#BUT when it comes to characters that are like almost entirely outside of my wavelength it's pretty hard for me to understand how they work

[dan-crimes]

I love writers I love when they ramble on abt characters and their motivations, their core values and the reasons why they react to things in certain ways and having character interactions work off of each other due to their differing ways of viewing the world and in general I just love character analysis

#as someone who loves humans and human behaviours and figuring out why people react to things the ways that they do #uhhh I'm actually surprisingly really bad @ writing characters with those same traits 😅 #unless it is smth I can connect to on some sort of level like a few of my characters have issues that I specifically relate to #thereforee I can understand the ways they act in certain circumstances #BUT when it comes to characters that are like almost entirely outside of my wavelength it's pretty hard for me to understand how they work #and it's pretty basic habits and behaviours I just fuckin lack them in general #like the concept of clinginess or abandoment issues or wanting to stay around people who treat you badly or jealousy or missing people #also love like I understand my type of love but my type of love isn't typical from what I've seen from others #even some of my own past issues like dealing with trauma have kinda been lost on me especially bcuz I'm the type to ignore stuff #like I just ignored it til it came back to bite me in the ass and had to just kinda struggle with it and go completely numb #until I got tired of feeling that way and pulled myself outta it step by step and my various negative ways of thinking elude me #since I just gradually built myself up and rearranged my brain so that all negative thinking eventually turns into dust #whether be positive or purely neutral until I'm able to handle it better #REGARDLESS I try to get a sense of what these other traits are like and how exactly they work for people but it is VERY difficult for me #bcuz the stuff is just such an alien emotion to me like people get REALLY emotional about things that simply aren't a problem for me #and I wish I could understand why and what goes on in the brain that causes that but my brain just doesn't work that way #SOOO me trying to make characters of typical issues I see people having DOESN'T really work when I have no idea what's going on #like IN GENERAL my characters need to have more emotion behind them but the emotions I need them to have are #like I said before. something I totally lack ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so I have no idea how to do it #I mean I think I need like a check list I need to make a list of traits my characters have in general cuz I never write anything down #it'd be easier to figure it out if I had words to go along with it and then I could figure out the behaviours behind those words #plus I need to draw my characters cuz I'm very much a visual person I can't get as good of a feel without some visuals along with it

[adventure-hearts]

Oi, can you give me your thoughts on the affection that Sorato would show to each other?

This ask actually inspired me to write meta for the first time in a while! Thanks a lot, Anon!

So, a while back I read this book called The Five Love Languages. It’s about how  everyone expresses/experiences love in five main ways — words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, receiving gifts, and physical touch — and how this affects interpersonal relationships, especially marriage. 

The book’s thesis is that everyone has a primary and secondary "love language”; for each of them there are multiple “dialects”, or different ways of manifesting love. In order to have a healthy relationship, you need to identify your and your partner’s language, so that you can give each other what you need (*).

Me being me, I immediately started to try and identify the love languages of each DA character, and predictably gave a lot of thought to Sora and Yamato’s. Based on my notes on this book, here are my headcanons about how Sora and Yamato express affection!

SORA

Primary love language → words of affirmation

If you consider Sora’s conflict in the original series, it was all about how unloved and unappreciated she felt in the absence of being told she was loved by her mother; and later, the feeling of feeling unappreciated by others in general. 

Piyomon best represents how words of affirmation is Sora’s primary love language. Actually, my theory is that all digimon partners do this, to some extent. Piyomon gives Sora exactly what needs to feel loved: telling her how much she likes and appreciates her, constant complimenting, cheering her up, making her talk about their feelings, etc. (at first, Sora was so unused to having this need met that Piyomon’s initial adoration made her uncomfortable). I also think Sora places so much importance in to what people say (or don’t say) to her that she’s prone to misunderstanding people when they say the wrong thing or don’t tell her what she wants to hear.

On the other hand, although Sora struggles with being on the receiving end of words of affection, she’s excellent at using it to show love to others. She’s the one who’s encouraging her friends, keeping morale up, and providing reassurance through gentle and encouraging words. There are dozens examples of this in the series:

“Piyomon, kakoiiii!”

Encouraging Miyako (02 eps. 02)

Calling everyone to to check in on them (tri. ch. 3)

etc

I think it’s pretty obvious that words of affirmation are key for Sora.

Secondary love language → acts of service

If Sora struggles with her primary love language, she overcompensates with her secondary one, which is basically doing things for others. 

This is the side of Sora who nurtures, organises, protects, cooks, sacrifices herself for others, and generally takes care of other people’s needs ahead of her own. 

The downside of this is that Sora feels overwhelmed when she can’t respond to other people’s needs, and feels unloved when people don’t do things for her in return. 

YAMATO

Primary love language → quality time

I believe Yamato’s main way of expressing love is spending one-on-one time with the other person. Again, the classic image is when he sits alone with Gabumon playing his harmonica. It’s symbolic of the Crest of Friendship.

Lots of Yamato’s issues in the first series probably have to do with his parents divorce stealing a lot of quality time from him as a child (i.e. neglecting him emotionally), and how as a result, he adopted the opposing attitude “I’m fine on my own, in fact I prefer to be”. Which is clearly not true, and it soon becomes apparent that this lone wolf act is him denying his true self and his true emotional needs. His obsession with being around Takeru and his jealousy when he spends time with other people is perhaps another clue. Yamato is the kind of person who feels loved when he gets someone else’s undivided attention, even if not a word is spoken. 

Gabumon’s entire existence of pure devotion and loyalty to Yamato and all their scenes together as a duo is ample evidence of quality time being his main way of expressing love, but other examples include his desire to be close to Takeru all the time, staying with Jou at the restaurant, “Let her cry”, having a one-one-dinner with Taichi to cheer him up, etc. Yamato doesn’t let a lot of people in, so when he deigns to spend alone time with someone, you know it’s serious.

Secondary love language → words of affirmation

This is maybe provocative, but I also think words of affirmation are incredibly important for Yamato. However, this secondary LL is very undeveloped, both by his discomfort with verbalized affection in general and especially when it comes to his attempts to express love for others through words. 

Still, Yamato’s need for words of affirmation is shown not just by Gabumon’s innumerable pep-talks where he cheers Yamato up by telling him how much he loves him and says all those wonderful things about him. Other examples would include the entire Dark Cave saga (including helping Sora), many of his interactions with Taichi (Yamato’s oversensitivity whenever Taichi says something “thoughtless” is also an example of the importance he places on words; but also, “Thank you for believing in me”!), and even his music career (writing songs about feelings while a bunch of girls screams their adoration at him? He’s getting something out of it).

How do LLs work in the context of (romantic) Sora/Yamato?

I’d say the first conclusion I took from this is both Yamato and Sora struggle with, and at times suppress, their primary love language. Having this in common is important, because it shows how similar they are emotionally, and probably makes them better able to empathise with each other.

Another crucial conclusion is that they're both fluent in the same love languages. Quality time could just as well be Sora’s secondary love language, and Acts of Service could easily be Yamato’s. So here are to people who — when in a healthy, mature state — are in the same emotional wavelength and therefore are perfectly suited to give each other what they need.

Now we’re getting into headcanon territory, but I think of the reasons why this couple works is precisely that know the importance of using “words of affirmation”. Do note that this love language isn’t just about saying “I love you” and “You look gorgeous” and “Here’s a list of the 438479287 best things about you″. It’s much more about saying “You can do it”, “That was great!”, and even “Thank you”. In this sense, you can totally see how both would be emotionally fulfilled by giving and receiving verbal encouragement and appreciation form the other. 

I think this love language both the strength of the relationship  — being able to build each other up — and also their Achilles heel — if one or both of them fail to develop it.

It’s all too easy to imagine a situation were Sora and Yamato don’t use enough  words of affirmation with each other, creating a vicious cycle. Of course, as we’ve seen, this love language is something they both need to work on and learn from their digimon partners! 

Overall, I’d say Sora is probably better at it, with Yamato often struggling to put his love in words without being embarrassed; I think any grand declarations would be saved for special occasions. 

I think Sora would be great at responding to Yamato’s need for quality time. Like, of course she’d be perfect at making sure they spend time together despite their busy schedules, at planning dates and activities and getaways. And she’d would be patient enough to just sit next to him in silence, waiting for him to open up. Sora herself would also benefit from Yamato’s tendency to want to spend one-on-one time, especially if Yamato used this quality time to listen to her and talk about feelings. Still, problems could emerge if Yamato thinks Sora isn’t spending enough time with him. 

I also believe Yamato would be pretty good at expressing love through acts of service, I.e. doing nice and helpful things for Sora. This is the kind of boyfriend who can cook dinner, do the laundry, handle car insurance, and who’ll jump in the middle of a battle to save her life. Trouble could arise if Yamato actually forgets to do something, or if Sora finds herself overwhelmed trying to do everything on her own.

Finally, a word about the remaining two languages (gift giving and physical touch). Of course they are present in this relationship! They just aren’t the main ways they use to express love. Again, considering Sora has the Crest of Love, she’s fluent in all the love languages. 

When it comes to physical affection / PDA, I think almost everyone in the fandom agrees this isn’t a couple who would be very demonstrative in public. I don’t think they would regard touching/kissing/sex as the predominant way of showing love and intimacy. I’m sure they’re a very affectionate couple (in private), but dealing with emotions would be the main dynamic in the relationship. 

Similarly, I doubt gift giving would be a huge thing outside of special occasions. I myself headcanon that Yamato is a not a great present giver, and if Sora was feeling ignored, there isn’t a diamond ring in the world that would make up for it. 

Well, this was a long tangent. I hope it answered your question, Anon! I’d be curious to see other people’s opinions, too.

(*) NOTE:

There are a bunch of quizzes to discover your own LL, but according to the author, the way to identify someone love language is by asking:

a. How they express love and appreciation for others; b. What they request more often; c. What they complain about.

#asks #digimon #meta #soraxyamato #sorato #will I ever get tired of psychoanalising these two? #I don't think so

[haro-whumps]

This is a crossover fanfic between my boy Galo and @whumping-every-day 's character Mutt (and Trev, sort of)

--

Galo wasn't entirely sure of the series of events that had led him here. Auntie Maggie's step-son from her first marriage had a friend who had a slave and the friend and his sister had gotten pulled away on an emergency and needed someone to watch after the slave while they were gone, and their usual dog sitter wasn't "emotionally suitable."

Galo's cousin (was that the right word? They only barely counted as relatives) had moved away but had given the friend, Trev, Galo's phone number and, admittedly, he was only a few hours' drive away. Nyla could take care of them all for an evening, but the other guy, "Mutt," was not so stable as all that, and Galo liked long car rides.

He liked having someone to commiserate with, too, for all that Trev and he seemed to operate on fundamentally different wavelengths. Someone who got the "holy shit walking on eggshells" thing. Also the "ah, I have a surprisingly evil dead relative" thing. Being that Trev was from across state lines, and that his state apparently had different safety constraints and standards of living for slaves, Trev had it worse than Galo. Sorry for that guy.

Well sorry for Mutt first and foremost. Absolutely sorry for Mutt FIRST and foremost.

God, his name was "Mutt" how fucked up was that. But Galo got the situation, more or less, and had Trev text him the dietary restrictions and routine so Galo had somewhere to reference it. Galo pulled to a halt in front of the farm house, wheels churning over the gravel, and shot Trev a text letting him know he'd arrived.

Galo opened the screen door with a creak, letting himself into what was effectively a complete stranger's home, in the middle of nowhere, entirely alone. Galo was aware that if this was a horror movie, he'd be the opening chump, but he also weighed over two hundred pounds of unnecessarily tall bone and thick muscle, so.

He let out a friendly whistle and three sets of paws bounded through the house, and Galo laughed as he held out his loosely curled fists for sniffing and licking. "Hey pretties!" he greeted, not shouting but loud in a way that would carry through the building, letting Mutt hear him, hear him being friendly and in a good mood. "Okay, outside. Outside for pretty dogs," he said and held open the screen door, and two bolted past. The third wagged its tail and shuffle-shuffle-stepped before sitting down, panting up at Galo with tail a-wagging.

"Hi there," Galo said with an arched eyebrow, smiling at the dog. It pat-pat-patted it's feet again the floor and shuffled a little closer on its rump, then rolled its head back with a awoowoo and a chuff.

"Am I not giving you enough immediate attention?" Galo asked, using his heel to keep the door open and reaching down to pet the dog, who tried very hard to lick Galo's face. Seemingly satisfied, the dog eventually bolted out to join the other two, and Galo let the door close with a smile.

"Mutt?" Galo called gently, moving into the kitchen and setting his computer bag down on a clear spot of counter. Trev and his sister had clearly not been expecting guests, but that was sort of implied with the whole "emergency" coming up bit. A flicker of motion caught Galo's eye.

"Hey," Galo greeted softly, voice pitched down low and quiet. "There's the shining star. Did Trev let you know I was coming?" Galo asked. He knew for a fact that Trev had, that the only reason he'd left before Galo got there was because, well, emergency, but it was a gentle way to prompt Mutt into remembering that Galo was supposed to be there.

Mutt nodded, arms crossed at the wrist in front of his chest, and Galo slowly crouched down onto his haunches. "Good. Good boy."

Mutt perked. Galo's smile turned a little more genuine. "Yeah, I've heard all about how good you are. Do you wanna come a little closer or do you feel like personal space is a good way to start?" Galo asked, careful to phrase it so both options seemed positive. He would, ideally, create less stress over the "right choice" and prompt Mutt to choose a more honest one.

Mutt shuffled a little, lips parting, and Galo kicked himself mentally. "Oh, you can speak," he added, voice still carefully gentle. "Talking is good; I like hearing what others have to say."

"Um, can, can, can I--cl, closer s-sir?"

"Yeah," Galo said with a smile, pleased Mutt had chosen that one. He held out a hand in a loose fist, like he had for the dogs, and slid his fingers together in an almost-snap. "C'mere, kitten."

It was a gamble, Galo knew, but hopefully the "wrong" nickname would disorient Mutt just enough to set him off balance and cut through the fear. It seemed to work, Mutt looking surprised as he stumbled forward and slid down onto his knees near Galo. He cautiously rubbed the loose backs of his fingers over Mutt's shorn hair, thumbing gently at a scar on his scalp, and Mutt...

It was a very, very gradual process, but Mutt melted. He leaned into Galo's hand, and Galo tugged him just a little closer, and he melted into that, so Galo pulled him closer, and after three quarters of an hour of careful coaxing Mutt was puddled up against Galo's side, Galo seated on the kitchen tile and scratching his hair with one hand and petting his back with the other.

He was gonna have friction-red palms from the hair and shirt but oh it was so worth it.

"There's a good boy," Galo murmured for the hundredth time. "You settled right on in, didn't you?"

Mutt made a contented little noise and Galo debated whether it was worth it to try and wrestle his phone out of his pocket to send a picture to Trev. Then one of the dogs started barking to be let back in and Mutt startled, badly, Galo getting an elbow right in the diaphragm. Fortunately, Mutt was very small and weak. Unfortunately, a slave had just hurt Galo and he was already feeling a little deja vu.

"S-s-sooor-I'm sorry! I'm sorry, please, please, not the barn please no no I'll be good don't punish me--"

"Oh I'm not allowed to do that," Galo said as casually as he could manage, and it worked. The idea that Galo, a very large free person, wasn't "allowed" something shocked Mutt right out of his panicked babbling, and Galo mentally fistpumped. Crisis more or less averted. "You're not mine, kitten. Trev asked me to come make sure you and the dogs get fed and taken care of; I don't have permission to punish you."

Galo stood, Mutt's wide eyes following him, utterly gobsmacked. "Besides," he said, stretching out his lower back because oof, floor, "I know you didn't mean it. You're still good."

Galo opened the door and the three hounds came bounding in, Galo giving them pets and scritches, performative with how fine and content he was. No big deal. Nothing that was happening was a big deal.

"Hey, kitten," he said idly, grabbing his laptop bag off the counter, "can you show me where the living room and bathroom are? Don't wanna go around snooping or anything."

Mutt did, and Galo told him he was good along with a friendly, easy-to-see-coming pat on the head. Galo settled onto the couch and was immediately joined by a large German Shepherd mix.

"Oof."

The dog was unrepentant.

"Hey there," Galo said, manhandling the dog off of him so its snout was on his thigh, its big doggy body on the couch cushions, and he gave it a friendly pet. Galo caught Mutt standing anxiously, wringing his hands, and Galo nodded to him. "You can talk, it's okay."

"Z-Zan isn't a-a-allowed on the f-furniture."

Ah. One of those houses. Galo rolled his eyes. "Well that's a stupid rule."

Mutt looked, once again, shocked, and Galo thought it over. He didn't seem the conspiratory type, but who didn't love being in on it?

"Hey," Galo said, low and mischievous, leaning forward towards Mutt with an elbow on his knee, "if I keep letting Zan be on the couch with me, will you promise not to tell?"

Mutt's eyes got somehow wider, and so did Galo's grin.

"I--I--I--" Mutt stuttered, before he finally snapped his mouth closed and nodded.

"Great!" Galo cheered, leaning back on the couch and giving Zan some ear scritches, making his tail thump thump thump thump. "We'll brush the fur off before I leave, nobody has to find out." Galo cast a sidelong glance at Mutt. "Y'know, Mutt, kittens can be on the furniture too, while I'm here." Galo slung his free arm over the back of the couch, his other hand still idle in Zan's fur.

Mutt didn't move for a very long moment, and Galo didn't push. Just pet Zan and got his computer queued up for a podcast he'd heard good things about. It was only about halfway through the introduction sequence, the podcaster's voice a pleasant, melodious sort, that Galo caught Mutt take a tentative step forward in the corner of his eye.

"You can come; it's alright," he repeated, still looking at his computer screen lest the direct attention make Mutt lock up. Slowly, like he thought Galo had set some sort of trap, Mutt sat gingerly on the very edge of the couch cushion, body taut as a strung bow.

"Good boy," Galo praised.

Like in the kitchen, it was the work of a lot of time and very little increase, but Galo got Mutt curled back up against his side, knees tucked up under Mutt's chin, the other two dogs piled in at Mutt's side and on top of Zan, by the midpoint of the second episode. Galo kept his arm around Mutt, and almost felt bad for letting the dogs up on the couch with them. It meant he couldn't take a photo this time, either, when Mutt inevitably fell asleep.

#writing #mine #whumping-every-day #galo #mutt #crossover #aftermath of torture #platonic touch #mild dehumanization #somewhat creepy comfort just for the lengths Galo has to sink in order to meet Mutt where he's at #I apologize for the lengthy introduction my brain has a disease where it won't let me do crossovers unless they're somewhat plausible

[mensajeroseis]

do you have someplace where you talk about fallout 3 like a post or something cuz people gimme shit on saying fo3 is good even for all the hate it gets but my brain can never recall Why beyond like, Vibes

i recognize the criticisms but it’s still Good yknow and thats why i followed you cuz you Get It

I definitely do considering my years of fallout 3 posting lol, but also I do not have an actual tagging system on this blog outside of my art and ocs. So I will just write a new one, because it is somehow a talent of mine to dump my nuanced and very sexy opinion about fallout 3.

I will say that fallout bethesda haters are always going to exist and will want to shit on anyone’s positive opinions about fo3 or fo4 (i do not care for fo4 but somehow still have 1000+ hours in it) and yeah like you said there’s a lot to recognize in criticisms for fo3/4, and fnv as well. But people tend to be blinded when they like a video game with no analytical eye, thus reverting their evolution and making their brains smaller which means they lose all critical reasonings and civil sociality. anyways. I think the most important thing to even say to people like that is, that people’s opinions on media are subjective and then tell them they have very obvious insecurity problems to care so much about disregarding yours, and proceed to block them for a funny haha (optional). Or if anyone immediately changes topic to how fnv is better, when you simply post about appreciating fo3 ; also have issues and should be ignored lol

A lot of people’s initial reasonings for fo3 being a good game is it was their first fallout, or the first fallout to bring the series to mainstream triple A regard. And that’s certainly something to admire but really it doesn’t say anything about the game itself. Fallout 3 is very straight forward, and also has a lot of obvious christian tones to it in the main story lol (cringe). There isn’t much room for nuance in quests, and that can make it come off comical rather than realistic. Which it can be felt Bethesda wanted to get that quirky 50s vibe from like the pop culture of it, like corny 50s B movies almost. But I will however say, the emotional value that fallout 3′s quests have to them are stronger than any other game in the series. of course this can also be subjective to the type of person you are I feel, some people want a personal connection, others don’t care for it. Some people say fnv’s opening is personal because you’re mad a dude shot you, for the character of the courier sure. But for the player, it is literally a plot McGuffin of mystery to entice you so idk, my opinion tho. To each their own. It’s like the whole fo4 opening debacle. How can you care about your son if you spend 5 minutes with a babbling infant. At least in fo3, you get multiple scenes of growing up in the vault, and observing the interactions of everyone and general social climate of 101. And that’s a very obvious strength fo3 has imo over fo4. 

Okay I’m losing brain steam now but uh... I feel it’s pretty definitive that fo3 has the best post apocalyptic atmosphere out of all the fallout games (again this is subjective, i find staring at a desert to be very draining and i find the commonwealth to be repetitive. I just like Grey and Green lawl) Bethesda’s strength as a company is definitely environment building/level design. Also the OST Inon Zur made for fo3 makes me Cum. Uhhh also I would find that Fallout 3 runs inline with Fallout 1′s tone (on the same wavelength at least, very obvious with some things like Trouble On The Homefront etc etc), and FNV runs inline with FO2 tonally. Fallout as a series is like a chapter book of post apocalypse and post-post apocalypse stories, and you will merely pick which one you’d rather read more. You can flip flop, you may flip one day and flop another. 

Duhh UHHH hmm anyways I have beef with HBomberGuy’s fallout videos and I will never watch them because of how much he refuses to give any nuance to fo3 or fnv lmfao. You are not going to win anyone over by telling them they’re opinion over a game is shit, but you can have good enlightening conversation and opinion growth if you talk about things in a nuanced view, and even better talk about the shitty things of the entire fallout series as a whole. Because Fallout Sucks. It really does. Play Wasteland 3 instead. 

anyways hope everyone who somehow read thru all this has a nice night.

#hell on earth whats wrong with my brain #Anonymous

[panharmonium]

You know what would be lovely? If more fic would give me genuine Will&Merlin content. I fell back into this void lately, and realized that 9/10 times my boy Will gets shafted. (The ones that don't do that, though, are almost entirely excellent, to be fair). Let them be friends! Let them be queerplatonic lifepartners, if that's your jam! All this to say, I reread all your Will/Merlin content and I am very grateful for you and the other Pro-Will content creators. Thank you.

😍 So, occasionally in the past when I’ve written things about these two and said to myself, “hmmm this is pretty niche and I am the only one who’s ever going to read it,” I’ve encouraged myself by being like “ok but one day somebody just like me is going to go looking for fic about them, and, unlike me, they are going to find things to read, because I wrote a bunch of it.”  And now here’s this ask - what a nice thing to hear!  Thank you so much!  I am so glad you have enjoyed my stuff! <333

I too struggle with Will’s portrayal in most fic, so I hear you!  I’ve talked about it in more detail here and here, but it’s frustrating that Will’s ship tag with Merlin is 90% Merlin/Arthur fic, wherein Will is either a barely-mentioned ex/an antagonist/a current significant other who is (surprise!) not good enough and inevitably about to get dumped for Arthur, and even in gen fic he tends to just...only show up to be a sounding board for Merlin and Arthur’s budding romance.  Like...you can usually predict the exact scenes Will is going to have in fic where he shows up as Merlin’s friend, and they fall into the categories of a) “humorous” moments of him being aggressively heterosexual (where did this weird fanon idea that Will is Merlin’s inappropriate and/or sex-crazed friend come from?  there’s literally....ZERO canon indication of this) and then b) him being the person to whom Merlin periodically debriefs on how things with Arthur are progressing.  He’s just a character of convenience, most of the time.  In the genfics, his relationship with Merlin often doesn’t matter in its own right, and in the shipfics, it gets shafted.

And when I talk about fandom trends that I don’t personally care for, I always try to clarify that I’m not actually telling people they should write something different - this is fanfic; you can use Will for whatever, or not at all; go for it!  Nobody has an obligation to devote time to any character they’re not interested in; that would be silly.  I’m only talking about what I personally find satisfying.  And personally, I feel that Merlin’s relationship with Will is something that is important to him, and something that he has never considered to be secondary or less important than the relationships he built in Camelot.  So when it comes to whether or not I find a portrayal of Will satisfying, my metric is basically “do I feel like the author actually respects his relationship with Merlin as something that matters?  Do he and Merlin have a relationship that exists outside of Arthur Pendragon?  Is Will an actual character in his own right, or is he just there to serve a convenient purpose?”

In terms of shippy stuff specifically - I’ve only published gen fic about these two so far, but I too would love to see Will have more shipfic that actually belongs to him, particularly of the sort you mention (because that is the only way I envision Merlin as ever being involved in a “shippy” relationship, personally, at least when it comes to the canon version of himself).  The most important thing for me when it comes to Will and Merlin is their friendship, but I love them in any configuration, and it makes me a little batty that Will’s entire ship tag is basically Merlin/Arthur fic in disguise.  Like - Will is such a good person!  He is so devoted to Merlin’s well-being!  Every single thing he does in his brief canon appearance is done for Merlin’s sake, at his own expense, and I can’t understand why a character like that gets so snubbed in his own tag.  

So, given all that, it is super nice for me to hear from someone who is on a similar wavelength! :D  Thank you so much for this message, and feel free to drop into my askbox any time you need a Will & Merlin fix - messages about Will are my favorite thing to find when I log in, and I am literally ALWAYS ready to talk about these two. :)

#anon said WILL RIGHTS! #and they're 100% correct #<333 #no kings no masters #replies #fandom #the once and future slowburn

[glammackay]

Under a Blanket of Blue - 14/03/21

Synopsis: George and Alexa settle in on their first day in Finland. (Warning: a lot of cuteness) @alexadem​

Alexa: Was the idea of catching a flight to go on a spontaneous vacation with a guy she'd just met a bit of a crazy idea? The majority would vote yes, but honestly, this was the sort of stuff Alexa wanted her life to be made up of. She didn't like to waste any time on the couch, twiddling her thumbs and trying to imagine herself having fun when she could just go out and experience it. Besides, there were literally no red flags surrounding George - to the naked eye, he seemed like the most unproblematic person on the face of the planet, and any qualms she /may/ have had about any potential awkwardness diminished the moment she had spotted him at the airport. One of Alexa's most prominent traits was that she was outgoing, and loved meeting new people, so she had absolutely no issue with running towards the man and greeting him in a tight embrace, nor within anything that followed, not even when the taxi driver had turned out of the city centre and led them more out into the sticks, where that dreamy lodge George had booked was situated. In fact, that had only excited her more. The potential this accommodation and this week, as a whole, had, was enough to keep her smiling the entire journey there. "Well...fuck me" Alexa announced, snowflakes dusting her eyelashes as she looked up at the place they'd be calling home for the forseeable. "Shotgun the biggest bedroom". She shot a smirk over to the actor, crunching her way through the snow up the pathway and stomping out her boots once she'd made it undercover. "So, how does this work? Did they tell you they'd left the key somewhere, or something? I mean...this place /definitely/ has enough places to hide something-" no matter which way she looked, Alexa spotted a new thing to excite her - at the moment, it was the sheltered fire pit that she would definitely be insisting they light up one night.

George: This vacation was somewhat out of character for George. He’d spent time in remote locations with people he hardly knew before, but usually it was some kind of bonding experience with co-workers, not somebody he was coming to know as a friend, and especially not somebody so seemingly different to himself. Perhaps that was why he was so drawn to it all. Alexa was a lot more outgoing and forthright than he was, but when talking to her they just seemed to get along so well. She seemed to be doing a good job of bringing him out of his shell a little bit, whilst he was allowing her to just feel comfortable being herself around him. This was the recipe for a great friendship and travelling buddy, no matter how little time had passed since first speaking. He’d been trying to keep the details of the place under wraps, just so he could watch her reaction when the lodge came into view. “It’ll do us, huh?” he grinned, knowing full well the place could sleep thrice as many. “Yeah, I think the secret entrance to the crazy sex dungeon is ‘round the back,” he tried to say seriously, but almost immediately began laughing to himself, his cheeks flushing at the mere notion of him saying such a silly thing. He felt comfortable with at least saying these things aloud to Alexa, even if he didn’t commit to the bit. He could never commit to the bit. “No, umm, there’s a key box somewhere...” he started looking around the entrance way, before spotting what he was searching for. “There it is. Then we just enter the code and...” there it was, the keys in his hand. Front door, back door, sauna door, hut door - they were sorted. “Right, let’s get this thing open, because I’m freezing my tits off.”

Alexa: Raising both her eyebrows as she glanced back and forth between George and the lodge that looked like it could host the Weasley family, Alexa scoffed "ch'yeah, I think it'll do us. We're going to be living like kings and queens, MacKay, I'm /so/ glad I left you in charge of the planning". With her breath visible in the brisk air, the actress shifted from foot to fit in a lame bid to keep warm - maybe she hadn't planned her airport outfit as well as she'd thought she had, but the extent of how cold the country was had come as somewhat of a surprise, although, nothing compared to the shock she felt as George cracked a joke that could've come from her very own mouth. "Oh, oh, I get it. Is this where you bring all your girls so you can act up here, and then re-enter Great Britain as a saint again? Solid plan, I'm almost going to be disappointed if there's not a secret sex dungeon now". Of course, any disappointment would quickly be remedied by all the amenities that this place /did/ have, and once George had got the front door open, Alexa couldn't help but dump her suitcase right in the entrance way, like an eager child who just wanted to run around taking full advantage of everything. "Holy shiiiiiit, this place looks like it's fresh off of MTV's Cribs, you did good. I don't even know where to star-" cutting off short as she remembered her plea for the best room, Alexa side eyed George for a moment, wondering if he was on the same wavelength before dashing off upstairs to check out the bedrooms. She didn't even care what the others looked like really, the first one she laid her eyes on was more than cute enough, with it's slanted roof, cosy decor, and best of all - view out the window, where you could see nothing but miles of snow-topped trees and hills.

George: “Oh no... you’re onto me...” George laughed, stepping aside as he let Alexa make her way inside first, before he enthusiastically followed suit. The place looked even nicer than it had in the photos, and in the photos it looked pretty remarkable. It wasn’t huge, but with the big windows looking out onto the nearby frozen lake - at least that’s what it looked like to George - and the open landing on the floor above, it felt spacious enough. Once again, he keenly watched his company as she dashed around the place, very clearly enjoying herself far too much whilst exploring. It was like letting a child loose in a sweet shop, and he couldn’t get enough of it. He was a little slower at settling himself in - he took the time to shuffle their cases so they were out of the way and ready to go to their respective rooms, before making his way into the small kitchen in search of a kettle. Naturally, the most important thing of any holiday rental was whether or not they had a kettle, which thankfully they did. Once he filled it with some water and put it on, he finally went to see where Alexa had ended up. “So... I take it I did good with finding this place, then?” he smiled at her and sat himself down on her now designated bed. “What do you want to do first? Chill out and settle in or go straight for the hot tub? Or something else? I  think we've got another two hours of daylight.”

Alexa: Fingers dragging themselves over countertops as her eyes took in the room, Alexa immediately made her way over to the window where she allowed herself a moment to let it sink in that she was actually here. About to tick off what had been at the top of her bucketlist for as long as she could remember, and she was almost lost in a sentimental moment when George's voice came from behind her. "You did good," she assured him with a soft smile. "I almost can't believe I'm here, especially not so soon, I wasn't sure if you were just making friendly conversation when you said you were interested, so - thank you for coming with me". Plopping herself down on the edge of the bed, Alexa ran her hands over her knees as she weighed up the options. "Well, you know I'm dying to get in that tub, so why don't we grab something to drink, hop on in, then find somewhere to see the lights from when the sun starts going down? Or, if we're feeling too sluggish, we can always save the venturing further afield for tomorrow night, and just stay cosy tonight? I'm honestly good with either".

George: George’s smile spread from ear to ear at Alexa’s reassurance. He had a feeling he’d done a good job with the location, but her confirming it made him feel even more confident of it. “Hey, now, thank you for coming with me! You know... to my secret sex hideout, that I definitely bring all the ladies I’ve known for two weeks to...” he let out a laugh at his own joke again, this time not blushing quite so much. It seemed he was becoming even more comfortable with his jokes to her. “Yeah, I mean, we’ll probably get a good glimpse of the lights just from here, with the views we’ve got, especially with those big windows downstairs, so maybe we can enjoy them from there with some blankets and music,” he mused, throwing out whatever ideas he thought might sound inviting to his travel companion. He jumped to his feet and made his way to the door, before turning on his heels and pointing his fingers in her direction. “So hot tub first... and we’ll feel our way from there. I just put the kettle on, would you like a hot drink? Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? The owners seem to have stocked all the vitals.”

Alexa: Hair falling across her face as she shook her head with a laugh, Alexa swayed into George, enjoying the fact he was becoming more comfortable with making jokes of the sort. "At least now I know why you really don't have social media, it's a John Tucker Must Die situation, you don't want all your conquests tagging you and being able to find each other". The thought of being able to see the lights from just outside the lodge hadn't even occurred to her, she had assumed there were certain spots that you'd be able to see them from the best, but then she supposed that had been extremely naive - they were in the sky, after all. "At the fire pit?" She suggested hopefully, eyebrows raising. "Sounds perfect to me. And you know, considering we're being all adventurous - I think I'll go for a tea. I've honestly never had one that isn't iced, and I trust you're well trained in the art of tea making. I'll have it however you have it". Following George back downstairs, Alexa practically skipped towards her case to retrieve her bikini - a white, Louis Vuitton one, of course. Admittedly, she was a bit of a brand whore - before taking it into the nearest bathroom and changing into it. She re-emerged a few moments later wrapped in one of the robes that were provided and leant on the kitchen countertop, face in her hands. "Just came to see the master at work. This better be the best damn hot bev that I've ever tasted or I'll severely judge you brits and your obsession".

George: “Tea it is, then,” George nodded his head in agreement, pleased Alexa had made the right choice to him. “And the fire pit, we can definitely check out in a bit. I think it’s called a Lapplander hut or something like that? Don’t quote me on it, though. But it looks really cool,” he spoke, almost to himself as they both went downstairs, and then their separate ways to prepare themselves. He managed to find all the right ingredients for a basic, good cup of tea, and poured them all in to some snow themed mugs for them. He’d just finished removing the tea bags before Alexa joined him once more. He placed her mug in front of her, before looking up and smiling. “Give it a minute to cool down, or you’ll burn your tongue,” he said, before realising that it sounded like he was talking to a child. “Sorry, I suppose that’s common sense. But I’ve lost count the amount of times I’ve burnt my tongue because I’ve been too keen to have a sip.” He lifted his own drink up to his mouth and blew on it, before setting it down on the counter again. “Maybe I should quickly get changed into my trunks whilst I wait for it to cool down. I’ll be back in a minute,” and with that, he left to fetch his swimwear from his suitcase and get changed in the bathroom. He soon emerged sporting a clearly well worn pair of rainforest themed swim shorts - about the craziest his wardrobe got - and his respective robe, undone.

Alexa: "Nope, no, I needed that. I always dive into everything too soon, so your caution: hot bev warning was /very/ needed" Alexa smiled, drawing the mug closer to her yet behaving by not taking a sip. She was softly blowing on it when her eyes averted from the steam onto George's reappearance - noticing the body first, then the iconic shorts afterwards. Honestly, it was hard to pick which one to comment on first, though the fact he had tried to deny the existence of his abs was too impossible to ignore. "Ah, and there it is, that so-called dad bod that you seem to think you have. D'you know how frustrating it is for hot people to not think they're hot when everyone else around them can see it as clear as day?" Realising she had to have been staring, Alexa turned her attention back to the tea and finally had her first sip, though she had to admit she wasn't fully concentrating on the taste. "Sorry. Don't mean to check you out but...I totally do".

George: George went bright red at Alexa essentially calling him hot and commenting on his abs. Not that he minded, of course, but the blushing was instinctual whenever anybody complimented him in such a way - it was as subconscious to him as breathing. He wasn’t sure whether to cover up or let her keep looking, because he couldn’t help enjoying the attention. He opted to leave his robe open, and grabbed his cup of tea, which was now at the perfect drinking temperature, and took a sip. “It’s okay. You’d think I’d be used to it, with having to be on film sets where I’m walking around with people looking at me shirtless all day, but nope. It still bewilders me,” he shrugged, before smiling at her. “I’ll try not to stare as much when you disrobe,” he teased, winking at her. Once again, the confidence to say such a thing was only because of the company he was in - he was just letting whatever he thought she’d enjoy hearing flow out of his mouth, without a second thought.

Alexa: The blushing definitely didn't pass by unnoticed by Alexa,  it took everything in her not to tease him for it, and she was doing so well until he so confidently commented about her losing her robe, even with the wink, it was all too much to be able to resist. "Oh, is that so?" She set down her mug once more, fingers going to the knot on the robe to slowly untie it, eyes focused on George in a bid to catch him falter. "Do you promise? I'm actually real shy"- probably the biggest lie she'd ever told, one quick Google search and you could see she had absolutely no issue getting her body out, it wasn't arrogance, just a strong belief that you should love the body you were given, and shouldn't have to hide it. Letting the robe fall from her shoulders, Alexa knew damn well she'd just sacrificed a warm walk to the hot tub, but whatever, it was worth it. "Come on then" she spoke in an overly sweet tone, grabbing her tea with one hand, and his own hand in the other to lead him outside.

George: Not quite believing how he’d managed to get himself into such a situation, George was biting down on his bottom lip in an attempt to stop himself from smiling like an idiot, but it definitely wasn’t working. “You’re mad, you are,” he said, shaking his head as Alexa disrobed in front of him, his cheeks managing to redden even more than he thought possible. He wanted to be overly polite and not look, but he knew she wanted him to, so he glanced her up and down; his gaze lingered a little too long, until it was interrupted by her taking a hold of his hand. He snapped out of it, and instead tried focusing on just walking to the door that led out to the hot tub. Opening the door, they were hit by the bracing cold of the outdoors - a stark reminder that they were very close to the Arctic Circle, and the sun was setting soon. “Quick, get in, I’ll figure out all the buttons,” he said, offering his hand up to help her balance as she climbed in. Thankfully, it wasn’t complicated, so within seconds, the tub started bubbling.

Alexa: More than satisfied with the reaction she had got, Alexa was glad she was the one walking in front so George couldn't see the smile on her face...that was until the door actually opened, and she was immediately hit with the cold air like someone had bitch slapped her. Assuming George knew what he was talking about - he had one of those faces you could just trust - Alexa set her drink down in one of the holders and hopped into the tub with his help, which was admittedly warmer than the outside air, yet not at it's full potential, like it had been on some power saving mode. "This is fucking cold too, you...shithead!" She exclaimed with a laugh, splashing a little out the tub at him, figuring they probably should've turned it on fully a little before they intended to get in it. "But it's better than out there, for sure. It's gonna be /so/ nice". Submerging herself to the shoulders, Alexa used her arms to push herself backwards onto one of the corner seats and kicked up her feet a little, probably enjoying the novelty of a hot tub a little too much considering they were hardly needed in LA.

George: George grimaced at Alexa mentioning the tub was still cold. “Ah, yeah, shit. We were just a bit too keen, huh?” he spoke, taking a big swig of his tea, before placing his mug by the side of the hot tub. He watched her enjoying herself for a moment, a huge grin on his face as he did so. “You having fun in there?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her, her answer very much evident without a word leaving her lips. After a few more moments, he figured it was time he joined in on the fun. He took off his robe, hanging it up nearby, and turned to face Alexa. “Fuck, it is a bit nippy out here, isn’t it?” he said, exaggerating the temperature even more by tensing all his muscles - the toning of them becoming even more apparent than before. And then he climbed into the hot tub, sitting opposite his company, so they both had a bit of space. “Oh, this is alright actually. It’s not putting the hot in hot tub, but it should warm up pretty quickly.”

Alexa: Unaware that her enjoyment was so apparent, Alexa grinned with a nod, feeling like a little child who'd just come on their first summer vacation away from school. Having never heard the term 'nippy' before, the actress immediately cast a glance down to her chest, figuring he must've meant she was showing actual nip, rather than referring to the cold, yet once she figured out he was just being British, she let out a laugh. "Fuck, you can't say things like that without giving me a quick Urban Dictionary style definition, that means something completely different where I come from..." Still, she hoped that wouldn't make him intentionally try to dial the slang or the accent down. That, mixed with the way he looked right now made her certain that George was the kind of guy who would get plenty of female attention without even realising it. One of the most eligible bachelors in any room, yet still one of the most modest. "Here - we should play a game. Like, a would you rather: culture edition. So like, you can say two of anything, one has to be American, one has to be English...whether it's food, movies, actors - whatever. And then you have to pick which one you'd rather eat, watch, sleep with - you know? Like, I could start with...Hugh Grant or George Clooney?".

George: “Oh, shit, sorry,” George shook his head, forgetting he was talking to an American who wouldn’t understand all his British colloquialisms, but he didn’t mind explaining them as he went. “It just means really cold - originates from... well, you can probably guess,” he trailed off, figuring he didn’t need to go into the etymology, too. He listened intently to Alexa as she described the game she wanted them to play. He rather liked the sound of it - their cultural differences had already been apparent the short time they had spent with one another so far, so why not combine it into a fun way to learn more about each other? “Ooh, I like this. Hmm, which would I rather eat... Hugh or George...” he pretended to look like he was thinking carefully, before laughing at his terrible joke. “Okay, I don’t know if it’s a terrible reason to discount somebody or not, but I don’t know if I could cosy up to George because we share the same name. That would just feel weird. Would you find that weird? It’d be like when Taylor Swift dated Taylor Lautner. Each to their own, but I couldn’t do that. So Hugh it is. He seems like a good laugh, anyway. What about you?”

Alexa: Well, at least she was on the right brainwave with thinking it had /something/ to do with nipples, maybe she wasn't being quite so stupid after all, though she wished she could rewind the clock a little and not check out her own tits. Thankfully, the water was already beginning to heat up a little more, and though her arms were still adorned with goosebumps, it was becoming more tolerable. "You are a literal dork" She should've known he'd have some smartass answer to her suggestion, though once he actually answered it properly, she nodded her head. "Good choice, good choice. I totally get what you mean, I even find it weird having to talk to my Amazon Alexa, like I'm going around the house talking in first person, makes me feel a little crazy". Reaching for her tea once more as she thought to herself, Alexa figured she should at least /pretend/ the question was difficult for her, when in reality Hugh Grant easily won for the accent alone. "I think I'd go for Hugh, too. I've had a thing for him since he played the prime minister in that christmas movie - which...I can totally imagine you in, by the way. I feel like you'd be that guy that goes to America because he can't pick up girls in England. In...the best way possible".

George: “If I ever need to ask you a question randomly now, I’m going to open with ‘hey Alexa’ and see how long it takes for you to get mad at me,” George teased, knowing full well he probably would do it once or twice at most. He fetched his mug and sat sipping at it as he listened to Alexa explaining the reason behind her choice, which he could definitely understand. “Yeah? You think I’m a Colin Frissell?” he asked, playfully raising an eyebrow at her. “I mean... when I’m in the States, I do find that people are fascinated by my accent and the way I pronounce certain words. I’m yet to have been invited back to an attractive stranger's place to stay the night, though. Well... no, that’s not wholly true. I’ve had a couple of propositions but not gone along with it, because it didn’t feel right,” he found himself rambling on, so he stopped himself with another sip of his tea, before placing it back where it was. He stretched his arms up, and shimmied his way further into the gently bubbling water, as he attempted to come up with his own ‘would you rather’ question.

Alexa: "I'm already mad at you for even thinking about it", Alexa teased setting the tea down once more and making herself more comfy in the water that was now hot enough to warm her completely. She didn't want to even think about having to get out anytime soon, especially not thanks to her need to tease and leave the robe discarded on the living room floor. Present her /hated/ past her. "Maybe a little, but as I've said, a much cuter version - which was why I was about to call you out on that bullshit. I don't believe for a second you haven't been hit on in bars, or anything like that. American girls can be...well, we're a lot. And I gotta say, I'm impressed you haven't just gone along with it for easy sex. I don't think I've ever really met a man who wouldn't when someone was offering it to them like that. Remind me again, who manufactured you?"

George: “It was Bill Gates himself,” George joked, trying to play it cool, despite his cheeks reddening - at this point he was surprised they weren’t just bright red the whole time. “I don’t know, it just feels too weird for me. I prefer getting to know somebody before we’re intimate. Like, I’ll make out with a stranger, sure, but sex is different. For me, at least,” he shrugged, realising his way of thinking probably wasn’t something Alexa was used to hearing. “It’s different for everybody, though, right? We all have certain things that we find difficult to share with someone until we know them better, and that’s just what it is for me,” he shuffled slightly in his seat, perhaps for the first time actually feeling slightly uncomfortable around Alexa, if only because he wasn’t used to opening up about such personal things so quickly, even if he was still doing it willingly.

Alexa: For probably the first time in her life, Alexa wasn't quite so quick to share her own views on sex as she knew all too well it was off putting for some guys. Usually, she'd be defensive about it, but there was no need to be, it wasn't as if George was judging her for having an opinion that was different to his, he was just sharing his own. Biting down on her lip as she nod her head to his 'different for everybody' statement, 'you can say that again' she thought to herself, though she wasn't about to make herself come across as some kind of harlot - despite it being true. "No, that makes total sense, I totally get why you'd prefer to refrain from it. Casual sex isn't all that great anyway in the grand scheme of things, 9 out of 10 times the guy won't be able to make you cu-" once again catching herself before getting too NSFW, Alexa turned her open mouth into a sheepish smile. "Sorry. We don't need to talk about orgasms, I guess that's just where my mind tends to wander when I'm still waiting for /someoneee/ to come up with a 'Would You Rather' question".

George: “Really?” George asked, a little surprised by Alexa's statistic. He knew that a lot of guys could be selfish in that respect, but not to that extent. He smiled a little at her attempting to censor herself, perhaps in order to make him feel more comfortable. He appreciated it, but he also didn’t want such a conversation to be completely off limits. “I don’t understand it when blokes don’t make an effort, in that department. Like, not even tried to figure out what their partner wants. I’ve always been the sort to ask a woman what they like and don’t like, sort of, as we go. I mean... god, this is gonna make me sound like a square to you, probably, but I usually ask a person if it’s okay to even kiss them, instead of just leaning in and hoping for the best. Well... I try to, and then I get kissed before I have the chance to ask,” he continued on the topic, even though she’d tried to brush it off slightly. He wasn’t necessarily avoiding coming up with a would you rather question for her, more that he was continuing to delay it whilst he thought of something good. And anyway, this conversation felt more interesting to him, for the time being.

Alexa: "Well Georgie, that just means that you have what most men lack...communicational skills. I don't think I've actually slept with a single man whose asked me what I've wanted. Most of them just kinda...grunt like cavemen and it's all pretty underwhelming. And I -" Okay, she was prepared for everything he had said thus far, but the fact he asked permission before kissing took her a few moments to wrap her head around, and she hoped he wouldn't take her silence as a bad sign, like she was inwardly mocking him or anything like that. The complete opposite, actually, she was more so wondering how it'd taken her 30 years of life to come across a man who asked for consent to kiss. Realising she hadn't said anything for a while, Alexa voiced the main thing that was swirling around in her mind, even though, for once she didn't feel like being outspoken, it was as if she couldn't help herself. "Well, just so you know, for...future reference or whatever, you wouldn't need to ask me. The answer's already yes".

George: George noticed the silence, but he had somewhat anticipated it. Whenever he told people this small detail about him, it seemed to take them by surprise. He took it as a good sign, more than anything else. He simply watched Alexa patiently, awaiting whatever response she may have. He expected a question or two maybe, or even just a comment about how rare it was. So her response managed to have the same effect and take him by surprise. He hadn’t been able to gauge how she felt about him, up until now. Sure, she’d complimented his appearance, but he didn’t know whether to take that as her genuinely being attracted to him, or simply a superficial thing. Not that he minded either way, but the truth was that he had had the thought of kissing her cross his mind... if only to be locked behind a door in his head for a later date, so he could just focus on getting to know her for the time being, and seeing what happens. “That’s... good to know. I’ll keep it in mind,” he said leaning in a little closer to her, as if to tease her that it had already very much been on his mind.

Alexa: Maybe, just maybe, throwing that into the mix already was a bad idea, but Alexa didn't know how to act if it wasn't bold and brazen, and it didn't seem to have put him off completely, so she allowed herself a breath, smiling at his response. "Just thought I'd save you some breath, you know, incase you were thinking about it". Of course, there was a very good chance that George continued to surprise her by being one of the only guys not interested - and that wasn't even being narcissistic, just that most guys were easy, and that meant a statement like that was actually usually followed by a kiss, so she was at a loss for words or any idea how to follow something like that up now. This never happened, the whole second guessing/feeling somewhat shy, and boy did she hate that it was happening now. For once, maybe she was the one blushing rather than George. Or maybe it was the heat from the steam. That had to have been it.

George: George continued with keeping his gaze on Alexa - he couldn’t help noticing a slight change in her demeanour. He was a little taken aback by it, as she probably was, too. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was because of what he had said or not, but he didn’t want to say anything about it. He’d hoped by now he had created a comfortable enough environment for her that she would tell him if she was bothered by anything he was saying or doing. When he finally looked away, and began glancing at their surroundings for the first time in what felt like a good few minutes, he realised that the sun was getting lower and lower in the sky. “Right now I’m thinking if we wanna see the lights tonight, we’d better start getting ourselves ready soon. Well, we don’t have to, because they should be at their brightest in a couple of hours, but I figured we could sort out some food beforehand so we can just sit and watch them for as long as we like after. How’s that sound?” he asked, his thought process managing to go past the realisation that he’d completely changed the topic of conversation without intending to.

Alexa: Alexa wasn't sure if the shift in her body was solely due to the hot tub or if her body temperature would've just knocked itself up a few notches regardless, but once George had broken the tension with reminding her what it was they were actually here for, it dawned on the actress that she clearly /was/ feeling some type of way about him. Not even in any deep way, it was far too soon for that, but maybe the attraction did hit a little closer to home than she previously thought. It wasn't so much, yeah people would find him attractive and much more of a...'/you/ are attracted to him, Alexa'. "Right, yeah, we should...definitely do that". Honestly, she couldn't get out of the tub quick enough now, eager to forget her entire thought process and focus on something else. Standing up, the drastic temperature change washed over her once more, so she wasted no time in heading back into the lodge. "Do you think we have time to go to a supermarket to get some ingredients, or are you thinking take out?"

George: George nodded at Alexa’s motion to start getting themselves ready. She seemed a little quick to get out of the water, but before she had a chance to get far, he, too, had gotten out and grabbed his robe that was hanging up nearby. “Here, take this,” he offered, placing the robe over her shoulders, figuring that would take the edge off until she got to her room and could warm up properly. “Well, actually, not to blow your freaking mind or anything, but I asked the owners if they could go to the shop to get a few things and drop them off before we arrived, so they’re already in the kitchen. At least to tick us over til tomorrow when we can make our own way out there,” he smiled at her once they had stepped inside. He tried to be cool but was noticeably tense from his body being exposed to the cold for even a brief time. “How about we get ourselves dried and changed, and have a look through the supplies when we’re warm and cozy?” he raised an expectant eyebrow at her, before walking over to grab his suitcase, ready to make his way to his bedroom.

Alexa: Clutching his robe around her, Alexa shot George an astounded look - not only was that a chivalrous act that she hadn't expected, but it seemed he had thought of everything while planning the entire thing. "Nope, consider my mind blown. That's some forward thinking brain you've got yourself there", embarrassingly enough, had it been the other way round and Alexa in charge of the organising, they definitely would've been raiding the cupboards to see if they could make a meal out of hot chocolate powder and eggs for the night. "Sure, you go hurry, you must be fucking freezing" she encouraged, retrieving her own case and taking it to the room where layers were the only thing on her mind. It didn't matter what the hell she looked like, as long as she could stay outside for as long as possible tonight, so once she'd taken her bikini off and dried herself she pulled on a matching set of loungewear ( with admittedly about three tops underneath ) and a pair of fluffy socks. The ends of her hair were wet, so she pulled it all into a high pony before grabbing a package out of her case and making her way back downstairs, hoping she'd miraculously managed to beat George back, though the odds were against her.

George: George was the kind of person who would practically over plan everything. Most of the time, it was a good thing, and it seemed to be for him so far on this trip, but he always had to remind himself to allow some freedom and leeway with his plans, especially if they included others. He grabbed a towel from the bathroom that was nice and warm, and began drying himself down with it, as he wandered into the downstairs bedroom, claiming it as his own. He made sure his top half was bone dry before he took his trunks off, and wrapped the towel around his waist whilst he hung up the trunks and began rummaging through his case for something warm and comfortable for him to wear for the evening. He settled on a pair of black sweatpants, a burnt orange jumper, and a t-shirt underneath, with socks that happened to match his jumper. He looked like he was about ready to join the Weasleys for Christmas, but he didn’t mind because he knew it’d do the job. Once he’d hung up his towel to dry, too, he ventured back to the open living space, surprisingly only beating Alexa to it by several seconds. “We meet again,” he teased, beaming at her, before making his way to the kitchen to see what they could start preparing for dinner.

Alexa: "Fuck me, hello to you too, Ron Weasley" Alexa teased, clearly on the same wavelength as it was undeniable that his sweater looked like it had been knitted especially for him. Following him through to the kitchen, before she'd even have a chance at checking out what he had ordered in, the actress placed the package down on the counter, beaming proudly up at George. "You didn't think I'd forget what yesterday was, did you?". Considering she hadn't known George for too long to know roughly what he already owned and what he didn't, she figured she'd make up a care package that would come in handy for the right now. A selection of ales as he'd said he liked them, a glass tankard with his full name engraved on it, ingredients for smores, a meditation set with candles and the likes in, and best of all - a game of twerk pong, which she figured would really help him finesse his twerking skills. "You don't have to open it right now, we can wait until whenever, but just so you know it's here, and that I didn't forget. So...happy birthday for yesterday".

George: George let out a small laugh at Alexa calling him a Weasley. “You read my mind,” he shook his head, almost in disbelief she was thinking the same thing about the jumper. He was even more in disbelief when she presented him with what he inferred was a gift. He figured she would remember it had been his birthday, but he wasn’t expecting more than maybe a card or one small gift, not a whole array of things. He bit his lip, trying to contain his huge smile, and managing to fail horribly once again. “Thank you so much,” he uttered, still trying to catch his breath from the shock. Before he could think of anything else to say, he practically blurted out “can I give you a hug?” Almost immediately, he realised asking permission was probably silly, since a few minutes ago she had said she would say yes to him asking to kiss her, and a hug was a few steps of intimacy down from that, so the answer would likely be yes, too. He didn’t give her much of a chance to reply, before he wrapped his arms around her. “You’re so sweet.”

Alexa: Alexa was glad that George left hardly anytime between asking and doing, as she couldn't help breaking out into a giggle, though he could probably /feel/ it regardless. "You really are something else, MacKay". Very quickly the giggle subsided into a satisfied smile, her cheek pressed into his chest thanks to the very present height difference. "You don't need to thank me, of course I was going to get you something. I wasn't just expecting you to put in all the hard work of the planning and then /not/ get you a birthday present". She pointed out, pulling back and glancing up at him with a playful eyebrow raised. "And don't tell anyone else I'm gross and capable of sweet things, okay? I got a rep to protect".

George: George’s smile kept growing when he felt the warmth of Alexa pressing against him. Noted, he thought, for if they found themselves having to keep extra warm whenever they ventured outside during the trip. He nodded acceptingly as she told him it was a fair bargain between them - him sorting out the vacation, and him getting a gift; he certainly couldn’t argue with it. “Well there goes my plans of telling everybody on social media,” he joked, the chance of which was extremely unlikely, since he didn’t use it at all. “If anybody asks about this trip, I’ll tell everyone you ignored me most of the time, I couldn’t even sit near you or been in the hot tub with you. Anything else you want me to mention? Just so I definitely don’t ruin that reputation you’ve got going on?” he asked, a playful eyebrow returned right back to her.

Alexa: Pursing her lips as she pretended to be deep in thought, Alexa wandered around the island in the kitchen, peeking into the cupboards nonchalantly. "Hmm, that you cooked for me every lunchtime and every evening. You don't have to, of course, I don't even know if I trust your cooking yet-" glancing back over her shoulder to convey that she was teasing, she soon resumed the nosing around before hopping up onto the counter herself, completely at a loss for what George had been planning to throw together. "But I want everyone to think you did, like you were catering to my every whim. And I'm a quesadilla at 4am kinda girl if I wake up hungry, too. So it must've been a real nightmare for you. Anyway, what are we whipping up tonight, chef?"

George: “Ugh, you’re just so demanding,” George playfully rolled his eyes, more than happy to go along with this facade, knowing full well that it wouldn’t actually come to life. “I can do that. I can even add that you made me walk to the supermarket in the snow by myself every day so you only had the freshest ingredients,” he nodded along, already enjoying this far too much. “Just tell me if I have to rein it in. Don’t want you looking too bad,” he smiled at Alexa, before beginning to look for the ingredients of the meal he had in mind for the evening. “Okay so... one of the dishes I’m best at is paella. Specifically chicken and chorizo paella. I don’t know if the owners managed to get every ingredient, but as long as we’ve got the basics, we can still make a delicious meal. Wait... did I ask you if you eat meat? I feel like I should’ve asked you that and accounted for it beforehand,” he pouted, suddenly looking a little concerned that he hadn’t taken everything into consideration.

Alexa: Clicking her fingers together, like George had just come up with the greatest plan ever, Alexa nodded. "Yes, that too. I like that. Meanwhile I was in the sauna, just waiting for you to come back from your treacherous journey". It was as if her stomach wanted to give away the fact paella was one of her favorites the way it rumbled in response to George even uttering it's name, but she wasn't going to say it loud, what are the chances he'd believe her rather than just thinking she was saying it to be polite? Besides, with the opportunity to tease him some more presenting itself to her, Alexa feigned an awkward look, shoulders slumping and eyes looking apologetically over at her counterpart. "I...I am a vegetarian, actually. And a celiac so I can't eat gluten. Plus I don't like any vegetables. And I'm allergic to /a lot/ of things, so really all I can eat is...potatoes". Letting that linger for a moment, she soon shook her head, a smile back on her face. "Nah, I'm totally fucking with you. Paella's amazing, and I'm sure yours is going to be one of the best ever". Though she did partake in the making of their dinner, she would give George most of the credit due to it being his version, and although she couldn't wait to dig in, she left it steaming on the side while she ran over to collect their coats, tossing George's over to him before jamming her feet into her boots haphazardly. "Come on, we gotta eat this outside. I've had paella on the beach before, but I've never had paella in the snow under the northern lights before".

George: George nodded his head, making a mental note of all these supposed demands from Alexa - he knew they’d have plenty of fun telling everybody about what happened on their trip and keeping an air of mystery about it. He sort of liked that idea. When she first said she was a vegetarian, George looked a little concerned, like all his meal ideas had flown out of the window very quickly because he’d been inconsiderate enough not to ask beforehand. And then as she continued, he began squinting at her suspiciously, before she admitted she was just messing with him. “Fuck me, you nearly had me for a moment there, I was about to trek out to the supermarket for real to get you something you could eat. So... thank god we’re not making that tale a reality just yet,” he sighed, shaking his head at her, pretending to act annoyed, despite the smile on his face. He was happy to do most of the cooking himself, but the help of Alexa was certainly welcomed - it was the first time in a while he’d prepared a meal with somebody that wasn’t a family member. He seemed a little surprised when she went to fetch their coats, rather than tuck in to their meal, but he picked up on what she wanted to do pretty quickly. “I’ll be honest, I doubt many people have had paella in the snow under the northern lights before - we’re about to be a part of a very exclusive club,” he smirked, before fetching his own boots and putting his coat on, readying himself to brace the cold.

 Alexa: "The mile high club will seem /so/ overrated once we join this one". Alexa stated, matter-of-factly before darting off once more to bundle up an armful of pillows and blankets. "D'you think you can carry both the dishes out for me?" She requested, barely able to keep the top cushion balanced as it wobbled precariously. Still, she managed to transport them all to the hut that provided just enough shelter from the bitter winds, but was completely open at the front so they still had a clear view of the sky. Which, she hadn't even glanced up at yet. She'd purposely kept her face practically buried in the blankets with one eye on the floor as she made her way over. She'd waited so long to see the northern lights in person, she'd be darned if she wasn't going to make it into some big reveal. With her back still to the entrance, Alexa dumped down the load she was carrying and jiggled on the spot excitedly. "Can you see them already?!" She asked George, on the off chance he wasn't doing the exact same thing as her.

George: “From what I hear, the mile high club isn’t even all that exclusive anymore,” George shrugged - despite not being a member of it, he knew plenty of people who were. He never really saw the appeal; he liked to feel comfortable and not like everybody on the plane knew exactly what he was doing, because that sort of thing rarely went unnoticed. “Of course, darling,” he nodded, taking both of their plates and walking carefully behind her to the hut, hoping very much he didn’t ruin such a big moment for her by spilling her paella all over the snow covered ground. Thankfully, he managed to set their plates down on the table in the middle of the hut with every drop still on them, and he looked up to see how Alexa was getting on. He had focused all his concentration on not spilling their food that he hadn’t dared look up at the sky at all, until she mentioned it. “Yeah, look,” he pointed up, “you can see the green just over the top of those trees. They should get brighter and cover more of the sky over the next couple of hours.”

Alexa: Without even realising that she had placed her hands over her eyes, Alexa turned so she was facing the right way, and parted them like a scared teenager watching a horror movie, though the moment she did and caught a glimpse of the green through the trees her arms dropped down to her sides and she did a little bounce of excitement. "Holy shit, that's so cool". Already it was unlike anything she'd ever seen, without it even being at it's full potential yet. Before they let the paella get too cold, Alexa got snuggled up on the wooden seat, holding up a corner of the blanket so George could sit down and she could drape it over their laps. Surprisingly, it didn't feel too cold to sit out in yet, though she knew that would change the longer they remained there without hot food in their belly. Which, her attention turned back to then, and she began to tuck in, giving George verbal affirmations for between the first few bites. "Jesus, that's good, too." and "I need to get you to cook for me more often".

George: George looked down at Alexa just as her eyes laid upon the lights, and the way her face lit up with pure joy made George grin like an idiot, knowing that he had had some part in making this experience happen for her. He had seen the northern lights a few years before, up in the far reaches of Scotland, but he knew they were in for an even more incredible experience tonight. His attention then focused back onto their food. He hadn’t even for most of the day, so by now he was famished. He grabbed his plate, and quickly settled down next to Alexa on the seat, and placed the blanket over his legs, before taking a big bite of food. He let out a small laugh when he heard Alexa’s intermittent comments about his cooking. “Paella is very much my piece de resistance when it comes to cooking. It probably won’t get any better than this,” he said, before taking another mouthful. “Well, no, I have made paella even better than this before, but this is definitely up there with the best I’ve made. Must have been my charming sous chef's help that made it so good.”

Alexa: No matter how charming he was being, Alexa knew nothing she had done in the kitchen had benefitted the taste, having been on mostly chopping duty which really anyone and their ten year old siblings could do, but she knew that was just the sort of person George was - modest and always looking to share the praise, that much was evident already. Soon enough, her plate was cleared, and Alexa set it to the side and brought her knees up, hugging them beneath the blanket while with every passing moment the lights grew brighter above them. If she were honest with herself, it had kind of been the perfect day, and who could've thought up a better ending than to be sat underneath something so epic? Feeling overcome with emotion in that moment - which admittedly, was very unusual for her - the actress let her head fall to the side until it came into contact with George's shoulder, and she smiled to herself as she took it all in. "So, what do you think? Was this worth missing mothers day for, or have you been pining over Mama MacKay's company the whole day?".

George: George was impressed by how quickly Alexa managed to clear her plate - he was a fast eater, but she still managed to beat him to it. Once he was done, he placed his plate above hers and settled back into his seat. He smiled when she decided to rest her head on his shoulder - he’d always seen this as something very intimate only people who felt really comfortable around him did, and considering how long they’d known one another, and this being their first time meeting properly, he felt pretty accomplished that she felt so comfortable so soon. He let out an almost inaudible laugh when she asked her question - somewhat surprised it was something on her mind, because it hadn’t crossed his since they’d arrived at the lodge. “I spoke to her yesterday about it, actually. That I felt a little bad that I’d planned this trip, forgetting I’d be missing Mother’s Day with her. But when I explained where I was going and why, she said that she’d probably have ditched me, too, if it meant seeing the northern lights in Finland. So... that definitely made me feel a lot better,” he smiled, leaning his head down to gently rest upon hers. “She always knows exactly what to say.”

#Alexa #para #//can u believe these kids #//shoutout to anybody who reads it all ;) #//the title is a ella and louis song and just kinda fits ok bye

[kpopfic-recs]

♡ bts ships masterlist♡

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(Last update 4/27/20)

Key: Fluff (❀) Angst (☆) Smut (☾) Completed Series (✓) Incomplete Series (✗)

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Jikook

↳ One Shots

And Back Again by novilunar II ☆ ☾

Summary: Jimin wishes he could stay away from Jungkook. (FWB!AU)

Length of story: 3.1k words

Warnings: None

The Good Doctor by snarcsics II ☾

Summary: Jungkook’s your basic sex addict. Troubled, distant, angry, and somewhat cocky, however Jimin suspects that was there long before Jungkook became an addict.

Length of story: 11.4k words

Warnings: Sex addiction

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Taekook

↳ Series

cause when you look like that, never ever wanted to be so bad by centurystorm II ☾ ✓

Summary: The TA for Jungkook’s chemistry class is fine as hell but no way is that why he enjoys chem class. (Lies, all lies). AKA the “oh no you spilled a chemical and now you have to use the emergency lab shower” AU. (College!AU)

Length of story: 2 parts/11.4k words

Warnings: Top!Jungkook, bottom!Taehyung, oral sex, blowjobs, semi public sex, spanking, dirty talk, anal sex, anal fingering, come eating

flowers love the sun by bootaeful II ❀ ☆ ☾ ✓

Summary: Taehyung, a beautiful mortal, had caught the eye of Jungkook, a god. Based on the Greek myth of Apollo and his mortal lover Hyacinthus.

Length of story: 2 parts/12.2k words

Warnings: Blood, death

Preach by bruhnam299 II ☆ ☾ ✓

Summary: It had been of their kingdom’s tradition to have a young lad or lass selected for the princes of the kingdom, for purposes justifiable by the princes themselves. They say that upon selection, you live a life of royalty just as the kings and queens do. Taehyung does not believe this; he knows that his life will be one of a sex slave if he were ever to be selected.

Length of story: 3 parts/12.9k words

Warnings: Top!Jungkook, bottom!Taehyung, dom/sub, anal sex, oral sex

Not My Delivery by winter_taebum II ❀ ☾ ✓

Summary: In which Jungkook believed that the person ringing his doorbell was his best friend Jimin along with the pet cat that he was 'supposed' to adopt. Jungkook was never really a 'cat' kind of person but he was willing to have a go at looking after a new furry playmate. Besides, whether it be cats or dogs, he was an animal lover in general. That being said, what shows up in front of his front door instead was neither of that but a beautiful man with breathtakingly sharp feline features and glowing skin instead..Jungkook stares blankly at the stranger in front of his door and what came next was jaw dropping. "Are you my master?" The beautiful male purrs.

Length of story: 3 parts/19.3k words

Warnings: Top!Jungkook, bottom!Taehyung, praise kink, barebacking, master/pet, anal sex, anal fingering, dry orgasm, orgasm delay/denial 

  ↳ One Shots

You Make Me Ssstutter by hauntedaffair II ❀

Summary: “For here or to go?” Taehyung asked sweetly. “Yes.” Jeongguk blurted.…Fuck my life. Jeongguk could almost cry. Burn me in hellfire right now. Taehyung is a cute barista and Jeongguk experiences multiple mental breakdowns. (Coffee Shop!AU)

Length of story: 1.6k words

Warnings: None

Hate Me, Love Me (Everybody Wants to Kiss Me) by parmajeon II ☾

Summary: Jeon Jeongguk never wanted to kiss someone while knocking the living daylights out of them so badly before. (Or: jeongguk is stuck between saying 'fuck you' and 'fight me' and ends up saying 'fuck me' to taehyung in the middle of a fight). (High School!AU, Enemies to Lovers!AU)

Length of story: 2.7k words

Warnings: Slight smut

Love Is Easy by xsmallathenabug II ❀

Summary: Taehyung accidentally says “I love you” to the guy on the other line while ordering a pizza and gets a “Love you too” followed by a "I hope you’re not expecting a discount on the pizza just cause we confessed our undying love for each other.”

Length of story: 2.9k words

Warnings: None

Badabing-Badaboom (We Should Fall in Love Baby) by bruhnam299 II ❀

Summary: Taehyung is so utterly confused. Jimin is a gym enthusiast (who drags Taehyung to his doom). And Jungkook isn't following up on the latest dating etiquette on how to do feelings (or ask someone out). Like. At all. Yugyeom gets pulled into all of this shit (and remains disloyal 'till the end).

Length of story: 3.1k words

Warnings: Scent kink

Let Me Lie Tangent to Your Curves by parmajeon II ❀

Summary: Taehyung didn't think grocery shopping would be that eventful until he almost gets arrested and finds himself face-to-face with an angel. (Aka the au where Taehyung gets his hand stuck in a car window after trying to carry out a heist and its midnight and hes alone in the parking lot and shit shit shit the owner is approaching and he's super hot??)

Length of story: 3.1k words

Warnings: None

Hit Me Like a Tidal Wave by parmajeon II ❀

Summary: Taehyung is a lifeguard at a beach and Jeongguk is an innocent beach-goer. Cue Jeonguk almost drowning, Taehyung actually drowning, and what should have been mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Length of story: 3.4k words

Warnings: None

Take Me Home by puddlesofme II ❀ ☆

Summary: “It’s the middle of the night and i’m walking home alone in the dark and there’s this guy following me and he’s starting to gain on me and i found this phone booth with a lock on the door and I tried to call my best friend but my hands were shaking so badly I accidentally dialed the wrong number and i don’t even know you but help me” au

Length of story: 4k words

Warnings: None

Until the End of the World by parmajeon II ☆

Summary: Taehyung and Jeongguk are best friends, and that's all they'll ever be. (College!AU)

Length of story: 4.3k words

Warnings: Mentions of sex

Time’s Ticking by parmajeon II ❀ ☾

Summary: Jeongguk might have magic older than time itself, but Taehyung’s tongue works its own kind of magic. (or: the au where jeongguk is literally the fountain of youth and explorer Tae decides he's gotta suck his dick to reap the benefits). (College!AU)

Length of story: 5.2k words

Warnings: None

Date Me by flywithtaetae II ❀ ♡

Summary: Taehyung flirts with the cute high school boy and relishes in the flustered reaction he gets for almost an entire year. But when the following year comes along, he finds himself choking on his own words. (Coffee Shop!AU)

Length of story: 5.4k words 

Warnings: None

Snow by gukvee,  jeons_v II ❀

Summary: Taehyung is obsessed with snow filters and he bumps into Jeongguk in a grocery store with his face shoved into his mobile phone screen.

Length of story: 6.1k words

Warnings: None

Stuffed Drumsticks and Cotton Candy Kisses by parmajeon II ❀ ☾

Summary: Taehyung is really good at precision-based games and Jeongguk is really good at strength-based games. Together, they amass a terrifying number of prizes before being kicked out of the carnival.

Length of story: 6.5k words

Warnings: Slight smut

Snap Streak (author unknown) II ❀

Summary: "who dat qt boi on ur story?" Aka: in which Kim Taehyung discovers the love of his life on Park Jimin's snapchat story.

Length of story: 7k words

Warnings: Sexual content (not smut)

Melt in Your Mouth (Not in Your Hands) by mindheist II (+ Jimin) ☾

Summary: What happens at a rave stays at a rave—except this one.

Length of story: 7.4k words

Warnings: Mentions of drugs and drinking

The Dawn Before the Sun Rises by internetpistol II ❀

Summary: It all started when Kim Taehyung almost impaled Jeon Jungkook with a pink umbrella. (College!AU)

Length of story: 8.1k words

Warnings: Mentions of sex

We Only Have Red Bull to Thank by parmajeon II ❀ ☆ ☾

Summary: “But lately,” Taehyung’s mind flashes back to the instance where Jeongguk had literally brought them outside when Taehyung suggested they ‘go out.’ “It’s not the same anymore. We’re on two different wavelengths and it’s fucking weird considering most friendships like this are ruined after the two people date, not before one of them even gets to confess.” (Or: 5 times when Taehyung tries to confess and Jeongguk just doesn't get it + the 1 time he does)

Length of story: 8.6k words

Warnings: None

You’re My Type by dom_joonie II ❀

Summary: “Taehyung turns away from the commotion to look up at the blue sky, but before he can tilt his head all the way back a six-pack catches his eye and, of course, everything goes south from there.” In which Taehyung has a crush on the lifeguard of the local pool, and his thirst cannot be contained. Especially not when eye-candy like THAT is walking around.

Length of story: 8.7k words

Warnings: Drinking, sexual/suggestive content

Been There All Night by Bangtanbananas II ☆ ☾

Summary: Taehyung never planned to fall head over heels for Jeon Jungkook but it just sort of...happened. And he didn't realize the extent of his feelings until Park Jimin walked into their lives and ruined everything. Or the lawyer au where Taehyung gets jealous and becomes a petty bitch. (Office!AU, Lawyer!AU)

Length of story: 9.1k words

Warnings: Drinking

Jingle My Bells by parmajeon II ❀

Summary: When Jungkook met Taehyung on the Polar Express, he didn't expect to see him twelve years later on campus yelling, "Santa Watch Team! Please sign up!”

Length of story: 9.4k words

Warnings: None

Drink Up Baby (It’s Poison) (author unknown) II ❀

Summary: Love thy enemy or better yet, make them fall in love with you (Harry Potter!AU).

Length of story: 10.9k words

Warnings: Drinking

If You Love Me, Let Me Go by buttstrife II ☆ ☾

Summary: They’re alone in Jungkook’s bedroom. There’s a song playing faintly from the speakers of Jungkook’s phone. The lyrics go like this: Oh, my heart hurts so good. I love you, babe, so bad, so bad. Taehyung is his love, his best friend, his soulmate – Jungkook is sure of it. Taehyung is a famous actor/model, and Jungkook is one of many who fall for him.

Length of story: 11.5k words

Warnings: Drugs, mentions of drinking, major character death

Hercules by GinForInk II ❀ ☾

Summary: Taehyung forgets his strength kink until Jungkook picks him up during a group project meeting.

Length of story: 11.6k words

Warnings: Implied/referenced homophobia, light masochism

dating for dummies by sugasus II ❀

Summary: In which Twitter is evil, Jeon Jungkook is a bit tsundere, Park Jimin is satan and Kim Taehyung may or may not have a boyfriend.

Length of story: 12k words

Warnings: None

oh, for the love of god by florations II ❀ ☆

Summary: What could go wrong with falling in love with your best friend? Not a lot, to be honest. That happens to people all the time. But what if said best friend is the God of Love and you're the God of Death? Then a lot. A lot of things could go wrong. Or conversely: What the fuck, Jeon Jeongguk. 

Length of story: 12.6k words

Warnings: None

maps to you by antiking II ❀

Summary: There is a dick on his face. There is a big, bold dick drawn onto his face in black permanent marker, and though Jungkook scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until his forehead is red, he only succeeds in smudging it around. He pumps a fistful of soap onto the towel and renews his efforts with twice the vigor. He has hagwon later today, and he’d rather step on Legos than go there like this. Maybe, he thinks, pausing for a second to examine the state of the dick, his parents will allow him to skip just this once. Does this count as a medical emergency? Jungkook isn’t sure, but his hands are shaky and the towel is shaky and he’s growing more panicked by the second because it won’t come off. He’s going to die. He’s going to die of public humiliation in front of everyone, and then he’s going to come back to life and kill his soulmate, because who the fuck draws a dick on their forehead knowing full well that it’ll show up on someone else, too? (Soulmate!AU, College!AU)

Length of story: 13.1k words

Warnings: Suggestive content

Let Me Hear You Scream by parmejeon II (+ Yoonmin) ❀

Summary: “We both rode as singles on this giant roller coaster and I didn’t realize how afraid of heights I really was and you don’t seem scared so please let me hold your hand for emotional support.”

Length of story: 13.1k words

Warnings: Suggestive content

you’re my earth (the center of my day) by taetastic II ❀ ☆ ☾

Summary: He likes watching the colors dance in Taehyung's wings when they catch on the light of the sunrise, and the golden glow of his fingers when he brushes them over flowers and plants. (Fantasy!AU, Werewolf!AU, Fairy!AU). 

Length of story: 14.3k words

Warnings: Blood, violence, death

Get Me Out Of My Mind (Get You Out Of Those Clothes) by taekookmusings II ❀ ☆ ☾

Summary: Taehyung never thought he'd fall in love with his roommate. Then again, he never thought his roommate would have been a literal gift from god either. (College!AU)

Length of story: 15.8k words

Warnings: Drinking

Let My Body Do The Work by seikou II ☆ ☾

Summary: Seriously, this is agonizing. He didn’t ask for this. His goal isn’t this and yet he finds himself moving his arms to Jungkook’s prompting and misery really loves Taehyung’s company. Gym is frustrating. (College!AU)

Length of story: 17.2k words

Warnings: None

I was told there’d be cookies by mintsoda II ❀

Summary: “Taehyung, this is a very special present I have here,’ Namjoon holds it up for Taehyung to see and Taehyung blinks at it, bottom lip jutted out a little, 'I would like you to deliver it for me. Could you do that for me, Taehyungie?' 'Really? Me? It's my turn finally?' he asks a little too fast, taking the box out of Namjoon's hands to observe it carefully but with a pinch of curiosity. 'What's in there?' 'It's something very important, please be careful with it. It’s for a young man called Jeon Jungkook. It’s a special gift, something really, really precious, you see?" When Christmas elf Taehyung accompanies Santa to the human world on his first ever present shower – Santa forgets to take Taehyung back home with him. Luckily for him, his first present delivery is for aspiring baseball player Jeon Jungkook who, as he finds out, must have had a very peculiar Christmas wish: milk and Taehyung's favourite cookies. (Elf!AU)

Length of story: 18.1k words

Warnings: None

Toads and Periwinkle by Kavbj II ❀ ☾ ♡

Summary: Jungkook’s kinda cursed (like really cursed) and Taehyung’s kinda a witch (like really not a great one but he tries).

Length of story: 18.2k words

Warnings: None

Body Ache by lethallergic II ☆ ☾

Summary: If you listen closely, there are two boys connected so deeply their hearts beat as one. (Or the one where Taehyung desperately needs an accompanist and Jungkook appears to be his only option.) (

Length of story: 18.8k words

Warnings: Smoking

Here Fishy Fishy by Kavbj II ❀ ☆ ☾ ♡

Summary: Taehyung's a real fish out of water (no like, for real) and Jungkook just saved him from drowning. (College!AU, Merman!AU)

Length of story: 21.5k words

Warnings: None

Shark in the Water by mindheist II ❀ ♡

Summary: As far as fairy tales go, this one doesn’t have a lot of fairies. Tales, yes. Tails, that is. Just the one. One (1) tail.

Length of story: 30.6k words

Warnings: Mentions of drinking, suggestive content

Frooty Loopy (author unknown) II ❀ ☾ ♡

Summary: "We both reached for the last box of Froot Loops and I don't care that we're both adults I will fight you.” In which Taehyung fights Jungkook to the death for a box of artificially flavored and colored loops.

Length of story: 31k words

Warnings: Mentions of smoking/drugs, drinking

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Vmin

↳ One Shots

Friends Won’t Let Friends be Sexually Frustrated by staycute1234 II ☾

Summary: Jimin runs into Jungkook on the basketball courts, the younger male leaving him in a sexually frustrated mess. Thankfully his roommate, Taehyung, helps him out. (College!AU)

Length of story: 3k words

Warnings: None

In The Same Boat by pornographicpenguin II ☾

Summary: "You want to what?" "Dock," Jimin says. Taehyung blinks. "You mean like...with a boat?"

Length of story: 3.8k words

Warnings: Docking

call me (whenever you want me) by jhopeg II ❀ ☆ ☾

Summary: Jimin should’ve known that mixing alcohol with his feelings was never a good idea. Because he sure as hell didn’t need to accidentally call a guy (whose voice was incredibly hot) offering sex to him. Over the phone. (College!AU, FWB!AU).

Length of story: 23.3k words

Warnings: Drinking, top!tae, bottom!jimin

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Yoonmin

↳ One Shots

assembly required (author unknown) II ❀

Summary: "It's like 3am and I'm exhausted and I can hear you raging next door about failing to put together an Ikea bed so here I am helping you and holy shit you're cute.” (College!AU)

Length of story: 3.9k words

Warnings: None

Movie Night by sungmin II (+ Taehyung) ☾

Summary: "Maybe we could try messing with one of the other members." He can almost hear Jimin's ears perk up. "What do you mean? Like a prank?" "No," Yoongi says, "I mean like mess around with one of them. You know, fluster him. Make him sweat a little at the very least."

Length of story: 4.5k words

Warnings: None

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Taegi

↳ Series

Brownies? (author unknown) II ❀ ☾ ✓

Summary: There was an unspoken rule in the music industry, never accept food from fans. So it was no surprise to Min Yoongi when he saw Kim Taehyung happily accepting just that. Or: Taehyung eats poisoned food that gives him fox ears and a tail and Yoongi has a good time.

Length of story: 2 parts/16.9k words

Warnings: Fox hybrid!Taehyung, hand jobs, blow jobs, rimming, praise kink, top!Yoongi, bottom!Taehyung, hyung kink (slight), anal fingering, anal sex, cum play, butt plugs, cum swallowing, masturbation

  ↳ One Shots

First Time at the Rodeo by parmejeon II ❀

Summary: Yoongi doesn't like loud and obnoxious people. Or people at all, actually. Enter Kim Taehyung with wide pants and a smile that could rival the sun's.

Length of story: 1.3k words

Warnings: None

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Namkook

↳ Series

The Curse of Curves by snotboy II ☾ ✓

Summary: An explanation as to why Jungkook had a boner during the Billboard video.

Length of story: 2 parts/2.8k words

Warnings: None

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Vhope

↳ One Shots

Truth or Dare (Cause I double dare you) by 2kitsune II ☾

Summary: Hoseok and Taehyung are forced to kiss, again. “So, you want to do a friend with benefits kind of thing?” Hoseok asks. “No,” Taehyung starts, eyes firmly stuck on the single window they have in their room. “We’ll just be friends who occasionally kiss,” He pauses, and his gaze flicks back to Hoseok, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips. “If that’s okay with you.”

Length of story: 7.3k words

Warnings: None

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Namjin

↳ One Shots

Bet You Won’t by Iridescentpulse II ❀ ☾

Summary: Seokjin choked on the rice he was trying to eat, eyes wide and the tips of his ears burning. He turned his startled gaze toward Taehyung, who just sat grinning at his friend struggling to breathe. Jimin quickly handed him his own drink, and after a few gulps, his throat was clear, but his brain struggled to grasp what the younger man had just said - "I'm sorry, could you run that by me again?" “I dare you to take a selfie while having sex with Namjoon." Taehyung dares Seokjin to take a selfie while having sex with Namjoon, and the group chat ends up getting more than it bargained for. (College!AU)

Length of story: 2.9k words

Warnings: None

  ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿ ... ✿°•∘ɷ∘•°✿

Multiple Members

↳ One Shots

go all day, go all night (i’m a beast) by sungmin II (Jimin, Taehyung, Yoongi & Hoseok) ☾

Summary: It’s safe to say that Jimin is a bit of an exhibitionist.

Length of story: 10.2k words

Warnings: Foursome, food kink, asphyxiation.

#bts #bts fic #bts fluff #bts smut #jikook #taekook #vmin #yoonmin #namjin #vhope #namkook #taegi #jimin #taehyung #suga #yoongi #namjoon #rm #jin #seokjin #jungkook #jhope #hoseok

[it-will-not-last-the-night]

PQ2 - End

As I did expect; making sure I was able to comfortably beat the Velvet Rangers first did mean Enlil, though visually impressive, wasn’t a difficult fight. I simply equipped Ryuji with the Omnipotent Orb and had him All Guard every turn and this left Enlil unable to do anything whilst the Joker, Mitsuru, Chie and Ann wailed on them.

The ending was honestly good though, very emotional, heart-tugging, I honestly haven’t had this much fun finishing a game since J.J. Macfield and the Island of the Missing. 

PQ2 is honestly a gem I feel. Beyond fun mechanics that I found easy to get back into even after long gaps, it balances the character development of an enormous cast very successfully, with only some issues.

Even though I knew nothing of P3 or P4 the game conveys their characters in a way I found enjoyable and easy to sink into, and that is really no small feat considering that the cast is, honestly, just insanely large by the end. 

I enjoyed Enlil as an antagonist for the most part, though they could definitely have used a little more substance in the plot, but this game, overall, was less focused on it’s villain and more on it’s protagonist, and that’s fine.

To that end Hikari: the game is honestly the story of her character development and I loved her. It’s a pity we don’t see much of her in the fandom, because I honestly adore Hikari and find her enchanting and relatable in a number of ways.

Her farewell to the friends she made at the finale of the game was genuinely touching.

In general the farewells at the end are emotional, and I enjoyed them all, event he little nod to Akechi’s own mixed feelings, clearly dealing with something, as he is the most hesitant of the Phantom Thieves to finally exit the theatre after they have learned they will forget everything once they are outside. A nice touch!

Of course, because it is me, I do wish to gush briefly about Ryuji: OH MY GOSH I love his dynamic with Hikari? But, also, I just love him in this game? He comes across in PQ2 as if he has matured from his incarnation in the vanilla game. Not only is he the character, along with Futaba, who spends the most time supporting and speaking with Hikari, but even in the ending when most of the Thieves all express varying degrees of excitement or forced enthusiasm about returning home, Ryuji is the one who most noticeably feels sad about the whole affair, expressing how he suddenly misses everything they’d gone through.

On the note of Ryuji and Hikari’s bond: I had thought it mostly just an accidental outgrowth of Ryuji’s common role as an externalization of Joker’s words, but when I watch the ending perhaps it is more intentional than I thought. Noticeably Futaba and Ryuji deliver the closing lines to Hikari, Ryuji is the one who, as she tears up, tells her to remember to keep her promise to invite them to see her movies and in the post-credits scene Ryuji is the character who feels they NEED to see her movie when they find a flyer for it, going so far as to clutch at his head because he, without knowing why, just knows he HAS to go do this. Furthermore, the cutscene as Hikari says her final goodbye and leaves, is framed around a small group of characters: Ryuji, Futaba, P3FemPC, Yukari, Mitsuru and Morgana. Among those Ryuji, Futaba and P3FemPC are the characters with the largest interaction with Hikari throughout the game, and I honestly have adored those four together.

I honestly have no idea why I am typing this, the game is dated and I believe interest in it limited, but I’d recommend any fan of Persona who hasn’t given it a try to do so, if only because the story and characters are honestly well executed, better in many ways than Vanilla.

To be frank; whilst Vanilla has moments that legitimately make me depressed, the scene in Shinjuku and the scene after Shido’s Ship, even at it’s worst PQ2 never has it’s characters be that mean to each other. Even when they jibe or insult they never cross a line to abusing or accosting, and they never all single out one character to relentlessly, constantly, deride.

A breath of fresh air really!

Anyway; I loved the game, I had fun, now I guess I wait for Scramble to become available, and I hope we get to see more of the P5 cast still in future (ALSO ATLUS JUST LET ME HOOK THE PT’S UP WITH EACH OTHER OR DATE THE BOYS PLEASE I WANT TO GIVE THEM LOVE TOO THEY DESERVE IT).

For fun below the divide I’m just gonna mention the relationships, romantic or platonic I’m not going to bother much with a distinction, I really have come to like following this game even though, I am sure, they are all crack.

Enjoy:

Chie/Yukiko: Whether best friends or girlfriends no pair of characters in the P4 cast seemed to, from the outset, come across as obviously as if they are close. The two seem to complement each other well, know each other well and play off each other well and are always delightful and entertaining to watch.

Mitsuru/Junpei: I talked about this one before; I just honestly loved their Ticket and found it endearing how both, in their interactions with each other, were almost Tsundere-ish in admitting to private desires to get along, and take care of each other dearly, but struggling to break through the shell of the other to confess this. 

Ryuji/Hikari: Talked about this one at massive length already; suffice to say I honestly loved their interactions so much and, along with Ryuji’s interactions with Sophia I have seen now in Scramble, Ryuji radiates enormous, powerful, Big Brother/Father energy. Which I think is great? What better arc for Ryuji than, a person who’s life is overshadowed by his awful father, to turn out to be a wonderful father himself.

Yusuke/Yukiko: These two just get each other. Honestly they just click. They tune in to the same cosmic wavelength and leave everyone confused as they naturally just synch up. It is a pity as the game enters its later stages we see less of them, in the early game they are a treat.

Ken/Akechi: Ken and Akechi just are perfect, wonderful, foils to each other and it’s almost a pity the game can’t actually go the full way with it because Akechi’s secret can’t come out. This leaves it as a tease, the suggestion, of what could be, but that’s still plenty good. I also find it always interesting to see Ryuji and Akechi, two boys heavily formed by an abusive father, both in their own explicit words state outright they relate themselves to Ken in some way. With Akechi, because he is so good at wearing masks, I wonder how true it is when he relates himself to Ken, it’d be interesting to know if this is one of his lies to maintain his façade, or a bit of his true self creeping out as it often does. 

Joker/Junpei: I don’t know why I like these two? But Joker comes across as really fond and supportive of him with his consistent chances to shout out “Junpei! Master Detective!”

Yukari/Junpei: As I said in my head I go back-and-forth whether this would be endearing or a toxic hate-love relationship. There’s no denying, though, that these two interact more with each other than anyone else in the P3 cast, they’re the Yukiko/Chie in that sense, if Yukiko/Chie consisted of a lot of barbs and harsh words. We actually get a glimpse of what, I feel, is a healthier dynamic for the two in P3FemPC’s world in the epilogue, where Yukari is still barbed but rather than deflating Junpei ripostes back, this automatically makes it seem less mean-spirited heckling and more two people, comfortable with each other, bantering.

Futaba/Hikari: This one is the obvious choice since the game is obviously going out of it’s way to make this an important relationship. Futaba sees herself in Hikari and appoints herself like an older sister to help her. It is adorable and amazing character development as the socially reclusive and shy Futaba clearly forces herself out of her comfort zone to prove to Hikari that she can change and that she is not a lost cause. Along with Hikari it is, perhaps, Futaba who is the true MVP of this entire game. 

Futaba/P3FemPC: Futaba gets some lovely Sister-like sequences with the incredibly fun and social P3FemPC, who Futaba is clearly in awe of. It is a pity that these really only happen in the early game, I’d love for them to continue, but P3FemPC as the big, fun, sister figure of Futaba is fun.

Ryuji/Yukiko: This one is just because the ending of Haru and Yukiko’s ticket has one of the funniest bit ever when Haru and Yukiko decide they want to ‘play’ with Ryuji and Yosuke. Yukiko’s ‘Will you devote all of your being to the name of the Amagi Family?’ is wonderful and I can just imagine Ryuji’s reaction to such a frank proposition. 

Mitsuru/P3FemPC: This one was actually surprising to me but Mitsuru really has something of an almost maternal instinct for P3FemPC. She seeks to console her and let her know she is valued, even if Mitsuru is poor at expressions of affection, as seen in Junpei’s case as well. In many ways it strikes me as a more sympathetic Sae/Makoto. Mitsuru clearly cares for the P3FemPC and is aware of her disconsolate feelings, but struggles to find the words to comfort her, but doesn’t let that stop her trying. 

#persona 5 #persona #p5 #pq2 #hikari

[etherealhavoc]

Sanders Sides Rainbow & Foil Theories (Warning: Very Long)

Disclaimer: other people may have come up with some of these ideas before, but I didn’t look to any other posts for reference when making this one.

Rainbow Theory:

Rainbow theory is already widely accepted. The sides each represent a color from the visible light spectrum [ROYGBIV] with Roman being red, Janus being yellow, Remus being green, Patton being blue, Logan being indigo, and Virgil being violet. That, of course, leaves the implied existence of an orange character we have yet to meet, who will be referred to as Orange from this point forward. There’s further support for this character in several scenes, including when Virgil tells Thomas “Do not allow him [Deceit] or any of his friends to stick around that long ever again!” after SVS1. This implies that Janus has more than one friend – Remus and another side we have yet to meet. The existence of Orange has been further supported by the thumbnail of SVS Redux, as there is an empty character slot next to Remus:

The rest of this will hinge on the rainbow theory being supported as well as the existence of Orange, given that there is already a lot of evidence backing up these ideas.

Foil Theory:

Setting that aside, the rainbow theory along with the introduction of Remus as “the dark side of creativity” has led to some speculation that each of the sides has a foil. Some versions theorize that each ‘light’ side has a ‘dark’ counterpart. However, Roman is the one who coined the light vs. dark dichotomy, and some of the other sides (most notably Virgil at the end of Intrusive Thoughts) have rejected this terminology. Virgil corrected Thomas to say “the others,” and in  SVS Redux, Janus made it clear that he was not an evil snake boi, he was just a snake boi. The entire rest of that episode supported his claim – Janus may have manipulative tendencies, but what kind of evil character advocates for self-care? It seems to me that none of the sides are truly good or evil, they just all have different perspectives on the world and think a bit differently. In the end, they all have the goal of doing what’s best for Thomas. Their different approaches do tend to create conflict for Thomas, mainly because there isn’t always a clear right or wrong to choose from.

However, it’s possible that the sides could still have foils. Just because these differences aren’t clearly centered around good vs. evil doesn’t mean that different sides can’t come from opposite perspectives. Keeping this in mind, here is my take on the foil theories. First, let’s look at a traditional color wheel:

Looking at this, we can try to find the sides… yellow for Janus, Orange, red for Roman, purple for Virgil, Blue (but it’s a dark blue) so blue for Logan, and green for Remus. But wait! Patton is missing (or Logan, if you decided to use the blue for Patton). This doesn’t work because the color wheel traditionally used for art isn’t the same as the colors on the visible light spectrum. This puts a dent in attempts to use primary and complementary colors to decide on foils for the characters. Yes, Roman’s red and Remus’ green are clearly across from each other and that is the most clearly established pair, but it’s hard to match up the rest of the sides that way when either Patton or Logan are missing. So, in order to properly use color theory to support the theory that each side has a foil, it’s important to keep in mind the differences between the traditional color wheel above and the visible light spectrum (which we can just go ahead and look at now).

In this, we can clearly pick out each side from Virgil to Roman. However, because the visible light spectrum is based on wavelength, it’s linear and that means that no colors are clearly across from each other. When you put these colors in a wheel, keeping the proportion of the wavelengths comprised by each color the way they appear on the spectrum number-wise, the result looks like this:

This shows a comparatively smaller amount of orange and indigo to the rest of the colors, but also doesn’t show opposites or complementary colors as clearly as the traditional color wheel. Remus and Roman are still largely across from each other, but they don’t line up perfectly. It’s also not a stretch to say that based on this color wheel, Janus and Logan would be foils, and Patton and Orange would be foils. However, based on this wheel, Virgil could either have two foils (Janus and Remus) or none at all. These pairings make sense based on what we’ve seen so far, although Virgil’s case requires additional analysis.

[Side note fun fact about the pink in the second image above: it’s not actually part of the light spectrum, our brains invented the color pink to fill in the gap between violet and red when we could sense blue and red light but no green]

Now to break down each of these pairings and why they make sense…

I don’t need to go too much into detail as to why Remus and Roman would be foils – they both encompass creativity and exist in an almost binary way, probably because Patton and Roman (and therefore Thomas) view creative things in a strictly good vs. evil light, as discussed in the Intrusive Thoughts episode. There isn’t a lot of room for grey area here. Now, I personally think that neither of them are strictly good or evil but rather encompass the ideas that Thomas sees as acceptable vs. unacceptable, but that’s not quite relevant to this discussion.

Next, Janus and Logan could reasonably be each other’s foils. I know that some people make a case here for Janus and Patton, but not only does that not match the color wheel, it also makes less sense than Janus and Logan in the context of the episodes. The clearest pair we have so far is Remus and Roman, which is largely due to Roman’s very black and white view of good and evil. When Remus enters, he immediately knocks Roman out. Similarly, nearly every time that Janus has made an appearance except when masquerading as Patton, he has removed Logan from the picture. In SVS1, he impersonated Logan in a manner that seemed intentionally see through. If he had actually put in a significant effort, it seems like he could have gotten away with the impersonation. So, if that wasn’t his goal, what was? Well, his goal could have been to exclude Logan entirely. When Logan finally appears, he says “You guys are doing a courtroom scenario… without me? Unacceptable” before being immediately shunted to the back of the room by none other than Janus. In SVS Redux, Janus allows Patton to skip all of Logan’s input (the button was yellow and black, Janus’ colors, and a cane similar to Janus’ cane in the Lilypadton fight pulled away the text pop-up), and then takes Logan’s place again – effectively excluding him from this episode as well.

Aside from that factor, Janus and Logan argue in a similar way. Both of them use facts, the difference being that Logan simply presents his facts in a mostly objective way while Janus uses facts and theories to support his own personal argument. Even when Logan uses facts to prove a point, he tends to use entire theories that he personally agrees with. Janus picks and chooses bits of fact and theory that support his point, and often uses them in a way that borders on manipulative. His style of arguing fits with a Mark Twain quote I like: “Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.” Both Janus and Logan think and argue in a logical manner and use outside references for support, and the differences in the way they do this supports the idea that they could be each other’s foils.

The dichotomy between Patton and Orange involves a lot more speculation, mainly because Orange as a character doesn’t exist yet and we have no way of knowing for sure what that side of Thomas will represent. However, there have been a few clues so far.

Mini theory time: the orange side represents Thomas’ more aggressive emotions, primarily anger. This makes sense just in general, but also because that part of Thomas clearly exists, but has not particularly been addressed. Logan threw a crumpled-up notecard at Roman in a clear display of anger, the sides argue in a clearly emotional way frequently, and most recently, Thomas’ enraged entry into his house after the wedding took place under orange lighting. That could have been a coincidence, but Thomas and the rest of his team put so much thought and effort into each episode that I’m going to treat that lighting as purposeful.

Now, an interesting thing about these instances is that Patton, the side who is supposed to be in charge of emotions, never seems particularly angry even when the other sides are. When Thomas came in seething after the wedding, Patton seemed horrified by the outbursts and swearing, but not visibly upset about how the wedding went at all.

That leads to the reasoning behind Patton and Orange being foils. In both of the other pairs, the two sides in question seem to have the same primary function. Roman and Remus both represent creativity, but in two different ways. Logan and Janus both think logically and back up their reasoning with facts, but Logan presents the facts as objectively as possible while Janus manipulates them and presents them in the way that best serves his purposes. Patton’s primary function as stated is morality, but he views the world through the lens of emotion. He said himself that morality as he sees it “all comes back… to empathy.” If Orange also represents Thomas’ emotions, with a focus on the negative and aggressive ones that Patton seems unwilling to even entertain, it would make a lot of sense for them to be foils. It’s hard to say exactly how their perspectives here would differ, considering that Orange doesn’t even canonically exist yet, but based on the hints we’ve received so far, the emotional dichotomy here is plausible.

Finally, we have the options for Virgil’s foils or lack thereof. If Virgil has two foils, they would be Janus and Remus as based on the light spectrum color wheel above, and at surface level this seems plausible. After all, the two other sides that Virgil seems to most vehemently dislike are Janus and Remus. However, it seems more likely that Virgil has no foil whatsoever. Neither Remus nor Janus view the world through the same lens as Virgil. Remus comes closer, as intrusive thoughts tend to be things that Virgil is understandably anxious about, but Remus doesn’t view these things as worst-case scenarios, and he likely doesn’t even regard them as realistic. He just seems to take joy in chaos and venturing into creative territory that makes others uncomfortable. Janus, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to think similarly to Virgil at all. In the end, it’s more likely that Janus and Remus make Virgil uncomfortable because he feels like they are a threat to Thomas and not because they are acting as his foils.

On the other hand, if we take the pairings as previously mentioned and leave Virgil with no foil we could rearrange the color wheel to accommodate that and it would look like this:

This gives everyone a clear opposite except Virgil, but also would leave a strange gap between green and yellow that would not naturally exist. However, it would make a lot of sense in the context of the Sanders Sides universe for Virgil to not have a foil. While all the other sides clearly align with either the ‘light’ or ‘dark’ sides (which hopefully will receive alternative titles at some point, since none of them purely represent good or evil), Virgil has settled somewhere in the middle. The entire “Fitting In (Hogwarts Houses)” episode was about how Virgil didn’t fit neatly into a box even though the others more easily seemed to. Virgil’s role as anxiety is to protect Thomas. While all the sides want the best for him, none of them are as clearly protectors as Virgil. Historically, Virgil’s namesake was likely a Roman poet named Publius Vergilius Maro and called Virgil, who in Dante’s Inferno had the role of guiding Dante through hell. That role may have been literal in the story, but Virgil’s role for Thomas seems to be guiding and protecting him through situations that feel like hell, or that induce panic.

If Logan and Janus view the world through logic, Patton and Orange view the world through emotions, and Roman and Remus view the world through creative potential, Virgil views the world through the lens of worst-case scenarios. His job is to get Thomas out of these worst-case scenarios with as little damage as possible. None of the other sides have this same outlook, that we’ve seen. The orange side might, we haven’t seen him yet, but he isn’t even plausibly opposite of Virgil on the color wheel. I feel confident in my theory that he represents the other side of Thomas’ emotions.

If anything, Virgil is his own foil. He sees worst case scenarios, and he can and does use that knowledge in two opposing ways depending on his goal at the time. Sometimes he uses it to protect Thomas, like when he panicked and told Thomas to get rid of his phone. The fight or flight response is firmly in Virgil’s territory and this is an ancient and essential defense mechanism in humans against danger. However, Virgil sometimes uses his worldview to scare Thomas or simply to prove a point. In the Embarrassing Phases episode, he purposefully upsets Thomas and the other sides in order to get the point across to Thomas that, as he puts it “when you reduce a piece of my history to just a "phase", you ignore everything that I went through. Who I was when I scared you all the time is no less real than who I am now.” Note the second part of that quote – Virgil used to be one of the ‘others’ and scare Thomas all the time, and that was real. Now, he works with the ‘light’ sides and aims to protect Thomas in a less scary way than he did before. He’s the same character, but the Virgil he was before the Accepting Anxiety series and the Virgil he is now could certainly be foils to each other.

That turned out much longer than expected, but I’ll end with a short summary. Based on the rainbow theory and a color wheel using the visible light spectrum, the foil pairs are as follows: Roman and Remus, Logan and Janus, Patton and Orange, and Virgil (who could be foils with nobody or possibly with himself). Each pair perceives the world through a different lens, but uses that primary function or worldview in contrasting ways. None of the sides are good or evil, that’s not the dichotomy here, they just have different ways of trying to do what is best for Thomas.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #deceit #virgil sanders #rainbow theory #sanders sides theory #long post #sorry

[kiruuuuu]

Siegemas Day 24

Happy holidays everyone, it’s me again! I stepped in for this day :) Once again, thank you @dualrainbow​, this event is a delight 💝💝

Today, my prompt is the very first line of the fic you find below. I hope you all enjoy it, and have a wonderful time no matter what or whether you’re celebrating! ✨ (Twitch/IQ, Rating T, fluff + emotional comfort, ~2.8k words)

.

“We made… too many cookies.”

The comedic timing is impeccable, the line delivered with perfect hesitance as to imply awareness of the understatement while hiding its undoubtedly practised nature. She’s a born people person with a knack for being charmingly endearing, and IQ is absolutely and horrifically powerless.

“This is ridiculous”, she states, deadpan, not giving away how amused she is in reality – it’s not often that she opens the door to a stunning young woman with pretty cheekbones tinted pink from the cold outside, clad in a flattering deep purple coat and holding several tin boxes in gloved hands. Patterned gloves, a row of snowflakes adorning the fabric. A very familiar row of snowflakes.

“I know, and I’m really sorry, but I don’t know anyone else who’d appreciate these.” Her hair is laid in neat waves framing her pale freckled face, light make-up completing the elegant look. She could be a film star, certainly possesses the same unselfconscious attitude one would expect, even though she’s displaying embarrassment right now. Her slim figure hugged tightly by her form-fitting clothes is visible clearly despite the frankly laughable amount of cookie tins and IQ can’t help herself.

She invites her in.

Twitch is a waterfall, bubbling excitedly about how or why she came across certain recipes, casually throwing in a French or German word amidst the usual English, and it’s impossible for IQ to follow her but she smiles and nods anyway while relieving her visitor of her cargo and placing it gingerly on the kitchen table. So far, this last Sunday before Christmas – the fourth Advent, as it’s called in her mother tongue – had been almost serene, began with chores and continued with a quiet cup of coffee and a good book before slowly tilting over into planning and researching for her next chapter. A regular occurrence. As a result, IQ is mentally somewhere else still and needs a few minutes before she can concentrate on her unexpected guest.

“Good to see you”, she chimes in during a small pause (wouldn’t you know it, even Twitch needs to breathe), and the two of them hug as a greeting. Twitch always gives her a good squeeze, really presses the two of them together, which is one of the reasons IQ looks forward to meeting her every day: it makes her feel appreciated. No one else comes close to these embraces, not Blitz, her decade-old friend, or even her own siblings. In Twitch’s arms, she closes her eyes and finds peace for a brief second.

It might be the absence of her family which has left her this sentimental – normally, she’s too busy to analyse her friends, to scrutinise them to this amount, but today an odd sort of nostalgia and possible bout of loneliness has overtaken her. She did light four candles on her wreath, the first one almost burnt out completely from being lit on all the previous Sundays, yet instead of providing warm illumination, it caused subtle brooding. Their house was always lively around Christmas, bustling with fights, pretend fights, singing, louder singing, future plans yelled through the staircase, raucous laughter, and various songs on repeat trying to drown each other out.

Here, in her small apartment in England, the silence felt foreboding.

“I tried my hand at spéculoos, which Marius called a German staple, and let me tell you – the dough I had was a nightmare to work with, much too sticky. I wanted to roll it out and use Julien’s cookie cutters but it wouldn’t cooperate, so you now have small poop piles of what I think you call Spekulatius. It’s in the blue tin, right on top there. I also made vanilla… uh, vanilla croissants? Shaped like moons? They’re Dom’s favourites, apparently, and Gilles begged me to help him, but he got the recipe wrong and we got so many that he just gave me half. Elias really wanted pain d’épices, um, spicy bread? No, gingerbread, that was it. You guys have the best name for it, by the way, Lebkuchen, it makes it sound like you’re Frankenstein: live, cake!”

Twitch somehow manages to wander through the flat while babbling on, accepting a cup of lukewarm coffee IQ puts in her hands and instinctively helping to pick a few cookies from each box to create an inviting-looking decorative paper plate which IQ carries into the living room where they settle down, fingers curled around warmed ceramic and eyes gleaming in the candlelight.

“You need to try these, it’s actually one of James’ mum’s recipes. Poppyseed and chocolate, they turned out better than expected, but after Liza told that story about her acquaintance failing a drug test because of poppyseed bagels, people refused to eat more than one and I definitely can’t stomach all of these alone.”

She watches, expectantly, as IQ dutifully picks out one of the spotted cookies shaped like a flower and bites into the crumbly bakeware. Surprising no one, it’s delicious – if there’s anything Twitch can’t do, IQ hasn’t found it yet.

“Really good”, she agrees, allowing for Twitch’s instant beaming smile to tug the corners of her own mouth upwards while she chews. “Manu, these all look lovely. You know I’d die for good Christmas cookies, so thank you. Even though this is way too much for me.”

Her laugh is melodic and as contagious as her constant sunny mood. “You should see how many I still have at home. Elias claimed he needs to watch his figure, Julien should be watching his figure, Doc doesn’t really like sweets, and Gilles eats maybe one cookie a day. Which you know is illegal at Christmastime.”

“Still, this is a wonderful present and I’m afraid I have nothing to give in return.” IQ isn’t being entirely honest. Still testing the waters; maybe Twitch will manage to read between the lines and they can finally address it. The moment the Frenchwoman stepped over the threshold was the moment IQ decided they’d talk it through today. It’s been going on long enough.

“Not true, you gave me the gloves!” Twitch’s triumphant gotcha! expression is self-satisfied and smug and sweet. Sweeter than the cookies calling to IQ – they really do look fantastic, a variety of shapes, sizes and colours, all together smelling of spices and memories and Christmas.

“Someone had to, you kept complaining about your icy fingers.”

“And you were probably sick of warming them up.” Twitch hasn’t caught on yet, her tone is still breezy and carefree. “Have you written some more? Any new scenes for me to read? I need to know whether the captain really is dead or not.”

IQ laughs, half embarrassed and half delighted – when the news broke in Rainbow that she writes stories in her spare time, she expected an outcome way worse than what she ended up facing: Castle immediately expressed interest in reading them, no matter the topic, and once word got out that it was usually science-fiction-centric, even more people approached her out of curiosity. None of them as enthusiastic as Twitch, however, who dove into the narratives like an age old fan into new material, sparking an unknown productivity in IQ which has yet to subside. Knowing there’s at least one person who devours anything she dreams up has been fantastically motivating, and they’ve begun spinning yarn together now and then. Twitch is the only one whom she trusts enough to proofread for scientific errors or inconsistencies, and she’s helped develop a character into a much more compelling version of themselves several times.

The next hour is spent on discussing IQ’s research, involving frantic googling and article hopping on Wikipedia to help with finding the correct jargon – Twitch knows most of the technical terms in French, which doesn’t mesh well with IQ’s rusty school French, whereas her German accent makes it difficult for the other woman to understand her, so they try to meet in the middle somewhere by using English, despite the laborious process involved.

They’re on one wavelength. Always have been, from the moment they came across each other in Rainbow’s workshop, when Twitch still dyed her hair auburn and IQ barely spoke a word with the other operators: a friendly smile, an engineering-related question, a brief introduction, and they were a house on fire. Inseparable at work.

Twitch made sure it bled into their private lives as well, even if it took considerable effort. IQ never asked, but she’s sure her friend secretly celebrated that one day when she finally said yes to one of her suggestions of meeting up.

.

And it’s exactly why it hurts so fucking much to think -

.

“Manu.”

Twitch stops talking mid-sentence, probably caught off guard by her serious tone of voice. “Yes? Is everything alright?”

It might be. She hopes it will be. Her fingers stray to a loose thread peeking out of the seam of her trousers, picking at it. “We’ve been friends for a while now.”

Several years, in fact, an unimaginably long time. Not that IQ hasn’t been able to keep friendships alive for this long, but never one this close. The level of intimacy usually kept declining after a certain point, usually prompted by nothing, sometimes spatial distance, sometimes emotional. There aren’t many people who keep up with her over a long time, and even fewer she keeps up with – Blitz is a great friend, but he just doesn’t share her passions.

“And you’re one of the most generous people I know. Your first instinct when you have too many cookies is to give them away. I’ve always admired this about you.”

Twitch is listening intently. She knows something is up, yet can’t put her finger on it. Her brows are furrowed. IQ knows this from a brief glance before her gazed drops back down to her restless fingers.

“Julien and I had a conversation about you, not too long ago. And some of what he said was… unexpected.” Rustling; Twitch is beginning to fidget as well. “Unrelated to that, Dom overheard you voicing your frustration about your being single and mentioned it to me. I didn’t know you were that unhappy. You never said anything.”

She really likes you. Yeah, don’t wave me off. I’ve never seen her fawn over someone like this. You get special treatment all the time.

And then, more poignant: At this point, I’m basically ready to fuck anything that moves.

The second quote echoes in her mind as if she’d heard it herself instead of it being delivered second-hand. Both of them made her look back at the past months and re-evaluate some events. Showed them in a very different light.

Twitch is radiating anxiousness. It’s easy to pick up.

“I realise now that I’ve received a lot of special attention from you, and… I just have to wonder.” It’s harder and harder to push the words out, her throat closing up. “Wonder whether your present today is cookies and friendship, or cookies and a confession, or cookies and an expectation. Whether there’s some kind of motive attached.”

Her entire life, there’s never been anyone outside her family who understood her better. Being a woman in a male dominated field is difficult enough, especially as a competitive one, and her experiences aren’t easily conveyed to her guy colleagues – Twitch understands, of course, has faced the same obstacles and prejudices. Seeking patterns everywhere, striving for excellence, despising complacency, the overwhelming need to reverse engineer anything new or remarkable, exploring new places, wanting to always keep moving and improving – Twitch understands, has had a similar upbringing and equivalent goals.

They share almost everything at this point, have been on holidays together, mastered several projects with each other’s help, stayed up till sunrise because sleep was the inadequate alternative to exchanging ideas and pushing each other further than they’d go by themselves. Others have always tried to slow IQ down, force her to relax, take her mind off something she enjoyed chewing on, and it was infuriating.

All Twitch does is encourage her. Which paradoxically calms IQ more than any massage or empty-brained film ever could.

She doesn’t want to lose all this. Her chest hurts with the pressure of potentially losing someone this dear to her. But at the same time, she doesn’t want Twitch to get the wrong idea.

When silence is all she receives, she looks up to find Twitch fighting for composure – wide eyes filled with moisture and lip quivering. It’s a stab in the guts. IQ has never seen her cry.

“I don’t -”, Twitch chokes out, adding more quietly: “This isn’t -”

IQ sits next to her, reaching out but retreating when Twitch shakes her head, so all she does is take her hand. As always, her fingers are cold, so IQ closes her own around them. This isn’t at all what she intended, but she needs to know.

“Your friendship means the world”, comes a much more composed statement after a minute. “You should know this.”

She nods. She does know.

“And – and yes, if there was more, I’d be happy. Even happier than I am now. But there doesn’t need to be.” Twitch is speaking faster now, rushing the words, her melodic French accent thickening. “I’m fine with everything staying the way it is. I love being around you, no matter how, so if you’re not okay with – with anything else, it’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll get over it, no worries.”

“Manu. Breathe.” Seeing the other woman in a panic is a rare sight and IQ doesn’t enjoy knowing she’s the cause. “I love being around you, too. You’re my best friend, by far. But… I don’t want anything casual.”

Twitch needs a moment to digest this and IQ readies her responses: she’s had bad experiences with it in the past, and as far as she knows, arrangements like friends with benefits tend to make everything messy and awkward. Staying friends is the better option.

“Yes. Me neither.” A beat. Their eyes meet, Twitch’s still glistening.

There is an even better option, as far as IQ is concerned. And it seems to slowly dawn on the nearly perfect woman next to her.

“And… what about something not casual? But still more?”

Oh. The pressure begins to lift off her chest with every passing second, with every second that Twitch stares at her, hopeful, unsure. Slowly, she clarifies: “You mean – cookies and a confession?”

The nod is nearly imperceptible, and IQ probably almost breaks her fingers by squeezing so hard. The next thing she knows is she’s leaning forward and pressing their lips together, tasting the saltiness of perceived rejection as well as the disbelieving smile of actual acceptance, and then Twitch is laughing as well, crying in between relieved giggling, almost hysterical, and IQ joins in, and before they know it, they’re a mess on the sofa, hugging, seeking physical contact, pressing kisses to temples and hair and cheeks and lips again, wrapping arms around warm bodies.

Her heart is singing because while she so fiercely hoped, she barely dared to, was used to disappointments and therefore expected the worst, even ascribed traits to her best friend in the whole world who’d never stoop so low as to demand something from her she wasn’t ready to give. No, Twitch understands her and vice versa. Even so, it took them an embarrassingly long time to get to this point. In their shared joyousness, they barely manage to finish their sentences:

“What Dom heard me say wasn’t, I mean, I was just -”

“Yes, I figured, but it still got me thinking -”

“I was having a bad day, I’m not that frustrated -”

“Oh? That’s a shame, you know, I was actually looking forward to -”

“Monika!”, Twitch exclaims, scandalised even though they’re both aware IQ is joking, and by now they’re laughing like mad, especially because Twitch only uses her full name when she’s done something, so IQ resorts to tickling her in retaliation or maybe to distract her, and they both yelp when Twitch’s foot shoots up, gets caught on the rim of the cookie plate peeking over the coffee table’s edge, and catapults its contents everywhere. One manages to hit IQ in the face, the rest is scattered all over the floor, which sets them off again after a second of total silence.

“It’s fine, it’s fine”, Twitch gets out in between breaths, “I really do have tons more at home.” Which IQ believes her in a heartbeat.

Even though she’s pretty sure she got the lion’s share of the leftovers.

And just a second before they notice that the napkin on which the cookies were presented has caught fire, IQ thinks about how she dreaded spending Christmas at Hereford without her family – and she realises now she’ll be in great company regardless.

#rainbow six siege #twitch #iq #twitch/iq #fanfic #oneshot #siegemas #this is the last couple perfecting my quartet of german/french ships #check out their new bios btw #in my head they fit so so so well together #I'm looking forward to reading all the entries I've missed!! #I hope I'll have more time after Christmas

[ask-de-writer]

LEZON (part 3 of 3), a Science Fiction tale.

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Science Fiction

Lezon

by

Glen Ten-Eyck (De Writer)

17837 words

copyright 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

written, 2003

All   rights reserved. This document may not be copied or distributed on  or   to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the   express  written consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users  of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.   They may  reblog the story.  They may use the characters or original  characters in  my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or  fan musical  compositions, provided that such things are done without  charge.  I will  allow those who do commission art works to charge for  their images.  

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fictions is actively encouraged.

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K’ress started working at her keyboard and touch screens. Lezon went to work on hers as well. The unsteady but somewhat rhythmic pounding of the guns became ragged and further spaced, giving a last few weak blasts and falling silent. Shortly, even the inertial drive went dead, leaving the D’ancer boosting on the ramjet alone.

The voice of T’cill came over the intercom. “Lezon, K’sere had an idea. Shut down life support and funnel its energy into the capsule too. It’s not much but it will help. We can live for several days with the system off line so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Give her a hug for us,” said K’ress as she reached for the engineering panels. Soon, only the dim emergency lights were on in a ship now ghostly quiet. The silent fusion flame of the ramjet burning the thin interstellar hydrogen in the vacuum behind the craft was the only sign of life onboard.

///////////////////////////

“What in the name of Treh the Huntress are you doing?” demanded M’ase as she strode over to the pilot’s station. The pilot had cut power so abruptly that M’ase had felt it through the grav compensators.

“Your order was to follow no closer than 15 C seconds,” replied the pilot. “We almost lost the Clanner by running past it entirely when it cut power.”

“It cut power?” said M’ase skeptically.

“I have a copy of the last five minutes of targeting data that we can replay,” said fire control. “You may want to see it. It appears that they have had an onboard system failure.”

“Put the information onto the command screen,” M’ase ordered.

“Coming on, now,” said fire control. “The left side of the screen is the current situation. The right is the last three minutes,” where the failure appears to begin.”

M’ase watched the ragged performance of the guns begin shortly after the last attempt to start the Restriction field. She saw the shields begin to flicker out, getting weaker in time to the gun fire. She saw the guns give one last blast and the shields fall to less than a tenth of the necessary strength. A few seconds later, even life support power went out.

She smiled tightly, remembering other traps set by this enemy. “Send out repair crews to do as much exterior work as possible.”

M’ase raised a hand in salute to the enemy on her screen. “You remind me too much of a mouse faking a broken leg in order to lure a tiger into reach. Does this mouse have hungry little kits at home with a taste for tiger meat? This tiger will take the time to sharpen her fangs and claws before she pounces.”

Damage control’s outside teams began to report in. The Hand of Claws would need professional radiation decontamination on several areas of the hull. The forward tachyon battery that had been put out of action when the Talon was hit could be back to service in less than an hour. The one that had just been hit was a total loss. The forward disruptor battery was severely damaged and considered dangerous to fire. Out of action for practical purposes. The primary sensor array was damaged but repairable. Overload damage mostly, though it would need realignment for real accuracy.

None of the Talon bays could be got into action without a full ship yard to repair them if it were done properly. However two of them could be put into action by sacrificing the doors and servicing the craft themselves in vacuum suits. It would be uncomfortable but possible.

Through her comm links, M’ase ordered damage control, “Repair the long range sensors and forward tachyon battery as first priority. Get a Talon bay going only if time and effort can be spared.”

/////////////////////////

Lezon was studying passive scan intelligence of her enemy. K’ress and K’sere were looking at the screens with her. The emergency lights lent a surreal appearance to the whole scene. K’sere’s tail tip was twitching in concentration. She pointed at one of the readouts.

“What is this little power that comes and goes?” she asked Lezon.

“They are welding on the outside of the hull,” Lezon replied. “Do you see that there are several of them? When there is a little spike in the reading, more than one are working at once.”

“I see,” said K’ress. Then it was her turn to point. “What’re these low-level tachyon pulses? They don’t seem to be doing anything.”

Lezon responded, “They are aligning the main sensor array. See, they are trying to restore the quarter wave spacing between the elements. There — now she has eyes again. Time to be mean once more.”

“What are you going to do?” both K’ress and K’sere asked at once.

Lezon was already working at the engineering panels. “They are exactly dead astern. We have enough power stored now to start the Restriction field and some to spare. I’m going to ignite a second fusion point in the ramjet.

“K’sere, it is school time again. What will happen if I space the two fusion points by any even multiple of the wavelength of a gamma ray?”

K’sere twitched her ears and tapped one of her fangs absently as she thought. She knew that there was something of a clue in the question itself. She brightened. “The space between them will become a laser cavity,” she announced triumphantly. “You will make a gamma ray laser out of the ramjet!”

“Right you are, kitten,” Lezon said. “Now, how much warning will they have to get under cover? Assume that their detection and fire control officers are good.”

K’ress looked with pride at the young second daughter of her Clan as the child began to calculate on her fingers, muttering the while. “Fifteen C seconds — tachyon propagation speed — I think I have it, Lezon. They will have just under seven minutes warning. If they have any lag in the command structure or don’t understand what they are seeing, they will have less.”

“Salvo on target, K’sere. Now, what could I do to hide what I’m doing while they watch me do it?”

“You could start the Restriction field. That would make it look like you were igniting the second point to get more power, especially if the extra fusion point was snuffed out right after you got the field started, like it were unstable or something.” Fiercely she added, “I hope that you burn a hole through them from stem to stern!”

//////////////////////////////

“Commander M’ase, they’re attempting to restart the restriction field again,” detection said, happy, now that her equipment was working properly. She and fire control were working on reestablishing information sharing protocols.

M’ase approved. Busy as detection was with getting the system up, she was keeping an eye on the enemy. It was engineering who pointed out, “They might make it, this time. They’re setting up a second fusion point in the ramjet for more power. It’s a trick that I’ve seen before, during the last war. It makes the ramjet unstable but if they are lucky, they’ll get the power that they need before it has to be snuffed.”

“Restriction field up,” announced detection. “There goes the second fusion point, looks like it may have blown before they snuffed it. They are bringing power up in the life support. The main drive is still offline.”

“We should have taken them,” muttered the pilot under her breath.

Just then, fire control called out, “Get damage control under cover! We have six minutes to maneuver out of the line of fire. We have an incoming attack.”

M’ase was torn. If she maneuvered to prevent damage to the ship, she could lose all of her damage control techs who were outside. “Drop tools and get inside,” she sent to damage control. “Five point five minutes to full power maneuver.” To the pilot she said, “Set up vector 20, 0, 0 and prepare to boost full power at my mark.”

Detection had set up a countdown clock on the main and pilot’s screens without needing an order.

“What’s incoming?” M’ase asked fire control.

“A ten second gamma ray laser burst. EM doesn’t show on the tachyon screens so I almost missed it. It was the spacing of the fusion points in their ramjet that tipped me off.”

M’ase was both admiring her adversary and angry at the same time. Damage control can’t possibly all get inside in time. Once again you’ve done the unexpected. Almost got away with it, too. The countdown inexorably continued. With only a minute to spare, M’ase began to get the first reports of damage control personnel reaching safety.

“Commence maneuver,” M’ase told the pilot, outwardly calm, as the clock hit zero. Those inside, felt little or nothing as the big ship began to boost. The damage control crews still outside the hull had no chance. Full power boost peaked out at nearly 350 gravities. Nearly a third of the damage control crew were killed outright or left behind as their ship dodged the oncoming laser attack.

“Get me the identification of the missing,” M’ase told engineering. “They will have Names to take with them to the Cave of Life.”

“May Lezon receive them as the heroes they are,” engineering responded ritually.

They barely dodged the laser beam. Where the beam hit the exhaust of their ramjet, a small glowing nebula down its length told of perfectly aimed death, narrowly escaped.

Detection sang out, “Target’s main drive is online. 240 g’s and climbing. Tachyon fire commencing again. Restriction field strength at .24 and increasing slowly. It will not be long before they have gone over lightspeed.”

“Continue to follow no closer than 15 C seconds and whatever you do, don’t get directly in the line of their exhaust again,” M’ase ordered the pilot.

Fire control and detection were working together again on the problem of the enemy’s guns.

////////////////////////

“We missed, Lezon,” said K’sere with disappointment.

“Learn from this, kitten,” Lezon replied quietly. “We did not hit them but we did the worst damage that we have done so far.”

K’ress looked up sharply at that. “How did we hurt them? They have more power and speed than we do still. They have more and deadlier weapons. What did we do by a miss?”

“We gave M’rel company on the journey to the Cave of Life,” said Lezon from the inner calm imposed by the training of the Warrior’s Way. “They had some of the most important people on the ship, their damage control engineers, outside working on the guns and sensors when they were forced to maneuver. They lost many of them at the least.”

“K’ress looked at Lezon as if she were seeing something even stranger than a Feront. In a way, she was. “Weren’t those people your friends? How could you?” Lezon’s answer showed her the depth of the gulf between them.

“All life is precious. It may be spent to the goal of the Warrior but never cast aside lightly. Once the goal is known, life is the only tool that can achieve it. My goal is your safety. Theirs, your destruction. I cannot regret the use of their lives in achieving my goal.

“I will light a candle for them to help them find the Cave of Life. I have done that for the fallen of both sides after every battle of my lifetime. When she has healed the wounds of their souls, Lezon will send them out to live again.”

K’sere’s curiosity piqued, she asked, “Do you really believe that?”

Lezon smiled indulgently and stretched, finally having little to do. “School time, K’sere. State for me the Principle of Conservation.”

Mystified by what it had to do with her question but knowing her teacher, she answered, “Mass and energy are interchangeable, each being a manifestation of the other. The combined total of all mass and energy never changes.”

“Well said,” approved Lezon. “Now, is life a phenomenon composed of energy and matter?”

“Of course it is…” K’sere trailed off as she realized the implications.

“Now that you have laid the foundations, I will elucidate. I believe that the myth of Lezon and the Cave of Life contains some truth. The rituals connected to that myth are almost certainly of no real value to the dead. They do help the living to go on.

“Very little in this universe is lost forever. Conservation says that life is changed but continues. That is what I believe. Some are more literal.”

K’ress realized that Lezon had not mentioned T’cass going to the Cave of Life and asked, “Lezon, why do you say only M’rel is going to the Cave of Life. Wasn’t T’cass’s ship destroyed too?”

“K’ress, Ma’am, it was. There is a large difference, though. My ship was destroyed but I lived. T’cass found me. I hope that she had time and sense enough to get clear before the Talons struck. Until we can go look, it is too soon to light a candle for her.”

“I see,” said K’ress.

She had long ago learned that it paid to be observant around Lezon, and was first to notice the information on the screens. The Restriction field had climbed to an intensity of 0.45 and the inertial drive was well past the limits given in the manual and supposedly locked into the software. She tapped a few keys and read before speaking.

She said, “Lezon, I know that we are fleeing for our lives. I just looked at the safety factors on the drive before bringing this up. According to the computer, we should be vapor. Do we have to help our enemies by overloading our systems?”

Lezon got that kitten caught in the snacks look again. “During the last refit, I found a used drive in better shape than our old one. It was cheap because they had just scrapped it out of an old shot-up Treaty Commission Messenger Packet.

“About half of the money I spent went to the drive and the other half went to modifying the engine bay to get it to fit. I still saved you money compared to an overhaul of the old drive. I should have deleted that old software.” Seeing the skeptical look in K’ress’s eye, Lezon hastened to add, “We are still inside class limits. I asked the T.C. to be sure.”

K’ress’s eyes slitted, her ears laid back and her tail tip began to twitch. “Lezon,” she purred, “before I married into this Clan, I was a Messenger pilot myself. Would I recognize what’s in our engine bay?”

Lezon managed to look utterly guileless as she said, “Probably. You did do time as a capital ship engineer, too, didn’t you?

“They were scrapping a T.C. System Defense heavy cruiser at the same time as the messenger. I think that we have one its four main drives down there.

“If anybody made a mistake, it was a T.C. clerk. Maybe she was the same one that sold us the drive and inspected the installation. It goes like the Feront on a hot rock doesn’t it?”

Lezon tapped at her screens and brought up an information display. K’ress sucked in a breath as she read the drive specifications and saw the Treaty Commission seal. It only took a few quick calculations to realize that the drive could boost them at just about 320 g’s and that their little ship’s total power resources couldn’t begin to overload it.

/////////////////////////////

“I am beginning to wonder just what we have run into,” M’ase said thoughtfully. “No ship in their class registry should boost like that.”

She was leaning over detection’s shoulder to see the screen better. The story that it told was as bad as it could get. The furthest that they could detect the Clanner was only 2 C hours. They could try a wide sweep around it, to block it from the triple sun. Fine, in theory…

More and more, M’ase wished that Lezon were still here to lend her unorthodox mind to the problem. Her loss at M’onafar had been the primary reason for the M’cratt defeat in the last war.

Her musing was interrupted by the pilot complaining, “I hate stern chases. There’s nothing to do.”

M’ase stalked over to the pilot’s station and leaned close. “Try a little math problem. Ahead is a closely grouped triple sun system that rotates about its center of mass very quickly. Calculate all possible courses through them or near them that will go toward any of these four Clan colonies.” She pointed out the target destinations on the pilot’s screen. “Figure the whole range from 0.5 to 38 C.”

Almost contemptuously, the pilot began to call up data. “I’ve been doing nav problems since I was a kit,” she muttered under her breath. A few minutes later, she frowned and approached the problem a different way. And yet again.

M’ase was watching sardonically as the pilot growled and went at the problem from the very start.

“This has to be wrong,” stated the pilot in a puzzled voice. “What am I missing? I can’t find any solution to this that allows us to pursue that Clanner.”

“What difficulty do you find with this simple little problem?” purred M’ase sarcastically.

“Every possible course through or near that system will force us out of detection range, making it nearly impossible to find them again.” The pilot laid her ears back in frustration. “I even tried to figure out how to just run around them and cut them off from the target system. If we begin the maneuver, inertia will prevent us from following in time if they cut away from us. They will be out of detection range before we can come about.”

“That is what detection realized before they even began their turn,” M’ase said, her own ears laid back a bit. “Unfortunately, star ships can’t change course rapidly once they are near or over the speed of light. Basic laws of motion still apply, especially that pesky one about inertia. Turn from the enemy’s course and the enemy turns away from you. By the time that you can turn back to their course, they are out of detection range, hidden by simple immensity.”

“And I would have just tried to follow them through that trap of suns,” said the pilot ruefully. She tapped her right fang as she thought. Brightening, she said, “Actually, I think that it may be our best course of action. Keep them crowded for now in the hopes of overloading their generators. They are short one radiator. When we get close to the system, we should fall back to about one C hour behind so that we can see the course that they commit to and try to work out an intercept instead of a direct follow. Then we can use the gravity of the stars to slingshot across their course at an angle, out of their effective range. The angle should bring our working batteries to bear.

“If detection had all of this figured out before they even committed to the course, she has my admiration and deserves that Name that you promised her.”

M’ase smiled. “You are bright. You did figure out what we are going to do. That is why you are on my bridge. Detection is inspired. She reminds me of a young Lezon.”

//////////////////////////

Lezon looked up thankfully as T’cill brought in food and drink. “Lezon, we’ve been thinking. How much power would it take to boost the tachyons from our guns up a quantum number? If we could do that, it would bleed the Restriction field energy a lot faster.

“K’sere came up with the idea. We have all been looking it over and we can’t find anything basically wrong with it.”

Lezon actually grinned, showing all of her fangs. “I am pleased to see you thinking on the nature of our problem. The idea of next quantum state tachyon weapons has actually been around for quite a while. The difficulty with your idea is that the generation of second quanta tachyons takes equipment that only a few high-tech labs have. Nobody has ever been able to contain the generated tachyons, either. The damage has usually been minor due to the small amount of particles involved. A few times, it has been spectacular.”

The crestfallen kit asked, “Why did the experiments fail?”

Lezon reached out and ruffled T’cill’s juvenile mane and said, “Two reasons that act in concert. One, it takes a Restriction field strength of at least .85 to hold them in the accelerator. The other is that those pesky tachyons have a really short half-life before they decay to first quantum state, yielding all of the energy that made them try to go so fast in the first place. Usually they don’t get out of the accelerator before they go bang. That makes the accelerator’s Restriction field go bang too.”

Lezon looked wistful, “If it wasn’t so big and expensive it could make a lovely bomb.” Changing moods briskly, she added the dreaded, “School time, T’cill. You and the others too. Figure the yield if only twelve percent of the tachyons in our field now got to second quantum. Since I know that it is not in your references, assume a half life of 9.74x10-130 seconds.”

T’cill’s eyes widened. “That short?” She scooted before the lesson could deteriorate with other nasty surprises.

///////////////////////////

Detection called M’ase to the bridge. “Sorry to interrupt your meal, Ma’am. The situation is changing. The Clanner’s restriction field is headed for overload. They have begun braking at just over 320 g’s. The drive is showing signs of flutter too.”

M’ase silently looked at the data. She turned, “Pilot, are you maintaining our separation?”

“Yes, Ma’am. As small as they are and as heavy as that field is, it’s not easy to match them. I’ve had to run our field up pretty high to assist braking. We are coming up on the target star system and perhaps the gravitational flux is messing them up. I’ve looked at what Detection and Fire Control worked out, and it has to be something of a jury rig.

“They are feeding the excess tachyon flux into the guns. That’s one reason for their continuous fire.”

“Are we close enough to project their course?” M’ase asked, more than idly curious.

“That bothers me,” said Detection. “So far, they have been holding their options as open as possible. Now, they are making for the equidistant point between the stars, as you can see. If they hold steady through there, the courses open for a small energy expenditure are like so.”

She keyed her screens and displayed probability cones in a nightmare of profusion. “If we assume that they want to make for one of the nearby colonies, this is the result.” The nightmare resolved into only a few probable courses.

“What if they go sub-light?” M’ase asked hopefully.

“That is figured into these, Ma’am. It includes the whole set from .5 to 12 C. Those are the upper and lower limits that they can reach with the changes presently in effect.”

“This I understand,” said the pilot almost smugly, “and we have them. We can break off and do a double gravity slingshot through the system’s center of mass. Our orbit and theirs will intersect here, less than .15 C year on the other side of the system. We will have time to finish repairs to the forward batteries and be able to bring in other guns besides.”

Detection and Fire Control both added, “I concur.”

“Do it,” M’ase said. Turning to Detection, she added, “I have not forgotten my promise. What is your Name?”

“I will be Treh, the huntress of the Stars.”

“A good name. It is so logged. After your shift, Treh, in the wardroom, we will have the ceremony for the crew.” M’ase put her hand once more on Treh’s shoulder. This time in the proper familiar greeting of the Named. The rest of the Bridge Crew raised their hands in salute.

Treh pointed out, “They are still braking hard. They are firing their bow battery as well as the stern to keep the restriction field from overload.”

“Yes,” said Engineering. “If it fails before they slow down below C they will be dead and save us further trouble.”

“Breaking off pursuit to go for the intercept,” announced the Pilot.

“They will be going through the equidistant point between the stars at just below C,” said Treh. Her screen promptly displayed a new and much more restricted set of courses for their prey. Pilot immediately refined her course through the gravitational center of mass of the system, increasing her probability of an intercept to a near certainty.

///////////////////////////

Aboard the D’ancer, Lezon called, “Gather round, everyone. You may as well be here on the bridge to witness the end of the chase. It has the best view and most information in the ship. Besides, I want the ones that I love close by.”

At Lezon’s use of the word love, K’ress looked up from her seat at the engineering board. The kits charged into the room.

“T’cill, you take copilot,” Lezon ordered. “K’sere, you have detection, and T’lass, you have the main computer.”

K’sere glanced at her screen and immediately said, “Lezon, they are breaking off and diving for the System Mass Center. They will be behind us for a while but …”

“I know, K’sere. They will complete a double gravitational slingshot and have an intercept in about 1/8th of a C year,” Lezon finished for her. Turning to K’ress, Lezon asked, “Are we ready for Restriction field shutdown?”

“We are, Warrior. I have to wonder why though. This close to C, we will never be able to restart it.”

“True. We will need to brake for a long time before we can restart it. Fortunately, we will have that time. I had hoped that M’ase would break off the chase sooner. Now she has led the Hand of Claws into the Cave of Life. I will have to light another candle.”

T’lass, her brow knitted, was punching information into the computer. She looked up, amazed at the answers. “Lezon,” she said quietly, “shall I start the cameras on superfast?”

“Set them to continuous aperture and to engage one thousandth of a second before Restriction field shutdown,” Lezon replied, grinning to herself. She had long ago realized that little T’lass was a mathematical prodigy and had set out encourage the talent. It appeared that T’lass might have figured out what was about to happen. She opened the communication channel for the first time in the whole chase.

////////////////////////

The pilot had finished setting up her maneuver and said with utter confidence, “Whether they try to boost or just fall free through there, this course will put them into our claws. See, they are down to .8 C and trying to drop their Restriction field. At that speed, the only explanation has to be a serious malfunction. They’ll never get it restarted in time to avoid us.”

Treh suddenly had a thought. “Falling free —“ she began to type rapidly. She stared in disbelief at her screen. Silently, she put the result onto the main screen.

M’ase was looking at the plots with horror when the comm channel called for her attention. The ID code being used was one that had been retired after the battle at M’onafar. Lezon was calling in after an absence of more than ten years.

M’ase opened the comm channel and saw Lezon surrounded by the kits of the Clan D’ancer. “M’ase, I feared that you might still be in command,” said Lezon without preamble. “I called to say farewell. You are too committed to your course to escape. You have just less than one hour to prepare for the Cave of Life. I am sorry that the weapon that I am using will not allow your survival. I will light a candle for you all.” The screen went dark.

Treh put the detection screen information onto the main screen where all could see how they had been trapped.

“Relativity Frames of Reference Theory,” said M’ase softly. “We are so used to working around it with the Restriction field, that we tend to forget that it still applies.”

“Their restriction field collapsed while they were doing .8 C. The energy transfer has boosted them to just over .97 C,” said Treh. Rhetorically she added, “So this is what it is like to fight a legend. Who but Lezon would use the Law of the Universe itself as a weapon?”

//////////////////////////

K’ress and the kits were watching the screens as the Restriction field was collapsed. The universe changed. The stars of the system vanished. Though they were braking, there were stars visible only in a wide belt around the D’ancer. Toward the bow they faded away into the infrared. Toward the stern they became visible from the ultraviolet. Only around the waist of the ship did the colors of the stars seem normal but even there, they appeared to be squashed by relativity.

Aboard the ship, they replayed the camera’s pictures and watched the destruction that Lezon had wrought with the little ship that they had always thought of as home and safety.

They saw the pursuing Hand of Claws seized by the gravity wave that propagated from their little ship as the collapsing Restriction field boosted its speed to over .97 C forcing their mass to increase to nearly the total of all of the rest of the system combined. Their speed had also forced time to slow down for them, causing the system that they were in to seem to disappear. Their gravity wave, traveling at the speed of light, reached the stars in a little less than a half of an hour, causing them to flare and be drawn in toward the little ship. Its enormous speed and the inertia of the in-falling matter kept the dying stars from catching it.

The Hand of Claws was not so lucky. Trying frantically to accelerate out of the trap, her shields were overloaded by the intersecting wave fronts of three stars flaring into novas at once. An expanding puff of vapor was all that was left by the time that the in-falling matter of the triple suns got there. The collapse of the stars continued until there was only one left, now struggling to find stability as a supergiant.

In the rest of the universe, nearly six months passed before the D’ancer was able to brake sufficiently to be able to restart her Restriction field.

//////////////////////////

Staring at the sky from the shade of the shelter that she had improvised from the wreckage of her blasted ship, T’cass heard the sonic boom of the D’ancer before she saw the ship itself. The craft swung about in a graceful arc and settled into a textbook perfect landing. Heaving herself erect in the 1.85 g pull of the large planet, she began to walk toward the airlock of the ship that she had long known as home, scarcely daring to believe that she was saved at last. She had been marooned for the last eight months, at first hoping for rescue then giving up and just surviving, sure that her Clan was gone. Lezon came out and met her.

“To quote somebody from years ago, ‘I thought that you were too tough to die.’ I’m glad to see you, T’cass.”

“I’m relieved that you came back for me. What took so long?”

“I’ll let T’cill, K’sere, and T’lass tell you the whole story. You didn’t leave me at M’onafar and I couldn’t leave you here. It looked like there was a good chance that you’d survived the attack, so we came back to see. We did come back as quick as we could. We had a few problems along the way.”

—THE END—

<==Previous

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Science Fiction

#LEZON #Part 3 of 3 #Science Fiction #Written by De Writer

[creative-type]

I recently read Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn on recommendation from a friend. Finished it in about a day, and have had it stuck in my head ever since. Not because I liked it -- quite the opposite, in fact -- but after finishing the last pages of the epilogue and setting the book down never to be revisited again, I had to ask myself a question:

Is it possible to read a book incorrectly? And if so, did I?

Spoilers and musings beyond the cut. Fair warning, Sharp Objects is a fairly dark book that covers some pretty heavy issues including cutting and abuse. Consider yourself warned

To start out with, I’m not a huge fan of death of the author. I do think the reader of a text has to take the effort to try and figure out what the author is trying to tell them. Consideration should be made for the time and place the work was written, the prevailing culture, and so on and so forth. A historical romance written today isn’t going to ever replicate completely the style of Jane Austin because the authors are drawing from two completely different frames of reference. Culture changes. Languages changes. How we tell stories changes. 

(Note: Not saying death of the author is inherently bad. It is just one of many systems of interpretation, and like every other system has its benefits and limitations. My hackles only raise when it becomes the only system of interpretation, as if it were intrinsically more valuable and valid than the rest /rant)

That being said, I think an author can be very subtle with the message they’re trying to send, or purposefully leave that message open to interpretation. And sometimes...sometimes sometimes the signals get crossed along the way, and the message that was intended never reaches the reader.

Which brings me to the point of this rambling mess of an analysis. I found Sharp Objects to be a dreary slog of a book. I knew it was dark going into the story, but there’s no levity inter-spaced between the overwhelming negativity to act as a reprieve between the elements of horror and tragedy. It has a very bleak opinion on the human condition in general and the small town the story takes place in particular. The ‘small town with a dark secret’ and the ‘family with a dark secret’ tropes are well-worn and familiar fodder for stories like these, but if I hadn’t read the author’s note at the end I would have thought that Flynn had never actually spent time in small-town America because it clashed so hard with my experience growing up in rural Iowa, the disconnect taking me out of the setting pretty early on. 

I’m sure some people enjoy this kind of storytelling -- and apparently enough did that they turned it into an HBO mini series -- but it’s not my cup of tea. Maybe it’s my small-town roots showing, but I was almost offended by the picture Flynn painted of the fictional town of Wind Gap. I can handle darkness, but not page after page, after stinking page of unlikable, mean-spirited bickering and backbiting. 

The mystery itself sparked enough curiosity to keep me engaged, but I’d pretty much figured out whodunit midway through the book on genre conventions alone. I figured about the fifth time someone remarked that the killer had to have been a man that it was probably going to be a woman, and was instantly suspicious that the main character’s sister’s illness was never named. 

About the same time I more or less knew who the killers likely were, I began to wonder if I was reading the book wrong. I was struck by how well-written the prose was, with several vivid descriptions helping carry me along even if I didn’t particularly like what was being described. The main character, a middling journalist named Camille, starts the book as a former cutter and current alcoholic, and her mental state goes downhill from there. At one point she takes Ecstasy with her (I think?) thirteen year old half-sister (who, along with their mother, never felt like an actually character to me and more like a collection of bizarre traits and behaviors smooshed together in the semblance of a human being. Like I said, there’s never really any doubt who the killers are) and later on has sex with a barely eighteen year old boy who happens to be the prime murder suspect. She’s in such a messed up state that she thinks the best way to make up for this lapse of judgement is to try and give a blow job to the lead detective of the case while they’re sitting in the police station. 

You know, as you do.

What made me think this way was the fact that the book’s written in the first person. I thought, if only for a moment, that perhaps we the reader was being led on by Camille’s own prejudice. It’s no secret that she hateed her hometown and the people she grew up with, and would rather leave her past behind than face the trauma she endured head on. No wonder she’s describing the sky before a rainstorm as the color of piss, or that she takes the time to mention a floating pube in the bath of a hotel on the way to Wind Gap. Of course all of her mother’s friend’s are equally as horrible as her mother, or that the girls she knew in high school would grow up to be just as shallow and vain. It made sense that she would describe the siblings of one of the victims as a fat, tantrum throwing girl and another as a dullard of a boy who would never amount to anything. A stubbornly pessimistic, barely functioning, disaster of a human being would see the negative in everything everywhere she went. 

All at once everything clicked into place, and I felt like the author and I were on the same wavelength. By the time I got three-quarters of the way through the book I could see it going one of two ways: 1) Camille would somehow be proven wrong about her assumptions and prejudices, which would in turn kick start some character development or 2) Camille would be right, and Wind Gap would be proven to be just as horrible as she already thought it was. I figured if that second option was taken it was likely for the story to have a somber, even tragic ending, as the weight of all these terrible secrets and pain broke our lead character completely. 

That’s...not what happened, and in strange display of pacing the true killer is only revealed during the epilogue (side note, I thought the reveal of where all the teeth were hidden was one of the best twists in the whole story). To be honest, it felt like the author tried to cram an entire sequel into the last 10 pages of the story, but long story short, Mama killed Camille’s sister during their childhood, but it was Baby Half Sister who did the present-day murders. After this stunning turn of events, Camille finds a knife and gives into the temptation she’d been fighting for the whole damn book, mutilating the one bit of unmarred skin she has left and the implication that she would have killed herself had someone not stopped her in time.

Ah, I thought to myself, tragedy it is. Not my favorite, but I could see how the author got from Point A to Point B and you could take a somber message about how the effect the environment a person is raised in affects them for the rest of their lives. 

If the book ended there I would have been fine with it. I still wouldn’t have liked it, but it would have made perfect sense. Instead we get this last little bit to tie all the loose ends neatly in a bow. Note this ending comes immediately after the relapse into self-mutilation, which itself burst onto the scene with very little warning and was over after one paragraph:

Curry and Eileen packed my things and took me into their home, where I have a bed and some space in what was once a basement rec room. All sharp objects have been locked up, but I haven’t tried too hard to get at them,

I am learning to be cared for. I am learning to be parented. I’ve returned to my childhood, the scene of the crime. Eileen and Curry wake me in the mornings and put me to bed with kisses (or in Curry’s case, a gentle chuck under the chin). I drink nothing stronger than the grap soda Curry favors. Eileen runs my bath and sometimes brushes my hair. It doesn’t give me chills, and we consider this a good sign. 

It is almost May 12, one year exactly from my return to Wind Gap. The date also happens to be Mother’s Day this year. Clever. Sometimes I think about that night caring for Amma, and how good I was at soothing her and calming her. I have dreams of washing Amma and drying her brow. I wake with my stomach turning and a sweaty upper lip. Was I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or did I like caring for Amma because I have Adora’s sickness? I waver between the two, especially at night, when my skin begins to pulse. 

Lately, I’ve been leaning toward kindness.

When I read that last sentence, the gears in head ground to an abrupt halt, and I immediately disconnected entirely from the story. Camille had spent the majority of this book being anything but kind. The only instance I can see that might fit into this characterization is an off-hand reference in the first chapter that her boss (the Curry mentioned here) thinks she’s too soft in her writing. 

I don’t know why these last paragraphs exist in this story. For all I know, the author couldn’t think of a way to finish the book and defaulted to a last-minute happy-ish ending. It is, after all, her debut novel. Hell, maybe it had been added at the insistence of her editor, or some other outside influence. 

Or maybe I’m just missing something. 

Death of the author demands that I, the reader, create my own meaning, but I simply can’t. Neither of the two readings I saw the potential for are supported by the text, and I find myself wandering back again and again to the matter of authorial intent. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the author’s trying to say. Either the story is too bleak to justify this...if not redemption, then healing for the main character, or the ending is too positive for the harsh and terrible world the author has gone through such pains to describe. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

There is a third option: That even though the world is just as terrible and awful as you thought it was, recovery is still possible. It seems to be what that last page implies, but this is the weakest reading of all, if only because it doesn’t have time to develop. Three paragraphs does not a character arc make, and Camille spent too much time moping around being miserable to even consider the possibility of closure.

I think this might have been what the author was going for. It fits well with the metanarriative of the mystery itself. But if so, it’s a message poorly communicated, and even now I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take from the book.  

Again, on a technical level it’s very well-written, and undoubtedly I’m putting too much thought into what’s otherwise a generic murder mystery.  But I also think it’s important for the author’s voice to be heard in their work, even if that message gets a little muddled along the way. 

#creative-type analyzes #sharp objects #Gillian Flynn #creative-type reads #creative-type reviews

[city-writes]

Soul Eater: Zexal!

Its a new year at the DWMA, and that means fresh new faces for the academy! Following in his parents' footsteps, Yuma Tsukumo joins the school for fun, adventure, and long lasting friendships.

For Zexal Month Day 15: XYZ Beyond Time! (The Crossover Day!)

Warnings: Soul Eater AU; Multi chapter fic

Characters: Yuma Tsukumo, Astral, Ryoga Kamishiro, Rio Kamishiro, Durbe, Lord Death, Sid Barrett

[Read it here on AO3!]

The sun was laughing high in the cloudless sky, looking down over the Death Weapon Meister Academy as new students began to gather at the entrance of the school, each separated into one of two groups: Meisters, or Weapons.

The students were all chattering amongst themselves, and only quieted down as Lord Death made himself known, towering above the crowd of children as he spoke in a playful tone. "Why yes, hi, howdy, hello! What's up, kiddos?"

There were scattered greetings returned to Lord Death, though most people were silent, not having expected the Lord of Death to greet them in such a... playful way.

"It's great to see a bunch of fresh new faces for the academy!" Lord Death continued, gesturing to the crowd of students with a large, oversized, gloved hand. "Now before we get right down to business and head inside, there's the matter of matching you kiddos up with a partner! So take this time to get to know your future classmates, and find yourself a suitable partner!"

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

Ryoga and Rio Kamishiro stood somewhat away from the large group, Ryoga folding his arms as he watched the other students mingle with one another. "This is stupid, Rio." He said, leaning against a pillar. "There's no point in me talking with any of these other people when I know exactly how this is going to turn out."

"Oh?" Rio asked, brushing some dust off of her skirt. "And how, exactly, do you expect this to turn out?"

"We're just going to end up together, as always." Ryoga bemoaned, "You can go see if you can find someone, but I'm just going to wait here for you to come back."

Rio gave a 'hmph!' and turned on her heel, intent on finding herself a Meister to prove her brother wrong.

As she made her way into the group of students, there were many boys and several girls eyeing her up and down, until a boy came up and began talking to her. "Hey there, pretty thing. You wouldn't happen to be looking for a Meister, would ya?"

Internally, Rio rolled her eyes, but on the outside she simply smiled. "Yes, I am." This garnered the attention of several more meisters around her, as rhe boy who spoke stepped forward.

"Well look no further, you've found your Meister!" He pointed to himself with a thumb, giving Rio a cocky grin. "Why don't you show me your weapon form and I'll show you just how compatible we could be."

Rio's smile became much more forced at that, but she shifted into her weapon form nonetheless, an ice blue shortsword, cold to the touch. She found herself on the ground in a clatter, as the boy struggled to pick her up off the ground.

"Augh, whats with you? Why are you so heavy?!"

"I'm not heavy," Rio countered, her voice emanating from the sword, "My brother can wield me just fine. You're just not as compatible as you thought, now are you?"

With a growl, the boy stopped trying to raise her, as another student tried to do the same and failed just as pathetically. This went on for quite a bit, before a young woman was able to slowly pick her up, struggling the entire way. It took the young woman a few moments to raise Rio up to the sky, but the minute she did, their soul wavelengths crashed into each other, not meshing at all. The action sent the girl reeling, and she unintentionally tossed Rio through the air.

Rio braced herself for impact as she flew through the air, staying in her weapon form, and was surprised when a hand reached out and grabbed her by the hilt, holding her up to the sky. The students who had been previously trying to use Rio watched in shock, as this boy who'd grabbed her was holding her with ease, and wasn't recoiling from the difference in soul wavelengths.

In fact, her soul wavelength was thrumming in time with his, and it felt...well, not exactly like when hers and Ryoga's wavelengths were in tune, but it was damn near close.

The boy who'd caught her was barely taller than Ryoga; he wore glasses, along with a white buttondown shirt and a black waistcoat, as well as a green scarf. He lowered his arm so he could look directly at the shortsword in his hand, and spoke. "Are you alright?"

The blade of the shortsword dematerialized and was replaced with Rio's upper half, who nodded in response to his question. "Yes, I'm alright, thanks to you."

The boy smiled and shook his head, "It was nothing. My name's Durbe. And you are?"

"Rio, Rio Kamishiro." Rio smiled back at him, before looking down to the ground. "Would you mind letting me go now?"

"Right, sorry." Durbe let go of the hilt of Rio's blade, and no sooner than he did, did she shift out of her weapon form, her feet landing firmly on the stone floor beneath them. "There you go. Well, it was nice to meet you." He said, beginning to turn with the intent of walking away.

Rio gave him a funny look, shocked that this Meister who handled her without any issue was just walking away as opposed to ogling over her like most people did. "I'm surprised that a partnerless Meister is passing over a weapon they flowed well with."

Durbe stopped and turned back to look at Rio. "As honored as I'd be to be your Meister," he began, raising his hand to motion to the tag on his chest. "I'm looking for one myself."

Oh, Rio realized. His tag said 'Weapon', too. What a shame, she could have proved Ryoga wrong by showing back up with a Meister that would have matched her soul's wavelength. Wait... if Durbe matched her soul wavelength... it'd make sense that he'd match Ryoga's too, right?

Rio smirked then and folded her arms. "What if I said I could find you one?"

"I doubt it," Durbe said, shaking his head. "No one's wanted me as their weapon."

Rio frowned at that, tilting her head just slightly. "Why's that?"

"Because I'm not exactly a 'weapon', per se." Durbe pushed his glasses up then, looking somewhat embarrassed. "My weapon form is a metal shield; A heater shield to be exact, one that curves and comes to a point on top."

"A shield?" Rio murmured incredulously. This was the first time she'd heard of someone's weapon form being something more defensively based as opposed to offensively based. People were usually swords or scythes or something of the sort, but a shield? She took a moment to think, before smiling knowingly. "I don't think that will change anything. Follow me."

With nothing to lose, Durbe agreed, and followed Rio as she made her way back to Ryoga, who was still leaning against the same pillar.

"Back so soon?" Ryoga questioned with a smirk.

"Oh, hush." Rio chided, before gesturing a hand to Durbe. "This is Durbe. Durbe," Rio looked to Durbe then, now motioning at Ryoga. "This is my twin brother, Ryoga."

"Your twin?" Durbe inquired, looking between the two. "It's nice to meet you, Ryoga."

"Really? This nerd is your partner?" Ryoga asked with a bit of snark to his tone, causing Durbe to frown slightly and Rio to put her hands on her hips.

"Nope," Rio replied, leaning in a bit, a mischievous grin on her face, "He's yours." With that, she looked to Durbe. "Do you mind showing us your weapon form?"

Durbe shook his head, and quickly shifted from his human form to his weapon form, which was true to his word, a white metal heater shield. Ryoga instinctively caught Durbe before he hit the ground and blinked frowning as he begrudgingly strapped Durbe to his left arm. He was about to make a comment about how in the hell would he be able to use this guy as an actual weapon, but as Ryoga took note of their matching soul wavelengths, he kept his mouth shut, but frowned nonetheless, a low hum escaping him.

"Well?"

Ryoga looked at Rio upon hearing her knowing tone. "His soul wavelength matches almost as well as yours does." He admitted. When Rio smirked and nodded, he rolled his eyes and looked down at Durbe. "Alright, nerd. What do you have to say about this?"

"My name is Durbe, not nerd, first off." Came Durbe's voice, emanating from the shield. "Secondly, I'm willing to see where this partnership takes us if you are."

"Can you attack at all?"

"Not to my knowledge." Durbe explained, sounding downtrodden, "But perhaps I just need a Meister to draw out my latent abilities."

"Hmm." Ryoga frowned still, but sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I guess I can work with that." He looked to Rio then, who looked pleased with herself. "And what about you? You still haven't found yourself a Meister."

Ryoga's only reply was Rio saying, "Catch."

With that, Rio lunged for her twin brother, quickly shifting into her weapon form, and Ryoga was quick to catch her, wielding her in his right hand. The moment his hand grabbed at the hilt of her blade, he gasped, feeling the power of two different soul wavelengths mesh in near sync with his own. It was unlike anything he'd felt before, unlike how he felt simply wielding Rio by herself. He didn't know how to describe it, but if he had to put it into words, it was like his soul was humming a tune, and both Rio and Durbe's souls managed to not only match his tune, but find their own respective harmonies to compliment it.

"I think..." Ryoga said after exhaling a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding, "I think we can make this work."

Simultaneously, Rio and Durbe shifted out of their weapon forms and were soon standing on either side of Ryoga. Looking at themselves amazedly. They surely had felt it too, the same near synchronization that Ryoga himself had felt... They both looked at Ryoga, Durbe with a weak smile on his face, and Rio practically grinning from ear to ear. "I think we can too, Ryoga." They both looked at Durbe then, who was still looking at his hands in awe. He looked up then, feeling the twins' gaze upon him, and nodded in agreement.

"Yes, I think this will work."

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

Yuma Tsukumo watched as a purple haired Meister paired up with two weapons - a sword and shield - and pouted, rubbing the back of his head with a hand. "Man, I hope I find a partner soon." He looked down at his Meister tag, then began walking around, trying to find a weapon who he could match up with. He was met with nothing but denials and refusals, all from weapons who'd already partnered up with other Meisters.

"Gah!" Yuma used both hands to scratch at his head, a look of duress on his face, "Why is this so hard?!" All he wanted to do was find a partner to be best friends with and go on cool adventures and---

"Alright kiddos," Lord Death announced, "Everyone seems to have found themselves suitable partners! Let's start heading inside!"

"W-Wait, what?!" Yuma asked, his cry going unheard by Lord Death due to the chatter of dozens of students excited by what awaited them, "Does everyone have a partner but me?"

As the students began funneling their way into the school, Yuma simply stood in place, watching as they entered the school without him. "Maybe somebody's late!" He told himself, standing tall with his hands at his hips. "Maybe this is just how mine and my partner's story starts!" He turned and looked out to Death City, seeing if he was right and someone was late. "Maybe--"

"Uh, hello?"

Hearing Lord Death's voice, Yuma froze, and slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder. Upon seeing Lord Death waiting for him patiently, Yuma blanched and turned around immediately, booking it towards the school's entrance. "Sorry, Lord Death!"

"Hold your horses there, kiddo," Lord Death held out a hand in order to slow Yuma down, and looked at him curiously. "You look familiar. What's your name?"

Yuma blinked at that. Familiar? How did he manage to come off as familiar? This was his first time meeting Lord Death face-to-face! "Yuma Tsukumo."

"Tsukumo? Tsukumo..." Lord Death rose a hand to the bottom of his mask, tapping it gently as he looked upward in thought. "Tsukumo... Aha!" Lord Death clapped his hands together, then looked back down towards Yuma. "Your parents wouldn't happen to be Mirai and Kazuma, would they?"

"Yeah, that's my mom and dad!" Yuma said proudly, smirking as he did so. His smirk faltered slightly though as he asked, "How did you know that?"

"You're the spitting image of your father!" Lord Death replied cheerfully. "I remember him and your mother well! They worked for me for a short time, and your mother was well on her way to being a Death Scythe when she and Kazuma decided they wanted to start a family together. How are they doing?"

Yuma looked downward for a moment then, exhaling before looking back up at Lord Death. "They went missing several years ago. There was a gathering of witches near our town, and everyone who could fight went to do so. They never came back."

"Oh..." Lord Death's usually goofy boice became serious then, and he placed a hand onto Yuma's shoulder. "I'm sorry to hear that. Your mother and father were good people."

"Thanks." Yuma nodded at that, then looked up to Lord Death with a smile. "That's why I came here, I want to be as good as my parents were; better even! Then maybe one day I can go out and find them!"

"That's an admirable goal, Yuma!" Lord Death's voice was back to its goofy self again, and he removed his hand from Yuma's shoulder, turning to look towards the school's entrance, "Let's get you a partner and get you settled into the DWMA nicely!"

"But Lord Death," Yuma began, walking with the headmaster into the school, "isn't it too late to find a partner?"

"Not at all!" Lord Death's voice was chipper, and there was a bit of a bounce in his proverbial step as he floated down the hallway, guiding Yuma to where the other students were being shown around by various teachers. "There are some students here who still don't have a partner, so perhaps one of them will be the key to finding you someone to partner up with!"

"You think so?"

"My boy, I know so!" As they joined the rest of the students in the hallway, Lord Death continued, "Let's just have a looksee at your soul," Lord Death said as he stsred right at Yuma, "and I'll be able to tell you if... you... Huh."

Yuma blinked. "Um, Lord Death? Is everything ok?"

Lord Death was quiet for a moment, but soon snapped out of whatever caught him off guard, laughing slightly. "Oh, its nothing. The souls of you youngsters never cease to amaze me!" His laughter slowed to a stop, before he cleared his voice. "How about this: After classes today, before you head home, stop by my office and we'll see about finding you a partner?"

Yuma smiled brightly at that, "Alright, sounds like a plan!"

"Well then, get along and join your fellow classmates before we lose them again!" Lord Death patted Yuma's back gently, and Yuma nodded walking towards the group and waving back at Lord Death, who enthusiastically returned the wave. When Yuma was out of sight, engulfed by the mass of students, Lord Death turned to one of the teachers nearby. "Sid?"

Sid Barrett turned at the sound of Lord Death's voice, and stood at attention. "Yes, Lord Death?"

"How's our friend downstairs doing today?"

Sid hummed lowly, shaking his head. "He still refuses to talk to us, sir. He only asks for books to read and paper to write with. Why do you ask?"

Lord Death looked back towards the disappearing mass of students, and spoke softly, "I believe we might have found a Meister for our magic friend."

#Zexal Month #Krys writes #Zexal #Soul Eater

[papersynth]

Klance theory - Music

This really isn’t one of my better theories because its really hard to analyse music :’)

I always see people make half-hearted theories on the music, always bordering on the "it kinda sounds like that!" and selectively picking a title, but I guess I have too much time on my hands and a new set of headphones I need to test.

I don't really have a proper format for this theory so this might seem like just rambling I hope its coherent. Useful links: S1 OST - https://open.spotify.com/album/6gJcepRhZZjaRWTIxOAvrl?si=4EwqNWa6Tjm9edF8gTfJRQ S2,4,5, 7 VLD OST - https://soundcloud.com/brianparkhurst/sets S6 OST - https://soundcloud.com/spiralbill/sets/voltron-legendary-defender

FOR SOME REASON I CANNOT FIND THE OST OF SEASON 3, I FIND THAT SUSPICIOUS BUT LETS NOT READ TOO MUCH INTO IT.

So lets start with what defines a romantic piece of music and I've broken it down to the music having 1. High Strings (often used to influence the current tempo or mood) 2. Legato Piano (or in the case of Voltron - Synth) in a  3. Adagio (slow tempo) Not trying to use these words to sound smart, its just that I need specifics

The reason why this formula is used is because love is a very funny and whimsical feeling. Its strange, its light, but its also sweet and kind. Romantic music always makes the effort to sound pleasant and continuous. The mix of slow piano and high strings is in relevance to how the strings insinuate the ups and downs. Moments of fantasy/whimsy that are often associated with love. 

Bonding Moment - Tears of the Balmera I had listened to the piece on repeat (and thought it wasn't) the same piece, but yes, the track playing is "To Go Home". The entire fight with Sendak (despite being super epic) DOESN'T use this track. "To Go Home" makes use of synth beats and a rapid tempo with HIGH notes. The music during the fight with sendak is much faster in tempo with LOW notes, accentuated with warning alarm music to evoke danger and urgency. Notice how varying notes are used with the visuals following the tide of the battle.

"To Go Home" uses the same notes slowly rising in octaves. Repetition and intensity are often used for "chase" scenes or those with rising tension. ANYWAY the point here is that the piece of music insinuates a tense moment -> battle -> resolution. Listen to the last 30 seconds.

It starts slow, then there's a rising note, then slowly dropping down, giving the audience a feeling of rest (it doesn't slowly fade out, it ends). The reason why the bonding moment feels romantic is not only because of the visuals, but the music imply the blooming of emotion.

High strings, slow synth piano, adagio. None of the fucking trumpet shit in the 30 seconds. Cut, clean, and precise ONLY to be interrupted (by the segue) into battle music. The recipe for a romantic soundtrack is used DELIBERATELY, it cuts STRAIGHT to the end.

I'm a filmmaker, I know that I can use virtually any music to segue into an intense scene, imagine that scene with JUST the first note (the synth) the whole time instead. It feels much more friendly (and teamwork oriented) than working it into rising harmony. Also the visuals just enhance this feeling even further.

Lance gives Blue to Allura - The Red Paladin

The reason why I’m bringing up this scene is because it is romantic but not exactly. This scene between Lance and Allura is BORDERLINE romantic instead of a friendly or honorary gesture. Visually and thematically, all Lance is really doing is giving blue on over to Allura. 

This scene is specifically special because the music conveys how the emotions are currently flowing. 

Allura enters, the steady music is accompanied by higher notes almost peaking. Alongside the visuals, it gives a feeling of “discovery”, like a eureka moment. This is because she walks in with a pink paladin suit, and remember Lance STILL has a crush on her. He sees a new side to Allura, re-iterating once again his interest in her as a princess (at first). THEN we slip into romantic music territory as he gives the bayard to Allura, talking about how he admires her as a person who he would entrust blue to. The higher notes slowly shift the focus of the conversation into a flowing melody, indicating they’re on the same wavelength.

The music here suggests discovery but just barely teetering on romantic feelings. The mood is similar to when Zarkon first interacts with Honnerva.

Zarkon meets Honnerva - The Legend Begins

AGAIN - Slow Synth with a flowing melody of higher notes that are introduced when Honnerva picks up Kova. The visuals also compliment the music being played, Zarkon’s sense of interest, and slight attraction to Honnerva. Listen to the music of both these scenes. They’re melodically similar, and both romantically coded.

Bedroom Scene “Leave the Math to Pidge” - Tailing a comet

I can’t get over how this scene is romantically coded so fucking subtly because its done with contrasting visuals. Lance approaches Keith with a super serious topic and the plot of this scene contrasts the music that’s being played. To insinuate a conversation between the both of them, that’s very serious the whole time, no music should have been used. You don’t HAVE to have a soundtrack for everything. The scene would have done fine without music but YET it STILL uses music. 

1. Legato Synth

That’s the continuous and slow beat throughout this entire scene slowly rising before going back down the MOMENT Lance says that he should step aside. It then continues to shift veeery slowly between high and low notes (but notice how it doesn’t have an accompaniment ) UNTIL Keith says “Leave the math to Pidge” intro

2. High String > Adagio

Lighthearted, and resolute. No wonder people think this scene is romantic. We have to be aware that the feelings between Lance and Keith are slow and gradual. They didn’t develop over a night, they took time to come to fruition. The more serious moments between Lance and Keith are slow but always coupled with romantic music. The music in this scene along with the visuals make it seem like Lance finds a lighthearted joy in Keith’s WORDS (because the strings come in AFTER Keith speaks). Their relationship improves over time.

Allura saves Lance - Omega Shield

Adagio? Check. Rising Synth? Check. ACCOMPANIED BY HIGH STRINGS TO INDICATE THE OTHER’S EMOTIONS? MC FUCKIN CHECK. This scene is 100% romantic, between Lance and Allura. I know this is a Klance theory but you guys seem to also forget that Lance is supposedly Bi coded, and last I checked, Bi means tWO.

Lotura and Krolia + Keith’s Dad - Razor’s Edge

The scene where Allura and Lotor are talking about what they’ve discovered in Oriande is a blooming romance between them. You can hear it in the staccato high note accent and as they go more into how they both find comfort in each other, intro comes these higher piano notes. This is the scene where we really hear love blooming between Lotor and Allura. Remember that feeling of whimsy and fantasy? That’s the feeling of love between the both of them. Its ethereal, exciting and light. 

You want a point of comparison? Listen to the final korrasami scene, where they’re talking to each other outside. There’s the high string, legato piano, and where the love REALLY blooms, you hear bits and pieces of (what I think is) a kalimba. Maybe a xylophone. Slow but light beats. Blooming love is always depicted as light prickles. If you’ve ever read romance manga you’ll always see the main character surrounded by bubbles and white light. The music speaks the underlying emotions that we cannot see or understand in words.

Lance coming to terms with his feelings about Allura

This, this scene. This is as about as obvious as you can get in regards to the recipe for a romantic soundtrack. Slow, adagio synth + high strings, also it helps that Lance is literally talking about his unrequited love for Allura. I wish there was an official soundtrack for everything, but all I can say is you have to go and listen to the music in these specific scenes because they’re all romantically coded.

The Mice tell Allura Lance’s feelings

I think this scene is what threw off the possibility of Allurance for me, its because of the music and her facial expression. The music STARTS hopeful, the way a romantic piece should be, but it slowly goes downwards instead, and ends on a slightly awkward lower note. Its not hopeful, its more of.....pitiful. Like for Allura she doesn’t think she can reciprocate Lance’s feelings which is what I think this scene was trying to insinuate. This scene contrasts with when Allura saved Lance in LITERALLY the previous episode. I don’t doubt for a second that Allura feels as though she may have feelings towards Lance, but I don’t think she wants to go through with them, that’s why when the mice told her about Lance’s crush on her, she felt bad about it. 

Allura and Lotor Kiss

Ohohohoh the music here was romantic up until a literal beat before their kiss. The music in VLD is amazing when it comes to picking out emotion also its just so well fucking put together. Listen closely to the music of that scene, did you catch it? the ONE note, that was slightly off, right before they kissed. Its awkward, and disjointed. It felt ominous, and jarring. Like it was a step into bad territory, which I would suppose Allura took when she devoted her feelings towards Lotor.

Allura talks about her feelings for Lotor 

This scene parallels the scene in season 3 where Keith comes up to Lance and talks about how he put the team in jeopardy in “The Hunted”. The funny thing about these two scenes is that the scene with Keith introduces a higher accent to the music but ENDS the music, working itself into a different piece instead of leaving it on plateau. The scene with Allura doesn’t have a musical ending, it remains on the higher notes and gets interrupted instead of being a segue into a different emotion. Make what you think of it, but it seems as though his unrequited love for allura is let go of. It just stops as its ongoing, it has no conclusion (at least, till s8 lol).

Allura Thanks Lance + Wishes he stays safe

OH BOY So remember how we’ve established that romantic music has an adagio base with high strings/synth to evoke romantic feelings? Allura thanks lance for covering her, and we BEGIN on that musical note, intro comes the base music, only to be distorted (albeit) comically by Veronica.

Allura (later in that episode) tells Lance that she wishes he was safe and we’re on that same path again, the music’s slowly rising, the strings are here this time aaaaaaaand no conclusion? It fades abruptly into a comical ping from veronica, how come we can’t get a conclusive note for these two?

The music in the romantic scenes found in the show are really, REALLY, indicative of what’s emotively happening. Most of the scenes with Allura and Lotor are cut short or fade into sad music for lance, while the other canonical romances like Hunk/Shay and Krolia/Keith’s Dad, rhythmically conclude. Maybe I’m going insane from listening to these tracks all day, but I think they’re a decent indicator of what’s emotionally happening behind the scenes.

That’s all there really is for now! Season 8 Klance prediction is gonna be a goofy scene with those lighthearted bubbly notes I was talking about earlier. Bet.

#vld #klance theory #I've spent 5 hours listening to the same fucking tracks I'm going insane

[d3ngar]

The New Jedi Order: Traitor

When I started reading the New Jedi Order series a few years ago, I knew enough about it to know which books were going to be the Big Ones™. Vector Prime (obvi), Star By Star, and Traitor were all ones that I was looking forward to since I knew they were all huge for their own reasons, and none of them disappointed me. Traitor is the one that I’ve read most recently (I just finished it a few weeks ago), and while I had a LOT of feelings after Star By Star, Jacen Solo has always been my favorite Solo kid and the one I identify with the most, so Traitor really got to me for a lot of reasons.

I think even if I hadn’t known that Jacen wasn’t actually dead after the events of Star By Star, I wouldn’t have believed it. He just winked out of the Force with no explanation of how that actually happened? Not buying it. While I didn’t think that this major character was killed off-screen, I was definitely wondering what happened to him, which was most likely the real purpose of his supposed “death.” Why would he just disappear from the Force? It was honestly a little distracting from the books between Star By Star and Traitor, since I spent so much time wondering what had happened to him. I think I succeeded in not rushing through Dark Journey or the Enemy Lines duology, but it was a relief to finally get to Traitor.

I had heard SO many good things about this book and Matthew Stover’s writing in general, and I was excited to read about Jacen (finally), but I’d also heard that this book is very “gray” in a lot of ways (namely the Force), which had me apprehensive, to say the least. Anyone who knows me personally or listens to my podcast knows that I tend to have a strong distaste for the concept of a “Gray Jedi” simply because I don’t think that that’s how the Force works.

I won’t go into my personal beliefs regarding the Force in much detail here since I could do multiple posts about it, really, but the long and short of it is that the Jedi way teaches passivity and communing with the Force and allowing it to act through you, and the Dark Side encompasses any action that exerts pressure on the Force through someone attempting to bend it to their will. Obviously there are exceptions and nuances within that philosophy, but that’s the best way to sum it up. Seeing as how I believe that Dark Side is always selfish and addictive, I don’t see much room for an individual that can utilize the Dark Side with no consequences.

With this set of beliefs, I knew that Traitor was going to be challenging for me before I even started it. The entire book focuses on Jacen being cut off from the Force by Vergere and him eventually overcoming that hurdle to not only regain his connection, but to obtain an even greater understanding of the Force that allows him to even sense the Yuuzhan Vong and their biological creations.

Throughout the book, Vergere is acting as a sort of mentor for Jacen not only during his period of captivity on board the Yuuzhan Vong worldship, but also during his escape on Coruscant. She feeds him questions that appear to make little to no sense at the time, but eventually lead Jacen to discover this greater connection to the Force of his own accord, and eventually unleash its power quite destructively. The utilization of the darkness inside of him even to save his life leaves him questioning everything he’s ever known about the Force before he eventually becomes this sort of messianic figure near the end of the book, bringing salvation to the New Republic and the Jedi. He almost doesn’t even feel like the same character after his encounter with the Yuuzhan Vong World Brain.

Needless to say, this WAS all very challenging for me. Coming to realize that the Yuuzhan Vong exist not outside of the Force but on some other sort of “Force wavelength” was a very strange idea at first, but the more that I thought about it, the more I became okay with it. I think I can kind of see where this expanded understanding of the Force that this series develops is going. Rather than being “gray” and allowing for use of both sides of the Force with no consequences, it posits that literally everything in the entire universe is connected through the Force, and nothing is more evil than anything else (at least that’s how I understand it). Everything just is, and it all belongs to the Force. There is no “light side” or “dark side,” it’s all just the Force.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t agree with this. But I can learn to live with it, if nothing else. At this point in time, Star Wars had to evolve and change, and the New Jedi Order gave it plenty of chances to do that. In the grimdark and morally-ambiguous era of media in the 90s and early 2000s, it only makes sense that something like this would happen at some point. The difference between “using both sides of the Force” and “the Force is everything” is super, super fine, but to me, it’s very important. Having a character walk the middle line with the Force is dumb, but a character who reaches a new understanding of the Force and uses it accordingly isn’t. Maybe I’m just nitpicky, but I’m glad that things ended up working out the way they did.

Honestly my bigger issue with this book is Vergere. As a character, I think she’s fine, but we’ve gotten hints about how powerful she is through not only her abilities, but also through how much she knows about the nature of the Force and the Yuuzhan Vong. She just seems so overpowered and it bugs me. This is totally coming from a place of “no one can be more powerful than my favorite characters and make them look like babies” but so far she’s saved both Mara and Jacen, and she’s acting all ambiguous about everything!! I will say, however, that stories and mysteries like the ones she’s at the center of make me happy that I only know major plot points from the series because I am very curious to see how she affects things in the future, even if I kind of hate her.

#star wars #expanded universe #legends #writing #traitor #jacen solo #book #review

[aion-rsa]

Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure

https://ift.tt/35el4vd

Graham and Ryan have left Doctor Who, and it was sad/joyous/on telly (delete as applicable), but where do their departures rank on the all-time list?

The question of “Who counts as a companion?” is a tricky one. Overall it’s an ad hoc combination of different criteria, with allowances made for the exceptions that are intended to fulfil the companion role on a one-off basis. The ranking system is based on whether the departure makes sense for that character, how well it’s built up to, and what it says about Doctor Who in a larger sense. The article only covers TV stories because I value what remains of my sanity.

That’s all the exposition. Please enjoy this non-linear history of production compromises.

47. Peri

Peri spends almost her entire time on Doctor Who being miserable, scared and under threat (even Big Finish doing a timey-wimey farce with Peri has abuse as a plot point), but there’s no compassionate release for her. Her mind is erased so her body can host another. She dies scared and alone, and it’s unlikely the Doctor could have saved her. While this is horrible, it could function, very bluntly, as an indictment of the Doctor and his treatment of Peri, but then it is revealed that this didn’t happen.

Peri is instead married with a pink love-heart around the flashback (the Matrix is corny AF apparently). This is because producer John Nathan-Turner changed his mind about killing Peri after they’d filmed her death. 

On one hand: yay, someone not dying. On the other: she only goes to a slightly better place, and when companions return from the dead it tends to require some cost to the Doctor. Here, any previous suggestion that the Doctor mistreated his companion is abandoned. Peri’s happy ending, rather than death, is that the Doctor abandons her without explanation and her new husband is an angry warlord who doesn’t seem the type to understand PTSD.

46. Leela

Producer Graeme Williams hoped that Louise Jameson would stay on in the role of Leela, despite Jameson insisting that she was leaving, and so didn’t write the character out. Leela was a warrior, intelligent but steeped in tribal superstition, and the investment in making a potentially problematic character work in her earlier stories gave way to more generic writing, hence Jameson’s departure. At the end of ‘Invasion of Time’ Leela abruptly announces that she wants to marry the Captain of the Time Lords’ Guards.

To borrow a term from critical theory: this is total f****** dogs***.

Jameson was happy for the character to be killed off but instead she ended up married on Gallifrey. We never see her again. It’s a lazy piece of writing; disrespectful to the actress, the character and the viewer.

45. Dodo

Poor Dodo never really stood a chance. Originally intended to be from Sixteenth Century France, producer John Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh remembered that previous historical companions had been deemed unworkable and so another was probably a bad idea. Instead, Dodo started off Cockney until the BBC told the Doctor Who team that she had to speak in Received Pronunciation English.

A happy-go-lucky soul, the production team never warmed to their creation and Dodo is sent away to recover from hypnosis halfway through ‘The War Machines’, and we never see her again. Polly tells the Doctor “she’d like to stay here in London and sends you her love” two episodes after her final appearance.

44. Sergeant Benton & 43. Harry Sullivan

Sergeant Benton and Harry Sullivan appear in ‘The Android Invasion’ as if it’s just another story for them. Benton last appears as an android duplicate and Harry says nothing during the final fight scene. They never appear again. For all of the strengths of early Tom Baker stories, emotional resonance is not one of them.

42. Katarina

Katarina was brought in for the final episode of ‘The Myth Makers’as a replacement for Vicki, and then sacrificed herself in ‘The Dalek Master Plan’. The production team had decided that, as a Trojan handmaiden, Katarina’s ignorance of modern and future technology meant she’d be hard to write for. This makes sense to an extent, except that her death involves her activating an airlock. So we have a production team creating a problem but solving it by suggesting that it wasn’t insurmountable anyway. As the Doctor says at the end of ‘Dalek Master Plan’: “What a waste.”

41. Sara Kingdom

Having killed off Katarina, the production team needed a new companion to fill her role for the rest of ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, so Terry Nation wrote in a Space Security Agent inspired by The Avengers’ Cathy Gale. After killing her own brother, believing him to be a traitor, Sara Kingdom joined the Doctor and Steven’s attempts to stop the Daleks from using the Time Destructor. Ultimately Sara is killed by the device, ageing to death. As the planet around them turns to dust, Sara’s body does likewise and is blown away by the wind.

It’s a horrific fate, to the extent that cuts were made to the sequence. Sara Kingdom was always designed as a short-term companion, and actor Jean Marsh wasn’t interested in joining the show permanently.

Companion deaths aren’t intrinsically a bad idea, it’s just that they can’t be regular, expected events or else the show becomes ‘Come with me for an adventure, you’ll probably die. Yes I’m a psychopath’. They’re usually short-term solutions to mistakes but the momentum of the Doctor’s failures here could have gone somewhere. Instead, the show casually resets itself to the status quo on a flimsy pretext, so these deaths mean little. If Doctor Who doesn’t care about their impact, why should the audience?

40. Liz Shaw

New producer Barry Letts had decided that Liz Shaw was too intelligent to be a Doctor Who companion, and the interpretation most generous to Letts here is that Liz wanted to continue her own work rather than be drafted by UNIT as an assistant. While I hope this was the intention, it’s still a move that implies a reductive take on the role of the companion (that they’re a function rather than a character) and reinforces the paternalism of the Doctor: fatherly, yes, but also dominating and controlling.

39. Polly and Ben

Polly and Ben follow the Doctor into the TARDIS in ‘The War Machines’ and discover at the end of ‘The Faceless Ones’ that they’re back in London just when they left. They ask the Doctor his permission to leave, saying they’ll stay if he needs them. The Doctor is sad to see them go but doesn’t stand in their way, although he does suggest that Ben can go back to the Navy to become an admiral and Polly can… look after Ben.

It’s a pat, patronising little scene that comes and goes suddenly, especially as Polly and Ben haven’t actually been in the story since Episode Two. Polly and Ben leave and the Doctor and Jamie immediately start talking about their next adventure.  The production team had decided the characters weren’t working, and the best you can say is that they were given slightly more ceremony than Dodo.

38. Astrid Peth

The thing about Astrid’s death is that it’s impossible to type ‘She pushes a mugging gold-toothed businessman down a ravine using a fork-lift truck (in slow motion)’ in a way that conveys any sense of pathos. People talk about Andrew Cartmel’s time on Doctor Who influencing Russell T. Davies’ approach, and while they’re wrong (RTD would have written it like that anyway, even if the Cartmel era didn’t exist, but fair play to Cartmel for being on that wavelength) few ever mention ‘Time and the Rani’as an influence. Russell T. Davies’ writing sometimes feels like he’s gleefully trying to combine the tone of Sylvester-McCoy-playing-the-spoons-on-Kate-O’Mara-while-Kate-O’Mara-is-dressed-as-Bonnie-Langford, with the opening ten minutes of Up. Sometimes he actually does it! This was not one of those times.

37. Adric

The Davison companions tend to get good leaving stories that are apparently based on some unbroadcast version of Doctor Who in which they’re completely different people.

So on one hand obviously the death of Adric was a memorable piece of television that affected people deeply on broadcast, but on the other hand it’s a glorified jump-scare. Adric is on board a space freighter about to crash onto prehistoric Earth and cause the extinction of the dinosaurs. He doesn’t know about that last bit, so instead of getting into the escape pod he attempts to solve a logic puzzle that is stopping him from controlling the ship. His bravery in going back to the ship doesn’t achieve anything. In fact if he had succeeded it would have changed history dramatically, so he dooms himself for nothing.

It’s brutal, in comparison with earlier companion deaths the emotional fallout is poorly handled, and it doesn’t pay off anything we’ve seen earlier. Consider Adric’s character up until his final story – a reckless know-it-all who keeps joining the bad guys – and it doesn’t join up with his final story and fate. The initial setup of Adric feeling like an outsider is swiftly resolved rather than used as motivation for his death. There’s no redemption, just a cruel and unlucky moment of bravery for the sake of a semblance of drama.

36. Amy and Rory

Steven Moffat’s first companion departures are not his best work. Initially Amy and Rory broke a trend: companions leaving as they get married off. Only then Moffat wrote a poorly handled pregnancy storyline where the characters’ emotional responses felt implausible, and unlike his softening of the Twelfth Doctor’s character the attempts to address this were bumpy. Then for Amy and Rory’s departure he has River Song, the Doctor’s wife who he rarely meets in chronological order, tell them that he doesn’t like endings and “never let him see you age”.

This reminds you that the Doctor isn’t only manipulative and scheming on an epic scale, and the fact that he tries to convince Amy not to try to go after Rory continues is more in-your-face selfishness (another example of the Seventh Doctor era being on similar wavelengths to the post-2005 show), rather than feeling like a genuine concern for her safety.

Now, I love Doctor Who, I like that the hero is flawed but that they try to be hopeful (and Moffat addresses this successfully elsewhere). The issues with giving the Doctor flaws are whether they’re dealbreakers for people watching, and whether or not they’re deliberately done. This feels like it’s aiming for a commentary on the Doctor but goes too far, and I can understand people finding this hard to watch.

As with many of Moffat’s ideas, just because it didn’t fully work here doesn’t mean it won’t crop up again later.

35. Kamelion

There are a lot of cases of a companion leaving because the production team can’t make them work, but this is a bit on the nose.

Like Adric’s death, Kamelion begging the Doctor to destroy him would have much more impact if it followed through more substantially on previous stories. Unfortunately Kamelion’s character was that of a shape-shifting robot where the robot prop didn’t work, and rather than have him just assume a human guise they simply never wrote him back into the series until his final story. As a result, there’s no real relationship in play when the Doctor grants Kamelion’s wish. On the other hand the robot’s plight is consistent with what little we know of him.

While it’s never fun to watch someone beg for death, it’s more of a testament to Gerald Flood’s acting and Peter Grimwade’s script for ‘Planet of Fire’ that his death scene works.

34. Donna Noble

Everyone remembers the sequence in ‘Journey’s End’ where the companions pilot the TARDIS and drag the Earth back to the right place while “Song for Freedom” builds and Freema Agyeman looks directly at the camera. It’s joyous. It’s huge. It’s wonderful.

The 10 minutes that follow are bleak.

Rose gets her compromised happy ending, then it’s the fate of Donna. She gets given some of the Doctor’s mind, becomes even more brilliant, but then comes the turn: this will kill her. She can’t be this brilliant, she can’t have any more adventures with the Doctor. As she shouts “No” the Doctor wipes her memories of their time together.

33. Lady Christina de Souza

Flying off in a knackered double-decker bus to further adventures is a really good way to go. This would rank higher if it weren’t for the fact that the character is hard to warm to. Unlike Donna Noble’s first appearance in the show, Christina’s role in ‘Planet of the Dead’ doesn’t allow for much pathos or depth, and the character never returned on television to show these. As it is we’re left with a bored member of the aristocracy flying away in some very British iconography, but without the promise of a Barbara Wright figure puncturing their ego.

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32. Mel

It’s worth stressing that any critique of Mel as a character has to firmly centre on the inadequacy of her creation. She was devised as a computer programmer from Pease Pottage who was into keep-fit, and that’s her entire character. It seems churlish to criticise Bonnie Langford for playing the part as “Bonnie Langford in Doctor Who” because there was nothing else for her to go on.

Mel leaves the series because she decides to travel with Glitz, a mercenary. Does this follow on logically from her character? All we know about Mel is that she’s wholesome and enthusiastic and seems extremely unlikely to go off with a violent intergalactic Del Boy.

However, she gets another leaving scene that would be wonderful if it reflected a recognisable character. We get a sense of the Doctor’s affection for Mel and a series of wonderful melancholy moments: the Doctor shutting the conversation down so he doesn’t have to deal with human emotion, his obvious sadness at another friend leaving because that’s what his life is. Mel’s last line about putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into space (“It’ll reach you. In time”) is brilliant.

This scene bears comparison with Sarah Jane’s leaving scene, specifically because it wasn’t in the original script but the lead actor insisted it be added in its place. It was the scene Sylvester McCoy read when he auditioned for the role.

31. Adam Mitchell

Adam joins at the end of ‘Dalek’ and leaves at the end of ‘The Long Game’, the next story, and has a piece of future technology in his forehead so whenever someone clicks their fingers a little door opens up and you can see his brain.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things this is unfair. Other companions have done stupid things and the Doctor has helped them. The Brigadier flat out murdered people. But Adam was deliberately rubbish and this is reminder that the Ninth Doctor is a damaged man who lashes out. When he says ‘I only take the best’ it seems more like an excuse to get rid of Adam than anything factual, but then the Doctor starts acting like it’s true. 

30. Vicki

Vicki left the series because producer John Wiles heard actress Maureen O’Brien complain about her dialogue in ‘Galaxy 4’, so decided to let her go when her contract expired one story later. This led to her being paired off with Troilus at the end of ‘The Myth Makers’, set during the fall of Troy. A late decision requiring rewrites, this is quite an enigmatic fate. We see Vicki fleeing Troy after its fall with Troilus, the Doctor hopeful that she’s safe, but we never see her again. Given the TARDIS’ translation gifts, one imagines she suddenly has to learn Luwian.

29. Nyssa

Nyssa, a scientist/fairy princess mash-up whose entire family and planet was destroyed by the Master (who took over her father’s body) could be a great character. Her innately calm, generous and curious nature contrasted with all the horrors of her past is full of potential, and indeed her choice to stay behind at what is essentially a space leper colony is consistent with this. However, because none of this is ever seriously addressed in the show, the potential pathos of her leaving is greatly reduced. As is often the case we have to make do with a sad leaving scene, where Tegan flat out says to her “You’ll die here” to which she replies “Not easily. Like you I’m indestructible.”

As with Adric’s death, there’s the vague shape of something weighty and dramatic there but without the substance to fill it. John Nathan-Turner hated soaps, but actually using their techniques might have given us a stronger sense of Nyssa and Tegan’s relationship, meaning the audience wasn’t left to fill the gaps.

28. Jackson Lake

Considering during the course of ‘The Next Doctor’ Jackson Lake is in a fugue state, has a breakdown, remembers the death of his wife and the abduction of his child… he seems quite well adjusted by the end of the story. Reunited with his son and suggesting a Christmas dinner honouring the people they’ve lost, Lake seems to be in a better place than the Doctor.

27. Steven Taylor

Steven went through a lot: Wounded in Troy, witnessing the deaths of Katarina, Sara, and the Huguenots of Paris. Initially conceived as a replacement for Ian, meaning he took on most of the action sequences, he leaves in ‘The Savages’ to mediate between two societal factions after a story designed as a more cerebral alternative to biffing. It’s a good place to leave for a character who had stagnated (which, as you can see, happened a lot).

26. Graham and 25. Ryan

Ryan didn’t get killed or converted by Cybermen, so that’s progress. What did happen is that the Doctor accidentally returned to Sheffield ten months late. Yaz is hurt and Ryan returns more comfortably to his old life. Graham is also there.

The returning character of Robertson, an American tycoon with interests in becoming President functions as both a Doctor Who villain and a Donald Trump analogue (in a story universe containing Donald Trump) and this version of Doctor Who isn’t currently capable of dealing with that. Ryan watches Robertson on telly, unpunished by the Doctor and resolves to do something. This is a good reason to go, especially given the concerns of the Chibnall era (at its best focussing on the impact on well-drawn individuals, at its worst expositing over abstractions and sketches).

Graham decides that he will stay with his grandson after Ryan’s sudden announcement. This pays off their development in Series 11, where they had the main character arc of that series.

So far so good, but we also see Graham and Ryan deciding that, actually no, they’re not going to deal with real world problems, just Doctor Who-style adventures instead. It’s a useful microcosm of the era: good ideas present but not followed through on, being not shown Ryan’s reasons for leaving, and not successfully tethering the characters to either the forced whimsy of Doctor Who or the contemporary societal issues it wants to highlight.

And a final issue, which may be resolved: why is this the break-up of The Fam?

This ending doesn’t preclude the Doctor coming back to visit them in any way. In this respect it’s a classic companion departure: practically speaking actors aren’t always free for a cameo or a return visit (for example William Russell wasn’t ultimately available to play Ian Chesterton for ‘Mawdryn Undead’, so the Brigadier was written into the role of a school teacher instead), which means the Doctor not returning for their friends becomes a feature of the character. So while Ryan and Graham are choosing to leave, rather than being drastically and permanently separated, is the Doctor is still making the decision to cut them out of her life?

24. Mickey Smith

Mickey is given, in ‘The Age of Steel’, a proper old-fashioned companion exit, by which I mean some plot points are introduced at the start of his final story and by the end they’ve caused him to leave. Here it’s based on the Doctor and Rose’s behaviour and Mickey’s worth being dismissed until he does something heroic. He’s finally able to say to Rose that she doesn’t need him anymore and move on. Broad brushstrokes stuff in a busy episode, but it continues the idea that the Doctor makes people better that was emphasised from 2005 onwards.

Sure, he does it by being a bit of a prick here but the point stands.

23. The Brigadier

What is the Brigadier’s final story? I’m looking for a story that is written as a final departure, ideally after sustained involvement in the show. For the Brigadier that means ‘Terror of the Zygons’ doesn’t quite work, it wasn’t meant to be his final story (he was unavailable for ‘The Android Invasion’). ‘Battlefield’might have been his final bow, but writer Ben Aaronovitch set up the Brigadier’s death then found he simply couldn’t kill him off. The episode the Brigadier is initially written out of the show in is ‘The Wedding of River Song’ – where the Doctor receives news of his death by phone – and this is swiftly retconned with the divisive Cyber-Brig from ‘Death in Heaven’.

These two were written after Nicholas Courtney’s death, and the first one is used for dramatic weight but is over with too quickly. The latter does show the Brigadier, even in death and converted, saving the life of his daughter and helping the Doctor before going on to possibly eternal life – as seems right and proper – but as it involves the Brigadier’s buried body being reanimated there’s an invasive element connected to a beloved figure. As with many of Steven Moffat’s ideas, just because it didn’t fully work here doesn’t mean it won’t crop up again later.

22. Turlough

Peter Grimwade deserves credit again. Given the job of writing out Turlough, Kamelion and potentially the Master while also writing in the new companion Peri, Grimwade actually makes the brief for ‘Planet of Fire’ work. Here Turlough realises early on that his home planet is involved, and by involving his family Grimwade makes the stakes personal. Turlough also gets to use his brains here, rather than just wander around with a gun looking scared.

Turlough’s departure is developed through this story, and the farewell scene is a low-key goodbye as he admits that travelling with the Doctor has made him a better person. Again, it doesn’t follow from previous episodes, as Turlough isn’t developed as a character after ‘Enlightenment’, but in the context of this story it works well.

21. Mike Yates

An example of Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks addressing how being a regular Doctor Who character might make you feel, Captain Mike Yates is shaken by his hypnosis when undercover at a petrochemical company and becomes concerned about the environment. He falls in with a plot to reduce overpopulation and restore Earth to a golden age by time scooping dinosaurs into central London, because Doctor Who, and is discharged from UNIT. He goes to a meditation centre to recover, and uncovers a sinister plot – because Doctor Who– and ultimately gets better. Yates gets an arc and closure, especially in comparison to his fellow UNIT soldiers.

20. Nardole

Nardole, chiefly a comic relief character with moments of depth, is entrusted with the task of evading the Cybermen for as long as possible while keeping a group of humans alive (a continuation from his assigned role of monitoring the Doctor). It seems likely they will eventually fall, and though this is de-emphasised to stop an already tragic episode from overloading, it’s quietly harrowing. Adric’s death shook up the children watching, Nardole’s affects the parents: the feeling of being a guardian to children in an uncertain, dangerous world is all too familiar right now.

19. Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane’s departure in ‘The Hand of Fear’(written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin) comes out of the blue. An early outline for the story involved the Brigadier’s death, sacrificing himself to save the world. This was lost in development, and the story delayed while it was simplified. In the meantime Elisabeth Sladen asked to leave and for Sarah not to be the focus, married or killed off. Sarah was going to be killed off though, in a story called ‘The Lost Legion’. Script Editor Robert Holmes disliked the story, so a simplified version of ‘The Hand of Fear’returned to replace it with Holmes writing Sarah’s leaving scene. This was rewritten by Sladen and Tom Baker, with Holmes unavailable to do further rewrites. This is why Sarah’s departure is sudden. There’s no huge focus on her and then unrelated to the rest of the story the Doctor receives a summons to Gallifey where humans are not allowed (and given what happened last time he went he probably doesn’t want to take Sarah). What the scene does have is a strong sense of the unsaid to it, a sense of wistfulness akin to seeing someone else living in your childhood home.

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18. Wilf

Essentially, if Bernard Cribbins is crying then I’m going to cry. It’s Bernard Cribbins, for god’s sake. He’s so lovable its actually weaponised against the audience, and while ‘The End of Time’ might not be to everyone’s tastes, Cribbins makes every scene he’s in work, so you’re thoroughly invested in Wilf and his responses. However, this is harks back to Susan’s departure. It’s undeniably moving that the Doctor is making this man cry with happiness… after lying to him (no mention of the safeguards he put in Donna’s mind, or that Donna didn’t want her memories wiped anyway) and who he emphasises is “not remotely important” before saying it would “be my honour” to save him. It’s said of the Doctor “words are his weapons” in ‘Hell Bent’, and the pattern emerging here is that they’re weapons he uses on his friends; when the Doctor says “I only take the best” this is not only another weapon, it’s asking the question: the best for what?

17. Bill Potts

Potentially eternal life you say? A walking dead person? Maybe keep the dead body aspect of it and this idea has legs. Bill follows the Brigadier in becoming a Cyberman, and Clara in returning from the dead to travel the universe. The images of Cyber-Bill carrying the Doctor, the reaffirmation of who Bill is, the arrival of Heather: all of these are great.

Steven Moffat was right that the show hadn’t been diverse enough in its casting, but presumably no one behind the scenes understood that there are unintended connotations to a white man telling a black woman that she can’t be angry if she wants to be accepted – as happens to Bill in ‘The Doctor Falls’ – or that Clara got a gore-free death compared to the lingering shots of Bill’s gunshot wound. There’s also ambiguity in ‘Twice Upon a Time’as to when Bill dies – in that episode she is represented by an avatar taken from a moment near death, but given everything that’s happened to Bill this could be tomorrow or in a million years’ time – so overall this one has some extreme highs and lows.

16. Romana and K9

After Mary Tamm left the show, feeling similarly to Louise Jameson that despite a strong start her character was reverting to the stock companion figure (a damsel in distress, tripping ankles, screaming for help to advance the plot that’s being explained to them) Romana regenerated with Lalla Ward taking over the role. Ward left the show as new producer John Nathan-Turner came on board, and while Romana’s departure was foreshadowed well in advance, Nathan-Turner didn’t want any soap opera elements creeping into Doctor Who, and so Romana’s farewell scene was understated and rushed against Ward’s wishes. Otherwise it’s a good exit for Romana, who refuses a summons to Gallifrey and, finding herself in another dimension, decides to go off on her own journey after her travels with the Doctor.

K9 goes with her because John Nathan-Turner hated K9. Compared to ‘School Reunion’ this is just completely dismissive, but there is at least a coda: another scene at the end of ‘Warriors’ Gate’ where K9 and Romana face their future together with optimism, and Adric asks the Doctor if Romana will be alright: “Alright? She’ll be superb.”

15. Susan Foreman

The first companion departure, and something of a template. Susan falls in love and stays behind. Actress Carole Ann Ford left as she was unsatisfied by Susan’s lack of development.

It’s the Doctor’s decision to leave Susan, his granddaughter, behind. He locks the doors on her, believing that she stands a better chance of happiness staying on Earth rebuilding after a Dalek invasion. William Hartnell didn’t want Ford to leave and channels that into his performance. A clip of this scene was used to represent Hartnell at the beginning of the twentieth anniversary special ‘The Five Doctors’, and with Susan’s fate unconfirmed after The Time War his line ‘One day I shall come back’ lands even heavier: we know he never did.

No wonder he never comes back for anybody else.

14. Captain Jack

‘The Parting of the Ways’ is Jack’s departure story as it’s his last as a regular companion before moving to Torchwood.

Torchwood was not announced until after Series 1 of Doctor Who, and so when it became clear that Jack – with his cheesy grin and action hero posturing – was going to die, it was unexpected. There’s a sense of inevitability about the Daleks killing him when everyone else is dead but, because this was a new series, it was never clear how far it would go. Maybe there’d be a last-minute reprieve. Ultimately there was, but as far as self-contained character arcs go Jack’s journey from con-man to sacrificial hero works, and if it had ended there, it’d have been on a high.

13. Adelaide Brooke

In Base Under Siege stories we have the stock character of a distrusting commander who doesn’t get along with the Doctor. A fun idea in ‘The Waters of Mars’ is ‘Hey, what if they were the companion for one episode?’

One of the less fun but still powerful ideas is also that the Doctor’s behaviour be so unnerving that this stock character would kill themselves in response. So here we have someone standing up to the Doctor as he states the laws of time “are mine, and they will obey me!” What’s interesting is that this is not dissimilar to the standard companion departure, but operating in the epic register rather than a more intimate one. The Doctor has previous on saying that companions have to leave and not giving them a choice, but here the controlling behaviour is scaled upwards to time itself. Possibly the show was not ready to explore this explicitly in a smaller scale just yet.

12. Grace Holloway

Sneaking in unnoticed is the fact that Grace Holloway, the one-off companion for the 1996 TV Movie, ends the film by kissing the Doctor at midnight under the fireworks but refusing to go with him because her experiences have given her renewed self-confidence. Grace is that rarest of things – a Doctor Who companion who gets to leave on her own terms without the Doctor being a dick about it.

11. Ian Chesterton

Ian and Barbara are the first humans in Doctor Who to explore the universe in the TARDIS, taken away by force when the Doctor kidnaps them. Initially they want to return home, but this desire fades. However, when they’re presented with a chance they take it. As a contrast to Susan’s departure, Ian and Barbara’s departure is joyful as it turns out that you cantravel with the Doctor and leave on your own terms as richer, fuller people.

10. Rose Tyler

Rose and the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose. It’s easy to lose track – amidst the melodrama, epic gestures and various tensions – of the way Series 2 sets up Rose and the Doctor being torn apart almost straight away. They’re so wrapped up in how much fun they’re having that it stops them from noticing other people’s feelings. It becomes clear that had the Doctor and Rose done this, the Torchwood Institute wouldn’t exist, so Harriet Jones wouldn’t have had a weapon to fire at the Sycorax in the preceding Christmas episode. However, the show is also telling you that Rose and the Doctor being split up is a colossal tragedy; performances, visuals and music tell you this is incredibly sad while the stories are reminding you they’ve contributed to their own downfall.

This is a companion departure with the heartbreak turned up to 11, to the point where the pretty loud “Brought this on themselves” track can get lost in the mix. Here’s the beginnings of companions burning out rather than fading away.

There’s also the unfortunate business where Rose Tyler, the beloved character who helped bring Doctor Who back as a critical and popular success, rips holes in the universe to find the man she loves.

Said man takes her back to the place she had the worst time of her life, gives her a genocidal sex clone and then quietly leaves when she’s making out with it.

9. Ace

Bearing in mind that Ace has left Doctor Who in so many different canons over the years, it’s specifically her departure in ‘Survival’ that I’m taking as her final story. I’m heavily indebted to Una McCormack’s book on ‘The Curse of Fenric’ here, as it makes the very good point that for everything that could happen to Ace – whatever fates spin-off media has in store for her – there’s nothing quite as perfect for where Ace has reached at the end of Season 26 as the promise of further adventures, the possibility of joy rather than darkness, an ellipsis rather than a full stop.

8. Barbara

Why is Barbara’s departure better than Ian’s? Because:

In ‘An Unearthly Child’ the Doctor asks them “What is going to happen to you?”, the single most important question in the entire series. Firstly because that is half the format of Doctor Who, and secondly because the other half is the same question in reverse. If Barbara Wright doesn’t happen to Doctor Who, then Doctor Who is a short lived 1960s sci-fi show about a cantankerous old git who kidnapped some school teachers (Missing presumed wiped).

7. Zoe and 6. Jamie

Zoe and Jamie both leave suddenly at the end of ‘The War Games’. Patrick Troughton was leaving and the actors decided to go with him, and that sense of an era ending bled into the fiction. 

At the end of ‘The War Games’ the Time Lords are named and appear for the first time, represented by a group of solemn men in robes who wield immense and ineffable power. The Doctor is put on trial for stealing the TARDIS and interfering on other worlds. His companions are returned to a time after their first meeting with the Doctor, their memories of their travels erased. This isn’t built up to, but there’s a general sense of unease in the final few episodes and the Time Lords seem aloof enough to mete out this sort of punishment.

Jamie and Zoe try to escape with the Doctor, but when they’re recaptured he gives up. With Patrick Troughton’s Doctor this is especially shocking, and it’s only his melancholy resignation that convinces them to give up too. Zoe ends up back on a space station, and knows there’s something she can’t quite remember, but with Jamie – who has been with the Second Doctor for almost the entire incarnation – he ends up back at the aftermath of Culloden, charging a redcoat. In a kind touch, the redcoat turns and flees, suggesting Jamie might be alright in the aftermath of the battle.

Doctor Who wasn’t really huge on tearjerkers until 2005, but it was very, very good at quiet melancholy.

5. Martha Jones

Martha is in love with the Doctor. The Doctor spends the entire series pining for Rose and being oblivious to this fact.

Martha Jones puts up with a lot, looking after the Doctor while in his human John Smith guise and having to restrain herself while being continually patronised, racially abused and treated like an idiot. She then spends a year travelling the Earth avoiding capture as the Master enslaves and murders the population, holding Martha’s family captive while she does this.

So frankly when Martha says she’s leaving and the Doctor still doesn’t understand why (“Is this going anywhere?”) it’s hugely cathartic for the audience and for someone who deserved better. Some people do get to choose when being with the Doctor stops, and it’s usually great when they do.

4. Jo Grant

However muddled the reasoning behind Jo Grant’s existence, the casting was inspired. Essentially a remix of Jamie (which suggests that Jo and Liz could have worked if Jamie and Zoe did), Jo Grant wasn’t the brightest but wasn’t stupid, and was incredibly loyal and brave.

With the Doctor’s paternal streak fully activated, the production team decided that Jo falling in love and telling the Doctor “he reminds me of a sort of younger you” would be exactly what the Doctor didn’t want to hear. In contrast to Victoria’s departure and the Doctor’s selflessness there, the Doctor doesn’t do what Mike Yates does when marriage is announced (looks upset and does his best to mask it) but instead quietly slips out and drives away by himself. The fact that he leaves in a way that suggests jealousy or loneliness is a huge change; now we see the Doctor closer to Susan’s position and he does not like it.

3. Tegan

Coming at the end of ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’, where she’s seen a lot of people killed and the Doctor pick up a gun and announce that he’s going to kill Davros (who Tegan presumably hasn’t heard of), Tegan’s leaving scene is very close to being perfect.

Firstly there’s the line “It’s stopped being fun”, which begs the question of when it started being fun for her, but that’s ignorable. Secondly, and this is more about personal taste than an inconsistency in characterisation, there’s a case to be made for Less is More here. Tegan runs from the Doctor and Turlough as he begs her not to leave “like this”, which causes the Doctor to consider his actions before he and Turlough leave in the TARDIS. As it’s dematerialising, Tegan runs back in has one final line. For me it’s just a line too far, and Tegan being unable to say anything at all would have been more powerful, especially for the self-described “mouth on legs”.

However, that’s more window dressing rather than substance: the reasons for Tegan leaving are excellent: it’s a commentary on the stories and Doctor we’ve seen recently, and a plausible emotional response to them. It sets the Doctor on his way to ‘The Caves of Androzani’ where the show comes even closer than ever to paying off a sustained period of grimdark storytelling. Adric’s death might be more famous, but Tegan’s departure is much better writing from Eric Saward and deserves more plaudits for it.

2. Victoria

Actor Deborah Watling wanted to leave, and so Victoria goes in ‘Fury from the Deep’. Here the character has a plausible response to screaming at monsters and getting into trouble: she leaves. She says that she’s having a miserable time screaming and getting into trouble, but isn’t sure if she can go: her father died saving the Doctor, she’s an orphan out of her own time. The Doctor intervenes and suggests a family she can stay with.

Most importantly, the Doctor and Jamie stay an extra day to give her time to think it over, and the Doctor stresses that it must be her decision. On top of this, the final scene of the episode is the Doctor quietly trying to make Jamie feel better about her leaving. Rather than the usual one scene and gone deal we have something drawn out, stemming from character, full of warmth and empathy.

1. Clara Oswald

Potentially eternal life you say? A walking dead person? Maybe lose the dead body aspect of it and this idea has legs. ‘Hell Bent’ is a divisive episode (referential meta-commentary on Doctor Who isn’t what everyone was looking for from a season finale) and the ideas in it are incredibly pointed: the grieving Doctor overthrows Rassilon, shooting a potential ally to retrieve Clara from a moment before her death, and tries to wipe her mind to save her life, addressing the long-term trends of companion departures head on.

Rather than a Gallifreyan epic, this is focussed on one relationship and the shade it casts on the Doctor’s behaviour, all the while dancing in and around threads from other plotlines. The Doctor wanted Gallifrey back so badly, but now it’s simply a means to an end for him to bring Clara back.

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Clara’s final story is often compared to Donna’s departure because of the mindwipe element and the idea of Clara being a Doctor-like figure in her own right – here realised rather than excised – but looking at this list you can see how it harks back all the way to Susan: the Doctor thinks he knows what is best and often gets it wrong, and what seems like extreme behaviour in this story is actually pretty standard. Here he gets properly called out on this behaviour, the show finally able to address this in an intimate rather than epic setting.

The post Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure appeared first on Den of Geek.

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