#I’m terrible with pretty in depth things like this so I’m normally just shouting but this is puttting what I feel in thoughts in a beautiful

[phoenixyfriend]

soulmate au: 2 or 27 for rexwalker? (or rexanidala)

soulmate au prompts

2. the one where you have your soulmate’s name written on your body.

27. the one where you can transfer any injuries/pain your soulmate has onto yourself.

Once again featuring Marginally Less Terrible Jango, Hopeless Romantic Anakin, and Significantly More Awkward Rex.

Word Count: 5.9k

-----

Anakin doesn’t have a soulmate until he’s ten years old.

He’s already been at the Temple for half a year by then, and heard enough about how not having a soul mark is a good thing, for a Jedi. It means fewer temptations away from the duties they’ve all agreed to take on. There are people with names on their bodies, including Obi-Wan, who has two, but everyone agrees that while friendship with one’s soulmate is fine, especially if that soulmate is a fellow Jedi, it cannot be allowed to become too deep.

“I don’t understand,” Anakin admits to Obi-Wan, one night when he finds Obi-Wan looking at the name that wraps around his upper thigh, the one in the unfamiliar alphabet and cultured, perfect strokes. It’s a few months after he arrives, long enough to think they won’t kick him out just for asking questions, but not quite long enough to know what’s normal yet. His own soul mark is several months away, not that he knows it. “Soulmates were one of the few things a mas--an owner couldn’t take away from a slave. They could get rid of the mark, but we still knew. They were important, something the universe gave us that we could keep, even if it was only in our memories. Why do Jedi try to make it not count?”

Obi-Wan gets a look on his face, the one he gets whenever Anakin has a question that’s more complicated and philosophical than what Obi-Wan was ready for, the questions about why that he has to think about because it’s all normal for Obi-Wan, who grew up here, in ways that it isn’t (and will never be) for Anakin with his Tatoo heart and slaveborn mind.

“It’s not about the depth of the relationship in and of itself,” Obi-Wan finally says. “It’s about how you go about it, how you let it affect you, and if you let it get in the way of your duties as a Jedi, or put yourself at risk of a fall. It’s... it’s not banned, exactly, to love someone the way one would expect to love a soulmate, but it’s discouraged for our own safety and health. Losing someone you love hurts everyone, but for a Force-user to lose someone they consider so dear to their heart, there’s always a risk of losing one’s stability and going Dark.”

Anakin doesn’t entirely understand, but he pretends he does.

Obi-Wan scratches at the stubble he’s trying to turn into a beard, and says, “Okay, let me finish getting dressed, and then I’m going to tell you a few stories. You said you like learning through stories, right?”

Anakin nods.

“Okay, so... Bandomeer, I think. Melida/Daan and Mandalore, definitely. And we can round it out with what happened a few days ago,” Obi-Wan mutters. “I--most of those are planets.”

“I’ve heard of Mandalore,” Anakin volunteers.

“Yes, most have,” Obi-Wan indulges him, but he looks a little nervous. “Anakin, I... these stories all have to do with some very painful times in my life, times when I almost left, or did leave, the Jedi Order. I think--”

“You left the Jedi?”

“For a year, when I was a little older than you, but I came back,” Obi-Wan says. “I’m... can you put on some tea? It’ll make this conversation easier.”

“Is it about your soulmates?” Anakin asks, clinging to the doorframe just before he exits.

“...one of them,” Obi-Wan says, passing a hand over the mark on his thigh. “It’s... she’s why Mandalore is on this list, but that story won’t make as much sense unless I tell you about Bandomeer and Melida/Daan first.”

“Because you left?”

“Because I already knew what leaving could cost me,” Obi-Wan corrects, gentle but oddly stern. “Go put on the tea, Anakin. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

-----

Three months after Anakin hears about the times Obi-Wan was forced to leave, did leave, almost left, and threatened to leave (for Anakin’s sake!), the name of his soulmate comes in.

“That’s not a name,” Anakin says.

“Anakin--”

“That’s not a name,” Anakin says, more upset than he’d like to admit. The soul mark sits neatly on one side of his lower abdomen, warm and precisely lettered and absolutely terrifying.

CT-7567, in a dark, desaturated blue.

“I don’t think your soulmate is a droid,” Obi-Wan tries to joke. It falls flat.

“They’re a born slave,” Anakin says, and watches Obi-Wan stiffen. “Droids don’t get soulmates. Slaves do, but sometimes ma--owners don’t let slaves have names. They just give ‘em a number and that’s it. Supposed to make us more pliant and keeps us from having thoughts of individuality.”

“Them, Anakin, not us. You’re free.”

Anakin looks up at him, lip wobbling, and he knows a Jedi shouldn’t cry, not when he’s already ten, but he wants to any way. “My soulmate isn’t.”

“O-oh, okay, we’re crying now,” Obi-Wan mutters, clearly overwhelmed, and pulls Anakin to his chest. “It’ll be alright, dear one. Your mark means you will meet one day, and when you do, you can free them. Alright?”

“Okay.”

-----

“Skywalker? Sounds like a slave name.”

It’s a refrain that CT-7567 hears almost every time one of the adults sees his mark. They mention Tatooine sometimes. One of the bounty hunters that covers their weapons training gets angry if people point out the slave thing, and CT-7567 isn’t the only person to get a slave for a soulmate. She doesn’t explain it often, but there’s an incident when Rex is three that gives him a little more information.

“That one’ll be angry,“ the bounty hunter mutters, her lip curling when she hears the cadets gossiping about their marks again, sees CT-7567 pulling up his shirt to show off his own. She’s always like that, about the clones who have slave soulmates. CC-1010, who knows everything about everyone, says that she used to be a slave before she killed her way out. She’s definitely scary enough. “Name like that... Tatooine, human, might be a slave or might be freeborn from a line of slaves. Either way, that one’s going to be angry about it.”

“How do you mean, sir?”

Her eyes flick to his, and then back to the slugthrower she’s cleaning. “Tatooine slave culture knows things. Your mark on this “Anakin” is going to be your number until you get a name, and they’re not going to make the mistake of thinking their soulmate is a droid. They’ll know you were born to a purpose.”

It takes another year for CT-7567 to learn that she means ‘you were born a slave.’

(It takes two more for him to pick a name.)

-----

Anakin is not the only one in the Temple to have this kind of soul mark popping up. He is not even the first. The Council is investigating it, apparently, but they don’t have much to go off of. It didn’t start until a year or two before Anakin came to Coruscant, but enough Jedi are affected by the CC and CT soul marks for it to be concerning. Anakin gets called in to provide some information on what he knows about slave-designations in these circumstances, which isn’t much, and is barely more than what they already know, but they assure him it’s helpful. Something about corroborating the information a raised slave is taught culturally with the information a Shadow can collect from a community that doesn’t trust them. Obi-Wan explains that it’s about how Anakin knows information that was collected and taught, instead of information that has to be gathered, bit by bit, and analyzed.

It’s a long way of saying that Anakin knows things that other people don’t, because he wasn’t raised in the safety of the Temple.

Anakin doesn’t know many of the others, but he does know one even before his soul mark comes in, because their Masters are friends. They talk about it, and three years after they first connect over this, something happens.

“It changed! Anakin, Ani, it changed!”

Anakin drops the datapad he’s been doing history homework on, and looks up as Aayla, already in the suite, grabs his shoulders and shakes him a little.

“Aayla?” Obi-Wan calls, coming out of the kitchen with a rag in one hand and a wet plate in the other. “What in the--what are you shouting about?”

Knight Vos follows Aayla in--it’s a bit early to call him a Master, given that Aayla’s still not knighted, but it’s getting close--and leans against the door, arms crossed. “Kid was right. The mark changes when the soulmate picks a name.”

Aayla pulls down the shoulder of one sleeve, and Anakin sees that the designation number has changed. It’s not a regimented CC-5052 anymore, but a short, sweet Bly, with a flourish at the end that probably means this person is always going to be excited to sign their name.

“We already knew that,” Obi-Wan says. “When people transition, their name changes on their soulmate as well. This is the same thing.”

“We didn’t know that it applied to born slaves the same way,” Knight Vos says. “All we had was anecdotal evidence from the kid. Trustworthy, yes, but no data to back it up. And now we know.”

“I wonder how it’s meant to be pronounced,” Aayla says, and obligingly lets Anakin poke at the name that swirls on her shoulder in a vivid yellow against the blue. It’s pretty, he thinks. The handwriting and the color and what it means that the soulmates they’ve all gotten are finding ways to be people.

“How long until mine changes?” Anakin asks, even though he knows that nobody here has that answer. “Do you think all of them are going to find names? Or...”

“If they don’t by the time we find them,” Aayla assures him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, “they will once they’re free.”

(In one life, the Jedi would have held their tongues and ducked their heads, hidden in denial and ‘we are their only option’ and ‘the Senate will use them regardless; we are a kinder fate than men like Tarkin’ and would never use the words ‘slave army’ to describe their men.)

(In this life, they are primed, from the moment a little freed boy explains exactly what a soul mark like this means to people like his, to see their army and say ‘we will free you.’)

-----

Rex

Anakin has his eyes fixed on the name from the moment his mark burns and twists and changes. He’s sixteen by then, and on a mission with Obi-Wan that prevents him from running to break into Knight Aayla’s room and show off to her the way she had to him. He’s not even on planet, but at least it’s not the middle of a fight. That could have been bad.

“Hey, Obi-Wan?”

“Hm?”

“I got a name.”

“For the assassin?” Obi-Wan asks, raising his head hopefully. “Did you get through to the guild?”

“...no, I meant, uh, my soulmate.” Anakin lifts his shirt, waits on that unfortunate dash of disappointment, and then Obi-Wan’s face lights up and the man practically scrambles over to get a better look. Anakin tries not to let himself read too much into it. It’s... nice, he thinks. That Obi-Wan is excited for him.

“I feel like half these individuals are picking names of exactly three letters,” Obi-Wan says, but he’s smiling as he almost touches the mark. He doesn’t, in the end, but Anakin wants to laugh at it anyway. “Rex, then. I look forward to meeting your young man.”

Anakin feels his face flare. “We don’t know that it’s a boy. I mean, there might be places where that’s a girl’s name. Or a species that doesn’t have our genders. Or--”

“I have a feeling,” Obi-Wan says, and laughs when Anakin pouts at him. “Oh, I wouldn’t bet my saber on it, but a few credits, at least. Nothing solid, but I was prone to visions as a youngling. Qui-Gon was never very good at dealing with the peculiarities of such a connection to the Unifying Force. He tried, admittedly, but he was very much a man of the present.”

Anakin spends the rest of the mission silently cheering on his soulmate for picking a name.

For taking that step to saying “I’m a person.”

-----

Someone tries to assassinate Senator Amidala. Anakin and Obi-Wan are assigned to protect her. There’s an incident with a robot, and Obi-Wan is... pulled aside.

(Anakin finds himself thinking, more than once, that he could have fallen in love with this woman if he wasn’t so attached to the idea inked into his skin.)

(Senator Amidala doesn’t have a soulmate. She’s free to choose, she claims. He doesn’t envy her, but he does respect this.)

(Anakin likes the security of the universe telling him that there’s someone he’s meant for.)

Obi-Wan disappears to investigate something, and returns just before Anakin and Padme are set to leave. He looks... grim.

“The assassination is more complicated than we thought,” Obi-Wan says. “As in, the main assassin was expecting this to fail, so we’d come find him after he killed the subcontractor.”

“So...”

“He wants to talk to us,” Obi-Wan says. “But, specifically, to the two of you.”

-----

“So, you’re Anakin Skywalker.”

Jango Fett is a shorter man than Anakin, shorter even than Obi-Wan, but he’s not small. The armor bulks him out further. There’s faint scars on his face, here and there, and he seems more amused than anything when Anakin slips in front of Padme to actually be the bodyguard he’s supposed to play.

“What’s it to you?” Anakin challenges, and pretends he doesn’t see the way Obi-Wan pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.

Fett smirks. “One of my boys has your name on him.”

Anakin stops breathing for a moment.

“One of your boys?” Padme prompts, and Anakin tries to remember his job.

Fett’s smirk falls away and he palms his face. “Three million of them, and counting. I’ve had people cross-referencing soul marks as they pop up, in case anyone’s connected to someone... important. Special attention on the confirmed Jedi.”

“Three mill--you’re behind the ident number marks,” Anakin realizes. “The slave-born.”

Obi-Wan’s face looks carved from stone, and Anakin realizes that the mood he’s been in since he called Anakin and Padme was because he’d figured it out before he called.

“Yeah, Umiett said you’d be the one to make that connection,” Fett mutters. He shakes his head. “Listen, I’ve got three million clones that are more sentient than anyone told me they’d be, and I’ve spent the last few years trying to decide how to get myself out of this contract without abandoning them in the process. Tyranus gave me the job to assassinate Amidala, but I’d already had her shortlisted as one of the Republic members most like to help me get these boys citizenship and legal rights. Once I heard Skywalker and Kenobi were involved, turning this into a discreet way to get your attention seemed like the obvious solution.”

“You tried to kill me... to get my attention... so I’d help you.”

“I didn’t try to kill you. I subcontracted to a former acquaintance that I knew wasn’t good enough to get past two Jedi.”

“Right,” Padme says, seeming unimpressed. Anakin agrees. “Okay, three million sentients, all your children--”

“Clones.”

“--yes, something that’s very illegal in the Republic at that scale,” she says. “Unless--”

“Kamino’s in the Rishi maze. Dwarf galaxy, not actually part of the Republic. Isolated.”

“Okay, that’s... going to make this more difficult,” Padme says. “Where does your citizenship lie? Are you still Mandalorian? I’m not as familiar with your role in recent politics as I could be. I know there’s something about all violent dissenters being sent to Concordia, but you--”

“If I thought that hut’uunla Duchess would listen to me, I’d have already reached out,” Fett dismisses. “That’s part of why I focused on Kenobi and Skywalker when doing the research. Skywalker’s got the background to argue slavery, and Kenobi’s got connections in Mandalorian politics.”

“And I’m to be your voice in the Senate.”

“Not mine. The clones’.”

Anakin looks to Obi-Wan for guidance, because this man was involved with the attempted assassination, but...

“Who is Tyranus?” Obi-Wan asks.

“Oh, you’re going to enjoy this. The man calling himself Darth Tyranus is Count Dooku of Serreno.”

Anakin hasn’t heard Obi-Wan swear that colorfully since the last time he got stabbed.

-----

Things... progress. Quietly. Fett mentions there being a Sith in the Senate, something he picked up from a particularly ugly visit from the Count to Kamino, the kind of visit that involved veiled conversations intended as mocking, bragging monologues.

“He really is a villain,” Obi-Wan mutters, as if Anakin hasn’t seen him monologue to captured criminals on occasion, or get so caught up in The Banter that he lets something slip that he shouldn’t have.

Anakin and Padme go to Naboo to ‘keep her safe,’ and Obi-Wan hares off on a falsified investigation, keeping the Council updated the entire time. Anakin doesn’t like splitting up, not when so much is happening, but they have no idea who the Sith in the senate might be, if they even exist. Anakin doesn’t even have time to say goodbye to the Chancellor.

All this contributes, for Anakin is already stressed, and excited, anticipatory and afraid, and then the nightmares come. Padme’s more aware of his fears than she might have been, as much as they talk about slaves and freedom and how she makes things happen with words and legislation. Anakin’s a little in love with the idea of this woman, though he won’t act on anything until he meets his soulmate and figures out what they’re meant to be for each other, but... friends, at least. Padme is going to be a friend, possibly for life, and Anakin’s going to love her no matter what.

She coaxes out the truth, and then tells him, ‘well, your mother would know more about this than you, since you left at nine; it would be entirely reasonable to ask her for advice,’ and then smiles like they’re sharing a secret crush instead of plotting the violation of his orders.

They save Shmi.

(Barely.)

Padme doesn’t get the advice she was using an excuse from Shmi, but from a long, tired conversation with Beru Whitesun. As it turns out, when a family’s been freeing slaves for generations, they know what they’re talking about. Even Anakin remembers the Whitesun reputation. Padme’s notes are copious.

Anakin cares for his mother, and talks to his stepbrother, and gets an idea of who these people in his life are. He can’t imagine they’ll make contact often, but he’s glad to meet them. Cliegg--his stepfather, and isn’t that a thought--isn’t a particularly soft man, or a smooth one, but his gruffness has a different energy on Tatooine than it would on Coruscant. Anakin approves.

Obi-Wan calls. Padme explains. Anakin is shamed by his Master and then has to defend that particular title when Owen and Beru stare at him and the comm in matching horror.

“Master-Apprentice,” Anakin says, just a little panicked. “Not Master-Slave. He’s my teacher, practically family, not... you don’t need to worry. I promise.”

“I’ve seen them interact,” Padme says, and then shoots a small, smug smile at Beru. “Obi-Wan’s somewhere between father and brother to Anakin. It’s very sweet, when they’re together, and very entertaining.”

Beru, who’s had three days to get used to Padme, smiles and nods. “Alright then. I’ll take your words for it.”

Obi-Wan sputters a bit at the claim, in the background, and Anakin is... just a little upset by that.

“I think your mother would want to speak with him,” Cliegg claims, and Anakin hesitates, because this is a mission call, for all that gossip is happening, and he really shouldn’t break more rules after the big one he’s clearly, blatantly completely ignored to come to Tatooine in the first place. Cliegg holds out a hand, eyes on Obi-Wan. “As would I.”

“Well,” Obi-Wan says. “I suppose I do have a moment.”

-----

Anakin and Padme arrive on Kamino.

“Your mother,” Obi-Wan says, in lieu of a greeting, “is oddly terrifying, did you know?”

“She’s... still recovering,” Anakin says, brow furrowing. “She can’t leave the bed for anything other than the ‘fresher for weeks, probably. And she’s nice, how is any of that terrifying?”

“It’s her energy,” Obi-Wan notes. “Quietly intimidating, I’d say. Very odd, really.”

“What did you even talk about?” Anakin asks, and then blushes as Padme giggles at him, like she knows things that he doesn’t. She probably does. She’s older than him. Still.

“Ah, that,” Obi-Wan says, looking away for a moment and--blushing? Obi-Wan’s blushing? “She rather aggressively informed me of what is considered normal on Tatooine for a relationship that is, as Padme put it, ill-defined but close and familial.”

“Master, you--what?”

Obi-Wan rolls his eyes and steps forward, pulling Anakin into a hug. Oh. “I’ve been informed that the manner in which I show affection to you is rather understated and ambiguous, by Tatoo standards, and that leaving things unsaid isn’t enough.”

“...Obi-Wan?”

“I consider you my brother,” Obi-Wan says, into this hug that is stiff and uncomfortable, but sincere and full of effort. “And I do love you very much, dear one, even if I’m rather unpracticed in showing it in ways that would... translate, shall we say.”

“Oh,” Anakin says, because he can’t think of anything else. He hugs back.

There’s a moment there, where Obi-Wan relaxes and Anakin shifts, and everything feels just a tiny bit more right, and then someone coughs.

“If you two are done?” Fett drawls, and Anakin mourns as Obi-Wan huffs and pulls away, hands back to being tucked into his sleeves in front of him.

“Quite,” Obi-Wan says back, with the strained smirk of someone who’s been dealing with the same frustrating sentient for a solid week without the option of just bashing their face in.

Fett rolls his eyes, and gestures for them to follow him. “I’ve got a bunch of the Alphas and CCs waiting on you, along with anyone we know for sure has a Jedi soulmate. Kenobi’s already spoken with them all, got confirmation that we probably haven’t missed any connections.”

“I know the list of everyone who reported a CC or CT soul mark to the Council,” Obi-Wan huffs. “I have it memorized.”

“Because of Anakin?” Padme asks.

“His mark came in when he was ten,” Obi-Wan says. “I was his legal guardian until very recently. Given the circumstances, it was reasonable that most of the information on the ident-code marking situation be shared with me in the same way that his school reports and medical records were. He was a minor until a year ago, Senator, and as you so rightly pointed out, my role in his life is certainly that of the family member who raised him for the past decade.

“Master,” Anakin hisses, well aware of his blush. “You’re embarrassing me.”

Obi-Wan looks at him, amused. “I’m told that’s rather the point, dear one.”

Padme looks away, clearly fighting back a grin, and Fett’s expression is mocking, at best.

They enter the section of the facility where other people are a moment later, and Anakin is... not quite as ready for the sea of identical faces as he thought he’d be. One small boy in different tunics from the rest runs up to Fett with a call of ‘Buir!’ and falls into step with them, grabbing Fett’s hand and peering curiously at the rest of them.

“This is Boba,” Fett tells them. “He’s the only unaltered one.”

“The one you claimed at birth,” Padme clarifies.

“Decanting!” Boba pipes up, and then smiles winningly at Padme. “I wasn’t born. I was decanted. He claimed me at decanting.”

Fett looks like he wants to run a hand down his face. “Yes, Boba’s the clone that was provided to me as part of the payment I demanded when I first signed on to the project. He’s the only one I technically have legal claim to.”

“All the others are Kaminoan property until claimed by the Senate or Jedi,” Obi-Wan adds, and Fett nods in his direction. “Preferably the Jedi, of course.”

“The Nulls are with Kal Skirata,” Boba pipes up. “He adopted all of them and Kaminiise didn’t care that much because they thought the Nulls were all failed experiments anyway.”

Fett grimaces at the look that gets him from Padme. “They’re not mine. None of them would have wanted to be, anyway, but it stands that I haven’t spoken with them in years.”

“They’re precedent,” Padme corrects. “One I should have been made of aware of if you want this to work. Can you put me in contact with this Skirata individual? What’s his, and their, citizenship status?”

Anakin steps back to Obi-Wan as Padme drills Fett for information, and keeps his eyes wandering for threats--unlikely, if Fett is genuine, and Obi-Wan says he is--and trying to figure out the best way to keep track of which clone is which. They do feel different in the Force, but Anakin’s not as used to using that sense for identification as most Jedi. He sees a few scars and tattoos, but he thinks he’s going to have to--

Oh.

“Anakin? Why did you stop?”

Anakin ignores his master, because one of the clones, one he can’t even see, is glowing so strong and right and calling to him...

“Anakin, please answer me.”

“I can feel him,” Anakin breathes out. “My soulmate. I think I can feel him, in the Force.”

“Ah,” Obi-Wan says, relaxing. “Yes, that tends to happen, when we look. Fett assured us that he’d be at the meeting, dear. Just a few more hallways to go.”

Those hallways pass in a blur, because he’s there his soulmate is there and--

A room, full of clones that look older than Anakin, for all that they can’t be, and more clones that don’t.

There’s a clone in full kit, helmet included, but Anakin knows, just knows, that this one is his.

“Troopers!” Fett barks. “Kenobi’s brought some friends in. Senator Amidala’s going to be working on the citizenship bill with us. The other Jedi is Anakin Skywalker. You can guess why he’s--”

The fully-armored soldier takes a half-step forward.

Fett sighs. “By the ka’ra, Rex, you’re going to embarrass yourself and me. Take your bucket off, kid, let him see you.”

“Some tact, Fett,” Obi-Wan snaps, and for all that it’s quiet and intended to be subtle, the clones absolutely hear him.

They also seem amused. Apparently Obi-Wan’s been hanging about for long enough that he and Fett have a dynamic, one the clones have gotten used to and find hilarious.

Anakin only sort of notices this, because the clone in armor, still unpainted, pulls off his helmet and for all that it’s the exact same face as Anakin’s seen a thousand times over in the last fifteen minutes, there’s something uniquely beautiful that has nothing to do with the blonde hair or the nervous smile.

“You’re Rex?” Anakin asks, even though he’s sure, he’s absolutely convinced, that this young man is his soulmate.

“Yes,” the young clone says. He looks about Anakin’s age, and Fett’s told them time and again that the clones are basically the age they look, for the most part. Anakin’s going to take it slow anyway.

“Obi-Wan already said it, but, um, I’m Anakin,” he says, and tries to find something to do with his hands that isn’t just taking his soulmate and hugging him ‘til all the suns set. He looks down, and settles for mimicking Obi-Wan and just tucking them into his sleeves. He looks up at Rex, and tries to smile, but he’s so nervous about all of this that it probably doesn’t look like much. He thinks he hears someone snickering.

“Oh good,” someone mumbles. “They’re both hopeless.”

Anakin snaps his head around and glowers at the little group the comment came from, but he has no idea which one said it. All four look amused, and have varying degrees of shit-eating grin in place.

“If you didn’t outrank him, Rex would totally be shooting you right now,” little Boba says. “I think he’d deserve to do that.”

Anakin doesn’t have to strain at all to hear Fett’s groan.

“Alright,” one of the older clones says, and everyone stands a little straighter. An authority among the clones? Official, or more of an informal primus inter pares situation? “Rex’ika and his Jedi can go get to know one another, and none of us are going to make fun of them for it, because I know damn well how many of you have been mooning over the idea of your soulmates despite knowing literally nothing about them.”

“So’ve you, Alpha!”

“You want a boot up your ass, Wolffe? Because if you keep talking, that’s what you’re getting.”

“Boys,” Fett says, and they settle down. “Now, the Senator has some questions for you, and you’re going to comply when she asks, because it’s going to keep your little brothers alive. You understand?”

One clone raises a hand, and Fett sighs.

“Yes, and little sisters, Valierra,” he adds. He mutters something under his breath that sounds like “kriffing Basic.”

(Anakin later learns that Mando’a is not a gendered language, and Fett’s frustration is entirely about the fact that ‘brothers’ isn’t gender neutral. Anakin tries to ask why he doesn’t just say ‘sibling’ or use the Mando’a word, and there’s apparently a whole thing with some instructors wanting to encourage the clones to learn to be Mandalorian, and others wanting to cut them off from anything to do with the planet.)

(Anakin... tries to understand. He’s still confused about why ‘siblings’ isn’t on the table.)

“Go on, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, looking somewhere between amused and exasperated. “We can catch you up later.”

“I got enough from Beru,” Padme assures him. “You can pop in to help us fine-tune later.”

Anakin nods, just a short jerk of his head, and then looks to Rex. The man is glaring at a little at a little group of other clones, but when Anakin reaches out and takes his hand--takes his hand--Rex turns and stares at him with wide eyes and a flush that Anakin’s sure he’s mirroring.

“We should talk,“ he blurts out, and he can feel Obi-Wan’s despair at how completely inept Anakin is at this whole ‘personal interactions’ thing, but that’s fine, because Obi-Wan’s a bit of a slut, and Anakin doesn’t flirt with everyone he meets, and he’s been waiting for his soulmate like a sensible person.

(“Or a romantic,” Vos had pointed out, once. “Most people date at least a little if they don’t meet their soulmate by, like, fifteen. I mean, culturally I understand why you want to wait until you meet your soulmate, but it’s not really a matter of sensibility, just personal preference. Obi-Wan’s not less sensible for sleeping around.”)

(Anakin does not like this argument, and so he ignores it.)

(Well, no, he agrees that people should be allowed to flirt if they want, but he doesn’t like the implication he’s gotten from a few other padawans about how he’s ‘awkward’ for not knowing how to talk to people that he wants to impress somehow.)

(So, he’s going to claim it’s sensibility.)

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“Kriff off, Ponds!” Rex barks out, immediately pinging on the exact clone that said the words, and Anakin bites a lip to keep from laughing at them both.

“Out,” Fett orders. “We’ve got shit to do, stop being a distraction.”

“Being a distraction, my dear, is a skill that Anakin’s put far too much effort into developing just to drop it on your command,” Obi-Wan says, light and airy and not at all like he just dragged Anakin and Fett for no Force-damned reason.

“Come on,” Rex mutters, tugging Anakin to the door with a blush that only grows as the other clones catcall them on the way out of the room. Anakin hears at least one particularly dirty comment get cut off by a smacking noise and a reprimand from a clone he thinks is probably Alpha.

The second they’re out of sight, Rex slows down, and glances back at Anakin.

Anakin tries to smile in encouragement. He’s not sure it works, really, but Rex smiles back, so it can’t be that bad.

“Here, Alpha told me to use the mini conference room,” Rex tells him, when the get to a nondescript door with a number on it. “It’s not completely secure, but we can lock the door so it’s mostly private.”

“Can I kiss you?” Anakin asks, and then has to fight to not clap a hand over his mouth.

He was going to go slow. He was a moron who’d promised himself to go slow. Rex is mostly an adult but there are ways in which he isn’t, and Anakin might not be fully an adult either, but that’s not really an excuse, and--

“Yes, please,” Rex says, and oh Anakin really likes the shy grin on him. It’s pretty.

(This man, he thinks, could easily bench press Anakin a few times over, but he’s blushing like a storybook maiden, and he’s doing it for Anakin.)

Anakin moves slowly, because this isn’t something he has much practice with either, but he takes Rex’s face in his hands and leans in, pressing their lips together with only the slightest tilt of his head, just barely less than chaste, and a firework goes off inside his ribcage.

His soulmate! He’s kissing his soulmate!

There’s a ‘stop projecting’ nudge from Obi-Wan in the Force. Anakin tosses up a shield and focuses back on the kissing. He pulls away, and the goes to just... peck a bit. Just small, chaste, tiny kisses because he doesn’t want to stop. Because for all that they just met a few minutes ago, this feels right.

Warm hands, larger than his own and steady in a way he thinks he really likes, settle on his hips.

“We--mm--really should talk,” Rex manages, and Anakin... well, Anakin stops kissing him.

Rex apparently likes it as much as Anakin does, because he lifts up onto his toes to kiss Anakin again before fully breaking off. He grins, clearly sheepish, and shrugs. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Anakin says, and then Rex pulls him down to press their foreheads together, radiating warmth and hope and affection that Anakin hasn’t earned yet, but is definitely going to.

“This is a Keldabe kiss,” Rex says, and his nose brushes against Anakin’s as he shifts. His hands are still on Anakin’s waist, and Anakin decides to wrap his arms around Rex’s shoulders. It’s nice. “I like, um, I like the other kind of kissing too, but this means a lot to me, and it’s one of those Mandalorian things they actually let us pick up.”

“Fine by me,” Anakin says, and he, hells, he hasn’t even asked for proof of the soul marks, but he doesn’t need to, really, with the Force as insistent as it is. “So. Talk?”

“Yeah. Let’s talk.”

#Rexwalker #Anakin Skywalker #Captain Rex #Obi Wan Kenobi #Jango Fett #Padme Amidala #Aayla Secura #Hopeless Romantic Anakin Skywalker #Phoenix Answers Memes #soulmate au #Phoenix Posts

[forauldlangsynee]

*inhales*

I really really want to talk about Gyro Gearloose in depth and I think I’m ready to face my fears of being called crazy. Well,, actually maybe I already am so scratch that. My head is FULL OF THOUGHTS OK.

Gyro had a lot of character growth and backstory which shocked me a lot, the episode ‘Astro BOYD’ is easily the saddest episode of the series.

Learning that gyro was repressing his past was so…sad he was blaming himself for everything going wrong even tho it wasn’t even his fault! It was Akita’s.

Like how at the beginning he was the Akita to Huey; because he kept telling him that BOYD was just a weapon, he was dangerous, he was keeping the lie even tho, he very well had to have known, he argued the same way Huey did. But he was obviously afraid to actually confront the truth; until he saw it for himself. Gyro was pretty well emotionally abused by Akita. Which is why he is the way he is. The poor man looked up him most likely because he wanted to be a Great scientist.

I feel like he had a lot of trust issues; which is why I think he accidentally kind of pushes ppl away from him, like Fenton. He’s constantly in a state of panic because he thinks he’s a failure even tho he isn’t. It isn’t until it’s right in front of his face; and I know that Huey had to have helped him realize because he saw himself in Huey, he was the kid that was telling Boyd he was “definitely a real boy” JUST like Huey was arguing in the episode. Making him realize he wasn’t a terrible person and he wasn’t responsible for the destruction.

And then he actually hired fenton; which was pretty big, from there on he really did treat him a lot better, even praising him for the gizmocloud instead of getting mad at him, which was a big step for Gyro. Honestly I was kinda rooting for them (I can’t lie in that fenro is looking like a pretty good ship rn…)

He was a really nicely written character and I genuinely felt like I got to know him, tho I can’t go without praising Jim Rash, seriously he’s just such a good actor. And gyro was brilliant.

Anyway after a long rant I think it would be crime if I didn’t include any headcanons about Gyro…SO ITS HEADCANON TIME!

-alright, alright hes…gay. Like he has very “AHEM MOVE. IM GAY” energy; like he just does his thing in his lab and if fenton gets in the way or he needs to head where he is, he just shouts that and pushes fenton outta the way outta like instinct he doesn’t think twice.

-he’s a crazy scientist he clearly gets no sleep, probably chugs whole pots of coffee just to make it thru a project. Which I feel like fenton would grow concerned about; obviously because he loves him and Gyro would clearly deny everything until he passes out

-he acts like he doesn’t have anxiety but I think he does; like signs of anxiety for him is probably talking very fast, maybe adjusting his glasses more than he normally would, stuff like that, that he’d obviously deny.

-definitely has OCD especially when it comes to his lab, everything needs to be exactly where he leaves it or he will loose his mind.

-he and fenton would probably argue about what organized is too; I think Gyros a little on the ‘organized mess’ side of the scale, his work space is messy, but he knows exactly where everything he needs is, whereas fenton would be more so files need to be organized in neat piles; Gyro just likes to be able to see all his work. So therefore when Fenton tries to stack his work; he goes mad and undos fentons doing.

-on that note he also definitely doesn’t like ppl touching his work; which is kind of already displayed when fenton messes with Gizmoduck even tho gyro comes around.

This is getting long so that’s all for now!

Definitely won’t be writing fenro fan fic waaaaaaatt

#ducktales 2017 #ducktales #gyro gearloose #character analysis #headcanons #rambling #fenton crackshell cabrera #fenro

[doctors-star]

lister/rimmer for “Oh no, I feel bad- SYKE, no I don’t.” pretty please

“You’re being weirdly helpful today. What do you want?”

Rimmer opens his eyes parodically wide, fingers splayed against his sternum in an elaborate moi? gesture. It is an appearance of surprise and hurt so manufactured that Lister almost wants to applaud the performance, bow at their audience of stars, and abandon the bastard to his machinations. But unfortunately, Lister has been granted prophetic visions of the future and knows with deep and terrible certainty that, were he to do so, he would spend two minutes wandering the empty decks, trip over Kryten’s best mop, slide on one of Cat’s abandoned silk cravats, and go and find Rimmer to bitch about it and hope that he’s doing something more interesting. So, given that interstellar travel is remarkably exhausting, it’s far better to cut out the middleman and instead lie here on the sofa and watch Rimmer direct scutters to haphazardly clean the living quarters inch by mind-numbing inch. They’ve even got little white glove-fingers on their claws, so that Rimmer can demand that they swipe something to test for cleanliness and then bawl them out for miniscule specks no-one else can see. Once, Rimmer had conjured up a white glove for himself and gone round doing the same thing, but when Lister had pointed out that he couldn’t pick up dust and therefore was imagining things, Rimmer had only doubled down harder - so hard that he’d worked himself into a real tizzy about going video-blind, or being permanently stuck with dust on his finger for all eternity, or dying, again, and had needed to go and have a lie down in the dark for a bit. So this is - debatably - an improvement.

Normally, Lister wouldn’t give a toss about Rimmer bossing the scutters about on yet another mad powertrip, but he’s going too far. He’s thrown out all Lister’s mouldering dishes, professing concern for Lister’s health but probably just trying to irritate him, and he’s cleared out the space in the corner of the bunkroom that Lister had hesitantly earmarked for the crib - and in doing so, had thrown out Lister’s third-worst t-shirt, the one with the curry stain vaguely resembling Maggie Thatcher, and which he likes to keep around in order to spit at it every now and then. The final straw, however, had been when Rimmer had nasally informed him that he was getting in the way of the scutters’ gruelling floor-cleaning regime, and that he had better go and put his feet up instead - to keep out of their way, of course.

“When have I ever tried to manipulate you to get what I want?” Rimmer says with a voice which he probably thinks is sweet and just makes him sound like a particularly jammy and unpleasant used-car salesman trying to get off with the seventeen-year-old girls coming in for their first Fiat 500.

Lister narrows his eyes. “Do you want that alphabetised or chronological?”

Rimmer blinks at him balefully, still very much putting it on. “Can’t I just do something nice without an ulterior motive?”

He considers this. “A person could, even if they never have before. You, though, I genuinely think the shock of it would kill you.” Lister spreads his hands invitingly, obligingly lifting one foot out of the way of a scutter before letting it once more dangle over the side of the sofa. “So, out with it.”

Rimmer shifts nervously from one foot to the other, inventing something at speed as though he never expected Lister to call him out on this - in which case, he’s a moron. More so than usual. “I don’t want the twins sleeping in our room,” he blurts out all in one rushed go, and Lister raises an eyebrow. “They’ll - they’ll cry, and keep me up, and I’m not giving up my Learn Esperanto discs for rodent-sized versions of you.”

Lister makes a game show-style incorrect noise and blows a raspberry, just to watch the left side of Rimmer’s face twitch in irritation. “Nope, not happening. They’ll cry so’s I know they need me, so I gotta be here to hear ‘em. Anyway, I wouldn’t make you give up your Esperanto discs - they’ll be better at it than you in a few months.”

Rimmer makes a sucked-lemon face at him. “Your spawn is not piggybacking my learning, the little parasites,” he says sternly.

Lister cups a hand around his ear exaggeratedly. “What was that, little-Listers? Ni estas tre lertaj? Yes,” he says to his still flat stomach in a very gooey voice that makes Rimmer clench and unclench his fists like a prize fighter, “you are very clever!”

Rimmer wrenches one hand up and points at him viciously, the other fingers curled in so tightly that his knuckles go white. “I forbid it.”

Lister sticks his tongue out. “Move out. Anyway, that’s not the reason - you cleared the space for their beds yourself. So, what is it?”

Rimmer narrows his eyes. The scutters start inching towards the door and effecting their escape. “I want to pick the film tonight, and it won’t be Fast and 14ious again,” he says carefully, feeling his way into the lie.

Lister pulls a sympathetic face and makes his game show noise again. “Oh, too bad,” he says, “you know well it’s Cat’s shout tonight so helping me won’t do anything. Anyway, 14ious is the best one.”

“It’s scratched to hell,” Rimmer points out. “We have to make up our own dialogue for the entire second act - last time, Kryten had the central car chase pivot around a shipment of mopheads and got disturbingly into the sex scene immediately following.”

Lister winces briefly at the recollection, but shrugs. “Exactly, it’s the best one. Right, contestant, last chance, remembering that you still have your lifelines: ask the audience, fifty-fifty, phone a friend-”

Predictably, Rimmer frowns. “Phone a friend?”

Internally, Lister pumps his fist. “Sorry contestant, that’s wrong too - you don’t have any friends.” Rimmer offers him a truly poisonous look and Lister nearly falls off the sofa snorting with laughter.

Rimmer folds his arms. “Well, if you know so much,” he sneers. “Work it out for yourself.”

“Nah, ‘cause you’ll just say yes to anything in the hope I’ll shut my gob,” Lister says without taking offence, and Rimmer looks vaguely exhausted. “Come on,” he wheedles, “tell me what’s eating you.”

“Nothing!” Rimmer snaps, unfolding his arms in a jerky motion and stalking off to fold himself into his bunk so that Lister has to awkwardly lean his head over the back of the sofa to see him. “Maybe I just want to live somewhere with basic standards of cleanliness.”

“Yeah,” Lister allows, watching Rimmer rub at the webbing between thumb and forefinger obsessively, as though seeking comfort. “But usually you yell at me until I do it. This,” he says, gesturing at the hard work of the scutters, “could be interpreted as nice, Rimmer, so you’d better do something selfish before the Playboy cover designers get in touch and make you every Miss July for the next century, or something else equally unlikely happens.”

“You’re an unbearable goit with all the standards and appeal of a mangy, leg-humping jack russell.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, explain yourself, you uptight lunatic.”

Rimmer makes a face at his own knees, then looks up, sees Lister watching him, and makes an even unhappier face. “Well,” he says, and then Lister has to wait and listen to nothing but the noise of deep space and Red Dwarf slowly falling apart around them for a good minute. “We ought to be ready for the babies, when they arrive,” he says suddenly, addressing the starched creases in his trousers.

“Which will be in about seven months,” Lister prompts gently, turning around to lean his chest against the back of the sofa and watch Rimmer better. He rubs the back of his neck carefully, tugging at the baby hair under his dreads. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be prepared, but - seven months is a long time, in the depths of space with sod all else to occupy them. Rimmer seems oddly hung up on it. The thought occurs to him like a lead weight in his stomach. “Look, man, I know we never asked for ‘em, but they are coming, so even if you don’t want them around you’ve-”

“No!” Rimmer says sharply, and when he meets Lister’s eyes he knows Rimmer is entirely serious, even though he still doesn’t understand literally anything else about the situation. “It’s not-” he waves a hand at Lister dismissively. Then he fixes his gaze on his hands, and addresses his remarks to those. “Pregnant people are supposed to rest,” he says sternly, “and be undisturbed by - by mess, and noise, and small children.”

Lister feels a frown settle on his brows, and a worry settle in his gut. Rimmer swallows hard, adam’s apple moving like a yo-yo. “Why’s that?” he murmurs gently, as if - if he could only be quiet enough - the question wouldn’t spook Rimmer out of his honesty.

Rimmer shrugs one shoulder. “Stops the baby growing up strong,” he recites oddly. “Mummy said she’d spent so much time running after my brothers that she was worn out with me, and that’s why I was slow.” He sniffs. He looks horribly lonely, and a hundred thousand miles away, and it’s like there’s a fist around Lister’s heart slowly constricting. “And that she might as well keep focussing on them, since I was never going to catch up.”

Lister shakes his head slowly. “Rimmer,” he says, “you’ve got more hang-ups than Elton John’s feather boa rack. I’m not raising the kids like your parents did you, and I’m not going to lie on the sofa for the next seven months doing sod all.”

“Whereas normally you’re such a ball of energy,” Rimmer snipes, but his heart’s not in it.

“Yeah,” Lister agrees calmly, “I’ve a strict schedule of slobbing about in different places and I’m gonna stick to it. Rimmer.” Rimmer flicks his head up guiltily and Lister offers him an exhausted look. “You can’t just decide to only care about my health when it suits your trauma and really annoys me, alright?”

Rimmer frowns. “Why not?” he whinges - which is a surprise, because Lister was anticipating him latching onto the caring thing, and not getting much further.

Lister spreads his hands. “All or nothing, baby,” he says firmly and with cheer, and then shoots Rimmer a wink - which reminds him of the aforementioned caring thing, and sets him off sputtering.

“And - and I don’t care,” he manages in the end. “Watch me not caring, you odious toad.”

“Uh-huh,” Lister says, and then, when Rimmer chances a glance his way, blows him a kiss to make him go all red and cross. It’s really ridiculously endearing.

“This,” Rimmer says, pointing at him, “is a manifestation of my dreadful upbringing, and, and Stockholm syndrome, anyway.”

Lister manages a grin, and lets it go. As he slumps back into the sofa, he can’t help but wish that Rimmer wasn’t probably right - and not just because the man is obnoxious and intolerable on a good day, when he’s wrong - and failing that, that this Stockholm syndrome, this resolute and unbending care that humans apparently manifest for one another despite literally everything when there is nothing else in the universe except a few creeping lifeforms and the persistent love they put out like radiation from a life-destroying nuclear incident, touching everything and making it all complicated - he cannot help but wish that it wasn’t there, or that it was there more, or something. That Lister loved him less, or that Rimmer loved him more, or that there was anything, anything at all, that Lister could do to change that.

But there isn’t, and he hasn’t got a hope in hell of Rimmer ever acknowledging affection without yelling got you afterwards, so he’d better just - stop bothering, really. Lister sighs, and smoothes his shirt over his stomach. He doesn’t care that Rimmer doesn’t want to care. He’s fine about it.

He hears his own brain make the game show noise. In a fit of pique, he removes one vile sock and throws it into the cleared space designed for the cots, and tries not to think about the hair-pulling sense of satisfaction he gets from listening to Rimmer yell at him.

#apologies for the delay! as ever i am working on it all slowly #thanks for the prompt anon! hope u enjoy this slightly loose interpretation thereof #red dwarf #rimster #this is your captain speaking

[bytheangell]

If you are still taking prompts, what would you think about writing something(s) based off of this, either/both, the Professor/TA, or the Writer/Editor?

Dedication (modern AU, Herongraystairs, check the link in the ask for full writer/editor prompt, a wonderful plot idea by @high-warlock-of-brooklyn!) (Read on AO3)

This is the first book Will and Tessa are collaborating on. They’ve written plenty of books individually and Jem’s worked with each of them in turn. But this is the first time they’ve co-authored, an experience that’s proving unique and challenging for all of them.

Being with Will and Tessa while they work on a new project is always a blessing and a curse. They’re two of the best writers of their generation and when they work on their own they’re brilliant, but when they work together - well, they’re also brilliant, but that brilliance is coupled with the occasional near-catastrophic clash of opinions and emotions.

Which is where Jem comes in.

Where Will and Tessa are so driven by passion and feelings, Jem finds it much easier to distance himself from their project (and from the writers themselves) enough to see the bigger picture and find solutions before the issues build up. Like many things about the three of them, it’s a perfect balance - they just work, better than anyone (including Will, Tessa, and Jem) ever imagined possible when they first got together.

It’d been a messy start, with Will and Jem already together but both developing serious feelings for Tessa after they met during a book event. The three of them quickly became very close. There were whispers of which of them would end up leaving, then confusion when the answer was none: instead of two of them growing closer and shutting the third out, they all seemed to adjust and adapt naturally around the three of them coexisting. They aren’t perfect, but they are perfect for each other, at least as far as Jem’s concerned.

Jem knows that what they have is special, which he reminds himself of over and over as Will and Tessa sit on opposite sides of the sofa, voices quickly elevating to nearly shouting over an issue with one of the characters Will is in charge of writing: one he’s chosen to give a pretty damning curse from a trickster faerie in this land of magic their current collaboration is set in.

“Tell him he needs to make the changes, Jem,” Tessa insists, the third time she’s repeated the demand now.

“Tell her that this plot adds depth, and without it, he’s boring,” Will counters. “Sometimes people - characters - need to be brutally honest about their own faults and issues. Sometimes people are disappointing.”

That’s how Jem can tell things are spiraling: when Will and Tessa - who have effectively communicated and collaborated on half a dozen bestsellers and who love each other more than Jem’s ever seen two people experience love - refuse to speak directly to one another. The moment they start talking around each other and at Jem instead is when he knows he has to step in and diffuse.

Usually, it’s a matter of taking a break, getting some fresh air, and coming back with clear minds. Jem normally isn’t one to pick sides, but this is different. He isn’t worried about the direction of the book… but after reading the latest draft from Will, which Will wrote while refusing to speak to either of them for a full week, he’s worried about Will. And he knows Tessa is, too.

“Perhaps a good starting point would be admitting this isn’t really about the character at all,” Jem says softly, gazing closely between Will and Tessa. Will looks a bit guilty and Tessa looks away entirely, which tells Jem that he’s right in guessing their concerns are also less plot-based.

“...what else would it be about?” Will asks defensively. But they can all sense how he’s been pushing them away lately, much like the cursed character undeserving of love he’s written in. It’s obvious that Tessa isn’t sure how to bring it up or else she would’ve already. Or maybe she already had and it hadn’t gone well.

“Tessa, would you mind making some tea?” Jem asks, waiting until she’s out of the room to turn back to Will.

“Will… you know this is about you. You barely talk to anyone for a week then come back with this character in such a self-deprecating mindset…”

“That’s ridiculous. He’s just a character,” Will says, but Jem can tell he’s entirely unconvinced of his own words.

“So if Tess came back having written Evangeline that way?” Jem counters, and there’s that look of subtle guilt, right back on Will’s face as he frowns and pieces together why Tessa’s so upset with him.

“I fucked up, didn’t I?” Will sighs.

“We’re not mad at you,” Jem’s quick to point out. “We’re just worried. It’s been a while since you tried to push us away like this, I just want to make sure you’re okay. We both do. Take it out in the writing if you want, but talk with us, too. Alright, my love?”

Jem’s tense as he waits. This has one of two options: Will relents and listens to him and they all have tea and talk this out, or Will storms out and they don’t see him again for another day or two.

Will stays. “I’m just letting the pressure get to me,” he admits. “I’m sure that’s all it is... But yeah. Okay. Tea.”

Tea, meaning ‘I’ll stay. I’ll talk. I’ll try.’ Jem leans over and places a barely-there kiss on Will’s lips before he relaxes back in his seat. Reaching out a hand that Will readily takes, Jem gives it a tight squeeze as they both wait for Tessa to return.

They talk.

In the end, the character arc stays. With a few redeeming modifications at Tessa and Jem’s entirely unbiased suggestion, of course.

---

A little over halfway through the first draft things seem to stall out. They have a progress deadline that week with the publisher and they’re cutting it close - mostly because Tessa keeps tossing everything she writes without giving Jem the chance to look it over. Recently she’s let her curiosity get the best of her, delving into research she should be allowing Jem to help with.

...and when he says ‘delving’, what he really means is stubbornly obsessing over, nitpicking bits of lore to streamline, and doing hours and hours of research for single-line references.

“When was the last time she slept? Like, an actual night of sleep?” Jem asks Will one day after a quick touch-base meeting that went… not terribly, but not particularly great, either.

“You need to get her out of here. No books. No wifi. I tried to kick her out but… well, you can imagine how well that went,” Will admits, and Jem winces in sympathy.

“The Time Out Cottage?” Jem asks, referring to a small cottage they own for unplugged getaways, where the wifi signal is nonexistent and a landline exists for emergency calls. “That means we’ll both be out of easy reach, and with that Friday deadline-”

“I can handle it,” Will cuts him off. “She’s been getting in her own way for days now, but she refuses to listen to me.”

A few minutes later Jem tentatively knocks on the door to the small study that does, in fact, look more like a makeshift research library. He nearly doesn’t see Tessa behind the small mountain of books on the floor, but he hears her pen tapping rapidly against the hardwood. No, not just rapidly - anxiously. He knows that action all too well.

“Tessa, what number is that?” he asks, the question needing no further explanation past his accusatory tone and pointed look at a coffee mug, which is next to a second coffee mug, which is next to a cup of black tea.

“Four? No, wait… what time is it?” she glances around and seems surprised by the height of the sun in the sky. “It’s afternoon already?”

Jem sighs. “It’s nearly four o’clock, Tessa, and your blood is probably about 90% caffeine. Come on, get your things, we’re taking a trip.”

Tessa looks immediately horrified. “No! I can’t, we can’t! The deadline, and I still have to streamline the fae lore between the two-”

“Will has it handled for 24 hours. That’s all we’re asking. 24 hours without research.” “Jem, you know-”

“-that you’ll be twice as productive once we’re back and you’re refreshed instead of running on fumes and fever dreams?” Jem cuts her off, his tone kind but insistent. He bends over and picks up a piece of paper. “Tessa, my love, this is nearly incoherent.”

Tessa reaches up to take the page from him and frowns. “I… okay, I can make out some of this, but I’m pretty sure that bit talks about aliens which isn’t any more reassuring. Will did say I was writing myself in circles, but I thought he was just, well, being Will, so... Yeah. Okay. Maybe I need to step back for a bit.” Tessa sighs. “The Time Out Cottage?”

“I already packed you a bag,” Jem confirms with a soft smile, leaning down to kiss the middle of her forehead before reaching out a hand to help her up off the floor.

When they return exactly 24 hours later, Tessa gets back to work and the lore practically falls into place between the two of them.

They meet the Friday deadline without a problem.

---

Jem spends his free time playing violin while Will and Tessa go through the first draft and begin to brainstorm fixes for plotholes, new minor characters to add to scenes that feel a bit lacking, and other small improvements to really round out the story and the world they’re weaving. They both claim to think clearer with his music in the background so he stays, even if he doesn’t feel particularly useful for this stage of the process until they have a single, coherent draft to hand over to him.

These are the moments Jem’s own insecurities and flaws float to the surface. The moments he watches Will and Tessa, so alike, so perfect for each other, connect on a level he isn’t privy to. He knows it’s a silly thought, that he and Will have their own things, as do he and Tessa. But sometimes he wonders if they truly need him around, or if he’s simply just become too much a part of the routine to actively get rid of.

He watches them sit next to each other with shoulders touching, hunched over a small screen, whispering back and forth. There’s a small smile on his face, one that’s wistful and tinged with hints of longing that, much to his dismay, they pick up on.

“I know that look,” Tessa says, catching Jem’s gaze and drawing Will’s attention before Jem can wipe the expression from his face. “Get over here. I think we’ve done enough work for today.”

Will is the first to move over, making room for Jem in the middle of them. After placing his violin back in its case Jem heads over to join them on the sofa, embracing the way Will and Tessa immediately crowd into his space once he’s settled, both placing a comforting kiss to his temples simultaneously before resting their heads on each of his shoulders and a placing a hand in each of his own.

They talk a bit, not about the book, but about anything and everything else, and fall asleep there, still entwined together.

---

It’s rare for any part of one of their books to be a surprise to Jem upon publication. He sees all the drafts, talks them through the acknowledgments and dedications, double-checks the reference pages against the chaotic piles of books and notes around their home.

So he’s immediately (and rightfully) suspicious the moment they hand him the first advanced copy and tell him to open it, watching his every move with eager expressions. Excited, but anxious.

‘A dedication to the one most dedicated to us:

This book would not be what it is without the kind heart, encouraging words, and infinite patience of James Carstairs. Neither would we. Jem, you are a light in our darkest hours, and we don’t know where we’d be without you.

We hope we’ll never have to find out.

Jem, our love, will you marry us?’

Jem reads, then re-reads the dedication. He closes the book, then opens it again, reading it a third time for good measure.

“Well?” Will asks impatiently, earning himself a nudge in the ribs from Tessa. Will huffs.

“I see you’re as dramatic as always,” Jem says quietly, instead of answering the question posed in the book. He knows his answer. He’s known for a while now what his answer would be, should the topic ever present itself, but he gets a bit of joy from making Will wait in anticipation just a short while longer.

“He wanted to be even more dramatic and show you at the event tomorrow,” Tessa admits. “But we decided against it. We thought you deserved the chance to say no without two hundred sets of eyes on you.”

Jem raises an eyebrow. “You think I’ll say no?”

“You haven’t said ‘yes’ yet,” Will points out, but he doesn’t sound nervous about it. Nor should he be.

“Yes,” Jem says, smiling brightly. “Of course it’s yes.”

#herongraystairs #will herondale #tessa gray #jem carstairs #tsc #thanks to Jay for letting me play around with that prompt! #SORRY THIS TOOK A MILLION YEARS #making prompt progress between weekly codas and bingo fills slowly but surely #i hope you like it my anon friend! #elle writes a few deadbeat lines #anon glamour activated #ask rune #long post #elle talks too much

[theawkwardterrier]

When in the Depth of Winter

Summary: Peggy notices how the cold troubles Steve and tries to fix it. 

The first part of my Steggy Secret Santa outtakes posting. This one was rejected because it refused to stay as light as I wanted, so take that as you will.

Read on AO3

Something happens to Steve as the temperature begins to drop below freezing. Peggy doesn’t think that anyone else has noticed - when asked if he seems different to her, Angie declares, “Nah, swell - and gorgeous! - as always,” and Bucky points out that just because the current war is a cold one, doesn’t mean that Steve feels he’s through with his responsibilities - but it’s terribly obvious to her. Or perhaps it’s only that no one else is around to see him walk through the house in his warmest socks or take an extra quilt from the linen closet to add to their bed. No one else thinks to notice how odd it is for him to bundle in gloves and a scarf and a hat, even though his core temperature stays consistently high regardless. She seems to be the only one who sees him turn from cheery window displays and tuck himself even quieter and farther inside at the parties they’re invited to.

She asks him about it, of course she does. They’ve been married for a year and had been seeing each other nearly daily for months before then, ever since he’d been recovered from the Valkyrie. There’s no one she trusts as much as she does Steve and she doesn’t think it flattery but mere fact that she holds similar esteem to him. Still, he only frowns and shrugs in response to her questions, says he’s feeling the same as usual, kissing her gently on the temple or crown or mouth and thanking her for worrying about him. And she doesn’t think he’s intentionally lying; sometimes, however, your feelings are buried so deeply that you don’t even recognize them. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything to be done.

Somehow, as if knowing that Peggy has other things to think about and can’t stay in the office until all hours or pop in for emergency sessions on weekends (or perhaps because she isn’t the only one whose family has her focus just now), her agents are closing cases at a top clip and the criminal underworld seems to have settled into some sort of hibernation.

And so Peggy is able to stop at the delicatessen on a Friday and still be home by suppertime.

“It’s the absolute perfect evening,” she says as soon as she comes through the door. “Come for a walk with me.” There’s an excitement to the declaration rather than any martial strictness; after an assessing look at her - this isn’t precisely normal for the two of them - he stands and dons his coat to join her outside.

They live away from the main street and most of their neighbors are already tucked away inside their homes. When they do encounter someone, they exchange nods, but for the most part there is only the soft sound of their boots atop the leftover snow, their exhalations of breath which fog in the air.

Through the larger front windows they can see families eating and couples reading side by side, silhouettes of Christmas trees, and once, a couple sharing a kiss in a dim sitting room. One or the other of them will point out some particularly pretty decorations. It is not late but the winter darkness is so complete that when they step through a streetlight the reality of the brightness is nearly a surprise, a brief dawning which reminds them of how lovely the velvet night can be too.

Pressed close as they are, she feels him shiver as a breeze blows past them. Leaning up, she touches her chilled cheek to his warmer one, both their eyes closed. And without speaking, they turn around and start for home.

Their fireplace has never been used before now, but they light it tonight, sit in front of its bathing warmth to eat the chicken soup that she had brought home, reheated piping hot. They don’t speak much but it is enough, unhurried and peaceful. She can feel him watching her, trying to figure through her intentions, but in the end he seems simply to accept it, leaning back and allowing himself to be thawed.

“What do you think of ice skating?” she asks him as they finish washing the breakfast dishes one Saturday morning.

He gives her an odd glance. “Walking but on ice and with knives strapped to your feet?” he tries.

“Well, I’m sure there’s nothing we have to do today which can’t keep until tomorrow, and I’ve bought you a pair of skates which should fit.”

Steve is her husband, and before that he was her friend, and he is above all her partner. She doesn’t often use with him the tone of voice she does for stubborn politicians or agency heads who disagree with her, the one which is simultaneously so firm as not to brook complaint and a bit blithe, as though whatever is being discussed has already been decided in Peggy’s favor and aren’t they silly for having forgotten. By the way his eyebrows furrow even deeper, she knows he recognizes it and he even opens his mouth to say so, but in the end he instead goes to get his coat.

Their house is a ten minute walk from the skating pond - not even that if you’re Steve - but they’re usually too busy to even contemplate availing themselves of it. It’s already midmorning by the time they arrive and the day is perfect, sunny but frigid, so no one has to worry about softening ice. They are far enough into the season, however, that the novelty has worn off and only a few other groups are taking advantage.

Steve has, through mutual effort, become a passable dancer beyond back and forth swaying and turning in circles (not that the style doesn’t have its own charms). That skill doesn’t seem to translate to the ice, however, and he spends their first turns around the pond clutching her hands with the trembling ankles of a newborn deer taking its first steps. But he picks it up more quickly than she had expected, his serum-induced athleticism activating as he continues to practice, and soon his hand in hers has nothing to do with balance or security anymore.

They get competitive, they can’t help it, laughing as they race, taking care to swerve around the others with whom they are sharing the ice. Steve tries a couple of jumps - daring and occasionally reckless as he might be, he’s smart enough not to attempt flips just yet - and even when he falls, he just laughs and shakes himself off as he stands again.

It doesn’t escape Peggy’s eyes as they switch back over into their street shoes that Steve has stuffed his gloves into his pocket, that he drapes his coat over his arm deference to the sweat they’ve worked up. But she doesn’t mention anything, merely takes his hand once again for the walk home.

They go to watch Angie playing Martha Cratchit in A Christmas Carol the next week, and treat her to supper and hot apple cider afterward. (Steve crinkles his nose but keeps taking baffled sips from his mug, as if a preference for it might sneak up on him if he only keeps trying.) The week after that, it snows again and they spend Sunday in Prospect Park with Bucky so Peggy can experience the site of their youthful sledding exploits.

“Well, we didn’t exactly have a sled then,” Steve points out as they climb Lookout Hill. “But there’s plenty you can do with a garbage can lid or the old instrument trays that the hospital was getting rid of.” It’s the sort of statement which would have Peggy’s mother making faces like she had just sniffed sour milk, but Peggy herself actually smiles at the picture of her husband small enough to curl himself up for a trip down the hill and brash enough to try it.

“Can’t believe you’re forgetting my masterpiece,” Bucky jokes. “Weeks of collecting scrap wood and old nails, borrowing my dad’s hammer to put it all together, and you don’t even mention it.”

Steve shakes his head. “My mother was certain I’d get tetanus just from being near that thing when she saw what you’d made.”

“I think my ears are still ringing from her shouting - and don’t think I’ve forgotten that it was mostly at me.”

“You were the one stupid enough to build it!”

“You’re the one who was stupid enough to ride it.” With a grin, Bucky adds, “I didn’t think anyone could shout louder than my ma, so I guess I learned a lesson in more than woodworking that day.”

“Now I’m even more disappointed that I was never given a chance to meet her,” Peggy says as they reach the top before Bucky can play any further with the word woodworking. He had been discovered in Russia by a SHIELD spy and extracted a year before they found Steve; he is quiet about the professional help he has been getting to manage the pain of the things that happened to him during the war and after, but it’s clearly making a difference: his terrible sense of humor is returning in fuller force even than she knew it could. Steve’s hip nudges against hers, and she knows that it is not by accident. She looks up at him and catches his smile.

After a morning of racing down the hill until the crowds arrive, after they’d handed over their sleds to a group of kids without their own and, picking up food on the way, gone back to Bucky’s apartment to eat and talk and laugh together, Peggy and Steve take the train back home. His cheeks are still somewhat rosy when she looks at him, and the remnants of laughter still dance about his mouth. Halfway there, a pair of seats opens up and they sit side by side, leaning into each other a bit, watching absently through the steamed window as the city passes them by.

“I can tell what you’re doing, you know,” Steve says as they climb the porch stairs, returning from helping out at the Red Cross rummage sale. Steve has plenty of volunteer projects he’s associated with around the neighborhood - the soup kitchen, the community center - but she had been the one to suggest this; she remembers how welcome that bright symbol had been on the battlefield, in the same way as Steve’s shield.

“Unlocking the door?” she asks as she plucks her keys from her bag.

He is so near to her that she can feel his heat and practically his narrowed eyes as well as he says, “Not—Well, sure, but what I meant was that I know that you don’t just suddenly find winter outings appealing.”

She lets them through the door, unbuttoning her coat with her other hand. “Perhaps I’m only just becoming comfortable enough with you to share my love for them.” Until he comes out with what he is thinking, she isn’t going to simply believe the jig to be up.

“Peggy,” he says, and to anyone else listening it would just be her name, but she hears the real sharpness to the word. She turns to him, coat still draped around her shoulders. He’s shut the door with his foot and they haven’t had a chance to switch on the lights; his face is shadowed, difficult to make out in the muted light of the late afternoon.

“When you asked,” he says, and then makes himself take in more air. “When you asked if something was wrong, I didn’t know that there was. But it’s just that—” He ducks his head, then lifts it again, making himself look toward her. “I keep thinking of all those winters of never being quite warm enough, never having a good coat or shoes to keep out the damp, the way I knew that I was getting sick by the way my breath would catch when I laughed or when there was a certain taste in the back of my throat. I can’t forget the smell of trench foot from guys who’d been walking in wet boots for days, or the times I had to be the one to keep digging the graves because the ground was so frozen no one else could get through it. There are nights I close my eyes and see Buck falling, that jacket of his all dark against the snow, even though he survived, he’s back now and safe. And sometimes, when the wind is really bad, I feel like I remember—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, though his shoulders shake as well, broad as they are.

They have talked about their time apart, as they call it, but he has always wanted to keep the focus on her end, on the things she had done and the way she had felt and all that had happened to her, pushing off talk of his end of things with reminders that there wasn’t anything to tell about what was essentially a prolonged sleep. They both know that he shouldn’t be able to recall any of it - he swears he was knocked out by the impact of the crash and he only woke up again long after he had been removed from the shell of the Valkyrie and completely warmed - but even the thought that he might remember a moment of his time frozen beneath the ice stabs at her.

“I could see that this time of year was difficult for you,” she says, and she doesn’t look away from him even as she folds herself inward. Typically her bulling forward has worked in her favor; the idea that it might have backfired and hurt the person she least wants to is intolerable. “I thought we might try to cloud some of the associations for you, to give you some new memories for the season. But perhaps it was a bit too much to overcome.”

He ducks his head and steps toward her; he is very near in the darkened front hall. “You weren’t wrong to try. The thing is that you did give me good new memories: helping people get through the worst of the cold, spending time with our friends, all those new moments with you. Those memories have to fit inside my head along with the old ones; you just made sure that sometimes when it’s cold what I’ll remember instead is kissing you with snowflakes on your eyelashes. I’m just never sure which is going to be the one my brain’ll bring up.”

“I know as well as you do that it’s impossible to erase the other memories,” she says. “But it’s terribly important to me to make sure that you have an entire lifetime’s worth of happy ones too.”

“You’ve given me a million wonderful ones, even when you weren’t trying,” he says staunchly. Captain America isn’t just a persona or a symbol, it’s who he is, the bolsterer, strong and entirely reliable, she’s always known that. But it is so clearly Steve Rogers who, after a pausing moment, asks, low and a bit worried, “But what about—I don’t want you to feel guilty if sometimes the good memories aren’t always enough. It’s only that the bad ones are still in there too.”

She closes her eyes; how particularly privileged she feels for him to allow himself to say such a thing when he spends so much time considering himself last, trying to make sure no one thinks of having to extend a hand on his behalf.

“Well,” she says, stepping forward and tucking herself beneath his coat with him, wrapping arms around his back to hold him tightly to herself. “In those moments, we just stand together and wait for spring.”

#Steggy fic #Steggy #Steve Rogers #Peggy Carter #alternate universe - Steve was found in the ice #bad psychology

[king-ofthe-ruckus]

I don’t know has been talked about but I love the twins watching YouTube or having their own separate chanels. Especially if they somehow get into rivalry about their channels.

Thoughts?

I fucking love AUs buddy, and modern AU for the twins are my favorite, because i feel like I can manipulate their relationship for it to be so much for fun, and since my version of Modern AU quite honestly doesn’t include my modern day reality, it’s just pure imagination, and I L O V E it, so thank you so so much for this ask.

special shout out to @panandproud123 @alexanderwesker and @orphisthedragon because i don’t know youtube at all XD

I’m not a big youtube-watcher person, i pretty much only watch @wearewatcher [ with Shane Madej, Ryan Bergara, and Steven Lim ] and there’s a lot happening on that channel, but that’s similar to how I imagine Jerome being like when he Jonathan and Jervis collab. But Jerome’s individual channel is closer along the lines of pranking people/making things explode/following tutorials terribly. He actually does quite a lot of review for people’s products, surprisingly, and people starts sending him things to be reviewed. He’ll also do Play With Me-type videos with Miah when they collab, because Jerome is incredibly good and predicting what will be useful in the future and playing the fighting sequences, but Miah is really good at the problem solving and figuring how the story will progress so they can be better prepared for following the storyline. 

Jeremiah’s youtube channel is pretty all over the place actually because he’s terrible at uploading at normal times [ there’s has been times he’s uploaded at 3am on a monday and then didn’t upload until three months later, and it was five videos at once and it’s because he got lost in a project and forgot to get around to editing and posting said videos ] however his playlists are like sped versions of him making blueprints and shit of building from shows/movies/video games and seeing if their real [ fyi this idea is totally from @alexanderwesker from that time on discord XD ] a playlist of videos where he’ll go into depth about engineering and the different types of architecture [ kinda like how in Alex’s Dream of Me (Till We Meet Again) Jeremiah mentions Gotham being Gothic vs. Neo-Gothic like everywhere else, which i believe because Alex is like John Mulaney where they could say anything and i would believe them wholeheartedly [ can you guess where all understanding of engineering is from?? XD ] ]

But their channels are sort of like John and Hank Green where usually a person prefers one of the other, but overall if you like one it’s not uncommon to like the other [ i’m thinking about the Dolan twins but i’m kinda here for the idea of Jeremiah and Jerome doing a Spelling Bee and getting shocked with dog collars when wrong [ Jerome wins fyi ] ] but anyways they also do a lot of competitions for victims of abuse and those with alcohol addictions, neither is vocal about their personal experience with either, but they’ve made it clear that they are particularly strong advocates, and they make their platforms safe space for LGBTQ+ as well.

however they each are very possessive of their fans, like “well my fans made me this!” and hold up a tie with the little colorful lines and little scribbled quotes [ there’s a legend/key [ i’m not sure if there’s a specific word that applies for engineering stuff ] that came with it that says when he said the quote and which blueprint they used to make the tie ] and then Jerome will hold up his t-shirt that had a common meme that they use of him [ that’s the equivalent of “i’ve connected two dots” “you didn’t connect shit” “i’ve connected them” ] and he’s just like, “Step it up, baby bro, my fans are /way/ better than yours could ever wish to be!”

#youtube au #chandler responds #kotr #they also do special things at each 100k subscribers and give away when they reach big milestones

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Been having a weird/off week. But you know what’s made it better?

Spending some more time in Midvale with Supergirl Ep. 6x06, “Prom Again!”

Spoilers!

So! Last week was the fun shenanigans/set-up, THIS WEEK we get the emotional pay-offs and oooooh. So good. So good.

Historically, Supergirl kinda struggles to stick its landing when it comes to paying off its set-ups, but I think this episode is really solid in that regard.  

And thus, we begin! With the forest showdown! And I love it. Love every part of it. Love Kara flying in and freeing Nia and Brainy with her heat vision, love that one of Kenny and Kara’s go-to plays is called ‘Speed Racer’, love Brainy’s whole, ‘my buddy’s gonna BLAST YA if you don’t cooperate’ and Kara just. Threatens the bad guys from the shrubbery.

She’s supposed to be scary and intimidating with the heat vision eyes but dagnabbit...it’s just kind of cute.

Last week I completely forgot to mention how much I love that Kenny and Kara have go-to plays WITH NAMES. (NERDY names at that!) And also that Alex is so exasperated by it.

JUST YOU WAIT, KIDDO. 

Fast forward to the Fortress and everyone’s happy! The day is saved! The timeline is restored! Alex apologizes for being a bit of a grouch!

*cough* understatement *cough*

And Brainy doesn’t get the fist bump, d’awwwww. XD

Nia has a lovely chat with Kara wherein SHE is the elder hero who inspires the youths. Nice. NICE.

And THEN, the first of some good Danvers Sisters scenes...we’ll call this one ‘the mini-van chat.’ 

Kara apologizing about the ‘Zookeeper fight-y thing’ and the GLASSES FIDGET.

Shout out to the writers, who were ON-POINT with the dialogue for both parts, and shout out to the young actresses as well. It’s...honestly uncanny, how well they nailed playing Kara and Alex. 

(I mean, we knew this already, of course, but GOSH. What a wonderful showcase. So, so glad, that we got such a large Midvale story in the final season.)

Right, so, another dialogue highlight from the mini-van chat (but like, not in a silly way. More in a, ‘oh wow that’s very sweet’ way) Alex, to Kara about her choice: ‘It’s the right one because you made it.’

THESE KIDS.

Then we go to Nia and Brainy on the Legion Cruiser!

Nia’s outfit? Outstanding. Brainy’s mask? Admittedly a little distracting because it didn’t look like it was fitting quite right.

But A+ song choice for their dance, show. 

(Really, A+ song choices across the board. You can tell they were absolutely LOVING getting in all those needle drops.) 

And then we discover--ALL IS NOT WELL! THE TIMELINE IS STILL BROKEN!

Cat Grant has released the aliens! And she has been captured! And yet she remains heckin’ fearless!

Love that she calls Mitch ‘Mr. Blue Sky.’

It took me a while to warm up to this ‘new’ version of Cat Grant but this episode really gave her some fun stuff to do and yep, I dig it. Great stuff. 

Meanwhile, back at the prom...

I'm taking this moment to applaud the Supergirl folks for their very nice workarounds for ‘crowded’ locations this season thus far. The episodes have never felt like, overtly obvious in terms of Covid protocol impacts (I mean there are a few scenes here and there where you’re like, ‘oh, yeah, this is set up in this specific way to probably account for some production changes) but I’ve never felt that the episodes are losing anything, you know?

Case in point! Two episodes, set in a crowded high school! But most of the stuff takes place before/between classes, or outside!

(Specifically enjoyed all the outdoor stuff and natural lighting. It’s not quite the same as that LA sunshine, but. Still nice.)  

Anyways, in “Prom Again!” the action/discussions are set in the hallways/classrooms outside of the actual Prom. Inobtrusive! Makes sense for the story! Doesn’t compromise!

Gold stars for everyone. 

Kara and Kenny are BOTH unrelentingly cheesy--Kara even says as much--and it’s wonderful.

‘Hey Stargazer.’ Kara, you smooth operator you.

Shout out to Kenny’s bowtie, it’s great.

...Shout out to Kenny in general.

(Like, Will is great, but he’s got a lot to live up to, now.)

So FURTHER PROOF THAT THE TIMELINE IS BUSTED: Kara is going to stay in Midvale!

:O

Me, knowing full well that Kara has to go to National City, but also being...just a liiiiittle bit team Kenny: 

And then...THE METEOR!

That Kara just. Body-slams.

It reminded me of another Danvers, who also body-slams some space stuff:

But UNLIKE Kara’s cross-company cousin, this particular move does not end well!

Because there’s KRYPTONITE! And also, a CLOAKED SPACESHIP, BLOCKING THE FALLING METEOR DEBRIS! And, you know, ALIEN HUNTERS THREATENING HIGH SCHOOLERS! And Kenny SACRIFICES HIMSELF FOR KARA!

(Well, okay. It’s tonight but you get the idea.)

Poor, sweet Kenny. Who feels WAY out of his depth as he’s imprisoned alongside Cat on the alien ship...but it does bring us one of her patented ‘tough love pep talks.’ Wherein she calls Kenny brilliant.

And also, Kendall.

Never change, Cat. Never change.

Also, “Go, go.”

Okay, some more rapid fire specifics that I enjoyed so that this list doesn’t get...too? Long? ...No promises.

Smol Kara squaring her shoulders in that classic Kara Super Pose! 

Alex being able to pick a lock!

Kara using the reflected sunlight from the moon to heal!

‘That’s an 80% failure rate’ ‘Oh yes it’s terrible.’

The scene where the police have Kara, and Alex comes rushing out all, ‘that’s my sister!’ and Kara’s gonna just RISK EVERYTHING to fix this?

100/10, excellent, love to see that Danvers Sisters angst in the Worst Timeline. Also? Alex’s desperate little headshake, silently pleading for Kara to NOT DO THE THING???? Devastating. In the best way.

‘The world will know that name...Keira.’ 

No Plutonian Landshark sightings!?!? Not even a graphic on a computer screen? FOR SHAME!

(Personally, I’m imaging that they look like Jeff, pictured below.)

Kara stowing away on the Cruiser, and her very cute, ‘Don’t be mad!’

Her entire speech about her future--She’s just seventeen! She doesn’t have her driver’s license yet! Eliza’s only let her do the laundry once! She’s not even sure she can make rice!

(Eliza, I love you, but for Pete’s sake, let your kid do her own laundry.) 

Brainy and Kara trying to play it cool upon being discovered by Kenny and Alex! 

Their story involving an excess of formal wear!

Nia inspiring Cat to start CatCo, and telling her she’s CAT FREAKIN’ GRANT!

“If you say Lois Lane I will expire.”

Wait, did I mention the lucid dreaming power yet? ...Nia’s lucid dreaming power!

The entirety of Kara and Kenny’s talk in the gym!

Kara in the Worst Timeline tell Alex, ‘you don’t have to shout’. And then in the Fixed Timeline: ‘inside voice please.’

And she quotes Monty Python that lil GOOBER.

THE WHOLE EPISODE(S) was a GOSHDARN DELIGHT, I TELL YA. (Did I say that last week? I might’ve said that last week, but I don’t care.)

And now, some slightly more in-depth, overall thoughts:

So, How ‘Bout Them Danvers: Not surprisingly, the girls end up in, if not the exact same place as the end of “Midvale”, then pretty darn close. I’m trying to avoid, like. All of fandom, these days, but unfortunately, the bad takes are numerous, and often untagged. So I did see a bunch of people insisting that Kenny living ‘ruined the Danvers’ relationship’ and that the show is ‘taking away everything that makes Kara Kara’

To which I say:

In the broadest terms, what needs to happen by episode’s end to match up with “Midvale”, and prep the kiddos for the stuff that happens in the Pilot - Kara needs to put the aspirations of super-ing on the backburner, and Alex needs to like. Not hate Kara, but also be committed to helping Kara keep her secret, you know...secret. 

All of these things are set up. I repeat: All. Of. Them.

And Kenny didn’t have to die!

(I will admit, I chuckled that they so blatantly teased an untimely demise for him...because I know it will annoy select corners of fandom.

Muhahahahaha.)

But anyways, back to those key ingredients for making a ‘Danvers Sisters in the same emotional place they were in @ Midvale’s end’ soup: Alex deals with that simmering resentment. Seeing Kara handle herself well in a super-ing context gives her that little, ‘hey, this isn’t so bad!’ outlook.

BUT INTERESTINGLY, in the Fixed Timeline, Alex and Kara don’t have that chat in the supply room, where Alex is like. ‘You CANNOT reveal your powers, BAD THINGS will happen if you do.’ 

That is saved for the Pilot!*

MEANWHILE. The Kara ingredients! She puts super-ing on hold. 

Her chat with Kenny functions as a replacement for her chat with J’onn-as-Not!Alura, in the sense that it’s here that she reveals that she didn’t choose to come to Midvale, she didn’t choose these powers. 

(...I can already sense fandom using those lines to prove their end-of-series theories and like. Ugh. Ugh.) 

But anyways. It’s also here that we get shades of Pilot!Kara, what with the season one conflict of being Super vs. being normal. 

It’s ALL THE SAME STUFF.

Fandom needs to like. Chill. 

And their (fake) concern for Kara’s characterization is entirely misplaced, because this was a really wonderful showcase for Kara in particular.

Like. The first episode was really Nia’s time to shine, and we still got solid Brainy and Nia action in this episode!

But man. That good Kara content.

THE CONTENT I CRAVE!

So speaking of good Kara content in particular, I LOVED Kara’s prom dress. It's got both a SKIRT. AND PANTS!

Amazing.

I know nothing of fashion, but it was very cute, very girly, and okay. Though I hate the comic, the one thing I actually liked about Future State is Kara’s costume. This was similar!

(Thank goodness it looked nothing like the prom dress from Rebirth. That...was a bit of a train wreck.)

(Look, not all comic artists are great clothes designers, it’s just how it is.)

We see the empowerment theme come up with Kara inspiring Kenny; he describes her as ‘an amazing light in a world of darkness’ and tells her that, ‘you changed me, Kara Zor-El.’

We love to see it. 

They also agree that stargazing and Monty Python make for the perfect prom these absolute NERDS I love them.

*Quick wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey note WRT making this episode ‘fit’ with the Pilot: I’m not saying that it 100% does. There’s already the change with the Kryptonite, and the added info/awareness of the DEO. 

Those little changes, though, don’t really impact the overall arc of Kara and Alex, the way the emotional stuff might. 

Thus! The ‘Pilot’ of Earth Prime, and in fact, the ENTIRETY of the show’s run thus far most likely involved little differences throughout, but the emotional core is very close, if not the exact same.

BUT EITHER WAY, it doesn’t matter, because our Kara and Alex are still our Kara and Alex thanks to the multiple sets of memories! 

(So all of fandom’s freaking out is for naught. As it almost always is.) 

I bring this up because, again, as much as I talk about setting stuff up for where we find Kara six years from now--this Kara is a little different! She comes across as more confident, something Izabela Vidovic mentioned in an interview, when discussing her approach to playing Kara this time around. 

And now, Alex: Admittedly, she gets less focus as like, a solo-entity in these episodes--she really is there to serve the more Kara-centric plot. Personally, it didn’t bother me too much because outside of these flashback episodes, Alex has had some solid development and screen time, so. It balances out.

And the scenes we did get with those 2? Solid. Top tier. There was even a couch scene! Like, technically. Because there was a couch in the supply room. XD  

Spotlight on Kenny: fandom kinda loves to insist that all the men on Supergirl are trash, because, ya know. 'Feminism’ or whatever. It’s ships, it’s always ships. But, in fact! The dudes on Supergirl? Are actually wonderful! And Kenny is another example of a guy who isn’t afraid to be emotionally vulnerable, who 1000% supports Kara, but is also like. His own person. 

GOOD JOB, SHOW. GOOD JOB.

Brainy too, had some really nice stuff in terms of dealing with his emotions!

And it’s Brainy who gives us our closing line, as Nia asks him how he’s feeling now that they’ve accomplished their mission:

“Hopeful.”

NOICE.

In conclusion! “Prom Night” and “Prom Again!” were EXCELLENT! They had heart! They had stakes! They had the promised time-travel do-over alluded to in the titles! Outstanding performances from the entire cast! Tthe ‘young’ versions of characters in particular! And I WILL be watching these episodes on repeat throughout the three-month hiatus! XD

But before the Super Friends take their break: NEXT WEEK! The Quest for Kara Concludes!!!

#SG post #supergirl spoilers #supergirl season 6 spoilers #long post #gifs

[nettlestonenell]

Armie Hammer wants a sequel to The Man From U.N.C.L.E.—shouldn’t you?

This post is a long time in coming, Gentle Readers and @jammeke​, but now, though it might be here, before your very eyes, to think it will be well-laid out would be a mistake. It’s set to be just about as messy as Ilya’s misplaced loyalties and murky motivations.

How dare!

I probably first watched this film well over a year ago (courtesy @jammeke​ posting things about it). I used Sling OnDemand (I think on TNT). In the ensuing viewings I also watched it in that way, but as I was sitting down for a fourth(?) viewing, it kept coming to me that I was tired of watching it with commercials I couldn’t skip, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it had been edited for time and I was missing out on scenes. [pointless aside: I was also watching the film in chunks, and never as a whole]

Where is she now? What’s the time stamp? How far along did she get? Are you shagging the hotel hostess yet?

So, I, uh, set out to buy it on DVD—without any luck! In the sense that copies I could find cost more (w/ shipping) than buying it to stream. So, I bought it to stream on Amazon. Do I regret my choice, Gentle Readers? No, no I don’t. I do regret burden of knowledge in learning that TNT was already playing the entirety of the film. That was a hard pill to swallow.

Nope, I’ve looked. That’s absolutely everything. Nothing additional lurking around here...

So here it is, as it is, @jammeke, “My Notes on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”

Look, I don’t know what this film is. I probably can’t fully articulate its appeal. Or maybe I can--certainly after transcribing four page I’ve tried. Number One thing to know about me and fiction/films is that a top draw for me is seeing something out of the ordinary, such as beautiful locations, a historical era, delicious costumes. There are times, frankly, this can trump weak story and undefined character for me. (The best films, of course, combine all three) Certainly, The Man... delivers in the delight of the eyes. Additionally, I must confess that growing up as a person older than @reblogginhood​ but younger than Miss Fisher, so much of what was on TV was essentially reruns of this film’s iconic Look(tm). So, when I see women dressed like Gaby I am just another three-to-seven-year-old overcome with the drop dead glamour of it all.

Darling, tell me how you really feel...

Some questions I have:

·         IS Armie Hammer a hulk of a man? Everyone in this film seems to think so, yet he always tracks to me as trim (rather than hulking)

·         Why translate via captions some Russian speaking, but not all?

·         IS Napoleon’s backstory directly cribbed from USA’s White Collar?

·         DOES Gaby have a German accent?

·         Does Ilya get preternaturally attached to all the people he’s ordered to look after? Also, what is his bonding rate with kittens?

Sorry, wrong iteration. 

 ·         If Lady Villain knows the lens is wrong—if her technical understanding is that in-depth--does she really need Gaby’s dad to make the bomb?

·         How old was Gaby during the war?

·         What happens when Ilya gets a NEW puppy assigned to him? (please let this be addressed in film #2)

Hooray for:

·         That bathroom fight! *all the Burn Notice feels!

·         Gaby is her own lady, and chooses sides as necessary—not always unilateral in her support for either male character. Case in point: she sides with Ilya over the clothes, and Napoleon over the incident of the wallet.

·         That delicious (speaking as Rusty, here) Ocean’s 11-stylized action. It’s pretty, so I’m not bored with it. Sometimes a sandwiched montage gets shown, so I’m REALLY not bored. I’ve got 18 tiny moving boxes of things to look at!

·         Pinkie rings. There, you’ve told me everything I need to know about that character.

·         Solo in a beret. English has not yet found a word for the feeling it evoked in this viewer. Somewhere between ‘precious’ and ‘oh, no’.

See, there? Now you’ve felt it too.

·         Goggles! All the accessories! Dune Buggies! (I mean, that’s what I’m calling Napoleon’s chase-scene ride)

Things I adore:

·         It seems (after some research) that more than a few folks view Gaby as a third wheel, and though she’s not exactly a Princess Leia commandeering her own rescue and exuding competence and a deserved take-charge-attitude at every corner, she IS a foci for both male characters (though romantically it would seem only for one), just as Ilya is a foci for both her and Napoleon [no one seems to worry about Napoleon, though they should--film #2, anyone?]

·         Mechanic Gaby not needing a beauty makeover, or being dragged into one. She gets some nice clothes, but it’s never suggested that she’s not attractive or acceptable before putting them on, and I respect, nay, embrace it.

Oh, my heart. She’s still not as tall as them!

·         Ilya, drab pigeon Ilya, knowing fashion

·         Oh man, don’t even get me started on the power of the statement, “it doesn’t have to match”

·         You knew it was coming on this sublist: the wrestle-fight. I mean, c’mon. Poor little Gaby, locked behind the Iron Curtain, living a life of always being watched. She’s in the swankest hotel (I mean, Napoleon chose it, so we can be sure it’s swank with an E). She’s trying to celebrate her freedom, her liberation. She’s playing verboten music, she’s drinking to excess. Girl wants—and deserves—a party. And Ilya is…not built for that (that he knows of). For some fun, just imagine if she had been given Napoleon to room with instead.

                            o   I will say that this scene, and some of their other interactions have what I would call early (non-sibling) Luke and Leia energy. Ilya seems to have moments of being struck by Gaby in a way Luke is struck by Leia in the early part of the trilogy. When Leia takes charge, and Luke accepts it. When Leia does something incredible, and Luke is left open-mouthed. *no, I don’t see OT Star Wars in everything. Shut up.

·         “He fixed the glitch.”

·         Again, shout-out to the non-action action.

·         “I left my jacket in there.”

·         The whole race to rescue Gaby I am in love with beyond words. [I have noted it as “Crazy Jeep Drive with Warhead!”] Probably b/c it comes across as totally egalitarian. Both men want her rescued. They’re no longer in competition. It’s just as important to Napoleon as it is to Ilya to catch up to her. Also, it is bonkers, like some sort of X-games version of a commercial for the vehicles they’re driving. And screaming Willie Scott does not make an appearance.

         Someone says “winkle” out.

·         Look! Another note about the screen divisions and how I love it, shout-outs to the original Steve McQueen The Thomas Crown Affair (a contemporary of when this movie is meant to be set), and TV’s 24.

Things that get a great, big NOPE:

·         Jerrod Harris: you’ve been in so much streamable content in the last decade I can’t hate you, but frankly, you’re terrible here—unless you’re supposed to be giving a mannered, not-campy-enough-to-be-enjoyable performance here. Your American English puts me in the mind of Alex Hawaii 5-0′Loughlin where it feels you’re concentrating so hard on your accent that you fail to convince anyone that you’re a harried, over-worked and exasperated spy handler. Your performance is at odds with every bit of dialogue you’re given to say.

·         That awful, mishandled title that doesn’t even connect to the film until the final moments (a sequel set-up, for sure)

·         Look, you don’t introduce Hugh Grant casually mid-way through your film in a throwaway appearance. I mean, he’s HUGH GRANT we all know something’s up now.

·         This is not exactly a great big NOPE, b/c I love a flat cap, Tommy Shelby—but I feel like a less tall man with a far rounder face in a flat cap would track more as Russian to me that AH does. To me, he just looks like he’s about to go golfing.

Over par? Unacceptable!

·         Is Victoria a British-accented Italian? A British woman who married—what? Gaby’s uncle isn’t Italian!? An Italian who went to school in Britain? My head hurts. Also, is her hair meant to be unconvincingly bleached?

Other commentary:

·         Napoleon’s adult ne’er-do-well backstory is so far from being emotionally equivalent to Ilya’s childhood trauma [and his enslavement to the USSR] it seems bestial when he calls it out on multiple occasions. Badly done, Solo.

·         Gaby is the film’s key (sorry, Buffy fans). Everyone is connected to her. Yes, she could have been given a bit more on the character front, but I don’t see her as as much of a flaw in the film as some others/reviewers seem to.

·         Look, essentially (and not very nuanced-ly), Ilya is a stalker. I think the film goes a certain distance in establishing that his early behavior toward Gaby is not normal, but concurrently it does not truly call him out on it. He’s essentially viewed as an odd-duck, sure, but not a true threat to her (should she not reciprocate or tolerate his intensity toward her). I think I might be able to cite his behavior when Gaby comes on to him (that he doesn’t jump at a chance with her) that maybe he’s given a little more nuance than a straight-on stalker, and it helps that he and Napoleon never get into a pissing match over Gaby’s person, only over her new clothes. But overall the film has to walk a fine line (and the jury is still out on how successful it is, I’d say) between playing Ilya’s laser-like attention to Gaby for its humor, and calling it out for the unsettling, threatening behavior it is.

·         Honestly, it wasn’t until I engaged the Closed Captioning that I understood Napoleon was calling Ilya the ‘Red Peril’. So, that was nearly three viewings in.

·         I give the screen credits A+, on both ends. Not to mention the end credits are actually INTERESTING with lots to see and learn! (Certainly we learn more about HG in them than we do at any time during the film)

Things I would have liked:

·         More of fish-out-of-the-Iron-Curtain Gaby moments

·         A better dichotomy shown of East vs. West Berlin/Germany. There’s nothing easy either visually or otherwise to distinguish the two.

·         HC being given a more specific American accent (from an actual locality). This, for an American viewer, works better than the flat, unlocated American accent many a British actor will bust out. *Mind you, HC does a generally good job, but he fails utterly on both “Immediate” which he pronounces at least twice as “immeedeejt” [rather than imm-E-deeot] and “Nazi” as “NAHT-zee” [rather than “NOT-zee”]. And let’s not get started on that late in the film use of ‘earnt’, a word that—well, it’s just not in the American English twentieth century lexicon.

·         C’mon. You gotta tease the Hugh Grant more.

·         Solo is a blank before the war. I’ve read thoughts on the film calling out Gaby as the blank character, but they’re wrong. Solo is the blank. He’s the ‘made’ man, his identity seemingly assembled during the war and after. For example, he doesn’t go into the war a thief, nor (it would seem) a particularly educated or urbane individual. Now THAT’s a juicy backstory I’d love to learn about, perhaps in film #2--or #3? What creates a Napoleon Solo? What would he be doing if he weren’t on the government’s leash/incarcerated? Is anyone left caring about him back wherever he calls home? I mean, who doesn’t love a gender-flipped 60s-era Holly Golightly backstory? [And yes, I would love there to be an ex-wife or even a current wife mixed up in his origins as well—Guy Ritchie, call me!]

Notes I have that I’m not sure if they still make sense to me:

·         Only mom calls me Napoleon (do he say it ‘mum’?) Is he a secret Canadian?

·         Solo’s torture, 1st view recall Napoleon’s childhood? *I think this means that after watching the first time I somehow erroneously believed that during the torture Napoleon’s childhood was a topic gone over. This was wrong. HOWEVER, this would have made far more story-sense than the backstory we’re given on an easily disposeable villain.

·         “Even the average Russian agent. You’re special.” ?

·         Uncle is Baddie (*so glad I made this note to myself)

·         Ilya’s dad IS an embarrassment. I’m not sure what genius commentary I had in my mind, here. Perhaps that Ilya himself is embarrassed of him? Not just Ilya’s handler’s? [Also, aside: Napoleon totally slut-shames Ilya’s mom, which is the doublest of double standards from ‘I got myself the biggest and most ornate suite b/c I-wanted-plenty-of-space-for-my-random-seductions’ and I really wish Ilya had thrown that back in his face] *yes, of course I know that Ilya and Napoleon would not likely equate a wife/mother’s sexual exploits with that of Solo’s, but let’s be honest, this film tweaks the nose of (I won’t say reverses, it doesn’t go that far) plenty of tropes and gender expectations, and this certainly seems like a missed opportunity to call Solo on the carpet (which I hope film #2 does far more)

Things I wrote down so long ago I don’t recall what they mean:

·         CC-save

In conclusion:

What does film #2 look like? What title does it get? Will the Peter/Neil White Collar dynamic continue to grow? *note that I have no confidence a second film will ever come to pass...

In the end, all I know is, “It didn't help when American Tom Cruise, who was slated to play U.S. spy Napoleon Solo, dropped out, prompting the casting of Cavill (who had previously read for the Russian role).“ I would not have watched that film.

#tmfu #tmfu 2015 #ilya kuryakin #napoleon solo #gaby teller #henry cavill #armie hammer #alicia vikander #the man from uncle 2015 #the man from u.n.c.l.e. #the man from uncle #i don't know what this film's tags are meant to be to keep it from popping up in the TV series searches Sorry

[junnie133]

so you HAD to date a princess don't you.

A fic about my version of the Modern with magic Linked Universe AU for your Modern with magic Linked Universe AU needs. Available in ao3 too. Relationships: Sky/Sun. And practically all the LU boys. 

{+}{+}{+}

“You two look terrible”

“You look terrible. They look like shit”

“And you two aren’t helping at all”

Honestly, Sky couldn’t care less about Warriors and Legend’s banter, or Four shutting them up for his and Hyrule’s sake. Sky only wanted to sleep, even a short nap was fine, but of course, he wouldn’t be complaining if he could actually do it.

It was movie night at Legend’s house- err, well, more like Ravio’s Shop’s basement. Legend was never around these days, not since Marin anyway, so the place was practically Ravio’s now, with their semi-pink haired friend dropping by every once in a while to provide some rare merchandise for the magical shop (mostly monster parts and weird artifacts Ravio managed to restore and sell for ridiculous prices). But as it was said, it was movie night, so Legend absolutely could not miss this. If he did, Wind would search him in the boiling depths of the Death Mountain or among the creepy mist of the Lost Forest, only to drag him over and see Pirates of the Caribbean with them. Again.

He groaned, if he fell asleep during the movie, Wind would kill him, so he stopped trying to get comfortable enough to sleep on Ravio’s couch and opened his eyes, his sclera blood-red thanks to many nights without a proper night of real rest.

“Dude, you look like you’re high,” said Wild next to him.

“You sure know a lot about it, Wild'' scoffed Warriors.

“You bake brownies one time...” he sighed exasperatedly. “I only did it because ‘Rule asked me to!”

“So now I am the addict” Hyrule groaned. “There’s a difference between being a junkie and experimenting with medical herbs because you’re a freaking med student”

“Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that” Warriors rolled his eyes “Be glad Artemis didn’t send you two to jail. Where did you get so many hyrule herbs anyways?”

“They grow naturally in the Faron Forest” Wild shrugged. 

“And anywhere else all over Hyrule. That’s why they’re hyrule herbs” said Hyrule matter-of-factly. “They have a lot of medical uses, it’s not entirely recreational like the media makes it look like,” he said with sarcasm. 

Usually, their gentle friend wasn't this… Legend-like salty, but if anyone understands Sky's lack of sleep and craving for a good rest night right now, of course, it was the med student among all of them. 

“I heard it helps to sleep, too…” slurred Sky, trying to keep himself awake enough to keep up with the conversation.

“No way Sky,” gaped Warriors, as Legend wheezed to his side. Wild and Four were laughing as well, but Hyrule seemed too tired to do more than a smile, slightly amused. “How is that you, future King of Hyrule, smoke weed?” 

Sky grinned lazily and rolled his eyes. “I want to see all of you studying to be a king” he sighed. “Impa is cool and all, but she kicks my butt every time I slack off. I haven’t slept as I want since I began my studies with her”

Warriors suddenly grimaced at that. “Yeah, don’t mess with General Impa”

“That’s what you get as the fianceé of an actual princess I guess” shrugged Four.

“And sometimes Purah scares me” he continued with a haunted gaze lost in the void ahead of him. 

“She and Flora made me eat a frog once” Wild spoke up. “It was alive”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me” Legend deadpanned. 

“Only once, tho?” asked Hyrule.

“I actually cooked the other two, thank you very much”

“Ok, enough talking about eating raw frogs and smoking hyrule herbs” interrupted Four before someone said anything else. Sky and Hyrule glared weakly at him, and the shorty rolled his eyes “For reasonable and, uh, medical reasons, whatever”

“Medical knowledge” Hyrule corrected.

“That’s what I said. So can we please talk about something else before Time, or Hylia forbid us, Wind hears us talking about smoking weed?”

“What?” they all looked over the stairs, only to find, thankfully, just Twilight holding two big bowls of popcorn in each hand. He was glaring directly at Wild, who quickly shot his arms up, trying to look innocent. “Damn it Wild, you brought brownies?”

“That was only one time!” he shouted.

“There’s no weed here, country boy. Chill” said Legend. 

“Don’t do that kind of jokes here” he sighed, putting the bowls down on the coffee table right in front of the TV. “Time can take them very seriously…”

“As if Wind hadn’t tried hyrule weed already” scoffed Legend.

Sky grimaced. Thinking about the sweet, tiny, innocent Wind they all knew since he was born smoking weed wasn’t something cute to think about, and if it made him upset one could only imagine Warriors’ own reaction. The big brother in question, not only the oldest of three but Captain of the Royal Guard who only received orders from General and Princess Zelda the CXIV (or Artemis for short), spluttered and tried to smack Legend on the head at the same time, but the asshole only dodged the hit and laughed right on his face.

“He’s at that age!” he said as an excuse like he needed any to mess around with Warriors’ big bro mental sanity. “And it’s not that illegal. ‘Rule said it, the thing’s used for medical purposes”

“I will have to make sure you don’t have illegal amounts on this house then” War crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes at Legend in the Captain mode they rarely got to see.

“Oh c’mon pretty boy, it’s only a joke”

“If that’s so you wouldn’t mind me asking Ravio”

Legend glared back. “You wouldn’t dare”

“If he doesn’t talk I just have to threaten him to close the shop”

“You really want to see him kneel and pray, and possibly cry?” he raised a brow.

“Ugh dude, I feel awful when Ravio cries, he’s such a nice guy...” scowled Wild.

“Nice guy or not, the law is the law,” said Warriors.

“Arresting the nice guy who makes us lemonade and is the only one who can shut Legend up without restraining him physically?” Four raised a glass of lemonade as proof.

Legend blushed and his glare moved to him, as Warriors nodded, convinced. “You know what? I’m not even at service right now, and I’ll give you that only for the last reason”

“You also like the lemonade,” said Twilight.

“And I also like the lemonade” nodded the Captain again.

Sky knew the kind of blush dusting Legend’s cheeks right now. It was the same he got when he thought about Sun and her beautiful smile, or Sun feeding Crimson, or Sun while she was studying, so gorgeous with her hair pulled up into a ponytail and a tiny frown on her face as she tried to memorize legal concepts and the kingdom’s history… 

He could happily drift off with that blessed image.

...if it wasn’t because of his loud friends.

“Who’s ready for Pirates of the Caribbean: At the World’s End?!”

Wind showed up with a DVD case on his hands after jumping from halfway downstairs to the basement, raising the thing up over his head with one hand like he just found an amazing treasure from a chest. He could faintly hear a tiny triumphant tune in the back, something like dan-dan-dan-daaaaan!, but after a second Sky shook his head. It surely was only the lack of sleep finally hitting on him.

“Why didn’t we just watch it on Fairyflix or something? I don’t pay the subscription for nothing” asked Warriors, annoyed.

“It’s a retro movie night” the kid announced proudly, as Time walked down the stairs calmly after him.

“Since when CD’s are retro?” Time asked aloud to no one in particular, muttering under his breath about being old. He seemed to be personally offended.

“How did you get it, anyway? I thought you had nothing left from your allowance after paying your and Tetra’s last bail” War asked again.

“Tetra lent it to me” the kid answered easily (like it was normal for a fourteen-year-old to pay his own prison bails), taking a mouthful of popcorn on his mouth before kneeling down to Legend’s unused CD player, gathering dust on its place under the TV. “There’s no internet on the big open sea, you know?”

“He has a point,” said Four, who fell silent as Warriors glared at him with a loud but wordless ‘Don’t encourage him’ in his eyes. 

Wind’s obsession to be a pirate was well known by all of them, as well as Warriors’ desperate attempts to dissuade him away from the idea.

“Everything ok, Sky, Hyrule?” asked Time, sitting down on the armchair across the room, right next to the TV. He had that worried look on his eye.

“I have finals at school” grumbled Hyrule.

“I’ve been sparring with Impa every day this week” Sky sighed.

Warriors grimaced again. “Surprise training?”

“Yeah…” he answered, defeated. “She says I have to be always alert to protect Sun”

Time shook his head, with a pitying expression on his face. “She wasn’t so strict before,” he said.

“How are you even retired, Old Man?” asked Warriors. 

“Saving Hyrule when you’re a kid and being the Princess’s personal knight for a long time gives you nice retirement pensions” he shrugged. “Also Ganondorf doesn’t like me, he only got rid of me in a nice way”

“No one likes Ganondorf,” said Wind from his place in front of the TV, selecting the language of the movie with the control. “Not even Miss Lullaby. She only married the old fart to prevent a war against the Gerudo”

“Who told you that?” asked Time, amused.

“Tetra” 

“Obviously” huffed War.

If you asked Sky, the Royal Family was a mess. A very organized mess if anything, but a mess nonetheless. Princess Zelda the CXII, or Lullaby for short, was meant to be the heiress to the throne in the first place, but then things got weird with the Gerudo and she offered herself to marry Lady Nabooru’s brother and only male of the tribe. That was like, ten years ago, when the butterflies on his stomach every time he saw Sun didn’t make any sense to a young eleven-year-old Sky. 

“How many years do you have to keep studying, tho?” asked Time to Hyrule then.

“Like two, if Princess Aurora does me a few favors” the brunette answered.

Princess Zelda the CXVII, Aurora for short, was a fragile girl who gets sick very easily. Hyrule was a magic-talented boy who managed to wake her up from a curse (or a common coma, they weren’t really sure) some years ago with his curative magic (and a kiss, but he would never admit that). Ever since, Queen Hylia had been insisting on giving him amazing studying opportunities to take advantage of his wonderful abilities, but Hyrule being the humble traveler he was, declined over and over again, claiming he had no money to pay back. At least until Princess Aurora asked him personally to be her personal healer that’s it.

Like he said. A mess.

“Alright shut up everyone, I’m gonna start this” announced Wind, sitting on the floor near the coffee table, pressing the play button. Everyone made himself comfortable, ready to relax, and enjoy their weekly movie night.

The last thing Sky remembers before falling asleep was Wind and Wild fighting over a bowl of popcorn, Twilight trying to act as a mediator, Legend making bets on who would win with Four leaping forward to take the other bowl and Hyrule curling to his side, as Warriors screamed and Time looked at all of them with his Disappointed Look™. 

Falling asleep so soundly in the middle of their own apocalypse only spoke how much sleep Sky lacked lately. But as Legend would say, he HAD to date a princess, doesn’t he?

#They gather up to watch a movie #That’s it #that’s the whole fic #time #warriors #hyrule #sky #sky pov #legend #four #wind #wild #twilight #war being a big bro #linked universe #modern au #but with magic #*sparkles* #wind calls ganon an old fart here #wind also pays his own bails #he's 14 #warriors won't allow him be a pirate #mentions of weed #hyrule weed #hyrule herbs #yes #med student hyrule #soon to be king sky #wind likes pirate movies

[springtimebat]

The Radiator Man (A sequel to Beneath the Wire)

When I was little (I’ve forgotten at what age now), my mom hired a man to work in our boarding house and maintain the central heating. Our tenants were always complaining during the winter you see. He worked in the boiler room, deep down in the basement, keeping the furnace and all the pipes running. So, at first I called him the Boiler Man. Later on, we had a sort of restoration period and he started going from door to door, installing vents and radiators into older apartments. So he became the Radiator Man. 

 He brought a woman with him. His wife, I think. She said they’d come here from the desert.

We both helped them move in on a cold winter morning. I can still remember the conversation my mom had with me as we carried cardboard boxes up the winding staircase.

“I want you to stay in the flat with her while I sign off the moving van. I’ll carry the rest of the furniture up on my own,”

“Why?”I groaned.

“She’s very quiet and all on her own. I don’t trust her in that small apartment,”

“She’s a grown woman mom. I’m sure she’s fine,”

“You haven’t met her yet. If you had seen her you’d understand,”

“Are you sure you’re not just overreacting?”

“No I’m not. She’s strange,”

“If she’s so strange why’d you give her a room?”

“Her husband said they had nowhere else to go,”

“Do they have no family?”

“Apparently not,”

Their apartment was beside a separate stairwell that led straight down to the boiler room. Because of the building’s structure the furnace sat below the kitchen, making it toasty and warm. But not everything was pleasant. The living room was worm-eaten and shabby. The walls were rotting and my mom had tried to hide the marks with old, dusty tapestries and carpets she’d picked up from car boots. The couch was shedding bits of fluff and cotton. There was no TV, just an old radio, with its aerial always pointing to the sky. Whenever the girl tuned into a programme it was always an old man talking in Romanian, never music.

The girl was normal looking I suppose. She was about average in height and in weight. Her hair was curled and poofy, the fashion of the time. She wore a turtleneck on that first day; grey, like her cold hands, with a pair of worn jeans covered in yellow paint. She’d been painting the kitchen. She was the first woman I’d ever seen wear pants. I remember looking at her suspiciously, furrowing my brow. Her face was pale, her cheekbone impossibly high, her lips impossibly full and pink. She had a doll’s face, painted and fogged over, her eyes clouded and buggy. She looked normal, at a first glance. But there was something…wrong about her. 

She shook my moms hand and offered hers to me. I didn’t take it. She didn’t say anything. She went to sit in the living room whilst my mom started moving boxes around in the peeling hallway. I stood there for a moment, stuck between the two, awkwardly shuffling my feet. 

“Go keep her company for a bit,” My mom groaned, “Stop getting under my feet! This is difficult as it is,”

“Why me?”

“I’m sorry, what work are you doing right now? What job have you got to get to?”

“Alright, alright,”

The woman was pouring tea into dinky china cups, bending over the tiny coffee table next to the old carpet sofa my mom loaned her. The year before we had to exhume the carpet sofa for lice. It seemed fine now. The woman in the apartment had covered it in fluffy pillows. Damp patches collected over the years had been flattened out and sewed over.

I walked over to her and she smiled, looking up. She was smiling at me but it seemed she was actually looking at something else. Something farther away.

“My mom says I’m supposed to stay with you,”

She nodded. A strand of hair fell in her face and she blew it away. She passed me one of the teacups. Teddy bears played ring around the roses across the brim.

“Have some tea,” She sounded exotic. Her accent was heavy, quiet. Almost threatening. Years later, thinking back, I’d realise that she was Romanian. I sat with her for a while, listening to the radio. Cautiously, I tried to make small talk.

“Where’d you come from?” 

“The Desert,”

“Why’d you leave?”

“There’s nothing left to live on over there,”

“Do you have any family, apart from him I mean?”

“No,”

“Do you wish you did?”

“Yes,”

“Why?”

“It gets lonely, all on your own. There’s no one to talk to,”

“I guess so. Yeah I guess it would be pretty lonely, now that I think about it,”

“I lived with a farmer a long time ago. He worked and lived with the land. I sewed and kept pigs in the pens. We had a few children running about too but they could look after themselves. That was a good time. I miss them all dearly.”

“So you had a family once?”

“No. Just a farmer and children. We were all alone. We came together because we all stood on the same grass and we had no one else. We were scared of being alone,”

“What happened to them?”

“One year, we had a bad winter. The weather was so terrible that all our crops failed. They all died from starvation. I don’t need to eat, I just like to. I was the only one who survived until the spring,”

“Is that why you left the desert?”

“Oh no. That’s why I moved to the desert,”

“Oh,”

Nothing more was said for a while, as we drank from our china tea cups. Even her tea was strange. It was ginger, I’m guessing, as I try to remember the exact taste. Except it was murky. It looked just like black coffee. The tang that hit my tongue was almost chemical. It seemed to sting the back of my throat and scrape at my teeth. It made me think of dentist appointments where your gums have to be scraped of plaque. Clinical and vile. After taking a few sips, I held back my repulsion and placed the cup back on its saucer. The radio was trying to make itself known in the background, shouting obscenities in gibberish behind us. The new girl from the desert hummed along in time with the announcer. She was calm. Too calm. Her eyes began to close. Her shoulders slumped tiredly into her cushions. The cushions she’d brought with her from what seemed to be another world. How was she so calm? She’s moved to a new place, to another country! Surely, she should be at her wits end. My mother would be rushing about the place, screaming at the top of her lungs and ordering the workmen around. But this girl, this strange girl, was lying about, as if she were already at home. Feeling kind of out of my depth and embarrassed, I cleared my throat and tried again.

“How’d you meet your husband?”

She opened her eyes and gave me an icy smile, the type of smile that darkens your face instead of brightening it. She reached out and poured herself another cup of tea. 

“I met him in the desert. My father introduced us,”

“Oh, so you have a father?” 

“I did. He’s gone now,” She was trying to sound sad. You could tell. Her voice was too high, too weepy. She was trying too hard. I raised my eyebrows.

“Did you like your dad?”

“No,” She bristled, “He should never have been a father. He was quite mad,”

“Mad?”

“Mad as a hatter. He wasn’t a hatter though. He was a scientist, which is even worse. The things he would do in his labs…” She shivered and frowned at me, “Young children like you shouldn’t know about the things he used to do.”

“He mustn't have been that bad. He introduced you to your husband,”

“Yes. Yes he did, didn’t he?”

“Uh huh. Surely that means he wasn’t all mad right?”

“Depends. It depends on how you look at it,” She gazed out of the window, masked by frost. She closed her eyes again, exhaling slowly, savouring the peace. I swallowed.

“You are happy aren’t you?” 

“Huh?” Her eyes clicked open and she turned back towards me, her glassy eyes still lost in a dream, “What do you mean?”

“You and your husband… you and him are happy aren’t you?”

She sighed and smiled, lowering herself onto the couch yet again.

“Yes we’re very happy,”

“Really?”

“Oh so content.”Her eyes began to close again, and this time I didn’t try to wake her. After a few moments, the new girl began to snore gently on our old carpet couch, probably dreaming of faraway deserts or long dead farmers or scientist fathers. 

My mother returned shortly after, having shooed the removal men off and placed all the boxes near the apartment entrance. She wasn’t going to help unpack, it wasn’t her place to do that. She sighed in annoyance when she found me sat across the new girl, who was muttering in her sleep. 

“Not much of a conversationalist,” I explained.

“I knew that already,” She groaned. She squinted at our new tenant, basking in the low winter glow. My mother’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Strange girl. Strange couple,” She muttered, “I don’t know about them kiddo. They seem…”

“Odd?”

“Dangerous. Dangerously odd,” She quickly turned around to look down the adjacent corridor leading to the apartment’s front door, as if she was being watched.

“I like ‘em. At least, I like her. She had some funny things to say when I got her to talk to me. Interesting things. You know they come from the desert, mom?”

My mother blinked, “What desert? There are no deserts around here,”

“A desert in another country obviously. It’s strange. She must have lived there a long time, maybe even her whole life. But she doesn’t seem to miss it. I know if I moved to some other country I would be crying my eyes out. But she’s different. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like she’s...relieved to be here,”

My mother looked at me for a moment, a worried expression on her face. For a moment she seemed completely lost. Then she rolled her eyes and started to walk out of the room towards the front door. 

“Don’t be silly honey,” She sighed, as we walked out of the apartment. 

The Radiator Man was climbing up the staircase to the boiler room as we closed the door behind us. As soon as I saw him, I stopped in my tracks. I stared at him, my mouth wide open. Whenever I encountered the Radiator Man, before and after this occasion, he would always make me stop, frozen in fear. Or awe. Or shock? Whatever it was. Like his wife he seemed normal enough at first glance. He was made of skin and bone, he had two eyes, a nose, legs and arms and hands. Perfectly normal. But there was something...off about him. He was huge, almost seven feet tall, with wide shoulders and a large belly. His legs and arms were more like pillars instead of limbs. He looked like he could knock someone out at a moment’s notice. Not only that but his skin seemed to melt in places. When you dared to look up at him, at certain angles he seemed to fade and different components of his body seemed to collide and meld together, so you thought you were looking at a writhing blob, or mass of hands and twisted noses and feet. Then there were his eyes. Oh god his eyes! His eyes were the worst of all. His eyes were yellow. Bright, neon yellow. No really. Like the neon they light street lamps with. On that moving day, he was using the light from his eye sockets to find his way up from the basement, his huge arms grasping at the railing as he hoisted himself up. It sounds so, so stupid now. Like, neon eyes? Really? Surely I remembered it wrong. It’s far more likely the guy just had a torch or a lamp and I just let my imagination get out of control. But I swear to you, his hands were empty. Every other time I can recall that bright, neon light, his hands were always empty. And for years, even years after the Radiator Man and his wife left and I moved on, I’ve always remembered his distorted face, grinning, his eyes like car headlights. 

He looked up at my mom and me in the corridor and went to shake my moms hand. She took the greeting hesitantly. He patted me on the head, ruffling my hair. I shivered. His fingers were rough and scratchy, and smelt of oil. He cleared his throat, a great guttural growl that made my heart pound a little faster. He cracked his neck and grinned at my mother, showing off square, white teeth. 

“Thank you for helping with today's work missus,” He said. His voice was as scratchy as his hands. It was a teenager's voice, I know that now, too high and immature for his body. He was trying to hide it, trying to make his pitch gravelly and calm, but you could tell he was out of his depth. Just as I could tell his wife wasn’t sad about her father’s death. 

“No trouble, no trouble at all,” My mom nattered, steering me towards the stairs. She clearly wanted to leave as soon as possible. 

“Thank you for keeping my missus company too. She gets awfully lonely sometimes. She doesn’t say so but she does.”

“No problem sir. No problem at all,” 

“You sure you don’t wanna stay for supper? We probably don’t have much in but-”

“It’s fine sir we've actually got something planned for tonight sir. Thanks for the offer though sir. Maybe some other time,” My moms mouth twisted into a giant, obnoxious grin. I raised my eyebrows at her but didn’t say anything. I wanted to get home just as much as she did. The Radiator Man looked at her, confused, and scratched his head. Then he sighed tiredly and shook his head. 

“Very well. Some other time then.”

“Lovely sir. Have a nice night sir! Enjoy your new home,”

“Yep,” The Radiator Man muttered, “Home,”

With that, we both descended the stairs and left him alone. 

I lay in bed that night, as the rain fell outside. I couldn’t sleep. My eyes were wide open. I couldn’t even think properly. All I could focus on was a saying my mom said once, when I was very young, a toddler, when I refused to go to sleep.

“Ah well it’s your choice sweetheart. But the Sandman’s gonna be mightily mad with you if you stay up all night,”

Sandman. Why did I just remember that now? Sandman…

Sand. Desert.

“Where’d you come from?” 

“The Desert,”

I felt like I had a whole desert under my tongue, on the roof of my mouth. I shuddered, climbing out of bed to grab a glass of water. I gulped it down but it didn’t change anything. My mouth was so, so dry. A second glass didn’t help either. Or a third. Or a lucky fourth. I sighed and made my way back to bed. Stuck within my blankets until morning, all I could think of were faraway deserts, mad scientists, labs, abandoned farmlands…

“Why’d you leave?”

“There’s nothing left to live on over there,”

I imagined the new girl in the apartment, her doll eyes sliding closed, muttering strange spells in her slumber. I imagined her husband, studying the buildings pipes in the dark with his neon eyes, his face melting in the heat. And as I drifted off to sleep, the two danced a mad waltz. They combined into a new creature, a new creation. A puzzle. They were a puzzle I needed to solve. That night, as I fell asleep, as I dreamt of strange apartments, of tea sets and radios, I didn’t realise I was about to begin a journey that would last years and haunt me the rest of my life.

“It gets lonely, all on your own. There’s no one to talk to,”

You know, she was right all along.

#writing #my writing #creative writing #short story #an experiment of sorts #the radiator man series #recollection #memories #childhood #horror #fantasy #parallel worlds #monsters #reanimation #sequel post to behind the wire #cryptid #cryptidcore #eldritch #deserts #desert folk #a new series #late halloween post #a larger project #a future project #isolation #lonliness #a thing I've been working on for a long time #oddcore #weirdcore #strange

[galadrieljones]

As You Were (Chapter 10)

Fandom: The Last of Us | Pairing: Joel x OC | Content: Fix-it, Canon Divergence, Slow Burn, Found Family, Joel Lives | Rating: Mature

Masterpost

Summary:

When Joel and Ellie take a wrong turn on their journey from Pittsburgh to Wyoming, they find themselves lost in what feels like a time warp: a beautiful place with a dark and dangerous secret, filled with painful reminders of the past. But they aren’t alone. When they meet Cici and Noah, a mother and son fighting tirelessly for survival, things change. For those with little hope to spare, family is what you make it.

This is an AU, starting after the events of the Summer chapter in the first game, and extending into the timeline of the second.

Chapter 10: The Yellow Brick Road

“Goodnight, baby girl.”

Around ten or so, Ellie was sitting in the window of the farmhouse, looking out at the rain. She was carving into a piece of wood with her knife, something she’d picked up outside. Her carvings had no direction and no intentionality. She didn’t know how to carve shapes out of wood, but she thought that would be neat to learn someday.

“Hey, Ellie. Do you want some cocoa?” said Cici. She was heating milk in a pan on the stove. She had her hair down and she was wearing soft pajamas. She looked pretty and mild in a way that seemed to Ellie as effortless.

“You guys have cocoa?” said Ellie.

Cici smiled. “We do. But no marshmallows, I’m sorry to report.”

“I definitely want some cocoa."

They all sat around in the living room, drinking their cocoa, which was delicious. Cici had some music playing quietly on the record player. It was Elton John, his Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road album from the 1970s. Ellie didn't recognize it, but like with most things she had never experienced before, she thought it was pretty neat. The music didn’t seem to bother Danielle and Becky and it brought a sort of nice, old fashioned feel to the house as if all was normal and everything would be okay, even if somewhat haunted by the past. Danielle and Becky were worried about Danielle’s father Jeb, and her brother Zach, who had been out hunting since that morning. They were supposed to be gone overnight, but the storm and the Infected was putting pressure on the situation.  

“They’ll shoot if they have to,” said Danielle, comforting Becky with her hand on her knee. Danielle was sturdier and less concerned. She was also not pregnant. That seemed to make a difference, thought Ellie. “They know what to do.”

“I locked your house tight,” said Cici. “No more sick will get in.”

“What if they break through the windows?” said Becky.

“They would only do that if there was something inside they wanted,” said Cici. “The house is dark and quiet, which is important. The sick are generally less active at night around here, because there’s just less sound.”

“Thank you,” said Becky, her red hair still braided tightly to her head, though it was getting piecey around her temples. “That’s a good reminder.”

Ellie sipped her cocoa, looking down into its chocolatey depths, thinking about how Cici was thoughtful in the way she referred to them as “sick.” The Amish girls did not seem to look at the Infected as if they were inhuman, but as if they were merely humans who had gotten sick. What if the people are still inside? Sam had said.

I'm scared of that happening to me.

Cici came over and sat down next to Ellie. Together they looked down at their cocoa, then back to the fire. Danielle had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water, and Becky had gone with her. She seemed too anxious to be alone. They were leaning against the counter now, and speaking another language, which Ellie obviously did not recognize.

“They’re speaking some sort of German,” said Cici, like she had read her mind.

“That’s so cool,” said Ellie. “What do you think they're talking about?”

”Probably Noah.”

”Noah?”

”Danielle has a crush on Noah,” said Cici, taking a sip from her cocoa. “She always has.”

”Seriously?” said Ellie.

”Yeah,” said Cici. She had her hands tucked into her sleeves. You could only see the tips of her fingers where she held the mug. “I think he liked her, too, but it was short-lived, more than a year ago, and he’s very stoic.”

”What happened?”

“William died,” said Cici, shrugging. “Noah sort of gave up after that. On a lot of stuff.”

”Geez,” said Ellie. “I’m sorry.”

”Don’t worry. I think he's finally starting to come back around,” said Cici. “But at the end of the day, Danielle’s Amish, and Noah’s not. Her religion would never allow it anyway.”

”Religion?” said Ellie. “Why would that matter? Aren’t there more important things?”

Cici shrugged. “Maybe to us.”

A little bit later, Ellie thought she saw a set of headlights come swooping up the hill, some ways down the driveway, out behind the electric gate near the trees. Ellie got spooked. She realized who it had to be, and she set down her cocoa on the coffee table and went running for the window.

“Ellie?” said Cici.

She could feel everybody looking. She touched the glass. “They’re back,” she said.

“Should you call your mom on the radio?” said Joel. He was pulling in through the trees, up the long driveway, toward the gate. It was dark, deathly quiet. “I don’t think they’re expecting us so soon.”

Noah had been quiet for most of the ride. He said, “Yeah, I'm on it.”

He took out the walkie as Joel put the truck into park, but then he thought he saw something unsettling waver over by the tree line, kind of a scribbly noise in the dark. He killed the engine, gestured for Noah to be quiet. Together, they listened. They could hear the crickets, the wind in the trees.

Then, the walkie went off. It was Cici, startling them both. She said, “Noah, is that you guys? Over.”

In the long night of the silent countryside, even the slightest disturbance could draw out the enemy. Joel shook his head, and Noah turned off the radio. Coming out of the trees then, almost immediately, interested in the sound from the truck, it was a clicker. Then one more. Then another. Noah and Joel both picked up their guns.

"If we molotov those things, more will just come out of the trees," said Noah.

“I’m guessing the fence is hot,” said Joel.

“Definitely,” said Noah.

“We need your mom to turn off the fence so we can get inside. They’re clickers, so I reckon we can make it, if we’re quiet.”

Noah turned on the walkie. He said, softly. “Mom. Do you copy? It’s us, but there’s a problem. Over.”

The frequency was quiet. Nobody was responding.

“Mom?” said Noah. “Mom, are you there?”

There was a tussle then. It was Ellie. She had picked up the radio. “Noah?” she said. “Is it you guys?”

“It’s us,” he said. “Hey. Where’s my mom?”

“She’s heading out to the crow’s nest. She told me to stay here until she radioed.”

“Shit,” said Noah. “Is the fence hot?”

“Yeah,” said Ellie. “She said to turn it off when she gives the all-clear.”

Noah looked at Joel, who took the walkie. “Ellie?” he said.

“Joel?” said Ellie. She sounded relieved to hear his voice. “Hey. Holy shit. Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine,” said Joel. “But we got clickers, outside the electric fence. We’re still in the truck.”

“Clickers?” said Ellie

A floodlight came on overhead then, sudsing the earth with pure white light and surprising the hell out of them. Joel had to shield his eyes. The sound it made, a great, electric humming, was enough to draw attention from the clickers, who screamed.

“Ellie, kill the fence,” said Joel, fixing to get the hell out of there.

“What about Cici?” she said.

“Just do it.”

Ellie obeyed. They both exited the truck at the same time. Something exploded behind them then, a long, fiery curtain. They stumbled forward, and the clickers went straight to the fire—them and twenty more, emerging from the darkness. Joel and Noah made a break for the gate. Noah hauled it open, but its convulsive moaning brought some more Infected out of the trees. Joel fired his pistol a few times into the darkness, then pulled the gate closed behind them, dropped the latch, and shouted into the radio for Ellie to hit the power. Ellie confirmed. They backed away then as a handful of runners rushed the fence. They were gutted by the electricity and burned to death in minutes, crumbling into char. The smell was terrible. Soon, all went quiet aside from the fire burning through on the other side, crackling as an ode to summer.

“What the hell just happened?” said Joel. It must have been two molotovs, maybe three to start a fire that fast and big.

“Mom?” Noah shouted up, toward the crow’s nest

“It was me,” said Cici. She was climbing down the ladder.

"It was you?" said Joel.

“Thank Jesus that worked.” Cici almost started crying as her boots hit the ground. She had been carrying her rifle which she dropped when she saw Noah. She ran to him and grabbed him by the ears. He hugged her tight, picked her up off the ground. “Thank god,” she said. “Thank god you’re okay.” Then she looked at Joel. “Thank you, Joel. Thank you.”

Joel simply nodded chivalrously, having done his part. Then, looking away so as to spare them their privacy and switched on the radio again. He said, “Good work, Ellie.”

“I’ll come out and meet you,” she said.

“No, you stay right there, where it’s safe,” said Joel. “I’m coming. Over and out.”

Ellie waited on the porch. She was ringing her hands. She hadn't realized how freaked out she'd been until that very moment. When Noah and Cici came up first, they were talking about things she couldn’t hear. Ellie watched them with a strange kind of longing and excitement, even as she felt she should probably look away. She couldn’t help it. Noah had his arm around Cici's shoulders, seemed to be reassuring her about something. Ellie had never known that sort of love before, or ever really even seen it up close. She found it to be fascinating, like watching a movie, but she was in it.

Noah saluted her as they walked by and said, “All clear, cap'n.”

She laughed.

Joel was coming up, too. He was looking around, as if on patrol. When he saw her though, he dropped his guard and smiled in this kind of bashful way. Then he came up the steps and  hooked his thumbs over his belt. "Hey there," he said.

Ellie was relieved to see him. She was relieved that he was not dead. And it was not just seeing him that put her at ease. It was his bigness, and how he filled his space. His familiar smell and how it never seemed to change. She held her hands behind her back now and said, “Hey. You made it.”

"I told you we would,” said Joel. He reached behind him then, took something out of his back pocket. It was all rolled up. “You did good back there. You and Cici both. You saved us.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“I got this for you.” He handed her the sweatshirt.

Ellie took it, shocked and confused. She immediately fanned it out, and got excited. “Holy shit,” she said. “This is for me?”

“Yes ma’am,” said Joel. “Try it on. Make sure it fits.”

She tugged it over her head and held her arms down by her sides. It was soft inside. It fit perfectly. She looked right at him and said. “How do I look?”

“Very collegiate,” said Joel. He rumpled her on the hair, once. She thanked him, stood there vibrating, just for a minute. Then she followed him into the house.  

There was a moment that evening when Joel felt himself living a momentary crisis. Keenly aware of all that had happened, he sipped cocoa and looked down at his hands. He had felt a seam rip, somewhere inside his chest, exposing a raw piece of his memory from the past twenty years. He could not pinpoint when it had happened, but he felt it now. Cold inside, he was looking out the window and leaned with his forehead on the glass. Cici had turned off the floodlight, leaving the night as quiet as it had been when they’d arrived.

At some point, Danielle, the Amish girl with the yellow hair came up beside him and stood as little and straight as a candle. It sort of took him by surprise. She said, “Hello, Joel.”

She had been introduced to him earlier. Her and her pregnant sister-in-law. Joel glanced down at her and straightened up proper, a product of his good Texas manners. “Hello,” he said. “Danielle, is it?”

“That is right,” said Danielle. She looked out the window then, into the depths of the night sky. “I just wanted to ask a question. Did you happen to see any other men while you were driving over the ridge?”

“No,” said Joel, thinking on it. “No, I don’t believe we did.”

“Okay,” she said, disappointed, looking down at her boot laces. “Thank you. I would have asked Noah, but he is busy.”

“You missing someone?” he said.

“My father and brother,” she said. “They went out hunting earlier today.”

“They know their way around the land?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I’m sure they’re fine,” said Joel. “I’m sure they just took shelter from the storm. It was pretty strong.”

“Thank you,” said Danielle. “I’m sure you’re right.”

Joel glanced back to Noah. He had been talking to Cici and Ellie over at the kitchen table, about what they’d learned back in La Crosse. “Are you and Noah friends?”

“Yes,” she said. “I mean, sort of. We’re the same age. I have known him a long time.”

“Do you all know what’s happening, with the land around here? The rivers?”

“Yes,” said Danielle, wistful. “We do. I know that Cici and Noah are preparing to leave because of it, with you and Ellie.”

“What will you do, you and your family?”

“I think we will go north,” she said, her hands balled up in the front of her dress. “We have lost everyone, and now our farm, too. We cannot stay here, especially not alone.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Joel. “About your farm, your family, your community. All of it.”

“Thank you, but you don’t need to say anything,” she said. “The Lord gives, but he also takes away. We’ve heard of other communities up north of La Crosse who may welcome us, many include Amish.”

“We met a couple of guys from a place called Midway. You know it?” said Joel.

“Yes, we have heard of it.”

“They seem to have a good thing going on, north of the spores. I’m sure they could use people like you, farmers and such.”

“Becky and I have many skills that we think we could offer. And my father and Zach, that’s my brother, they are very skilled as well.”

“There you go,” said Joel, smiling. She seemed broken somehow, very sad. He felt a little embarrassed for noticing. He said, “Are you doing okay? You just worried about your dad?”

“Yes,” she said, trying to liven up a little. She put on a very good happy face. She said, “But I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure they’re fine.”

“Okay then.” He looked back out the window. In the reflection on the glass, he could see Danielle, looking back toward the kitchen table. Noah looked up, right at her, just for a second, and she immediately turned back toward the window and sighed. Joel wondered, briefly. Perhaps? He sipped some more of his cocoa.

“Noah is brave,” she said. “Him and Cici. They have helped us for so long. It is scary to imagine life without them.”

Joel felt that same seam tugging open again, from before. It caused him strife, but it was also easy to jury-rig it shut, for now. The cocoa was warming his soul. It was trying to make his problems seem silly. “I know what you mean,” he said.

“How long have you known Ellie?”

“Not long,” said Joel.

“Well, she speaks highly of you,” said Danielle. “It seems you have been through a lot together. Do you think that sort of thing can change someone?”

“Yes, I do,” said Joel.

That night, he and Ellie were getting ready for bed in the upstairs bedroom. Danielle and Becky were sleeping in Noah’s room, across from Cici’s at the end of the hall, and Noah was sleeping downstairs. As Ellie brushed her hair in her gray pajama pants and her new sweatshirt, Joel sat thinking and looking down at his knuckles. Noah was still awake downstairs. You could hear him playing some music on the record player, real low. It was Elton John, something very old that he only remembered because it was a golden classic that he might have heard on the oldies radio station when he was a kid, or that his grandma might have listened to back at the dairy farm in Odessa. It was a song called Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. The song was nostalgic.

Goodbye, yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl.

“Hey, Joel?” said Ellie.

She was turned around now, looking back at him, holding the brush in both hands. She looked like a little girl.

“Yes,” he said.

“I was just wondering. Cici said we’re gonna leave in a couple of days. That we’re going to a place called Moline, in Illinois?”

“That’s right,” said Joel. “It’s right on the I-80, which is how we get back on the road to Tommy’s.”

”Are they gonna stay in Illinois?”

”I don’t know, Ellie. That’ll be up to them.”

She set the brush down, and then she came and sat down next to him, right next to him, on the bed. He scootched a little to give her space. The bed creaked. She pushed her sleeve up. Together they looked at the bite scar on her arm. “Should we tell them?” she said.

Joel studied it closely, the pink ridges and bumps. It was almost like a flower. A mean flower. Tenderly, he pushed the sleeve back down. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

She sighed and looked down at her feet, which barely touched the ground. “Okay.”

“How you doing?” he said.

This seemed to surprise her. She shrugged. “I’m okay. Why?”

“I was just wondering,” he said. He took a great, deep breath. "We could talk. If you want."

“Talk about what?”

“About Pittsburgh," he said. He wasn't looking at her. She was terrifying in moments like these. Joel did not fear Infected or bad guys with guns. But with Ellie, sometimes, he was speechless. He didn't know why.

“You mean about Henry and Sam?” said Ellie.

“Sure,” said Joel. “Henry and Sam.”

“I don’t know,” she said, turning slightly toward him. “Do you wanna talk?”

“I'll listen," he said. "It's just been a lot that's gone on. Spending time with Noah made me realize that."

Hanging her head then, she reached into her pocket. She switched her knife open, eyeing its shiny blade. She did this whenever she didn’t know what else to do with her hands. It was a nervous habit. “It just seems so pointless, don’t you think?”

“What seems pointless?”

“Their deaths,” she said. She closed the knife back up and put it away. “Their lives. I don’t know. It’s like, one minute they were there, and the next, they weren’t. Poof. They were dead, and we were gone. We’d made plans. Now, it’s like their lives didn’t mean anything at all. Like they never even existed.”

“They meant something to you,” said Joel. “To us. For a little while. That’s more than some can say, in the end.”

“I guess,” said Ellie. “I’m just scared. I don’t wanna lose anymore people, Joel.”

She looked up at him with big eyes, like puddles. “I know, Ellie.”

“What about you?” she said, turning the tables. “Are you okay? After La Crosse? What Noah told us, about the sacrifices, like, shit. That seems pretty gnarly.”

“It was gnarly,” said Joel. “It was. But for the most part, we came into the aftermath. There was less action than we had anticipated. I’m okay, Ellie. You don't need to worry about me.”

“Well, I worry,” she said. “So deal with it. And I just—all I mean is, if you ever wanna talk, I’ll be here. Okay?”

He was looking down at his hands again, where they were folded in his lap. He felt big and mean beside her. He wondered if he deserved her, or any of this at all. He said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. She smiled then, like she was satisfied with the conversation and therefore, unburdened. Then, she got up and went back to the mirror and continued to brush her hair. “I used Cici’s shampoo today,” she said. “Does my hair look shinier to you?”

Joel found this very amusing. He said, “Yeah. You know, I think it actually does.”

“You should try it," she said.

“Ha,” said Joel.

“You might just like it…”

“I’m turning out the light now.”

“I’m serious…”

“Goodnight, kiddo.”

She sighed, set down the brush on the bureau. She seemed herself again, so positive and bright. It was a relief.

“Goodnight, Joel," she said.

That night, Joel could not sleep. He felt like his brain was working overtime for some reason. After Ellie dropped off and her breathing gone even, he got up silently and put his boots back on and went outside to chop some firewood. He had noticed it dwindling in supply upon their return, and it would still be a few days before they left the farm. The nights were getting colder. He loaded his shotgun and went out past the creek to a healthy pine grove just inside the confines of the electric fence. He didn't hear a soul out there, Infected or otherwise, only the bubbling of the poison creek and the crickets and the whip-poor-wills. The rain had stopped but the sky was still dark with clouds, and you could not see the moon. He cleaned up a few logs on the edge of the tree line, bound them up and hauled them in on a pallet, which he pulled on a rope. Once back to the house, he split the logs and left the axe on the stump, stacked several bundles near the chimney and then carried another bundle back to the house.

As he was walking in the door, he ran into Cici. She had on a blue wool jacket and a pair of warm gloves. He surprised the hell out of her when he came in the door. It made him feel bad.

"Joel," she said. "Holy shit. You scared me."

"I'm sorry," he said, setting down the bundle and unbuttoning his coat. "I didn't know you were up."

"I couldn't sleep," she said. "I thought I'd chop some firewood."

"Beat you to it," said Joel, showing her the bundle under his arm.

She seemed a little dumbfounded, taking off her gloves. "You didn't have to do that."

"Well, I did it anyway," said Joel. He went into the living room, which was empty. Noah's sleeping bag was still rolled up next to the fireplace. Joel tossed in a log, then another, started stoking it with the cast iron poker. "I see that Noah is elsewhere."

Cici shrugged. She was over in the kitchen now, leaning against the counter. "He’s probably with Danielle, out in the crow's nest."

"Danielle?" said Joel. "The Amish girl?"

Cici smiled. "It's not as weird as it seems." She poured herself a glass of bourbon. "You want some?"

"Sure, I'll have a little," said Joel. He settled down into the couch with a great big sigh.

Cici joined him. They both held heavy-bottomed glasses, poured neat with about two fingers of whiskey. "Here's to you," she said.

"Me?" said Joel.

"Yeah," said Cici. "For helping Noah. I'm just like, extremely thankful."

Joel looked down into his whiskey, swirled it around a little. "He's a pretty brave kid," said Joel.

"Yeah, well. Maybe too brave," said Cici. "Still."

They touched glasses, drank. The whiskey was good. The fire was very warm, and very big.

"So how does that work?" said Joel. "With Noah, and Danielle? I wondered if maybe something was going on, but ain't that like, against the rules?"

"It definitely is," said Cici. "But they're teenagers, and in a few days, they will both have to leave this place, and they'll probably never see each other again."

"So what you're saying is, fuck the rules," said Joel.

"Pretty much," said Cici. "I'm mostly kidding though. They're just friends. But they grew up with each other. That changes people."

"Yeah, I get it."

"I worry about her, a little," said Cici. "She's a nice girl, and she's braver than you think. But so much in Danielle's life is riding on her finding a suitable husband."

"And that ain't Noah."

"He ain’t very suitable, no."

"If we’re looking at the grand scheme of things," said Joel, "it seems like repopulating the earth is a little more important than religious rules right now. But I ain't been close to God in a long time. That's just my sinner’s opinion." He drank.

"You sound like Ellie," said Cici, smiling into her whiskey. "She said almost the same exact thing."

Joel looked at his watch. "Ellie's a good kid," he said.

"Have you ever been married, Joel?" said Cici. She was looking at the fire as she said it, not at Joel. She drank her whiskey.

"Yep," he said.

A little time went by. As usual, she did not press him for details. She was a mysterious woman. She never dropped her hand.

He felt her looking at him then. As a mystery, she was full of plot twists. So he looked at her, too. Her hair was a kind of dirty blond, nothing special, and it was down now and tucked behind her ears. She had fine bones. Her eyes were brown: dark and deep, like bullets. They were so different than Ellie's, which seemed to float on the surface of her face. He expected her to say something, but she didn't. Instead, she just reached for his left hand and picked it up by the wrist. Her touch jolted him upright. He thought she was looking at his wedding ring finger, but she wasn’t.

"You need a new watch," she said.

You kept complaining about your broken watch.

He looked down as if seeing it for the first time. He scratched his head. She gave him back his wrist and he pulled his sleeve down to cover up the whole thing. "Should we put the music back on?" he said. It put a cap on the conversation.

She went along with his suggestion, finished her whiskey and got up from the couch. She crossed the room in her socks, dropped the needle on the record player, then she made a face at the Elton John. "This is Noah's," she said.

"Well, it ain't Madonna," said Joel, "but it'll do just fine."

"Excuse me?" she said.

They drank more whiskey and talked, sitting on opposite ends of the couch.

***

On the record player: 

“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John

***END PART 1: THE FLOODPLAIN***

Coming soon - PART 2: THE 1-80

Thank you for reading!! <3 -gala

#the last of us #tlou #the last of us 2 #tlou2 #joel tlou #ellie tlou #joel miller #ellie williams #joel x oc #as you were

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #3)

(cw: alcohol) <-Previous | Next-> ----------- 12/18/87  4:04 AM

Hey. 

Don’t know why I’m keeping up with this.

But don’t worry, I don’t think so little of you that I’d believe you were dead without question.

My first theory was that it was all a big joke. Some prank you’d set up with literally everyone other than me, probably payback for one thing or another. Far-fetched, but, hey. Less far-fetched than you being dead.

That theory was stretched to its limits pretty much right away. Game Central Station went on lockdown for a couple days, and then there was this… event. I guess it’d be called a memorial or something. Whatever it was, it was a Devout thing. There were preachers and everything, and GCS was done up all fancy. Everyone kind of pretended to be Devout that evening, all dressed in blue, like they’d all run for cover under this one idea that they thought would protect them. What you did, no one had ever seen before. I don’t think anyone even knew it was possible. And once they did, no one knew how to handle it. The world did not seem safe anymore. The whole arcade was just hushed and shaken and at a loss.

But, I gotta say, this “memorial,” it really wasn’t any sort of honor to your memory, or a funeral, or anything like that. I’m certain you would have wanted the arcade to come together and collectively wonder how in Litwak’s name they were going to go on without you, but that just didn’t happen. Hate to break it to you, but after the stunt you pulled, you stopped being a ‘good guy’, shot right past ‘bad guy’, and landed square on ‘worst guy’. No one really came to proclaim their love for the worst guy.

I am sorry about that.

Pretty much every sprite in the arcade was there, though. My whole game came out, with Fix-it being way too clingy, as usual. When I was able to get some time away from him, I even found Tapper. He closed his game down so that he could serve traditional blueberry wine at the memorial. When I saw him standing behind that table draped in blue cloth, part of me hoped that he would shed a bit more light on the situation for me. But he, like everyone else, reacted to me in a way I’d never seen. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, not quite with happiness, but with a sort of relief that seemed almost painful. It looked like he would have hugged me if I’d let him. Instead, he just told me how glad he was to see me all in one piece. And how sorry he was, a sentiment I was quickly growing tired of hearing. He did give me an entire bottle of that wine with his condolences, though, so I didn’t complain. 

But I didn’t drink it, either. I felt a storm toiling in my belly, and it thundered at the thought of ingesting anything.

The event had a handful of preachers lined up to say their piece on the situation and try to give the masses some sort of faith to hold onto in such dark times. I didn’t absorb too much, but I was admittedly not paying close attention. My bored, wandering mind had found something else, and gotten entirely stuck on it. 

There were two empty game ports that had otherwise been filled, last I could remember. Your game, and the game you hated. The entrances had been framed with blue ribbons and flowers of all things, and it was crossed with Surge’s yellow tape, barring entry. There were no lights, no gold hallway, just a black, empty terminal with a hole where the train tunnel should have been. I could see right through to the floor of the arcade.

There’s no faking that. It didn’t feel like a joke anymore. It went back to feeling like a dream.

It was all a really long in-depth dream, and I’d wake up on your couch, covered in candy wrappers, with a wicked hangover. Then I could tell you that your memorial flowers were blue, and you’d make gagging noises and tell me to lay off the sugar before bed. There would be soda and takeout leftovers for breakfast, and the arcade would open and close like any other day, and I’d no doubt end up on that couch again, covered in candy, goofing off with you. As per usual.

Just the thought cut me out of the heavy atmosphere around me and placed me in a fragile, eerie calm. That’s when a preacher finally earned my attention.

She was the only one who even spoke directly about you. None of the others had the nerve to do anything other than tiptoe. Though, she never did actually say your name. She just referred to you by a lot of unflattering descriptors that I don’t want to honor by repeating. Overall, her point was that you, by disrespecting the Devs’ design, let into your code a festering digit of binary that spread and corrupted your once favored, blessed, pure data. She said, in your final days, that you played host to a virus of avarice. You abandoned all the blessings and protection of the Devs for your selfish desires, and took innocent lives with you. 

So then, of course, she turned it all into some bullroar cautionary tale. She said we are all, as sentient beings, at risk of your “fatal corruption,” and reminded everyone how to avoid a repeat of this disaster: The textbook long-winded “Follow the Devs, follow the program, sit down, stay still, shut up.”

Barf, right? I thought so, too. I’d had quite enough of it. Someone had to shut her up, and no one else was going to do it. I gave even less thought to consequence than I normally would -- none of it was real, in my head, so none of it would matter. It was free game. 

So, I did just about the worst thing I could have done, and painted some fireworks. In the brightest red I could conjure up. You know, the color they should have been using for you. 

Those split seconds between the whistle and the bang were some of the best I’ve had since you left, purely for the look on the stupid preacher’s face when I cut her off. But when the explosions hit, and Game Central was bathed in red light, and the whole crowd broke into screams, something deep inside of me changed. 

I panicked.

That snap reaction, that fear that did not feel irrational, but rather, instinctual, took hold of me like a gamer’s command. I ran. I needed to get away, far away, quick. You know I live for my fireworks. But right then, the screams and the burning lights, they were something right out of a nightmare.

Even if I hadn’t been clambering to get away, that would have been my last moment at the event. The crowd didn’t take kindly to me or my display, so I was chased out of GCS by an instant angry mob. Shouting abuse and throwing their wine glasses and all that. 

I hid myself away in my game, trying to rationalize it all. It had to be a dream. It was just a vivid, terrible dream, and I could wake up at any moment. So, I had the unique experience of staying up all night just trying to wake up.

There could be no reality where you and your game were gone.

#fanfiction #fanfic #wreck it ralph #turbo #make it mavis #tapper #homesick #original character

[therealkatekane]

My Journey

At the tender age of thirty-five, I have discovered anime. Don’t get me wrong, I first watched Princess Mononoke at sixteen. It was my first exposure to Eastern thought, and it blew my tiny adolescent western mind, and I loved it. But outside of Ghibli movies and Voltron (which I don’t count), I’ve never sought it out on my own.

As a previous post might indicate, I am obsessed with Godzilla, so it isn’t as if I’m closed off from Japanese media. Most of the video games I play are Japanese. (Fire Emblem, Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, pretty much anything Nintendo.) One of my partners is even a Pacific Islander of Japanese descent, who lived in Japan, who speaks Japanese. And we’ve been together seven years. But all of the sudden, now I’m on this quest to make up for lost time and consume all the anime I can.

(Note: If you have suggestions, I would love them. But I would prefer if they were queer. I want women in love with other women. It doesn’t have to be overt, but I don’t want any heterosexual romances, and would prefer as few male characters as possible. I’ve seen enough male-driven storylines, thanks.)

But today, I am here to word-vomit all about the queer extravaganza that is Senki Zesshou Symphogear. Because I am addicted. I’ll start with this picture.

And so begins our journey...

The show starts out the gate being super gay. Tsubasa (Blue) and Kanade (Red) are each a half of the singing duo Zwei Wing. They refer to one another as partners and there is a lot of “We can do anything as long as we’re together” and “I’m going to sing with you forever” type stuff.

Then there is Hibiki and Miku:

Friends since childhood, they are the core couple of the show. Hibiki is the main character who typically discovers she’s not just a normal girl and has the ability to wield a Gear, which allows her to become this adorable badass superhero. Miku is her anchor in the mundane world. She is frequently the one person or thing that can reach/inspire/motivate Hibiki. She is what drives Hibiki.

Hibiki calls Miku her sunflower, the place where she is warmest, where she will always return to. 

Which brings me to the point that they share a bed. Despite having bunk beds, they always sleep together. Except when they’re fighting, then they go to their respective bunks. It’s just so cute.

The characters are delightfully complex. Hibiki is as pure as the driven snow but she isn’t naive. Usually, pure characters are oblivious or ignorant to the danger or evil around them, but Hibiki isn’t. She knows fighting is dangerous. She knows people can be evil, but those things never deter her. It makes her incredibly brave, even when confronted with someone she knows is malicious, she extends her hand in friendship because she chooses to believe the best in others. It is nice to see a character who is sweet and pure without being an utter dumbass. 

We’ve all seen it. The sweet, precious hero is surprised that the bad guy who has been trying to kill them for an entire season won’t be their friend. Hibiki is NOT like that. She always gives people the opportunity for kindness without expectation, with the full awareness that it might be rejected.

Miku is the sweet, somewhat demure, nurturing one. She is the caretaker character. You might initially think she’s the standard timid and meek best friend stock character. But nope. She does not suffer fools. She is not an enabler. She is not afraid to call anybody out on their bullshit, regardless of who they are. She does what she thinks is right which also makes her very brave. She wants to protect Hibiki as much as Hibiki protects her.

Their dynamic is just lovely. Hibiki can kind of be a mess sometimes. She’s absent-minded, never on time, doesn’t prioritize school work. Miku is always there to pull her back down to earth, to center her. If she feels Hibiki is losing focus or deviating from who she is, Miku will always be the one to ground her. She truly is Hibiki’s anchor, her safe place. And I love it.

Oh and there is my dear Yukine Chris. I won’t go super in detail, but I will leave you with this:

It is exactly what it looks like. A queer D/s relationship. Unfortunately, it’s toxic and unhealthy. A whole lot of “I’m the only one that can love you” and “You have to obey me or I won’t love you anymore” and “I’m angry so you have to let me take it out on you” and so on. It’s all taken directly from the Abusive Relationship Handbook.

But worry not, we are not subjected to the toxicity for terribly long, and Chris gets the kindness and love she deserves from her new friends and senpai. I’d go more in depth, but y’know... spoilers.

Now, let us march forward to season two where our Roster of Queerness is completed by three additional characters. Two of which are so cute I cannot even fucking stand it. 

I call them my Precious Gay Babies.

Kirika and Shirabe are two little baby gays that grew up in an orphanage with only one another and Maria, who is like a big sister to them. But oh my fucking god they are so precious I can’t even handle it.

Kirika is the more animated of the two. The sweet, cheerful ray of sunshine. And Shirabe is the quieter, more solemn of the two. They literally have a fight where they are shouting back and forth at each other how much they love one another. If this show was only about them, I would watch it. They are just way too cute.

Shirabe can be a little possessive of Kirika, and Kirika knows who she belongs to. If another girl touches her, she knows Shirabe will put the stomp down on it. I usually find behavior like that kind of squicky and toxic, but in this instance it isn’t too gross because I think it’s rooted in their background. They’ve only ever had one another so they’re extremely protective of each other.

I mean, just look.

Look at my Precious Gay Babies!

LOOK AT THEM!! 

They are so cute and precious and I love them.

Let me wrap this up with Maria.

I won’t go too in depth with Maria because I don’t want to be spoiler-y. But 1) She’s fantastic. 2) No, I don’t know what’s up with her hair. 3) She is totally queer for Tsubasa, and I’m sailing on that ship. 

I am midway through the fourth season. So, I haven’t caught up to the most current season (5) but holy hell. I am invested.

It’s just a bunch of girls (oh! And there is even a genderless, sexless character who is precious and I love) being in love with other girls and fighting monster things.

I fucking love this show. Right now, it’s kind of vying for top spot with Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid. Which may only be my number one because it’s a little more overt in its women sleeping with other women thing. It’s equal parts “fuck yes!” combined with “am I high right now?” That’ll be my next post, I digress.

If you are in the mood for some light but surprisingly good entertainment featuring a strong line of female characters who all fall in love with one another, then I cannot recommend Senki Zesshou Symphogear enough. It is fan-fucking-tastic. It doesn’t require too much thought, but it makes up for it by giving you a ton of warm, fuzzy feels.

And if you can recommend me anything similar. Or anything that heavily features queer women, I would be forever in your debt.

Oh, and PS there is a mobile game, which is how I found the show in the first place. Downloaded the game, played it, then got all fucked up on the anime. Worth it.

#symphogear #senki zesshou #tachibana hibiki #hibiki #miku kohinata #yukine chris #kirika akatsuki #maria cadenzavna eve #tsubasa kazanari #shirabe x kirika #amou kanade #zwei wing #hibiki x miku #precious gay babies

[pact-mom-kyrie]

Hey after a year I wrote a thing. I called it “Brooding nerds“ because is about Alesso (sniper, priest of Grenth) being broody after the event of Hall of Chains. He got some weird powers because hey, he had been dead once before, in Queensdale. He feels alienated. Fron his brothers, from the guild, from everything. So his brother Enzo (mesmer, nerd) goes to talk to him.

Shout out to @disaster-bi-canach for always being there. I mention her main Sinéad here. Go and read all her stuff. Is really good.

Also HAPPY FANFIC DAY!!!

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

The nights on Istan were cold, or at least the wind blowing up Champion’s Dawn made him feel like it. The little town was gleaming under the moonlight, pretty like a painting with Churrhir cliffs beyond. 

This was the ancient homeland, thought Alesso. Or at least part of it. He was not knowledgeable enough about the story of Zephaniah, he has bearely heard the story of his ancestor, the man he had only known as Zephare. The only thing he knew for sure was what Koss had said to him: “Another touched by the gods?! By Dwayna, never knew a child of Zephaniah could get this pale, huh?”

Somehow it hurt. But he didn’t say anything. Koss seemed like the kind of nosy grandpa he had never known. Salva noticed though and glared at the old man. Somehow the judgmental gaze of sweet, kind Salvatore made him feel guilty, or at least act like it.

It felt nice, but it was not enough to make him feel better.

That was the reason behind him being sit down, brooding on his own in a cliff, reaper-forged rifle by his side. He had given the excuse of going up just to shoot any awakened that dared come close to the town. But there were none, otherwise, he would have seen them walking through the plains or the breach… that was kilometers away.

Such accuracy was unnatural.

“The eyes of a god” Maesta said while they were in the Priory. He only thought it was about the fact that now they shone like embers, but he realized soon enough that it was something more terrible than that.

When he shot an awakened soldier.

From the cliffs.

With his eyes closed.

“Now you’re just fuckin’ cheatin’ partner” Exclaimed Johnny, his voice a mixture of anger and excitement. 

Alesso knew that yeah, he was cheating. But he couldn’t stop it. He had been dead twice, and that allowed him to gain some weird boon, and it felt extremely weird. After all, who else could say they had held a tiny bit of that kind of power?

All of sudden, a portal appeared by his side, and from its glimmering depths, a figure appeared. Tall and aristocratic.

“Good evening, little brother, nice weather for alienated brooding isn’t it?” Lorenzo has managed, after all their years as adventurers, perfected the art of princely sneer. Alesso glared at him, but could only mumble a weak curse. Years ago, he would have said “Yeah, fuck you”, and close himself up. But not now. Not like before.

“Don’t you have an entire observatory to read? Or did you run out of paper for interviewing zombie grandpa?”

The mesmer almost laughed, but he just gasped as if scandalized “Don’t call Koss Dejarin like that, young man” he faked the intonation of a scolding mother “he is not your grandpa!”

Alesso snorted, his devilish laughter barely escaping his lips “So you’re accepting he is a zombie, right?”

“Well, to be honest...” Enzo got lost in thought for a second, half-joking, half-serious “Awakened have peculiar characteristics, and have different needs from other types of risen-type creature, so they belong to their own category in Howard’s classification of unde-”

“You fucking nerd” The sniper rolled his eyes, huffing slightly “Whatever, tell everyone I’m ok, just thinking of stuff and… stuff”

The redhead sighed deeply and sat down, looking slightly distraught. “Oh no, I came here because I am worried, you little twerp. You’ve been way too quiet and sullen. That is not normal”

“What is normal then?” Claimed Alesso, wiggling a bit far from his brother. He was slightly scared, not ready to face any of his siblings, and tried to mask his fear with annoyance.

It wasn’t working.

“You being with us, smiling when no one looks, competing with Johnny over shots, praying for the fallen of Elona, just...” Enzo looked down, into the town “not like this, not as if we still were the same idiots running around Queensdale”

Alesso winced. Queensdale. It had been five years, it used to feel like a month ago, and now it felt like yesterday.

“Gyro behaved the same when I came back this time. He checked my pulse, he looked at my pupils, almost asked me for a blood test, as if he believed I was… as if I am-”

“You are not dead, Alessandro Zeppeli” The voice of Enzo broke a bit as if he was trying not to sob “You re here, with us. Still the same fool that tried to wrestle a spider queen, still the same child that broke into the home of Thomas Silvertogue to learn how to be a spy”

Those words felt like a knife stabbing his heart. Lorenzo was not the kind of man who broke easily, even if his emotions were there for everyone to see. It was not simple nostalgia, but a sort of awed reminiscence, and Alesso could not help to feel it too. 

“I’m scared” He murmured. It would have been better if he didn’t remember the last time he had said that. The sight of the ashes of Commander Steinbrecher in an urn, the greatest hero of all Tyria, had sunken his heart into the abyss of terror.

“I know” Enzo replied softly “The letter you gave me. Maesta… she wrote about everything”

Alesso lowered his head, feeling smaller. Silent in his own uncertainty. He had a snarky comment ready, but he felt too tired to say it. He was tired of hiding his thoughts behind the words of an asshole.

His brother sighed “You didn’t read it” It was not a question “You had a letter from a noble of Kryta, an agent of the Shining Blade, and didn’t even peek under the seal, knowing it may have some valuable intel. Thank you”

“What? She is my friend. Besides I don’t know if she had enchanted it or something” the thief tried to explain, not ready to show how much he cared about their relationship “Also I don’t wanna read the correspondence of someone whom actually thinks you are hot enough to fuck”

Lorenzo scoffed, no doubt rolling his eyes. “There were no details of that kind if you are interested, dear brother. Actually...” His tone changed to a more solemn one “She was asking for an explanation about… the way I said goodbye in Lion’s Arch”

The sniper raised his gaze. That was not a good memory, if anything, it was extremely awkward to remember Enzo being a jerk towards anyone, more so the woman he loved. “Did she break up with you via letter? I mean you mocked her for being emotional...”

“I am perfectly aware of what I did and I am ready to face punishment for my actions” Once more, the princely manners return “but that is not the point, as a matter of fact, the letter made me realize that we have something in common”

“That we deserve a slap for being assholes in serious moments?” Alesso raised an eyebrow, cringe clawing his heart. Enzo looked surprised, not ready for such a display of painful self-awareness.

“No, not that. Maybe a bit of that, but this is something completely different. Something we cannot… solve, so to speak” Enzo looked above them, gazing at the starry sky, “She wrote you were given a portion of Grenth’s power. As well as she did, but since you’ve been to his realm twice, your abilities got… stronger”

The eyes of a god. The reason for his accuracy, his eyes changing, now gleaming in the darkness. 

“Here is the question, Alesso: do you think you’re the only one who has felt the power of a god running through his blood?” It was a serious question. Way too precise. He would have expected it from Salva, or from Commander Sirhasi, but not Lorenzo. Then again, he had the bad habit of underestimating Lorenzo.

“I think so. I am the only one who has been so close to the gods...” he stated with unnerving confidence “Damn now I feel like an arrogant little shit”

“Well you arrogant little shit!” the mesmer exclaimed joyfully, opening his arms “You are SO wrong I could write a whole treatise on how wrong you are. But since I love you so much, I will give you a short version: I have felt the power of a god too, and it was fucking awful”

And so, Alessandro Zeppeli, a descendant of the house of Zephaniah, Lightbringer of the Order of Whispers, opened his mouth and gasped like a fish out of water. Because he had no idea what his brother was talking about.

“W- what? When? Why?!” He almost yelled, more confused than ever. He looked all around him, somehow waiting for someone to appear, to confirm it was all a joke at his expense.

“Do you remember the battle in Lion’s Arch against the minions of Zhaitan?” 

How would he forget that? He had spent days with Ihan and Joseph cleaning the city, trying to heal his sadness with risen’s blood. Until Commander Sirhasi asked if he was alright and he ended up crying like the child he was into the norn woman’s bosom.

“Yes, that face tells me that you do” Enzo whispered. Maybe lost in his own memories of those awful times. “Steward Gixx told Magisters Irene and Gialinn to help him with a relic of Balthazar. He thought that someone had to wield its power and since it was a human god...”

“It had to be a human, and there were no other nerds close to you” he muttered.

“Yes. I had to carry a part of the spirit of a god of fire, fury, and mass murder. As powerful as I felt, it was not a good experience. I thought nothing of it later, just a weird experience in an extremely hard time. Until Balthazar returned..” he lowered his head, while Alesso put the pieces together in his head.

“Whatever remained of the fucker within you, resonated with him, then” The sniper stated, only understanding the implications a second later “So your behavior, the fire that sometimes escaped from your illusions… that was Balthazar...”

Enzo nodded “Yes. One time I spat molten embers, one night I cried fire, and sometimes I just wanted to kill someone. Anyone. And I hid it all from everyone but my colleagues of the Priory”

“Well shit, even I didn’t saw that coming, except the part when you almost scared Cesare to death, of course,” Alesso looked at his brother, making him recoil slightly “Did you use your illusions to hide? Because you are good, but not that good”

“You rude prick. I happen to be that good” Lorenzo sneered “I was scared of any of you realizing it, I didn’t want you t think I was going to join the Zaishen or something like that”

Alesso moved closer to his brother “I get it... but if there was anyone of us who would have joined that prick, it would have been anyone but you” he saw the mesmer smiling, moved by his trust “After all, the stick in your ass wouldn’t let you bend the knee towards that monster”

“Fuck off” the strange laughter of Enzo pierced the night, sounding like a weird harpy in the cliffs “The point is: you are not alone, dumbass. Your god loved you. Maybe all that happened is sad, and I cannot imagine how you feel about it but...” He sighed and hugged Alesso from the side “You are still out little brother. The one who creeps us out because he looks a lot like dad. You’re part of the best and strongest guild in Tyria. The weirdest guy of the whole Pact...”

Now it was the turn of Alesso to laugh, like a tiny devil mocking Champion’s Dawn “I get it, you old cheesy geezer” He returned the hug, and felt his loneliness fading away “Thank you, really”

“I know, I am amazing. You are welcome” The fake pride of Lorenzo was even worse than his stupid smile, and he knew it “No, but in all seriousness, it is alright. You can tell me every time you feel bad about your existential crisis, at least regarding your godly issues. You’re my brother, and we are very similar....”

“Ew. Don’t remind me that. Makes me wanna hide under a rock” Alesso broke the hug, stood up, and took his rifle before looking up to the sky, smiling “Maybe Grenth is gone but... I feel I can still carry his will as long as I am with you, my family... bunch of losers” 

Lorenzo also stood up, stretching his back “You better. Without you, we wouldn’t be as good as we are. Also, I wouldn’t be able to fulfill my main familial obligation without you”

Knowing what kind of obligation he was talking about, Alesso sneered and said a single sentence. “To keep Cesare humble? Alright. Seems all this ‘Hero of Three Nations’ thing has started to go to his head, do you have a plan?”

The redhead smiled, malice covering his face “Oh yes, it includes portals. Lots of portals” he stated while opening one by their side.

“I may have an idea, but you lead the way”

The two brothers entered the shimmering pond of light, and for a moment there was nothing but peaceful silence in Istan.

Until the shriek of a heroic guardian pierced the night.

#Them Boys #Alessandro Zeppeli #Lorenzo Zeppeli #My writing

[deniigi]

So on the subject of Lying by Omission and Inimitable, how would Big Red react to seeing his dad again? How would his dad react to seeing him?

oho.

well.

I have a snippet of something terrible to give you an idea of how he would react:

(trigger warning for self harm, mental illness, auditory hallucinations.)

This piece is part of a larger one which examines how Sam understands Jack’s role within Matt’s life at the present in Inimitable. It’s not pretty, so I’m putting it under the cut.

——-

Matt didn’t talk much about his father, which Kirsten chocked up to a kind of slow-burn survivor’s guilt.

He did, however, talk to his father, which Sam was alarmed by.

The first time, he’d walked past Matt gripping his head in his hands in his office, murmuring furiously to himself in the dark.

He’d seemed at first to be reading to himself, but he couldn’t be reading. His hands were buried in his hair.

Sam realized then that he was having a conversation. A full-on conversation with himself. He hadn’t been able to hear much of what Matt was actually saying, but it had been enough to hear him say ‘well you would say that, wouldn’t you, old man?’

Sam had left him to it with his heart pounding.

He’d been scared. Scared that his teacher was losing it. Scared that this guy who’d been the first in ages to recognize him and be kind to him for the sake of it might lose himself. It had felt selfish. It made Sam feel sick. But he’d realized later that it wasn’t selfish.

Matt was his…something now.

His teacher. His mentor. His father figure or something close to it.

He didn’t have any parents anymore. Matt played that role whether he admitted to it or not and Sam let him, whether he admitted to it or not.

Seeing him struggle with some kind of hallucination and being scared of that wasn’t selfish as an employee would feel if their boss got fucked up and was about to be replaced with a real dickhead of a new one. It was the kind of selfish that a kid felt when their parent got sick and couldn’t look after them. It was swirl of worry and fear and a desperation for this person to go back to being their normal happy selves because that was how they were meant to be. That’s how they deserved to be.

It was a normal reaction, Sam assured himself.

He went and sheepishly poked his head into Kirsten’s office and mumbled something to her about checking on Matt and she was up in a flash.

Matt’s doc changed his meds after that. He was having too much anxiety that he’d been hiding from people.

 –

The second time it happened was in between the old meds and new meds and about six cases that needed more lawyers than their firm had. And Matt was kind of…

Scary.

He was angry.

Then he was sobbing.

Then he was angry that he was sobbing and he hurt himself. He really, really hurt himself. Foggy had to yell at him to make him calm down enough for him to pick the glass out of his skin.

Then he hurt himself again, this time on purpose. He had to go to the hospital for that one; they couldn’t treat a wound that deep at home.

It was heart-stopping.

Kirsten told Sam to keep away. She and Foggy took over the role that Matt usually played when he was smiling. They took shifts, one of them doing things to keep Sam out of the line of fire, away from spaces where he might witness Matt’s breakdowns. The other tried to keep Matt grounded, tried to keep him from swinging too badly and seeking out Sam to apologize for things that he hadn’t done (yet).

It was strange; really strange to be treated like the son of this man who he’d only known for almost two years now. But Foggy and Kirsten seemed to know better than both him and Matt what their relationship was.

They always did.

They knew Matt better than he knew himself a lot of time, it seemed. And they were good–really, really good at predicting his moods and behaviors while he struggled through the waves of paralyzing anxiety and cold, empty depression.

But they were human.

Sam caught Matt screaming at his father. An illusion of his father. A ghost that no one else could see or hear or feel.

Matt railed at him. Asked him why the fuck he’d been so stupid. Why he’d been so naïve. Why he hadn’t just done what was best for both of them and let his wife abort Matt before things had gotten too far.

Matt blamed his father for saddling him with the devil—the mental illness truly—that made his life one long drawn out rage with spots of depression and flecks of false hope.

He spoke to the man like he was standing right behind him. And then he listened to what the ghost was saying back to him.

That was the scary part.

Matt listened. The ghost spoke to him and he listened.

Kirsten heard him shouting and came running to help. She startled upon seeing Sam in the hallway and caught him just as he made to take the last step up from the stairs. She told him to go back downstairs to his room.

She promised that things would be okay. Matt was just having a hard time at the moment. That was all. He would be okay.

But Sam’s throat had closed.

He wanted to help.

That was his teacher. His mentor.

Matt held Sam tight against his chest when Sam was hurt or crying or grieving or screaming. Matt did that for him. He wanted—no, needed to return the favor.

He had to return the gesture.

He was suffocating.

———-

The answer, anon, is that Inimitable Matt wouldn’t actually deal with Jack’s reappearance half as well as LBO’s Matt did.

He’s been through too much. He’s got some serious problems with abandonment and when he gets out of his depth, he focuses a lot of his frustration and violence towards this imaginary Jack in his head.

I think, if they were to meet again, Inimitable Matt would be so standoffish and stiff and tense that they wouldn’t really even be able to have a conversation. And straight up? I feel like that would break Jack’s heart and send him spiraling into guilt because yeah, this is exactly what he was afraid would happen and he would absolutely feel like he deserved it.

It’s a tough situation because obviously, I want to say that Matt and Jack would fall right back into step, but Inimitable Matt has moved on and he is trying to be a father figure to Sam (whether he admits it or not) and an important part of that is realizing where his own dad when wrong and realizing how much damage he’s endured because of that. And man.

Sometimes it is really hard to forgive even the best intentions.

#fic #inimitable verse #samuel chung #matt murdock

[scattered-irises]

LONG AWAITED CONCLUSION TO THAT ZEXAL PHILOSOPHICAL CHAT I POSTED A YEAR (or two) AGO

Part i

Basically, the theory is: Tron is a figment of the Arclights’ imagination and it’s actually just Byron going around messing everything up. Tron is a symbol of the corruption of the Arclights. 

****

And so, I pose you this question, Phosphorous. What if Tron never existed and was just a metaphorical representation for Byron's hatred and anger? What if the Barian World hadn't done anything to him and instead, just made him an angrier old man? So instead of this creepy, laughing child, we have this creepy man who goes around ruining people's lives for the sake of his revenge. 

The child is just something the Arclight brothers made up because they couldn't stand the fact that their father had become like that. But that was why they still followed him. Because he was still their father.

I see your point there. It has plausibility, muses Phosphorous. 

The reason why Tron erased their old names was because it was a way for all of them to disassociate their current selves with their past selves. They have changed too much to be considered Byron, Christopher, Thomas and Michael anymore. Christopher has turned extremely cold and calculating compared to his happier, gentle brother attitude when he was younger.

And Thomas...the poor child. He used to be a happy boy that teased his younger sibling but as IV, he masks himself as a happy celebrity loved by all in the world and underneath that mask is a sadistic monster and underneath that mask is a son that just desperately wants his father back and will do anything to get it and underneath that mask is a lonely young man who wishes to be understood.

Arguably, Michael is the one who remains closest to his original self. He's still the beloved younger brother and like when they were younger, still has a close relationship with Thomas. But he's cracked beneath his placid smile and gentle nature. When angered, he lashes out terribly and like Thomas, will do anything, even murder, to achieve his family's goals.

And so, one could argue that Tron is basically just an overall representation that their family has changed for the worse.

“How much autonomy do the brothers have? and how do they relate to others as they attempt to fulfill their families goals?” poses Phosphorous.

  Ah, ah. An insightful query, my friend. They are pretty much never seen doing things of their own free will. Even when it seems like they are enjoying themselves (I.E III sneaking into Yuma's house to eat lunch and meet him. It actually was just a scouting mission on his family's next target), their actions are meant to serve ulterior motives. In the end, all of the things they do is in the name of serving the family. 

A somewhat random note, Christopher looks at Thomas with contempt. They're basically polar opposites (But not really. Once Christopher gets emotional, he's just as broken and destructive as Thomas). 

Thomas has a grudging respect for Christopher because a part of him still recognizes him as his older brother. 

Christopher seems to care a bit more for Michael, but when Michael was being tortured, he watched the scene at the insistence of Tron. At the end of it though, he turns away, hinting at a bit of a conscience. 

It's Thomas and Michael that are more of a sibling relationship. This is most likely because they have spent all of their lives together while Christopher had been absent for 5 years from their lives. He was gone when Thomas was 12 all the way to when he turned 17 and Michael was 10 and is now 15

Thomas genuinely cares for Michael, going as far as to shout at Tron for treating his brother like that. Christopher immediately silences him. 

Michael also returns that gesture, although less because he ended up falling into a coma before we could see more. 

“Yet all three are, at least at times, willing participants in Tron's schemes?”

Yes, my fellow thinker. Christopher is the most loyal one. He never questions Tron’s orders. Michael will go with his father in hopes that he will get his family back. He is Tron's favorite because he is a "gentle and obedient child." I find it quite sad how, although Christopher is the most loyal one to the cause, he isn’t the favorite. I suppose it is also because I am the eldest of three, yet am not as favored as the youngest. 

“The youngest seems to be favored most of the time,” muses Phosphorous as they look out at the tumultuous Barian sea. 

It's Thomas that sometimes goes out of line. He's the strongest of the brothers, but Tron is always saying that he is the weakest. It is most likely the fear of Thomas realizing that he's actually powerful and could turn on Tron. Hence, that is why Tron says he trusts no one.

Phosphorous stands, overlooking the gloomy landscape of crystals. 

“So each and every one is then beholden to this idea of what? A happy family? Or just something different than their current state of affairs? Do all the brothers truly share this idea of a return to a happy family? Or do they don't even know that that looks like and just want something to change?”

In short:

Tron: Kill my murderers and I'll become your happy ol' dad again and we can go back to England and do happy British people stuff

Sons: Uh sure okay

Personally, I think they all know to an extent that they're deluding themselves

They're just ambling down this path of lies because the brothers are desperate to have a place to belong to after being separated for so long

But you might have a point that they might not even know what a truly happy family is anymore.

“So it's like they're chasing something that doesn't exist then?”

Exactly. Much like the couple that was running to the end of the rainbow. They are chasing a boat that has already long passed by. After all of the things Tron did to them, I'm sure they all know that they will never be "normal" and "happy" again.

“So under your theory, Tron doesn't truly exist, or at least is highly metaphorical, which makes all of their struggles self-inflicted and their delusions even more deep.”

Quite perceptive of you. Tron does exist, but he's basically Byron but meaner. They merely use the child with the ruined face to cover up the fact that their father has turned into a monster.

"Hey so dad's gone nuts but let's pretend it's a weird little boy who's nuts so it takes a bit of the pain away."

“Ah, so then they could say "Tron" instead of ‘Father.’”

Yes, exactly. They almost never address Tron as father. They only talk of their father in the past tense.

“But then,” proposes Phosphorous, dramatically turning back to me. “Why would they care so much for the new names they received? Or do they not care for them?”

Those names have become a part of their identities. They use it to cope with the fact that they've all gone south personality-wise. Thomas even uses IV as his celebrity name, perhaps as a sign that he does not recognize his celebrity persona as his true self.

Phosphorous takes in a deep breath, the acidic breeze rustling their toga. Their eyes meet mine own with a sharpness that I had always so admired.

  “So these new names, they're basically masks, but do they disassociate themselves from their new identities the same way they do with Tron and their Father, or do they still think of themselves as fundamentally themselves, just forced to do things they wouldn't normally do? Though I would assume each brother is affected differently by their mask,” says my friend as they begin to pace.

Ah, they still view Tron as their father (A leader) but deep down they probably don't want to put two and two together. So it's a superficial belief of "We fight for Tron (our father but let’s not think about that.)"

Either that or,

They are fighting for their Father,

 who is basically just an idea of a happy family now whilst Tron

represents a bad family.

Onto your second point, the brothers fit into their masks to different extents.

Michael doesn't seem to mind III for they appear to have the same personality, save for III's destructive tendencies.

When Christopher is reunited with his student that he abandoned and is called Christopher, he sadly smiles and says. 

"It's been a long time since someone has called me that"

And Thomas probably has an extremely difficult time taking off his mask after wearing it for so long in front of so many people

“So then do their numbered names also represent a bad family? also why do they start at three, like why not 1,2,3 instead of 3,4,5?”

I still don’t understand why it’s 3 4 5 (Nor does anyone else, for that matter.), however, their numbers are probably how Tron sees them. From his scientific background, he probably just sees his son as pieces of useful data he can use to his advantage.

“Hm, the only thing I could think of for the numbers was that Tron was somehow including him and the boys' mother in his count, like their the first two so that's why it starts at three, which is something you probably already thought about,” theorizes Phosphorous futilely.

Perhaps the numbers are used as place holders. They are not Christopher, Thomas and Michael. They are merely placeholders for when Christopher, Thomas and Michael return. When their family is whole again...

“But if the numbers are place-holders then so is the name ‘Tron,’” concludes Phosphorous.

Indeed.

“But I wonder if the brothers associate the numbers with Tron, like the numbers aren't really them, just a means to an end that will be removed when they get their father back, or if they're deluding themselves,” muses my friend.

Yes, the numbers are most likely temporary to them. Christopher is deluding himself.

He knows that he’s Christopher under V’s cold exterior. Same for Thomas and Michael. They are a family of delusions, united under the promise of a better tomorrow that will never arrive. 

  And so I thank you, for bearing with me. 

  Without ceremony, Phosphorus walks away from the crystal cliff, leaving me. I stare into the depths of the sea of ill intent and allow the sounds of the waves crashing against the crystal to overtake me. Closing my eyes, I begin to meditate. 

  Thus we conclude our bout of philosophy and ardent beard stroking. 

#zexal #analysis #zexal analysis #long post #Christopher Arclight #Michael Arclight #Thomas Arclight #Byron Arclight #Tron Zexal #Iris thinks hard