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swbumblebee · 3 years

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“Stop it.”

Mace Windu was a Jedi Master, and as such had years of training resulting in near limitless patience.

A limit, however, that his closest companion and partner in time-travel was testing with his constant pacing. And huffing.

Plo Koon ignored his request. Mace sighed.

“Would you just sit down? You’re not going to bring them home any quicker and you’re wearing down my rug” he warned.

Plo looked at him, looked down at the rug, and continued pacing.

“I don’t know what you’re worried about” Mace continued, happily ignoring the sulky silence. “We know their mission goes well, we’ve done this before!” he exclaimed. “It’s a resounding success and half a planet ends up with a crush on Obi-Wan.” He said matter-of-fact.

He felt a reluctant pulse of amusement from Plo in the Force, as much as the man tried to keep it off his face. Mace could always tell.

He stood up, joining him in front of the sofa.

“Nobody gets blown up, nobody gets injured.” He reminded gently. “The Tume agreement is signed, as it is every year, and they both live to worry us another day” he said kindly.

Plo shook his head.

“I know how it went last time. I remember the debate” he corrected. “But things could be different my friend, we have changed the timeline. The smallest difference could be vital, and we have made a very large difference.” Plo explained, in his usual measured voice. “We have altered young Anakin’s temperament; Force only knows that he’ll do. And Obi-Wan has much less to prove.”

Mace frowned. His friend was making some irritatingly good points, but he remembered the two boys standing in the council room not one week ago; a familiar determined glint in Obi-Wan Kenobi’s eye that, in the coming years, would move planets, and Skywalker looking up at all the Masters as if they hung the stars.

“They will not disappoint us” Mace said surely.

Plo stopped.

“I know” he sighed. “I just…worry. It is most unbecoming of a Jedi” the Kel Door admitted.

Mace smiled.

“We are no longer typical Jedi my friend, and you are not the only one.”

It was true. Despite his words of reassurance, waving the two off in the hanger had brought a distinct clench in his stomach, and the training droids in the dojo had had a very long week.

Both froze, two very familiar force presences making themselves known, and not a moment later Mace’s commlink chirped shrilly.

They grinned at each other.

“Windu”

“Master, Knight Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker have just requested permission to land” the unidentified voice on the other end of the call informed them professionally.

“Thank you, Windu out.” He closed the link without a second thought, already grabbing his cloak and joining Plo, standing impatiently, by the door.

“Wait – we can’t both go!” Mace exclaimed, the thought suddenly occurring to him as Plo reached for the door control.

The other Jedi looked at him, clearly irritated.

“Why not?”

Mace rolled his eyes. One of them had to be sensible.

“Plo, how’s that going to look? Two senior council members waiting for a new Knight and a Junior Padawan? People already think we’re too close” he exclaimed, frustrated with his friend.

Whilst they both had a wildly different attitude towards the A Word (developed over the course of the war and in their new situation) appearances were something they had to be mindful of.

Whilst his expression did not change, the Force around Plo expressed just how much of a toss he gave about appearances.

His friend folded his arms.

“Alright, we can re-convene at the flat later. I will meet them in the hanger.” He said calmly, as if it was some kind of compromise.

Mace raised one eyebrow.

“Any why do you get to welcome them home?” he asked archly.

“You waved them off” Plo said simply. “It is my turn.”

“Ah that’s not how-Plo!” he cried out, outraged as Plo quickly opened the door and strode out into the corridor, pushing Mace gently back with the Force whilst he made his escape.

Leaving the Master of the Order spluttering at the injustice of it all, in his wake.

---

Plo was working hard to keep his happiness behind his shields as he strode into the hanger just in time to see the temple shuttle land. He ran a critical eye over it, having a sudden vision of Skywalker’s battered old ship in that first timeline. As liable to explode as it was to put the wipers on.

Thank goodness that was a bridge to be crossed in the future. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for Anakin adopting ships.

Obi-Wan ruffled young Anakin’s hair, laughing as the boy tried to squirm away, as they descended the ramp. The playful scowl on Anakin’s face transformed into excitement as he sensed Plo and turned to him, held back from running over for his usual hug by his Master’s lightning quick reflexes, grabbing a wrist and holding him back.

Plo sent a wave of welcome over to them both in the Force as they came closer, a genuine smile on Obi-Wan’s face and Anakin practically buzzing with excitement.

Obi-Wan bowed deeply in respect, clearly nudging Anakin through their training bond to do the same, and the boy hastily followed suit.

Plo held a hand up and nodded at them both as they rose smiling. Both looked absolutely fine, perhaps Obi-Wan a little tired, but Plo had a feeling that was more to do with the energetic ten-year -old he’d just spent a week with, than the challenge of the mission.

“Welcome back” Plo once again pushed his pleasure at them in the Force. Predictably, Obi-Wan’s eyes slid away from looking him in the face, but he smiled gratefully all the same as Plo plucked the bulky pack out of his hands and shouldered it. Anakin nearly skipped as they all headed towards the exit and made for the Kenobi/Skywalker residence.

“Thank you Master, it’s good to see you-“

“Master Plo, it was so wizard we went in a hyperlane and the pilot let me sit up front and Chose was awesome Master it was hailing when we got there, like really hard rain! And they had massive beds and loads of puddings and me and Master Obi-Wan went to a play with singing-“

As the child rambled excitedly on, Plo shared a bemused look with a resigned Obi-Wan, sending him a wave of amused sympathy at him in the Force. Received with a dry raise of the young man’s eyebrows.

It must have been a long week for the twenty-three-year-old.

Content to let the child’s happiness wash over him, and Obi-Wan appearing to enjoy the lack of expected contribution for once, the journey to the flat was mostly uneventful, only a few Jedi casting them amused looks at Anakin’s wild gesticulating.

“Anakin, Obi-Wan!”

They were stopped from keying in the door code by Mace’s cry of greeting as he rounded the corner towards the little group. Ignoring Plo he went straight up to the boys, Anakin beaming at him and Obi-Wan bowing once again.

“Master”

“Hi Master Mace! Guess what? We saw hail on Chose and-

“Anakin” Obi-Wan blissfully interrupted before the whole recount could begin again. “Why don’t we get inside and get the tea on and then you can tell Master Mace and Master Plo all about our mission” he suggested firmly, in a way that was definitely not a suggestion.

“Yes Master”

Obi-Wan keyed in their code and stepped inside, Anakin following happily kicking off his boots by the door.

Mace, still giving Plo the cold shoulder, stepped inside first. And made a distinct noise of surprise. Plo followed curiously looking over his shoulder.

“Obi-Wan – what happened?” he asked, aghast.

Plo held back an unseemly laugh.

The flat was a tip.

There were robes on the floor, he spotted two pairs of boots sticking out from under the sofa and a discarded pack under the table. What looked like the entire Temple’s supply of mugs were scattered on almost every surface, alongside precariously stacked datapads and flimsy piles on the tables and on the floor, some of which had fallen over.

As he picked his way across the room, avoiding random bits of droid and one or two power tools, Plo could spy a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the kitchen counter when he peered inside, and about three days worth of washing up. A laundry basket was sitting next to the washing machine, overflowing with brown and beige.

The two young Jedi stood awkwardly in the middle of the flat.

Obi-Wan flushed a little.

“Ah, we left on quite short notice” he offered.

“I don’t think it’s that bad really” Anakin offered with an awkward shrug, slyly kicking something further under the sofa.

“This is….” Mace was lost for words. Whilst Plo hadn’t spent much time in Master Kenobi’s home the first time around, he had always thought the man to be fastidiously clean, and what he had seen had been very tidy.

Anakin however, was no surprise.

Plo could sense Mace doing the same thing he was, adding “domestic help” to the Obi-Wan Support List. They’d been so focussed on studies and their boy’s personal development they completely forgot that the Knight had never lived by himself before, never mind taken care of a youngling!

Obi-Wan apologetically shoved some pads and an old robe off the sofa to make space and disappeared into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

The two Masters sat down gingerly. Anakin on the floor opposite.

“Your mission was a success?” Plo asked conversationally as Obi-Wan reappeared with the mugs of tea. Plo caught Mace peering at the rim for signs of prior use, and gave him a look.

“Yeah” Anakin answered before Obi-Wan could get a word in “the Chosians didn’t like me at first but they really liked Master Obi-Wan and they spent ages talking. And people kept giving him stuff.” The boy explained with a disgusted expression. “Flowers and cakes and-“

“Yes thank you Padawan” Obi-Wan interrupted loudly, his ears turning a rather bright shade of pink. Mace smirked at him and Plo sent his partner a mental swat.

Obi-Wan cleared his throat.

“The mission was a success and the Tume Agreement has been updated and signed.” The Knight took a sip of his tea. “We will not need to go back for a while, it should be valid for another ten years” he finished casually as if accomplishing something no Jedi had managed before, on his first mission, was an afterthought.

Mace and Plo shared a look.

Just like last time.

It was a huge relief that their presence had had no adverse effects on the Negotiator’s skills. As Plo sat and listened to Mace congratulate the blushing young man he had a thought.

What could these two, The Team; the best Jedi of his generation and the most powerful force user ever, accomplish with the support of Mace and Plo this time around?

The Sith had better pack their bags. He thought smugly.

---

To get a feel for the whole set up of Obi-Wan Anakin’s first mission when they were assigned it “the first time around” read this Snippet Of Nothing, which is the mission being discussed, and is from the councils point of view.

#Space Dads Go Time Travelling #plo koon #mace windu #Obi-Wan Kenobi #Anakin Skywalker #Bby anakin #fluff #Old married couple Mace and Plo #surprisingly messy Obi-Wan #bit long this one #obi-wan fanfic

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linklethehistorian · 3 years

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New Working Link to DarkestJay’s English Translation of Fifteen & Commentary on the Discrepancies Therein (PLEASE READ)

Information below the cut for length, as well as spoiler information relating to my article.

If recently you’ve tried to access DarkestJay8686’s English Translation of Fifteen on WattPad through the link I provided at the beginning of my article, you’ve probably already noticed that that link is, unfortunately, very dead; the reason that this has happened is because, sadly, as of late, they — and other translators in the fandom who also post their works to WattPad — have been facing a struggle with their works constantly being flagged on the site and forcibly removed for copyright reasons multiple times over, forcing them to eventually give up and move their content somewhere else where it would be safe from harm.

Upon learning of their arrival on a new, safer platform, I had considered simply exchanging the old link out for the new one at the beginning of my article, where it was before, and altering my notes to reflect this, and I’m sure that I still will as soon as I can find the time to rework everything properly, but in the meanwhile, there’s something I’ve also badly needed to discuss with you all about these translations for some time, and what better time and way, I thought, than to do it in this post where I provide you with the new link?

I’m sure that many of you reading both my article and their translation have noticed that back in the Arcade scene, there was something I had mentioned happening in the novel that didn’t quite match up with DarkestJay’s presentation of those events — namely, Sheep being the first to leave the building, instead of Dazai and Chuuya; well, that difference is actually quite important as one of the main reasons why, while their work may overall be excellent and I do encourage everyone to read it regardless, I still personally would never recommend making it the only thing you read if you want to truly understand Fifteen and all of its events 100% correctly.

Yes, I am saying exactly what you think I’m saying: my information within my article was NOT incorrect — Jay’s translation of the scene, however, was, and if you don’t believe me, you can go read Lea’s translation of the scene and see it for yourself.

Now, before I say anything else, I want to make this 100% clear: I in no way am intending to imply that Jay’s work on the whole is anything but exceptional, nor am I even remotely saying that you shouldn’t read at all; in fact, I highly recommend you do read it in its entirety, because despite a few small mis-steps, as someone who owns two copies of the original Japanese light novel, has read many an English translation, and knows this story extensively well, I will be the first to very enthusiastically say that this translation is actually quite good and very, very helpful overall — an absolutely essential resource for anyone who does not speak the original language but still wants to read, experience and understand Fifteen as if they could. I am extremely, extremely grateful and appreciative of their hard work in making that possible for all English speakers, and I don’t ever want to come across as anything else or make it seem like any of that is any less than true.

That being said, though, it nevertheless absolutely cannot and should not be your only resource on the matter, because if it is, you will unavoidably end up being misled on some matters — unintentionally, of course, but still misled all the same.

Because this was translated well after the anime came out — unlike Lea’s partial but nonetheless equally wonderful translation, which came into existence very shortly after the novel was first handed out in theaters alongside DEAD APPLE, a whole year before the animated adaption was even a concept — DarkestJay’s translation does have some points where it is extremely clear that said television show’s rather poorly handled and highly inaccurate interpretation very heavily affected the OP’s perception of things, and thus caused the OP, Jay, to incorrectly interpret and translate certain parts of some scenes and/or dialogue that otherwise might not have been super clear to someone not fully, extensively familiar with the language.

Specifically, as I mentioned above, there is the one particular instance among the many that I can easily point out: due to the pre-knowledge of the anime’s awful take on the story, there is a point in this translation where Jay simply assumes it to be true that Dazai and Chuuya were the ones to leave the Arcade, with Sheep calling out to their retreating backs, and thus incorrectly translates it as such, when in fact it unfolds in exactly the opposite manner in the original version of the tale; likewise, there are also many bits of dialogue throughout the entirety of the book where the perceived “understanding” of the characters’ nature’s as the show wrongly presented them caused Jay to take the liberty of wording things in certain different ways, or make certain alterations to the type of punctuation used that Jay believed suited them, rather than leaving them in their unaltered states, as they were intended to be read.

This is the major issue with going into a project like this with this kind of confirmation bias; no matter how good your intentions may be, because you expect that you already understand something or know what’s going to happen, you’re much more likely to think it’s safe to cut corners, and rather than carefully researching the context, tone, and other specifics and particulars of every line before you write it out and post it — the way you would if you started with a completely blank slate and no idea of what would happen in it — you will more often than not just assume that it plays out in the way you expect it to if it seems close enough, and quickly go with that presumption as if it is fact without bothering to make 100% sure of it.

Again, no offense to OP, because translation work is very hard, and as I said, overall, it is a wonderful translation and I do think it’s well worth the read, but problems like this are why I personally recommend anyone reading this to also check out Lea’s translated summary with excerpts and translation of the bonus chapter in conjunction with Jay’s, as Lea’s came out long before a Fifteen anime was even a concept and, as such, was completely unbiased — therefore being an excellent source to check facts against where possible.

Of course, there are definitely also some points where both translations are different but neither is actually wrong — as while Lea’s is less literal about every phrasing so it’s not super awkward sounding in English and flows better to read, Jay’s is almost always more literal instead, and thus differences in personal preference for wording can easily diverge while still getting the point across fine in both — but these instances are much different from the ones where it is clear Jay actually slipped up, so I’m sure you won’t have trouble defining them. As much as I would like to be of help in this regard, I must sadly inform you that I will not personally be pointing out all of these slip-ups here at this time, nor do I have any plan to do so at any time in the foreseeable future. for I have neither the time nor the desire to go about critiquing a fellow fan’s work when I’m already dedicating enough time and energy just to writing about the mountain of mistakes that the anime made without also adding more difficult and unnecessary extra work onto that.

If you have any questions about a particular line in the translation and if it indeed is correct, you can absolutely feel free to send me an ask about it and I will try to help you with it to the best of my ability, but beyond that, I will not be engaging with the matter much farther than I already have.

(However, on one last note, I will, for now, add that — as I expect this might become a point of much contention and is something that will come up in my article later on, anyway — the “it must be because I love you” scene that you will find in Jay’s translation is actually not exactly one such instance where a mistake was made, at least in regards to the “‘I love you” bit; if you’re curious about the exact details of how that all works, you can read about it in my post here. So yes, that does indeed exist, and you are free to take it in whatever way you want. I’m not personally an SKK shipper myself, but if that’s your thing, then good for you — go for it and enjoy it; it can be canon support for your ship if you want it to be.)

Thank you for reading, and, as promised, here is the link to Jay’s new account, as well as their Twitter, and where you can currently access their translation of Fifteen. Enjoy.

[See the recent related addendum]

[View the masterlist of my article]

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rwbyremnants · 3 years

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WARNING: tiny hints of Non-Freezerburn content

So this is the very beginning of when this story begins to drift from being focused on Freezerburn goodness (it really goes off the rails later). I know some of you don't like to see the ships change mid fanfic so I figured I would give you a heads up. Don't worry, Yang and Weiss are still endgame and there will be plenty of those two throughout, but there's going to be a lot of fuckery happening over the next couple dozen chapters. Bear with me!

=Chapter 34

After watching Cinder enjoy the attentions of two young ladies a bit more than she probably ought to have, Kali quietly herded the rest of them from the room. Pyrrha offered to stay, despite Weiss' repeated attempts to help usher her to the exit; seemed she really didn't mind indulging Cinder just this once. Emerald offered to give her friend a ride back on her bike once they were through so everything was taken care of.

Once walking back to the car, Kali patted Ilia on the shoulder. “I'm proud of you, little one.”

“What? M-me? Why?”

“You came in, stood your ground, and reminded the rest of us that one of our own was suffering. We tried to help, but hadn't tried our hardest yet. It was important.”

Ilia was still smiling from the compliments when Blake cleared her throat and added, “Y-yeah. That was pretty cool of you.”

The next smile was a completely different kind. Weiss nudged Yang with her elbow as they split off from the others to get on her motorcycle.

“She really has it bad, doesn't she?”

“Oh yeah,” Yang chortled as she started it up. Weiss swung onto the seat behind her, sliding her arms around Yang's middle gratefully. “One too many bottles of Love Potion Number 9. She’s been head over heels for Belladonna as long as we've known her.”

“Right… do you think she’ll ever get past thinking of her as ‘the new girl’ and see her as just a girl? Because I think she's kind of sweet in her own way. But maybe she's just not Blake's type.”

Yang glanced over her shoulder at her as she began to guide the bike toward the exit of the parking lot. “Really? And if you're so smart, little miss teacher's pet, what is Blake's type?”

“Tall blondes who lead biker gangs, apparently.”

That insinuation nearly made her guide the bike into the shrubbery instead. “Hey! Not funny.”

“Well, it’s-” Weiss had been about to insist that it was the truth, but then she remembered it was a truth she wasn’t supposed to divulge! And she had come so close to spilling the beans! “It's, um, a little funny, right?”

“NO! You almost gave me a heart attack! Come on, Blake being sweet on me? That would be a disaster!”

She knew her own laughter sounded forced, but at least she had managed to laugh. After following the Belladonna car for a few blocks, she asked, “Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but I'm curious. Why would that be such a disaster? I mean, Blake is a beautiful girl.”

A scoffing noise came from the gangster in front of her on the bike. “She's just… like a sister to me, you know? It would be like dating Ruby, which I definitely don't want to do either. But I'm not denying she's cute. Just don't feel those kind of feelings for her.” Once they got to a stop sign, she chanced a grin over her shoulder. “Not what I feel for you, Princess.”

Though she still wanted to continue the conversation about Blake, feeling bad that Yang felt no attraction to her, the comment filled her stomach with so many butterflies that she couldn't seem to focus on it anymore.

Soon enough, they were parking in the driveway and disembarking their various vehicles. Ilia stretched and Kali let out weary sigh as they walked up to the front door. Yang reached down and took Weiss's hand, and she gladly squeezed back.

The sight of Willow Schnee sobbing on the couch brought their mood down a couple of points. However, upon seeing the group entering, she looked up and flashed them a bleary smile.

“O-oh! You're back much s-sooner than I expected! How was your visit with your friend?”

“Fine, Mother,” Weiss began carefully as the rest of them filed in. “She's being taken care of now. What's wrong? Are you okay?”

The woman waved a regal hand, dismissing the concern. “No worse than when you left, don't worry. Raven… was kind enough to offer to make me a cup of coffee to settle my nerves. Though she has been gone for some time.”

Weiss, Kali, and Yang went through into the dining room, then into the kitchen. There they found a clearly frazzled Raven Branwen standing in front of the counter, where coffee grounds and water were strewn everywhere — including all over herself.

“Oh.” Her eyes shifted back and forth. “I can explain this.”

Kali chuckled. “You were trying to play host in an unfamiliar home?”

“How do you work this stupid espresso machine? You pretentious ass.” Her pale cheeks were the very tiniest bit rosy; it wasn’t much of a blush, but still far worse than Weiss ever remembered seeing in Yang’s mother’s expression.

“Here,” she sighed, nipping up a washcloth to help clean it up. But Raven stiffened, so she put her hands on her hips. “Do you want my help or not?”

Raven relented, and Weiss and Yang stood back and watched in mild fascination as Kali helped her clean the counter off somewhat, then moved on to preparing coffee together. It was like seeing a ballerina dancing alongside a rhinoceros. Several times, they glanced at each other in sheer disbelief before returning to the spectacle.

“That was… special,” Yang muttered once they had finally excused themselves.

“Agreed. I’ve never seen her like that.”

That brought a slightly shy smile to the bruiser’s lips. “I have. But… yeah, not real often, or in front of other people.” She shrugged. “Maybe she likes your mom.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She barely knows her!”

“So? You barely know me.”

“You… make a compelling point,” Weiss conceded as they returned to the living room, Yang chuckling and slinging an arm around her neck.

--------------------------------------------

Within half an hour, Raven came back with the coffee. There had been a couple of shouts, but nothing prolonged or sharp enough to truly worry anyone. Mrs. Schnee gracefully accepted the cup and they all chatted for a while. In a way, it almost seemed like they were paired off: Willow and Raven, Ilia and Blake, Weiss and Yang. Kali was the odd woman out, but didn’t look at all uncomfortable simply playing host.

“Wouldn’t that be weird?” Weiss asked when they were poking around in Blake’s room a little later. Yang looked right at home, but she was completely captivated by the unfamiliar surroundings. Stunned that she was going to live here for a while… possibly a long while.

“Wouldn’t what be weird?”

Shrugging, she sat on the bed. “If our mothers were dating. I mean, that would make us sisters.”

“So?” Yang giggled. “I was sniffing around your skirt first; I get dibs.”

“Stop that,” she laughed, swatting her shoulder. “I mean it. Do you want to be sleeping with your stepsister? Aren’t our lives crazy enough already?”

Yang walked over and straddled Weiss’s lap, hands sliding into her hair as her thumbs traced their way up and down her girlfriend’s temples. “Sounds hot.”

“Ohhhh… wait, what are you doing?”

“Enjoying myself?” Her nose nuzzled into Weiss’s ear. “Didn’t think it had been so long since we fooled around that you forgot what it was like.”

Dipping her head away from the nose and the lips moving down to her neck, she sighed shakily. “Hey, hey! We’re in Blake’s room!”

“So what? She’ll understand. I mean, we gotta take it where we can get it.”

“No, you…” How could she explain this to her? She couldn’t - not without betraying Blake’s trust. “I just… don’t think she would… not on her bed.”

Yang drew back, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why? Is there something wrong with this bed?”

“No, it’s-”

“Bedbugs? Rusty springs?”

“Yang…” The lips pulled her earlobe in, and she had to push her away to head off a pronounced moan. “Listen to me!”

That finally got her attention. The bruiser finally sat completely back, frowning at her girlfriend. “Hey. What’s shaking? You’re being kinda weird.”

She didn’t have to tell her the whole story. But she at least deserved part of the truth. “I’m not comfortable doing this in Blake’s room. If you want to go out to the back yard and neck for a little while, then that’s peachy, but… I don’t know. I can’t get in the mood in here.”

“What’s so special about a room? I wasn’t going to get her sheets dirty or anything.” But seeing that Weiss was serious, she leaned down and gave her a sweeter, less heated kiss. “Sorry. We can put it on ice.”

“Good. Because I fully intend to go back to the icebox for it later.”

“Good,” she agreed with a wicked little grin before their lips found each other’s again. Even that was a bit odd for Weiss to be doing in the room of the girl who was still crushing on her girlfriend… but all relationships require some amount of compromise.

--------------------------------------------

Weiss felt awkward about sleeping in Blake’s bed. Though Blake had insisted, and taken the couch, it still didn’t feel right; she was only supposed to be crashing there for a short time. Kali's large queen-sized bed was big enough to accommodate both their mothers with ease, but Blake’s smaller twin was not; technically, yes, but comfortably, no.

She was so discomfited that she couldn’t stand it anymore. Sometime after midnight, she began to creep downstairs, hoping to check on her. She only got halfway down the staircase before she began to hear…

Crying.

‘Shoot,’ she thought harshly to herself as she frowned, trying to decide if she could make it back upstairs without being noticed. It wasn’t terribly likely. Besides, even though she wanted to give Blake her privacy, she wanted to help her friend even more. Or at least offer help; if she told her to go the hell away, that would be that.

“Blake?”

Instantly, the raven-haired girl sat bolt upright, eyes wide with true fear as she stared at Weiss. It faded quickly, leaving her looking broken and tired.

“Weiss… go the hell away.”

Message received. “O-okay. I’m sorry.”

“Wait…” Sighing, she covered her eyes with her hand. “No, I should be the one apologising. I’ll go, I’ll… I want a drink of water.”

When Blake stood to make her way to the kitchen, Weiss moved the rest of the way into the living room as quick as she could. “Please don’t go. I can get it for you.”

“Why would you?”

“Because… because I feel bad for interrupting. Please, just let me? I won’t take two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

She let her take care of the task. Weiss came back with two small glasses of milk. Blake raised an eyebrow. “What are these for?”

“Milk helps you sleep.”

“That’s warm milk, isn’t it?” But when Weiss’s smile slipped a little, she took her glass quickly. “I-it’s fine. Thanks.”

“Mm.” They both took a few sips as Weiss sat next to her on the couch. The air seemed to ratchet up with tension. So long had passed since they had a simple, civil conversation that she almost had forgotten what that was like. Eventually, just when she felt she might have to make an excuse and just go back upstairs, Blake spoke up.

“Sorry I’ve been so weird.”

“It’s alright.”

“No… no, it’s not. I’ve been stupid, and jealous, and… and taking out stuff with our moms on you. Still being weird about Yang. And that’s gonna stop right here, tonight.” Her amber eyes turned up to look at Weiss, a little uncertainty in them. “Not totally, I mean… I’m still a girl, I can’t help my girlish heart. But I’ll work on it.”

Smiling and nudging her with her forearm, Weiss said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s really alright. Um…”

“Yeah?”

“This is none of my business. But I think you and Ilia would be really cute together.”

It took Blake a few seconds of staring off into the corner before she came up with an answer. “You’re right. That’s none of your business.” Seeing Weiss deflate prompted her to nudge right back. “But I get that you think you’re helping. Just… cut it out, that’s all.”

“Got it.” After a second, she sighed and said, “Are you really alright on this couch? I honestly thought it would be me down here. Doesn’t seem very comfortable, and we are invading your hou-”

“You know my mom would never let me hear the end of it if I made you sleep on the couch, sister.”

“Then let’s share the bed. Please, I mean it, I just do not feel comfortable up there by myself - it’s not my room, it’s yours, and I can’t… I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. That’s unacceptable!”

Blake appeared caught off her guard, openly staring at her guest. However, a little twinkle of amusement was sparking in her amber eyes behind the surprise. “You want to sleep with me?”

“If you’re going to phrase it like that, then no,” she scoffed, prompting a little chuckle from the other Dragon. “Otherwise… I mean, you know I’m pretty tiny.”

“Not that tiny. But alright - you’re on, Schnee. We could try it.”

After finishing off their milk, the two made their way upstairs and wriggled into the bed. It was more than a little uncomfortable at first. They wound up facing away from each other, trying not to think about rear ends and toes touching; it helped that Weiss was in fuzzy pyjamas, adding an extra layer of separation.

“Hey…”

Weiss rolled onto her back. “What?” But Blake only curled around her side. “E-excuse me! What is the meaning of-”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered softly.

“What for? We already covered this topic downstairs.”

“Still feel like a horse’s ass. You’ve actually been a real cool cat since Yang started making eyes at you, and I just… wanted to hate you. Tried not to, but it would have been easier if I could. And I… and w-with our parents… why am I so stupid?!”

“Again, we covered this,” she told her again, but her voice was more gentle as she pet gently along her back. “I could have tried harder to understand that this wasn’t easy for you. And… I feel like I should have figured out that was part of the problem a lot sooner. So don’t-”

Blake squeezed a little tighter, and Weiss could do nothing but wrap her arms around her a little more tightly. They stayed like that for a few minutes before she could feel Blake begin to shake from the force of her own sobs, in spite of how desperately she was trying to suppress any noise escaping. It broke her heart. Why did life have to be so hard sometimes?

--------------------------------------------

“You thought you could get away…”

The fire was coming. Weiss was trying to throw off the chains as quickly as she could before it caught up to her, clawing them from around her ankles and wrists, but she couldn’t grip them firmly enough. What was the matter with her? The stupid puffy ballgown was definitely not helping matters, it kept getting tangled and snagging on the bed of nails below.

“You’re mine,” her father snarled - except he wasn’t her father. He was a dragon, large and sprawling and covered in gleaming white scales, red eyes blazing down at her as he clawed his way across the craggy landscape. “MINE!”

“No!” she cried, even though no sound was coming out. A silent scream as she tried desperately to escape. He was going to catch her, drag her back to his hoard of treasure!

Then the claws were closing around her, pushing chains into her skin, closing the trap…

When Weiss’s eyes flew open, for just an instant, she still believed it had all been real. The sweat soaking through the neckline of her pj’s told her that her subconscious mind had believed it as well. What a horrible nightmare. Obviously she had a lot on her mind lately, but did her brain have to put her through it when she was asleep? That should have been her time to escape from the strife.

Then she realised why she felt so chained.

“Yang,” Blake was mumbling in her sleep as she clung even tighter to Weiss’s body than she had before slumbering, practically on top of her now. That was about the saddest thing she had ever witnessed. Poor thing had it bad.

Maybe… she should step aside? No. That was stupid. Weiss knew without any further reflection that she and Yang loved each other. Even if she wished she could do something for Blake, that would not be possible without making an even bigger sacrifice - and one that would solve nothing, since Yang did not have those feelings for Blake. But there had to be something she could do!

Then she felt hips shifting against one of her thighs, grinding slightly. That wasn’t the ‘something’ she had in mind.

‘Oh golly,’ she thought in alarm, going stock still. ‘So she’s having THAT kind of dream. What do I do?!’ The movements didn’t stop, presumably because Yang wasn’t stopping in the raven-haired Dragon’s mindscape. If she woke Blake up, she would be horribly embarrassed if she ever found out later… but if she didn’t wake her up…

Another little moan told her she couldn’t leave it at this. Weiss tried to shake her shoulder. “Blake?” No response, just more squirming - and her cheeks flared with heat, her heart beating faster. “Blake! Gee whiz!”

Finally, those amber orbs popped open in the darkened room. They swivelled around a few times before training on Weiss, completely caught off her guard seeing her there.

“Huh?”

“You were, um….”

“Schnee, what are you doing here? What's-” She moved a little, and her words cut off. Even in the low lighting, she could see her face draining of colour. “What… was I...?”

Even though she felt a little mean about saying so, she couldn’t help teasing a teensy bit. “Your dream self clearly thought I was some other gal. Unless… you still want to make me ‘see stars’?”

“Shut up. This isn't… I'll move so we can-” But when she tried to move, it prompted a shiver and a moan that cut off all further speech.

“Wow. You're really ready to go.”

Holding completely still, Blake hissed urgently, “It's not what it looks like! You know I would never do this to any girl while she's asleep, right? Please tell me you know at least that much!”

“I do,” she laughed, her own cheeks rosy by now. “I could tell you were having some really steamy peep show dream. And… and that's why I woke you up.”

“Ugh… couldn't you have just let me finish? Now I'm all pent up and frustrated.” Her hips moved a little again, and she whimpered.

“If I let you finish while you were asleep, then I would feel like the one taking advantage! But for what it's worth, I'm sorry!”

After a few more idle thrusts, Blake sighed and forced her hips to still. “No… no, you're right. I'm just… never mind.”

But Weiss decided she'd had enough of pussyfooting around this topic. “Just wish it was Yang sleeping over instead of me?” When amber eyes turned to her, guilty as they were fearful, she hastened to add, “I'm not upset. Believe me, I understand just how attractive Yang is. Maybe if you were trying to get her to two-time me, I'd be getting territorial, but… I don't know. You're a good friend to both of us, and you can't help having eyes for her.”

“How… can you not be angry?” she breathed in sheer surprise. “Or at least yelling at me to… to get over it? Yang is going steady with you now, and I have no right-”

“Hey, you have every right to feelings. It's what you do with them that counts.” Her hand reached down to give the Belladonna behind a little tap. “And this was involuntary, so don't think I'm holding it against you.”

For a moment, Blake just tried her best to weather the sensations and take in the words from her temporary roommate. Then she smirked. “Y-yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm the one holding 'it’ against you.”

“SHHHH!” Though they both giggled. “Um… yeah, I don't know what to say. You can keep going if you… really need it? It feels like-”

“No, no, I can stop.” She rolled onto her back, panting as if she had just run a mile. “Wowie zowie…”

For a few seconds, the two teenagers lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to make sense of their crazy situation. A lot had transpired in a very short amount of time. Really, in only a few short weeks, Weiss had gone from oblivious little princess of Atlas Heights to a bonafide gangster, dating a girl and standing up to a tyrannical father she had never thought would force her and her mother out of their own home. And Blake…

Well, Blake had lost her shot at Yang. Knowing just how great Yang was made it impossible to pretend that wasn't an awful blow.

“Damn.”

“What?” Weiss whispered.

“I… I can't go back to sleep.” Her eyes looked even guiltier when her head turned to look at her. “Maybe if I… move to the couch?”

Weiss bit her lip. “Or I could make a trip to the bathroom. And while I'm gone… you could, um, take care of whatever needs taking care of?”

“Oh, I couldn't ask you to do that! And then you'll come back in and the room will stink like me. No, I'll… I'll get over it. Don't worry.”

“But you're so keyed up! Just let me let you do this. I don't care how the room smells,” she added as an afterthought.

“But it'll be…” Seeming to rethink her words, she turned away. “Besides, the last thing I want is to wake up my mom with this. So if either of us get up… forget it. I'll just wait until I take a bath in the morning.”

Scoffing, she reached over to nudge Blake with her elbow. “You just said you can't sleep. I'll be really quiet on my way out, I promise.”

Now she looked truly conflicted. Even moreso than before. Why? Was Kali that light of a sleeper? A glance over showed her that Blake's legs were constantly squirming, though in a way that kept her from moving the bed too much. She looked miserable, and humiliated besides. Even while she was looking, she could swear she saw her eyes misting over, though in the low light from the window it was hard to tell.

“Hey,” she breathed softly, hand coming to rest on her forearm. “I can be quiet as a mouse. It's no trouble; I have to go a little, anyway.” That was an exaggeration; she did, but it would be easy to ignore until the following morning.

“How can you be so nice to me when I've been such a bitter… shrew?” she demanded, her voice soaked with emotion. “I even… I even thought…”

When she didn't finish, Weiss eventually gripped her forearm a bit tighter. “You even thought what? It's alright, I'm not going to kick you out of your own bedroom. I promise. You can say anything that's on your mind.”

“I even…” The tears were falling now, and she reached up to brush them from Blake's cheek. “When y-you were in the hospital, I really thought for one second that it might be better if you didn't make it, and everything could go back to normal! How stupid! I don't w-want you to die, not really, and even if you did, things won't go back to normal anyway! Why do I have to be so… s-so awful?!”

Weiss rolled over to hug Blake tightly, and felt her return the embrace as they clung to each other, only the latter sobbing. Though a cold feeling settled into the pit of her stomach from the sentiment, the knowledge that at any point Blake had wished death upon her, it didn't make much of a dent in her gratitude that she was opening up - no longer keeping her at arm's length. If they were ever going to truly be friends, they would have to evolve past petty jealousies one way or another.

“You're so sweet!” she finally growled into her shoulder when she could speak again. “God damn you for being so sweet, I can’t stand it!”

“Shhhh,” she soothed her as best she could, not really experienced with this sort of thing but trying her best. “I’m not, really. I feel like I should have said something earlier, but I didn’t really know how to - and it was easier just to ask Yang to talk to you instead of getting involved mysel…”

A little too late, she realised what she had said. Blake pulled back to blink down at her, halfway between puzzled and still remorseful about the whole situation. But then she nodded. “It’s okay. I know I was a terrible brat about it when it happened, but I do appreciate you trying to do the right thing, and get us talking again. Even if I had a funny way of showing it.”

“Yeah. Like I said, it's not easy with you still being hung up on Yang. For us to be pals, I mean.”

“It’s not just that. I mean, you’re right, Yang’s the one I… well, you already know. But it would be a lot easier if my rival weren't such a bleeding heart. I mean, Yang and Cinder? I'd be clawing her eyes out!” They both chuckled, and Blake relaxed against her. Apparently, the more heavy subject matter had dissipated much of her arousal. “Too bad the one who rode in on a horse and swept Yang off her feet was actually a tiny white knight, and a sweetheart.”

Smirking, she murmured, “Pretty sure that happened the other way around. I was a lamb to the slaughter.”

“Hey, careful; you’re still talking about the woman that holds my heart.” She rolled over to face the other way. Weiss almost didn’t catch the next words over her own weary sigh: “One of them, anyway.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Goodnight, Weiss.”

“Goodnight.”

However, it took quite some time for Weiss to drift off after that. She wound up eventually taking a trip to the bathroom, after all - and was very cautious when returning to the bedroom, but Blake was fast asleep this time. Completely content. It made for a nice change.

#princess and the dragons #1950s au #freezerburn fanfic #rwby fanfiction #rwbyremnants #monochrome

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tsarisfanfiction · 4 years

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Desert Sands: Part 2

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Scott, John, Alan, Virgil, Gordon, Kayo, EOS

Another little chunk for you guys to chew over while I wrestle with writing the ending (or maybe not-yet-the-ending, it’s being finicky) of this thing.

<<<Part 1

“Kayo?” John called, immediately trying both Thunderbird Shadow and her personal communicator. Both resulted in the red symbol of no signal, just like Scott. “Thunderbird Two, I’ve just lost contact with Thunderbird Shadow.”

“What?” Virgil and Gordon demanded, in tandem. “Where?”

“I’m sending you the co-ordinates now,” he said, fingers flying across the data. Just like Scott, her suit telemetry showed no signs of increased stress or panic before going dark. “It’s approximately five hundred miles south-east from Thunderbird One’s last known position.”

“Five hundred miles?” Virgil asked. “That’s a big area. Are there any signals of anything between them?”

“No, but there’s nowhere there that I’d expect to,” John admitted. “It’s an uninhabited part of the Sahara Desert.”

“We’ll follow Kayo’s flight path and go cautiously once we cross the African coast,” Virgil declared. “We’ll let you know what we find.”

“F.A.B.,” John acknowledged, turning to Thunderbird Three. “Alan, do you copy?”

“Right here, John,” his youngest brother answered immediately. “Over the Sahara now. EOS is beginning scans.”

“Stay in orbit,” he reminded. “I just lost contact with Thunderbird Shadow and Kayo in the exact same way.”

“What’s happening?” Alan asked. “That’s not normal. They fly over the Sahara all the time!”

“I don’t know but we’re going to find out,” John promised. “Let me know what EOS finds.”

“Preliminary scans show nothing,” the AI chipped in, hijacking Alan’s signal. “I do not like this, John. There is no sign of movement at all- John, I believe I have located Thunderbird One.”

“Where?” Thunderbird Five was linking up to her sister before John consciously thought about it, taking in the data streaming from Thunderbird Three’s EOS-enhanced scanners. There was nothing but sand dunes, some impressively high. Wind whipped the sand around, lowering visibility. “EOS, I don’t see her.”

An additional scan appeared, overlaying the satellite imagery.

“Thunderbird Three is not powerful enough for a positive identification but I believe the metal buried beneath a thin layer of blown sand is the right approximate dimensions and construct to match with Thunderbird One,” EOS informed him. The signal was weak, but now that EOS had pointed it out, John could just about make out what she meant.

“That’s eighty miles from where we lost the signals,” Alan piped up, and John could see on his face that he was doing the calculations in his head. He was doing the same ones, and reached a conclusion he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

“From the speed and height Thunderbird One was travelling at, if her engines went offline she’d travel approximately eighty miles before crashing,” he said, and Alan made a noise of agreement. “It’s in the right direction, too.”

“So what do we do now?” Alan asked.

“Keep scanning,” John said. “I want the entire area logged, just to be safe. With Kayo and Thunderbird Shadow also missing, I don’t want Thunderbird Two encountering any unwelcome surprises when they get there.”

“But if that’s Scott he’s buried, John!” Alan protested.

“And if it’s not, we haven’t found him at all,” John pointed out. “Even if it is, we don’t know what happened, and until we know that it’s not safe for Thunderbird Two to approach.” That was what concerned him the most. What was taking down Thunderbirds without any warning? If he didn’t know that Virgil and Gordon would refuse, he’d have told his brothers to stop as soon as Thunderbird Shadow went down.

As it was he was anxiously watching the green icon, silently begging it not to disappear as it reached the African coastline.

“Virgil, you’re coming up on where Thunderbird Shadow vanished,” he warned them. “Be careful.”

“Decelerating and reducing altitude,” Virgil responded. John could see that, but appreciated his brother staying in contact. With Scott and Kayo both gone from his sensors, he really didn’t want to lose another brother, and with Gordon also on board, there were two brothers heading into almost certain danger. “Coming up on- Kayo!”

Thunderbird Two’s green icon came to a rapid stop, banking around sharply before readouts declared the green ship had come into land.

“John, we’ve got eyes on Thunderbird Shadow,” Gordon told him. He was using his personal comm, and his image was clearly running. “She’s down but her cockpit’s shut. Looks like Kayo’s still inside.”

“Kayo!” he heard Virgil call faintly, picked up by Gordon’s communicator rather than using his own.

John could be patient when he wanted to; it was a trait he shared with Virgil. Another trait he shared with Virgil was a lack of that same patience when it came to family wellbeing. In no time at all, Thunderbird Two’s external camera feed was being projected for him to watch.

At a glance, Thunderbird Shadow seemed okay. She was facing the wrong direction, back towards Tracy Island, but there was little visible damage on the fuselage. More concerning was the fact that both the Thunderbird and Kayo’s suit were still offline, despite Thunderbird Two and his brothers still broadcasting strongly.

Virgil, wearing his exosuit, was wrestling with her cockpit, wrenching it open and leaning in to presumably look at Kayo. His bulky frame – enhanced by the gear – completely hid the inside of the cockpit from view, leaving John to wait in frustration for an update.

“I’m okay,” his sister said, and her image appeared alongside Virgil’s as he turned his own communicator on. “I think my leg’s broken, but that’s the worst of it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Virgil muttered, and John had no doubt that a scanner had been deployed.

“What happened?” he asked. “Thunderbird Shadow and your suit are still offline.”

“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some sort of EMP,” she reported, hissing as Virgil did something off-camera. “Thunderbird Shadow’s engines cut out without warning. I used the manual overrides to get her turned around and out of it, but she didn’t come back online so we still crashed.”

An EMP would explain it. John left Virgil and Gordon to dealing with their injured sister and started running calculations. Thunderbirds One and Shadow had gone down five hundred miles apart – at this point it was foolish to even entertain any idea other than the fact that Thunderbird One must have crashed – which gave John two points of reference for the outer edge of its range. There was no way of knowing if that was a chord or the diameter of the range, however.

“Alan,” he called, turning his attention to Thunderbird Three, who was still feeding Thunderbird Five with aerial scans of the area.

“What’s up, John?” his brother asked. “Any news?”

“We’ve found Kayo,” he told him. “She’s okay, but Thunderbird Shadow crashed. Seems like we’re dealing with an EMP, so can you and EOS search for something that could be causing it?”

“F.A.B.,” Alan confirmed. “But… John? If it’s an EMP… how are we going to get to Scott? Thunderbird Two will crash if she tries, and eighty miles is a long way to walk.”

“Let me worry about that,” John told him. “You just focus on finding the source.”

Once they had it, they could work out how to switch it off.

Leaving Alan and EOS to it, he returned back to the feed showing a resigned Kayo being carried by Virgil back into Thunderbird Two.

“Thunderbird Shadow is completely shot,” Gordon reported, noticing him. “We’re going to have to carry her back. That EMP completely fried all her systems.”

“You might as well do that now,” he said. “Until that EMP is dealt with, Thunderbird Two won’t be able to get to Thunderbird One, and she’ll need carrying back as well.”

“Are you sure Scott didn’t manage to do the same as Kayo and turn her around?” Virgil asked, but it was Kayo shaking her head that answered him.

“I barely got Thunderbird Shadow turned around and she’s designed for those sorts of manoeuvres,” she said. “Thunderbird One can’t turn that fast at the speeds she was going at when the EMP hit her.”

“EOS thinks she’s located Thunderbird One,” John added. “The scans aren’t clear, but the location is plausible.”

“Why don’t we just fly around this thing and walk in?” Gordon asked. “It can’t be that far, right?”

“At the speed Thunderbird One was going, she could be a hundred miles in,” Virgil snapped. “Until that EMP is dealt with, we can’t get there.”

“The plausible site is eighty miles in,” John clarified, mostly to cut off Gordon’s brewing response. Scott was the short-tempered one, but when he was absent and probably in trouble Virgil lost a lot of his calmness. Gordon didn’t always take too well to being on the receiving end of a snappy bear, transforming the usual easiness of Thunderbird Two’s pilot and co-pilot into a potentially volatile mix. “Alan, EOS and I are working on the EMP; get Shadow and Kayo home.”

“F.A.B.,” Virgil said, with clear reluctance. “Kayo, don’t move. Gordon, get Shadow ready for transport.”

John left them to it, content that despite brewing tempers they’d get the job done, and turned his full attention to the scans coming in from Thunderbird Three. The Sahara was huge, and he made a mental note to get a satellite in place to monitor it in the future. Whether that required wheedling the GDF or just making his own remained to be seen. Actually, when EOS got back, he was going to set her to finding all the satellite blind spots so they could all be plugged.

John refused to find himself blind ever again.

“John?” Alan’s voice was small.

“Yes, Alan?” he responded, tearing his eyes away from sand, sand and more sand to look at his youngest brother’s hologram. Alan was biting his lip.

“Do you think Scott’s okay?”

If he crashed at that speed it would have been fatal, the cool voice in the back of his mind reminded him. John ignored it, unable to entertain the idea that his big brother might be dead even though logic dictated as such.

“Thunderbird One is equipped with fail safes and supplies,” he said instead. “Scott will have done everything he could.” It wasn’t his best reassurance – or even one at all – but John had learnt the hard way that saying ‘they’ll be fine’ with no evidence to support him was far worse in the long run. “Besides, it’s Scott. You know what Scott’s like.”

That, at least, got a small smile.

“Yeah, I do,” Alan said. “Scott won’t give up.”

“And nor will we,” John assured him. “Thunderbird Two is taking Thunderbird Shadow and Kayo back home while we find this EMP generator.”

“I believe we have located that,” EOS cut in. “John, I am sending you the scan now.”

Thunderbird One had been difficult to spot, and they still had no guarantee that the buried metal was the missing craft. This… whatever it was, was not difficult to spot. A large blotch on the scan, it was easy to see why EOS suspected it, and with nothing else even remotely suspicious turning up on the scans, John was quite content to assume it was the responsible party.

“Hold your position there, Alan,” he said, stripping off his baldric and heading for his exosuit. “I’m coming to join you.”

“F.A.B.,” came the response and then John was launching, jetting through the sky and following the readout to where the giant red rocket was firing microjets to keep itself in position. The hatch opened and he skidded in, awkwardly catching himself before he crashed into the opposing wall.

Landings were awkward.

“So, now what?” Alan asked, uncharacteristically not commenting on his lack of flying ability. “It’s halfway between where Scott and Kayo got hit, and it’s at least eight miles high, so how do we turn it off?”

“Drop a probe, Alan,” John said, holding one out. “When we lose contact with it, we know that’s the upper limit.”

“That still doesn’t tell us how we can turn it off,” Alan pointed out, and John sighed.

“No, but once we know the extent we can look at our options.”

“We have options?”

John dropped the probe out of the open hatch before closing it and accepting the data stream EOS presented him with.

“Two hundred and fifty miles,” he announced when the data stopped, not bothering to respond to Alan’s dubious question.

“So, what are our options?” Little brother was not so easily deterred, but there was only ever one option.

“Take us down to three hundred miles. I’ll HALO drop from there and disable it.”

Part 3>>>

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #john tracy #virgil tracy #gordon tracy #alan tracy #kayo kyrano #eos #desert sands

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mnkiss · 4 years

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A quick list of animes I watched and don’t want to forget:

Mushishi - pure, haunting beauty, 10/10 recommend especially when you want some clarity and calmness in your life. You’ll cry tho

K - the amount of tears I shed TwT I literally miss the characters. Weird af world and story, but somehow I got attached. There should be K: seven stories somewhere but I can’t find it... Also: this whole we’re a bunch of problematic people who become a family is a trope I’ll never get tired of

Tokyo Ghoul - S1 and S2 feel like one huge story and it’s just the beginning so buckle up... There are 2 OVAs (Jack and Pinto) that help with understanding Re: (S3) and then there is S4 which is apparently only the most important parts of the manga... I understand why so many people think that s4 is ridiculous, but the first 3 seasons are great. The manga is a must for the anime tho, bc the last season is a joke, so if you can, read the manga first. With that said, the censorship is terrible so if you can, watch it without the weird black and white patches that take up half the screen, because the animation, the fights, the colours are all extremely vibrant and alive, just like the characters. What being human means, why the police feel like they are doing god’s work when they kill innocents along with the psychos, what a family is, can we be selfish for others, and many more questions are discussed here, all while somebody gets gutted. S2 was much more like a filler than a normal season, but still, I cried, and the whole anime is awesome so watch it if you can. (If you get upset when humans are able to endure more than supernatural beings then it’s not your show, bc even though humans are supposed to be, you know, humans, they are still able to kill tens of ghouls with a fucking hole inside of them.)

Attack on Titan - got tired of waiting after s2... No mystery is worth more than a year of waiting lol

Black butler - I need to get around and watch the book of atlantis. Great story, Sebastian is everything and more, and the aesthetic is something I’ll never forget. The music fits perfectly, and the foods make me drool. It has the “big picture”, as well as small journeys where you can get to know your favourite characters which I appreciate. S2 was not something I enjoyed, but the book of circus was worth it as well as most ova’s.

Darker than black - THEY MUST CONTINUE IT BRING HEI BACK PLEASE PLEASE I CAN’T I JUST CAN’T - also s2′s opening makes me cry. Dolls and Contractors work together as a team, then alone, then again as a team... it was a wild ride. Awesome character development, great plot and world building. Sadly they cut their story and future at s2 for some reason... If I ever watch it again I watch Gaiden before Gemini tho - a lot less confusion and disappointment this way.

Bungou Stray Dogs - loving it with my whole heart can’t wait to watch it again because there is literally NO character I don’t love. It has pretty boys, crime, mystery, magical abilities and comedy alongside the surprisingly deep issues. The art style is otherworldly, everything is so PRETTY and CAPTURING ugh *-*. It also made me read lots of books again (especially Japanese literature which was new for me) ^^ (Who doesn’t ship Dazai and Chuuya... And Poe is a baby too)

Noragami - cute, very cute, I love it when the main character is powerful af yet has a silly, loving side. Also: you can learn a bit about gods and religion

Assassination Classroom - tears. all of them. tears. It’s not what I expected but still, the little assassins and the teacher’s relationship was perfect.

Another - i watched it for the dolls and the umbrella meme. Liked it? yes. Do I remember anything else tho? Not really

Parasyte - one of the first animes I’ve ever watched. Loved it. ^^ Migi was great, all the issues it brings up were thought provoking, and it has gore.

Hellsing - idk it had too many monologues and ideologies, didn’t finish it

Psycho-Pass - In short: cyberpunk future, systematic oppression, immigrants, killing with permission and other moral or societal issues, plus charismatic characters and gore. The watching order: S1, S2, Sinners of the system, S3, First inspector. Wonderful buildup, dynamic storytelling, great mystery elements, and of course the found family/teamwork will always be a favourite of mine. The writing is extra detailed, every character is 3D, their responses, beliefs and cultures are tied together perfectly, the chemistry between characters is relatable and although everybody seems to live by one goal only, it’s not as dull as one would think. It also has some great book recommendations, literature and philosophers play a big role, which is always a bonus. 10/10. I really hope we will get extra contents and S4 in the future.

Steins Gate - I can’t bring myself to watch the last 2 episodes of S1 lol. It starts slowly but it’s much better paced than I remembered. The anime heavily relies on the characters which are sadly very 2D: the haughty but loving, the cute but tragic, the clever weeb, the loving tsundere... and for some fucking reason every single girl loves the mad scientist who... doesn’t really show love or sometimes not even respect towards the others until the last half of the show, so I don’t particularly care about their fate, but I watch it bc I don’t want to leave it unfinished. Because people are so into it I thought maybe the story will be... flabbergasting, shocking or just a masterwork, but the whole time travelling thingy, all the rules, all the paralel worlds work very conveniently. There were some great twists that I loved, some that I saw coming and some that I didn’t, but the story itself isn’t the best and even the plottwists won’t help that.

Full metal alchemist - i watched many, many episodes. I liked it. But it lost me. Anyways, I looked up the story and it sounds interesting, lots of plot twists, great conspiracy theories etc. The main character was a bit... annoying. My main problem is that they were children cuz I can only get immersed in the adult characters’ stories...

Durarara!! - s1 was great I love gang and mystery stuff, BUT I stopped watching it bc I was only immersed in the adult characters’ stories...

The Ancient Magus' Bride - it’s a gory fairy tale, with two toxic but loveable characters who learn a lot, evolve a lot and become real companions. There is lots of touching, head pats and affection. <3 Seasond 2 is very much needed, I want to see more episodic journey elements like the cat kingdom episodes were, and perhaps cry just a little less. Pro tip: when you watched the first 12 eps you should watch the 3 episode ova and then the next 12 eps ;) Oh, and expect tears mostly from happiness

Devilman Crybaby - I was the crybaby. The ending is beautiful, the art style was great, it literally pulsed through my eyes sometimes. Awesome characters, weird storyline, sad ending.

Death Parade - another anime that made me cry :) Beautiful art style, immersive story, interesting take on the afterlife, moral issues. It had everything I needed,

Juni Taisen - It wasn’t the craziest or most cunning anime of all times, but I cared about the characters and I really wanted to know how it ends, so it was good i guess

Kekkai Sensen - i watched s1 and I didn’t care anymore...

BEASTARS - it was one hell of a ride. Interesting world, great conflict, highschoolers and gore... also I think there was a sudden rise in the numbers of furries while it aired. It’s art style however was too cgi-y, too smooth for me :/

Re: Zero - the main character is a little bitch i hated him but i stayed for the plot. I don’t really like love interests when one party is only loved because they look perfect... i really wish we got more seasons and explanations s2 is on the horizon, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it

I’ll update it when I watch something else or I remember something I’ve watched.

Also in conclusion, what do i need in an anime? 1) adults 2) superpowers 3) found family 4) a brooding, powerful af main character 5) action and mystery (plus gore) 6) chemistry between characters 7) side characters that matter 8) tissues

Any recs?

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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The butt slap was ad libbed according to the writer. The whole it was the bi bookend to the waitress slap was not a thing. SIGH. This stuff kind of proves how a lot of queer meta is a lot of guesswork that rarely pans out. Posters in the background that must mean a thing, suddenly don't mean that thing. Macho male posturing about triplets suddenly becomes "but who says they were women" like if queer men actually brag the same way straight men do! They don't! Triplets = women. Come on! CRINGES

I’ll take “passive aggressive ‘I’m a tired concerned fan’ masquerade” for exhibit 3, as if anything I’ve talked about was at all contingent on the ass slap, and as if I’ve been engaging at all in that corner, and as if honestly that detail was even marginally relevant beyond something to chuckle at with a smile.

Lmao even the genders of the triplets are literally irrelevant in this conversation, that’s the most hilarious fucking thing. This fandom is so wrapped up in its own hilarious and frankly, half-hysterical dialogue that they get caught in the strangest hair splitting that honestly, when you’ve never plugged into this ridiculous escalation culture? I don’t… think you realize how funny it is to watch.

How Funny-Unfunny. Laugh or you’ll cry. The fact that you even GALAXY BRAINED up this post with those arguments and really thought to bring this to my wall.

Literally guys what kind of ridiculous hetnorm culture have you been not just saturated into but trained into drawing *the most* regressive arguments and giving it platform? I recently just listed a whole assed adventure in literal queer representation history. Like, the way actual cinema history works. And it’s messy, and it’s sloppy, and half of you would flay the content, but it’s us, because people are messy.

Aside from that, whether or not you clearly haven’t watched Oz,as coffeebrainblog has pointed out, or any of the groundbreaking films that DID do the kind of bold representation work this fandom implicitly footstomps for – unless you really watch your share of documentaries – Tongues Untied, even if it’s intersectional with the black community; Learn. Your. LGBT. History. Before. Engaging.

If your entire premise ends up centrally featuring what is, essentially, alt-right viewpoints (eg not gay if the dicks don’t touch because ewww; three+somes in regards to generational closeted queer culture, or certain preformances of affection expected of characters in the show, all kinds of shit the LGBT community has talked to death and explained and featured and held LONG DIALOGUES WITH TREMENDOUS NUANCE)

And here’s supposedly socially liberal tumblr or whatever with people explicitly going to 1. unearth these mindsets (if not actually having internalized them) 2. Delete content 3. use arguments entirely premised in like, ignorance of how many decades of LGBT discussion because someone literally chooses to elevate alt right thinking as if it’s even an argument angle to bring to the table in the year of our lord 2019.

You REALLY THINK a fucking middle aged LGBT male political rights activist who was writing polemic commentary about LGBT representation via incrementalization BEFORE SUPERNATURAL EVER EXISTED much less before he wrote on it – what, is writing this content for the alt right conservative demographic he drops Trumps America burns on at any time? Or that he has no idea how to arrange queer content, which I’m sure you have other hilariously disconnected-from-the-text-value arguments like this original anon. You know, it’s not a mix tape bro, because anyone in the actual represented character demographic would know what that is, it’s just a tape of songs Dean likes. Yes, literal argument of hilarity heard. No, absolutely not relevant to the discussions of our canon and not whatever the mythical monolithic GA this fandom dreams up yeets themselves to either.

So this shit? Yeah nah. Miss me with that fam. Watching people still trapped in hetnorm ideals and heavy internalized dialogues talk down their own content while disregarding actual lgbt media representative history and the political activist author on deck that has been open about this very same issue is some whole other form of Dumbass Circus people are choosing to perform.

Not to mention this new bizarre purity culture of representation people will only accept now that no actual rep guideline discussions ever came up with, we just want to be “represented” by people who don’t sometimes do bad things. And yes, the nature of conservative representation has also been dogged to death by Bobo, along with packaged heteronormative picture framing of gay men ala Pete Buttigieg. And no, what you think is “conservative representation” (eg, haven’t popped out in a coming out ceremony that was full central text, haven’t been illustrated in bed even if the straight couples don’t anymore, haven’t kissed even though… the straight… pairings… don’t…. ) Conservative means all these fucked up ideas framing this conversations right here and right now officer.

Well that and in the other corner the people that keep trying to bring incest into LGBT discussion. Which IS, according to representation guidelines and again, decades of internal discussion that is already WELL PAST any of the arguments someone with their Ao3 ship has come up with and spun this fandom in circles about – generally, it’s actually conservative rhetoric to try to include that in LGBT discussion too. Which is why it’s banned to begin with. It’s defamatory because it’s literally a slippery slope argument used to strip us of rights. And no, we don’t want it here, and we don’t claim it and we never will and this was settled decades ago kiddos, right alongside pedophilia and beastiality which, surprise, are all summarily forms of rape. No, “consensual incest” got put down like a fucked dog too years ago, don’t. Don’t start.

So even the fandom’s habit of trying to blend “all ships [in fanon] are equal” into “all ships are equal” in the representation field already pitched you more right-of-center than america is with the rest of the world, and then everything after that has been one downhill spiral anchored in a thousand representation activists that don’t know representation history. A lot have come around. Thankfully there’s a very low volume of y’all that haven’t started tuning in to the LGBT middle aged man you’re saying you’re here to represent. There’s poorly-trafficed failed tumblr threads and a handful of anons, and beyond that, a few people mistakenly choosing to cycle this regressive dialogue by what ultimately amounts to social pressures skewing perception. Now just waiting for everyone to catch on to how illusory those social pressures and perceptions are.

Literally ignoring decades of nuanced discussion of LGBT cinema media representation elevating voiceboxes of LGBT men, and the voice of an LGBT male author in the demographic, who was politically active before some people here knew how to read. What a bizarre “representation” discussion.

So before anyone starts talking representation in canon, why not go back and review queer canon. Yes, that big list I posted. That is literally a list of queer representation canon, long before you ever started yelling about a gay angel.

#i don't do stan bullshit #but if i stan one person #i stan bobo berens #his level of galaxy brain #actual galaxy brain #not like nonnie's idea of galaxy brain #has made such vicious commentary ON the fandom #and this bullshit right here #on such a high level it just whiffed by everybody #but that's a whole other topic I've banged on about #seriously guys #if you're going to act like this is about activism #educate yourselves on the history of it all #wtf #i can't emphasize this enough #bobo is actually dean and cas(visual) demographic #i'm p sure we won't find a 2 billion year old agender guy to ask how to rep #so middle aged is probably the fairest demographic for him too #respectively #but that all said #all this young activism #bobo was once a young activist too #and he wrote shit #and we've held entire discussions about this shit #and yet we're still sitting right fucking here #and now Bobo's an old but still progressive activist #and standing in front of ice walls #and then bringing you lovely queer content #and this is what the fandom does to the discussion #i can't

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yaboylevi · 5 years

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Hello there! I couldn't help but notice that salty anon asking about your stance on Levi so I'll ask again because it sure sounds interesting! Do you mind telling us how you feel about him?

Okay, so the original question from a dumb hater was how I could even support a romantic ship between Eren and Levi if I am not a Levi fan*.

*If a ”Levi fan”, like that idiotic anon meant, is someone who excuses all of Levi’s bad behaviors, then no, I am not a fan.

Premise no.1: I’ve loved Levi for so many years, he’s been part of my twitter handle in the past, is in my Tumblr url, icons on various social media, I have a lot of merchandise and not only for “the sake of the ship”. I genuinely used to love him to the point that he was my favorite character alongside Eren, I couldn’t pick one. So I guess I am a bit of a fan, after all.

Premise no.2: I am a gigantic bag of salt about this topic so tread carefully if you’re easily offended. I won’t sugarcoat my VERY BIASED opinions, and if you strongly disagree, that’s perfectly fine. I won’t change my opinion with the information we currently have, because this isn’t a gut reaction I spent two seconds on, I actually soul searched (lol) for the reasons as to why I felt so negatively about Levi. He was my fave, and I felt deeply hurt and confused and frustrated, so I thought long and hard about it. I am open to change my mind if anything else comes out of him in the future.

Also, I have already spent a lot of words on how I feel about Levi’s character as of late, here, here, and here, here, here and here for example, also here and here (I haven’t exactly been silent about it lol) but let me reiterate it into one incomplete post. It’s really freaking long, and a wall of text at it. I don’t expect people to put up with this messy rant, but suit yourself if you want to.

@ the people who sent these new questions almost a month ago, I’m sorry this isn’t the reply you hoped for. If you guys want a more positive take on this, just look through my ereri meta tag.

Levi as a character can be simplified in 3 points, in my opinion: 1) the deep, caring feelings he has for his comrades and as such the responsibility he feels for them and their deaths; 2) his violent side and how he resorts to violence to solve situations. These 2 merge together into 3) what used to be his main goal, free humanity. He lent his strength (that at times he uses for violence/to get his way) to the cause: helping in freeing humanity inside the walls because the sense of freedom is worth everything.

So, harsh opinion: I believe he has lost sight of his goal – as Isayama has stated in the past even though I didn’t wanna believe it because it made zero sense and cheapened everything I loved about Levi – and he has fallen back into his worst behaviors. Add to that a lack of active presence and engagement in the actual story, and you get this predictable, background character that I can’t for the life of me enjoy currently. Because apparently, he forgot how to live on his own without Erwin’s guidance (and here I’d have another bag of salt to pour but this would get too long, and I don’t have the patience to word it in a way that wouldn’t bring me the ire of his fans).

I don’t know if Levi is really supposed to be seen this way, but at least to me, the focus has been mostly on this: his anger/violence/flaws, and his lack of involvement.

I never liked the way he resorted to violence to “resolve” not life-or-death situations or simply to vent his frustrations, in the first place. It’s something Eren had to let go of, he was rewarded when he used his wits, abandoning pure rage for the sake of revenge, and it’s always been Isayama’s intention, imo, to show as much with the story in general and with Levi as well, as Levi has never been rewarded for it either.

So, witnessing his character revert AGAIN to kicks and straight-up sadism, as a fan, has been a big disappointment. Then, the shift of his goal because “saving humanity” wasn’t Erwin’s goal, after all, has been another point of disappointment – but this happened way before the current arc. His obsession with “making the dead soldiers’ sacrifices worth it” can be commendable, but the way he’s going about it is totally blind and dictated by anger and loss of hope, in a way, so I don’t see it as something positive either. He lacks vision, he lacks a voice in the things that are happening around him as if he doesn’t care whatever happens to all of them, as long as he can make Zeke suffer and kill him. I know it’s not totally the case, because we have seen (and I want to believe) that he still cares about his comrades who are still alive, as seen during the battle in Liberio and his reticence at following direct orders to kill Eren, but at the same time, the obsession with “repaying the lives of the dead” is making him being absolutely heartless for the sake of his “hope” (like, I’m paraphrasing here but he literally went “let’s go to war again and let Historia become a shifter if she so wants to, who cares, more deaths, yay”), though he himself doesn’t seem to care about hope and freedom and all this stuff that much anymore, or he would’ve spoken up about the mess Paradis and Hange were throwing themselves into, like Eren did.

Another point of dissatisfaction is that it seemed to me like he was forming stronger bonds with the 104th and he was becoming better at voicing his opinions without becoming violent, but I guess he either regressed, or I always read him wrong. His violence in 114 was downright revolting to me, I felt nauseous and, in a way, I’m glad he got k.o’ed. It put a stop to his metaphorical downfall, at least — I see post-timeskip Levi as a cheapened, worsened, “hyperfocused-on-just-one-side-of-him” version of the Levi I used to love in earlier arcs and he was only getting worse, imo.

And, as a special mention re: his violence and his relationship with Eren… It was interesting to observe how he slowly changed in regards to Eren, learning how to lift him up and get the best out of and for him, caring about and paying attention to Eren’s emotional state when no one could or would. It was also very interesting how he opened up to Eren just because he wanted to help him, always, from the beginning. THAT’S what really made me fall for the ship and for Levi.

Also, he thought that violence wasn’t the answer with Eren, and I guess I can excuse him for his behavior in Shiganshina because it was a charged challenge of sort for every character. But he really did think that nobody could make Eren submit with violence, yet he’s the one who tried to do exactly that as soon as they met again in ch.105. I was so disappointed that their relationship seemed to have regressed so much, I kept being hopeful only because of his face/words after the kick: he felt betrayed and saddened by Eren, so it meant he still cared deeply about him. And yeah, he does, but the reasons are also partially…bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe he cares about Eren as a person, the boy he met and decided to protect all those years ago, but now saving Eren has become deeply intertwined with saving his last remaining goal: making it up to the dead soldiers (and I’ve already explained why I think it’s not a “positive” goal). And it’s unfair and a skewed view, imo, because Eren really didn’t have much to do with every single death. But I think it’s Levi being desperate about it all, he clings to it or he’d lose it if he had to, um, reconsider his current mindset. He’s like…grasping at straws, I feel. Like he was doing with Erwin when Erwin revealed his true colors. Levi ended up reconsidering his own ideals and goals, back then, but in a bad way (he had no goals of his own, he just blindly followed Erwin, who cares about humanity, right? Even though he seemed to care oh so much before).

I guess it’s the downfall of the “Hero”. @/Isayama, was this necessary? Is this entertaining? I am personally not a fan of this, there were so many ways to challenge Levi’s belief & trust in Eren, and to still have Levi be an active player. This just feels like a cheap way to get him out of the picture and turn him into a really secondary character. He doesn’t feel like a main player in this arc.

So long story short, I’m very disappointed in his development. I was willing to go along with it in the hopes that it would be leading us to something very interesting and it seemed it could go into a good direction as I stated here. But when he seemed to be confirmed basically dead (literally, or anyway when it comes to his importance in current events), I’ve kind of lost all hope in regards to his character, and I felt so done about it. He is either gonna stay this way, or there’s gonna be some small, cheap, background-ish closure (though atm I fail to see how, seeing as the story is about to end) and if that’s the case, I fail to comprehend the purpose of his arc, then. I don’t think his is an unreasonable development, I just fail to see how the direction Isayama has decided to “develop” him in has any relevance to the story and its themes, as he used to be a major player with some good-ass, relevant presence in the story. As I said in some posts I linked above, Isayama may have lost motivation to develop Levi any further and dropped it from the “main players” roaster, probably when he decided to change Levi’s motivations halfway through the story (because yes, the problems I have with Levi started towards the end of Uprising).

I used to be a great Levi fan, if my username and icon are anything to go by, and I still like him when I reread some parts as I stated elsewhere, because I really, really love when he interacts with the 104th or like, with his subordinates or even Hange. It’s fun to watch and even cute, when he’s not being a violent arsehole. So it’s really a shame that it’s come to this.

And yeah, I’m sure some people may have noticed already, but the ereri content on my blog has become quite scarce, S3 and the shitfest that went down there in regards to Eren&Levi parts also dampened my hype for the ship, my dissatisfaction with Levi’s character and the way his interactions (or lack thereof) with Eren went recently just pissed me off. But I loved this ship for like 5 years, I’m attached to it, and I am capable of separating the good parts of it from the bad ones (though it’s become increasingly difficult). And most importantly, I still love the way their canon relationship was developed up until before the serum bowl. Almost nothing has happened with them since then, so that’s why I was still really hyped for the next 2 years, but recently, and with Levi’s return, I’ve just grown more frustrated and bored with it.

After all, I fell in love with the romantic fanon ship BECAUSE the canon relationship was so interesting, had potential, and seemed to be going some incredibly cool directions, as both the characters seemed to be similar, had the same goals and understood each other on a basic level. It turned out to be almost nothing in the end, but alas.

So, how can I ship them if I don’t like one of them?

I still like Levi, especially when I reread the early arcs. This doesn’t mean I have to accept the worst sides of him that have apparently taken over his whole personality. His violence ISN’T a flaw I - or anyone, imo - should accept. Snoring IS a flaw we can/have to accept if we love someone. Violence is something that must be overcome. My annoyance with people implying they are better fans because they accept and embrace and excuse him and his violence, compared to those who don’t like that, is also a factor in my frustration. Understanding why exactly he’s the way he is is part of being a fan of a character, wishing for him to become a better person and ultimately letting go of toxic (yeah) acquired behaviors, imo, is better than defending and hyping them up. Some people even LOVE and WISH that violence will be his downfall because it’s violence for the sake of avenging [redacted] so it’s sooo romantic. lmao, ok. And I won't even get started about the ones who SERIOUSLY say that adult characters don't need to change, because I'm gonna start laughing for 3 hours straight. Dudes, there's not an age where you stop changing. If you stop trying bettering yourself at age XX, then I already know you're a shitty adult irl, goodbye.

Anyways, back on track. As I said in another post I may have linked above, I thought his encounter and resolution with Kenny would have amounted to something in this regards, since Levi used violence to get acknowledgment and to feel like he was “worth” something, imo, but it was only a set up for serumbowl. Wasted chance.

And I get it that violence is the way he was taught to deal with things, but 20 years have passed since then and he had a whole character arc in Uprising about opening up, trusting, feeling trusted in return, and feeling good and grateful and happy about that BECAUSE he was open with his squad and learned that it was better to use words rather than fists. So I thought he had grown out of it at least a bit. But I mean, there are other characters who have regressed or haven’t changed at all after their supposed character arc, and that dampened to a great degree the enjoyment of such characters for me (Historia, Ymir, Reiner), so whatever I guess? I can definitely see it’s something of a “cruel” way of storytelling Isayama really seems to like, maybe because he wants the characters to suffer. I guess you can’t have a story if all of your characters become better people and overcome their flaws…well, actually you can, but I guess Isayama doesn’t want this to be that kind of story.

But anyway, just to be clear, it also ties in with wanting the characters you love to better themselves and let go of things that ruin their lives or that have roots in trauma. Wouldn’t you want that for someone you love, even and especially in real life? So, if his violent tendencies have been portrayed as “wrong”, Bad Coping Mechanisms, and rooted in childhood trauma, why is it so frowned upon in this goddamn fandom to wish for him to let go of them, since it’s something that has caused him and characters around him pain or distress or downright failure. Overcoming these flaws would mean he’d feel better about himself, and others, and his past, etc. Why is it SO wrong to wish him the best? Lmao, I don’t get it.

So when his “real fans” be like “Levi’s violence is a part of him, you don’t love him for real if you can’t accept that part. anyway he’s perfect the way he is”, I’m like…that’s actually bullshit. I just want him to be a better person, just like I wanted to be a better person when I had detrimental (for me and for the people close to me) behaviors due to mental health stuff.

It’s not even on the same level of wanting him to stop being rude, that’s part of his charm. Violence…is not a cool personality trait, and it’s something you should want him to get over.

–

I still love lots of things that were shown in the manga in regards to Eren and Levi, so I don’t get why I should justify myself for liking them together just because I don’t like some parts of one of them. I still think some of Levi’s best personality traits came out when he interacted with Eren, and I like the Levi who cares about Eren the most. Hence why I ship the goddamn ship. That’s all there is to it, really. Here I talked about what I loved about their relationship, though now I feel like a bit of a hopeful fool.

#nobody will read this 10k words long rant but whatever #shingeki asks #salt #Levi #unnecessary post but it was a good chance at venting #I feel like I haven't even touched one of the main big reason #but I don't want to talk about e*win tbh #arekupacific

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ghostbustermelanieking · 5 years

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au where scully is reassigned from the x files but mulder isn't?

1. Shortly after the incident in Antarctica, Mulder and Scully get the news that the X-Files have been reopened. They both apply for reassignment immediately. “This is it, Scully,” he tells her that night at her place, sitting on her couch. “We testify to OPR about what we know, and we’ll get the Files back in no time. We’re finally close to finding the truth.”

She shakes her head with an eye roll and a small smile, frostbite still visible on her cheeks. She tells him she hopes so, patting his knee absently.

But it doesn’t happen the way that they’re hoping. Of course it doesn’t. The next morning, they go in and they are given the news that only Mulder has been reassigned to the X-Files. Mulder and Diana Fowley. Scully is meant to stay under Kersh.

Mulder is furious, initially, ranting angrily to Scully on the bench on the hall, not caring who hears him. They’re splitting us up again, Scully, they’re trying to weaken us. Scully is surprisingly quiet, her arms crossed over her chest and her mouth set in a hard line. He remembers, involuntarily, a few weeks ago when he told her to go be a doctor and she told him that she wouldn’t quit. Now it feels as if their positions are reversed again. Except the decisions have been made for them.

He wonders, briefly, if this is what was supposed to happen. If this is his way of saving Scully, by moving on without her. He wonders if he needs to let her go or if that’s the worst possible thing he could do.

He says instead, “This isn’t the end, Scully, I’m not going to let them do this to us. This isn’t over yet.”

She purses her lips and nods, but she doesn’t say anything. He gets the sense that she doesn’t quite agree.

2. It should be the end, Scully thinks. This whole thing, everything that happened after Dallas, it should be a sign. Mulder’s ex-partner and ex-girlfriend has come back, has taken her rightful place on the Files, and Mulder never tried to kiss her again. She feels out of place here, like she is intruding. She doesn’t want it to end—god, she doesn’t want it to end—but she doesn’t know how else it can go, now. Mulder has a new partner, a partner that believes him, and she can move on with her career. She hates even acknowledging these prospects, but it seems to be the situation.

But Mulder won’t let things go. After everything, she probably should’ve expected him not to let things go, but she really thought he would. But he keeps making excuses. Keeps calling her on the Bureau phones and distracting her, asking her to lunch (she starts declining when Diana begins to accompany them, even though Mulder’s face falls every time she does), asking her for opinions on files. (“This is what Diana thinks, Scully, but what do you think?”) He asks her to movies or over to the Gunmen’s for poker night, and the Gunmen make faces whenever he mentions Diana’s name, and she feels a rush of gratitude. On a case in Nevada, Mulder is abducted by a man ordering him to drive west, and Scully follows the story the the news, white-knuckling her coffee mugs and ignoring orders to work, calling Fowley and snapping directions at her over the phone. As soon as Mulder’s safe, she calls him and listens to him tell the story over the phone, his words muted, on the verge of tears. She harbors a quiet fury for Diana’s apparent helplessness, refusal to do anything but send state police after Mulder. She wishes she had been there.

In November, Mulder goes rogue. Apparently he’d gone into the Bermuda Triangle in search of a ghost ship with the assistance of the Gunmen rather than Diana. The Gunmen lose him. Scully pursues the information through the halls of the Bureau. She goes down into the X-Files office and finds it empty; no sign of Diana. The smoker calls down to the office looking for Fowley, telling Scully about the information she’s given to Kersh, but midway through, he realizes that he isn’t talking to Diana, and Scully immediately hangs up. It’s the kind of thing she’s been suspicious of since the summer, but she has no time to pursue it. Skinner gets her the info, and she and the Gunmen race off and fish Mulder out of the ocean. Sitting on the deck of their boat, Mulder stretched out on his back breathing raspily and Scully holding his wet hand in hers, she wonders why Diana didn’t come for him.

In the hospital, he speaks of Nazis and The Wizard of Oz and tells her she saved the world. She looks down on him affectionately and starts to leave so he can rest, but he calls her back. “Hey, Scully?” he calls.

She goes back to the bed and leans close, replying, “Yes?” in a half-serious, half-indulgent voice.

He doesn’t speak for a moment, just looks at her, his eyes dopey with the painkillers. And then he says it, as serious as she’s ever heard him: “I love you.”

Her heart leaps on instinct, with excitement, before she tamps it down. He’s high as a kite, she reminds herself. He’s out of it, and he has a partner. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. “Oh, brother,” she says, rolling her eyes.

She turns to leave the room again and nearly runs into Diana, a look of panic that she can’t tell whether or not is staged on her face. “Oh my god, Fox,” she says, and Scully can’t stop the grimace moving across her face. She keeps moving, her eyes half-shut.

“Hi, Diana,” she hears Mulder say, sounding a little dismayed. She looks back, in the doorway, in time to see Diana sit on the edge of the bed and Mulder touch the blooming bruise on his cheek, not really looking at her. He looks at Scully instead, something like pleading in his eyes.

She looks away. She leaves the room and pretends that regret isn’t twisting in the pit of her chest. Tomorrow, she tells herself, he’ll have come to his sense.

3. On Christmas Eve, he calls her out to a haunted house. He tells her a ghost story full of tragic, star-crossed love, and she scoffs and rolls her eyes, and it feels just like old times until she says, “Shouldn’t you be bothering your partner with this, Mulder?”

He thinks, You’re my partner, automatically, and even after months of working with Diana, it still feels true. He still misses her. He doesn’t know how to be around Diana, as much as part of him wants things to be the way they were before she left; part of him wants to investigate with Diana and Scully, but the rest of him knows that it is a bad idea. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to handle things here, but mostly, he just knows that he misses Scully. That he wants to work with Scully.

The truth is that Diana couldn’t come even if he wanted her to, because she’s spending Christmas with her father and sisters in Connecticut. “I haven’t seen them since I moved to Europe,” she’d said the other day, and Mulder had thought that was strange because Diana had stayed protective over her father after her mother’s death, on into adulthood. But strange or not, she is in Connecticut. He doesn’t tell Scully that, though, because it doesn’t matter. He’d want her here whether Diana was in town or not. He says instead, “You are my partner, Scully. I don’t care what the FBI says.”

His chest lifts when he sees the corners of her mouth lift in a small smile. She spends Christmas Eve ghost-hunting with him, and gives him a present that he didn’t expect in the early hours of the morning even though they hadn’t discussed presents at all this year.

4. In early January, they send Scully to New York for a case alongside a green, brown-nosing young agent. Kersh indicates that this case may be a chance for her to improve upon her career, and though a part of her feels a loyal pang towards Mulder and the Files at that, the part of her that is filled with rage every time she goes to the basement to meet Mulder and sees the new nameplate—Agent Diana Fowley—on the door hopes that this will be a new chance for her.

That silly, stupid, traitorous hope is squashed after a little while on the case. She realizes that this is an X-File. She denies it at first—Mulder gets ahold of the file somehow, and calls her at the airport, teasing her about how he should be investigating this case along with her—but it becomes more and more undeniable as she keeps digging. Mulder does some digging for her, too, keeps taking her calls. At one point, she asks, “Don’t you and Agent Fowley have a case?” and he simply says, “No.”

He calls her while she is alone with the suspect, Fellig, and she asks him to do some more research for her. Within the next hour, she is sprawled on the floor of Fellig’s apartment, a bullet through her gut. She thinks of a lot of things as Fellig instructs her to close her eyes, as Ritter calls an ambulance. She wonders if anyone will tell Mulder.

—

Later, when she wakes up in the hospital, Mulder is there, sitting at her bedside in a chair. She shouldn’t be so surprised to see him, but she is.

His eyes light up when he sees her, and he seizes one hand in both of his, holding it gently. “Scully,” he whispers, his voice soft and tender; he leans down to press his cheek to her pale knuckles.

“Mulder?” she rasps, still in disbelief. “You came?” She wants to ask, What about the X-Files?—really wants to ask, What about Agent Fowley?—but every word hurts.

His eyes are teary. “Course I did,” he murmurs, and he leans in to kiss her forehead. Her eyes slip close, exhausted and in pain and somehow contented, despite it all.

5. Cassandra Spender reappears, asking for Mulder. Scully gets wind of it by whispers across the bullpen, by passing Jeffrey Spender’s desk on the way to the lunch cart. She convinces Mulder to do it; she feels out of place, considering she’s not his partner anymore, but after nearly a month cozied up on her couch with him watching old movies and eating takeout he’d brought her, she feels more comfortable with him. And anyways, she’s as involved in this conspiracy as he is, had as much reason to see the truth brought to light. She urges him to do it on the basis of answers about her own abduction, and he agrees. She notices that Diana is gone; he tells her that she’s gone to visit her sister in Oklahoma and he can’t get in touch with her.

Cassandra Spender tells them stories of alien colonization and of her own husband’s involvement in it. Mulder invites her down to the X-Files office to do research on the Spenders, though Scully protests that they don’t want them working together. (She’d had to stop making calls to Mulder at the office, stop having lunch with him, at Kersh’s insistence. It almost harkens back to their first separation in 1994; Scully’s almost surprised they’re still hanging out outside of work, instead of being reduced to signals and dark parking garage meetings like before.) As she predicts, they’re quickly caught and she’s threatened with dismissal. Jeffrey Spender claims it’s by request of Agent Fowley, and Scully’s face grows red with anger. She can’t look Mulder in the eye.

Mulder protests that this is ridiculous, that Diana would never, and he’s immediately cut off. Apparently, they’ve gotten tired of the trouble Mulder and Scully have gotten into together. They’re reconsidering Mulder’s position on the Files and within the FBI as well.

It’s revenge, Scully knows, for talking to Agent Spender’s mother, but pointing that out would do no good. They’re both sent home.

Scully knows she should probably just leave things alone, but something inside her doesn’t want to let things go. She knows that Fowley is involved with the men who have done these things to them; she’s suspected it for a long time. So she keeps digging. She shares her research with Mulder, and they pass it on to Skinner. She stays at Mulder’s apartment probably longer than she should, drinking a beer he found at the back of his fridge and trying to figure out whether or not, now that she’s shared her suspicions about CGB Spender, she should share her suspicions about Fowley, when Cassandra bursts in. She wants Mulder to kill her, and for a long moment, Scully is afraid he will. And then, before she knows it, the CDC is bursting in to force them into quarantine. Diana Fowley, fresh back from Oklahoma (or, as Scully suspects, somewhere that is notably not Oklahoma), is on their tails, with an excess of lies that Mulder believes. She lies from Mulder’s apartment to the military base that they’re taken to, and Mulder never stops to question it. He actually seems fucking disappointed in Scully for questioning Diana. And that is the moment when Scully is finished trying to protect his feelings in this whole situation. It’s been obvious to her for months; now she needs to prove it to him.

—

Scully goes to the Gunmen. She’d desperate at this point. She may not be Mulder’s partner anymore, but she is still his friend, and she is not going to let a woman who is likely consorting with the men who abducted and assaulted her continue to manipulate him. They find information that proves every suspicion she’s ever had.

But Mulder doesn’t want to hear it. She tries to make him understand. She gives him evidence of Fowley’s activity in Europe. She points out the convenience of Fowley’s sudden reappearance, of their being partnered on the X-Files. She points out all the convenient times that Diana has been missing, that she has provided little to no help in maintaining the Files. That she is basically sabotaging him from the inside. And Mulder won’t hear it. He scoffs, he waves off their defenses. He says that Scully has given him no reason not to trust Diana, and something in her just snaps. She says, “Well, then I can’t help you anymore.”

“Scully, you’re making this personal,” he says, and every word feels like a slap across the face.

Seething with rage, she says evenly, “Because it is personal, Mulder. Because without the FBI, without the X-Files, personal interest is all that I have. And if you take that away then there is no reason for me to continue.”

She turns and walks away, her heels clacking on the floorboards. For a second, she thinks: This is it. This is when he’s finally going to let me go. And then he catches up to her. He catches her shoulder gently, saying, “Scully, wait.”

She turns on him hard. “Wait for what, Mulder?” she snaps. “We’re not partners anymore.” He flinches immediately, but she doesn’t care; this is the way she’s been feeling since her reassignment. She says, “You want to keep this impersonal? Fine. Speaking from a strictly professional standpoint, I don’t see why you need me anymore. You’ve got the X-Files, and you’ve got a partner who probably believes you, whether she’s working against you or not.” She bites her lower lip, hard, her hands in her pockets. “Where do I fit into that equation?” she asks.

And then she’s gone, slipping out of the Gunmen’s apartment and going down to her car.

6. She gets home and tells herself that it is over now. She’s serious this time. She’s going to stay at home until she hears about whether or not she is keeping her job.

But as she should’ve expected, that plan more or less blows up in her face. Agent Spender calls with information for her. He wants her to intercept the transport of his mother by train at the Potomac yards. Scully is tempted to say no, partially out of not wanting to be involved and partially out of contempt for Jeffrey Spender, but remembering everything she and Cassandra have been through, she finds herself unable to.

Mulder calls her en route to Cassandra. He wants to come pick her up, to go somewhere with him and Diana. She laughs bitterly at that. “That’s not going to happen, Mulder,” she says, teeth gritted. She tells him she is going to find Cassandra. She refuses to come with him. He decides to come with her instead.

Against her better judgement, she decides to go pick him up. For Cassandra, she tells herself. No other reason. They make it to the Potomac yards, but they can’t stop the train. Mulder tells her and Skinner that something bad is about to go down at El Rico Air Base. And by morning, everyone at El Rico Air Base is dead.

Scully goes home. Even after everything case down, after Mulder tries to apologize, she still goes home. She’s tired of the whole thing. After everything, she couldn’t even save Cassandra. She doesn’t want to hear Mulder’s apologies; she can’t do this anymore. She just wants it all to be over.

—

The next morning, she gets a call from Skinner. “Agent Scully, I’m calling to tell you that your suspension had been lifted,” he says solemnly. “And that you’ve been reassigned to the X-Files, by request of Agent Mulder.”

Scully bites down on her lower lip so hard that it bleeds. “Excuse me, sir,” she says, “but I believe that the X-Files are currently at their maximum capacity of agents.”

“I’m afraid they’re not. Agent Fowley requested a transfer,” says Skinner. He clears his throat. “And I’m afraid there’s worse news. Agent Spender’s blood was found all over the office. It will be a while before either of you can begin work.”

Scully grimaces. “That’s horrible. Do they have any idea who did it?”

“No, but I can tell you who Mulder suspects,” Skinner says.

Scully nods, staring at the rug, tears blurring her vision. She knows who he’s talking about, and she’s too exhausted to consider it. It’s been some of the longest few days of her life. And now they’re offering the X-Files back, and she’s not sure that she wants it, after everything that’s happened. At one point, she didn’t, and then she didn’t, and now she doesn’t again. She doesn’t know what to do now. All she really wants is for things to be the way they were before all of this started. Before Diana Fowley came back, before Mulder had essentially rejected her and her trust.

“Is… everything okay, Scully?” Skinner asks on the other end. She sniffles quietly and wipes her eyes; she’d almost forgotten he was there. “I thought this would be good news.”

“I… appreciate you calling to give me the news, sir,” she says quietly. “But I don’t know that I can accept the position.”

Skinner is quiet for a moment on the other end. And then he says, “You know, Mulder’s been making requests for you to be transferred back to the Files since the beginning, you know. The whole time he was partnered with Agent Fowley. He’s been asking to work with you the whole time.”

Her eyes blur further; she’s not sure if she’s grateful or extraordinarily embarrassed that Skinner managed to see through her act, see what she’s been worried about. She thanks Skinner quietly and hangs up quickly, rests her chin on her hand across the arm of the couch. She tries to tell herself it doesn’t mean anything. She tries not to think of her and Mulder on this couch a week ago, her half-asleep and him stroking the bottom of her foot absently from where it lay across his thigh, kissing her hair absently as he left. Of his teary eyes in a hallway last summer as he begged her to stay.

7. He’s at her door by that night. Of course he is. He’s apologizing before she can even get the door all the way open. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She sighs wearily, leaning against the door. “What do you want, Mulder?”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, reaching out to stop her from closing the door, although she’s made no move to close it. “I’m so sorry, Scully. You… you were right. I was an ass, and I’m sorry.”

Her hands clenched harder around the doorknob. She looks at him without saying a word.

“I-I’m sorry that they partnered me with Diana,” he says softly.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she mutters, resentful and remorseful all in the same breath.

He isn’t finished. He begins, “It's… it’s been hard for me to know how to deal with this. Part of me wants things to… to be the way they were before Diana left. She… she meant a lot to me, and it’s tempting to try and look past everything else and just remember what it was like before. But even from the beginning, I… things didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to work without you. I didn’t know how to work without you. I kept making excuses to hang out with you because I missed you so much.”

She looks down, away from him, at the doormat. She doesn’t know how to talk about this. She’s thinking about it, every lunch and mid-day phone call and movie night, and the memories are almost painful. “Mulder…” she says softly.

“You said you didn’t see why I needed you anymore, but I do need you, Scully.” His voice breaks a little. “I always need you. You’re my partner.”

She sniffles. She remembers when, while high off his ass, he told her that he loved her. She’s still not sure she believes him. She says, “You still trust her.”

“I…” He’s hesitating. He reaches out gently to touch her shoulder. “I don’t know anymore, Scully. I trust you. And I should’ve listened to you, and I never should’ve told you that you were making it personal, because it’s always been personal with us.” He rubs a circle along the back of her shoulder, steps a little closer. She doesn’t step away. “I’ve really, really missed you,” he murmurs. “And I’d love to work with you again, if you want.”

She gulps. She lifts her chin a little to meet his eyes. “I missed you, too,” she whispers, the back of her neck reddening.

He squeezes her shoulder. “I… I was wondering if we could talk about things,” he murmurs. “You and me. I was wondering if we could try and work on them.”

She wipes one eyes with the tip of her finger. She takes a deep breath and steps aside in the doorway so he can come in.

#iiiii don't love these last three parts but oh well #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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coolkidstable · 5 years

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guess who’s back!

it’s been like a week but i am BACK BABY! as you can guess i have mixed feelings about that entire series, which were amplified by the fact that i actually went to that game - yes, game 4 - as a (slightly early) birthday present from my brother. this is truly just 2.3k words of me being emo and getting personal, but it helped me process everything. and sorry for the lack of a read more but i’m on mobile lmao

i made it clear to both family and friends that i wanted this series to be a close one, for the home team to win each game, and for it to be a hard fought series that shows just how good both of these teams are. (maybe this wasn’t as clear on tumblr, but the decision to step away was made abruptly, though i’m very glad i did it.) that, well, didn’t happen. the canes are a great team, and their success wasn’t a fluke. don’t even try to suggest that. but this series didn’t work for them, for reasons that i really don’t know but may be revealed with time. who knows. regardless, it was a fantastic run and while i wish the ending wasn’t so bitter, i’m so proud of this team and all that they accomplished this season. the future is bright, and this time “next year will be better” isn’t just a hope - it’s a promise.

i really wanted them to score a goal, though. i love tuukka, and i want him to win those two trophies so badly, but i was really hoping he’d give up a goal. obviously, the canes’ chances of coming back to win the series were slim to none, but one last goal would’ve been a way to end the season on a somewhat promising note. and it’s weird and a bit sad that i went to 3 home games this season, and didn’t even get to hear raise up in person - two shutouts and a whalers night for which brass bonanza played instead.

that’s not the main reason, though. i was at this game with my brother, whose main team is the canes, who just got back into hockey late last season, opting to root for his local team over his childhood rangers and getting to see such an incredible run. he just wanted to see a goal to ease the blow, and i was right there with him. it was expected, though, and he’s not crushed or anything. he went to some pretty special games this season, including both the first storm surge and the first playoff win, and he knows that the rest of our family is happy. and really, that’s what it all comes back to - family.

the first bruins game that i have even the vaguest of memories of watching is the 2010 winter classic against the flyers. i’m not even 100% sure if i watched any of it; i just remember asking my dad why they were playing outside and catching glimpses of the game while he watched. he and my mom, once diehard bruins fans, had become fairweather fans upon moving to north carolina in 2003. the bruins, quite frankly, sucked, and games were rarely on tv. meanwhile, the patriots were quite the opposite. the bruins soon started to improve and began to creep back into our lives. i remember the 2011 cup finals, and not knowing a single player other than zdeno chara - the Tall One - and tim thomas - the Brick Wall. i don’t remember much else, but i was there in some capacity.

then came 2013. a series against the leafs. a historical game 7 comeback from a 4-1 deficit. i remember watching bits and pieces of this game on two different TVs - first the main one downstairs, where my dad was watching, only because it was the playoffs. he didn’t watch or care about regular season hockey - i didn’t even know there’d just been a lockout. when he gave up on this game, he went upstairs to go to bed and turned on the tv for background noise while i hung around to say goodnight. we were almost done when nathan horton scored the first goal, and from there, we watched history unfold. i was losing my mind - was this what i’d been missing out on?

from there, i watched the rest of the playoffs, and i haven’t looked back since. first i watched this young undersized rookie defenseman by the name of torey krug take the rangers by storm, then i watched the bruins hand the penguins‘ asses to them in a swift 4-game sweep that began with a shutout on my birthday, and then i watched the bruins lose a hard-fought series against the chicago racistlogos in the blink of an eye. it was a rollercoaster of a postseason, and i spent most of my free time learning about the game and my new favorite player, who i must regretfully admit was seguin. every game brought me closer to my dad, as before the game 7 comeback, i’d never join him to watch sports, or anything, really. in turn, it allowed him to reconnect with the sport he’d once loved most of all.

the next season was a good one as well: my first full season, the first game i ever attended in person, and the bruins winning the president’s trophy. that season ended in disappointment, but it was a good run, and i grew an appreciation for every single member of that bruins team. (nowadays, i guess that attitude is what the kids would call my brand.)

halfway through that season, i discovered hockey tumblr. i didn’t really make content or liveblog or even talk in the tags, and i never made any lasting connections, but still, it was a community that i greatly enjoyed. it also opened my eyes to other teams, and i started to experiment with the whole having more than one team thing - yeah, those were my stars fan days, among other questionable choices that aren’t important right now. this is also where the canes first came into my life, though not as a true second team until much more recently. things were changing, and not always for the better.

the 2014-15 season was fun, though i wasn’t able to watch as many games due to not knowing about r/NHLStreams or anything of that nature. regardless, the bruins just simply weren’t very good, and the season ended in disappointment. a few months later, hockey became very disappointing for reasons i won’t get into, and this coincided with my second emo phase (see: my current url). i ended up jumping ship for bandom tumblr and the life of a panic! at the disco stan.

still, i kept up with the 2015-16 season a little. it kinda sucked, but it was fine. i still loved the team - i just wasn’t really invested anymore. and maybe it was for the best given how busy school was that year. the next season went much the same, only this time, the bruins made the playoffs, i had just about given up on using tumblr at all, and there was this new kid on the team named sean kuraly.

the 2017 playoffs were odd. i hadn’t watched many games that season, and i hadn’t watched a bruins playoff game since the last time i was truly invested in hockey. still, it wasn’t like a switch flipped and i suddenly stanned the bruins again. i spent all the games in that series playing pokémon moon while occasionally glancing at the screen to see what was happening. i wasn’t even truly playing the game; i’d already beaten it and was merely trying my hand at shiny hunting a jangmo’o by hatching dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of eggs, nicknaming them, and randomly trading them over the internet. it was mindless enough to pay attention, and pay attention i did.

it was kind of like the rangers series, on a smaller and less successful scale. much like torey krug before him, sean kuraly came out with a bang and made bruins fans love hockey again - or maybe i’m just projecting. regardless, you know he scored the 2OT winner, and you know about the kuraleap. i don’t remember how many jangmo’os named sean, kuraly, and sean kuraly i traded to the lucky people of pokémon sun and moon wondertrade, but the humber was definitely higher than 52. the bruins did lose the series, but i was interested again.

when the 2017 draft happened, i felt a special connection to it by virtue of these boys being the right age to be in the same high school graduating class as me. this draft piqued my interest in a way no other since 2014 truly had (unpopular opinion on 2015, i know, especially considering my favorite player was drafted fourteenth that year), and you know what? it had been a few months since i’d been active on tumblr, but i searched a few tags and started peaking back at hockey tumblr. i was almost convinced i should dive back in and redo my account for the second time, but i had college orientation to worry about, and by the time i returned, the motivation was lost.

until the 2017-18 home opener. you all know i love jake debrusk, and you probably know he scored his first nhl goal in that game (alongside charlie mac). you’ve seen the video and/or gifs of his dad crying. but beyond all that, it was just a damn good game. i had so much fun watching it - in boston, no less, because finally, after all those years trapped in my hometown, i was where i wanted to be - that i just had to get involved with hockey tumblr again. watching on my own wasn’t going to be enough, i knew.

and so, tumblr user @david-pastrnak returned. honestly, that season was fun, but the first half felt like a blur - likely just because it was my first semester of college. i even went to my first bruins home game in november, and though it wasn’t a good one, it was fun. they picked up the season with a win against tampa on the day i met my favorite band, and somehow, that seemed important. soon i saw my first live bruins win on td garden ice, and even went to a few more games, during which i watched as my grandma grew to love hockey and the bruins, bringing us closer together. it was around this time that i truly embraced the hurricanes, too, and having that second team that i truly care about and love has made being a hockey fan so much fun. it was also around this time that i rediscovered my love for writing. things were changing for the better, but they were only getting started. even when the bruins lost in disappointing fashion to the lightning, i knew things were going to be okay - better, even.

the off-season was mostly uneventful, but towards the end and into the beginning of the season, i ended up in a few group chats with others on here. some of these are still active while others are not, but regardless, i connected with a lot more people, got better at making conversation, and, most importantly, found some of the best friends i’ve ever had. you don’t really expect to meet a lifelong friend on the internet, never mind several, but i’ve gotten incredibly lucky!

this season has been special. i started going to games more often, grew to care about every member of this team more than i’ve probably ever cared about the entire team, and made some incredible friends who i’m blessed to know. and beyond me, this season has been incredible. you know that if you’re reading this, so i won’t get into it all. there were ups and downs, there were moments we thought we’d be golfing in april, and now we’re going to the stanley cup final. the last time this happened, i had just started watching hockey and was still learning. i was also a literal child who still thought i was straight. a lot has changed since then, and somehow, this stanley cup final feels like a culmination of everything i’ve been through with and because of this team. winning the cup isn’t just about how happy it would make jake, how much tuukka deserves it, or whether sean would hand it to danton or vice versa. it’s not about watching to see who helps wags lift it without damaging his injured hand further. it’s not even about watching the look of pure joy on pasta’s face and thinking back to his draft day and my bold, unwarranted, yet correct claim that he would be one of, if not the best player to come out of the 2014 draft. no matter how much they mean to me, winning the cup isn’t about the players.

winning the cup this season would be a celebration of all the friends i’ve made, the stories we’ve shared, and the connections we’ve made. winning the cup would be a celebration of how much closer hockey has brought me to my family. shit, winning the cup would be a celebration of kureinen and all our fun memes because why the hell not?

winning the cup isn’t about the players, or the team, or the parade, or the bragging rights for fans of boston sports. winning the cup is about the deeply meaningful and even just the fun ways in which hockey and the community on here have positively impacted our lives.

and even if we don’t, it’s okay. this season has been by far the best i’ve ever watched, and no matter what happens, it’s one i’ll always remember.

but hey, if we do, i’ll get my first tattoo to commemorate it. speaking of playoff promises, from now on, i’m going to have to talk like anders bjork on here so checkurohhhhhhhh

#now that that’s out of my system: i cannot believe ive been to two series winning games what the fuck #and i need to finish the fic i promised but once i get home it’ll be my priority!#personal #also i won’t be fully back until tomorrow in reality bc i’m busy today lmao #long post

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slashtakemylife · 5 years

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What I think made VLD fail narratively and a possible fix-it

Most of us agree it was in S3 when Voltron went all over the place, Voltron’s plot went like a headless chicken from S3 to S6 then S7 looks like filler and S8 took the weight of explaining everything

The main problem is that Voltron doesn’t have a real coherent focal point of conflict, there are power stuggles between the baddies that leaves us an the general story line confused,here’s each season’s conflict or problem and how it went wrong and a possible fix it (Loooong post)

S1 - S2 (The Perfect ones)

Problem: Zarkon

Big Conqueror Meanie, these is not much to say about Zarkon other than he is the bad guy so the paladins have time to start their journey and learn of each other and the situation they are in, along with us the audience and at the end of S2 the big meanie is defeated

S3 - S6 (Headless Chicken)

Problem: ???? Lotor, then Zarkon then Lotor and at times even Haggar

Lotor is now our main conflict focus, his premise is that he is turning the Galra into Good people, so that opens the idea that they could go back to being the peaceful people they were, even be part of the newly forming Coalition, so Lotor joining forces with Voltron for the greater good is not such a crazy idea, in fact, that is the idea

However we also see he is a back stabber, he is always waiting it out for the best moment to strike and you know it’s going to be big but he waits so damn long even his generals get fed up with him and betray him, at some points even Haggar looks like a good contender to be the true big baddie but then...

Zarkon is back alive, pushing the focus of the conflic back to him because this series began with him, we were trained to see him as the main threat so Lotor and Haggar are pushed back, for what? Zarkon gets killed again and Lotor is now the emperor then he is shown to be the good guy working alongside Voltron only for then to back stab them and reveal his true intentions

Ring any bells? This was stablished since season 3, but Lotor only get’s to be emperor and his defeat all in season 6, we went 3 season going in circles, in between baddies, only to end up in the same place, Lotor is crowned, makes Good galra and uses Allura for research

The problem here is, we as an audience don’t have a clear focus on the conflict we only ever feel a general “galra is bad period” conflict that is not strong enough to be a real motive or plausable “why” for the series actions and character development of our heroes and the series story in general, they change direction and focus that the paladins and we as an audience fail to catch up and have the characters do things and stuff that makes no sense at all

Keith, we start with him tryin to be the leader but then Shiro comes back so that pushes Keith away into the Blades only for him to come back to pilot black, Shiro disappears only to come back into his role, Pidge focuses on the threat at hand when suddenly we have an entire episode of her finding her family with it legit starting in a “hey this GENERAL CONFLICT is happening but I need to take a few days” (seriously see the begining of that ep is almost literally like that, I’m really not making it up). Lance swings back and forward from goofball lover-boy to serious team mate to goofball and then back to serious, Hunk, my poor boy gets left behind in development entirely again, and this happens for 3 WHOLE SEASONS, and again, they all go in circles until they end up in the exact same place they hinted at in the beginning of season 3

S7 (Complete Filler)

Problem: Sendak?!

Ok after we stablished our main group of baddies, the royal family pretty much, S7 brings Sendak? A secondary villain that has no depth over Vrepit Sa and Victory or Death? The main drive of the season is that earth is in danger but since this is the focus, all the past 6 seasons feel for nothing, we don’t see anything of the main baddies, the royal family so story wise we don’t get much content per se

We get a lot of the characters’ development and backstory here but this shows how VLD failed narratively, without a clear structure in the headless chicken phase there were never moments to naturally wove in character development into the story (like S1 - S2 showing Pidge slowly getting info of her family as the story progessed without taking the focus of the threat at hand) beause there was no story! we were all confused and runing around like headless chikens from baddie to baddie to really include our heroes stories, so they had no choice but to shove them down our throats in this season

I knew VLDs was at it’s worst when right from the start, the very first episode:

Keith: you have no idea what Shiro’s done for me

VLD: proceeds to show what Shiro did

FFFFFFFFFFF what? This is so so so balantly obvious, as in literal narration, shows how bad VLD got that they just flat out tell you, these little phrases, these nudges of ‘hey hey you remember?’ are meant to be used because you have previously stablished the moment before, an ‘oh yes I remember!’, I read that all those flashback were due to appear back in the start of S2 when Keith and Shiro were wormeholed together and they reminicent a little on their past and bond, but they held back because they didn’t want to put a heavy flashback episode, well they had no choice but make S7Ep1 a heavy flashback episode because they didn’t do it throughout the consecutive seasons, if they had added just one scene, one memory back in S2

“Brused Keith outside of office, clearly he fought someone, Shiro telling him he won’t give up on him”

When we finally arrive at S7 and Keith delivers that line, we know the deep meaning behing it, we feel conected to the show, is the same feeling we get at Marvel movies when they drop a name or a previous event, or when in Justice League Bruce tells Diana about Steve, we feel that, because we know just how loaded that phrase is, in here is just a flat line with no meaning until Voltron shows you in that exact next moment why it has to have meaning, since they went all over the place in the Headless Chicken phase, they had no time to add these things, leaving the creators with no choice but to push important plot things in this filler season and of course, our next and last one

S8 (The Final Choke)

Problem: Haggar, Royal Family

Now here I admit something, I have yet to watch S8 but I’ve spoiled myself enough, comments would be appreciated if I got something wrong.

Not gonna talk on any shipping or the character’s ending, the main problem I see repeat itself is people talking how little there is of the characters, how they go back to square 1 on what their roles are (cook, tech-wiz, fearless leader) rather than the people we saw grow and develop, how there’s little interaction between them and that is pretty much the main reason almost all of us are here (yes there is but is fewer than in other seasons) however the reason is that this season has the job to build up and break down Haggar’s but also the Royal Familys’, despite having 7 seasons it is only now that Haggar gets the full back story and with that tie in the finale, Voltron expects us to be able to focus on the villans and not so much on the paladins (heroes) because, supposedly, they’ve spent 7 seasons telling us who this characters are, what motivates them, what makes them strong, that we no longer need to focus on them that much, meaning we have enough time to give the Royal Family all the story they never had and our heroes just the final touches, the final tie ins that they need to lead them into their epilogue

So that went to shit, unfortunately, by the reactions, they didn’t succeed, they had to drop things, rush things, forcefully add things to give the season a bit of sense and coherence while also adding big robo fights and general stuff like comic moments, bonding and their lay-low/fun episode, it was just a lot and they barely got it

So now on to my main point, the reason VLD has so many plot holes, so many stories that go nowhere is because of that damn headless chicken phase, we wasted time seeing Lotor get to the throne with so many twist and turns, that time should’ve been used to add character development and a coherent story, the story has nothing to focus on, leaving the creators to fill in with sometimes even more things that they should, leaving so many loose ends the audience and even VLD himself can’t keep up, ultimately having to rely on their last 2 season to try and pull it all together, if they succeeded or not is up to you

Also I saw a post saying how VLD built up a world and it’s rules but then did whatever it wanted, making new rules, breaking them or remaking them, there is no logic behind, this also affects the last 2 seasons, since they reach a point were there really is no time left for the resolution, they have to rely on convinient things to solve problems, to make and break rules as they go to try and fix the problem but this can also get confusing and sometimes a little over the top, in S7 they legit say, there’s a lot of crazy science stuff said to make things work, just go with it, pretty much means, don’t think of it too much, we didn’t either, just bask in the glorious thiccness of the Atlas

My fix it is basically to let Lotor become emperor sooner, Zarkon stays dead and Lotors’ defeat to be a season sooner, thus allowing VLD time to develop Honerva

S1 - S2

Those are perfect

S3 - S5

Lotor becomes emperor because he is the rightful heir, he creates a Good Galra but he either

Makes it fake like in the Altean colonies and uses people for making his mega weapon

Threatens the people to tell Voltron they are safe with the Galra (they did something like that at the start of S3)

This gives the Paladins a false sense of trust on Lotor, helping him with getting the material he needed for his ship and the whole Allura thing, ends with his defeat (I would even put Lotor’s squad as the ‘bad guys’, like rebel Galra, so they make Lotor look good but he is directing them, honestly I wanted to see more Paladins VS Lotor’s squad but then they go separate that it never happens again, not all 4 of them at least)

Get back to Earth, basically canon S7, since Sendak is sort of not a main villain, I would start Haggar arc from here the basic info of her plan, it ends with Voltron defeating Sendak

S7 - S8

Start S7 with Honerva’s Robeast we saw at the end of canon S7 (got battle fatigue at the end of canon S7 so putting that last fight to the next season would be great) so that means we get 2 whole season to really flush out what they made in S8, even, EVEN getting a proper Lotor redemption arc were we don’t see his melting corpse

By doing this, you strech the story, give time to focus on what you want to show, I will just talk the only canon pairing, defeating Lotor since S5 gives Allura 3 seasons to get over him and flush out a bit more that ship rather than the rushed out thing we got, give Lance and Hunk more arc, yes I will say it, get the LGBT rep right, focus on the story, show what will help the story, it being how do we defeat this very clear antagonist since we don’t even know who I’m pointing my bayard at, chose what plot you will develop and not put all kinds of plot holes, weave in the character development into the story and not just plaster it into our face because you ran out of time

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #voltron season 8

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rebornlaracroft · 6 years

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FFXV: On Episode Ignis (SPOILERS) - (Another) Emotional Breakdown/ Review (kind of, still crying) OR "How to get a DLC right (in my opinion)" & Thank You to the FFXV Development Team!

When I wrote my emotional breakdown/review back in November of 2016 I had no idea that I would indeed write another one, especially on FFXV. I thought I had already said everything I had to say about that game, well serves me right for being wrong. And damn I'm happy that I'm wrong.

WARNING: THERE OBVIOUSLY WILL BE SPOILERS FOR BOTH THE MAIN GAME AND ALL THE DLC!

As I said back then FFXV is a great game, while I acknowledge it's flaws and the wasted potential in some parts (which could still be changed next year it seems?) I also appreciate it for what it is. The game left a huge impact on me back then, an impact that still has it's effect even one year later, perhaps because the game is still present through the DLCs but I guess there's more to it then that.

First off: I liked all DLC episodes, Gladios probably the least because of kinda lacking story and the focus on battle which was fun but nothing more then that unfortunately. Promptos was way better, resolution regarding the conflict on who he actually is, or rather what he is and (B)A(E)ranea, I mean she's a fan favorite, right? (Notice: And yes while I agree that the DLC could/should have been part of the main game, I just accepted the DLC issue that's been present for year now with all kinds of games and they did deliver great content for the money so in my opinion it was worth it!)

But episode Ignis is different from both of them, different in a way I had never expected it to be, different in the way that it gave us the happy ending we've been wanting for a whole year now!

But before I get into that, let's talk about the Episode. It was as emotional as I had expected, seeing Ravus was amazing, although he only was there for a short amount of time until we had to fight him. I wish that part would have been a little longer. His scene with Luna was heartbreaking, seeing her drifting away... I really like Luna, even if she isn't as developed as she could be, I like her and I wish that alternate path would have given us a way to save her too. I would have liked a little flashback though, some kind of talk between Ravus and Luna about their fate as part of the Kanagi prophecy or whatever you may call it, preferably when they were both children or teenagers since Ravus mentioned themselves as children when Regis left them. It would have been a really nice addition.

Regarding flashbacks or rather flashforwards/visions... Ignis actually knew HOW Noctis was destined to die, how he had to sacrifice himself, be killed by an entity that once was his own father just for the sake of their world. I can't imagine what kind of burden that was for him, considering that was one of the very last things he ever saw, something that mist have been burned into his mind, his very best friend serving as a sacrifice to save everyone.

Now on to Ignis' sacrifice... obviously as painful as I had anticipated, but also a badass fight against Ardyn! Being given the choice (well not really, since you can only follow the actual story the first time you play it) was really interesting and probably one of the best additions they could have made. Since the second choice gives us something none of us could have ever anticipated, something probably all of us have wished for since we finished the game - an actual good ending.

Now I don't mean to say the real ending isn't good, it is, it's fitting, it's the way it's meant to be. But having an alternate, better, ending is something that I really wanted, it doesn't have to be the true ending but I just want to see them happy, not just in my mind but also on the screen! Many people wished for that option and it seems they listened, I don't know if they intended that alternate ending to be included since the beginning or if they actually included it because the fans wanted it? I would suppose it's the second one, its just nice to think that way! Anyway on to the ending. The battle against Ardyn was really hard but considering what we get after it it's definitely worth it! Once again we get Ignis sacrificing everything he has to save Noctis, at least I had to. I had to sacrifice my senses, my body and lastly my life. I don't know if you can finish the battle without having to give up everything? Defeating Ardyn leads to Noctis gaining a stronger resolve then before, he doesn't want to leave anyone alone, he understands that he isn't alone and that he doesn't have to bear that burden alone. Due to timeline changes Ravus survives as well! We see all the important characters, everyone coming together seemingly to fight the darkness, to hold out ten more years for Noctis to come back and for all of them to fight together. Somehow it seems Ignis isn't blind this time, maybe Noctis healed him before he went into the Crystal, it seemed that way at least. It's very ambiguous, not everything is precisely explained but that's fine, it's beautiful, it's what I wanted all along. The four comrades, friends, brothers enter the final battle together even with Ravus by their side, an older Ravus that has finally been able to acknowledge Noctis thus giving him his father's sword.

The very last scene after the sky brightens is Ignis standing in the throne room in front of Noctis who is sitting in the throne, mind that it's ONLY Ignis. He seems to form the word majesty in Japanese, though there was no sound.

THEORIES:

1. Everybody lives, everybody is happy, they fought together and somehow managed to avoid Noctis having to sacrifice himself since they were by his side, maybe they could all help in activating the crystals power together. That's what I think at least, they live, Noctis lives, all of them do and they managed to defeat the darkness, they finally finished their journey and returned home to rebuild Insomnia.

2. Ignis has died alongside Noctis. This could be possible because he had to give his life to use the ring, at least I had to eventually. Though why was he kept alive for 10 years? I don't know, but it's possible that his sacrifice was only made when Noctis returned and sacrificed himself as well? This would mean the last scene shows both of them as ghost like entities just like Noctis and Luna in the true ending. This could also explain why we don't hear Ignis say majesty, an artistic choice maybe, and why it's only him and Noctis. It would be a nice way of interpreting the ending as a Ignoct shipper.

Either way, I guess how you interpret this alternate ending is up to you! There's no clear explanation, not enough information, we don't see a sacrifice this time. The ending is brilliant, you can make of it what you want, it can be your perfect ending if you want it to be and that's just wonderful. It's the greatest addition they've given us with those DLC, one that only worked in Ignis episode!

I don't remember exactly when they take place, but we get some new scenes during the credits and before or after, a talk between Ignis and Noctis after the famous last camp scene. Another very beautiful and emotional moment between the characters. It doesn't matter whether you ship any of them or not but that camp scene in the main game made it clear that they LOVE each other. After what they've been through they have such a deep connection, all of them have this wonderful bond. Bit Ignis also has his duty, a duty of protection, for him Noctis is his very purpose! I don't want to belittle the other characters in saying that they don't feel the same way, but Ignis is different, it's difficult to explain but there's a reason for why only he got this additional camp scene with Noctis, one that once again shows their love for each other, the suffering they cause each other. Noctis blames himself for what happened to Ignis and Ignis blames himself for what is going to happen to Noctis because he couldn't avoid it (at least not in this timeline). It's a mutual connection the other two don't share in this exact way and that's what makes their relationship special and stand out in this scene. I would have liked Gladio and Prompto to get an extra scene too in their episodes but even this is enough for me.

The last thing I want to do is to give a HUGE THANK YOU to the development team for giving their best at the DLCs and especially for this very episode! They did an amazing job, they gave the fans excalty what they wanted and I couldn't be happier now! I really do love this game despite its flaws and issues and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll give us next year, I think episode Ardyn was confirmed, hopefully episode Luna too! Episode Aranea and Ravus would be awesome too, given that both are amazing characters and Aranea is a fan favorite and both deserve more love!

#final fantasy 15 spoilers #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #ffxv #ff15 #noctis lucis caelum #ignis scientia #gladiolus amicitia #prompto argentum #ignoct #episode ignis #review #games #ps4 #mental breakdown #emotional #crying #spoilers

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swyllh · 6 years

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junshua: all real values

title: all real values

premise: junhui can control probabilities. he can’t make boys (like jisoo) fall in love with him.

genre: angst, fluff, modern magical au

wordcount: 4183

ship: junhui x joshua

warnings: implied sexual content

cross-posted on: AFF

"you are the kind of boy that boys will fall in love with. they will fall hard, fast, and short of your every expectation."

the coin, suspended in mid-air, glints knowingly. this is where he begins, this is where it falls - everything narrows, shrinks, crowds in on this one moment of judgement. the sound of passers-by and irrelevance fade into an inconclusive, bated breath. junhui squints, feels the pounding of blood and instinct in the back of his head. he pushes the thought forward, needling focus into a single, hard point before his eyes. fate, undecided then, twists and tweaks itself accordingly.

"heads," he whispers. the coin slams back down in his palm, yielding.

"you cheated," a girl younger than him cries, and the bubble of miracle splits open - everywhere, sounds and noises come rushing back in.

a car passes them by in the adjacent road, and a dog is barking fervently. sunlight winks in the periphery of his upward glance, and everything feels right again.

"i didn't," junhui says calmly, pocketing the coin. "i guessed right."

he's not good at math. the answers are straightforward and stubborn, laid out in the hard, honest strokes before him. the chalk crumbles at his glare, but remains firmly etched on the blackboard. junhui sighs, and raises his shaking hand. someone, qiutong or yanpeng, fakes a cough behind him. his math teacher, an old but humorous man, folds his arms and gazes knowingly at junhui's unmoving figure.

he presses the chalk into the board, and starts writing gibberish. but if he believes it's right, then maybe he'll be spared the extra homework.

tell me i'm right, he prays, turning over to look at his teacher. the old man lowers his glasses and squints, getting up from the table. things are looking hopeful, and junhui gulps nervously, willing his gift to somehow transcend the laws of this world to spare him for this one period.

"wen junhui," his teacher says slowly - possibly a tone of wonder? - and then clocks him in the head. "don't sleep in class next time."

he goes on his first date in the summer of 2010. it's hot, and sweltering, and chock full of smoke. the fact that he's wearing hand-me-downs and ratty old sneakers doesn't help, but he'll do what he can with it. the popsicle in his hand is melting with a vengeance, but it's a stinging mint that he regrets buying. whatever. he bites into it, relishing the cold and the strange tingling sensitivity it bestows on his gums.

"wen junhui!" qiutong yells, nervous but brave. "over here, you dummy!"

he turns to where her voice is, and nods his confidence into place. she looks at him appraisingly, and he smiles brighter. qiutong's dressed up much nicer than he is - she's managed to stay sweat-free, a biological victory on her part, and not past the point of overdressing. he thinks he'll be able to get his first kiss by the end of the day. it's not a particularly nice thought, and it leaves a somewhat sour taste in his mouth. but still. he's a teenage boy, and that's what always happens.

she does kiss him, shyly, on the cheek, and he thinks he should have pulled her back for an actual kiss. but he doesn't, and she stays smiling at him while he walks her home.

summer vacation passes with a rapid, heated succession of sweet nothings and cotton-dry kisses. his fling blurs into a hazy, stifling memory, like deliberately coy touches against his neck. qiutong, still wearing her hair long and sleek in a ponytail, prances into another girlish infatuation with the boy next door. junhui continues reading his comics in class.

but over the summer break, some things have visibly changed. yanpeng, a funny guy who had only reached junhui's nose at best, returned with a tall, lanky frame. he's still the same goofball struggling with the guitar, but this time, there are clusters of girls in quiet amazement when he practices.

his hands have gotten bigger too - his middle finger and thumb are no longer separated when he circles a hand around junhui's loose wrist.

"heard you went out on a date with qiutong," yanpeng says, wriggling his eyebrows.

It's meant to be a greasy gesture, but it comes off as rougish and playful. junhui licks his lip, caught by the leftover itch of summer.

"yeah."

"lucky bastard," yanpeng exclaims, leaning back in his chair.

his tanned, uneven neck is all hard edges now, leading down into the barely visible hollows of his collarbones. the rest vanishes behind the clean white folds of his shirt. crisp, junhui thinks, almost cool.

yanpeng leans forward, peering into junhui's face. "did you kiss?"

junhui doesn't trust his voice to speak (it still breaks embarrassingly whenever he's pretending nothing's changing). so instead, he nods, mildly pleased with the effect of this one simple gesture: yanpeng's eyes widen, beautifully bright with awe.

"you lucky bastard," yanpeng says slowly.

junhui smirks, his ribs threatening to burst under a shameful mix of pleasure and want and guilt. at this distance, he can see the light-brown flecks in yanpeng's eyes, as well as the flutter of each lash. his gaze wanders down in a sinful, vulgar blink, resting on the other boy's pale, chapped lips.

it's nothing like qiutong's - she had always been wearing those sticky strawberry glosses that clung to his cheeks possessively. and though they were sweet and feminine, she kept reapplying them. eventually those kisses felt like obligations, and the tacky weight of each smack too heavy to bear alongside the summer heat.

"i wonder what it's like to kiss," yanpeng says, leaning in.

junhui suddenly pulls away, and the motion extinguishes a light in yanpeng's eyes. no one speaks. the silence pushes yanpeng back to face his own worksheets, leaving junhui with a devastatingly attractive view of his straightened spine.

i wonder what it's like to kiss you, junhui had thought.

in a heartbeat, he hears those words echoed through yanpeng.

the party clamours on; junhui holds the red plastic cup close to his chest, laughing at some beer-soaked joke that's being shared. qiutong is in the corner, whispering in the same low dulcet tones she'd croaked into his ear the last summer. in the narrow span between a failed beer pong toss and the lucky outcome of a bet, jun finds himself finishing the last of the alcoholic infusion.

yanpeng is kissing someone else now. the sight of it - junhui's suddenly pressing a palm to his mouth, overcome by the acrid taste of bile rising up his throat.

don't look at me, he thinks, stumbling back into the counter and then, why don't you look at me like that. please. please. pleasepleaseplease.

yanpeng shifts, pulling away from his first kiss with a dazed look. the universe, morbidly amused, makes him stare unseeingly through junhui.

junhui bolts out of the house.

the stars, winking fervently, form an intricate carcass against the hollow sky. junhui wipes at his mouth, heaving uselessly. something bubbles at the base of his throat and reduces him into a laughing wreck.

he pulls out a coin, cool against clammy heat of his fingers. it offers no resolution, and is only ever honest in its glossy, half-hearted reflection. he tosses it, right hand moving in a well-practiced flourish. the coin spins into a white glint, suspended in midair, awaiting judgement.

"heads," he whispers. the coin slams back down in his palm, yielding.

he moves to seoul in a few years. the language is an assortment of words uncertainly shaped in the same sounds, but his intonation is always just a little off. korean tastes strangely reminiscent on his tongue, like home in an alternate dimension.

he begins with simple odd acts here and there, underlining auditions with a ballpoint pen, circling unknown words and mistaken characters. but his determination to succeed is what pushes him forward - literally.

a firm handshake, neatly-pressed shirts and a leatherbound will ticking against his wrist - he wants, he wills.

it's how he meets jeonghan. the shoot is less moving than he'd expected; when they bring out the cameras and leave the recording mics behind, junhui starts to feel a little worried. but he's immediately overwhelmed by someone entering the room, and can't help but turn around.

the man, glowing and eternally understanding, graces him with a smile - one that forgave all of his misconducts and unfortunate kisses. redemption, too easily earned and hardly ever well-deserved, glides towards junhui in a couple of strides. even the taste of his name on junhui's lips is a refreshing gift.

"yoon jeonghan," jeonghan had introduced himself. "you must be junhui."

junhui takes his hand, compelled. "yes."

(something fizzles, pulses, stings just right - jeonghan's eyes light up, mirroring his own.)

in a matter of minutes, he's agreed to move in with jeonghan and his family.

family is a pretty broad way of phrasing it - from chan to mingyu, the boys have absolutely nothing in common. that is, until junhui sets his bag down in his room, and is immediately accosted by eleven new faces. seungkwan's the first to arrive, his bright, glossy face in a face mask and cucumbers in either hand.

"you must be junhui!" seungkwan coos.

jeonghan sighs, and gives them a look. "really, seungkwan? you had to get the whole house up and moving at eleven?"

seungkwan startles, and turns to face ten other faces. "no, that wasn't me! i wouldn't have brought them."

at this, chan awkwardly raises his hand. "i think it was you, jeonghan-hyung."

"yeah," seungcheol confirms, wrapping an arm around jeonghan's waist. he presses his face into jeonghan's shoulder, sighing.

"sorry," jeonghan says, though it's more towards seungcheol than anyone else. "anyway, this is wen junhui."

there are introductions, and the same fizzle runs through the room. junhui knows there's something different in this house, but he just can't place his finger on it. minghao, the only other one speaking mandarin, sits him down, and shoos everyone else out the room. jeonghan retreats, kindly shutting the door behind him; if not for that pointed gesture, he might have felt compelled to follow him, too.

"jeonghan-hyung is very attractive," minghao says, matter-of-factly. "i remember things. you?"

"what?"

minghao shrugs. "everyone in this house has a gift - vernon can heal cuts and bruises, seungkwan is sensitive to the space around him... things like that."

"oh," junhui says weakly. "that makes sense."

minghao's expression softens, if only minutely. "it's alright, we take care of each other here."

junhui, silent for a moment, finally says, "i believe you."

the same current jolts down his arm, and leaps in avid, endless circles around his room. minghao, stunned, stares at him with his mouth agape.

"does jeonghan-hyung know about this?"

jun shrugs. "he knows there was something, i don't think he knows what it exactly is."

"it's not safe," minghao says quickly.

"not if i will it to," jun bites back with equal fervour. "and i will."

minghao stares at him, eyes darting to his packed, singular luggage and the newly-furnished room. there must be something that's won his approval, or at least his pity, and so he nods, jutting his chin out sharply and downwards. he raises a finger and taps his temple.

"i'll hold you to that."

probability is a game; junhui has mastered it. each morning when he wakes, he watches the shadows of leaves dance on the ceiling. from there on, he wonders how his day will go, counting the forks in his path: the shared bathroom will be empty, there will be just enough milk for his cereal in the fridge, the train will be right there when he reaches the platform... he could go on forever, count every variable of free will in the deterministic universe. the coin will always yield; the chances stacked in his favour. the odds of every event falls prey to a binomial distribution - it will, or it won't.

but junhui always wills. he has to.

seungcheol and jeonghan are exchanging delicious, intimate words in the living room after a particularly rousing dinner routine; mingyu's outdone himself this time. junhui sits by the kitchen counter, and scrolls through his phone. minghao's reading a book next to him. he doesn't know exactly what it is, but something makes him look up.

the sight freezes him: jisoo, jaw tight, is burdened with the strangest succession of emotions on his face. junhui follows his gaze and finds that it lands on jeonghan.

junhui knows it. even at this distance, he can taste the sour, acrid taste in the hollows of his cheek.

and then jisoo is looking straight at him, eyes wide. junhui takes it as a cue to leave. he stumbles out of the barstool, and rushes back to his room. in the darkness of the stairs, he wonders if someone, anyone in this house is hiding in the black spots of the hallway, listening to the uneven pounding of his heart. he hates being so transparent, so easily read - jisoo had probably felt something, and found a single name curled up behind junhui's facade.

it hurts, still hurts. he doesn't know if it will ever go away.

(he wants it to, he doesn't want it to)

"junhui?" jisoo's voice is behind him, and an extra pair of feet are padding along the corridor. "junhui."

"yes?" he's glad his voice doesn't crack now.

he turns around to see jisoo, whose face is flushed and marred by worry.

"please don't tell anyone," jisoo whispers.

junhui stops in his tracks. "what?"

"just now," jisoo says. "you saw."

it hits him - he had recognised himself in jisoo just then, which means...

pressing his lips together, junhui walks over to his room and pushes the door open.

"let's talk inside."

jisoo, slightly chastened, enters his room. junhui slips in after him, locking the door behind them. he can't say he's not taken aback - jisoo, one of the older boys, has always been a picture of unmoved tact and poise. now, however, he's worrying his lip and sitting on junhui's bed. junhui settles down beside him, leaving a polite distance between them.

"it's ironic," jisoo says first, "that someone so attuned to other people's emotions is betrayed by their own."

junhui doesn't know what to say to that.

"i like him," jisoo whispers, soft but firm. junhui is envious of that - confidence is often too loud. "i like him so much, junhui."

"how long?" junhui wants to slap himself for the question.

jisoo takes it in stride. "a while. since i met him. i don't know."

junhui knows what he means. the room, too large for this silence, shifts in and out of focus.

"i had a - someone i liked," junhui says. "he almost kissed me."

the admission feels more like a confession of guilt. but saying it aloud emboldens him; he takes a coin out of his pocket and makes an unnecessary gesture to show it off. jisoo leans forward, drawn in by the magic trick (or the sudden stir of regret in junhui's chest).

"heads or tails?" junhui asks.

jisoo shrugs. "tails."

"heads," junhui says, and tosses it.

the coin lands. junhui doesn't need to peek to tell he's right. the point's been made anyway - jisoo's solemn now, catlike eyes glowing in the dimly lit room.

"i pulled him into it," junhui says, "and i pulled us out of it."

the thing about guilt is, the longer you keep it, the more attached you become to it. you think yourself special for it, and let it guide you around; a stockholm prisoner, chasing blindly after the vivid blaze of uneasy heat and stealthy fear. it grows greedily, gaudily, like a precious little secret to be hoarded.

junhui finds himself casually, carelessly glancing at jisoo. the many innocent gazes exchanged morph instantly into a confirmation of their individual crimes. in many ways, junhui feels like an accomplice, picking out the way jisoo is so readily attuned to jeonghan. to the common eye, it would just be a side-effect of their gifts - jeonghan is a steady force of attraction that demands; jisoo is too emotionally available for his own good.

junhui learns to read jisoo - he doesn't cringe, much less frown. the only indicator of hurt and heartbreak is the small, wrinkly smile toying on his lips and a strained silence to mimic calmness. something about discovering this makes him pleased, as though it confirms his own nagging discomfort.

(that, and the fact that it's getting harder for him to keep his eyes off jisoo.)

junhui doesn't mean to, but he overhears a fragment of a conversation. he's almost done getting dressed and leaving his room, when jeonghan's voice, meek and confused, slips into his room.

"do you ever hate what you have?"

there's a pause. "yeah, it's tiring."

it's jisoo.

"it is, but everyone's dealing with it." jeonghan pauses for a moment, and when he speaks again, it's fraught with doubt so unlike him. "shua, do you think seungcheol...?"

"he does."

"how do you know it's real?"

"it is."

he finds jisoo in his room later, sipping on a cup of tea. jisoo answers only on the third knock, eyes rubbed raw. his shoulders fall at the sight of junhui, and the faltering excuses shed themselves almost immediately. jisoo paces back to his bed, and rearranges the pillows around him.

"i heard," jun says, honest, "what you and jeonghan-hyung talked about in the hallway. i'm sorry."

"it's alright."

junhui joins him on the bed. "you okay?"

"never been better," jisoo jokes, holding out a hand.

junhui takes it. "you're really strong, hyung."

"i'm not," jisoo denies, still smiling despite the puffy eyes. "i'm really not."

junhui shakes his head. "i think you are."

jisoo exhales shakily.

"believe me," junhui says, earnest.

when jisoo fixes his gaze on him, junhui suddenly gets an urge to pull out his coin and prove something, anything - he'll spin possibilities out of nothing for jisoo, build an entirely new universe to house jisoo's inexhaustible heart.

"i trust you," jisoo says, squeezing junhui's hand.

junhui wakes up to an uncomfortable chill pooling around his shorts. his neck is hot, sweaty, and longing for a second more of dream-jisoo's caress.

jisoo. dream. kisses.

junhui sits right up, and fumbles to get the incriminating, tainted pair of shorts off him. in the shower, he turns the temperature down to the lowest, and scrubs at his skin till it turns a shameful red.

"jeonghan-hyung's gone," minghao says to him in the morning.

"what?"

minghao looks concerned, but jisoo's hand falls on his shoulder in a comforting gesture. "he'll be fine; seungcheol said to leave him alone."

jisoo doesn't seem to think so - the twitch of his eye, a grim look poised over his face and the stiff, strained hand on minghao's shoulder... junhui wets his lip and swallows, mind wandering to trace the contours of jisoo's hand. he knows it's a good, steady weight, and jisoo's got long fingers as a guitar player.

"junhui?" minghao asks. "you okay?"

junhui doesn't trust himself to speak. but jisoo is watching, and the thought of jisoo catching on sends a confusing thrill down his spine.

"check his fanbase's twitter," junhui offers. "i'll talk to the photographers we know."

he grabs his leather jacket, and hops off the barstool at the kitchen counter. as he's about to leave the penthouse, jisoo's hand circles around his wrist. junhui panics, stilling completely. but jisoo's too absorbed in his worry for jeonghan, and misses this.

"thank you, junhui," jisoo says, sincere - knowing the depth of jisoo's feelings for jeonghan makes junhui want to cry, or throw up, he doesn't know which.

so he says, "trust me.", if only to hear the three words again.

"i trust you," dream-jisoo had whispered into the crook of his neck.

real-jisoo had just smiled and said, "ten years isn't long when it's with yoon jeonghan."

wonwoo finds his lost keys one day, and knocks politely on his door. when junhui opens it, wonwoo's stonily standing there, keys in his outstretched hand.

"i think you lost these," wonwoo says, features softening. "they were in the shoerack."

"thank you, wonwoo," junhui says, and then adds teasingly, "you're such a keeper."

wonwoo flushes, but smiles anyway. "i'm good at this anyway."

sunlight filters in through the windows and hits the rim of wonwoo's circular glasses just right. he's goodlooking, there's no denying that. junhui plays with his keys, drawing for time, trying to picture wonwoo in place of jisoo in one of his less ridiculous dreams.

(it still involves a great deal of kissing though.)

"um, junhui?"

"oh," junhui says. "oh, sorry, i just zoned out."

wonwoo laughs, a warm chuckle. "yeah, minghao says you've been doing that a lot."

"thanks, though," junhui grins back, embarrassed.

there's a creak, and both junhui and wonwoo turn to see jisoo hastily trying to close his door. jisoo jumps, as though caught redhanded for some reason.

"hey," jisoo says, biting his lip. "sorry for interrupting. i didn't mean to eavesdrop-"

"oh, no," wonwoo says. "i'm going back to my room anyway. bye, junhui, don't lose anymore things."

junhui rolls his eyes, and playfully replies, "you'll always find it for me."

wonwoo shuffles off to his room, shaking his head. junhui's tacky, exaggerated smirk is stuck on his face, until he sees jisoo's expression. there's that same small smile on his lips that doesn't quite reach his eyes. jisoo swallows, his arm limp against his side. then, catching junhui's gaze, quickly flashes him a smile before shutting the door completely.

save for the guitar playing, jisoo is nothing like yanpeng.

junhui's only memory of yanpeng spans across the awkward adolescent summer of 2010 - the uncomfortable chafe of starched collar, limbs too long and excited boyish smiles. with jisoo, however, there's only the thought of cool, breezy quiet and long, yearning talks in hushed whispers. there's also the occasional hand holding and heads-on-shoulders, but junhui tries not to indulge himself beyond reason.

jisoo is kind, pliant, and overly generous. he's a good person, really, but he's always catching junhui unawares with his friendliness. it leaves junhui wanting, and trying so hard not to will it to happen. jisoo is no coin, much less a hot-headed experiment for the sake of curiosity.

junhui holds back, tossing pennies in the air and catching them before they can yield to his command.

the day jeonghan returns, abashed and exhausted, junhui's at the door, mildly spiteful; jisoo looks relieved to see jeonghan, and physically delivers him into seungcheol's waiting arms. junhui knows it's childish, knows it's terrible of him to be irked that jeonghan's back - a part of him is soothed now that their resident angel is back, but still.

minghao pulls him away, glaring. "wen junhui."

"what is it, hao?"

"you're not exactly being discreet."

junhui shrugs. "i haven't done anything."

"of course you haven't," minghao says, rolling his eyes. "what was that with jeonghan-hyung?"

junhui shakes off minghao's grasp. "i'll tell mingyu to cook up something for tonight then."

it's the worst idea he could have. there's something eeriely reminiscent of the way jeonghan and seungcheol are curled up on the couch, lost in their own world. junhui's just done with the dishes - he had been avoiding minghao's rebuke - and stepping out of the kitchen.

he spots a familiar figure near the dining table staring over at jeonghan.

it's jisoo. jisoo is looking in jeonghan's direction, a small smile on his lips- something in junhui snaps, like a dam bursting apart, acrid bitterness flooding through him. his hand mechanically rises up to cover his mouth, overwhelmed.

don't look at me, junhui thinks, please, please, please, why don't you look at me like that?

jisoo's head turns towards him instantly. junhui barely registers anything before jisoo's hand is wrapped around his wrist, guiding him back to his room. they stumble awkwardly through the hallway, familiar but still unused to the dark.

in the safety of his room, jisoo's grasp suddenly feels like a morbid reminder of all his dreams. he tries to shake it off, and jisoo lets him, if only to cup his face.

"junhui," jisoo whispers, "i'm going to do something. stop me if you don't want this."

jisoo moves forward, and presses his lips against junhui's. it's everything jisoo is - kind, soft, pliant, and generous. junhui stills, struck by the strange, giddy feeling of redemption, or something better. and then he pushes back, hand tangled in jisoo's shirt, insatiable heart going want, want, want.

(something fizzles, pulses, stings just right.)

when jisoo pulls away, eyes gentle and bright, junhui feels the rush of spring bloom in the tiny, tentative space between them. he moves in, guided by jisoo's fingers rubbing circles on his jaw, and learns to savour the taste of new beginnings in the quiet murmur of his name.

#seventeen #seventeen ff #seventeen fanfic #junshua #junhui #jisoo #joshua #angst #fluff #modern magical au #aaaaaaaaaa i am so in love with this au aaaaaaa

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nemesis-nexus · 7 years

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A few more things that I need to get off my chest regarding the First Nation, the BLATANT disregard of Treaty Rights across the board and the abysmal treatment of the people at the hands of the United States government: Not only are you paying for it, but you will NEVER be compensated for any of the services your tax dollars are covering EVER! What you have been told about there being permanent jobs created between the dapl and KeystoneXL pipelines is a lie! the fact of the matter is there will be no more than between 15 and 35 permanent jobs! Everybody's bitching and moaning about how they want to end the dependency on foreign oil, the problem is that the dapl will not do that in fact the dapl will not benefit the United States in any way shape or form! The truth is that it's being transported across states where it will be refined and exported overseas - why do you think countries such as Japan have such a vested interest in it? The truth is that Energy Transfer Partners has lied about everything since the beginning! They paid off ex-Governor Jack Dalrymple so that he would call in the National Guard to defend the pipeline!! Since when does the National Guard protect private oil companies instead of THE NATION?! Then every time violence erupted Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier ran as fast as he could to the nearest microphone and Podium and LIED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED! There is a reason why there has been a TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT since the beginning of this conflict and that is because they don't want you to see what's really happening over there because if you see what's really happening over there they can't lie to you about it later!!! This is also the reason why they have gone after independent journalist such as Jon Ziegler who they called out before shooting him in the hand!!! What you may have heard about weapons in any of the camps is a complete lie, think about it logically, why would they suffer all the abuse that they did to the point of almost being killed and NOT fight back if they allegedly had all kinds of guns and other weapons? What you have heard about the trash on the ground is also a lie, the campsites WERE NOT "deliberately trashed" what ACTUALLY happened was the blizzards - as they have a tendency to do in the winter - set in very quickly and did not give people enough time to move out all their belongings! That coupled with EXTREMELY HIGH WINDS that were blowing everything, everywhere made things literally impossible to clean up at the time so yes there was a mess to clean up and no one is denying that! However as soon as the snow started to melt that is exactly what they did, they cleaned up about 85% of it and they knew they were going to need more time which is why they asked the Army Corps of Engineers to extend the deadline so they could finish the job! The Army Corps of Engineers however refused to grant them more time so they were unable to finish what they started, we know that they were refused an extension for the very specific reason of utilizing the trash on the ground as propaganda to further smear the Water Protectors and as expected all the gullible, ignorant people who believe whatever they're told bought it hook, line and sinker! What you may have heard about human feces all over the place including in the river is also complete and utter bullshit! There were composting toilets on the scene at all times, what they are is toilets that are designed to collect waste and when they are full the contents are bagged up and shipped out by truck. The contents Ultimately used as fertilizer, the same as horse manure! What gets me regarding the trash is that people are so hateful and callous that they are implying that they are more concerned about trash on the ground than they are about the multitude of Human Rights, Constitutional Rghts and Civil Rights violations that have been levelled against EVERYONE fighting for the Earth and Water in the last year - going so far as to say that Sophia Wilansky blew her own arm off!!! They are literally more concerned about trash on the ground then they are about human life and that is a level of depravity I hope no one I know ever lowers themselves to!! Does anybody ever wonder why when we're taught American History in school, no matter what grade, that the ONLY time we're EVER told anything about the First Nation is when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and in regards to Thanksgiving, but we're rarely if ever told ANYTHING else? We have Black History Month where all kinds of information is made available to learn about Black pioneers and key figures of Black History, we also have TV channels (specifically BET) that show movies featuring prominent black actors and actresses and the work of talented directors producers so forth and on... We also have Native Heritage Month and yet where is the information readily available to learn about any Tribe of the First Nation? Where are the school plays that demonstrate real Native History? Where are the book reports that put front-and-center all the people who fought for Indigenous Rights since the beginning? Where is the TV channel that specifically displays the work of prominent Indigenous actors and actresses or of talented producers directors and such? Why is it whenever we talk about racism we automatically think Black White Latino Asian but very VERY rarely IF EVER do we mention the Indigenous who have had it a HELL of a lot worse than ALL of us COMBINED? I will tell you why; because we have ALL been mentally conditioned to not even acknowledge the FIRST NATION let alone the Indigenous PEOPLE! We know it is true for the aforementioned reasons that they are never discussed outside of Thanksgiving and Plymouth Rock, their Heritage month goes by with no general recognition whatsoever of historic Indigenous figures such as Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Geronimo or even Sitting Bull, in fact the closest we came to acknowledging the Indigenous was when the Sacagawea dollar was introduced and people lost their fucking minds over it!!!! The fact that the Indigenous at Standing Rock as well as all those who stood in solidarity alongside them have been Domestically Terrorized the last year by the very people who are supposed to protect them, not a private company performing an illegal project and people are actually more concerned about trash on the ground than the fact that lives were almost taken and even more have been violated is beyond reprehensible and inhumane to say the least!!! This war that has been leveled against the First Nation for centuries did not start at Standing Rock but what has happened at Standing Rock for the last year is but a small example as to the kind of dehumanizing, racist, hateful and dismissive treatment the Indigenous people have been regarded with since the Inception of this country! To this day they continue to have their land stolen and their children forcibly removed as well as their women abducted and raped, oftentimes sold into sexual slavery!! I can guarantee if ANY other group of people was treated the same way that the Indigenous people are treated NOT ONLY would the courts be FLOODED with lawsuits of Racial Profiling, Racial Discrimination and a PLETHORA of hate crimes to beat the band, but it would be all over the news and EVERYBODY would be bitching about how WRONG it is, but when the Indigenous are treated this way all those Social Justice Warriors can't be bothered!!! Since people seem content to continue to bring up the trash on the ground I will remind them of what is important - That just because some people were unable to gather up their belongings and transport them out when they left IS NOT A CRIME and is certainly NOTHING COMPARED TO: Having crop dusters spraying poison directly on you, your family, your animals and your land Having your children assaulted with guard dogs Having your pregnant wife assaulted with pepper spray to the face Having your sacred holy items stolen and smashed then thrown in the mud and garbage Having your Cemetery bulldozed into nonexistence Being arrested without your Miranda Warnings or charges being read beforehand Being illegally strip-searched and then shoved in a dog cage for hours on end Being accused of firing a gun and trying to kill a police officer when their own words dictate that such a scenario was physically impossible, dropping the local charges because they knew they had nothing to base them on and then pursuing bogus federal charges #FREEREDFAWN #FREELEONARDPELTIER Being attacked indiscriminately and viciously with: LRADS Tear Gas Rubber Bullets Concussion Grenades Sound Cannons Beanbag Rounds Fire Extinguisher Size Mace Water Cannons in 26 Degree Weather Verbal assaults issued on Radio Transmissions that DEMAND the men come out and fight OR THE WOMEN WILL BE RAPED IN CAMP - YES THERE IS AUDIO AND VIDEO EVIDENCE OF THESE THREATS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT!!! On the night of November 20th, a bunch of people went to the Backwater Bridge to clear the two burned-out vehicles that were blocking it so as to allow vehicles including emergency vehicles passage. Upon securing one of the trucks to the rig and starting to pull it away they started getting fired upon from the back - yeah that's right THEY WERE SHOT IN THE BACK! I thought only COWARDS shot people in the BACK??!! Then when they tried to approach the barrier to attempt to speak with the militarized police and National Guard to try to explain what they were doing, they were fired upon with more rubber bullets, concussion grenades, teargas and beanbag rounds! Some of their Munitions hit the ground and ignited yet of course they did not accept responsibility for that instead passing the buck and blaming the Water Protectors accusing them of starting fires! The fact of the matter is and again we have the video to prove it, that the ONLY fire that was in fact started by the Water Protectors was done so AFTER they started hosing everyone down with a water cannon in 26 degree weather! It was an emergency fire that was meant to keep them from succumbing to hypothermia! So yeah the next time somebody tries to give you shit about the trash on the ground, just remind them of EVERYTHING ELSE THAT'S HIT THE GROUND IN THE LAST YEAR and ask them why their priorities are so screwed up that they place more value on a gum wrapper than on a human life!! The most recent and despicable crime committed by the Domestic Terrorists is the forced removal of people from The Oceti Sakowin and Rosebud Camps where dwellings were desecrated and torn apart for NO OTHER REASON than they could! This is why the structures on the OS amp were burned, because they did not want them desecrated as well but also because it is customary for them to burn down semipermanent structures before moving on. Several arrests were made including military veterans and the grandmother they were protecting! Eric Poemz was tackled and slammed to the ground resulting in his hip being dislocated and what did the domestic terrorists do? One of them took a picture with him screaming in agony then laughed about it and left! Another one told him that the water protectors spent the last 6 months disrespecting THEM and THE STATE!!! And what makes all of this that much worse is that what I just said is not everything that happened ONLY SOME of the MORE extreme examples!! Now Trump wants to introduce legislation that makes protesting of any kind a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison? This bill will take any Act of protest and corrupt it into and act of aggression where by anyone participating will be arrested for "Inciting A Riot" the most messed up thing about it is that you don't even have to be doing anything to be arrested and accused of it, just ask Chase Iron Eyes!!! The fact is that racism is still rampant in this country and as bad as Black, White, Asian and Latino think they have it NO ONE has it as bad as the Indigenous! It is time that we all reread our history, learn the facts versus the bullshit and work together with our Indigenous brothers and sisters for the betterment of OUR present and the security of OUR future!! We Are ONE Even Though We Are MANY And We Stand STRONGEST When We Stand TOGETHER! #FREEREDFAWN #FREELEONARDPELTIER #NODAPL #WESTAND #MNIWICONI #WATERISLIFE #OCETISAKOWIN #PROTECTTHESACRED #PROTECTORSNOTPROTESTERS #RESPECTEXISTENCEOREXPECTRESISTANCE #NOSABALPIPELINE #KEEPITINTHEGROUND #NOKEYSTONEXLPIPELINE #NOTRANSPECOSPIPELINE

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actutrends · 4 years

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Forget backward compatibility — Xbox One is ‘forward compatible’

I should be upfront and honest with you. I’m writing this story to say that I called it. What did I call? That Xbox One has forward compatibility with the next-gen Xbox. I said that on some random GamesBeat Decides podcast months ago, and I’ve definitely mentioned it on social media. And now, Microsoft is confirming that is the case.

In an interview with games-business publication MCV, Microsoft internal dev boss Matt Booty said the company doesn’t plan to have any next-gen exclusives any time soon. Xbox Series X is launching this fall. Games like Halo Infinite and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 are launching alongside it. But those first-party Microsoft releases are still going to work on your original 2013 Xbox One. If that’s where you want to play them, you’ll have that option.

“As our content comes out over the next year, two years, all of our games — sort of like PC — will play up and down that family of devices,” Booty told MCV. “We want to make sure that if someone invests in Xbox between now and [the next-gen Xbox] that they feel that they made a good investment and that we’re committed to them with content.”

The idea of “cross-gen releases” isn’t new. That was a common strategy during the transition from PS3/Xbox 360 to PS4/Xbox One. But Microsoft is going beyond the select cross-gen game and making it a policy.

This is a consumer-friendly move by giving Xbox One owners more time before having to purchase new hardware. But Microsoft is doing it because it fits so well with its current strategy.

Why Xbox One getting forward compatibility with Xbox Series X makes sense

Microsoft’s focus is on getting people to sign up for its Xbox Game Pass service. Fans view that subscription platform as a great value specifically because it gets all first-party Xbox games on their release days. If suddenly, that stops working because you need to buy a new box — well, maybe it’s easier to just cancel Game Pass until that new box is a bit cheaper.

And that’s the main reasons why Microsoft is committing itself to forward compatibility.

Of course, this is just for Microsoft games. Third-party developers and publishers can and may choose to make next-gen exclusive releases. But that seems unlikely. Tens of millions of people own the Xbox One (and PlayStation 4). And it’s going to take a year or so for next-gen devices to reach the required critical mass to produce a blockbuster, profitable hit. The current rumors surrounding Ubisoft’s next Assassin’s Creed game suggest it is cross-gen, for example.

But Microsoft has other reasons why it needs forward compatibility.

Isn’t forward compatibility going to hold back Xbox Series X games?

The concern with forward compatibility is that it’s going to have a detrimental effect on the potential technical performance of the next-gen versions. Xbox Series X has a powerful GPU and CPU. More important, it has hyperfast SSD storage that is going to make the Xbox One and PS4 seem positively ancient.

But if Microsoft’s developers have to make Halo Infinite run on Xbox Series X as well as a 2013 Xbox One (or even the very slightly updated Xbox One S), won’t that drag down the potential of the Series X version?

Yes. Absolutely. Developers can’t assume you have eight superfast CPU cores or an SSD that can stream in content as fast as you need it. Xbox Series X first-party games are going to suffer under an artificial ceiling.

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But Microsoft is going to have that problem whether the Xbox One is forward compatible or not. Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere means that all Microsoft games work on both console and PC. And developers cannot assume that PC players have an SSD (although, if you’re a PC gamer and not using an SSD I’m gonna get mad at you).

And a lot of publishers release their games for console and PC. So the industry is going to have a couple years of transition as developers slowly begin leaving HDDs behind. And if you have to support low-spec PCs anyway, why not support the low-spec Xbox One (and PS4) as well?

One last big reason why Microsoft wants forward compatibility is because of Project xCloud. As of now, its streaming technology works by putting thousands of Xbox One S systems in server racks. Sure, Microsoft can afford to upgrade that infrastructure, but if Xbox Series X games work on the current servers, it has some extra time before it has to do that work.

What about PS4 forward compatibility?

Forward compatibility makes a lot of sense for Xbox One. But I think it also makes sense for PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5. Sony, however, doesn’t have all of the same pressures as Microsoft. It isn’t promising that its first-party games will all come to PS Now or PC. So it doesn’t have as many reasons to support this concept. But I still think it would work because Sony’s first-party games are expensive to make. They are such massive productions that they almost aren’t viable unless they have a potential audience of 50 million people.

It’s going to take PlayStation 5 two-to-three years to reach that kind of install base. And Sony’s options to recoup investment on something like God of War 2 aren’t great. It can release it exclusively for PS5 in the first or second holiday to sell hardware as a loss leader. Or it can hold it off a few years until more people own the system.

But if we look back on that first year or so of the PlayStation 4, it’s obvious that PS5 is going to sell fine based on the strength of its brand in the 24 months after its launch. Sony doesn’t need a killer app to sell PlayStations. At least, it didn’t need one for the PlayStation 4 to turn into an unexpected breakout hit.

That doesn’t mean PlayStation 5 won’t have an exclusive at launch or in its first six months. But don’t expect the biggest stuff — the games that have budgets of $100 million or more — to hit as PS5 exclusives before the end of 2020.

And if a PS5 heavy-hitter comes along in the first year or so, Sony may even seriously consider putting it on PS4 as well. But the publisher will likely make that decision on a case-by-case basis instead of Microsoft’s across-the-board policy.

So when does Microsoft cutoff forward compatibility for Xbox One?

The Xbox One lives on, but is it ever going to die? This is about transitioning technology forward and serving the best platform to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. So Microsoft probably has a timetable in mind for phasing out the Xbox One. Booty has already alluded to a “year or two.”

I would expect the Xbox One to reach end-of-life around holiday 2022. That’s enough time for a price drop on a Series X. It’s also enough time for SSD prices to drop to the point where it should be illegal to use a spinning platter on PC. Those two years are also long enough for developers to ship games that take full advantage of next-gen hardware.

Maybe most important, however, is that Microsoft can spend the next two years communicating with fans. It can explain that, sure, these games work on any Xbox, but here’s what you get if you upgrade.

Finally, I expect the phasing-out process to work similarly to how it does with smartphones. By holiday 2022, Microsoft may have an Xbox Series X2 and an Xbox Series S2. And, as part of launching those hardware iterations, it may officially end support for Xbox One.

Regardless of how Microsoft decides to approach it, you can safely assume it’s going to do whatever it takes to make it as painless as possible to maintain a subscription to Xbox Game Pass. That’s what it’s all about for the company, and that’s what will drive its future strategy decisions .

The post Forget backward compatibility — Xbox One is ‘forward compatible’ appeared first on Actu Trends.

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