every number saved on the phone.

He dialed a number and waited. The contact ID read: THUNDER 현진.

With bated breath and closed eyes, he listened to the phone ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing, until—

“Hey there, grandpa!”

Chan couldn’t help but rub his temple. “How are you, Hyunjin?”

“I’m doing as good as I can—M, web him up!—yah! Webs. Use them, like, now!”

“Are you busy—”

There was a loud boom followed by Hyunjin grunting and cussing through gritted teeth. The sound of thunder and crackling lighting echoed in Chan’s ear, as though it were happening right besides him. After a second of silence, he heard Hyunjin chuckle in between breaths.

“Say, ajeossi, what do you say to lending us a hand?”

“With what?” Chan frowned.

“Oh, y’know, the usual . . .” Hyunjin said as matter-of-factly. “Super-villains.”

Chan paused, looked at his flip-phone, and blinked as if to consider what was happening. He heard a familiar and unmistakable voice, calling after Hyunjin with a tone of disbelief and disapproval.

“Are you on the phone right now?” Mark sounded livid. “Dude, are you serious?”

“I’m getting reinforcements!”

“YAH—”

“Don’t get your webs in a bunch, M!”

“Hyunjin—” Mark began but was cut off.

Chan wondered what was going on but before he could ask, his friend interjected. “Ajeossi,” said Hyunjin, not bothering to listen to Mark or Chan. “On your left!”

He heard it before he saw it. Behind him, something began to glow: it started as a just a small, twirling sparkler until it grew into a wide circle that encompassed much of the kitchenette. Chan couldn’t see the rest of his apartment because this burning circle—a portal, no doubt made with magic—opened to a busy intersection in what looked like Enn City. Cars had been crushed or exploded; the streets were cracked or burning; and standing a few feet away was Hyunjin himself.

“Where’s the shield?” he asked, hanging up the phone.

“It’s—uh—there,” said Chan, pointing to a corner of his apartment. The shield laid untouched but ready for battle.

Hyunjin rolled his eyes, his right hand extended as if waiting for something. “Well . . . are you gonna grab it or are we gonna stand here all night?”

Chan smiled. He snatched the shield, ran the length of his apartment, and leaped into the portal. He quickly realized he wasn’t wearing any tactical gear when he felt the hot asphalt under his bare feet. The portal closed behind him with a soft hiss. Great, he thought, I’m underdressed.

“Looking good, ajeossi,” said Hyunjin, smirking.

“Please,” Chan mumbled, ears burning with embarrassment. “Stop calling me that.”

A dull whistle resonated faintly in the air until it crescendoed to a loud boom. That’s when Chan saw it: a war-hammer so splendorous and beautifully crafted that he had to remind himself it wasn’t the real thing. He now understood why Hyunjin had his hand over his head as Pokpung met home in its owner’s hand.

“What are you two doing?”

Chan turned to his left and saw Mark Lee—the Brotastic Spider-Man—glaring at them as he hung from lamppost. His suit was black and neon-green. It fit him like a second skin and was coated with debris dust.

“Are we gonna fight or are we gonna pose like idiots?”

“Call it, Cap.” Hyunjin passed Pokpung from his left to his right hand.

The Captain—Bang Chan—smiled, bursting with purpose.

He didn’t know what he’d do tomorrow. He just knew it was worth fighting for.

#bang chan #chan #chan stray kids #bang chan fic #chan fic #stray kids fic #bang chan imagines #chan imagines #stray kids imagines #stray kids x marvel #captain america x bang chan #captain america!au #captain america fic #marvel imagines #hyunjin #hwang hyunjin #taecyeon #ok taecyeon #seo changbin #changbin #2PM #mark lee #mark nct #spider-mark #stray kids scenearios #nct scenarios #marvel scenarios #marvel au #kpop au #kpop x marvel

[galadrieljones]

The Walking Dead: Episode 4.12, “Still” Rewatch

So I rewatched “Still” in honor of the Stilliversary tonight. My thoughts are not related much to Team Delusional stuff, more so just thoughts and idle analysis, but I had fun and definitely did not cry.

Here we go!

Beth is already feeling it, right away, after the trunk scene, ie: what he must think of her. She’s just another “dead girl” who needs to be protected. It is both insulting and embarrassing at the same time.

Daryl misses that squirrel and breaks an arrow! Dammit, Daryl. This is just another trial, but it’s interesting in how we see Daryl in like rote provider mode, and yet he makes a mistake.

The suck-ass camp begins with some Garden of Eden imagery: While Daryl skins and cooks the snake, Beth is admiring the beauty of a ladybug crawling on a leaf. The music is actually full of wonder. Beth sees the beauty in the natural world while Daryl sees it only for what he can use. It is an essential masculine vs. feminine moment, in terms of their individual themes, and what propels them and their actions. Their masculine and feminine energies will be subverted later though, and well-complicated, because the writing is good.

Beth brings up Hershel’s death early: “He’s not exactly around anymore so...” She wants to have a drink, maybe to rebel against her father, maybe to honor his memory, maybe to seal her own fate. It is a complicated choice for Beth. It’s not just some “dumb college bitch” moment. She knows this, but how is she supposed to communicate it to Daryl?

Daryl is like an animal eating that snake while Beth tries to talk to him. Literally, out of body. I imagine being her and just like, Ugh. Gross, dude. Then, when she leaves, Beth totally expects him to come after her. When she doesn’t see him right away, she mutters, “Jerk.” She called him a jerk in season 3, too, after he takes off with Merle. I think Beth is used to being treated nicely by boys. Ofc, Daryl, while he may not be an overt gentleman in his scarfing of that disgusting snake, was there watching her the whole time. 

“You wanna spend the rest of our lives staring into a fire and eating mud snakes? Screw that. We might as well do something.”

I sort of missed this before, the mention of “the rest of our lives.” It is a small acknowledgement that they are now “stuck together.” Ofc, Beth’s idea is to “make the most of it,” to go out into and DO something! Embrace the future! Daryl sees only the here, the now, and the past. He would prefer to stay still.

Unrelated but: God, Daryl is peak hot in this episode. 

Anyway, so, the state of Pine Vista, and what happened there. Jfc. It’s very ugly and very sad. The Dogtrot seems a reference to a dogtrot house, which is an old Appalachian style home. Basically like two shacks connected via a breezeway. I see some sort of backcountry types having moved in here and tortured the rich folk. There is evidence that “fun” was had. “Rich bitch,” etc. Maybe it’s the same psychopaths who tormented the OG Terminus crew, ultimately turning them into crazy cannibals.

Beth finds the Washington D.C. spoon. Why?? It’s such an odd, pointed shot, with a slow zoom. Is that where we’ll find her? Does anybody else know anything about this?? Anyway maybe this is a TD post lol.

Beth finds that bottle of wine and it’s a shame she has to break it! I remember feeling so bad about that the first time I watched this episode. Like NO BETH YOUR BOOZE!! She uses it to stab the shit out of that walker though, and to defend herself. She’s kind of pissed at Daryl for not helping her, again used to only the kindest of attention from boys. But Daryl isn’t like other boys (lol). He was there the whole time, once again, but he let it play out, because he knew she could do it. I like that her first (almost) drink here sort of has to become a weapon instead. Nothing is ever easy! And sometimes, the environment IS best observed, not in terms of its beauty or promise, but in terms of how its use can best be served to survive.

Tempus Fugit - Time flies! Oh, yes. Yes it does lol.

Daryl and Beth both need to escape their old selves here. Beth with her pretty cloths and Daryl stealing the cash and the jewels. They need to shake that shit off. Burn it all down, if you will. I think this episode we mostly associate with Daryl changing and having his epiphany, but Beth changes, too. She is just quieter at it.

It is 3 o’clock! The grandfather clock is this interesting motif that puts pressure on the situation literally while also bringing the symbolic pressure of time passing, running out, etc. It makes us feel detached from reality, like this is a purgatory episode. I like when The Walking Dead does this, like when they take us to a new place in which we become critically aware that this thing we’re watching is fiction, and by the rules of fiction, anything (ANYTHING) can happen.

“I know you think this is stupid, and it probably is, but I don’t care.” She just is who she is. She doesn’t give a shit what he thinks. I think that attracts Daryl to her in this moment and emboldens him. I think Daryl actually really cares what other people think of him, that he is keenly self-aware in this way. We see this fear manifest as Merle in Chupacabra, ie: that the rest of the group thinks he’s a “freak,” a piece of “redneck trash,” and that they’re all “laughing behind [his] back.” Meanwhile, Beth is just like, “You probably think I’m just some dumb bitch. But guess what, Daryl? I DON’T CARE.”

Beth sitting at that bar trying to clean out glasses: “Who needs a glass?” She clutches the bottle longingly and then cries. I would argue she is thinking of Hershel and the line of questioning that arises in this moment. Should she do this? Is she betraying him? This moment also contradicts what she tells Daryl in 4.1. “I don’t cry anymore Daryl.” This is the moment that breaks him.

Beth keeps trying to make him feel normal, while they’re walking to the shine shack. She thinks he used to be a motorcycle mechanic. But Daryl’s normal is not hers, and he doesn’t really do small talk. In these little moments, we see him being who he is. Daryl is really good at being who he is when who he is revolves around passivity and silence.

They go from country club to moonshine shack. What we see is how a class divide might differ in longevity. A country club full of walkers, made out of humans who turned against each other, every bottle dry in the house vs. an empty shine shack, no death in sight, absolutely full of booze. When societal protections collapse around us, it is the ruthless and the bereft who will know how best to survive. It’s like Beth sad about Daryl, being “made for this world.” 

They are trapped! Tropes. So many romantic tropes! Lol at people who would like to ignore that any of this happened or that Bethyl was never canon.

This: 

Anyway, I think Daryl is actually pretty mean to Beth toward the end here, out on the porch, like the way he treats her, kind of tugs her around physically. He doesn’t hurt her, but he is not gentle. This puts things into harsh perspective for Beth, as I do think that, while he is not right in how he handles her here, he is right in some ways about who she is. She is not naive but she is used to protection and safety and relying on others, the same way he is used to the opposite of those things. Both of them need to learn how to exist from the other side. 

Beth also sees what’s going on, however. I think she also might be used to this sort of quasi-violent, performative, drunken behavior. Her dad was a drunk. I think it’s interesting that so much of this episode hinges on alcohol in Hershel’s wake. I always thought this might be one reason Beth is drawn to and accepting of Daryl. We only really see Hershel while sober (I mean, mostly). We never saw him in his deep element of alcoholism, but Beth did. She is not innocent to vices or men spinning out of control. It’s why Beth responds to Daryl’s whole insane story about the tweaker and Merle with, “You miss him, don’t you?” She doesn’t care that Merle was a degenerate drug addict. He was Daryl’s brother who died. She has loved and lost an addict, too.

Before, Daryl was just “drifting.” In this episode, Beth gives him a quest. I think that’s very important. She also gives him something to look forward to:

“You got away from it.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“Maybe you gotta keep on reminding me of it sometimes.”

The hint at their future: “You gotta keep on reminding me,” he says, counting on them staying together. Beth is so kind to him here, too, even doting as she talks about him being the “last man standing.” I can’t imagine a girl has ever treated Daryl like this. I think she scares the living shit out of him.

Daryl suggests they go back into the shine shack, but Beth says they should burn the place down instead. Again, stillness vs. action. See their complimentary traits: Daryl is passive. He needs someone to tell him this is okay. Beth is active. She does what she wants. It is uniquely antithetical to their gender roles and subverts the power dynamic we might otherwise expect from a relationship like this: Daryl is older and a man. Ofc he should be the more aggressive, assertive one. The actor. But he’s not. It’s Beth who makes their choices in this episode. Daryl follows her and protects her along the way. 

The ending is so happy. Oh my god. Anyway.

Thank you for humoring me. Happy Stilliversary!! 😭🥺❤️

#the walking dead #bethyl #daryl dixon #beth greene #daryl x beth #4.12 #still #stilliversary #❤️❤️❤️

[libradusk]

Touch Starved | Kix

Word Count: 3,683

Pairing: Clone Medic Kix x Reader

Summary: The pain of losing those you love burns harsher than any shot of liquor ever could.

You’re determined to not let Kix face his demons alone.

Warnings: LOTS OF HURT/COMFORT because I live for this trope, use of alcohol as a coping mechanism somewhat, mention of injury and death that results from war, mention of a medical setting.

a/n: This chapter is dedicated especially to @morganas-pendragons​ who is so talented and so kind and helped inspire this chapter - I really hope you enjoy this chapter Kayla!

Also the two other characters briefly featured in this are my two medic oc’s, you can find a visual reference for Eir here with a little more info, if you’re curious.

Thanks for all the love on this series so far! I appreciate each and every one of you.

Tagging: @thatonesakudere​, @kaminobiwan​ and @simping-for-fives​ (Send me a message if you wanna be tagged in any of my future fics!)

When he wasn’t in the mess for supper with the rest of the 501st’s boys, you knew exactly where he was hiding.

That preconceived knowledge turned over itself in your stomach. The feeling was biting, twisting your newly closed stitches tighter until they threatened to knot your rib-cage into black and blue rods of anxiety.

You were woozy, still somewhat unsteady on your feet despite it having been a full 24 hours since you had awoken from the surgeon’s table, bathed in a halo of fluorescent light and with little more than a medical droid for company. But still, despite the stinging in your side and the heaviness of your muscles, you persevered onward, back towards the medbay, back to him - whether he wanted the company or not, you needed to do what you could to ensure he was ok.

For your own sanity, as well as his at this point.

Your stomach protests against your heart’s demand the moment you are hit with the first wave of disinfectant-heavy air, forcing your arm to shoot out and brace your heaving body against the medbay’s entrance. Almost instantly, your knees buckle in response to the flare of pain that shoots over your entire right side. Bile begins to stretch and rise from the hollowness of your stomach, equal parts a reaction to not only the smell and memory of your injury, but also to the agony currently rippling across your hunched form. The force of it makes your heart feel as though it is swelling and threatening to drag itself out of your throat with each breath you take, it takes a good few seconds to recollect yourself and refocus your vision as it stutters. 

There's a quiet sense of mourning draped across the wing. Considering what whispered condolences and murmurings had floated past the lips of the surviving soldiers released the same time as you, you’re not surprised. Through the pain poisoning your thoughts, you theorise that the bulk of the medical staff on duty are no doubt stretched between filing out piles of casualty reports and treating what unfortunate souls were not as lucky as you were. Yet despite all this, it's mere moments before you raise your head to find yourself flanked by a small crowd of medical droids. They hobble around you on weighted, gray tinted limbs with a speed that seemed uncanny to the robotic creatures, a concerned droning manifesting through the air as their vocal modulators begin to speak in unison.

Get away from me, I don’t have time for this! 

The words lock themselves behind your gritted teeth as you inwardly curse your body for collapsing in on itself before your mission was complete. Thinking only in frustration, you fight past the tremor threatening your wrist to shove at the closest droid’s metallic face-plate, silently urging your senses to adapt to the sterile atmosphere so you could continue to force your tired legs towards their goal.

Yet instead of the chill of durasteel or the sharp prickle of a sedative agent penetrating your flesh, all you feel beneath your fingers is….nothing. You flex them around the air as you force your breathing to return to normal once more, the frantic panic slowly uncaging the rest of your senses until you can reach focus. There's a heavy, latex warmth clamped around your outstretched wrist and a symmetrical weight steadying the hunch of your shoulder. You follow the path they offer until your eyes meet with the concerned gaze serving as the final stitch that keeps you frozen in place - pinning you with a tired glare that makes you feel remorseful and relieved all at once.

“...Eir.”

The clone medic continues to stare down at you long after you regard him and shift your weight backwards. The purple tattoos rimming his eyes bleed almost seamlessly into the dark circles bruising the hollow of their sockets. His hair doesn't look like it's been washed properly in days and he's still donning a set of surgical scrubs atop his uniform. He looks every bit as broken as you feel, yet he's still on duty with no sign of rest in sight. Your heart falls at the thought of how many others have been injured as badly as you in the last attack to warrant him being assigned additional duties within the 501st.

A sigh stretches over Eir’s chest as his dark eyes inspect the state of you.

“You should be resting. I had hoped you would have had the sense to stay away from the medbay for a while longer at least. I’ve got my hands full here as it is without you working yourself to the point of reinstatement straight after being discharged.”

Despite the exasperation sinking across his tone, he releases his hold on your wrist, the hand supporting your shoulder slinking back to join it in shooing away the medical droids as soon as he deems you steady enough to stand to full height again. He clicks his tongue as you absentmindedly ghost a hand over your injured side despite the pain having mostly subsided in its throbbing now. There's another beat where you can't quite bring yourself to look him in the eyes, feeling oddly sheepish at the scene you had just made, and continuing to wither under his knowing gaze. He takes mercy on you then, recognising the determination blazing behind your downtrodden expression and greeting it with a knowing smile so tiny, you don’t even have a chance to notice it before it floats away once he returns his gaze to the rows of medical beds stretching like coffin markers down the hall.

“Come on then if you’re going to find him, I can’t have you pulling at your stitches in the doorway. You know you’ll have to face Faera’s wrath if you ruin her handiwork.”

His voice holds a familiar warmth now as he folds his hands behind him and waits for you to follow his march. A sigh of relief leaves you before you can stop it, the force of it irritates your bruised lungs, but you confine the feeling to the back of your mind and concentrate on pushing your legs to a brisk walk behind the tall clone.

“...You know, he almost fought Faera when she was called in to stitch you up.” The words wring out a fresh admission of guilt from you, if Eir notices the heaviness of your silence, he doesn’t comment on it. You can’t blame him, his mind must be engulfed in a war-zone of its own right now.

“I’ve never seen him-” the surgical room doors seem to spin past each other as you and Eir pass them, each identical to the last. You wonder if the way they seem to blur together into a grey-white smudge makes Eir feel dizzy too, as you wait for him to pick up his sentence where he left it hanging under the pale lights. “-I’ve never seen him so terrified to leave a surgery before…”

Eir comes to a graceful halt at the end of a particularly dark stretch of the medbay corridor. A sigh born from concern hisses across the scar marring his lip and creases his brow. He wrings his gloved hands behind his back as his gaze rests on the final door looming in front of you both.

“...Make sure he’s ok will you? For me too.” Another sigh. Long, dark lashes flutter in contemplation as his fingers continue to twist around the apprehension, the guilt, as it spills away from him in the safety of the dark. “We’ve lost a lot of brothers these past few days… I’ve taken him off duty, but he won’t let me-”

The mess of feelings choke him now and he ducks his body away from you, snapping at the bunched corner of his gloves to steel his mind and breathing. Your voice finally finds itself once more as your fingers move to the door’s switch.

“I promise, Eir. Look after yourself too, okay?”

You stand in the doorway just long enough to see the back of his head tip forwards in a nod before you leave him to confront the very man you had set out to locate.

The moment the blast door closes behind you, all the air slips from your throat once more. The echo of hospital equipment set up across the wards finally numbs, and you’re left with little more than the harsh lighting crawling across the room to distract yourself from the sight in front of you. Your heart keeps on rising until you can taste it: nervous and bloody and wretched.

Kix sits with his back to you atop the surgical table in his blacks - no scrubs, no armour and armed only with a bottle of brandy hanging from his deft surgeon’s fingers. The room itself is heavily sanitised and free from gore and death, not unlike the one you had woken up in that same morning, yet it still manages to conjure a feeling that's downright insidious as the atmosphere crawls over your skin.

The entire base stinks of death today, the sickly pallor of Kix’s skin under the lights appears to indicate that he's danced beside its path far too many times now.

The clack of your boots against the floor is soon smothered by the neon as you edge yourself closer to where he sits, motionless in place. Had the arch of his shoulders not been gently rising with each breath he took, you would have been convinced that death had claimed him too.

“Smuggling in alcohol to the medbay, Kix? I would have expected better from a medic.”

You try to keep your tone light as it always is when you greet each other, but the words tumble out sour and tired, scratching your throat and flooding the gashes they leave with guilt the moment that they’re free. They trip forward and tie themselves around your feet, begging you to turn back around and leave. You ignore them, stepping closer into the room. You find yourself tracing the wedding of tattoos and patterns shaved into the back of his skull to calm yourself in the silence. The bottle remains suspended at his side, an all too familiar barrier for you both.

The seconds feel heavier than ever before he finally shrugs them away, throwing you a backwards half-glance over his shoulder, wordlessly beckoning you closer despite the hesitation that clenches across the muscles in his arms. Your attempt at lightheartedness is all a facade and you both know it. The fact that your hands have begun their crawl up the sides of his biceps to massage the knotted stress out of his shoulder blades is revealing enough of your true intentions.

You don’t waste energy with empty inquiries into if he's ok - none of the GAR medical staff are, after all, statistics and corpses cannot lie.

He leans back into your touch appreciatively, taking the utmost care to keep the brunt of his weight off of you. Kix’s gaze is locked on the swirling golden contents of the bottle in his fist now, the expression branded across them reminds you of the one Eir’s face had mirrored minutes prior. Another lump curdles in your throat as you spread your palms a little wider across his back and lean into the warmth of his body from behind him. The table bites into your thighs.

“I wish I could tell you it matters if I drink on the job or not. I’ve lost every one of the boys I’ve touched in the last ten surgeries.”

The world pauses at his words.

He takes another heavy swig of the bottle, hissing at the sting of the liquid against his tongue. The smell of it between you turns in your stomach, but you press your face into the slope of his neck all the same, urging him to continue with a gentle press of your lips.

“... and then when they brought you in from the field, all bloody and unconscious - a little part of me started screaming to run away.” Kix pulls forward, gently separating you both so he can twist to finally look at you from the edge of his table-top perch. His eyes are painted with remorse, but beneath it they’re as warm as they always are when it comes to you. “I was so scared of killing you too.”

His eyes glass over the moment his fingers can’t fight their shiver long enough to hold the bottle anymore. The emotion in them shatters the same time it hits the table with a resounding thunk. 

You rush to gather him up in your arms before the first tears begin to fall, pulling his head to your chest in the hope that your heartbeat could soothe him where your words could not. His fingers are bitten and washed raw, but no amount of scrubbing could ever cleanse his memories of what he had seen, what he was yet to see. They’re blistered around the cuticles, and you press each knuckle against your mouth to try and kiss away the guilt and the pain they carry, anything to ease his burden even a little. You’re not naive, you know nothing short of a miracle would make things better as they currently stood, but you would sooner drop dead than let him be dragged down alone by the weight of it all.

“You did everything you could, you all did.” You whisper the words against the heat of his skin, moving away the bottle so you could coax him closer and away from the table. “You didn’t kill any of them, none of this is your fault. I know it, Eir knows it and so does every single one of the boys in this whole damn army”

He’s carved from solid muscle, yet he’s so beaten down that the defeat aches across his posture and sinks its teeth into his bones as he struggles to find his feet. He breathes in deeply, head lolling heavily in the crook of your neck to ground himself from breaking down and sobbing into you. Each breath is steady, counted, but his heart flutters erratically next to yours as his fingers twitch over where they know your injury lies, too terrified to touch near it in case they somehow unhook each of the stitches and spill your blood across the white room. You dance your own down his spine in drawn-out, fluid movements. Your mind is aflame with the knowledge that though his body may gradually begin to unfurl, as long as he remains planted in this place his mind will be primed to snap again and again, until there is little left for you to reach.

He’s torturing himself by remaining here long after his shift has ended, you note. The realisation punctures something deep and threatens to drag forward fresh tears of your own. You pull back then despite the reluctance of both your limbs and the man tangled between them, gently patting his shoulder once before lacing your fingers against his clammy palm.

“Come on.” It's not a request as much as it's an instruction, one that leaves no room for argument despite the dull pain that throbs across your tone.

Eir is nowhere to be seen when you finally succeed in leading Kix by the hand out of the surgical room, you don't know whether to be relieved or concerned at the fact. The air across the ward still tastes of sickness and fear, it clips you as you push past it and out towards where your quarters are located.

Your room is small and most certainly not designed to house two people, but it's a better place to grieve than on a cold slab of operating table. Perhaps you think, that you’re also a little selfish enough to want him next to you tonight. Just so that you can ensure he isn't falling to pieces in that cold, aseptic cage of a surgical room if nothing else.

Your hands are endlessly gentle as you bundle him into the narrow bed before placing them on the mattress to carefully ease yourself in next to him. He senses your discomfort immediately, shuffling over to help you climb beneath the sheets in a position that takes the pressure off your wound. The care with which he handles you defrosts a little of the sadness freezing your blood, grateful that even when he was hurting so deeply himself, his adoration for you still continued to dapple like sunlight through every action he undertook. You draw him back into your chest again then, engulfing him in the warmth and safety that you extend to him with your entire being. Kix’s eyes shut themselves tightly, lashes fluttering against your pulse as he listens in for the thrum of your heart against your rib-cage. A tiny part of you hopes that it will be enough to lull him into some much needed slumber, but the cynicism dominates and quashes the thought as soon as it bubbles to the surface - its all wistful thinking once again, neither of you will sleep much at all tonight, that much had been foretold the moment you were discharged from the medbay that same morning.

The smell of brandy is weaker on his breath now as he trails his fingers over your torso, having finally found the strength to touch you now that he had been liberated from his self imprisonment. A shudder kisses down your spine at the sensation. It's as though he’s mapping out every little bit of your body, like you will be taken away from him if he doesn’t.

The same bitter cynicism screams in your ear once more, reminding you that in this war there’s no real guarantee you won’t be pulled apart either way.

You force it down alongside a fresh curtain of tears.

His digits halt once they loop towards the medical dressing plastered to your side, it's as if the newfound obstacle has clashed with his memories of your body enough to shock him to an abrupt stop. Slowly, cautiously, his touch withdraws away from the fabric as if it's dangerous.

“It’s proof that I’m alive.” He doesn’t respond outright, but you can feel his shoulders begin to shake underneath your caress, even though his face remains hidden under your chin. “You saved me, Kix, I’m here because of you.”

“My heart hasn’t stopped pounding from the moment they wheeled you in. It only got worse when they called me away to begin another procedure, all I could think about was what I would do if you didn’t wake up - like all the others before you.”

You curl around him tighter, hooking your legs around his own and cupping under his shoulder blades to draw him in even closer, grounding you both as he spills his heart until it bleeds into the sheets beneath you. Tears stream his face, less reluctant now. They veer down in fat streams and look drunk with how they cling to his cheeks and chin.

“...These boys need you, Kix. You would need to carry on, as we all do-”

“I wouldn't want to.”

You let him say it, let it drip like poison from his lips in the hope that it's at least cathartic to the guilt radiating from within him. You snuff out any words that threaten to follow with a kiss to his forehead, prolonged and firm enough to soothe the lump in your throat as much as it is for him. He cranes his head upwards to capture the second kiss with his own mouth. There's nothing gentle about how his lips mesh with your own this time, his kiss is searing with its passion and it steals away what little breath you have left. A hand threads itself behind your nape to pull you impossibly closer in the tiny bed, the other digging into your hip bone as though you would dissolve into starlight if he failed to hold you in place.

His cheeks feel damp as they scrape against your face, dying the kiss salty with tears. They overpower the bite of the brandy on his tongue in the same way they must do to the alcohol burning in his veins. The sheets twist and threaten to slip from the bed frame as you press to turn him onto his back despite the twinge in your side. His eyes snap back open, wide and alert in protest at your overexertion. You shut down the medic side of him with a single finger to his parted lips, a smile blossoming across your face for the first time that day. The thin sheets pool around your hips, binding both sets of the legs beneath it together. He relents with his unvoiced complaint, frown still reluctant, but eyes swimming with golden waves of emotion as he stares up at you. 

“I love you.”

He’s said it before, a few times now - but back then the words were always seeped in alcohol and playful bravado. This is different, it's raw and choked with affection that runs deeper than any liquor could ever reach. It decorates across his face in such detail that it puts his tattoos to shame, and it drags forth another wave of tears that have been collecting behind your lashes. They drip into your smile as it splits wider.

“I love you too, Kix. More than you’ll ever know.”

You surge forward to kiss across his face and neck, relying on the peppered heat of your lips and passion to communicate what mere words never could - to reassure every part of him that you were real, alive, and hopelessly in love with him, that come morning, he wasn’t going to wake up to your body laying there cold and accusatory with his failure to save you.

For the first time, Kix allows himself to be treated for his own wounds, as you stitch up his anxieties with each brush of your lips against his.

#kix #kix x reader #touch starved #kix reader insert #clone wars imagine #star wars reader insert #star wars imagine #mine #woooo i loved writing this

[cybernexus]

Pick five tropes for your character.

1. Determinator

A character — good or evil, regardless of gender, young or old — who never gives up. Ever. No matter what.

There is no stopping the Determinator. They do not understand tact. They do not Know When to Fold 'Em, and it's a waste of time to tell them the odds. No one can reason with them. They'll do whatever they have to without question. No price is too great to pay for success, up to and including their own life. Do not expect them to realize they might be better off letting it go, even if they can barely stand. If you're ever kidnapped or lost with no hope of rescue, they'll be the one who will find you. Their adversaries will shout, in exasperated rage, "Why Won't You Die?!". For them, there is no line between "perseverance" and "insanity."

// This got long so I’m stuffing the rest under a cut!

2. Entropy and Chaos Magic

Magic and powers with a "chaotic" theme. Often referred to as "chaos magic", "wild magic" (not to be confused with the Wild Magic trope) or, more fancifully, "entropic magic" or variants on that name. Sometimes appears in settings with an Order Versus Chaos cosmology, but can pop up anywhere.

It can function in many different ways, but frequent traits include: high randomness and uncontrollability, probability manipulation, and inducing accelerated decay and destruction, depending on how the writers interpret the concept of chaos and entropy.

In real life, "entropy" is a physical concept, roughly defined as a measure of disorder and chaos of a given system.note  Per the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system can only grow, never decrease; the only way to decrease the entropy is for some external force to do work on it.note  Since the universe itself (as far as we know) is an isolated system with no external forces that can affect it, this suggests that eventually it will succumb to "heat death of the universe": eventually all organized systems will break apart.note  Hence why chaos-based entities tend to have an Omnicidal Maniac vibe to them. Hence why Aihren is the foil to that, because they're trying to absorb the energy and save the universe by preventing (or at least prolonging) the heat death. If you find yourself asking “but wait, who was the foil of Aihren? You just mentioned Omnicidal Villain...”

All I have to say is ... Soon(TM)

3. Past-Life Memories -

Past-life memories are memories that a reincarnated character gains from previous incarnations of their soul.

When Reincarnation and past-life memories are presented as being real within the context of a story, it often works in a way similar to Genetic Memory, by giving the character knowledge and skills that they would otherwise be unlikely to gain for themselves. Past-life memories often manifest as Dreaming of Times Gone By.

In most works with Reincarnation, the majority of characters do not gain past-life memories, so having them is often a sign of being a particularly important soul, perhaps even The Chosen One.

4. Utility Magic - In many works, magic is something to blast things with and generally make stuff explode.

But not in this universe. In this universe, Mundane Utility isn't a secondary effect of all those awesome spells, but the primary one. The magic essentially has to do with things on the more mundane scale of the Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality, like Cleaning Magic, or Gardening Magic, or Paper-Filing Magic. Why modify that fireball spell to cook your hotdog, when you can just have a spell that does exactly that in the first place, and to your perfect specifications?

5. Gender Ambiguity Kind of like some other muns I saw, I didn't really like most of the definitions I saw on the site because they seem to be written from a very ... "there's only 2 genders" kind of view. Which is dumb in the year 2021. Anyways:

Aihren is androgynous. So androgynous in fact that they can "put on" a beard (via shapeshifting) and instantly have people think that they're AMAB. Aihren's assigned sex at birth is nobody's business, not even their lovers. It's something that to them, doesn't really matter. Aihren comes out different every reincarnation and then just shape-shifts themself into how they want to look anyway (they prefer to have no sex characteristics unless they plan on using them).

Their face just naturally is very sort of in between the lines of what society has arbitrarily decided is "male" or "female" (I shouldn’t have to clarify but just to touch on it anyway, there is nothing wrong with identifying with the binary). Even Aihren’s body has been described as androgynous. They regularly flip between having breasts or a flat chest, and they're quite curvy in the waist and hips, but also very square and athletic in the shoulders and legs.

Almost everyone seems to find them hot so that's pretty neat, lol. At the end of the day, androgyny is their personal gender goal. Being nonbinary is very personal to one's self and every individual defines it differently. Androgyny is not the goal of all nonbinary people so always remember to ask for people's pronouns and respect identities when people don't want you to call them something like "dude"! (As an example)

Tagged by: @magioffire​ Tagging: i’m heccin lazy if you see this and wanna do it tag me so i can read them!

#file | ooc #file | dash games #// this was super fun; i've always been a fan of tropes lol #// i've found a lot of these are written from a kinda cynical point of view which was interesting #// when i was younger i liked these a lot more

[marikorawralton]

Color Theory (or my loose grasp of it)

AKA Color Theory and its connections to the themes of Lily's Story.

This one's going to take a bit of explanation and a lot of Lily's Story lore before I can actively explain what the hell I'm talking about, so expect a lot of words. Sorry.

In The Knights Himura, there is a scene in which Aurelia, a tailor, explains to the protagonist the meaning behind the colors used in the making of the jacket.

At the time, I didn't look into it much, other than a super super broad thing, It was one of those moments where I wrote before I researched, so the scene doesn't have much impact. It's kept intentionally vague, because I didn't wanna dig too deep into it or end up making something bigger than it needed to be.

Truth be told, I didn't research it enough to feel confident. I didn't feel confident enough to make it something bigger or a more important part of the story.

Now comes Lily's Story, a piece I've been working on for over three years at this point.

I remember looking into the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy: A trilogy of films by the director Edgar Wright that includes Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and At World's End.

This was, of course, followed by a good hour or so of Wikipedia scrolling. You know how people death scroll on Instagram? I used to do that a lot on Wikipedia before they made the site basically unreadable and painful on the eyes.

It was during this binge that I discovered director Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy. This trilogy of films included Blue, White, and Red. Each film represented a color of the French tricolore.

It isn't universally accepted, but it's partially believed that the three colors of the Tricolore, or the French flag, represent the three words of the modern French motto.

Liberté is represented by the color blue.

Egalité is commonly believed to be represented by the color white.

Fraternité is believed to be represented by the color red.

So, what does this have to do with Lily's Story?

Lily's Story takes place in a land known as "Argentelle", which is based on a post Revolution France with a heavy emphasis on personal liberties. The people of Argentelle basically live in an idealized version of early American and Revolutionist French belief.

The story takes place in the modern day, but they were founded by stranded European revolutionaries, so their technology is more primitive, settling around diesel age (1880s to 1920s).

Lily herself is from this place, brought to our world by her family and raised by the Knights Himura after the death of her parents. I wanted her to represent these three ideals, as well as having them appear within the story over time.

Being a child, Lily believes deeply in equality. It's the way children don't judge those that look differently than them, since they have no hatred to bear.

White. Lily wears white. A white dress, white boots, white tights, etc.

She has no cross to bear or anger in her heart quite yet. She's still a child.

White is also seen, almost universally, as the color of innocence, and that which has not been stained. Innocence and equality come hand in hand. When we assume the whole world is innocent, or when we all allow ourselves to be naive, then everything is equal.

How easy it is to stain the color white also shows how easy it is to damage this naive mindset. It doesn't take much to harbor hate, but it is exceedingly difficult to find the balance of equality.

Blue. The first thing Lily sees when she leaves for the city of Yonahbourg early in the story is the blue sky. It's vast, spanning what feels like hundreds of miles with huge white clouds marked across it like a painting.

Blue is also the color of the Argentelle Rose

The blue of the rose not only represents freedom, but also the manufactured and that which is not natural. Blue roses are impossible in nature. Argentelle Roses are cultivated through magical means and human borne crossbreeding.

In this way, the color blue represents the impact humans can have on their world. We are all born with freedom in our hearts, to make our own decisions to carve our own paths. Of course, these paths leave marks and carvings in the forests and plains we all inevitably cross, metaphorically or not.

As the nation of Argentelle practically worships the concept of freedom, it's no mistake that their official seals and documents and motifs are all blue.

Blue in this case not only represents freedom, but royalty and class. It represents the struggle the leaders of the nation have balancing nobility and class with the needs and rights of the ordinary man.

Red. In Argentelle, red is seen as the color of the people of the "Austral Plains" to the south of the capital of "Asclebourg".

The people of the Austral Plains and "Santa Cereplata" are generally poor agrarian people, robbed of their opportunity by geographic and political divide ages ago.

Red also represents the blood lost by those who fought in a brutal civil war there only a few years before Lily arrives.

The people of the south speak their own flavor of language, leaning between the standard "Argentellois French" and the Mexican Spanish inspired "Austral Spanish".

This linguistic, cultural, financial and physical divide has created a tight knit, albeit somewhat private world for the people of the south. They are very connected, with huge families being the norm.

Lily's own sword is made of a deep crimson metal known as "Irokane", inspired by the Hihi'irokane myth and trope common in Japanese media.

Irokane metal is mixed with ordinary steel, creating an alloy known as "Chemadeaux Steel". The underlying red metal manifests itself through an incredible durability, rust and corrosion resistance and a disturbing bloodstained appearance.

Red is a strong color, and in many ways, a color without morality. It represents passion, trust and intimacy, but also war, death and anger. In the meaning of the story, however, it means fraternity.

Fraternity is neither good, nor bad, just as Equality and Freedom are not inherently good things by their base existence.

Freedom without order is Chaos.

Equality without balance is Inequality.

Fraternity without openness is Solitude.

We can strive to free every man, but without order and some rules, the world would fall apart and become a chaotic mess.

A man who has all he owns stolen from him or his livelihood lost in the collapse is no longer free to do as he pleases, only forced to survive.

We can try to treat everyone the same, but we will never be able to lift those beneath us without doing everything in our power to help them up.

A man oppressed by his weaknesses, circumstances and by poverty is no freer than an injured slave, forced to rot away as his usefulness left him long ago.

We can want to be together, but it's just as easy to create our own walled off tribe as it is to allow anyone into our hearts.

A man who leaves society to hold those closest to him is not free, for he is tethered by his own fears and irrational thoughts.

#marikorawralton #marikowriting #lily's story

[nostalgicbones]

evan is not actually an asshole

to preface: this is not a pro-infantilizing anxiety post. i don’t agree with making anxiety evan’s sole personality trait, or giving him a stutter he doesn’t possess, or just generally making him seem babyish and naive. as someone with anxiety myself, i appreciate the fact that deh doesn’t water down the negative consequences that can come from a bad anxiety spiral. he is not an angel, he cannot do no wrong, he is a whole person.

however, in response to that, what i’ll dub ‘uwu evan’ from now on, is a version i'd like to call ‘asshole evan’. asshole evan is typically approached as a counter to uwu evan, and is framed as the ‘realistic’ interpretation of him, as opposed to the watered down, infantilized trope. it’s the belief that deep down, evan’s not a good person, actually, or even a nice one: that he’s hardened, bitter, and edgy, and the fact that he typically presents himself politely is only a side effect of his anxiety making him afraid to speak his mind.

sharing my takes isn’t usually my thing, but i haven’t seen any content countering this concept so... here i am. this is how that response makes me feel. buckle up kids, it’s a long one.

i’m not going to fault you if this was your response to uwu evan. it really does make sense: soft baby evan bad and unrealistic… hard edgy evan good and realistic. the problem with both of these takes is that in the end they’re equally watered down and there is no room for the in between. if you’re at all familiar with the show you know it lives in a morally grey space, so why should we boil down the characters to black and white ideas of them?

often, the argument for evan’s secret assholeish internal life would be thus: he’s anxious, he’s depressed, he’s fed up with the world. he hates himself, he hates everyone else, he doesn’t even wanna live, so why would he genuinely be kind inside? he’s made awful mistakes, so regardless of intent, he’s a selfish bitter asshole. some may say he’s redeemable, others may not, this aspect varies person to person. there are a lot of people who dislike the show who say the same things, and tout them as excusing negative behavior. the novel has also often been cited, but i am vehemently against holding the novel to any more weight than a fanfic, and i believe val’s characterization of evan is equally misguided.

the problem with this approach towards evan is it’s an overly clinical, surface idea of his character, and what teenagers are like in general. he’s anxious and depressed, and very much fed up, but he still humors his mom when she rambles to him about how college will be better. he hates himself, but he doesn’t hate everyone else, rather the self hatred manifests in placing others on an unrealistically positive pedestal, like how he views zoe. even if every other thought going through his head was one of hatred and vitriol, intrusive thoughts are a symptom of anxiety and what you think does not dictate who you are.

he is not a baby, he is not an edgelord, he is just a boy. he swears, but to a lesser degree than those around him, and more so when he’s stressed or upset. he doesn’t stutter, but he stumbles over words and often repeats them if he’s under pressure. his initial intent with the murphy’s is simply to let them have some peace before the lies get out of hand and he makes selfish decisions. after it’s all over he truly feels remorse, and would take it all back if he could. he doesn’t see the world in a negative lens, he sees himself in a negative lens, and by comparison everyone else actually seems better than him. you can have rose colored glasses and be depressed simultaneously.

good intentions are fundamentally laced into his character. the whole reason the Big Lie is ever told is because, after he begins to deny connor ever wrote the letter, cynthia violently breaks down—and in an impulsive moment of empathy, instead of telling the truth he hands her back the letter she’s pinned so much of her heart to. this act alone is not that of an opportunistic asshole, this is the act of a fearful, empathetic boy that wanted to ease someone's pain.

this is not to say there are not assholes in the show, or that assholeish traits make a character automatically irredeemable. jared is proudly an asshole, he does not have any filter and he says more than a few harsh things towards evan and others. he outright bullies connor, exploits the tragedy by making memorabilia for his own gain, and never apologizes for anything whatsoever. that’s not all he is, as he’s also a complex character who cares much more deeply then he’d let on, and seems to genuinely want a closer relationship with evan; but he does have some bitter walls put up to protect himself from getting hurt.

i think it’s pretty clear evan is decidedly not an asshole when compared to jared. in most scenes with him, evan is visibly uncomfortable and makes no effort to defend himself or even playfully jab back at him. he internalizes the fact that jared projects that they’re not ‘real’ friends, and his teasing about his ‘sex letter’ escalates his fears about anyone finding out that he actually wrote it, not connor. despite all of this, he still seems to try to be friendly with jared and until he’s caught up in the mess of lies is genuinely nice to him without the same courtesy in return.

evan shouldn’t be boiled down to one aspect of himself. not his anxiety, not his depression, not any of it. he hates himself. he wants to be a better person. he doesn’t stand up for himself. he lies, a lot. he notices small things other people don’t. he snaps at his mom. he hates public speaking. he forges emails between himself and a dead boy. he struggles with thoughts of suicide. he doesn’t want to be forgotten. he doesn’t want anyone else to be forgotten, either. these are complex traits of a complex character, who is not a baby, and not an asshole.

the hyper-focus on asshole evan being the more realistic, or correct conclusion to come to, specifically, is quite a damaging stance to take in my eyes. it implies that you can’t make mistakes without them defining you. it implies that, realistically, you can’t be like evan (anxious, depressed, suicidal, socially awkward) without a bitterness towards the world. realistically, you can’t be a teenager without swearing gratuitously, or dealing out sarcasm, or fuming internally about those around you—and that’s just not the case. you don’t have to make evan an asshole to come to a realistic interpretation of his innermost feelings. choosing to be kind, first and foremost, is not ingenuine or a weakness caused by his anxiety.

i know people in this fandom really, genuinely enjoy food for thought, so i wanted to share how i’ve felt about this issue for a while now. i am, personally, someone who thinks and acts a whole lot like evan does in the show, so when people snap back from uwu evan to say he’s actually just an asshole without the balls to speak his mind? it bothers me. bad decisions do not define who you are. intentions do, however, weigh in on whether you’re an asshole or not. evan’s intent is always, always to do good. the outcome of this can be, as we all know, more than disastrous. but he never set out to cause hurt and destruction, he set out to ease someone’s pain. that is not the mark of an asshole, that is the mark of a complex person doing their best.

as a final note i’m really not here to police people’s interpretations of characters. i think a huge part of the magic of this show is what an individual makes of it, and that there are no fundamentally Wrong interpretations to be had (except maybe that it was boring or tasteless, or that evan’s dead at the end.) i’ve just seen this idea gaining traction and it’s upsetting to me that it’s framed as the only Rational and Realistic conclusion to come to after watching the show, when to me so much of DEH displays evan’s self-destructively empathetic and hopeful disposition, and that’s a huge part of why i personally find him real and relatable.

if you disagree you’re welcome to disregard everything i said and keep scrolling. if you agree let me know because i’ve felt pretty alone in these feelings!! ;0; and either way if you got this far THANK YOU for enduring my rambling and considering my ideas, i really appreciate it <33

#trying this again bc it didn’t show up in tags? #deh #dear evan hansen #don’t come for me if you disagree i’m already afraid of backlash kfjfnfh #analysis #lexposts

[sebastianshaw]

For a good example of that: Karma when possessed by Shadow King and then being forced to walk a crossed the desert and survive and that leads to later on down the road Karma joins a weight loss group- despite being unnaturally skinny- because she wants to " look. Good for the people who see her in uniform" and then she goes on to saying how another plus to joining this group is that she can find dates there. So not only slapping people with disordered eating in the face and ah yes predatory lesbian a classic.

THAT STILL MAKES ME MAD like I was thinking about that recently for some reason??? because like Shan wanting to be skinny makes SO MUCH SENSE from a trauma standpoint. Yes, she lost the weight through starvation which NORMALLY would make someone associate thinness and hunger with trauma, but the way she became fat in the first place was such a traumatic and violating and agency-robbing experience that it makes more sense she’d associate eating and fatness with trauma even more so. As awful as being stuck in the desert was, she still had her own free will and her own body, it wasn’t being controlled by someone else and used to hurt her friends, do presumably disgusting things/violate other people, and warped by someone else into a shape she didn’t even recognize, which is what Farouk did to her. Like on a meta level it’s more than problematic that the Shadow King’s fatness (and making his hosts fat when he possesses them) is used as a physical indicator of his depravity, but in-universe that’s exactly what it would be for Karma, a physical manifestation of what he did to her, a lasting mark of his ownership of her. So her being terrified of weight gain?? Would make sense. But it would NOT be because she wanted to look good in her costume or look good for the sake of other people! It’s completely dismissing and minimizing the horror of what she went through, of having her agency, will, life, and body taken away from her for months by this monster. And that is a thing that would be worth exploring. Like I am not a big Karma expert so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think she ever got a character arc about her mental recovery? It was more like once she lost the physical weight, it was fine. And this would have been a good opportunity to show that no, it’s NOT fine, and to also explore the link between eating disorders and trauma----and there is a STRONG link between eating disorders and rape/sexual abuse, as I’m sure you know, whether it’s binge eating or self-starvation as a way to regain control of one’s body, and Farouk’s takeover of her body is very metaphorically rapey---but instead it’s a cute lil quip about tee hee wanna look good! It reminds me of how in the 90s, Polaris briefly battled body image issues, convinced she was fat, comparing herself as a “blimp” to Rahne (an extremely skinny TEENAGER) and thinking that everyone else thought so too, dieting...but then it all got resolved in a few issues with her just suddenly becoming confident in her body because reasons, so very confident that she wanted to show it off with a new and skimpier costume! Gosh isn’t that so inspiring and strong and feminist! Yes, seriously, they gave her the laziest excuse for an eating disorder portrayal in order to have a reason to have her want to wear a sexier outfit and sell it as empowering, I’m not shitting you. That seriously happened. Honestly, I think that the men writing this shit really can’t conceive that women have bigger concerns than looking attractive by the standards of others, for the benefit of others, and thus can’t understand that EDs are actually rarely about that, and so much more about trauma and loss of agency and regaining the only form of power that you can even if you have to hurt yourself by doing it. They can’t conceive that women do anything that isn’t about being sexy, specifically sexy for others, so they feel like this is the only possible motive. And since it’s a shallow, easily-resolved motive, the stories and portrayals are also shallow and easily-resolved, and, of course, framed as just being about looking pretty (read: skinny) and it’s gross af. Also god yeah can we NOT with another lesbian vampire trope rsdgjrjsfdgj ETA: @cadreformed ALSO I feel it bears mentioning that Karma was also a victim of LITERAL rape as well; she’s a rape survivor from the very beginning, her mother and her were raped by Thai pirates who boarded the boat taking them to the United States, so that’s been a part of her backstory since her introduction and also...never really...dealt with...I don’t think? Again though not a Karma expert so maybe it has been and I’m wrong but yeah that’s a thing, so she’s got a lot to work with in this department and it just gets IGNORED

#eating disorder tw #rape mention #out of shirt #karma #xian coy manh #shan coy manh

[thisisallthehattersfault]

Writing Romantic Relationships

I get a lot of compliments on my chemistry and character interactions. A lot of my readers have expressed liking the way I write relationships, so since that’s an aspect of my writing that gets a lot of positive attention, I want to really make sure to hone and refine it as best I can. With that goal in mind, I did some Googling a couple months ago to try to find any articles or videos I could that had advice for writing believable, engaging romantic relationships.

Turns out, there’s not a ton out there.  The results that came up were all focused on the Romance genre, which I’m sure will be very helpful to those who are writing their first bodice ripper, but it’s not for me. There were a few lists of things to avoid when writing romantic relationships, but as with all advice telling people what not to write, they’re really only helpful sometimes.

So, I decided to sit down and try to articulate the way I approach romantic relationships in my writing, in the hopes that it might be helpful to someone, and also in the hopes that other writers would chime in and add some tips of their own. 

Right off the bat, you should ask yourself why you want these characters to get together. A romantic relationship should be an entirely character-driven subplot -- sure, things like an alien invasion or an eldritch cult will push people together through necessity, but if you really want your readers to be hooked on your characters’ relationship, you need to make it believable that these people would fall in love even if the Plot wasn’t happening. Basically, what do they see in each other? What do these people gain by being together? Why them, and not anyone else?

The main way I address this is through character flaws. A good relationship in real life should make you a better person -- within reason. No, getting a girlfriend isn’t going to solve all of your problems, but those problems should seem smaller and more manageable now that you have someone in your corner. A romantic relationship is life’s built-in buddy system, and fiction should reflect that. The two ways characters can help one another deal with their respective flaws are through Overcoming and Compensating.

Overcoming is typically how character growth works -- your character addresses their flaw, and decides to change it in order to become a better person. Having someone around to call them out on their bullshit, or encourage them to do better, or praise them for their progress can be a huge help in achieving that growth. Typically the easiest and most effective way I’ve seen this done is to have one character lead by example. 

An emotionally repressed jerk becomes more open and expressive because their S/O’s strong sense of compassion rubs off on them. A character who’s shy and insecure gains courage by watching their confident, self-assured love interest. These will likely be the first reasons your characters are attracted to each other. They should respect and admire things about each other, and want to emulate those traits -- even if it’s only grudgingly, and even if they never admit it out loud. 

Which brings me to Compensating. The thing is, perfect characters are boring and unrealistic. Even after a whole book’s worth of development, your characters should still be at least a little flawed. They’ll still have hangups, habits, issues that they haven’t worked through and probably never will because if they were cured of Every Single Flaw they’d be… just, unbearably boring. What I’m saying is: Not all character “flaws” need to be fixed. But, depending on what those flaws are, they could maybe stand to have somebody else compensate for them.

An impulsive character held in check by their calculating partner. A trusting character cautioned by their hesitant lover. A passive character with a temperamental s/o who stands up for them. This is the classic opposites attract -- the messy one adds excitement and spontaneity into their lover’s life, while the neat one keeps things reasonable and on-track. There should be a back-and-forth, with each character taking turns to show that neither of them are necessarily wrong, but there’s a time and place for quiet vs loud, aggression vs pacifism, logic vs emotion. Your characters should respect their s/o’s perspective, and be willing to listen and meet them on their level. This creates balance, and gives your readers clear examples of why your characters work as a couple.

These are the most important parts of your relationship to figure out, because they’re how you’ll plot out the romance. The major heavy lifting for your romance will be almost entirely done by showing how your characters help each other grow or come to rely on each other for help. If they don’t make each other better, and they don’t need each other to pick up the slack, then the relationship is shallow, and won’t work. 

Once you’ve got the bones of the relationship figured out, you can start to work on the fun meaty bits. Next up, Affection.

Way, way too often in media, we’re given two characters who are supposed to be madly in love, who… don’t have anything in common. No shared interests, conflicting goals. They barely talk to each other. But we’re supposed to believe they’re happy in their relationship? Look, your characters need to like each other. Yes, even while plot is making their lives crazy! They shouldn’t completely overlap, but they need to have hobbies and interests in common, or at least have complimentary senses of humor and priorities. Your character who has never touched a camera in his life can absolutely still fall for a photographer -- if he appreciates art, or at least appreciates the way his s/o lights up when they talk about their craft. Are your characters both passionate about animals? Do they do the same sports? Play video games? What do they do together? 

Again, they don’t need to share Every Single Aspect Of Their Lives -- in fact, it’s better if they don’t. Much like how you need your love interest to both Overcome and Compensate for a character’s flaws, their hobbies and interests should be a little of both -- things they share, and things they don’t. Hell, have your character who absolutely hates country music take their s/o to a concert anyway. Have your character who couldn’t care less about videography rattle off movie-making trivia because their lover talks about it so often. Show them supporting each other’s interests, even if it’s only to make the other happy. The things they do share should be a way for them to connect and have fun. That’s really what it comes down to. Romance should be fun sometimes.

Next up, I wanna talk about Love Language. I read somewhere that if you need your characters to kiss and say I love you for them to be in a relationship, you didn’t write a strong relationship. I agree with that, but I think it needs to be expanded on -- The Big Kiss and Those Three Words are a very loud way of expressing affection, but typically people say it much quieter, and much more often, than we acknowledge. 

The Five Love Languages are Words Of Affection, Giving/Receiving Gifts, Acts Of Service, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Understanding your characters’ primary love language and showing them expressing their love in whatever way makes sense for them will make your readers go absolutely fucking hogwild. Your characters don’t need complimentary love languages either -- in fact, if you’re looking to add a little conflict in the relationship, giving them love languages that don’t add up can really help add some believably to the whole mutually pining trope. A character who’s love language is physical touch trying to cuddle up to someone who hates having their space invaded, or a character who’s love language is words of affection coming across as a flatterer to a love interest who’s been manipulated a few too many times, makes way more sense than two people who adore each other but aren’t together because [enter contrived excuse.]

Between your characters having Affection for each other and your characters speaking to each other in their respective Love Languages, you have the groundwork for a lot of really immersive Chemistry! We get why these characters are good for each other from a story-telling perspective, we know why they like each other, and we can see how they express their feelings in small, consistent ways that really sells the idea that they’re in love -- or headed that way. Now what we need is to feel it for ourselves.

Chemistry in writing is all about immersion. When you have a crush, your whole body gets involved. The sweating hands, the pounding heartbeat -- but it also shows in your body language, the way you stand near that person, the way you carry yourself when they’re around. It’s in your thoughts, the language you use to describe them, the way you view them compared to others. There’s really no trick to writing chemistry -- at least none that I’ve found -- other than to really delve into your characters and make your readers feel what they feel. Every quiet thrill when their hands brush, every subtle glance at each others’ lips. These are people who want to get closer like lungs want air. Attraction is a magnet, and both of them should feel it.

I don’t just mean sexually, either. A character hyper-fixating on the collection of freckles on their love-interest’s nose can be as much a method of ratcheting up the tension as a character who can’t tear their eyes away from their love-interest’s rippling abs. Likewise, it doesn’t even need to be physical intimacy at all that your characters are chasing -- the desire to know someone, their deepest thoughts and dreams and fears, can be just as if not more intense than the desire to see them naked. However your characters’ attraction manifests, you need to make your audience feel it. Use all five senses, have them be very aware of each other when they’re in the same room. Show them wanting each other. Make your readers want it, too.

As you’ve probably picked up on from my wording in this, the last big tip I can give you for writing romantic relationships is that they need to be Reciprocated. Loudly, explicitly, consistently. Too often only one half of the pair is fleshed out, while the other is basically cardboard -- a thin, lifeless collection of “attractive” traits with no substance beyond that. The Manic Pixie Dreamgirl is perfect and fun and sexy, and she’s here to drag this unfuckably boring sad sack out of his miserable life. Why? Why is the gorgeous Adonis with every girl in town fawning over him settling for the plain, bitchy protagonist? Wish fulfillment is great and all, but both of your characters need solid reasons to be attracted to each other, or the romance just won’t be good.

#Writing advice #romance #romantic relationships #writeblr #not writing #shut up alice

[a-lil-bi-furious]

Scisaac for the ship meme?

thank you for the ask!! Sorry it took a bit, but Scisaac is answered here. So we’ll go with your other request: Sciles 😊

I actually don’t ship them (most of the time). I’m not opposed to them, per se, but I can’t see myself shipping them within canon context as it stands?

1) Why don't you ship it?

It’s actually really weird that I don’t because I’m a huge sucker for the friends to lovers trope. I think mostly it’s that their dynamic has always felt purely familial to me. I can tell that there’s really deep love there, and I can absolutely see how that could be a foundation for a romantic relationship! I just prefer them platonically. I think it’s really important to have deep, meaningful platonic bonds between people presented as close as romantically involved pairs are and there aren’t many relationships like that that don’t eventually go the romantic route in some form. As a friends-to-lovers lover, I am often the one rooting for the dynamic to go that way (😅 my b), but Sciles is one of the few best friend pairs I’ve never felt super inclined to ship? In my mind, they’ve always been brothers (and not in the classic ‘i’m calling you brother to establish no homo’ way), so it’s difficult for me to separate from that to see them romantically? I am partial to queer-platonic relationships, though, and I love the idea of queer-platonic Sciles. They already function as life partners and it’s easy for me to envision them continuing through life that way. I could absolutely see them platonically raising a kid together, too, and we already know how it would go (see: their dynamics with Liam).

Brother vibes aside, I also sometimes have a difficult time with their relationship overall. Especially in earlier seasons, I really liked the Sciles dynamic and it felt like a mostly positive one! As the seasons went on and trauma compounded, it got to a really unhealthy place and I don’t think what we got on screen was sufficient for me to believe it recovered. But I feel like their relationship is unbalanced, mostly because of their respective personal issues and how dependent they are on one another. They saw each other through a lot of trauma, which is a good thing in the sense that they both had support, but also a bad thing in that I think some of their bonding through that makes it difficult to confront their issues and trauma with each other. Stiles can be manipulative and has some bad behaviors that don’t really get corrected by anyone. Everyone has toxic behaviors and that doesn’t make them hopeless or necessarily bad, but it does make relationships difficult when those behaviors manifest there. And I think they get directed as Scott quite a bit. The problem on Scott’s end is that he’s one of the people who won’t ever correct it. Scott doesn’t like that kind of conflict, doesn’t like hurting people he cares about, and quite frankly doesn’t like confronting his own feelings enough to care about himself. He buries his hurt and his anger and focuses so intently on everyone else that he gets lost, and eventually all of that is going to explode. And they have such a hard time communicating, damn it! After so much time with each other, I’d think maybe they’d be better able to?? (I know, I know, communication is complicated and hard). Idk, in some ways, their relationship doesn’t feel entirely healthy to me. But no relationship is perfect, and I absolutely think these issues are things they could work through if addressed. They just kind of trip me up as far as shipping goes, because it seems like those bad patterns would be amplified within the confines of a romantic relationship? This isn’t to say a romantic relationship is necessarily closer or different in dedication, but especially given what we see of their romantic relationships on the show, it just seems like that change would make a difference here.

2) What would have made you like it?

I think I would need one of two things: either some prior establishment of potential romantics or a slight change in their dynamic. As it stands, I just don’t feel a lot of tension (of the longing, pining nature) between them. But I don’t think it would take much to make that happen? It’s all about the way it’s presented for me. We’ve already got, canonically, Stiles hitting on Scott casually a few times. It always felt very platonically playful to me, but if there was some seriousness woven into those propositions, if you added in some more glances and lingering touches and prolonged eye contact, just little things here and there to put more of that tension in their dynamic, then I’d probably be all over it. It feels like the difference between “Do you wanna make out for a second? Just to see how it feels?” as casual, friendly, experimental “I’d make out with you if you asked, but it wouldn’t be a big deal” and testing the waters for genuine interest. (Of course, my interpretation of their interactions and relationship is going to differ, and lots of people might already feel like their relationship is like this! I’ve got a friend who felt that way while watching. I just didn’t get that energy from them, personally.)

I also think if the show spent more time on their relationship’s emotionally heavy moments I’d be more interested. It’s clear in the show that their relationship is intense and really important to the both of them. We also have some moments that are really emotionally heavy and intimate (like the scene in the hospital in 3B) or tumultuous (like in “Lies of Omission”), and I think they (mostly) did a great job with the scenes we got! But I just wish we have more of those, and specifically more communication between them in those scenes. I want more of just Scott and Stiles being together and talking (like what that trip through the desert could have been but kinda wasn’t) to continue to show that intimacy between them. I don’t know, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would just need to see more of them and some little changes to their dynamic to ship them. And to address some of their issues and work on those. But it probably wouldn’t take too much, ya feel?

3) Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Absolutely, I do. I have some troubles with them, but y’all are totally valid in shipping them! I often teeter on the precipice of shipping them myself. I mean, you’ve got alllll the good stuff friends-to-lovers has to offer. You’ve got the meeting in the sandbox idea (which is adorable omg)! You’ve got the lifetime of knowing one another and growing up side by side! You’ve got them treating each others’ houses like their own! You’ve got them casually sharing clothes! You’ve got them watching each other go through crushes and start dating (and maybe experiencing a little jealousy once that starts)! You’ve got secret handshakes and nicknames! You’ve got that complete and total comfort between them where it’s clear they share their whole lives with each other! They’re inseparable and function so naturally in-sync as partners!

You’ve got a relationship with so much depth and complication and all the tangled up tension that comes with them hurting each other and growing apart in later seasons. And you’ve got them working through that (albeit mostly off screen *side-eyes jeff&co*) and getting back to being Scott and Stiles again. There’s just a whole lot of potential and a whole lot to love! And, hey, maybe with some time and thought or convincing, I’ll be shipping along with you. You never know. (Send me ships and I’ll ramble about why I do/don’t ship them!)

#ty for the ask friend <3 #daughterofluthien #Ask games #not rlly sure if I should tag relationship or characters so I won’t #this doesn’t feel super negative but still isn’t for the ship so.....rude?

[aqvarius]

Hi again! This is the anon who asked about which HLITF routes you’d recommend. I’m pretty weak for the “senpai” trope I guess, since I loved the Boss in MK and Shunichiro in IM. Other faves are Yosuke (KoP), Kazuomi (MK), and Toma and Jun (IM) - kind of all over the place really! I’d also just be happy hearing what your HLITF faves are and why!

hello!! ah well namba is definitely the most fitting with that type (or i guess more like the older boss/sensei type) but his stories stop at halfway through season 2. EDIT: to expand on this aside from just that he’s older and the chief, there is sort of that sense where you really want to impress him bc he’s your grandboss (boss’s boss lol) and you’re constantly striving for him to notice you bc he’s very my pace/easygoing but then is actually REALLY sharp. to an extent, all hlitf routes have a bit of that feel bc there is that student/instructor dynamic but namba’s route definitely has the most “impress the boss” feel to it. 

if you enjoy the banter between toma and his mc then ayumu is great! i think the closest to jun might be ishigami? he’s someone who’s very straightforward and strict about work but he’s always going the extra mile to help his subordinates succeed. i can’t think of anyone similar to kazuomi tho (i guess soma would be the closest just bc he’s smooth as f and a great liar lmao??) cause kazuomi is an absolute nutcase. 

my ultimate hlitf bias is the ever underrated soma bc he reminds me so much of my fave, huedhaut. he’s cool and gentlemanly but can have the most acerbic tongue. he’s so hard to read and understand bc on the surface he just seems generic-perfect but once you start being able to understand his dangerous side it’s Thrilling. i love it when he says something and you originally think it’s a compliment but he’s actually cutting you down with a beautiful smile on his face? i love that he’s such a tease in bed and generally in their relationship too? but i also love when he gets angry or panicked and loses his cool. ugh he’s just so smooth and witty and i love both his warm (and surprisingly passionate) side and his ice cold side, his gentleness and his meanness. also he has so much DEVELOPMENT throughout the seasons a;lskdfj idk i just adore him. i always go back and reread certain scenes with him bc i can satisfy my cravings for drama AND being teased (bc i’m........ a masochist......) but also i feel like he knows just how to soothe me when i need it too. i feel like i understand him better than anyone else. also his mc is the most talented out of them all lol. every time i see him threaten or trap ayumu and/or toru with that cold smile on his face i’m like...... That’s My Man (◡‿◡✿)

i’m also part of the mushroom fanclub (shinonome) even tho sometimes you just wanna kick him in the nuts and run away. his story is a sloooow burn but it is SO worth it. to be perfectly honest, personally i find that his sequel is where their relationship really starts to develop and then it’s followed by a really strong season 2. he’s such a bitter melon but you just can’t help but love him when you understand the ways his love manifests and the ways in which he treasures you. he has a really bubbly and tenacious mc who is really goofy and adorable and they’re just So Good Together. they’re the kind of couple where you watch them in a tv drama and can’t help but make 30 gifsets to capture every moment they even look at each other. 

and then my first hlitf man, who always comes by to recapture my heart is kaga (i mean you just have to check my happy kaga week tag to see the ways i cry over him). i just adore him SO MUCH. some people hate him bc he’s so mean to his mc but he just has a bitter tongue and he actually treats her so well. like he’ll call you trash/worm/rat/cockroach/garbage/moron/mongrel/dog but then he’ll take you to see a movie you want to see and cook you dinner and tuck you into bed and let you sleep in. kaga is someone who does everything the way he wants without caring what people think so you know that he never does anything for you out of obligation but rather bc he truly cares. he doesn’t let many people get close to him so it’s extra special when he does (although this is actually true of literally all of public safety lol). i think kaga is actually the person who falls for his mc the quickest out of anyone in public safety? so i love how quickly you start to see the ways he treats you specially. he has probably some of the best PoVs and substories and his season 2 is my absolute FAVOURITE. his mc is a little frustrating at times (she tends to be in general in everyone’s ms1 but her development is A+) but she does have some shining moments too. 

i hope this is helpful at all! i just rambled on a lot ahhhlasdk

#her love in the force #hlitf #jin namba #hideki ishigami #shusuke soma #ayumu shinonome #hyogo kaga #snow answers #Anonymous #love 365 #voltage inc