#I say as a person who mostly likes Andromeda sometimes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

birlwrites · 6 months

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I was going through your dark lord wip tag because I was in the mood for Lore etc and I noticed that you've talked about all of the other Black family members, but you've only very rarely mentioned Andromeda, in both answers to asks and in ttdl itself. So I was wondering if you could tell us about her? I'd like to know how you think of her. Is it spoilery to reveal if we'll get to meet her sometime in atfhv?

we probably will meet her at some point but she'll be a very minor character because i had to stop somewhere - but yes i have plenty to say about andromeda!!

as far as the cousins go, growing up, andromeda, being the oldest second oldest bella it doesn't *matter* we're *twins* second oldest, was generally the Voice Of Reason. she was very sensible, which is exactly why regulus and sirius always, Always fell for it when she told them bullshit stories about pegasi actually being normal horses who jumped off cliffs and flapped their legs really hard until they sprouted wings. all horses can do this, it's just that most of them don't want to. unicorns sacrificed their ability to sprout wings in exchange for other magical powers. regulus and sirius believed this for years. along with much other bullshit andromeda made up

she was close with her mom and the rosier side of the family, and while she and bellatrix were very close, they weren't inseparable the way regulus and sirius were. she was a slytherin prefect, and prefect meetings were how she met ted - eventually they were paired together for rounds, at which point andromeda's already-flagging devotion to her prefect duties completely bit the dust, and their rounds were not what i would call Productive. rather, that was weekly (or twice-weekly!) Secret Date Time

also, i'm not saying that andromeda running off with a muggleborn was part of what inspired bellatrix to dive even deeper into blood purity as a sort of revenge on her not-sister, but i'm not Not saying that

andromeda knew she was going to leave for a long time before she did it - first she was working up the nerve, and then she was just planning it. she pulled away from her family a bit, but slowly enough that people just thought she was growing into a more reserved adult than she'd been as a child (which is exactly what narcissa Actually did). it took years, which is a good moment for me to say that in this universe, andromeda didn't run away straight after graduating from hogwarts - she did it several months after turning 20, shortly after the conclusion of the summer social season, to be exact

she'd been out of hogwarts for years (and keeping up a secret relationship with ted the whole time, secret in the sense that she'd met his entire family and was acquainted with his friends and Nobody Was Allowed To Breathe A Word To Anyone Who Didn't Already Know), she'd laid the groundwork to leave and like. find employment, and at that point, after years of looking for a way to make it all work, she was ready to go

she didn't *want* to leave, i should say - but the political climate in britain was swinging back towards blood purity, and her family would never accept her relationship with ted, and she spent a long time coming to terms with the idea that she didn't want to live her life stuck in a family like that

and she chose her moment carefully - right after the summer season ended, so her family wouldn't have to deal with it during the season, and by the winter solstice banquet, it would hopefully have mostly blown over. that meant her only options were times when narcissa was at hogwarts for her final year, but if anyone could skate through That social situation and come out the other side unscathed, it would be narcissa, and also andromeda was just done waiting for a perfect moment that would never come. she figured if narcissa reached out to her, she'd apologize for the timing - then narcissa never did.

andromeda doesn't want to be controlled - that's not to say that she's this wild person who's all over the place and doesn't want to plan ahead of think about the future. just the opposite, actually. it's that she's very confident in and resolute about her own ability to create a good life, and she doesn't want to be told she's doing it wrong for stupid superficial reasons. she didn't leave with the intention of cutting herself off from her family (although she did fully expect that *they* would cut her off) - it was more about setting a boundary and making clear that she's in charge of her own life. and if house black couldn't handle that, too bad for them

she and bellatrix have the same voice, but also they don't. bellatrix talks faster and sounds more lively, and andromeda talks more slowly and has settled into her voice more - people who know them both are often surprised to realize that it's not that bellatrix has a higher voice and andromeda a lower one, it's just that they use their voices differently. first impressions of her are that she's pretty mellow, but she's actually just very good at planning out how to do what she wants, in such a way that it means that if andromeda gets sharp or aggressive, it's because something's gone wrong in her plan and she's pissed because now she has to use brute force to make it work

but also andromeda is just. ruthless about her priorities. she wasn't always, but she decided to be around when she decided to leave. if she got caught up thinking about side concerns (my sisters will be upset; i won't be around to try to sway my family away from blood purity; i'll miss my mom; etc), she'd never get what she actually wanted - which was her own life going the way she wanted it to

she hasn't been a target for recruitment into the order because dumbledore doesn't think she cares much for the greater good, and he's not wrong, although he's not totally right - andromeda cares very much about the war. she cares about making sure ted and nymphadora (who's almost 4 atm) will survive it. she won't go into the fights and put her life on the line, because she has people she's decided to be there for, and she's not going to change her mind on that, especially not if dumbledore tries to do it for her. (but, like, she'd be willing to support from a non-combat role, so dumbledore is partly wrong)

the main reason that i don't talk about andromeda much is simply that her absence has made much more of an impact on regulus than her presence has. she left when he was 9, and while they spent summers at black manor together, andromeda was the least likely of the sisters to spend time playing with her kid cousins, especially as she grew more set on leaving. she left around the same time as arcturus and melania's deaths, and orion ascending to the lordship, and then sirius diving into a heap of blood traitors at hogwarts - it was a time of so much turmoil that andromeda leaving isn't even really its own separate Event in regulus's brain. just a part of those couple of years.

there's 'the before times,' when they spent summers at black manor with their grandparents and their cousins including andromeda, and 'the after times,' when they spent summers in london, only visiting their other family, and also regulus barely saw sirius, which, ngl, he cared about much more than he did about andromeda leaving

she's living her best life, tbh - or rather, her best life possible under the circumstances. she doesn't even know sirius was disowned; she avoids the society pages, because when she used to read them, they just made her incredibly sad. she certainly doesn't know sirius didn't end up in slytherin

(also, while i'm rambling, it's not that none of her family reached out after she left - it's just that the letters she got were just trying to persuade her to come back, as opposed to attempting to keep in touch. once she married ted, the letters stopped immediately, except for the one informing her she'd been disowned. neither of her sisters wrote to her - they were both reeling, and pissed off, and intending to give her the silent treatment when she came back, and then she Didn't.)

#dark lord wip #should i make an inbox tag

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agentwashingcat · 2 years

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Scars

I have no idea where this Andromeda fic came from but here it is. Featuring Jaal and Scott Ryder it’s mostly fluff with some sap cause Scott is a hopeless romantic lmao

Cross posted on ao3!

“Jaal, are you staring at my tits?”

Scott, in the midst of towel drying his hair, had found Jaal watching him from the doorway of the crew quarters. And considering Scott was currently only wearing pants, it was a logical assumption that Jaal was staring at his tits.

Obviously.

Jaal chuckled, shaking his head. “Can I not admire my partner’s body?”

Scott felt his cheeks flush, but kept it together. “I’m sure we can think of more inventive things for you to do.”

Nailed it.

“Hmm, I’m sure we can.” Jaal’s eyes swept over him once more, landing on his chest. “I had a question, if that is alright?”

Scott blinked, not expecting the abrupt change in topic. “Sure, Jaal, what’s on your mind?”

“You have markings on your chest where Liam does not. Is that typical?”

Scott looked down at his chest and then looked back up. “Wait, have you seen Liam naked?” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Jaal waved a hand like it was nothing. “We were learning about each other’s species by asking weird questions we could not ask others.”

“And you had to be naked for that?”

“You’re avoiding my question.” Jaal titled his head. “Was it offensive? I apologize if that is the case.”

“No! Well, I mean, maybe, depending on the person. People don’t always like to talk about their scars.”

“Oh! I did not realize they were scars. They are very well healed.”

“Thank you I worked really hard at that.” Scott was only half kidding. Scar care was important and he had been very diligent about it to minimize the scarring after surgery. “I honestly don’t know how to word this so I’m just gonna go for it. Do y’all have transgender people?”

Jaal frowned. “Trans gender? That word did not translate.”

Off to a great start. “People who are born one gender but realize they’re a different gender.”

Jaal brightened. “Oh, yes, we have many, many genders. Children are encouraged to explore and find an identity that is correct for them.”

Alright, that was promising. “I’m not sure how much it matters for Angara, but humans who are a different gender will sometimes change things about their body so that they feel more comfortable in it. So that’s why the scars.” Scott paused. “Lexi also gives me a hormone shot once a week, so you’re not allowed to strand me anywhere.”

“I would never strand you, dearest one,” Jaal said, laughing. He moved towards Scott, pulling him in by the waist and resting their foreheads together. “I appreciate your candor with me.”

Scott felt the tension slip out of his shoulders. “I try. Humans aren’t always… accepting of people who are different from them. Makes it hard to know who’s safe to come out to.”

Jaal furrowed his brow. “But our differences should be acknowledged and celebrated!”

“You’re preaching to the choir, man.”

Jaal’s brow only furrowed deeper. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, uh-” Idioms not translating properly was a real pain in the ass. “Just that I understand what you mean, I suppose.”

“Ah, I see.” Jaal kissed him gently, bringing a hand up to cradle Scott’s face. Scott leaned into him, eyes sliding closed as he melted against Jaal. They hadn’t known each other for long, but if anyone asked, he would have said Jaal was the other half of his soul. Which was crazy, since they had come all the way from the Milky Way, but it felt true. Despite everything, they fit together in a way Scott had never felt before.

When they broke apart, Scott gave Jaal a dopey smile. “I love you.” He felt the blood drain from his face. Oh god, that was supposed to stay in his head. “I, uh, fuck, was that, I didn’t mean to say that.”

A large smile broke out over Jaal’s face, his eyes sparkling brightly. “I love you as well, dearest one.”

The blood rushed back to his face instantly, and he was sure his cheeks were burning red. Jaal’s openness was still something he was getting used to. “Good. Great! Uh, oh no, I’m failing, I’m doing so bad right now.”

Jaal looked concerned, cupping Scott’s face with both hands. “You are perfect, dear one. Never forget that.”

Scott didn’t think his face could get any redder. “Right, right, okay, sure.” This was, actually, he wasn’t sure if this was going well or not. He could barely think straight at the best of times, nevermind when Jaal was telling him he loved him and he was perfect. It was like something out of one of his fantasies.

“Scott, are you alright?” Jaal asked.

“I’m spiraling a little, not gonna lie.”

“Spiraling?”

“Overthinking, I think.” If that wasn’t proof that he was overthinking he didn’t know what was. “I’m not… used to this, yet.”

Jaal blinked. “To what?”

Scott almost laughed at Jaal’s confusion. It must seem so simple to him. “The overabundance of affection, I suppose.” Scott knew that part of it was his own fault. He kept people at arm's length. Him and Sara were affectionate of course, but sibling affection was a lot different than this. This was exhilarating and intoxicating.

“You deserve all the affection in this galaxy and yours, my heart.” Jaal was looking at him so sincerely, with such bright eyes that it made his head spin.

“God I really do love you,” Scott managed to get out after a moment.

Jaal chuckled, kissing him again. “And I you.” After a moment he spoke again. “Next time we are on Aya, there is a place I want to show you.”

“Oh? What place?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Scott pouted, putting on his best puppy dog eyes. “But I wanna know.”

“Do not, what did you call it, use your dog eyes on me,” Jaal admonished, laughing. “It’s a surprise.”

Scott stuck his tongue out at him. “Fine. Be that way.”

“You’ll know soon enough, dearest one, I promise.”

“I will because I’m gonna tell Sara to set a course for Aya asap.” No one ever accused Scott of having patience.

“A S A P?”

Scott grinned. “As soon as possible.”

Jaal rolled his eyes. “You are a menace.”

“But I’m your menace.”

Jaal’s face softened as he looked at him. “That you are.”

#mass effect andromeda #Mass Effect #jaal ama darav #Scott Ryder #Jaal x Scott #Jaal x Ryder #trans Scott Ryder #my mass effect fic #lmao this was supposed to just be Scott coming out and got a little bit out of hand #writing be like that

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coraniaid · 2 years

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John Crichton for the character ask game

I'm incredibly late replying to this, sorry -- finished my Season 4 rewatch over the weekend and needed a little time to unpack my thoughts about it.

(Asks are from this post.)

Favorite thing about them

Crichton's not quite in my top tier of Farscape characters (that'd be Aeryn, Scorpius, Rygel, Pilot and -- after my latest rewatch, and much to my surprise, Sikozu), but I do like him.

Indeed, Crichton is so obviously the main character of the show (or at least the viewpoint character) that I'm not sure it's possible to really be a fan of Farscape if you didn't. But that being said, one of the things I like most about him is the extent to which the show doesn't want to position him as The Hero

In the Farscape Illustrated Companion, Rockne O'Bannon talks a bit about how much everybody involved in making the show wanted to avoid Crichton falling into the "cocky, nothing-really-matters TV hero category", and Ben Browder and others talk about the same thing on a lot of the audio commentaries.

And that's a trap I think the show could easily fall into: a worse version of the show would be … well, Andromeda, with Crichton as the Kevin Sorbo figure single-handedly fixing problems in the Uncharted Territories everywhere he travels.

But that's not who Cricthon is. As Pilot puts it in Crackers Don't Matter: he's "not particularly smart […] and not even vaguely physically or spiritually imposing." Humans aren't anything special in the Farscape universe, and Crichton is (for the most part) no exception to that. The crew don't defer to him and don't especially trust or respect him. I mean, when there's finally a vote to see who'll be named captain of Moya nobody even thinks of voting for him. Rygel gets more votes than he does.

(Okay, presumably Rygel voted for himself, but still.)

Sure, Crichton's an astronaut and a scientist and he's generally well-meaning, but he's mostly just a very unlucky guy who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time a lot. And as the opening narration says, he's just trying his best -- which isn't always enough -- to muddle through things and get home. Horrible things happen to him out in the Uncharted Territories and he does not walk away unscarred; it's not even obvious that the galaxy is better off with him being there. And I think that's a really interesting choice, especially given when Farscape originally aired.

On a more minor note, I enjoy the running joke of Crichton not being able to remember the names of any of the aliens of the week they run into, and just how much it irritates everybody else on Moya. Sure, given the translator microbes I'm not sure it makes any sense, but it is funny. (Especially in The Ugly Truth, when we flashback to the start from Crichton's perspective and are immediately clued into the reality that Crichton's memory is not flawless from the fact that all of the crew are now also calling the Plokavians 'Plakavoids'.)

Well, maybe I'm easily amused.

Least favorite thing about them

On the other hand, sometimes (maybe a lot more than sometimes, especially in the first season), they do fall into exactly that trap, either by inserting Crichton into scenes or subplots where he doesn't really do anything but distract from somebody else in the crew, or insisting that the latest aliens of the week happen to find Crichton instantly attractive (despite his … well, see above).

More than one person I've recommended the show to has given up on it, and they've always given Crichton as the reason. The show just isn't quite as subversive as I think it wants to be.

(From memory, Ben Browder flags the scene at the end of The Way We Weren't as a perfect example of this on that episode's audio commentary. It's a touching moment of mutual recognition between Pilot and Aeryn, with Pilot's line about having been willing to do terrible things because of his desperation to see the stars echoing Aeryn's guilt over what she did to return to flying a Prowler. And also Crichton is there, for … no obvious reason?)

This is also why I find parts of Season 4 a little underwhelming, I think: for a number of different reasons -- the fact that Aeryn loses a lot of agency, the fact that wormholes are so important to the whole season, the fact that Cricthon actually gets to go home when none of the rest of the crew do -- Crichton really does become the main character in a way I think he wasn't before.

Favorite line

"I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash, or Arthur frelling Dent. I am Dorothy Gale from Kansas."

brOTP

In terms of … actual friendship? I think the answer has to be Ka D'Argo. And I do like how organically the first couple of seasons work up from "D'Argo and Crichton don't understand each other and don't want to" through "D'Argo and Crichton are reluctant allies even if they don't always get along" up to "oh, wait, they're actually friends now." But the back half of season 3 has a lot of weird fighting between them which really seems to suggest the writers haven't got much of an idea what to do with them anymore, and I don't think they really get to do much in season 4 either.

So I'm going to be contrary and say Harvey instead. Sure, he might just be a weird hallucinatory echo of a neural chip an alien implanted in Crichton's head after torturing him, and their interests might be fundamentally misaligned to the extent they've both tried to kill each other several times. But who else is Crichton going to go to the beach and have margarita shooters with?

(And ... well. Just the idea of the neural chip was such a clever way of letting Scorpius keep appearing in the show every few episodes without diluting him as a villain, so I'm not surprised the writers were so reluctant to ever get rid of it.)

OTP

Aeryn Sun!

Honestly, if this wasn't a separate question I'd have had 'being utterly crazy about Aeryn' as Crichton's best (and most relatable) characteristic.

But I mean, the Aeryn/Crichton relationship is -- much like Crichton himself -- such a big part of the show I'm not sure anybody who didn't like it could stand to watch.

nOTP

Like I said before, I think the show (and Crichton himself) is at its weakest when it forgets that Crichton isn't James T. Kirk and decides he should be instantly attractive to whatever human-looking-aliens he's just stumbled into.

Off the top of my head, just in the first season there's Lyneea from I, ET, Gilina from PK Tech Girl and of course Lishala from everybody's favorite episode Jeremiah Crichton.

But the one I think makes the least sense is Jenavian from the Look at the Princess trilogy. She's got just enough characterization to make it clear she shouldn't find Crichton interesting or attractive, and yet. Just felt weird and unnecessary.

(Okay, I lied. I had to go back and look up all of those names.)

Random headcanon

I go back and forth on this, but I think I kind of like the idea that Stark somehow managed to transfer Tayln!Chricton's memories back to Moya!Crichton when they met up again.

(Although this is around the time the show completely loses track of Stark as a character, so who knows what the writers intended.)

Unpopular opinion

Is the Farscape fandom big enough for there to be unpopular opinions?

Song I associate with them

I don't really have any song I associate with any of the Farscape characters, so I'm going to take this opportunity to say that I really like the Farscape opening credits music (in all its iterations, though especially Season 3).

Favorite picture of them

Could've gone with a number of Crichton-staring-at-Aeryn screenshots, or Cricton's increasingly dismayed reactions to the terrible things that keep happening to him (the final shot of Cricthon screaming wordlessly on the operating table at the end of Season 2 is such a great cliffhanger).

But since I brought up Crackers Don't Matter already, let's go with a classic:

"I look ridiculous, don't I?"

(Not shown, Aeryn nodding emphatically.)

#farscape #john crichton #ask game

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auxiliarydetective · 2 years

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The last Artbreeder family was already chaotic, but this one is even more chaotic. May I introduce to you, the Weasleys, specifically the Weasley-Malfoy branch

Again, shame on Artbreeder for not having a better picture of Fred. But this is quite alright. It doesn't spark Freddie energy, but it has the main facial features

These three are triplets, (from left to right) Andromeda, Leo and Sagittaria. As you might guess, Asteria chose to stick with the Black family tradition of naming children after stars/constellations and Fred let her, though he did throw in his comments if the name ideas were getting too old-fashioned or odd.

Andromeda is the named not only after a constellation, but also after Asteria's aunt Andromeda, Tonk's mother, who was burned off the Black family tree for marrying Ted Tonks. She's the least chaotic of the triplets, more quiet and reserved, but also more cunning. Instead of being loud and energetic, she'll throw sarcastic comments from the sidelines. Whenever her family is at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, she usually keeps to the back, going over the paperwork, putting orders together or restocking items. Andromeda is a Slytherin and plans to take over the shop someday when her father and uncle feel like they're ready. Being the first Slytherin in the Weasley family doesn't bother her at all. She knows that it's the house her mother's family has always been in - safe for Sirius - and personally believes that her father and his twin could also have been Slytherins. Either way, she takes pride in her house. One of her magical talents lies in Divination.

Leo comes from the Leo constellation and is a huge nod to Gryffindor, being Fred's house, the house the Weasley family has been in for ages. Plus, it's not that far of a stretch to say that Asteria had the Gryffindor quidditch team in mind while choosing this name, considering her relationship to it and its former captain, Oliver Wood. Fitting to his name, Leo is on the Gryffindor quidditch team as a chaser - a very skilled one as "Uncle Ollie" likes to mention. He's definitely his favourite "nephew". On top of being great at quidditch, he's a very brave duellist and popular in the school's duelling club

Sagittaria is named after Sagittarius upon a vision Asteria had shortly before the triplets' birth. She's also a Gryffindor and a beater, also oddly fitting to her name since she's very accurate in knocking people off their brooms. On top of that, she seems to be the only sibling to have inherited Asteria's affinity for fire.

The triplets all have second names which are mostly there for Asteria to yell at them when they inevitably cause massive chaos. She had noticed while spending time at the Burrow over various holidays that "Frederick Gideon Weasley" had always had a stronger impact than "Fred Weasley" and put that knowledge to good use. So, she gave her kids the full names of Andromeda Leto Weasley, Leo Ignatius Weasley and Sagittaria Pheobe Weasley. Sometimes, she may even add an "of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black" at the end, which usually signals she’s joking

#hp #hp oc #oc concept #artbreeder #asteria malfoy #fred weasley #fred/asteria #leo weasley #andromeda weasley #sagittaria weasley #next generation

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arisalem · 1 year

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Hi, i'm Ariadna but i go by Aria

I saw someone in tumblr make an introduction in a post so i thought why not do it myself too?

~My name is Ariadna and i love reading about mythology ever since i heard of it.

~I'm 23 y/o and i'm an Aries. Yes, i like astrology and i'm pretty much into it. I also believe in energy, spirituality, reincarnation, ghosts, angels, witches. You pretty much get the point i think.

~I love all things weird, like subcultures, reptiles, gothic literature, carnivorous plants and other strange topics (ik the examples aren't really strange but it was what came to my mind, i'll keep updating).

~I LOOOVE horror, fr, it's what gets me going. I also love vampires and werewolves, stories about them, the possibility that they actually existed or still exist, pretty horrorful but i do believe in them, for some f*cked up reason probably.

~I love animals and wish i could go vegan, i actually want to achieve that goal cause i think that killing animals to feed on them and the things people/the industry does to get animal food is absolutely horrorful (not in a good way), gross and cruel. However, i don't judge those who eat meat or even like eating meat, it's how this world is used to eat basically, we're used to do many things that aren't right for us and other creatures. Also, i've heard people say phrases such as "poor plants, they have feelings too" or "we're carnivorous by nature", etc. and my thought on those "arguments" ("" because it's not really an argument) is fuck you, i get it, you like meat, fucking say it , don't justify yourself, just say you like eating meat.

~I organize and categorize things when i'm bored and don't know what to do, they're usually files or films in my pc or could also be photos in my phone, things like that. It's like the way i destress (not sure if that word exists) sometimes.

~I'm a people person but i seem a bit antisocial or introverted in person because i suffer from social anxiety sometimes (most times). Also, my blog is a safe space for anyone that identifies "outside the norm" or the socially accepted, like goths, emos, lgbtq+ community, etc. And i won't accept any agression, violence or cruelty done against anyone in my blog. If you're racist, homophobic, transphobic, lgbtq+ phobic, sexist, mysogynist, hembrist (yeah that's a thing too), xenophobic, sexual abuser (or someone who supports abuse cause "they were asking for it", btw f*k you) or just a plain bully, then fuck off my blog, you're not welcome, i won't condone it.

~I write and create oc's as a hobby (i'm not very good at it though). Some of my character's names are Celestine Phade, Orion Debstern, Coralinn Wardwell, Eleonor Bruneau, Osiris Éjzsaka, Lavender Kelechii, Andromeda Harkin, Rita Abital-Cheronobog, Anastasia Bosporus, Zella Haizea. Some of them have pretty weird names and i made a few of them (their names). Some are witches, most of them are witches.

~I have many stories to write about, i always start them but never finish them cause i think i'm not a good writer (i'm probably not, at least not so good), i have good ideas though.

~I draw and paint sometimes, but i haven't in a while. I like dark art and usually draw/paint faces, i'm good at drawing bodies tho but mostly female bodies, i've never really practiced much drawing male anatomy. Not really good at hands, they feel difficult to draw, they're not actually difficult, they just feel like it.

~I'm currently studying html programming but i'm not sure that's what i wanna dedicate myself to, i actually like cybersecurity but i'm just starting with programming. I also like many things to study but not all of them are well paid as a job, like photography, criminology, archeology, speleology, painting. So many possibilities, but so little time.

~For anyone that could and will probably ask: i have a boyfriend, and no, i don't want to s*xt with you or get any pics of your d*ck. Tysm

I'll keep updating if anything comes to mind

🍁🎃🍁

#introduction #intro post #introduction post #house of salem #salem #witches #horror #strange #goth #grunge

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harrypotter-imaginess · 3 years

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A/N: I loved doing this one guys, and I hope you love it too. Might do a part 2 not sure yet, as always commissions are still open until 3/10 message if your interested- price list is here

- Okay this is the ship guys this is it-

- This is like Hades and Persephone type of love

- Everyone thinks that Regulus is someone to be feared because of his family, and everyone knows they dabble in the dark arts

- And everyone is so caught up in his family-

- In the estate, and those dark rumors, and their dark magic-

- That no one see’s Regulus is just a boy-

- A lonely boy with no real friends, not really

- It’s worse now that Sirius has been disowned

- He’s got people around him, boys who’s parents are aquatinted with his

- But they don’t really like him

- They just hang around because they want a flicker of his power

- Of that ancient dark magic everyone’s convinced he’s got

- Everyone except you that is

- You’re this beautiful, cheerful, precious thing

- He meets you when you’re lost, looking for the bathroom

- “Sorry to bother, but do you know if it’s down the hall?” You ask, he’s seen you a few times; in class, or around the corridors

- Playing gobstones with your ever growing group of friends

- He would be jealous if he wasn’t so surprised that you’re speaking to him at all, aren’t you a muggle born?

- Shouldn’t you be afraid of him?

- Just like everyone else?

- “It’s in the next hallway, that one is moaning Myrtle’s bathroom” he says quietly

- He watches you nod enthusiastically

- Looks like you’ll be on your way now, probably for the best, he wouldn’t want his parents to know -

- “Would you mind showing me?” You ask

- And it’s awfully pushy, but somehow Regulus can’t turn down that bright smile of yours

- You talk to him so easily, like you’re not afraid of him at all

- And it irritates him a little.

- Honestly, even the professors are a little afraid of him

- Everyone is

- So why aren’t you

- “Do you-“ he stops in the middle of the corridor, and you walk a few steps forward before realizing he’s not beside you anymore

- “Do you know who I am?”

- You must not, that’s the only explanation

- When you find out you’ll go as pale as the moon, and afterward you will regale the tale for your many friends, how you barley escaped the fearsome Regulus Black, right before he was about to curse you with his dark magic.

- But you only offer a quizzical expression and a smile

- “You’re Regulus Black”

- You say it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world

- It only makes him upset, but he doesn’t know why

- In fact since the moment he met you there’s been this burning irritation lingering in the back of his mind, and he just can’t seem to pin point why

- But regardless of the reason, it seems to be boiling over right now, in an empty corridor in the middle of the night

- “Shouldn’t you be afraid? I could curse you right here if I wanted”

- But the smile on your face remains

- “Maybe, but you won’t” you muse

- He laughs

- “Why because you think I’m afraid getting expelled?”

- Honestly his parents would welcome him with a feast if he came home for attacking a muggle born

- It would be a sign he wasn’t going to become like Sirius after all

- Because that’s the worst thing a person could be according to his parents-

- A blood traitor

- But instead of quaking in your shoes you flash him a quizzical smile

- “Nah, I just don’t think you’re that kind of person” you shrug

- The words echo in his mind long after you’ve said them

- And though he’s looked at you before

- He’s only really looking at you now, the easy way your lips curl into a smile, the sparkle in your eye, the glow around you-

- Like you’re made of sunlight

- Like you breathe life into all things wherever you go

- Like an ancient witch he heard of , heralded as the goddess of spring

- Like Persephone

- Ah, so that’s it

- It’s not that he hates you

- It’s that he envies you

- Because seeing how natural it is to see you do good, makes him hope - it makes him yearn to be like that too

- To be more than an heir to his family’s dark legacy

- “I could be wrong though” you shrug, you can count on one hand how many times you’ve been right about something

- But still, you just don’t buy that the shy kid in front of you is some evil prodigy bent on destroying the world

- “No” Regulus’s voice cracks, and it’s soft, so soft you almost don’t hear it.

- But your turn to him, eyes jumping from one of the many paintings in the corridor to his pale face

- His eyes seem glossy as they look into yours, and it’s not just because of the light from the torches

- “No, I’m not that kind of person” he says with a bit more strength this time, and you grin

- And while you feel that there’s something important about the moment, you don’t realize the monumental significance this chance meeting holds for Regulus

- “Oh, we passed the washroom” he realizes after a moment, he was so caught up in talking to you he hadn’t realized

- “Ah, that’s okay I didn’t have to use the bathroom anyway” you say with a wave of your hand

- Huh?

- Noticing his expression you get a sheepish look on your face

- “Well I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while, but you’re always with people-“

- Yeah he’s sure his “friends” would give off an especially murderous aura if you ever tried to approach them

- “So when I saw an opportunity, I just took it” you admit with a slight laugh

- “I wanted to see what everyone was talking about when they mentioned the ‘Dark Prince’ “ there’s a teasing flint in your eye, and the nickname alone is enough to make him flush red

- “And what’s your assessment?” he manages to ask, a smile stretching across his face

- “Very underwhelming, I came expecting several hexes and a duel, and all I got was a cute boy with pretty eyes”

- This time he really does flush bright red, eyes trained on his shoes

- You laugh, you were mostly teasing

- But he is quite cute isn’t he?

- What’s everyone so scared of anyway? He’s like a shy kitten

- He watches you walk to a particular portrait, whispering a word before it swings open

- “Well see ya around Mr. Dark Prince” you say, sending a teasing wink his way

- Regulus is glowing red, even when he’s tucked in bed, in his common room hours after the meeting. the mere memory of the words you said send his heart racing again

- “They said I’m cute” he’ll recall with a goofy smile spreading across his face

- After that, things are brighter for Regulus

- You pull him into your group of friends, quite literally

- “I-I don’t think this is a good idea” he manages, catching the terrified glances of passerby’s as you tug him forward by his arm

- What a sight you must be, the literal personification of spring pulling the Dark Prince himself by the arm through the castle

- The aforementioned Dark Prince having a rosy tinge on his cheeks, which most of the other students misplace for Fury instead of what it actually is:

- Embarrassment with a healthy dash of attraction to aforementioned personification of spring

- “Nonsense, everyone’s dying to meet you Reg”

- When you use his nickname his flush darkens

- No ones ever called him that-

- No one except Sirius and Andromeda

- He likes the way it sounds coming from you

- And you’re right, your friends accept him into their fold immediately

- “You know any curses?” One of your friends asks, it’s in a jovial manner that anyone could tell they’re just teasing but Regulus flinches

- “No, not really” he admits, not any he’s good at anyway

- He did see his parents do something akin to a sacrifice when he was younger with an alter in the full moon, but he really wouldn’t know where to start with that

- “What about gobstones, you know the rules to that?”

- Regulus nods

- “Well lets play then!”

- Before he knows it, it’s like this was always his life

- Laughing with you in class, games of gobstones with your friends and trips to Hogsmeade on the weekend

- Regulus didn’t know that he was yearning for this

- How often had he wished for something like this,

- A place that feels like it’s full of sunshine, where everyone feels accepted, and no one has to feel sad

- This is the happiest Regulus has ever been

- But all dreams must come to an end

- The end of the semester comes around, and he has to go home for Christmas vacation

- You’re standing side by side on the train platform waiting for the train, your trunk lying next to you

- “You’re not taking anything back with you?” You ask

- Regulus shrugs

- “There’s no point, everything I need is at the manse”

- You’ve always been a bit curious about what the Black manor is like

- Probably something grand, large library’s, they probably have one of those record players with the gold horn thing

- And a ballroom

- It probably makes Hogwarts look like a pile of dirt

- But the way Regulus’ face darkens when you ask him about it tells you that- yes they probably do have a ballroom, but there’s other things too, things that are far less pleasant

- And when he starts talking about his home life, how it’s worse - lonelier- Now that Sirius is at the Potter’s all the time, and there’s no one around to stand between him and his parents

- He notices your heartbroken expression and rushes to comfort you

- “It’s not so bad, Mum’s got her tender moments every so often and-“

- “Regulus” you cut in, and the sound of his whole name leaving your mouth makes him stutter to a stop

- “You’re supposed to feel safe and loved all the time not just sometimes”

- It’s such a basic thing, but when Regulus hears this, he feels like he’s being allowed something

- He feels, for the first time, he’s allowed to be safe and happy

- He’s allowed to be good

- “Why don’t you come home with me for Christmas? It’s probably not as grand as you’re used to-“

- You fidget awkwardly, maybe it’s silly, the prince, Regulus Black, himself sitting on your worn sofa, holding yarn while one of your family member’s knits

- You can picture it though

- You can picture a big smile across his face, indulging the younger children in your extended family in their requests for piggyback rides and for him to participate in their games

- “I want to,” he says, really the fact that you’re offering is enough, more than he could ask for

- “But I can’t”

- And it’s the truth, after Sirius, he can’t make any mistakes, his family won’t stand for it

- He especially doesn’t want to think what would happen to you if they found out he had been spending all of his time with you, a muggle born

- He doesn’t want to think what curses they might inflict you with

- He doesn’t want you to ever be hurt because of him

- “You’ll write to me?” You say it with the fervor of a demand, and it makes a smile curl onto his mouth

- “Everyday” he promises

- And things are exactly as they always were at 12 Grimmauld Place, his mother is distant, only livening up when one of the other ladies shows up for tea

- His father is squirreled away in council meetings

- His cousins are no fun, not really, and Andromeda’s not around anymore since she ran off with Ted

- He likes Ted, though he would never admit it to his family

- Ted is a lot like you, someone with an infinite amount of kindness

- He wonders how they’re doing

- He wonders how Sirius is doing

- He’s probably happy, he always looked happy when he was with his friends

- And so- with a picture of you discreetly kept on his desk, he writes three sets of letters

- The first is for you, to assure you he’s fine, and live vicariously through your spring, through your lovely Christmas moments and imagine himself there too.

- The second for Andromeda, to ask if she’s doing alright, and to tell her he misses her

- And the last, is for Sirius

- Asking how he is, and hoping he’s well.

- And to say that he understands what Sirius was saying all those years, in their childhood and then into adolescence, Regulus understands now-

- And he wants to be good too

#harry potter #regulus black imagine #regulus x y/n #regulus black headcanon #regulus black x reader #harry potter imagine #harry potter headcanon #marauder headcanons #marauder imagine

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onyxonline · 3 years

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Posts winx club ocs from deviant art cutely

Information timeeeeee

Saros , Fairy of The Universe, dethroned princess of Andromeda, is searching for a way to reclaim her throne after her sister, Nova took over forcefully. She finds herself in Alfea to learn how to reach Enchantix, for it is the only way she thinks will be what it takes to take her throne back. Saros is stoic, keeping to most herself and very sarcastic and snappy, she has a bit of a short temper, and rather prefer to be on her own sometimes, although her friends are there to remind her that she shouldn’t shoulder her burden alone.

Vega, Fairy of Constellations, a inhabitant of the planet Stellae, she rose in ranks of her school and has been transferred to Alfea to represent her planet. She’s a very intelligent and bold fairy, has a love for horoscopes and astrology. Vega was the first to befriend Saros, helping more on the social and emotional side. She’s very patient and likes to think before acting. Honestly she rather talk than fight, but will do so if there’s no options.

Dahlia, Fairy of Comets, Duchess of Feu, known for her fiery and passionate personality, Dahlia is the talkative gal, she has mastered the arts of language being able to persuade others with ease, and using her charm to her advantage. Dahlia loves her family and friends, putting them before herself a lot. She will fiercely defend others when she sees people being wronged. She and colt were childhood friends, as she would sometimes visit his planet for diplomatic reasons.

Esther, Fae of Celestial, Prince of Atlas, he is the definition of Prince Charming, and he hates it. Esther is Saro’s arranged marriage, and both have agreed to put it off to know each other better, he was often put in a pedestal and given a lot of high expectation, and because of that, he is a bit of a perfectionist. He’s mostly reserved, but is very sentimental to the people he trusts, showing a more insecure and anxious side, but to others, he will be known as the calm prince of the Atlas planet.

Colt, Fae of the Void, Duke of Annuler, the last to join LUNARIX, he’s Dahlia’s best friend, and both can be seeing being chaotic little shits. But otherwise, a relatively nice man who is a bit brash and bold, he’s well liked in his kingdom, and part of the Annuler Council, being the very youngest. While initially not interested in joining the club, Dahlia was able to convince him with the promise of adventure and fun, and well. Let’s just say she was right. Colt can be a little broody, but I assure you, he’s doing it on purpose.

Likes and reblogs are appreciated ✨✨

#winx club #winx club oc #winx oc

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animecreator3000 · 3 years

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About the Boueibu iceberg

@delphoxqueen asked me to explain about my list for the iceberg so here it is. I might update this from time to time with links and stuff if I stumble across the original posts. This is all from what I know so feel free to add new info. Also, spoiler warning for RobiHachi and the Boueibu manga and novels. (This is like a masterpost it’s very long)

1. There’s a theory in tumblr about which decade the series is set in, using data like the friday the 13th calendar in s2 ep11. In HK we got a second number for when the next monthly Pretty Boy Contest was happening and using the one from Love it was theorized that around a decade had passed since then, which ended up being true.

2. The stage play had a few original songs and characters exclusive to it so unless you watched the full performance, you probably weren’t able to witness all of them. One of the characters is called “Robato Deniro”, as romanized in the stage play booklet I own.

3. The nurse and the cafeteria staff from the s1 mobile game appear in the background in around the first half of s2 ep3.

4. S2 had an unfinished manga that was only available online and was never released on physical format; it was centered around the defense club and sometimes the conquest club and Beppu brothers. All that’s left from what I know are the scans linked on magicalgirlsandcerulean’s blog.

5. This isn’t that obscure because it’s talked about in the anime, but I’m mentioning it because I think many people dropped it before the ova, where right at the beginning it is revealed that the alien that resucitated Mr. Tawarayama twice was, as described by Io, a “mulberry-colored naked mole rat-looking thing”, and was nicknamed “Moley-san” by Yumoto. At least in the anime, we had never heard before of who this was and it never appeared on screen nor was mentioned again.

6. In HK ep8, Karurusu promises the knights to grant a wish if they show him how earthlings spend summer. Kyoutarou reveals at the end of the episode that he wished that summer lasted one more day so he could spend it doing nothing, which prompts Ichiro to theorize that it’s the 32nd of august, and the next day is the second 1st of september.

7. The stage play was was held from march 10th to 13rd, of which the latter is Ryuu’s birthday. There’s an additional recording of a small celebration with cake focused on Ryuu and Io.

8. Atsushi mentions his older sister in the flashback at the beginning of s1 ep4, but she never appears or is mentioned again.

9. There’s a few posts on tumblr theorizing about what happened to the Hakone parents since Yumoto only says in s2 ep3 that according to Gora, “they are busy with their hot springs tour”. En mentions that it’s a bit suspicious, but it’s all the information we have from the anime. Posts talk about the parents perhaps passing away from an accident or an illness, thus the reason why Gora was so worried about Yumoto’s cold in s1 ep10, but from another post I think it’s implied in the second novel that they actually left their home when Yumoto was still a toddler.

10. It’s no secret that the surnames of the characters are all real onsens in Japan that even the seiyuus have visited, but apparently the Arima onsen has two different kinds of water, “kinsen (gold hot spring)” and “ginsen (silver hot spring)”, with different properties each, and the Kusatsu onsen water also has certain properties, both that were used to build the characters. Additionally, Ryuu’s favorite food are Sato Nishiki cherries, which are grown in the same prefecture, Yamagata, as his onsen, Zaou.

11. The press club lose relevance after s1, with only Kinosaki and Tazawa reappearing briefly in s2 ep2 to interview the Beppu twins after they arrive at the school. Tazawa doesn’t even have lines. Hireashi is mentioned by Zundar in ep11.

12. What the heck

13. Exclusively in the manga we see that Arima met Kinshiro and Atsushi when they were little and they were good friends, but when they met again as adults, Kinshiro seemingly didn’t remember Arima. Atsushi, however, stated that Kinshiro’s talent is remembering people’s faces and names, so Arima wonders if he’s just trying to distance himself from him. He also explains to Akoya that he follows Kinshiro and obeys him because as a child, he was fascinated by his radiant smile. This is never talked about in the anime.

14. Like the previous point, the anime never shows Akoya being bullied, at most just a slight dislike of his full name, but the manga shows that he was made fun of for it and how he actually hates his surname, to the point of introducing himself formally to the president and vicepresident of the student council as “Holy Angel Akoya”.

15, 16, 17, 19. Batonama lives were the livestreams done through the franchise by the defense club seiyuus on youtube and niconico. They’re all on youtube, without any kind of translation.

Love-ko is a girl with a shell bikini drawn on a piece of cardboard that was used as a girlfriend in the Batonama Love! lives, acted by the seiyuus themselves.

RobiHachi has one episode full of official Boueibu artwork and a parody of the series too, a Love-ko doll appears, and Wombat appears as well, named “The Don”. It received an english dub, so for a bit, people were excited that Wombat was going to speak in english too. Also, various mechas appear in both Boueibu and RobiHachi.

18. The director of Fairy Ranmaru (Masakazu Hishida if I’m not wrong) revealed in an interview that he was inspired by Boueibu and aimed to make a show like that.

20, 21. The website super-groupies.com has results for defense and conquest club lingerie sets, dc and VEPPer tote bags, the Beppus’ scarf rings, dc bath sets and the pumps magicalgirlsandcerulean mentioned. I’ve found the s1 Loveracelets and Caerula Adamas’ ring on different sites, the True Loveracelets on TheChara’s twitter and the Happybraces (apparently called “Hapibure”) on broccoli.co.jp but I’m not sure where exactly they were all announced and sold, so I’ll just drop that.

22, 33. Boueibu was originally pretty much a copy of Sailor Moon, I think they were all going to be called “Lackluster Moon” and that stuff and be literally Sailor Moon genderbent. They were all different from color palettes to physical features (except Yumoto’s), and Ryuu was a shota, even smaller than Yumoto. Their names were also very reminiscent of the five Sailor Senshis’. Even if they made it more original, the show is still clearly inspired by Sailor Moon (just look at Caerula Adamas lol) and Pretty Cure. It has also referenced, very blatantly, animes like Doraemon, Detective Conan, Aikatsu and even Vocaloid, when Kyoutarou tries to guess what Karurusu is saying with ““Just Google It, Asshole”?” in ep1.

23. Wombat’s real name and the name of his planet sound like gibberish to the earthlings and ends up being named after the Earth animal, but Zundar, Dadacha, Karurusu and Furanui all have original names. And I think Hireashi means “goldfish”?

24. If you google “zundar technology”, it’s actually a company in Shanghai, China. Aren’t Wombat and Zundar always talking about “advanced alien technology”?

25. Zundar and Dadacha are siblings, so are Karurusu and Furanui, and so are their father King Kamopapa and their uncle minister Wao, but neither are the same species and, except the first two, not even the same color. But they are supposedly related because they share birthmarks or something like that...

26. Everyone who’s in this fandom knows about the pixel blur and voice pitch censor from s1, but I’ve added it anyway because it’s so rare for mahou shoujo and shounen animes to explain why the heroes aren’t recognized when transformed.

27. A good while of s2 ep11 is spent discussing Zundar’s ex-wife and his problems to give child support. Naturally, he gets mad at this.

28. “Money doesn’t betray” (s1 ep6) and “The despair hidden behind your smile that comes from not being understood” (s3 ep11) are sentences that came out of nowhere and implied that the people they were said by (Io) or about (Taiju) respectively had some kind of angst going on but were never explained at all. They’re famous for just that.

29. The Beppu twins’ house in Andromeda shown in flashbacks had strange green circles that apparently are from another anime I don’t know but honestly I didn’t get it very well... It was revealed on a tweet from Takamatsu.

30. Alien language mostly appeared in s2 due to the many flashbacks of Aki and Haru in Andromeda, but in Boueibu s1, it appears on the Zundar Needle before it is shot on the human. It appears a lot through RobiHachi as well, due to being a story about travelling through space. There might be an alphabetical chart somewhere, but I can’t assure it exists, I might even have dreamed it.

31. Hikaru Midorikawa as the melon monster, Kousuke Toriumi as the bishounen monster, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as the kotatsu and panda monsters and Takuya Eguchi as the remote controller monster in s1 and 2, before going on to voice the main cast in HK. Keisuke Koumoto voiced Hatchi Kita in RobiHachi as well as Akihiko in Boueibu, and the characters look similar.

A new addition is that so far Boueibu is the only anime I’ve seen where children weren’t voiced by female seiyuus, but by actual children. Personally, it’s charming and makes it so much more realistic, specifically since no women appear in the franchise at all either (not counting Protag-chan in the game).

32. Speaking of seiyuus, Can I Destroy The Earth? had a dub shown in ep11/12 (?) that made Gora the villain that wanted Earth to stay the same and not progress, against the monsters that supposedly wanted to bring good things to earthlings. Aki and Haru quickly dismissed this dub as fake. (I made a mistake in the title in the previous post btw)

34. As seen in the glossary in the Boueibu Mook (I think, but might not be the mook), Caerula Adamas’ speeches are based on an old japanese detergent commercial that went “Gold, silver, pearl, gift”.

35. In the manga there’s a short parody of the first chapter of Sailor Moon with “Pretty Boy Guardian Gakuran Akoya”. The conquest club manga was released before the anime, so I remember reading somewhere that a fake website appeared for the Gakuran Akoya manga, before turning into the conquest club manga website in the day of its release.

36. Cgi was used a few times in the anime: s2 ep10 for a short sequence of the defense club on a rollercoaster and the carousel monster, ep11 for a cenital shot of the Battle Lovers singing, and HK ep12 for the Honyalaland soldiers and the Wao mecha.

37. The toothbrush incident in s1 ep7. (It’s definitely well-known but it’s so weird lol)

38. “We hope we can see each other again someday!” Something along those lines was the last text to appear in the last episode of HK, implying a s2. We all know how that went.

#boueibu #new post bc i didn't put a readmore in the other one and it was getting too long #msorry #long post #speaking of the robihachi eng dub... sarazanmai has one too...#so many animes like those get dubs but not boueibu?! HOW UNFAIR #at least we got the funimation subs #is the game even canon??#i mean with stuff like how everyone is apparently straight in there #even yumoto who pretty much came out as gay in the anime #that's very inconsistent #i mean. it is canon but maybe it's like an au? idk #also we need gakuran akoya to be real lmao #also no prequel with gora or hk s2. WHYYYY #i think this took me four hours

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blue-mood-blue · 3 years

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They tell him that his name is Benzaiten Steel.

They tell him that he’s been shot.

Officially, publicly, his condition is unknown - they haven’t released any details yet, pending the investigation. As he understands it, the investigation amounts to his mother and brother pointing to each other in accusation, both of them held in separate interview rooms of the HCPD while Ben lays in his hospital bed. They were hoping he could give them answers, Ben realizes when the doctor and the officer both hover around his door uncertainly before turning to go.

But Ben doesn’t remember anything. He can’t tell them if his brother in law enforcement went corrupt or if his mentally ill mother finally slipped too far. If it was an argument, or an accident, or which of his incredibly small family is more likely to lie. He wouldn’t have been able to tell them his name if they hadn’t told him first, because Ben hardly remembers anything at all.

It’s the head injury, the nurse tells him at two in the morning while she gives him more pain medication. Not from the blast, which had caught him in the shoulder and was more than enough damage to a body on its own, according to her. He must have hit his head on something on the way down, gave himself a nasty bump and some swelling. Nothing to worry about too much, she added quickly after getting a good glance at Ben’s expression. Just... just the memories might not come back. Hard to tell with these things.

Ben chews over the possibility after she leaves, slipping in and out of sleep. He should want to know, right? He should be searching for those memories, and the way he fit between them. He should be looking for himself... looking for the truth.

There are two people in his family. One of them shot him. He can’t imagine a truth there that wouldn’t tear him in two anyway.

Ben takes a moment to pity whoever it was he used to be - must’ve had a sad life, in the middle of that mess. Couldn’t possibly have been happy, in that little apartment in Oldtown, no one to call or contact besides the people led away in handcuffs. Such a small, tiring existence... didn’t he feel stifled, trapped? He does now. He thinks about going back to that, and he can’t breathe.

Ben looks at the window instead. He can make out some stars, but only a few - it’s hard to see much around the light pollution and the dome. He doesn’t remember, but logic tells him he hasn’t lived the kind of life that’s ever taken him off of Mars; he’s never seen any of those stars, or the planets around them, or their moons - not really. He thinks he might like to, and it’s almost a surprise when the thought comes to him; it’s as if his mind has been cleared of some dome hemming him in, holding him in place, and now there’s room to want. Ben feels untethered, adrift... free. Free in a way he knows, somehow, he’s never been before.

It’s a heady feeling. For the first time since waking, Ben smiles. He could be free. He could reach up to those stars and never come back down.

Benzaiten Steel might not remember anything about himself, but he learns that he’s a good actor. When the officer comes back with more questions, Ben tells them he’s afraid for his life, more afraid because he doesn’t know who or what to fear. “Be honest,” he asks, voice shaking with something (not fear, but the officer doesn’t know that). “Do you think this could happen again? Am I really safe?”

Benzaiten Steel is declared dead, and Ben boards a ship.

~~~

He still calls himself Ben; everything else, he cuts away and leaves behind as deadweight. He’s Ben Nothing, Ben Nobody, and he runs between the stars like there’s something chasing him. He finds work where he can, and he finds that the most lucrative work is the illegal kind. He finds that he’s good at it, charming people with a smile or disarming them with a few tears, and then liberating them from whatever they have in their pocket, or safe, or bank account.

Ben is happy. Ben is competent, secure, well-liked in the circles he moves through. Ben is as free as he ever wanted to be, in this life or any other. And if he feels like something unnamed is breathing down his neck some days, well, he is a thief, isn’t he? There’s always someone after him, law enforcement on several planets at least. If he avoids Mars and anywhere too close to that little, red planet, it’s his own business. There’s not much on Mars, anyway; only the Cerberus Province and the connections he could make there, and it’s a small sacrifice to make for all of the things he gets to see.

Ben isn’t lonely. He just feels a little adrift sometimes.

And it’s years before anything catches him.

He has a jewel that toppled a dynasty with the conflict it caused hidden in his pocket, and he slips into a dark, mostly empty theater to wait out the afternoon and the authorities. He already has a spot waiting for him on a ship traveling several planets away, but it won’t take off for hours. He has plenty of time.

Ben pulls out his comms to waste some hours, ignoring the movie playing on the screen; a kids’ movie, probably with the hope that whole families would make the effort of taking a trip to the theater to spend time together. It was a bad gamble, with the only person there other than Ben asleep in a chair in the corner. Ben snorts; kind of a stupid thought, that anyone would bother when they could stream whatever old movies they wanted directly to their home.

He’s in the middle of a game when he looks up at the screen. There’s a woman fighting a dragon, and he isn’t sure what caught his attention until it happens again.

“Andromeda!” someone on the screen yells.

Ben’s head hurts.

Andromeda! a younger Benzaiten yells. He can feel the warm sun beating down on him, the familiar sounds of shouting down a street somewhere too far away to worry about. His voice, thin and reedy and so young, makes its best attempt at a growl. You will never escape me!

“You will never escape me!”

His head throbs, and he could cry with how much it hurts.

I do not intend to run - I will stay and fight, because good must always succeed! Someone with his face answers back, swinging a sword made of paper towel rolls and too much duct tape, and then breaks from the script: And I’m faster than you anyway, Benten, so I can escape whenever I want to.

For a moment, he rests on the divide between Ben and Benzaiten. If he tries, he could pull back - but he also knows he could no more let go of that voice than tear his own heart out.

Juno. A knowledge from the long-dormant pieces of him whispers an answer he doesn’t ask for, as it drags the whole of his messy, painful history with it. That’s Juno. Your twin. Your family.

Benzaiten is still crying, hurt radiating from his head and his chest, and there’s no one around to care so he doesn’t stop. He watches the stupid movie three times, then boards a ship and tries to hide the evidence with makeup and a bright smile. He’s two planets away by the time he thinks about going back, all the way back, and by the time he’s three planets away he’s decided that it would be a ridiculous idea.

It’s been years. Fuck, it’s been so many years. Does Juno live in the same place? What if he’s married now; out of the two of them, he was always the one looking for someone to hold onto him. Would he even want to see Ben?

The answer should be yes, but Ben’s not an idiot, he knows reality is more complicated. Juno buried him, and mourned for him, and maybe even started to heal - and Ben had run. Run without looking back, leaving a death certificate and open wounds behind him.

Is Sarah still alive?

The question stops him cold, staring through the window and the pieces of galaxy he’s passing. If Sarah is alive, he would have to see her, too. That’s a promise he made himself a long time ago - that he wouldn’t choose between them. He was the one who held the family together. He’d always been that.

The Benzaiten in his head, the person he isn’t sure he is yet - anymore - tells him she loves you.

Ben, here and now, tells him she shot you.

Both of those things are true. And when Ben pulls away from the window, he tells himself that’s what he’s afraid of, that someone he loved hurt him and could do it again, that he might let them in the foolish, stupid need to find out if the love was still there somewhere under all of the hurt. To know trying hard enough could mean getting better.

If there’s another fear, if he can feel the gravity of Mars pulling him back and down and heavy, he doesn’t let himself think it. And he’s gotten pretty good at deception, so he might even believe it.

~~~

Ben dances more, when he remembers dancing. Nothing feels as free as the movement, as his total control over it. Not even the stars.

How much of his running was escape, and how much was just running?

~~~

He still calls himself Ben.

He has his reasons. “Benzaiten” is too memorable, and sharing a face and a last name with a sibling seems like a really good way to get that sibling into trouble. There’s a reputation in place already with the name he used. There are days when he doesn’t feel like he fits in Benzaiten’s life. He finds plenty of reasons.

He doesn’t visit. He thinks about it, comes close - as close as a planet and one ticket fare away, once - but Ben can’t bring himself to step foot in Hyperion City. Hyperion belongs to Juno, somehow. He was the one who stayed (I do not intend to run - I will stay and fight), and going home feels like... trespassing. Ben knows Juno wouldn’t say that. It doesn’t stop him from thinking it.

Hyperion City has a newspaper, though, and a subscription service that seems a little optimistic in its range. Maybe not all that optimistic, since Ben regularly takes advantage of it - between jobs, and only on his personal comms. Most of it has nothing to do with him, but he skips and skims through the digitized pages anyway, looking for whatever hints of a life he can find. Juno is a private investigator now, which doesn’t surprise Ben. There’s an engagement announcement and no following marriage announcement, which does.

(Sarah is guilty, and dead, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that. He doesn’t linger on the thought.)

Sometimes, when he feels brave, he imagines what it could be like. So what’s this about a gala at that new art gallery? You know, the one that lasted a whole night before it got blown up?

Juno’s laughter from the other side of the comms connection, maybe a little too young. Uh huh, I heard. The HCPD put it all over the news, along with how they saved the day. Or didn’t you hear that part?

They can say whatever they want, I know a Juno Steel case when I see one. Now, Ben adjusts on the bed, miles and miles away, glancing at the window to see if he can get a peek back the way he came, tell me everything.

Maybe the next time you come to see me, Juno says, and just like that the thought disintegrates. He can never put too many words in Juno’s mouth; there are just too many things he doesn’t know.

Ben gets lucky one day and sees a whole half a picture of Juno, looking out on a crowd. He’s not the focus - he’s standing next to some politician in the middle of a speech, a Ramses O’Flaherty who makes a lot of promises that sound like the “too good to be true, but wouldn’t it be nice” kind - but Ben will take what he can get. He can’t decide if Juno has more or less scars than he would have expected, given his line of work. He wonders how they all got there. Juno is standing on the stage with the politician; he must buy some of those promises to put himself so clearly in the man’s corner.

There’s a kind of worry in his gut about it, but Ben tries to take it as a good sign. The Juno he knew had a hard time trusting people; it would be nice if he’d found someone to believe in. It would be nice if that trust is well-placed.

Ben has to leave his comms behind for a job, taking a burner along instead, so he gets the results of the election at the same time he gets the announcement of O’Flaherty’s death and the conspiracy over Newtown. It doesn’t have to mean anything - just another politician who wasn’t what he seemed to be, or didn’t manage to hang on long enough to make good on his promises. That’s all it is.

He still looks for Juno in the stories he reads. He can’t seem to find him, anymore.

~~~

For the first time since they were nineteen, Benzaiten sees Juno across the room.

For a moment, he feels like he’s seen a ghost. A ridiculous thought, from the dead twin.

Juno Steel is so far away from Hyperion City, talking to Zolotovna in a resplendent dress as if he’s lived the kind of life that makes him belong, immediately and implicitly, among the disgustingly rich. Ben, who is there for a reason, he knows he’s there for a reason but fuck if he can remember why, tries not to make it obvious that he’s staring. He’s failing at that, he knows.

But Juno is here. Juno is here in the room with him, so different than he remembers, with so many more scars. With one less eye. Ben wants to ask when that happened, wants to demand that story, just as much as he wants to fade into the crowd and run.

He feels untethered; he feels like, if he runs, he’ll never find his way back again. Just this once, Ben lets himself understand that the tug of gravity pulling him back was never a leash around his neck as much as it was a rope around his middle - giving him a way back home. Juno had always been his anchor, keeping him from drifting too far.

There’s no going back, now. There’s no going home, no home to go back to.

Juno’s glance turns in his direction, and Ben is about to duck out of the way - an amateur move, guaranteed to catch his sibling’s eye, but he thinks he can be forgiven for being a little bit off his game - when Ben realizes he’s not who Juno is looking for. A man slips by him, tall and confident and familiar in a way that tells Ben exactly why he should be familiar. Juno can’t seem to help the way his face changes when he spots the man.

So the thief grabbed at Juno’s heart and pulled him away from Hyperion. That’s why Juno is here. It’s... infuriating, because there’s no way a common con deserves Juno Steel. Because it was never a thought in Ben’s head that Juno could be convinced to leave Hyperion, and he never thought to ask. (I do not intend to run. Running was Ben’s job.)

Ben is ready to do something stupid. He’s halfway across the ballroom, walking directly towards his brother well and aware that the impact will cause an explosion of a scene, when he sees Juno tilt his head.

There’s a comms in his ear.

Ben has been a thief long enough to recognize the habits of another thief - especially a new one.

He doesn’t remember what he came to this event for, but there’s nothing, mark or prize or job, that Benzaiten wants more than to understand the stranger in the dress who almost has his face. If he breaks something with an impulsive decision, he thinks as he continues to cross the room, well - wouldn’t be the first time.

He’ll let himself be selfish. That’s what Ben does.

#the penumbra podcast #tpp #benzaiten steel #juno steel #junoverse #ben lives au #don’t ask my why i do not know #i was just curious about a Ben who becomes a thief #and it kinda spiraled from there #so i guess the hot takes are:#Ben’s family is a grounding force for him #and Ben also struggles with dealing with his mistakes #GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR VERY COMPLICATED EVENING JUNO

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amaryllisblackthorn · 4 years

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a lot of people have this idea that Annabeth's been like, a Luke apologist and in denial since the very beginning but it's not really true?. Annabeth was angry at Luke for his betrayal in the end of Lightning Thief and during Sea of Monsters. It's only until the end of The Titan's Curse that she starts the 'Luke really isn't that bad' kind of thing.

the end of Lightning Thief:

"I can't believe that Luke..." Annabeth's voice faltered. Her expression turned angry and sad. "Yes. Yes, I can believe it. May the gods curse him...He was never the same after his quest."

"When I get back next summer," she said, "we'll hunt down Luke. We'll ask for a quest, but if we don't get approval, we'll sneak off and do it anyway. Agreed?"

She was really angry at him during Sea of Monsters. Her vision from the Sirens does indicate that deep down she may believe she's able to save him, or at least wants to, but it doesn't diminish the hurt and anger she does feel.

"How could you?" Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she'd explode. "Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonor her--"

"Liar!"

"I understand you want to destroy the camp!" she yelled. "You're a monster!"

"Because you have none of your own [intelligence]!"

"That's disgusting!" Annabeth said.

"You're insane," Annabeth said.

"Go to Tartarus," she said.

All those above are on the Princess Andromeda with Luke. Then later, to Percy:

She shook her head. "We made a dozen safe houses like this. I doubt Luke even remembers where they are. Or cares."

Even in the beginning-ish of Titan's Curse, she doesn't trust him. When he's struggling under the sky and asking for her help, she's hesitant. It's only when the sky begins to fall that she goes to help hold it.

Annabeth had tears in her eyes. She reached down like she wanted to touch Luke's face, but at the last second she hesitated. "What happened?" she asked.

"Why should I trust you?" Annabeth asked. Her voice was filled with hurt.

Then the darkness above Luke began to crumble, like a cavern roof in an earthquake. Huge chunks of black rock began falling. Annabeth rushed in just as a crack appeared, and the whole ceiling dropped. She held it somehow--tons of rock. She kept it from collapsing on her and Luke with her own strength.

However!! There's a shift in her feelings by the time Percy and Thalia rescue her and I personally think it's because she's aware that Luke 'saved' her life for the time being after Atlas ordered him to kill her after Artemis took the sky -- even though he was super complicit in her being in that situation in the first place. Compare:

Luke hesitated. "She--she may yet be useful, sir. Further bait."

and

"We'll bring Luke back," Annabeth pleaded. "To Olympus. He...he'll be useful."

I don't think it's a conscious parallel on Annabeth's part per se, but Rick Riordan using the parallel to indicate the connection. I think that's when Annabeth discovers that Luke does still care deep down, and that deep down the person that she knows is there. which is fair, because before this point he hadn’t given her any indication seeing as he literally directed Oreius to eat her. that’s a whole ‘nother write-up, though, i think. i digress.

Once she knows this, she starts to view him as someone being manipulated and taken advantage of by Kronos, someone who was able to manipulate Ares, a god, in the first book, -- she's not wrong! He is being manipulated. That doesn't absolve him from his horrible behavior especially towards her, but she understands that Luke is a troubled, traumatized young man being taken advantage of by the evil King Titan, and she's also aware that literally no one else cares enough to try to save him.

like, the language Annabeth uses to describe Luke in the end of Titan’s Curse is the same that Percy uses to describe the demigods on the Titans’ side in Last Olympian.

"You don't believe me about Luke," Annabeth said, "but we'll see him again. He's in trouble, Percy. He's under Kronos's spell."

I tried to wound his men, not kill. That slowed me down, but these weren’t monsters. They were demigods who’d fallen under Kronos’s spell. I couldn’t see faces under their battle helmets, but some of them had probably been my friends.

there’s another callback with the language Percy uses to describe the opposing demigods in Last Olympian. this time, to what Percy says to Luke at the end of Lightning Thief.

“He’s brainwashing you, Luke.”

“You’re being used, Luke. You and Ares both. Don’t listen to Kronos.”

This kid was getting brainwashed—trained to hate the gods and lash out because he’d been born half Olympian. Kronos was using him, and yet the kid thought I was his enemy.

Poseidon put his hand on my shoulder. “Percy, there were only a few demigod warriors aboard that ship, and they all chose to battle for Kronos. Perhaps some heeded your warning and escaped. If they did not . . . they chose their path.”

“They were brainwashed!” I said. “Now they’re dead and Kronos is still alive. That’s supposed to make me feel better?

Percy has sympathy for the demigods manipulated by Kronos to be on the Titan’s sides; he sees them as victims. the reason he doesn’t for Luke, I feel, is because Luke’s betrayal made it personal. I think this is where Percy’s fatal flaw comes into play, honestly, with the personal loyalty. both in regards to the personal betrayal to Percy, as well as Percy’s loyalty to Annabeth (and thus Luke’s betrayal of Annabeth, too). and i feel this also applies, to a lesser extent, to Ethan. but that’s a whole ‘nother write-up, too (one day!)

there is, admittedly, the factor of Luke’s age in comparison to Percy, Annabeth, and most of the other campers. there’s definitely a power imbalance -- especially with Annabeth, which isn’t okay, obviously. so even though he’s a victim and young himself, that power imbalance in regards to his actions, manipulations, etc is messed up and not okay.

even so, Luke is still pretty young himself -- not as young as the others, but still young. like, i got into this series when i was younger than Percy and Annabeth were, so Luke, like most early 20 year olds, seemed very old to me in that regard; it’s only as i got older and closer to his are that i started to really realize that heck he was really young. so while Luke is definitely an adult in regards to the relationship he has with Percy, Annabeth, and other younger demigods -- which he should have been mindful of and makes his manipulation etc very messed up and not okay -- he’s also young himself which is something to keep in mind. like, Luke is only around 19-22? in the series. That puts him at a power imbalance in regards to Annabeth and Percy, in which he's very much an adult in the relationship, but outside of that he's still pretty young! he’s a college kid, which when you’re younger seems pretty old but then you are one and realize differently -- his brain hasn't even fully developed yet. but i’m like, seriously digressing.

my intended point was that i disagree with the interpretation that Annabeth was blinded by emotions and a toxic relationship which led her to make excuses for Luke and unable to see him for what he really was etc,-- because Annabeth was angry at him after his betrayal and had even thought he was different, that he didn’t care anymore. The ‘Luke apologist’ behavior only starts at the end of Titan’s Curse, the third book in the five book series. I just feel like her ... feelings? perspective? position? idk the right word.... is often misrepresented?

she becomes very defensive over Luke’s ‘inner goodness’ and stuff because she’s literally the only one who wants to save him and knows it. she knows what he’s done isn’t okay, but she keeps driving it home that he’s being manipulated because he is! it doesn’t excuse his actions but it doesn’t have to. by the end of titan’s curse, annabeth sees luke as someone terribly lost and no one trying, willing, or caring enough to save him. and like, she’s right when she sees luke as someone who isn’t beyond saving, who’s extremely lost and being manipulated through his trauma and anger -- it doesn’t excuse what he’s doing but that doesn’t make him someone not worthy of saving. despite what he’s done, luke is still her family and she will fight for him. she sees luke the same way percy sees the other opposing demigods in the last olympian and she’s right. she’s not making excuses for him, she doesn’t think he’s done nothing wrong, she’s just not willing to give up on him and she was right. as the child in the relationship/dynamic, it wasn’t her responsibility to be the one to save him and shouldn’t have been, but she wasn’t wrong in how she saw Luke.

like, their was definitely a power imbalance in their relationship and it’s definitely important to acknowledge that, but i feel like people tend to like, erase annabeth’s agency, for lack of a better word, and attribute her desire to save Luke as being tragically misplaced? like, Luke has totally wronged Annabeth and mistreated her terribly, but like...I find her not giving up on him mostly admirable and not pitiable, though like I said as the child in their dynamic it wasn’t her responsibility. i’m rambling though.

mostly this post was made to remind people that Annabeth was angry towards Luke, and rightfully so, until near the end of Titan’s Curse, which is where her defending Luke and insisting he could be saved really started, likely with Luke indicating he actually still cared deep down for the first time being the catalyst. especially since it seems a lot of people give like the impression they think she’s done it from the very beginning? idk ive definitely rambled a lot and lost my main point sometime ago or something. enjoy this anyway.

#annabeth chase #pjato #percy jackson and the olympians #luke castellan #ab analyzes #i'm kind of expecting this to be somewhat controversial idk #;the last olympian #;titan's curse #;the lightning thief #;i have at least two other related metas i want to write up so hopefully ill get around to that

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the-gay-prometheus · 3 years

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Frankenstein AU Segment - “Willful Disobedience”

Clervalstein yearning goes brrrrrrr

Anyways- uh... so as I said at the beginning of pride month, my goal for June is to write at least one directly Clervalstein related AU segment each week because gay.

This time around, I was inspired to write about the events that led to how Henry would eventually find Victor and the Creature on the mountain, so in terms of timeline, this takes place before all segments I’ve written except for “Home Again” and “Same Scars, Same Stitches.”

A couple of fun little tidbits about the making of this segment (feel free to skip over them and get right to the segment below the cut, this is just me rambling about some inspiration):

1. The whole bit with Victor drawing and the Creature mimicking him by drawing as well was somewhat inspired by the “Forbidden Friendship” scene from How to Train Your Dragon. I listened to that specific track from the movie score a few times while I was in the process of thinking about this idea!

2. Another bit of musical inspiration actually came from the Chronicles of Narnia, specifically the track “Evacuating London” from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. If you time it just right and you’re somebody who can actively read and listen to music at the same time, it should somewhat line up with the last few paragraphs (excluding Henry’s bit at the end) - starting at where Victor says “I’d give anything-”, then with the little piano part being timed with the paragraph that starts with “It was intricately detailed-”, then the major swell in that half of the song should line up with the paragraph where the Creature begins feeling the need to disobey Victor’s most important rules; then comes the part that begins with a bit of bells and eventually vocalization, and that entire half of the track should align with the Creature carrying out his plan at least most of the way. Of course - all of this depends on your reading speed, but I would definitely recommend listening to the song after reading at least and imagining those parts of the segment along with it if you’re interested in a little peek into my crazy writing process! 😅

Anyways- this is another wholesome segment, so no warnings needed to my knowledge!

As always, all likes, reblogs, and comments of any kind are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated!

~~~

Sunlight warmed the cold stone of the mountain ridge upon which Victor sat. His sleeves were rolled up on his arms, as the heat from the summer sun was felt much more intensely up on the mountain top despite the cool alpine breeze. Heavy clouds capped the peaks beyond though the sky was primarily a clear blue, and mist drifted through the valleys below. Though the view was magnificent, the sketchbook that sat on Victor’s knee contained no trace of the mountains. His eyes darted from the open page to the horizon, but it wasn’t the horizon he was searching for. As he stared over the peaks beyond, it wasn’t the view itself he focussed on, and instead an image that was clear in his mind. With a slight smile at the thought, he turned his gaze back down to the page and continued his sketching. It wasn’t long before the smile faded as the sound of quiet, careful footfalls upon the stone broke the calm silence, and he became aware of a presence directly beside him. He instinctively scooted himself about a half inch away as the other figure slowly sat at his side, his brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate harder on his sketching. “What are you doing?” came the inquisitive voice of his creation, and he felt the looming figure lean over in an attempt to view what he was drawing. With a further frown, Victor covered over his sketch with his other hand and turned away.

“Last I checked, that was none of your business,” he grumbled in reply. The creature tried to get a better look, but Victor’s hand covered over too much of it for him to be able to see. He sat there for a moment longer, his mind wandering and his gaze flitting about from view to view as he tried to decide what it was he should do. Now that the cabin was finally completed, he found himself with a lack of activities to keep him busy, and though his creator was certainly better company now than he had been when he first arrived to the mountain, he still wasn’t much of a conversationalist and was often preoccupied with his own thoughts or projects. Out of ideas, he hummed something softly to himself, some tune he had once heard Victor singing one day many weeks ago. Victor lifted his eyes at the sound and glanced over at him, but the moment the creature returned his gaze, he rolled his eyes and shook his head, turning back to his sketching. Quieting himself at his creator’s reaction, the creature sighed and stood, walking back toward the cabin. Victor almost felt bad - almost - but he kept drawing, now absentmindedly humming the same tune. After a few minutes, he became distracted by the sound of footsteps once again, but this time the creature sat a ways away from him. He went quiet, trying to ignore his creation and keep his focus, but he heard the scratching of another pen on paper, then a pause, then more scratching, and he felt himself being watched. With an exasperated sigh, Victor dropped his pen beside him and looked over to the creature. “What on earth are you doing?” The creature looked up at him, his expression blank.

“Last I checked, that was none of your business,” he answered matter-of-factly. Victor stared at him a moment, then frowned.

“Back talking me? That’s new.” The creature blinked, but didn’t answer, instead turning back down to the piece of paper that lay on his knee and continuing to draw something on it. Now thoroughly curious, Victor stood, walking over to him and standing behind him to look over his shoulder. The creature made no efforts to hide his drawing, and Victor could clearly see the rough beginnings of a person sitting in the exact same pose he had been sitting in. “Are you… drawing me drawing Henry?”

“Ah, so you were drawing someone named Henry.” Victor blushed furiously.

“Oh you sly bastard,” he muttered. The creature glanced up at him. “How clever of you, to get an answer out of me like that.”

“That was not my intention, but I cannot say I am disappointed by the result,” the creature responded simply. Victor sighed, sitting down beside him before flopping dramatically onto his back. Now trying to think based on memory, the creature gazed off into the distance before looking down at his paper and continuing to draw. “May I ask who this Henry person is?” he asked as he drew. “I hear you speak the name often. He must be of great importance to you.” Victor wanted to be angry. He wanted to tell his creation to mind his own business and stop prying into his personal life, and yet… he couldn’t be angry - not while Henry was the topic of the conversation, anyway.

“Henry is… was my…” He paused, carefully thinking about how to choose his words, “closest friend.” There was a length of silence as he felt an ache in his chest from the thought of Henry, and the creature took a moment away from his drawing before returning to it.

“Tell me about him,” he suggested as he sketched. Victor sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, holding his sketch of Henry over his heart as he stared into the sky.

“Where to even begin with him,” Victor uttered quietly.

“Describe him to me.” Victor lifted his sketch up and stared at it, before holding it out to the creature. The creature glanced up, and looked at it with a curious expression. Victor gave him a curt nod, signaling that he was welcome to inspect it closer, so he gently took it from Victor’s hand and inspected it closely.

“He’s tall, but not too tall - just tall enough that I have to look up in order to look into his eyes. And he’s always well dressed - I don’t think there’s ever been a day when he wasn’t looking his best, though I suppose I might be a bit biased on that.” For a moment he wondered just how much further he should go with his description. How could he describe someone like Henry without giving his true feelings away? He hesitated, then sighed with a smile. His creation already knew one of his secrets, and, after all, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere or seeing anyone else, so what harm was there in completely venting his thoughts? “He has the most thoughtful hazel eyes, toffee brown around the edges and streaked with emerald green that deepens toward the pupils, the kind of eyes you could get lost in if you stared for too long.” The creature’s pen went still and he looked up toward the horizon, trying to imagine what Victor was describing. “And his hair is long - not quite so long as yours, but ends just past his shoulders - and lays in tangled waves always kept tied back, though a few strands never fail to set themselves free. When the sun hits it just right, I could swear it was made of fire,” Victor breathed as he pictured it in his mind. “It’s the kind of brilliant auburn that takes your breath away, that seems to gleam with its own radiant light. Sometimes I swear he’s more angel than man, and perhaps if angels do exist, he may well be one of them.” The creature smiled, but the smile soon faded as his mind drifted to Paradise Lost and further to his past. He blinked the thought away, then turned his eyes back down to his art, setting Victor’s drawing of Henry down at his side. “He’s covered with what must be thousands of freckles, mostly concentrated on his cheeks but they expand over his face and at the very least his arms, chest, and back. I would liken them to… dark stars against a bright sky,” Victor explained. He raised an arm up and began tracing lines in the air as he continued. “I used to try to find constellations among them, and sometimes I thought I nearly could. Orion, Andromeda, Lepus, Lynx, Pegasus, Phoenix, Vulpecula,” he muttered each constellation as he imagined himself tracing the lines between freckles on Henry’s skin, his chocolate brown eyes seeming to light up with wonder as he grew to be lost in his own imagination.

“He barely sounds real,” the creature interjected nonchalantly, hardly looking up from his drawing as he began to focus closer on it. Victor grinned and chuckled softly.

“I tell myself that every day,” he murmured with a hint of sarcasm. “Surely no man could ever be so perfect, and yet there he is-” He paused, reaching higher toward the sky and extending his fingers to feel the breeze between them, “as real as you and I.” His hand dropped back down to his chest as he heaved a sigh. “There’s no man on earth as generous or as compassionate as my-” He stopped himself, blushing hard as he realized what it was he was about to say. “As Henry, I mean. Just… just Henry.” The scratching of the creature’s pen stopped again, and Victor glanced over at him to see him staring ahead in clear contemplation of the implications of his words before returning to his art. “You know,” Victor began, returning his eyes to the sky. “I can just about guarantee that if it were Henry who made you instead of me, you would have turned out ok.” The weight of his words hadn’t set in before he said them, but now that they were out, they sat heavy on his chest like lead. It took him a moment, but he sucked in a ragged breath and exhaled unsteadily. “If it were him instead of me, William would still be alive.” At those words, the creature froze, as rather than a weight to him they felt like a dagger slowly piercing between his ribs and etching each letter directly onto his beating heart. “And to think… Even if it wasn’t him who made you, if it were him who found you here, perhaps your night terrors would have all but ceased by now. And maybe, by his grace, you would be at peace.” They sat in contemplative silence, both somehow altogether calmed and unnerved in each other's presence. “I’d give just about anything for him to be here,” Victor mentioned, breaking the silence and lifting himself up onto his hands. “And I know all it would take is one letter. He’d drop everything to come here. But that’s… that’s just it. That’s the problem.” He sighed, fully sitting upright. The creature glanced over at him. “I can’t let him just… ruin the rest of his life for me. I don’t know how I could live with myself knowing that I held him back because of my own mistakes.” His eyes dropped to his other side. “And yet… I barely know how I can live with myself without him here.” It was at that moment that he felt something being laid gently on his lap, and when he looked down, he saw the drawing the creature had been working on.

It was intricately detailed, each line placed carefully onto the page with such precision. Though it was only simple line art, Victor could clearly see the image of himself sketching from earlier on the page, but standing in front of him was another figure - Henry. He was exactly as Victor described him, tall and well dressed, with long hair tied back and a few strands that drifted over his face. Though there was no color, his eyes seemed just as gentle and full of wonder as Victor remembered them to be as he stared off to some distant land. His face was covered in tiny dots, freckles, each so meticulously pricked on that Victor could clearly trace some of the constellations he described between them. Tears welled in his eyes as he placed his fingers gently on the drawn image, running them gently down the drawing’s cheek, wishing instead of cool paper that it was the soft, warm touch of Henry’s face. “Did I do him justice?” the creature inquired quietly, trying to read his teary expression. Victor sniffled and smiled.

“You… you’re quite the artist,” he managed to answer. Gingerly, he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, slowly rising to his feet. “I’ll… I’ll be back later. I need to take a walk and… clear my head,” Victor mentioned, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “Will you be ok on your own?” The creature didn’t answer for a moment, his yellow eyes staring into the distance as he thought deeply, but soon he snapped his attention back to the present.

“Yes, of course. Take your time, Victor.” Victor sighed and nodded.

“I’ll try not to be too late to return.” His creation watched as he wandered off and eventually disappeared into the trees, before returning to his thoughts. It was strange - in all the months that he had been there, the creature had never once considered disobeying Victor, especially out of the fear that he might abandon him again. Suddenly, however, he felt the strong need to disobey each and every one of Victor’s most important rules. He hated to see his creator so struck with longing, but even more so, he considered the positive ramifications of what his carefully formulated plan might bring. Sure, Victor might be initially upset, but with how much he desperately wanted this Henry person to be there with him, surely it would be well worth it in the end.

The first part of his plan was simple. He would need to break Victor’s trust, and search through his personal belongings. He made his way back to the cabin and slipped into Victor’s room to find a mess of folded papers lying on the bed stand - each paper being a letter he had received from a Henry Clerval. Though all he was searching for was an address, the creature couldn’t help himself and decided to read through some of the letters. As he did, he became even more certain about his decision. Not only was this man exactly as Victor had described, but the connection between them was clearly something so strong that it should have been unbreakable. To his luck as well, the creature managed to find amongst the scattered papers a letter Victor had intended to send as a reply to Henry but never had the chance to send, dated from a time before his creation.

The second part of his plan would be the most time consuming, but also the most critical, and this unsent letter would prove to be the perfect resource. Retrieving his pen and a small stack of paper Victor had stashed away, he began crafting a letter of his own. With as much precision as he could muster, he forged Victor’s handwriting and did his best to copy his style and choice of language. A few hours were spent on this, most of that time spent on crafting one single sentence until he was sure it was perfect before finally continuing on with the rest of the letter. After he completed it, he spent a few more minutes checking it once, then once more to ensure it was in fact as accurate as he could make it, before then spending a little more time practicing forging Victor’s signature and finally signing the note in his creator’s name.

Finally came the most dangerous part. With only his own memory of his travels from Ingolstadt to guide him, he would need to find and deliver the letter to someone who would be able to ensure that it reached Henry safely. Of all Victor’s rules, perhaps his greatest was that the creature was to never descend the mountain, and above all, was never to enter civilization or interact with any other human beings. Each of these would need to be broken in order for his plan to succeed. For a moment, he hesitated. Would Victor become so cross with him over this that he would abandon him once again? Where would he go if he did? What would he do? Who could he turn to? Still, it cut him sharp to think that he might be squandering this small chance to bring his creator some joy after all his sorrow if he were to abandon his plan now. His mind was made - no matter what the outcome would be, he was going to ensure this letter was delivered, and hope that Henry would arrive some day soon just as Victor said he would.

He would need to be swift in order to ensure that Victor would never know he had even left, so he quickly yet cautiously put each letter back in its rightful scattered place as though they had never been touched, and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. With a deep, shaky breath, he could feel a new sensation pulsing through him - a rush of adrenaline that raised his heart rate and widened his yellow eyes. Letter clutched tightly in hand, exited the cabin and broke into a sprint. Down the mountain he ran with superhuman speed, leaping over logs and boulders as though they were mere hurdles. Though he should have balked at sheer cliff faces, instead he lept from them and skid down their sides, ignoring the sharp pain of the rock scraping at the soles of his feet and the palm of his empty hand. Letting his intuition guide him, he continued his swift journey to Geneva. Though the place held painful, dreadful memories for him, the surge of adrenaline that coursed through him overrode the thoughts, and he raced toward the location of the address. Slowing to a walk, his chest heaved and ached from exertion, but he slowed his breathing as he came upon a fence that outlined one of many pastures that outskirted a large house on a hill beyond. In one pasture, he could just barely see a figure on horseback, cantering through a field with his wavy, tied hair flickering ember orange in the sunlight behind him.

“Can I help you, sir?” came a sudden voice from beside him. He jumped at the sound, instinctively hiding his face in the hood of his cloak.

“I- ...yes. Yes, I believe you can,” he stammered in reply. The stranger, a servant from the Clerval household, gave him a curious look as he held out the letter. “This is a letter for a man named Henry Clerval. I am of the impression that this is his residence?” The servant smiled as he took the letter.

“Ordinarily I would have sent you in the direction of Ingolstadt in Germany, but as luck would have it, master Henry returned home just yesterday.” He inspected the folded letter curiously. “May I ask your name?” The creature froze, gripping his cloak tighter around himself.

“I am but a simple deliverer of this message, kind sir. My name need not be of any concern. As for the letter, I am under the impression that he will understand who it is from once he has received it.” The servant nodded.

“I understand. Thank you - I will see that it’s delivered to him promptly.” With that, the man turned and started off toward where the man on horseback was riding, glancing back at the creature in confusion for a moment before continuing with a brisk pace to the one he would be delivering the letter to. The creature waited a moment longer to watch for the rider’s reaction, smiled, knowing he had made the right decision, and began his sprint back toward home.

“Master Henry? Sir?” the servant called in the pasture, letter held carefully in his hand. Henry’s hazel eyes lifted as he turned his head and gently pulled back on the reins of his mount. The mare he rode slowed to a trot, then to a walk as Henry carefully turned her in the direction of the servant.

“Yes, Marc? What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, sir,” Marc replied. As Henry slowed his steed to a stop at his side, he looked down curiously at the other man, who held the letter out to him. “This arrived for you just now from an unknown deliverer. He said you would know who it was from when you read it.” Now thoroughly intrigued, Henry took the letter and opened it. His eyes widened as he beheld the handwriting, and slowly his other hand lifted to his mouth as his jaw dropped while he read. “Is there something wrong, sir?” Tears welled in Henry’s eyes, dripping down onto his freckled cheeks as he looked up from the letter, his expression of shock turning to a tearfully happy smile.

“No, Marc, everything is much better than I had anticipated.” Marc gave him a confused glance. “Will you help me ready a supply pack and ride with me? I will need to be leaving at once.”

“Of course, sir,” Marc replied with a curt nod. “May I ask where it is we are headed?”

“The base of Mount Montanvert.” Henry turned his mount, his eyes resting on the distant mountains. “Be prepared to bring the horses back here for me once we arrive there. I might not be returning for quite some time.”

#frankenstein au #frankenpride #clervalstein #head empty clervenstein thoughts #clervenstein my beloved #also back at it again with not proof reading before posting lmao so hopefully this is good

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drabsyo · 3 years

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Is there a difference between Catra and Bellatrix/Pansy?

I've never thought about it before but I would have to say, yes. I'm not certain about Pansy, but with Bellatrix there are definitely some parallels there.

🔴 They were both left by someone they cared about, and they labelled that person a "traitor", Andromeda for Bellatrix, and Adora for Catra. And that betrayal impacted their lives so harshly, to the point where they were consumed by pure hatred, and they had obsessed over it, cradled it, held on to it.

🔴They're both ruthless, and dedicated to their cause; Bella's loyalty to Voldemort, Catra's loyalty to the Horde (at least before she was redeemed). The way they think is pretty similar too, in almost any situation it was always "how can I benefit from this at the end?" instead of "is this the right or wrong thing to do?", and they work their way through that, cunningly, almost easily I'd say. Catra even manages to use that cunningness to save Glimmer in the end, which is this whole

🔴 Pansy, Bella, and Catra were also fed false propaganda at a young age, an extremist view, manipulated by individuals in seats of power. Pansy and Bella thought lesser of muggleborns, Catra hated Princess (with the exception of Scorpia, but we'll discuss that further on).

The parallels are there. There are quite a lot, now that I think about it... I'm sure there are more, these are just the ones I can think of at the top of my head. It has been a while since I last saw She-Ra, and to be honest, I don't think we actually have enough canon material for a more in-depth analysis for either of Bella or Pansy's characters but we work with what we've got.

🟢 The difference I would say is, although I'm not claiming to know Catra's psyche or character better than anyone, Catra's loyalties. Catra held this long standing grudge against Adora. (Sure, Bella held that same grudge against Andromeda and towards every other witch/wizard that went traitor every other Wednesday and, granted, we can also argue that Bella attempted to protect Andromeda by crossing her out of the tapestry. And we do see Catra trying to protect Adora at times, and getting punished for it too, much like how Bella took the brunt of the consequences of Andromeda's "betrayal"--Bella getting married off to Letrange, all that.) But Catra's hatred towards Princesses was triggered after Adora left. She was content before Adora left, she didn't show any signs that she hated any of the Princesses. Catra felt content because Adora was there, and the rest of the world didn't matter. It was more of: "Forget about them! Forget about Hordak, forget about Shadow Weaver! Some day, all of this is going to be ours, Adora!" (not a direct quote from Catra)

But then Adora left. Adora left the Horde, she didn't leave Catra. But Catra took it personally. Yes, it's the same with Bella too. Andromeda left, but she didn't leave because she wanted to get away from Narcissa or Bella. She left because, like Adora, she found something else to fight for. And that involved the complete opposite of what their, Adora and Andromeda's, initial "people" believed in.

Scorpia is a Princess, Catra knows that. She doesn't hate Scorpia for it, she considers her as an ally because Scorpia chose to be on her side, their side. The divide between "them" and "us" is now clearer to her ever since Adora left her for "them". It was more about "Which side are you on?", rather than the whole pureblood politics/propaganda that was basically "Oh we're an exclusive club and you're not invited, and since you're not invited, you SUCK". (I know that's such a dumb way of phrasing that but it's 3 am and my mind is too sleep addled to come up with a more graceful way of putting it and I'm fairly certain that's not all it's about in the first place.) It still overlaps, yes, we can argue that Bella's hatred for muggles was probably even more amplified after Andromeda left her for "them", but Bella has always been loyal to Voldemort. Catra wasn't loyal to Shadow Weaver or Hordak. She even betrayed Hordak, lied to him, and overpowered him in the end. Sometimes she even thinks that she knows better than him. She didn't hold any love for Shadow Weaver either. She didn't believe in any cause solely because of Hordak or Shadow Weaver. Her loyalties, I think, were mostly to herself--to make sure she succeeded. Sure, Catra felt like she had something to prove and there was satisfaction in being able to fulfill that, much like Bella, who did that by being the only woman to take the Dark Mark (I think), but Catra outgrew that desire to prove herself to people like Shadow Weaver, people like Hordak. She wanted that same goal she told Adora in the first episode, except now it's "Forget about them! Forget about Hordak, forget about Shadow Weaver! Forget... about Adora. All of this is going to be mine someday." But she never forgot about Adora. I can probably keep this argument going but-- I am sleepy ;-;

AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE know that I am NO WAY an expert, and I'm just spit balling here, I'm probably wrong, feel free to tell me if I am, or if you have a better argument/discussion, and if you wish, we can keep the discussion going. Because this is really interesting! I've never considered it before, but now that it's been mentioned, I can't stop thinking about it lmao. Though honestly, I've been pacing my room for the past few hours, debating myself over this and yes, you are right, I am an awful debater. In any case, I do hope my garbled thoughts gave a bit of insight, anon. Though I highly doubt it... Still! Thanks for this ask :))

#anon #ask #pls i'm so sorry i ramble a lot #but i hope you are having a nice day anon and this ask has been BRAIN JUICE #so thank you for this ask <3 #it's 3 am and i'm still here i need to lie down #who would have thought i'd be here thinking about parallels between harry potter and she-ra princess of power #*sobbing* let's get this bread #*sobbing intensifies*

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willowbleedsonpaper · 4 years

Text

Ghost Of You (Part 4)

Draco Malfoy x Muggle!Reader

W.C. : 3600

Summary: The war with Voldemort was over. Draco Malfoy was forced to flee for his life ending up in Muggle London where he met you, the muggle whose house he broke in looking for a place to hide. You agreed to let him hide in your house if he promised to let you live your life normally. How will your relationship work as time passes and you both realize you’re no longer just partners in crime?

A/N: Hello! I am having such a great time writing this that I could update it daily, sadly I won’t be able to post tomorrow. So wait for an update on Monday maybe Tuesday. I try to be active since I enjoy writing so much but sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway, I needed inspiration for a character and if you scroll thorugh my blog you’ll see that I am a huge fan of Supernatural, so one of the characters was my inspiration for this new character, not in personality but in appearence.

THIS IS NOT A CROSSOVER!

So, yeah. Tell me what you think so far! Every comment, like and reblog is deeply appreciated. Shoot me an ask or something if you would like to be tagged. Enjoy and happy reading!

Warnings: Mentions of a curse.

*Not my GIFs. Credits to the Creators*

You had stayed that night awake until really late, chatting about everything and anything. He was good company and you quickly realized he wasn’t only good looking but on top of that he was really clever and knew a little about a lot of things. You enjoyed the sound of his voice, softly telling you about things he had done and places he had visited.

Sadly, sleep started to take over you, a yawn escaping from you almost every minute. He suggested you both went to sleep, seeing as you weren’t going to work for the next week on your boss’s orders. Something about you never getting sick so it should be something serious, if only she knew the only sickness you had wasn’t a sickness at all but Draco Malfoy himself.

You really wanted to be mad at him for making you miss work, but he was such an enjoyable company when you weren’t getting on his nerves and he wasn't in his moody self, you almost didn’t want to admit that him staying at your house with you had been a wonderful choice. You couldn’t, it was wrong. It was a bad choice and you had to live now with it, learn from it.

Or that’s what you told yourself when you enjoyed a little too much his mere presence

Draco walked you to your room, your sleepy self tripping in every step, giggling at every almost fall if it wasn’t for him who held you from your arm “You look more drunk than tired.” he said confused, leading you to your bed. “Are you sure you weren’t drinking?” he asked.

You had nuzzled in your bed, not even changing from your clothes that were comfortable enough to sleep in “I’m sure” you mumbled, eyes already close. Draco had walked to the door, about to close it when he heard you softly sigh “Night, Draco.”

He smiled softly, mostly to himself “Goodnight, Y/N.” he mumbled closing the door behind him. He wasn’t tired, barely sleeping at night he decided to go for a walk. He didn’t knew the neighborhood well, but surely he wouldn’t get lost from walking a few blocks down and then back, so he grabbed a sweater and made his way outside.

The air was cold against his face, the trees dancing with the little force of it. He could see himself living in a place like this, quiet and peaceful. Maybe there was a place like that back at the Wizarding World, a place he could call home again. The Manor didn’t feel like it anymore, no matter what he did to forget everything that went down there, the images were burned in his brain. He would only consider to return for his parents but they sended him away, the last time he ever saw any of them four years ago.

They were better off without him.

He kept walking, not noticing when he made a turn towards the woods until the lights of the houses were just tiny dots in the distance. At least he knew which way to go, so he kept on walking further into the forest. The weight of his body making the fallen leaves crunch under his feet, not caring for keeping quiet he carried on without a care in the world.

“What do we have here?” a silky voice said from behind him, making him stop dead in his tracks “It’s Draco Malfoy in the flesh” she said with soft chuckle.

Draco hadn’t moved an inch, sliding his wand out of his sleeve “Aunt Andromeda.” he said quickly turning in his place, shooting a spell her way with the swift movement of his wrist, spell she effortlessly deflected moving her wand across her body, creating a shield. Draco straighten his posture, lowering his wand slightly “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he said, a look of displeasure in his face.

She lowered her wand completely, moving her coat tighter against her body “I see you take more after your father,” she said, eyeing him from head to toe “Both physically and in character.”

“Don’t mention my parents” he growled, the grip around his wand turning his knuckle whiter than they already were “You chose your muggle-born husband over your family. You don’t get the right to mutter their names.”

She scoffed humorlessly, giving him a condescending look from where she stood “You are one to talk” she said, crossing her arms over her chest “Or are you going to deny that you’ve been hiding at a muggle’s house for three days now?”

His stance flickered, the statement hitting him like a ton of bricks. What was he doing? His mouth opened slightly but he was at a loss of words.

Andromeda nodded in satisfaction “That’s what I thought.” she muttered “Draco, I’m not here to judge you, I would never” she said, almost caringly “But you need to leave, you’re putting that girl in danger and they will find you. They’re close, they know you’re hiding in muggle London and it’s only matter of time before they get here” she warned, placing a hand over his forcing him to lower his wand.

“How would you know that?” he asked coldly, stepping back from her “You know nothing!” he spat, turning away from her and storming away.

“Your mother sended me” she said, successfully making him stop “Have you spoken with her lately?”

Draco turned to her, wide eyes and a shocked expression looking back at her warm brown eyes. He shook his head, a pit forming in his stomach “They still go to the Manor?” he asked shakily.

“There is only one way she could’ve have known where they’re looking for you.” she answered sadly “They can’t move against Potter, but they can get some kind of revenge in killing you” she said, a gulp forming in his throat.

He stared at her, his eyes void of any emotion “What should I do then?” he asked bitterly “They’ll stop at nothing and the ministry seems more worried about anything but the former followers of Voldemort” he muttered, regretting instantly saying his name. It still felt like he would appear at every turn he made.

Her face hardened and he saw a flash of his mother in her, the stern look she would give her when he stepped out of line “You have options, but none that you would like” she explained “Leave, not just London, the continent. Go to America, I’m sure you can make a good life there for yourself”

“Or?” he asked, showing no interest in leaving.

“You have to kill them” she simply said, and right there Draco saw the Black in her, the Slytherin that would do anything to get what she wanted, except this wasn’t about her.

He rolled his eyes, turning with a defeated sigh “How is that useful? I’ll end up in Azkaban for that!” he yelled, running a hand down his face.

“Only if you get caught.” she said, and he snapped his face at her “I know what has been of your life so far, Draco. You deserve to live happy and free.”

He let out a scoff “How is that gonna make me happy or free?” he asked her, really wanting to know her answer “How do I kill a monster without becoming one?”

“That is the price, Draco” she explained, grabbing him by the shoulders and guiding him to where they could see the lights of the city again, her hand pointing to one specific house. Yours. “Your happiness and freedom lay just in front of you.”

He frowned, his eyes never leaving the green square that contained your house “What about it?” he asked, earning a sigh from her. He turned his face to her “That is temporary, I needed to hide. I'm sure you know how it is to run from Death Eaters.” her face fell sadly, but she said nothing about it.

“You seem fine now.” she stated, examining his body with a careful look “Why haven’t you left?”

He didn’t know, or if he knew he refused to say anything “I’m still hiding. I needed some rest and she agreed to let me stay. That’s all”

“Lovely girl, I’m sure. A teacher, isn’t she?” she grinned at Draco’s dumbfounded expression “You’re not doing a great job hiding, took me less than a day to find you and I’m not as experienced as a Death Eater, how long until they track you down to her house? To her?” her voice had turned stern, a pleading look in her eyes “Come with me, Draco. I can help you, you won’t have to hide anymore.”

“What?” he whispered. The chance to stop running, finally settle down somewhere and be free to some extent was within his reach, and yet it felt like a lie.

“A safe house,” she said, cupping his hands in hers “I moved there after the war, no one knows where it is. You’ll be safe”

He looked down to their hands, the warmth radiating from her so welcoming he felt tempted to accept right there and then. But his mind wandered back to you, only three days had he known you and he felt closer to you that he ever did to all his so called friends at Hogwarts. Yes, Pansy and Blaise had been there for the fun but only that, not really caring about deep talks like the one he had with you; other like Crabbe and Goyle followed him thoughtlessly and agreed to his every word it got boring pretty quickly. You had showed interest in him as a person and he liked the feeling of that, he wanted to get more of that. Whether you did out of precaution or genuine interest he had yet to decided, he wanted to have a chance at being your friend.

And Andromeda noticed his hesitance, following his line of vision to your house “Take time to think about it,” she let go of him, pulling her wand once more and producing a piece of paper, writing neatly on it “Write to me here when you made up your mind.” she folded the paper and gave it to him “But remember you have more than yourself to think about, you pulled that girl into all of this when you agreed to hide in her home.”

He saved the note in his pants pocket, nodding at her “Thank you.” he said lowly, not looking back at her.

“I’ll see you here if you decided to come with us”

“Us?”

She smiled softly “My grandson, Teddy. I took him in after the war” her smile turned sad and Draco remembered the fact that Nymphadora Tonks and Professor Lupin had been married shortly before they died in the battle of Hogwarts. Teddy, as she called him, the only tangible proof of their love. “I hope to hear from you Draco. Your mother loves you and so does your father, they asked me to tell you that” and with that she vanished from his sight.

*******************************************************************************************

The soft smell of coffee woke Draco the next morning, his eyes adapting to the dark room as he focused on the window, dark clouds filling the sky and threatening with a heavy rain later in the day. He rubbed the sleep off his eyes, making his way to the bathroom in the hallway he was surprised to hear you from upstairs, softly humming away in the living room. If he leaned himself a little over the railing he could make up your form sitting in the couch with a blanket over your legs and one of your most colorful mugs in hand. The steam carrying the smell that had woken him up.

He made quick work in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and face, changing his clothes for a fresh pair of pants and shirt, pulling a sweater on to match the weather outside. His steps going down the satir caught your attention, making you turn with a chuckle.

“Morning,” you grinned “I thought I was the one tired last night, you slept throughout the entire morning.”

He was surprised by your statement, checking the clock himself to see that in fact it was almost noon. “I must’ve been really tired” he mumbled, going to the couch across from you “What are you doing?” he asked, seeing all the the sheets of paper spread in front of you, dark stains from your coffee decorating the corners of a few, some more older looking than others.

“Well, I thought since I’m not going to work I could make some activities for the class and drop them tomorrow to Sally” you explained, showing him a few you had already finished. “I was going today but the rain flooded the streets near the school and they cancelled classes for the day.”

He hummed, reading over your handwriting “You really love your job,” he said, missing the smile that flashed over your face “I’ve seen few professors so dedicated at their work like you are.”

“Thank you” you said shyly, moving the papers out of the coffee table. “You must be hungry, since you hibernated last night like a bear.” you joked, signaling him to follow you with your hand “There’s coffee, of course. Toast, some fruit and eggs” you said, listing the options as your turned with your hands in your hips, a smile in face “What do you want?”

He frowned, moving his head to look suspiciously behind you “You don’t have to feed me” he said and you laughed.

“And let you starve to death? Not on my watch, buddy,” you said, moving to the stove “Besides everything is already done, I just need to heat it up.”

He sighed, already knowing it was a lost fight for him “Coffee and toast is fine.”

You saw him as he went to sit in his usual spot, the chair on one of the extremes next to the door. The rain was falling softly against the multiple windows in the kitchen creating a closed ambience in the room. He rested his arms on the table, holding his head with a soft sigh “You tired?”

“Hmm?” he hummed, opening his eyes to look at you. Realizing you had said something he sat a little more casually “What?”

You smiled down at him, placing a plate with toast and a cup of coffee in front of him “You should eat breakfast and go back to sleep.” you told him, filling your own mug again “You look exhausted.”

He said thank you to you, starting to eat with a shake of his head “I’m fine.” he told you, getting another bite.

“Yeah, right.” you scoffed, getting a glare from him “You were falling asleep on the table not a second ago, you need to rest. How do you intend to out run the bad guys if you can barely keep your eyes open?” you asked him, cocking your eyebrow in his way.

He gave you a sour look, putting his mug down slowly “How do you know I am not the bad guy?” he asked you, and the smile that had been in your face was replaced by a thin line “How do you know I am a wanted man for the horrible things I’ve done?”

You looked at him sadly, your hand going to rest on top of his capturing his attention immediately. Wide grey eyes staring right into yours “You’re not a bad person, Draco.”

“You don’t know me.” he fought back, a void look in his face.

“Maybe, but you could have hurt me when I got home the night I met you and you didn’t, I was scared of you and what you could do to me or the people around me and you took the time change that” you said, his eyes shone listening at your words as he bit his lower lip, attempting to stop the faint shake of his lip.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” he muttered, moving his hand from yours “You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew.”

You tilted your head, searching his eyes but failing. You smiled sadly, standing from the table “That’s alright,” you said, a little more cheerfully “I’ll believe your a good person no matter what you tell me.”

You walked out of the kitchen, leaving him to his own thoughts. You did wonder what he had done to think he was a bad person. Sure he was a menacing guy, his dead face and cold voice gave you the chills just by looking at him. He definitely was a person you would avoid at all cost if you came across him on the street. You didn’t have a choice when you two met but right now you didn’t regret helping him. Maybe you were still a little hesitant of him, but you regretted nothing.

*******************************************************************************************

The night arrived and you wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, you were ready to slide into your comfortable bed and just close your eyes.

Of course, fate wasn’t on your side.

You started cleaning up your space, the work for your students ready to be delivered to Sally the next day. You couldn’t help but feel proud of you for all the work you did that day, the next morning doing nothing but relax.

Your train of thought was interrupted by Draco calling your name. You turned to him , the crestfallen look in his face making your stomach turn inside you “Draco? What is it, what’s wrong?” you asked, dropping all the thing in your hands and walking to him and that’s when you saw it. The bag in his hand.

He was leaving.

You should have felt relieved, the strange man that broke into your house and somehow forced you to do his willing was leaving! Then why did you feel like you were losing someone, like saying goodbye to a friend? Maybe because that’s what he was. Draco was your friend.

“I-uh, I’m leaving now.” he said lowly, scratching the back of his head “And old friend contacted me, said they can help me.”

You smiled, fakely, but smiled “Right” you said “I thought no one was waiting for you.” you tried to joke, the words coming out more bitter than funny.

Panic flashed across his eyes “They’re not!” he said, maybe too quickly “It’s complicated.” he mumbled in defeat.

“Complicated as It’s a long story or I asked you not to tell me certain things about you?” you asked, a little more cheerful than before.

He smiled, a breathy laugh coming out of him “Things you asked me not to tell you” he said and you nodded, starting to regret that decision.

You stayed silent, neither one of you knowing what to say. Draco seemed to be appreciating every little detail in your living room as you moved your feet, your shoelaces being the most interesting thing at the moment.

You lifted your eyes, seeing him looking back at you and you felt heat rise up your cheeks. Why did he had that effect on you? You didn’t know. “I guess this is goodbye then.” you said and pursed his lips nodding.

“It is” he told you “I...I wanted to apologize” he said, and you frown, his apology taking you by surprise.

“What for?” you asked.

“Everything?” he told you with a shrug “Breaking into your house, threatening you, cursing you…”

“Cursing me? you asked, taking a few steps back at his statement. “What do you mean you cursed me?”

He stared wide eyed at you suddenly really nervous as his heart beated hard in his chest “It’s… it’s not what it seems like.” he tried to assure you, but your mind went back to the first time you ever saw him, a panicked state.

“What. do you mean. you cursed me?” you growled, a new found sense of anger raising inside you. You were about to start yelling at him, ready to get all the dirty little details out of him when a knock came from the door. You snapped your head towards the door, your eyes hard as you debated if it was worth opening the door at all.

“Y/N…” Draco said with a string of voice, reaching his arm towards you when you snatched your body away from him, a scowl looking back at him.

“Don’t” you hissed, walking towards the door. Better to get this out of the way, whoever was at the door would hear you turn into a hurricane if you decided not to open. “Stay there, Draco Malfoy. I’m not done with you” you told him, pointing a finger at him in emphasis.

Draco started to panic, no one visited you. Ever. Whoever was at the door probably looking for him. He had to stop you. “Y/N, don’t…” but you had already burst the door open.

“Yes?!” you snapped, not even looking at who it was. Your body completely frozen at the person in front of you “Jack?” you stuttered.

He smiled at you, giving you a shy smile “Hi” he mumbled, taking a short step forward “Y/N, I… Who is that?” his eyes hardened, falling on the blond man behind you. You turned to Draco, who had a glare on his eyes as he held his head high.

He took a quick glance at you in your shocked state and realization dawned on him “Harry Enfield” he muttered sharply, walking to your side. “You are?” he asked, eyeing him from head to toe, taking a protective stance beside.

You turned to Draco, swallowing the lump in your throat “Harry, this Jack,” you said looking back at him “My ex-boyfriend.”

TAGS: @fanficflaneuse @accio-rogers @gloriousrebelrunaway @slytherinprincess03 @coldlilheart @aasthapiplani @nebulablakemurphy @strawberriesonsummer @l1teralegend

#Draco Malfoy #draco x reader #draco malfoy fanfiction #draco x ravenclaw!reader #draco malfoy x reader #draco lucius malfoy #draco x muggle!reader #draco malfoy x muggle!reader #muggle!reader #hp fanfic #hp fanfiction #andromeda tonks

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sirloozelite · 3 years

Text

A Review of SWTOR

So, not too long ago, a pair of friends (frenemies more like) of mine were playing SWTOR... and suffice to say they would not shut up about it. I’d always been aware of the game in the back of my mind, but it had never really appealed to me. MMO’s don’t really, as I would always be worried about random players sticking their nose in whilst I was trying to keep to myself.

Still, my friends would not shut up about it, and they kept recommending it to me, despite my internal aversion to it. Now, considering that they had both foolishly taken my advice on games to play in the past, I decided to return the favour and give SWTOR a chance.

And boy was I glad I did. Is SWTOR a good game? Yes... and no... and yes. It’s not perfect, it’s got problems, but it’s still a lot of fun, and I’m glad I’ve done at least one playthrough of the game.

Upon loading up I of course had to choose what storyline I wanted to follow. Since both of my buddies had gone Jedi Knight, (though I’d argue that a certain someone made their Jedi about as deplorable as Anakin) I decided to be the awkward one and went Sith Inquisitor instead, and honestly... I think I chose perfectly!

Oh and... for those interested... here is my Inquisitor:

His name is the Sixteenth Brother! What’s his backstory? Well... that depends on who you ask! Some say he’s the 16th sibling of a Zabrak family... others say he chose the name to hide his true one. Some even say he’s a time traveller from a distant future sent back in time after accidentally finding a Sith relic in his time. Whatever the truth is matters little. All that matters is that he was great fun to play as.

Oh and for the record, this review is based on a Free To Play experience and completion of the class storyline only. I’ve not touched the expansions yet, but intend to at some point. Any criticisms I have that are solved by subscribing are a moot point. Furthermore, it goes without saying but all of the below is my own opinions of the game. Doesn’t make them right or wrong.

The Good

There are many good things about SWTOR, almost too many to name. That said, there are some things I’d like to highlight.

The Story

The first and foremost best thing about the game is of course, the story. Being a Bioware written game created at the same time as the Mass Effect trilogy, I expected a good story... and I was not disappointed by the tale of the Sith Inquisitor. It was the standard tale of a protagonist coming from lowly origins, in this case a slave, and advancing up the ladder of society. Nothing too revolutionary, but add in the Sith and the Empire and it was made all the more better. Frequently, poor 16th Bro would get hounded for being an alien, and each and every time he’d beat the odds, and then usually show mercy to those who had insulted him. (I played him mostly light side... though there were a few times I surrendered to the dark and zapped people)

The world building within the story was also top notch. Plenty of detail is hidden away in the codex, much like Mass Effect, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t stuff in the actual gameplay and story as well. I’d never really been a legends fan, and whilst I’m still not, I do see why a lot of people love these sorts of stories. I was invested, and that’s what mattered.

Outside of the Sith Inquisitor, the very fact that there are seven other unique storylines and classes to play, as well as heavy character customization and role play more than make the game worthy of revisiting. There is a little bit of something for everyone it seems.

The Characters

Another great strength of Bioware games is usually it’s characters, especially the protagonists companions. I can happily report that, at least for the Sith Inquisitor, the vast majority of the characters in the story were great.

The three standout characters outside of the Inquisitor to me were Khem Val, Ashara Zavros and Talos Drellik.

That’s not to say that Andronikos, Xalek, Zash and Thanaton weren’t good characters either, I just didn’t enjoy them as much as Khem, Ashara and Talos.

Each character felt like they had their own arc. Khem Val growing to accept you as a Master and true successor to Tulak Hord was great, even if he and 16th Bro were constantly disagreeing about 16th’s methods. Despite his dislike of the decisions, I still sided with him when the time came to choose who got to control his body for good.

Ashara going from “I’m a Jedi and I won’t go against my teachings!” to “Peace is a lie!” was good development as well. I understand that some people don’t like this character much, but she was my go to companion most of the time. She’s not quite a Sith, but not quite a Jedi either, and that made for a perfect companion for the 16th Brother, as he was hardly a model Sith either.

As for Talos... well... he’s an archaeologist and a historian... and I’ve got a degree in history... so of course I was going to love him! Plus he was eccentric as all hell and added a nice voice of humour to the crew. His personal story about him trying to find his old mentor and carry on his legacy was heartfelt too.

As for everyone else, I was invested in their characters, don’t get me wrong, just not as much as the others. Both Zash and Thanaton were good villains that I took pleasure in ending, and Andronikos and Xalek got their fair amount of use on the field and in the ship. Everyone was friends at the end after all.

The Voice Acting

The other good point I’d like to highlight is the voice acting, particularly that of the male Sith Inquisitor. I’ve heard people say the female voice is better, but for my experience the male Inquisitor was the perfect match of sass and sarcasm. It made every scene with him in enjoyable to watch. RPG games were a single protagonist can get a bit boring sometimes. Commander Shepard suffers from this in Mass Effect at times. I never got that feeling with the Inquisitor though. He was hilarious from the second he stepped off the shuttle on Korriban and sassed Overseer Harkun (who I totally zapped to death) to the moment he took his seat on the dark council with a surprised Pikachu look on his face.

So yeah... super credit to Euan Morton for making the Inquisitor the dark master of sass and sarcasm!

Outside of the Inquisitor, I can say that all the other VA’s did a great job too. I can’t think of any character that had particularly bad voice acting off the top of my head.

Other Good Stuff

Outside of the three things I mentioned, SWTOR also has plenty of content to offer for everyone. If you want to do main missions, sure! Side quests? Sure! Space combat missions? Yep! Whatever you fancy, it’s there. There is no shortage of content to enjoy for hours on end, even as a Free To Play player like I was.

The Bad

And now to most likely upset some people... sorry about that, but no game is perfect, and SWTOR has some flaws that could put people off playing it. This stuff is by no means a game breaking deal for me, but it did annoy me and I felt like it needed addressing.

The Game is Tedious

My biggest complaint is that at times, usually after an hour of playing, the game can become tedious and boring to play! There were times it felt like a chore honestly, and I hate saying that because SWTOR is a good game.

The main reason for it feeling so tedious though comes down to how you move around the maps. When you can, fast travel is your best friend and can save a lot of time, however, not everywhere has a fast travel point near it.

This is where speeders come into play. You can buy one for a reasonable amount of credits, and they are faster than walking for sure, but not by much.

The problem with the speeders is that it is so easy to get shot off of one by one of the random enemies you are trying to drive past (and believe me there are hundreds of them!) that is becomes aggravating to move around the map from objective to objective. Avoiding enemies isn’t hard for sure, but sometimes you have to go right past them, and after hours of fighting enemies it can get a bit tedious being shot off your speeder in one shot just because you didn’t want to waste time fighting an enemy. Once you hit your level cap, fighting random enemies is pointless after all.

Maybe that’s just me though. I’d personally make the speeders a bit more durable. One tiny shot shouldn’t disable your speeder. Heavy fire... sure! Doesn’t help that sometimes you can tank a bunch of shots on your speeder and escape without being knocked off, but then on another occasion you’ll be knocked off by a sneeze.

Either way, movement around the maps can get annoying as all hell, but at least the scenery is pretty.

The Planets

Now don’t get me wrong, I like all the planets I went to... mostly... and my issue isn’t with the planets in general.

It’s with how bloody long it takes to complete them all.

The Story Arc quest lines for each planet can take forever sometimes and they end up going on a bit too long if you ask me. Alderaan and Hoth are the two that come to my mind the most. It felt like I spent weeks on those planets driving back and forth between areas to do simple tasks for little reward. Plus the sheer number of side quests didn’t help. I stopped doing everything that wasn’t a story or Arc quest once I hit Hoth!

Don’t get me wrong, I like side quests for sure... I just don’t like them to drag on forever! In a lot of ways, SWTOR reminds me of Mass Effect Andromeda. That game too also had side quests that went on forever.

My one piece of advice to nay new players for SWTOR would be to ignore the side quests and focus solely on your class story quests and planet Arc quests instead. If you try and do everything, you’ll burn yourself out quickly. Unless you are a completionist of course. In that case go nuts! XD

Other Bad Stuff

Aside from my two big gripes above, which are honestly minor in reality, the only other issues I really have with the game are the boring side objectives in some missions. Nine times out of ten they equate to ‘kill a bunch of dudes’. They are easy enough to complete, as you’ll be killing things anyways, so you don’t really need to put any real thought into completing most of them. They just feel tacked on and rather pointless honestly.

The Ugly

And now the ugly stuff. This is stuff that is between good and bad. Bad as in they annoyed me, but good as in I understand why others like them or they improved over time.

The User Interface

Oh god the UI! When I first started the game it was so overwhelming! Pop-ups everywhere! Hundreds of tabs and side bars and tutorial boxes being spammed my way. It was not friendly to a new player who had literally just jumped in. If I hadn’t played games like Civ or XCOM in the past I might not have been able to cope with how much stuff was going on at once.

Luckily, after a few hours of play, I began to understand the UI a bit more and became comfortable with it. I knew what was where and what did what, as well as what I didn’t need. (any PvP stuff for example) Plus the ability to edit the interface to your own liking helped a lot as well, so it wasn’t a complete lost cause, just overwhelming at first.

Flashpoints and Heroic Missions

So, these missions are designed to be played with other players online, clearly. They can be done solo, but they take forever to do so. Endless hordes of high HP enemies, including even higher HP boss fights is not that entertaining to me, and thus very quickly became boring to me. Artificial difficulty in a way. Plus if you do die, it ain’t half a pain in the ass to get back to where you were, only to find that boss that had 5% health left when it killed you is now back to 100%.

I gave up doing these sorts of missions and have no intention of returning to them unfortunately, which is a shame as some of the flashpoints have actual important story content in them.

Still, if unlike me you actually have friends to help you with these, then I get why you like them, and more power to you. I just don’t enjoy them much.

The Soundtrack

And now to really upset some people. Look... I like John Williams music scores as much as the rest of the fandom does. That said, there were places in SWTOR where it showed up and really really did not work! It almost felt like the game was just spamming random iconic tracks that sort of fit the scene, but really didn’t.

The biggest one for me that didn’t work was the final duel against Darth Thanaton in the Dark Council Chambers. During the cutscene between the two fighting, the music started on ‘The Final Duel’ from ROTJ when they were fighting, and they suddenly it shifted to the theme from Padmés funeral when Thanaton was overpowered! I mean, I get what they were going for with the music, but the sudden shift between tracks was unceremonious and didn’t work. If they were going to use licensed movie music then they should have just chosen one track and stuck with it rather than jumping between two!

Furthermore, to me those themes were written for specific scenes in their respective movies, and thus were created to fit those scenes, not random SWTOR scenes. If anything, the entire scene should have had it’s own score written for it rather than just reuse movie tracks instead!

That said, whenever the game does use original music that isn’t from the movies, it’s fine! The ambient background for the planets is great, Alderaan’s especially, and I hated that planet! They clearly had the talent of music directors to write Star Wars sounding music, so I don’t fully get why they didn’t just go with original music all the way rather than just reuse John Williams music instead. I don’t know if they didn’t have enough money or something. If that was the case then I’d understand.

So yeah, the music is a 50/50 for me. The original music is great. The movie music is still great, it’s just not used right.

Other Ugly Stuff

WASD controls. They aren’t game breaking, but I’m not a great fan of them. They make my wrist hurt. I adapted, like I did with the UI, so it’s not really a big issue, but I know it could put one or two people off playing it.

Another minor gripe is a consequence of the game being an RPG within an MMO. Other players are running around, often doing the same objectives as you. They can steal your objectives before you, forcing you to wait around for them to respawn so you can do them yourselves. Luckily there is usually other stuff to do in the meantime, and the re-spawn timer is smallish, so it’s not a huge problem. Just an unfortunate consequence.

Conclusion

So... would I recommend playing SWTOR to people? Yes! I would. It’s a good game, even with it’s flaws. I had a lot of fun running through the Sith Inquisitor’s storyline, and I learnt a lot about the game for any future playthroughs I do. I know what to expect now and what to stay away from, so hopefully whatever class I choose to do next will be full of less annoying little things.

That said, considering how long it took me to do the Inquisitor’s story, I feel like I’m gonna need a serious break before I can play another class. I was almost burnt out when I finished the Inquisitor, and I’ve still got the two free expansions to go!

So yeah... all in all, SWTOR is a good game,. I’d recommend it, and I’m glad I gave it a fair chance. It’s not in my top 10, but it’s one to return to. :)

So, if you’ve ever thought about trying out SWTOR before but were apprehensive about it, then I’d encourage you to give it a shot. It is free after all! Unless you subscribe. But you can at least try it for free! Bonus I say! XD

#swtor

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