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crazycookiecrumbles · 2 years

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Rise, Puppet

Masterlist

A/N: I’M SO DEVASTATED — SEASON 4 SPOILERS

also reblogs and comments appreciated. especially comments, like, i need feedback to live and to motivate lmao

Pairings/Characters: Eddie Munson x Reader

Warnings: depictions of violence, mentions of death, swearing, crack fic, happy ending

Summary: After losing Eddie in the Upside Down, you’ve discovered a much more aggressive side to yourself that likes to fight. Hopefully, that’ll come in handy when you go back to defeat Vecna. Again.

The anger you had felt was burning you from the inside out. You wanted to scream. You wanted to put your fist through drywall, hell, you wanted to grab Dustin by his shoulders and throw him out the window, but you couldn’t do that.

You were with the usual suspects, the unknown heroes of Hawkins who were preparing to go to the Upside Down once and for all to end Vecna, a final battle that was sure to suffer numerous fatalities. Your friends were planning on going without you, given that the last time you were involved with this mess, you went a little crazy afterwards.

“And that’s why you can’t go! Because you lose your shit more than everyone, and that’s saying a lot. Look how fucking crazy these people are. Hopper was in fucking Russia for Christ’s sake!” Dustin shouted at you.

You shook your head as you paced back and forth like a caged feline trying desperately to break free and hunt her prey. You stopped short and turned to Dustin quickly, striding so fast and getting so close that he thought you really were going to grab him by his jacket and throw him somewhere. Instead, you held your fists up and took a deep breath before biting the knuckles on your right hand before shoving them into your pockets, “I did not.”

“You beat the fuck out of Andy on his front yard,” Dustin shouted at you. “That’s crazy!”

You threw your hands in the air, “I heard he tackled an 11-year-old girl! Who the fuck does that? And you can’t tell me that wasn’t him being racist as shit. I mean, half this town —“

“Y/N,” Steve began as he stepped closer to you and in front of Dustin to relieve some of the pressure and anger off of him. “Look, you’ve been doing this since the beginning, I get it, but this time…someone should stay back, you know, say what happened, tell our story.”

You stared at Steve for a moment before snorting, “You’re full of shit.”

“Am not!”

“Tell your story? What, like some woman in waiting? I’m not going to go psycho —“

“You heard Eddie died and went absolutely postal on Andy because he’s the only one left out of that weird little hate gang they made. I don’t think you should go down there,” Dustin explained.

“And you should?” You laughed, “You’re just as bad as me —“

“Eddie knows I totally loved him. You never told him,” Dustin replied.

Your mouth fell open. Okay. Maybe Dustin did have a point. You never admitted you had a crush on your dungeon master, but how could you? It was impractical! It was your senior year (first time for you, countless for Eddie), you were finally feeling like you had a gang to belong to, even though most of them happened to be freshman. You were having fun enjoying life, and you fell in love with the most unexpected person you could have ever imagined.

And, of course, you never told him. When could you?

First of all, if he didn’t return those feelings, you couldn’t return to Hellfire Club, it would be too much. Secondly, what if he started to favor you in the group because he did return those feelings? It would be unfair to the game! Thirdly, you couldn’t tell him before you guys went after Vecna! He would be distracted. You didn’t want him distracted, because you didn’t want to lose him.

Well, look how that turned out.

“I want her there,” Hopper chimed in, surprising several people there. “What? A few of you are staying back with Max and El while she goes into her mind, the more we have down there, the better. I want someone with that much rage on my team.”

You nodded, “Thanks, Chief—Hopper.”

He nodded and looked around, grabbing a machete off of the table and handing it to you, “You can handle that, can’t you?”

“Actually,” you cleared your throat and went to the front door of the cabin where you had abandoned your duffel bag. You brought it over and dropped it on the coffee table after opening it up. Reaching in, you brought out a bow and held it up confidently, “I’ve been practicing.”

~*~

Dustin was so upset you were there. Like Steve and Eddie, he had grown attached to you too since the day you actually acknowledged his presence when you and Nancy were in her room studying and he interrupted asking if you guys wanted leftover pizza. You cooed that he looked adorable and squishable while Nancy stayed focused on her phone conversation and threw her shoe to shut the door in his face.

Needless to say, you and Nancy had different priorities around that time, and while she was straying away from the kids, you found that you were putting yourself in their business more because they actually acknowledged your existence when you were around.

So, Dustin didn’t want you here. He lost Eddie, Steve was here, he didn’t want to lose you too, another member of his trifecta of teens that he dubbed as being his older siblings and role models that he looked up to, but never said as much to. Being in the Upside Down again, it was a lot for him, more than he expected it to be, and he couldn’t help but think about Eddie’s final moments. Dustin looked up to you to see how you were doing.

You were ready to fight since you had gotten down there. You had a quiver resting against your leg filled with arrows you had soaked in gasoline so you could light them on fire. There was also the machete strapped to your belt on your other side that received a gasoline shower and was ready to be ignited at any moment. You looked like you were ready for war, and, well, this is, essentially, what it was. You guys were walking into a war that you were likely all going to lose and die, and here you were, still going.

You stopped walking with the group when you heard a noise. You turned your head halfway to glance behind you quickly, but you could see nothing. Turning your head forward, you quickly caught up to the group, and realized you were passing by the trailer park.

You found yourself stopping to stare at Eddie’s trailer. You remembered the many times you had been there. It was raining, you had no car, and Eddie’s place was close to the school, so the two of you went to his trailer to seek shelter and you made a true delicacy for the two of you: buttered noodles.

He loved your buttered noodles, said there was something extra special about the way you made them. Honestly, it was probably the cholesterol talking.

Then, there was the time he wanted to help you get better with your fighting techniques in the campaign, so he basically tutored you in how to fight in Dungeons and Dragons on his own free time. He accepted payment in the form of, naturally, buttered noodles and other food and treats you’d bring for him.

Eddie was seen as the scary outcast at school, but he was so sweet. He had such a big heart. He was silly, and goofy, and so very misunderstood by everyone who didn’t have the privilege to know him. While he did partake in a few extracurricular activities that were far from legal, he always respected your level of comfort around drugs. So, sometimes, it was you, sober Eddie, and your favorite slasher movie of the week until one of the kids came along, banging on the trailer door, wanting to hang out.

You sucked in a breathe and shook your head, reminding yourself that you were there on a mission. You looked over to the group and saw that they were also stopped and looking around, like they had seen something you thought you sensed earlier. Sighing to yourself, you made your way over to them only to see the bats flying above like a bad omen.

“Everyone take cover!” Steve shouted.

Everyone split for cover to hide from the bats looming overhead. You and Dustin were closer to a few busted up cars, and you went and hid in them. As you were watching the strange flight pattern of the bats above you before they flew away into the distance, Dustin was sitting in the front seat of another car and staring in the direction of where he had found Eddie the last time he was there.

Suddenly, the door to the car he was in had been yanked open, and Dustin was yanked out of the car by his jacket. He fell to the ground in a heap and screamed as he felt himself be dragged across the ground. You quickly threw open your own door and ran around the car to Dustin.

Dragging him was a figure in armor the color of gunmetal with gold accents and trim. He wore a headpiece that resembled a dragon’s head, from what you could tell from behind, at least, a massive shield bearing a dragon, and a long broadsword that looked as menacing as the rest of him did. You were not prepared to fight someone in full armor like this, not at all, but Dustin needed you.

You ran forward and jumped in the air, hoping a dropkick to his back would, at least, knock him over. It didn’t, but it definitely made him stumble and let go of Dustin to address the other threat, you. The man turned slightly and bashed his shield against you with such force that it knocked you off your feet the second you were up and left you flat on the ground.

“Get help,” you wheezed as you rolled to the side and narrowly dodged the blade coming down at you.

“I won’t leave you!” Dustin shouted as he used his spear to try to pierce the man’s armor from behind, only for it to break into pieces in his arms.

The armored man turned again to Dustin and used the shield to block Dustin’s next swing with the broken spear, breaking it once again and leaving him with nothing but a stub to use. Dustin’s eyes widened in horror as he looked up at the man whose face couldn’t even be seen under the dark shadows the helmet produced.

“Run, Dustin, run!” You shouted as you stood up, a flaming arrow aimed at the man’s back.

Dustin took off running to get the rest of the gang, and you fired off arrows as you walked backwards. With every arrow that hit him, it bounced off of his armor and did nothing but fall to the ground. He used his shield to block them, and when he was close enough ,he raised his blade and swung. You tried to block it with your bow, only for his sword to slice the bow right down the middle.

With the bow now broken in two, you jumped back and tossed the halves aside before reaching for your machete. You brought it up quickly to deflect one of his swings. At this point, you were just desperately trying to bat off everything he threw at you. You weren’t nearly as concerned with trying to land a blow as you were with trying not to suffer one.

He swiped at your midsection, causing you to lean forward as your hips jutted out behind you to miss the blade. He took advantage of this and slammed your side with the shield twice, the first time to hurt you, the second time to knock you over. While you were on the ground he raised his blade to slice you in half. Now you were desperate. You weren’t sure if the machete could take another hit and block the blade. Honestly, you were surprised that it even held up as long as it did.

You chucked the machete at his head. It hit the tip of the dragon’s mouth on the helmet he wore, and it sent it tumbling down his backside.

The face that you saw under that helmet took your breath away. Your eyes widened, your heart stopped, you swore you lost control of your bowels as you looked up into the darkened eyes of Eddie Munson.

“Eddie, wait!” You screamed and put your hands in front of you to protect yourself. His blade came within an inch of your hands as he was frozen in his place, staring at you, a conflicted look in his eyes as he hovered above you, ready to deliver the swing of death at any moment.

Scrambling, you tore off your hat and tossed it to the side. You quickly wiped the warpaint off of your face as you scooted backwards from him, stopping only when the blade went into the ground right beside your head in a threatening manner. You swallowed the lump in your throat as tears burned your eyes and you gazed at the man you were helplessly in love with. “Eddie, Eddie, wait, it’s me, it’s Y/N. You remember me, right, Eddie? Please.”

~*~

Seeing how close you were to getting your head chopped off, Hopper stopped everyone from moving forward for fear of pushing this man to finish the job, much to Dustin’s dismay. However, when everyone got a closer look at who it was that you were fighting, well, Robin’s hands came up to cover her mouth while Dustin felt tears prick his eyes.

“Is that —“

Nancy’s question was interrupted by Dustin’s revelation.

“Eddie the Banished,” Dustin breathed. “Eddie’s Kas. Eddie is Kas. Eddie is Kas!”

“Okay, dickhead, who the fuck is Kas?" Steve shouted.

“Kas the Betrayer! The key to stopping Vecna!”

~*~

“Please, Eddie, please. Don’t hurt me, you know me. You know me, right? Y/N, the buttered noodles?” You shouted all in one breath as you felt you were at his mercy beneath him. “Please, Eddie, I love you. Whatever this is, just snap out of it, please! Come back to us Eddie, come back to me!”

Eddie’s gaze softened. He blinked a few times as the darkness bled away from his eyes, instead replaced by the familiar glimmer you were so used to seeing. A smirk formed on his lips as he gazed down at you, “So, a fella’s just gotta die and become a puppet to get a girl to admit that she’s head over heels, madly in love with him, huh?”

You blinked, “What the fuck?”

Eddie planted the shield in the ground and extended his arm to you. When you grabbed it, he yanked you up with so much strength that you were surprised when you were upright and stumbling into his chest. Your hands came upon his shoulders before they moved up and cupped his face, hands cradling his cheeks as you held his head still and really, truly studied him.

Tears fell from your eyes as you stared into his. Your voice cracked after you sniffled and tried to calm down, “Eddie? Oh, fuck, if this is Vecna, just do it —“

“No, no, no, no, it’s me, it’s me,” Eddie said quickly, his hands bracing against your back and holding you close to him. “I’m sorry. It just feels like I’ve been down here for so long, I, I wasn’t thinking. I’ve, I’ve been alone for so long, and all these voices, man, they —“

“What are you talking about?” You blurted out. “God, Eddie, how are you even alive?”

“Pfft, no thanks to that guy,” He muttered. “I uh, I think I was gone. Then I, I heard a voice asking if I wanted to live, and, well, duh, of course I do.”

“Then what,” you pressed.

“It said, ‘rise, puppet, and follow your new master.’” Eddie shook his head as the memory haunted him. “I don’t know how long it’s been down here since that happened. I, I can barely remember the things I’ve done, but, but not too long ago this other voice started telling me to rise again, to betray my master —“

“Vecna?”You questioned, watching him nod hesitantly. “Okay. And then?”

“And then I tried killing you and Dustin until you knocked my helmet off, and I finally could see you….and you said you loved me, Y/N. You love me? Really? Me, of all people?”

You choked on a laugh as you grabbed his shoulders and shook him, “Yes, you of all people! God, Eddie Munson, you’re so…”

“What? Stupid?” Eddie asked. “A total pussy for following the bad guy because he wanted to live?”

“Brave,” you smiled. “Eddie, you are a hero. You’re my hero. C’mere.”

Eddie the Banished was absolutely flushed when you pressed your lips against his. Hell, the man squeaked in surprise and stood absolutely still, like if any movement from him would ruin this moment. He couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

Eddie was so head over heels for you that he couldn’t possibly say in words how deeply in love with you he was. When he was dying, all he could think about was all the things you’d never done together, how he never told you how he felt, how he dreamed about ending campaign sessions early to kick those little sheep out and spend all night with you, whether that involved kissing, sex, or just listening to music together.

Eddie had it bad for you, so much so, he really couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Oh, I must be dead,” Eddie murmured when you pulled away, “Because this is only the stuff of my dreams.”

“You dream of dying, coming back to life, nearly killing me, and then me kissing you?”

“On particularly freaky nights, yes,” he joked, a goofy grin plastering itself on his face.

You sighed and wrapped your arms around him tightly, burying your face in the crook of his neck as you two held each other while the rest of your misfit crew began to make their way over to you, screaming his name and shouting questions that would need to be answered again and again.

#eddie munson #the upside down #eddie munson x reader #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things 4 #eddie munson fic #joseph quinn #joseph quinn fic #joseph quinn x reader #dustin henderson #steve harrington #jim hopper #eleven #jane hopper #max mayfield

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maidofdarkness23 · 2 months

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Arbiter Corps AU Incorrect Quotes Part 1

Valkyrie: Would you take a bullet for me? Skulduggery: ...yes? *Nefarian angrily burst into the room* Valkyrie: *running away* Great, thanks!

Nefarian: Don’t preach to me about romance, Valkyrie. I had a three-way in a hot-air balloon.

Omen: If Nefarian and I were drowning, who would you save? Skulduggery: You two can’t swim? Omen: It’s a hypothetical question, Skulduggery! Who would you save? Skulduggery: My time and effort.

Omen, cowering in fear: What do you want from me?! Valkyrie, standing in front of Omen: *bites into the whole KitKat bar like a heathen* Omen, crying: Please...stop...

Valkyrie: There are three ways to handle a difficult situation. The right way, the wrong way, and the Skulduggery way. Omen: Isn't that the wrong way? Nefarian: Yes, but it's faster.

Valkyrie: Hey, it’s your turn to wash the dishes. Nefarian: I’ll wash the walls red with your blood. Valkyrie: Okay, but before that, wash the dishes. Also, use soap this time.

*the Squad cleaning up* Valkyrie: Pick up the nearest piece of trash and throw it away. Nefarian, to Skulduggery: Aight, which bin do you wanna go in—

Nefarian: You need to be more careful! Valkyrie, who was dragged into Nefarian's issue: Careful? CAREFUL?! I'LL CAREFULLY WRAP MY HANDS AROUND YOUR THROAT-

Nefarian: I’m sick and tired of being called 'mortal' like, you don’t know that. Neither do I. I have never died even ONCE. Nothing has been proven yet. Stop making assumptions. It’s rude. Also I'm magic.

*Valkyrie teaching Nefarian to drive and taking Omen along for the ride* Valkyrie: That's a pothole. To the left! Nefarian: Take it back now y'all *Drives into pothole* Omen, sticking his face into the front over the center console: Cha Cha real smooth. Nefarian: I don't think that's how the song goes. Valkyrie, crying and gripping the handle: Please just take me home. Nefarian: Country Roads. Omen: To the place. Nefarian and Omen in unison: I Belong! Valkyrie, crying harder: What the fuck?

Nefarian: People always shoot down my ideas and I’m sick of it. Two sentences in and everyone’s always shouting “what the fuck? that’s illegal!” and “you can’t do that!”. Like, c'mon, let me talk!

Valkyrie: Stop setting things on fire because you're curious about what will happen. What will happen is fire. Nefarian: But what if something else happens just this one time

Nefarian, admiring a sleeping Skulduggery: You’re so cute. Skulduggery, sleepily: I could beat your ass. Nefarian, lovingly: I know.

Casually in the Middle of a High Stakes/Dangerous Situation Omen: How do you eat pickles? Valkyrie: What do you mean? Omen: I mean, there's a whole process. It's not like you can grab them from the jar with your hand, because it's cold and the juice burns if you have a cut, plus, it's pretty unsanitary. And you can't use a spoon because you'll have to scoop it out, and it'll be way too difficult to grab more than three or four without taking 10 minutes along with half the brine in the jar, even if it's one with holes. Valkyrie: Yeah, that's why you use a fork. Omen: Okay, sure, but what if you don't have one of the big ones clean? It's weird to use a small one. But there is always one of those smaller sharp knives clean. Valkyrie: But the straight edge doesn't really fit the cylindrical shape, and you have to make sure you don' t break it, it's too much work. Omen: It makes me feel like I deserve the pickles though. Like, "Yeah, I did it. That's right. Good job me." It's empowering. But even after that, it's not like you can use a bowl. Valkyrie: I get that, it's not ascetically pleasing. Omen: Exactly! And it looks weird if you don't entirely fill the bowl, but you also can't eat that many. My solution: Use a mug. Valkyrie: Nods in agreement Nefarian: That is all very interesting, BUT WE'RE TRYING NOT TO DIE RIGHT NOW! USE YOUR LIMITED ATTENTION SPANS AND FOCUS! Omen: Jeez, okay. Valkyrie: Quit yelling at us already.

Nefarian: What has the galaxy ever done for you?! Why would you wanna save it?! Valkyrie: Cause I’m one of the idiots who lives in it!

Skulduggery: Get on my level! Nefarian: Unfortunately, to "get on your level" I'd need a boat trip to the Mariana Trench and a pair of cinderblock shoes.

Nefarian, Skulduggery & Omen: *screaming* Valkyrie: *runs into the room* What's wrong, Omen?! Nefarian: Wait, why are you asking Omen that when Skulduggery and I are also here? Valkyrie: Because Omen wouldn't scream unless it's an emergency. You two scream whenever you have the chance. Normally at each other.

All of them as a child: I can’t wait to grow up and have cool adventures! AOT now: I can’t wait to go to bed.

#skulduggery pleasant #valkyrie cain #nefarian serpine #omen darkly #hehehehe #Arbiter Corps AU

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riacte · 6 months

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ok i'm gonna put down the hermitgals precure au martyn plot c (he's a pathetic lil fairy hopelessly devoted to ren):

it's a normal day. false is outside holding onto something ren loaned her / temporarily gave to her for safekeeping (like his diamond glasses or something). she's suddenly attacked by this very angry small... thing with a tattered red scarf around him. false gasps and attacks back. she thinks this new creature is one of the bad guys. meanwhile the creatures bites her and dramatically declares "get your hands off milord's things!!!! >.<"

false blinks and goes "wow i only know one other person who speaks like that... do you know king ren?". the creature looks at her like "do YOU know king ren??". both of them are very shifty and distrustful of each other.

it doesn't help when cleo comes in and recognises the creature with a scandalised gasp. it turns out that's martyn, a fairy not from the hermit kingdom, but a wanderer fairy who has no real home. cleo grabs martyn and starts shaking him furiously.

cleo: how DARE you show up!! after all that you've done!!

martyn: EXCUSE YOU??

false: uh. do you guys. know each other?

false senses cleo and martyn have some beef, but considering cleo isn't transforming and beating martyn to a pulp, martyn isn't really evil, just annoying. martyn claims to know ren and asks to see him. false goes back to speak to ren, leaving cleo and martyn to sort out their beef.

one year ago, when cleo was fighting alone, she bumped into the wanderer fairy martyn. he offered help, but ended up (accidentally) hurting cleo instead while they were in a fight. like maybe he pushed them off a bridge or something. and since cleo eventually ended up being defeated, she holds a big grudge.

meanwhile, false goes to stress' house (where the mascots are) and says, "so uh ren, there's this weird guy martyn who wants to see you? he also BIT me so something's CLEARLY wrong with him". ren's eyes instantly light up and starts recounting his story with martyn.

before the fall of the hermit kingdom, before cleo, martyn was a lonely wanderer who somehow found himself inside the hermit kingdom. he wasn't a hermit, so he didn't feel like he belonged, but the then-prince ren saw him and picked him by the scruff of his neck. people didn't trust martyn because he was an individualistic survivalist gaslighting backstabber, but ren showed him kindness and life. slowly, martyn grew less wary of ren and the hermit kingdom. even when those around ren told him to stay away from martyn, he never did. as a result, martyn ended up catastrophically devoted to ren.

martyn was always away carrying out errands and exploring the world, and on one of those instances, the hermit kingdom was attacked. ren and iskall were forced to flee, and ren never saw martyn again. at that, ren looks very sad. iskall has his own thoughts about the martyn situation, but keeps them to himself.

false: yeah that's sad... but he still bit me :/

ren goes >.> and decides to take responsibility for martyn and heals false's wound. it's at this exact time that cleo and martyn enter. martyn, the jealous freak, the clowniest clown, gets jealous over false. but in the end his crazy devotion triumphs over everything and he runs towards ren screaming "MY LORDDDDDDD".

insert martyn's ten minute dramatic speech about how he went to the four corners of the world and found nothing but walls, corners, edges, and how he's been searching for king ren ever since, he's lost purpose without ren, he's an unguided hand, his soul shattered when he thought ren died, he still wears his red banner to keep ren close to him, how no one ever responded to his missing dog posters, and how he would follow ren to the ends of the earth.

iskall is standing here like 🤨HALLO??? i'm the king's guard, thank you very much. you're just a guest in the hermit kingdom! ahem! how dare you call yourself hand! what an omega loser. 🤨 now fuck off-mega.

cleo chimes in like 🤨 martyn, you made everything worse! you may have had good intentions, but you just can't seem to be committed to them. you were such an asshole to me. please leave.

false, who is mostly unaffected but joins in for shits and giggles, goes 🤨 you bit me and that's rude.

stress doesn't have anything personal but she's like 🤨 you hurt my friends and my friends don't like you so you seem like an ABSOLUTE GEEZER 😡

a sniffing martyn tells his backstory. while martyn was out there wandering, he received news that the hermit kingdom was attacked and ren was gone. without ren, martyn felt like he wasn't welcomed in the hermit kingdom. he genuinely thought ren was dead, he was very depressed, until he heard news otherwise. he then went on a mad hunt for ren until he saw false, and thought she'd kidnapped ren because she was holding something that belonged to ren.

ren, who is completely oblivious to martyn's jealousy: 🥺 falsie would never kidnap me! in fact, she's always saving me! <3 RD

false: 😏 😌 yeah i'm always saving his royal highness from monsters. it's my full time job 😏

and then martyn realises while his one and only is ren, ren has so many people he cares about. ren is martyn's only king, but martyn isn't ren's only warrior. he gets upset about this and maybe starts sprouting sad poetry tumblr style. but ren holds his hand and goes <3 you're special to me martyn <3 RD and martyn goes 🥺 i love you milord.

iskall: 🙄 oh for FUCK's sake-mega.

anyways monster of the day comes and martyn makes it up to cleo by finally being useful. they still hate each other. iskall is judging martyn intensely. martyn and false send each other bombastic side eyes. stress is very ^_^ but also "if you hurt my friends i will MURDERRRR you! <3 <3". outside of ren, martyn doesn't feel very welcomed.

in the end, a sad soggy martyn says he's going to wander again and he wishes the best for king ren. ren goes <3 luck be with you hand! please come back when i reform my kingdom, my palace will always have a place for you! <3 RD.

everyone else starts to feel bad and apologies for being mean to him, but martyn says "i'm a wanderer by nature, i can't help it." he agrees to be the gang's scout and bring them back information.

martyn and cleo continue to have beef. iskall continues to be jealous of martyn. martyn continues to be jealous of false. ren and martyn continue whatever the fuck they have.

but in the end, cleo martyn iskall false come to a truce and the real victim becomes ren's ego <3

#ria.txt #he's not supposed to have a lot of relevance bc this is a hermitcraft au. but it's funny. bc he has beef with everyone except ren #precure au #inthelittlewood

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th3sp4rr0w · 7 months

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A03 Link <- Starts at Chapter/Day One for those just joining us :))

Prompts for Day Three; Sensory Deprivation/Overstimulation/Isolation

Alt. Prompt for Day Three; Separated From Loved Ones

Prompts Used; All

Tw; Emotional Manipulation, Violence, Injury, Autistic Meltdowns, Meltdown-Based Self Harm/Self Induced Injury, Internalized Ableism

Disclaimer; I have autism. The meltdown Danny has closely resembles a bad one for me. Autism looks different to different people, and I don't want to say that my experience is the only valid one bc obviously that's not true. People experience it in all different ways. Please don't make fun of his meltdown or make fun of anyone that may share their experiences in the comments. Just be nice to me and to others okay thank you <33

Link is to the A03 story for those seeing this for the first time and wanting to check it out and the chapter is under the cut :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Talking with Sheila over the next week was like a dream that had come true.

Like Jason had predicted, it hadn’t healed the wounds his mom’s passing had left. He hadn’t expected it would and wasn’t disappointed it didn’t, in the same way that he hadn’t expected being adopted by Bruce to heal the hurt Willis Todd had left somewhere inside him through the years. Though neither could heal the wounds the people that raised him had left, they both soothed it in ways he couldn’t seem to understand.

He hadn’t called Sheila ‘mom’. He felt like that title would always belong to the woman who sang to him when he was small and gave him his love for reading. One day, though, he could see himself giving Sheila a different title of affection. Maybe ‘mama’, he hadn’t really decided yet, but the thought was similar enough to the couple times he had slipped and called Bruce ‘papa’.

He still didn’t know how to process it when she told him she loved him a day into messaging back and forth. It was somewhere between elated and nauseous. He could count on one hand the number of times Bruce had told him he loved him in the last year, yet here Sheila was, giving it out like it was candy. He felt something weird curl in his stomach, but ignored it, assuming that it was a good weird, or something he’d picked up living with Bruce. Living with that nut case could make anyone extra paranoid. He still didn’t say he loved her, and how could he? He still hadn’t said those words to Bruce.

Through their messages late at night (For him, he reminded himself- Ethiopia was seven hours ahead of them, and she often times could only message early in the morning or midafternoon her time), he found out she had left both of “her” boys with Willis, and was extremely concerned to hear that her little Daniel wasn’t with him... which was weird, because the file Bruce had clearly stated that she had taken his twin? He chalked it up to a miscommunication error Bruce didn’t have communication errors .

He’d also learned about the crime that had caused her to flee to a different country. Apparently, the girl's parents had begged her to do some operation on her that they couldn’t afford. She would’ve died without it and was too far gone to save. It, admittedly, contradicted the information he had found in the bat-cave, but Bruce had dropped the case for a reason, right?

Batman would never make that big of a mistake on a case like that.

She wrote out stories of her life for him to pour over, from her current life at the horn to when she and da- Willis. To when she and Willis had met and fell in love. She said that she had hoped that, when they were old enough, her boys (and wasn’t that something, being one of her boys) would contact her exactly like Jason had. It had started looking grim, whether his twin was still out there in the world or not. He didn’t dare voice that to Sheila just yet, hoping for her sake that he was okay. She seemed like she was so worried about them over the years, especially now that she knows they were separated.

She asked him about himself, how he had gone into Bruce’s custody, how he liked living with Bruce, how his adopted brother was, how school was going. It was everything he had imagined her doing.

She was also wicked smart. You had to be to go into medicine, but especially since she had been living in Ethiopia, where hardly any English was spoken. Her area mostly spoke Amharic, she said, but living in the capital of the country she saw all sorts of people that spoke all sorts of languages. He started learning so he could visit her one day, even if the alphabet of the language did intimidate him just a little bit.

She had so much to say to him, it made his head go a bit fuzzy. Getting to know her, telling her things about his life, getting a nickname from her (ሰማያዊ ጄይ ወፍ -she refused to tell him what it meant, stating it would give him a little extra motivation to learn). There was really only a couple of things that Jason hadn’t... loved about the whole thing.

First; Bruce had tracked the Joker to around her area in Ethiopia. It was still unclear how exactly he’d gotten out of the country, but he had. The clown was way too close to her for his comfort, and there was no way to warn her without telling her everything.

The second thing was that, after Bruce had found an excuse to visit Ethiopia “for a meeting” so they could stay for a while without too much fear of the media finding out and causing a ruckus, Jason had wanted to tell him so they could go see her. Dick was going to space for a Titan’s mission, so if he just told him about it when he got back, then he would probably be too excited on Jason’s behalf to get mad at Bruce that much, right? Except, when Jason went to tell Sheila the good news, she had all but begged him not to tell Bruce about her yet.

He hadn’t known what to make of that.

Her reasoning had been that she was worried Bruce would take it as a threat. Big ol’ goofball Brucie Wayne would take one look at her and assume she was attempting to steal away the precious boy he had loved and cared about for over a year. Except, when he tried to tell her there was absolutely no way he’d ever think like that, would be overjoyed even on Jason’s behalf, she had outright dismissed him. When he pushed it, she got annoyed and more defensive.

He guessed he could understand where she was coming from. He’d probably be a little nervous in her position, too, but she was so vehemently against Bruce even knowing he knew about her...

He didn’t know what to do.

He sat through his classes, distracted and dazed. What if he couldn’t introduce them before Bruce found out Jason had gone behind his back? Then Dick would be mad at both of them for keeping something important from him, even if it was none of his business. He didn’t even know how Alfred would react. He was pretty sure the man would probably be on his side...? Then again, he had been pretty sure Sheila would want to meet his family.

He felt a harsh poke to his shoulder. He looked over at the tiny boy next to him.

He raised his eyebrows, looked over to the teacher then back at the older boy in silent conversation. He had a way of doing that; making you feel scolded without ever opening his mouth. Most days Jason isn’t sure if the boy is on par with or better at it than Alfred . It was inspiring and terrifying all at once. Jason didn’t know if he wanted to learn how to do it or if he never wanted the other boy to do that again.

He shrugged, eyes flickering to the abandoned sheet on his desk before settling back on the boy next to him.

He rolled his eyes, looking back up to the board as the teacher droned on.

Jason returned to his thoughts. He wondered briefly if he could get away with going on his phone, but decided against it. Even if the teacher didn’t notice, the little stalker next to him would. He was reasonably sure he wouldn’t snitch, but he would ask uncomfortable questions. It was hard to deny the boy anything, his big owl eyes boring into his soul and making him want to cater to the kid’s every need.

He wasn’t fully sure that the baby bird wasn’t a meta.

The moment the bell rang, the boy had grabbed Jason’s wrist to prevent him from hiding out in a bathroom to see if Sheila had emailed him yet. When Jason attempted to protest, he glared at him. Jason followed obediently after him.

He allowed the boy to take them to their regular empty classroom in the back of the library. They’re pretty sure everyone forgot about it since they changed librarians again, since they never see any sign anyone else ever uses it. He started pulling food from his lunchbox as the other boy started talking.

“You need to tell me what’s going on with you, Jason,” he started. “You’ve been acting so weird, and you’re avoiding me-”

“I’m not avoiding you!” Jason protested immediately. “If I was avoiding you, I’d be doing a damn better job at it,” he muttered.

The other boy looked about as intimidating as a baby chihuahua as he glared at him. “You may not realize it yet, but you absolutely are. You always get like this when you have something on your mind that you haven’t figured out how to say, so say it. What happened? Did you get in another fight with Dick?” his voice was gentler than it had been previously by the end of it.

Jason sighed. “No, baby bird, it’s just... I found something out last week. Something Bruce definitely knew about. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

“So spill. We can workshop it together, okay? We can figure this out, Jace.”

And he did. Jason spilled everything, from finding out Catherine wasn’t his bio mom, to contacting Sheila, to Ethiopia (though, he kept Joker out of it; as far as the baby bird knew, Bruce had a business trip and decided to give Alfred a break for the weekend).

The kid had looked at him afterwards. “So, Sheila-” he looked at Jason questioning, and when he gave a nod he went on, “-Sheila is the one who gave birth to you, and wants to meet you on your dad’s-”

“Bruce isn’t my dad,” Jason denied.

“Fine, Mr. Wayne’s-”

“Call him Bruce!”

“ Mr. Wayne’s ,” he emphasized, ignoring Jason’s groans, “Business trip, but she doesn’t want you to tell Mr. Wayne you know or that you’re going to meet her?”

“Pretty much,” Jason replied miserably.

“Well, you know what you have to do, right?”

“What’s that?”

“You listen to her,” he said seriously, beginning to take some of the celery sticks and peanut butter Alfred had packed them.

Jason looked at him a minute. “What do you mean?”

“Well, she’s an adult,” he started, crunching on his celery, “She must have a reason she doesn’t want him to know. Just trust her, okay? It’ll all work out.”

Jason shrugged, finally grabbing a sandwich and chewing on it thoughtfully, “Yeah, probably. I just...”

He trailed off. The child looked at him expectantly.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. Alfie knows something’s up, I think, and it’s tearing me up to keep quiet about it.”

He heard a hum. “Yeah, but this isn’t just about you. It’s Sheila’s life, too, and she’s the adult. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”

Jason sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, birdie.”

The other boy beamed at him, “You’re welcome, Jayjay.”

Jason smiled back at him. If he didn’t know any better, he’d believe anything that little menace tried to convince him of as long as he had that faux innocent grin.

Hell, he did know better, and some part of him still believed the little shit.

The baby bird had made a good point. Sheila did already have a reason to keep this from Bruce, and there was probably one she couldn’t tell him. He’d hadn’t told her he was Robin; they’d only been chatting for a week. On the other hand...

He felt guilty for not telling his family. He could tell Alfred was worried sick, and Bruce had started catching on. Dick was too busy to notice anything yet, but it was only a matter of time that he’d be home and Jason would have to start lying to him , too...

He tried to throw himself in his schoolwork the rest of the day, worrying at his lip all the while. When Alfred picked him up at the end of the day, he didn’t know what to say. Finding her had been a dream come true, but sometimes, it felt like he was dirty. Like he was doing something he knew he shouldn’t be during patrol and Batman was right behind him, watching him screw up and boring his disappointed gaze at him all the while.

He went to his room, barely saying ‘hi’ to Bruce in his study. He did his homework, texted the boy next door about notes he missed being zoned out through the day, helped him with his questions, took his hour-long pre-patrol nap, and got ready.

When he was Robin, his problems were supposed to go away. They did, for the most part. As Robin, he was invincible, he could hop from roof top to roof top without a care in the world and just... let loose. Jason Todd wasn’t supposed to exist in the suit. He was Robin. But not tonight.

No, tonight seemed worse, somehow. No matter how hard he tried, or how focused he pretended to be, he couldn’t stop thinking about her and the gnawing feeling that something was wrong, wrong, wrong-

Maybe that’s why, when Batman and Robin ambushed that trafficking ring they’d found in its early stages, he was distracted. It was such a blur; one second, he was fighting bad guys and kicking butt like Robin does, and the next he was blindly clawing at his own face, actively trying to get his mask off.

This had probably happened too many times to count, especially in the early days. When you’re a vigilante, sometimes, people do messed up things to you, like pour strange chemicals on your body. The league (and Batman... mostly Batman-) designed suits specifically for when bad guys poured strange chemicals on it, to keep them from hurting you too bad so you can keep fighting. When that skin is exposed, say, on your face, that’s a different story.

They hadn’t wanted anything too abrasive on the face, since that would rub the sensitive skin raw and make mask-shaped red rings against it, and that’s bad for the secret identity. If Bruce Wayne had Batman-cowl shaped red marks on his face every day, eventually someone would put two and two together and make four. Before he and the team developed the right combo, he apparently got really good at make-up, but then the bat had gotten a certain little bird. 9 yr old Dick Grayson hated the way it felt, but he couldn’t go to school every day with marks on his chubby baby cheeks.

So, Batman spent months perfecting the best mix of protective and comfortable. He had designed the mask so, while not as soak-proof as the rest of the outfit, you had some time to get it off should anything happen. In addition, the lenses suctioned to the skin, gently enough not to create lasting marks but well enough that nothing should enter and get into the wearer’s eyes in most situations.

The lenses were enforced, but not unbreakable. They absorbed as much of the impact as possible without completely shattering, but they would crack so they wouldn’t break your eye socket when you got hit in the face. So, if someone were to, say, punch you real hard near both of your eyes while wearing brass knuckles, then pour chemicals on your face, you’d be in some deep trouble.

The stars had aligned tonight for the worst possible scenario to become reality.

Jason was screaming, he thought. He clawed at the mask, trying his hardest to get it off with his gloves on as the noise of the fight surrounded him. He wasn’t sure what happened, but when he felt strong arms try to grab him, he fought with all he had left.

A voice flickered in and out of his adrenaline-fueled stupor, “Ro-… Okay, you... ‘in, Shhh, Robin, it’s me.”

He finally realized it was just Batman and relaxed. He thought he was crying, it was hard to tell anymore.

“Papa- papa, I can’t see,” he cried out as he started sobbing. He felt the strong arms around him start to pick him up.

“Relax, I got you,” he murmured, then- “Agent A, I need you to prepare the med bay with saline and sterile syringes, prepped for flushing. We have a Robin with a clipped wing.” Papa adjusted his hold, starting to run towards where Jason was pretty sure they parked the bat-mobile.

“Oh, dear,” he heard the butler reply in the comm. “What’s happened?”

“I’ll fill you in at the Batcave.”

He couldn’t hear Alfred’s reply over the rush of blood in his ears. He felt papa adjust him to open his door, leaning in the back seat to set him down and gently peel off his mask, rubbing under his right eye for a moment before buckling him in and closing the door. Moments later, he heard the door in front of him open and shut quickly, feeling it roar to life and tear down the road.

Papa produced a bottle of water and talked him through opening it to pour onto his face. They were still going to flush when they got to the cave, he claimed, but getting as much of it off as early as possible was important. Jason did as he was told, tilting his head back and not bothering to close his eyes as he let the water pour down his burning cheeks. It felt cool against his skin, mixing with the sweat and grime.

It was humiliating. He felt like he was in his early days again, messing up at every corner and leaving pap-, Batman, to clean up the mess.

“What happened out there, Robin?” he heard the gruff voice ask from the front seat.

“He- he had brass knuckles,” he gasped. “Hit me in the face a couple times and broke both my lenses,” if he knew the bat, he probably looked up at that, searching for any sign of bruising, “Then, someone poured the chemicals. Don’t know what they were, they had them stored in an unmarked glass bottle. Brown.”

“Hn.”

Jason cringed. It had felt right in the moment, but any time either he or Dick had called out for some version of “dad” in battle, it brought out the worst version of Batman. Overprotective, obsessive, and violent (always towards others, never towards them. Never them, even if sometimes they might deserve it). This version of Batman, who barely wants to let them go live their lives in fear of having them out of his sight. Jason wasn’t going to be patrolling by himself for the rest of the week, if he was allowed to patrol at all.

His eyes stung. The vision was slowly starting to come back, but it was blurry. He could see some blocks of color; the dash looked like a solid black thing with specs of blue. If he tried to squint, he could barely make out the little ears on Bruce’s cowl for a couple seconds before he the pain was too much and he had to close his eyes again.

The rest of the night was a blur. He remembered Bruce holding his head gently in his lap as Alfred flushed out his eyes, examining them carefully. Bruce used his mask to find what chemicals were used and, thankfully, they weren’t too potent. They had flushed his eyes in time, and tonight shouldn’t have any lasting effects.

Sometimes, after a harrowing patrol, either of his little birds could show up in their pajamas by the elevator and wait. Somehow, Bruce always knew. He’d be there within 5 minutes, freshly showered and dressed comfortably with his pink robe, and take them into his room. He’d hold them protectively until they fell asleep. They’d often wake up, still in his embrace in the morning.

Jason had only participated in this ritual with Dick, could count on one hand the amount of times he had. But tonight was just...

Well. It was a lot.

So, after a shower with still-blurry vision and fumbling his way through getting dressed, he went to stand by the elevators to wait for his... for Bruce.

Instead, he found Bruce standing there waiting, hair already damp in his usual bedtime attire. His pink robe was tied loosely around his waist. He was wearing sweats with a Gray Ghost t-shirt. He held out his arms for Jason to slot into.

Maybe he was too old for this, but that didn’t matter. Right now, sitting in Bruce’s arms as he carried him into the one room in the house he felt he could sleep in comfortably tonight, he couldn’t care less about it.

As Bruce laid him down to hold him gently, rubbing his thumb pad over his brow and smoothing down his hair, he felt safe. That’s all that mattered.

As long as he was with his papa, he was safe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny cringed as he heard another bang from the basement. His parents had decided to stay home to prep for an upcoming convention and he was going nuts .

He had done all the work Jazz brought home. He’d burned through the majority of her book collection.

Tucker and Sam had worked together to customize a phone that he could actually use- he normally fried any electronic device he came into contact with for more than a couple weeks. The phone was one of those new, annoying ones that had no headphone jack. It was also a new-enough development that they hadn’t finished customizing a pair of Bluetooth headphones for it. He had lost the headphone adapter nearly immediately after getting it.

He flinched again as he heard the clang and screech of metal on metal. If he had to listen to this much longer, he was going to start screaming.

Arguably the worst part of the whole week was the fact that the wound he’d gotten hadn’t healed, like, at all . Ghosts kept coming, they kept fighting him, and they kept aggravating the wound with their own ectoblasts and throwing him into the ground. Not to mention when Maddie herself reopened it throwing a whole harpoon at him . Thankfully it hadn’t gone through, just scraped the absolute heck out of his side, but still! Ow!

His side burned. Sounds were starting to bug him more. His parents put more ectoplasm in the fridge and hadn’t replaced anything that went sentient yet and his stomach ached with hunger. He hadn’t seen Tucker and Sam in forever and he actually wanted to go to school just to get away from this hell house -

His head flew backwards and hit the wall. The sound reverberated in his ears, taking over the sounds of downstairs for a few seconds. He did it again, and again, and-

He was crying. Breathing was weird and it felt vaguely like death. It wasn’t enough, it was never enough.

His hands rolled into fists and he used his wrists to beat his temples. The pain was grounding, in a way. He could feel hot tears stream down his face and it made him all the more desperate to just make it stop, why wouldn’t it stop -

The way his shirt was twisted around him was wrong, the sheets were the wrong texture, he could still taste the terrible mint of his toothpaste, the sounds from the basement kept getting louder. Every nerve in his body was on fire and his head ached. He could feel bruises forming on his wrists and temples. It wasn’t enough.

He grabbed a pillow and screamed . He hadn’t slept more than 10 hours in almost two weeks, he was seeing spiders, he hadn’t had any zesti in days and everything was too much. He took a shuddering breath and screamed again, brain focused on the screeching metal.

CLANG! CLANG! SCREEEEE-

His voice raised in pitch to screech with it. He vaguely felt something shaking. His hands came up to tug on his hair. His shirt stuck to his neckline as tears soaked the hem. His throat burned and it was almost a mercy as the migraine he’d created for himself throbbed.

The metal clanging finally stopped. The screams that had turned into hoarse little sounds calmed in favor of sobs.

Over the next few minutes, the tears slowed. He carefully pried his hands away from his hair and attempted to soothe himself. He almost wished Jazz was here, but was eternally grateful she hadn’t witnessed his, uh, lapse in judgment.

He... he should’ve just left, or found an old device or another they had floating around. Embarrassment flushed his cheeks. He threw a fit like a toddler and for what? Because of a few noises? How old was he again?

He tore his shirt off before another round could start over the fabric. He shuffled over to his drawers, pulling out a soft hoodie and his favorite bottoms. He changed quickly.

When he was little and these things happened, he went to his parents. They once soothed his aching wrists and checked his head. They would workshop whatever had pushed him this far, making sure he had the tools he needed to prevent it next time. Jazz helped a lot in that regard. But now, they cared more about their career.

Jazz was at school still. She would help him through these, now, but she wouldn’t always be there for him. He grabbed the fluffy pillow she had given him, pressing his face to it.

He wanted his mom. He wanted her to rub his back the way only she knew how. He wanted the smell of his dad’s fudge as he did what he could to soothe his son. He never knew what to say, and his hands felt like fire, but he’d always offer fudge and that was enough. He knew his dad was trying to comfort him the best way he knew how and it was enough .

Jazz would’ve had the space documentary on right now. Tucker and Sam, who always somehow knew exactly what was wrong without asking, would’ve been there with noise cancelling headphones and soft things and would know if it was a time for hugs or hand holding or staying six feet away from him. They knew him. They were perfect .

He missed them. He was so alone and he still had another week of this. The tears had his face sticky and he was dehydrated so all he was doing right now was that stupid dry sobbing that made him feel like he was faking the whole thing. He started gagging at some point.

He could feel his teeth and every one of their sockets being stretched grotesquely to fit them. He could feel as his mouth filled with saliva and could hear it swish around every time he moved his tongue. Every little thing someone could tune out normally felt like it was setting him on fire; his breathing in his ears, the mucus in his nose, the inseam of his sock, every little stitch of his clothing, every eyelash scraping against his eye.

He hadn’t eaten in a few days he could feel his stomach cramp around nothing . Jazz had an important test to study for so he wasn’t going to bug her about food. His parents had eaten out since the ectoplasm incident, so they didn’t feel the need to get more food. They hadn’t gotten anything for Danny since they “didn’t want to reward him for bad behavior while he was suspended”. He was so sick of being suspended.

His body convulsed as he calmed down. He felt a cold build in his lungs.

He cursed his luck. The frost blew out of his mouth, sticking to his cheeks. He was going to start screaming again.

He transformed, shakily starting to fly. He went intangible and went through the wall, trying not to let the way it felt against his body make him go back into a full meltdown. His ghost form was slightly more tolerable, but he could still feel every molecule of being buzz with ectoplasm and it consumed him whole.

He flew around for a bit before finally finding the thing that had set off his senses.

Skulker. Jazz had finally convinced him to release the bastard and he was already back. Danny felt his anger levels rise and he was briefly tempted to throw himself at the bricks without going intangible. Instead, he charged.

He rammed into Skulker full forced as he cackled. They tumbled through the air until they landed on a roof.

“WHELP!” he cried as Danny started laying into him. “WHAT- HEY! TIME OUT!”

He grasped the boy by the shoulders and threw him. Danny felt his previous wounds get jostled and his head hit the corner of the building. Even though most of the damage by now was gone because of his ghostly healing, it still hurt. He hissed in pain.

“What ever happened to the wit! Honestly, whelp, at least put some effort in, it won’t be satisfying to hang your pelt-”

Danny threw an ecto-blast at him. Skulker narrowly avoided it, his facial expression between impressed and annoyed.

“You pest! I never thought you’d have it in you-” he grinned, going to attack Danny back. “It’ll be a pleasure to skin you slowly!”

Danny growled, dodging Skulker and attacking with his ecto-blasts. “DO IT!” he yelled.

Skulker stuttered for one second, allowing Danny to get him pinned down to the roof.

The ghost pulled the glowing blade out of his suit, swinging at where he knew the half-boy should be sitting. “I’ll do it!” he threatened, swinging around.

“DO IT!” he yelled again, shaking the ground around him. “SKIN ME! DO IT!”

Skulker paused. He... was beginning to feel this was bigger than he first considered it would be. He almost felt like he needed to leave but pressed on.

“I’m not playing around, half-breed!” he roared. He swiped at the boy, clipping his cheek. He only grinned at him, his fists starting to glow green. He started towards him, shouting again.

“Good! If you don’t skin me, I might just do it myself !”

The shaking of the building grew stronger. His voice carried itself in green rings, reverberating around the buildings and shaking the earth. Skulker could feel his armor start to shake like it did whenever Ember did this around him. The child’s words hit him afterwards in the shock of it all.

Yeah, he probably should’ve tried retreating earlier.

And besides, just how many powers did this kid have again? He felt like halfas got it all at this point, it was ridiculous.

Instead of gaining common sense, he picked himself up and launched himself at the boy. Said boy punched him with green fists, screaming- no, wailing at the top of his lungs. Could he even control this?!

The metal suit came apart with clangs and screeches of metal. The boy whined loudly, his wail once again shaking the buildings around them.

Skulker was stuck in the helmet as he listened to the boy whimper for a few minutes before he composed himself. He felt the boy pick his helmet up and shake it vigorously as he flew.

The boy said nothing as he turned intangible and went through a wall. The small ghost in the helmet sat there in silence as he listened to the boy crying. He heard the tell-tale sign of him going back to his human form.

He had been pointed at the ceiling, so all he saw was snippets of things being thrown over top of him. He didn’t dare speak, but it was weird that the little whelp had been silent this long.

Normally it was making noise and being annoying. Snarky comments and witty anecdotes, but today... nothing.

He heard noises from other parts of the house. He thought he could make out the sound of those ghost hunters voices, but that was weird. If this was the little ghost’s haunt, why would ghost hunters...?

Realization slammed into him like a ton of bricks. The little half-breed was still human. It still had parents. Its parents were the hunters that they had learned to avoid within the last year or so of having the portal in the basement.

Ohhh, this was bad. This was so, so bad. He remembered every time he had been captured and had a new appreciation for the little whelp never turning them over to its parents. He... also realized just how dangerous this all was for it.

He listened to the boy as he pulled things from places, ripping noises and grunts of pain.

Skulker found himself wondering just how the half-breed worked. If he got injured. If he knew this was just playing around for them.

He heard the boy start whimpering again, starting to jump around desperately. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but it did it with an almost manic edge to it. The distress of the creature was palpable in the room.

The thing eventually collapsed onto its bed. He could hear its panting from where he lay on the floor.

He wasn’t sure how long they staid like that before the thing's sister entered the room. He heard her voice attempting to soothe as smells filled the space they resided in. He could hear agitation in the thing’s voice as it responded.

The, what was it called again? ‘Fenton Thermos’ didn’t provide anything except darkness and silence. That was arguably the worst part of it, not being granted the passage of time, or companionship while being stuck, unless there were multiple ghosts there at once. But this? He wasn’t sure this was better. This somehow felt more wrong than trying to skin the whelp alive, for ancients’ sakes.

He couldn’t even do anything to help. Or to hurt, whichever came first. Being stuck in his helmet gave him the perspective he never had, and stripped him of being able to use it at all. This was probably the worst he had felt after getting a beatdown from the half-breed.

He heard shouting next. Between the thing and its sister. Something about never giving it space and how it never came to her with its problems. It felt too... ‘absolutely not his business’ for his taste.

Eventually, he heard more screaming. He felt the room shake and he almost said something, then decided against it.

When it stopped, he felt his helmet get snatched up and thrown up against the wall. He didn’t make a sound as the thing raged.

All at once, he felt the whelp race down the stairs. Watched through the lenses of his helmet as he went through the portal and started flying. He saw glimpses of territories in the Zone as they flew by.

He saw through the lenses, but mostly felt it when they reached his territory in the Zone. It was something every ghost felt when they entered their haunt. He also mostly felt it when the little whelp threw his helmet into his haunt . It could be so rude sometimes!

No matter. He had already made up his mind.

He started rolling the helmet towards the center of his haunt. He needed to rebuild first, but this was too big of a thing to keep to himself.

He needed to tell someone of the boy’s situation.

After dropping off Skulker (emphasis on drop ), Danny was... hesitant to go home. He could normally spend days in the Zone and never face an issue. He wanted to stay in the Zone, until his skin felt like his and his mind stopped buzzing.

But fighting with Jazz wasn’t an excuse. That was mostly his dumb fault. If he wasn’t such an oversensitive crybaby, he wouldn’t have snapped at her. She was just trying to be nice, and he blew it.

He couldn’t handle it anymore. The only reason he could even go into the Zone was because she had told their parents of the rumor that Skulker’s suit had been found (the same suit that Tucker and Sam had already cleaned up following reports of a freak ‘earthquake’). His parents were driving him nuts and he was starting to fear he’d never be okay again.

He could blame the accident for a lot. It took away his chances of ever becoming an astronaut. It took away his security in the world. It took away his ability to feel invincible in the way that kids do. But this wasn’t the accident’s fault.

He was born broken. He was born with his skin too tight, too-large teeth, and something bubbling in his throat, begging to get out. He was born wrong.

There was... there was just no fixing that. He was going to be broken forever.

He would always have to live with the fact that everything that was wrong with him was purely something he did. Jazz could say whatever she wanted about it.

Daniel Fenton, even before the accident, was broken. Not even Jazz could fix that.

He could never fix himself.

#ailesswhumptober2023 #dp x dc #jason todd #danny fenton #danny phantom #dc robin #robin #batman #ai-less whumptober day three #Kite Flies Over The Nightingale Nest

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tired-reader-writer · 11 months

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Emboldened by the five notes on my previous post, I'm just gonna drop all my barely cleaned up and coherent word vomit of the AU idea here:

An OC who's aware on some level that he doesn't really belong or exist in the world he's placed in, aware that there's a purpose to his existence woven into the fabric of his soul, aware that he has a time limit (there's no time, there's never enough time) that he has to make do with to his fullest abilities (to do what, though, he's not fully consciously aware— it's more like an instinct until the task or event comes close time-wise), he knows things he's not supposed to know, not everything, but only what I want him to know and as such, his knowledge is... quite spotty at places.

For once I'm not gonna deal with worldbuilding bc I'm gonna focus so much more on the weird-ass hijinks this One (1) OC will inevitably cause— And the fact that his actions and plans and choices look absolutely bonkers and unpredictable to others bc he's just operating on a wholly different paradigm than the others— kinda like the insanity/madness the Lovecraftian Outer Gods might cause someone who lays their eyes on those horrors, or perhaps a follower of the cult of Dionysus. Ellyus Mercury seems like a madman to all but himself (that's a lie, even he knows he's not sane).

It's not that Ellyus doesn't have coherent goals and motives that make sense— it's just that his motives make sense ONLY to the audience who knows what's happened in canon already, like saving Elan 4, or preventing a story beat from happening, bumping up an event in the timeline, shit that would have no coherent links between each other to the characters that actually inhabit the world. Because really, what does saving one disposable body double by faking his death have anything to do with... *checks notes* opening up a hospital on Earth?

It's like everybody else is playing chess and Ellyus is... playing Pokemon— it's not that he's above the others, his goals are just Different™. He ain't got the time to care about checkmate when he's looking for a Shiny Legendary or something, y'know? He doesn't out Prospera despite the threat she poses to the others, despite the chaos she'll inevitably cause, bc like the audience he knows he knows about the senseless slaughter of the Vanadis Incident that sent her careening down this vengeance path, remembers it like he was there to see it (he didn't even exist back then but... his time perception is a tad fucked), he can almost taste the fire and gunmetal on his lips— and certain biases are already baked into his character. So he doesn't out his mother. What will Ellyus do? What can he do before his short life runs out except equip Earthians and his dear ones to weather the storm the best he can? He's a walking talking extremely portable inciting incident with his hand in fifteen pots simultaneously just waiting to be fridged (to turn into a narrative ghost).

He saves someone who died early in canon and was replaced by another body double, he bumps up the entire Earthian-Spacian relations thing in the timeline, he somehow diverts another character's uh, obsesssion? from one of the two heroines onto him bc of course he does, not doing anything to stop Prospera necessarily but trying to protect the people he was wired to love (that he was born to love). And Ellyus will do plenty of haunting, especially since he dies pretty early on. He dies, and leaves everybody to pick up the pieces of his impact (he leaves behind video messages of sorts. ramblings. things he couldn't say in life. revelations. information. predictions. encouragement. apologies.) He'd be spending time with his sister and dorm-mates and he'd already be missing it as if it were the past. Alive or dead, he is a ghost.

It's like, y'know how a character is a narrative tool? Like oh this character is meant to be the villain foiling the hero, but other than the narrative role, characters also have the job to cast the illusion of realism, they have to be a convincing thesis about their humanity, y'know? They have to be convincingly human, it's one of the characters' jobs. They have to hold up this illusion.

Ellyus' jobs include: being a wrecking ball, an outlet of the author's love towards certain characters (hence “born to love”, it's not about fate so much as it's about him being A Character), but his job doesn't quite include being a convincing human who fits into the world, who fits into the society and the background he is supposed to be part of. If I had to use a metaphor, y'know normally characters are like a garment, they're meant to be well-stitched and hemmed and be neat, some authors fail at the task but that's the job, but Ellyus? I purposefully left raw seams and un-hemmed edges and frayed threads to make him more foreign to the world. That's why he so unapologetically loves people that would NOT make sense for him to just love right off the bat, because of course, of course it's his job, it's his role as a character, it's his reason of existence, if I were to build a normal character I'd not make him love them so quickly.

He was always going to die. He wasn't supposed to exist but he does but he's going to die. It was always going to turn out this way. Y'know about Primrose Everdeen in The Hunger Games? Yeah. Yeah. The exact brand of Doomed By The Narrative, Dead Before It Ever Began.

Chucking Ellyus into the story is like hurling a bowling ball at an exquisitely arranged jenga tower because I like how pretty all the colourful pieces look when they fly everywhere upon impact. This thing has nothing to do with what canon is trying to achieve at all (to use the jenga tower metaphor, what canon is trying to achieve is a beautifully arranged and stacked tower) and for once I'm not focusing on worldbuilding or whatever, just... hijinks. Crack treated like horror, kind of. It's hard to explain. His thing is a riff on how I imagined myself in stories when I was younger (though those imaginations very quickly turn into OCs for me), he's like reader/self-insert but not quite. Isekai manhwa protagonist but not really. He's derived from the same roots!

So y'all who are caught up with the anime already know about the Samaya family, the repli-children, the eleven GUND-bits, Suletta's origins.

In my version things go a little sideways in that there's a thirteenth clone, except it's a defective clone that wasn't supposed to form in the first place. Why didn't Prospera just turn it into a GUND-bit? Not sure, haven't thought about it that far, let me have this one plot contrivance.

So there's Suletta Mercury and Ellyus Mercury.

Ellyus is... aware of all that, Suletta is not.

This leads to some fucky relationships between Ellyus and his identity.

Because, see, there's a couple other characters with... interesting relationships with their own names and identities, namely Shaddiq and Elan 4 who I ship him with.

Unlike them though, Ellyus never had an original identity. Ellyus Mercury is his true name.

It's the only name he'll ever have.

It's not a fake identity to protect the real one, no. His entire existence, his and Suletta's, their entire existences are the cover for the ones who truly matter. There's no place for Ellyus and Suletta in the future Prospera envisions. They're there to serve a purpose, a stepladder in trying to bring a world Ericht can live in— or at least Suletta is. Ellyus was probably just left alive to see how long he'll last. They have no father. (Nadim was never theirs.) Prospera is the only mother they know. (They were never Samayas.) They're only mirages, illusions, but even Suletta is realer than Ellyus, in his eyes.

He knows that by all means he does not have a place in this already complete story. That he's a foreign being, an alien, an outsider, somehow knowing things he shouldn't be able to know, and he's... ehhh, alright with that all things considered. In his eyes. That might change with some character development.

And oh, that's a trans lad by the way, no way an XY clone is popping out of an XX source.

There's a lot more brainrot buzzing around in my head like an insistent bee— like his daring rescue of Elan 4, his general personality and how little sense he tends to make even in day-to-day life, his death (god I think so much about his death), his protectiveness over Suletta (“We're not the ones that matter. We're not... We'll never be Samayas. You understand. Suletta has to matter to someone. And... And until she finds her footing, I gotta be there for her, you see? I gotta be there for her. She's my little sister. She matters to me.”), struggling over how to make Shaddiq/Ellyus/Elan happen... But I think the post is long enough as-is, and I'm not very confident releasing something like this into the wild so uh, I'll end it here. Shoot me a DM or an ask if anyone is interested in hearing more of my rambles.

#witch from mercury #mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury #gundam the witch from mercury #the witch from mercury #gundam witch from mercury #g-witch #g witch #gundam witch #Ellyus Mercury (OC)#like the strings on a rope (darling i fray like a firework)

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beautifulpersonpeach · 1 year

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another reason i'm happy for chap 2 is bts destroying all the narratives about them and women bpp. in the wild days of ✨discourse ✨ on tumblr, thank you for being the voice of reason. before i'd see people say bts avoids women because of armys, bts never works with women, bts hates women, bts has weird relationship with women, the relationships is weird because of armys. but what happened? rm worked with soyoon and now armys are listening to her music, became her fans, respecting her. jimin danced with women and nobody died. his female dancers are loved in fandom. suga has been working with women for a decade and the fandom never cared. all those bts - women theories and discourses just look so stupid now.

the same with the discourses about bts relating to other idols in hybe and general kpop. before covid bts played with txt and after covid in chap 2, bts returns playing with txt as their idol and comeback activities return to full. like normal like was always expected.

bpp my question is, where did these theories even come from?

***

Hi Anon,

It's funny, isn't it? I mean, on one hand there's always a faction of the fandom that believes the members belong to them and cannot date anyone (male or female), just as there is in every other k-pop fandom. But as you said, the talking points in certain k-pop spaces about ARMY's overall response to BTS working with women, being around women, having friendships with women, especially in contrast with how BTS relates to ARMY, has zero basis in reality.

Outside of the usual fandom tone-policing and checking y/n shippers (and taekookers), the whole idea of BTS - women - ARMY as a whole having any sort of weird relationship is a very recent thing too, because this is not a talking point I saw anywhere in the fandom before 2020. Going by some forums I was in at the time, I suspect this particular 'concern' was started by fans of other k-pop groups in 2020 and I'll just leave it at that. Like I vividly recall a Taemin stan telling me without preamble to wake up to the fact BTS is "kept away" from women. With BTS's long history of working with and interacting with women whether or not ARMY was in the picture, none of those theories made any sense to me.

It's such an odd thing to even debate or discuss given everyone can see with their own eyes how that dynamic has played out for the last 10 years. There's no conspiracy or anything to even theorize about, far as I'm concerned, because many of their female friendships and work relationships are well known.

Nobody lost their shit when Ryujin was spending time with BTS, when she filmed the reel with BTS, and afterwards when she talked about working with them. And I can list off 10 other women (at least) who this is true for too.

I hear you too about BTS working with other idols especially within HYBE. It's true that while touring in 2019 BTS was very busy and appeared 'removed' from TXT who where just ramping up, and that since 2015 BTS had focused more on curating their own content/variety shows given they'd been repeatedly disrespected and blackballed by the Korean media establishment. But they still interacted with other idols and after they clarified their plans for Chapter 2, just continued as expected. But somehow, the talking point of BTS feeling 'too proud' to interact with the rest of k-pop (by k-pop stans), that too took on a life of its own, and was made to seem more nefarious than it actually was. I still find a bit amusing tbh.

I think one reason these sorts of theories about BTS and the most innocuous things get obsessed over as fact by k-pop stans, is because for a group like BTS, those people have nothing else to say. There's very little you can actually hold against a group like BTS. And I'm not saying that just because I'm a fan. The fact is with the history most k-pop groups have, very few of them could last anytime at all in BTS's position with the amount of scrutiny on the group.

A second reason is k-pop fans relying on pre-conceived notions about a group they don't like, and then applying the worst examples of issues they've seen in their own or other k-pop fandoms, to BTS and ARMY regardless of whether it applies. For example, VIXX is in the news lately because a member worked with a broker to dodge military service in Korea, but before now that group was notorious for some of the most disturbing kinds of fan-service I've ever seen in k-pop.

Exhibits:

A female fan giving Hakyeon her thong to sign

(A lot of k-pop stans back then and today think this is cute, but imagine for a second if this was a BTS member and ARMY lmao)

The group members designing thongs and other lingerie for their female fans

(I mean, I can see how this could be a flex but imagine for one sec if this was in BTS's history)

And there's the group including a BDSM contract for their fans in their album

(Almost 10 years later and I still don't know what to say...)

Another example is members of Shinee saying point blank they can't talk about their dating life because their fans have told them they don't like it.

I mean, imagine if BTS did any of that today. Heck imagine if they did that years ago. K-pop stans are still making them pay dividends for War of Hormone and mixtape lyrics from 2015, even after a Women Studies professor vets their work, even after HYBE has female CEOs for their sub-labels, and even after on Blind in Korea female workers say HYBE is the best company in the entertainment sector to work for.

A lot of the talking points, criticism, or discourse around BTS sounds bonkers, especially if you know what else is going on in the industry, what other groups are doing or have done with nary a mention from the wider k-pop fandom.

It reminds me of how Jimin was getting flamed for missed insurance payments because someone stole his mail, while during the same day the news broke, Yang Hyun-suk (the guy who manages BlackPink and is debuting Baby Monster this summer) was in court after a former female trainee in his company claimed he threatened to kill her, gave her drugs, and pimped her out. If you took a look at the trending k-pop pages on Twitter or k-forums, you'd think Jimin was the one facing a sentence and not the guy that remains at the helm of YG.

Because as I keep saying, for many k-pop stans, the underlying issues are less important than who those issues are about. Apply the same thinking to the theories you see about BTS and women.

Even in the case of outright dating rumors in the past 10 years, the fandom didn't collectively lose their shit. Jennie's case being the exception because she had the double misfortune of triggering the most unhinged side of the fandom (taekookers) and belonging to a group whose fandom has some of the most extreme rivalries with ARMY, and so many from her fandom worked to disprove it as virulently as taekookers did. I consider Jennie an anomaly for that reason because there have been several examples over the years when nobody cared. For example when the dating rumors of Jimin with Seulgi from Red Velvet happened, the most people did was speculate and move on...

I've rambled lol, but anyway, what I mean to say is that agree with you Anon.

#bts #kpop #bts and women #fandom behaviour #kpop fandom #bts army #bts fandom #Bangtan #K-pop #fandom discourse

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sun-roach · 11 months

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Another restless night. The small room feels too hot, suffocating, yet at the same time Fork feels cold.

He pushes his legs over the edge of his cot and brushes his trembling right hand trough his messy, blond short hair, in an attempt to push his curly bangs back - in vain.

His hair never listens to him, combing it seemed to make it worse, which is why he just stopped trying. To his surprise, though, some vode would sometimes ask him how he manages to get his hair so soft and fluffy. Whenever he tells them he isn’t doing anything, they don’t believe him.

Jay was one of those brother’s.

Jay…

A cold shiver runs down his spine. He instinctively grabs the fork from under his flat pillow.

His best friend got sent back to Kamino.

He had failed yet another campaign. He led his man to their death. He led Jay to Kamino.

There is no commander in the 107th. Fork had refused to take that title since it had belonged to a vod he had looked up to, who someday just vanished as if he had never existed.

The general was considerate enough not to push the title on him, yet still she treats him like one. Honestly Fork doesn’t know how to deal with that.

How can she see him as a commander? He had failed his first campaign. He had failed so many people. Not just vod but also civilian. He can still hear the screams, he can still feel the ground shaking, causing his bones to tremble.

So how can she still treat him like a commander?

Half of the battalion is gone because he had miscalculated, because he wanted to save as many civilians as possible.

He doomed his men.

They may not show it, may not say it and keep treating him like always, but he knows deep down they must despise him.

After his second great failure there is no way they don’t.

It should have been a guaranteed victory. Yet he managed to prove otherwise.

When Jay had started to act strange, Fork started to get very worried, causing him to pull his men back. It was a mistake. Jay had suddenly started to shoot around him, shakingly trying to aim for the general.

It was obvious that Jay was fighting something. Maybe he had gotten poisoned. But something tells him that this wasn’t the case.

Fork can still hear his brother's frantic words, echoing in his head:

Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers follow orders.

There had been something so hollow in Jay's voice. Fork can't tell if Jay had been trying to calm himself down with those words or if it meant something else entirely. Though what else would it mean?

He buries his head in his hands, eyes twitching close, his muscles tensing.

It was him who had wrangled his brother down. It was him who stunned him, who cuffed him and watched their general argue with their medic, Loss.

Loss is a good medic. A very good one. And yet he is one of the few Fork dislikes, even despises.

Their medic doesn’t care if one of them dies. He will only do his job. He does it great, because he wants to be great. There is no other reason.

Fork never felt comfortable around him. The medic was always quick to judge him as a person as well as his orders.

There was one time, where he had wanted to comfide to someone. He had went to the medic, which was a mistake. The medic didn’t care for his mental struggles. Loss had told him to 'man-up', told him to stop acting weird and fish for attention. Fork never wanted attention. He just wanted to have someone help with his inner struggles, his trauma. His commander was gone. His general got enough to worry about, so many vode had died, he can’t burden the men with his own problems. Strife, his batchmate, was way too busy and seemed to become more distant with each day. There was no one. He was truly alone.

Loss had suggested to transport Jay back to Kamino. And Fork had let it happen. He didn’t speak up, couldn’t. Loss's word stands above his. If the medic says that Jay is a lost cause, then everyone will believe him.

The grip around the fork in his hand, tightens. He tries to concentrate on the object's weight and forces him to breathe slowly.

Maybe Loss is right. Maybe he is a defect. He feels everything too intensely, he has his own little ticks that no one seems to understand, his tongue always feels too heavy to speak, his heart is way too sensitive. Everyone teases him, makes fun of him, for his need to follow specific routines.

Fork knows that they don’t mean to be mean, yet it causes him to feel so alien toward his men sometimes.

Fork clings on the words of his commander. He was always kind to him. Patient and understanding. He was that kind of man, who easily could make everyone laugh and feel loved. His commander was a true leader, never shying away from confrontations, always one step ahead.

Often times he randomly barged into Fork's room and laid down on the younger ones cot, asking him about his opinion and perspectives on the situation at hand. He just would stay with him, make him talk more than ever - which is still not much - and-

Someone knocks on his door. For a moment Fork only stares at it, warm eyes wide, his lips slightly parted to led his shaking breathes out. His hands drop down on his lap, shaking and sweating.

Another knock, the fork in his hand feels warm and heavy.

<It’s alright. Take your time. Breathe.>

Fork's eyes close. He takes a deep breath before he stands up. With his free hand, he quickly rubs his face clean from tears, he hadn’t noticed had fallen.

He steps towards the door, wearing his blacks for nights, and opens it.

In front of him stands Loss with crossed arms.

Fork doesn’t say anything. He only looks at the vod and waits.

Jay will soon arrive on Kamino….

Seconds pass snd the medic starts to glare at him. What answer was Loss expecting from him?

It’s late. Why is Loss even up at this time? Why did he even care to tell him about Jay?

Fork wordlessly turns around to step back into his room. Loss's growl doesn’t go unnoticed.

<Freak. This is all your doing anyway. Why do you keep playing- >

Something in Fork's mind switches. His eyes turn dark and cold, the fork leaves his hand and hits the wall next to the vod's head.

Fork has never seen Loss look so pale and shocked, almost afraid. But he doesn’t care. He wants the medic to leave.

His hands quickly form signs, telling Loss to kriff off.

It’s a wonder that the medic does without any word or further commentar.

Yet it breaks Fork down to his knees. His whole body shakes as he quietly cries into the next day.

#oc: fork #lieutenant fork #107th battalion #star wars oc #oc fiction #oc: strife #oc: Jay #oc: medic Loss #star wars #tcw #sw tcw #he needs a break and a warm safe place

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checkoutmybookshelf · 8 months

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Fairy Tales of Love and Death

In the afterword to this book, Olivia Atwater says:

"I am not fond of death. I feel strange that I even have to write those words, but apparently I do. For some reason, we are surrounded by stories which romanticise death, and which imply that people who refuse to accept death are doing the world some sort of moral disservice. Obviously I do not think that accepting death is a virtue."

Someday I need to inject this quote into the brains of every doctor, nurse, CDC director, and world leader who had any say whatsoever in public health policy in the year of our lord 2023. Not to mention literally everyone who has ever thought that disabled or chronically ill people are better off dead. Because that romanticization exists, and somehow it got tied up in a really ugly way with ableism.

And then with her whole chest, Atwater told a story in which not only does almost nobody die, but at least one person is resurrected. Let's talk Longshadow.

*Spoilers abound below the break, so be warned!*

Fairy tales have an actively weird relationship with love and death. By courting one, you're often courting the other in fairy tale settings, and Miss Abigail Wilder ends up doing that QUITE LITERALLY. When Mercy Midnight gets caught in the bedroom of a girl who died suspiciously by the Lord Sorcier's beloved adopted daughter, our girls get right down to the business of falling in love while trying to solve a fae-based murder mystery.

There are so many beautiful little moments in Abigail and Mercy's relationship. Abigail realizing she is falling in love. Mercy dressing Abigail in midnight. Abigail speaking in support of Mercy to Other Mum. Hugs. Little touches. The desire for mutual belonging. The really lovely little motif of imagination, and Mercy actively making choices to revive Abigail's neglected imagination. Everything about this relationship is warm and soft and trusting...even once it's revealed that Mercy actually is Lord Longshadow, and is herself a sluarch.

Sluarch is the term Atwater uses in this story rather than psychopomp (creatures who guide the souls of the deceased to the afterlife; there are versions of these in every religion and culture), and they are tied into raven imagery, but they are themselves fairies, so all the usual rules apply. The sluarchs we meet are all just brimming with personality, and honestly they are just as wonderful as Lady Hollowvale and Mr. Jubilee, in their own ways.

What I think I loved best and what touched me most about this book, though, is how it addresses agency in death--both at the actual point of and for ghosts. And what this book screams to the skies with its whole chest is that people and ghosts have autonomy where death is concerned. Sluarchs do not judge, they do not coerce. They are hands to hold while you make your choice, and after you have made a choice, if you choose to go into the afterlife with them. Even Lord Longshadow, Mercy herself, has to learn that agency and autonomy are the most important things where death is concerned, not some arbitrary idea of what is "right" or "correct."

#olivia atwater #longshadow #regency faerie tales #regency fantasy #regency novel #regency romance #wlw love #wlw #lgbtq representation #adoption #abigail wilder #mercy midnight #fairy tale #books & libraries #books and reading #books and novels #books #book recommendations

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sunnysideblogup · 2 years

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So Twitter people have started piling on Rosie Carnahan-Darby after some questionable tweets she sent after the Queen’s death in regards to her views of the royal family and colonisation. I can’t be sure but I think a lot of people making the comments are American, or at least not Kiwi.

The thing is, she is in no way the only Pakeha who is thinking that right now. NZ primary schools LOVE to talk about the monarchy, and from the ages of 5 to 10 you hear about this fairytale person who is “technically in charge” of your country. And because you grew up with Disney you kind of like the idea of a Queen. And then members of the royal family visit and maybe you’re encouraged to go wave flags. And when tragedies happen Prince William or someone else comes over to shake hands with first responders and give a speech about prayers being with you all.

And then you get to high school and you start learning about colonisation and the land wars and Te Tiriti and you realise how fucked up it is that the country that you call home once belonged to other people, and people that look like you stole that from them. And you realise that the only reason you grew up in this country that you love and that is a part of your identity is because indigenous people were slaughtered, and oppressed. That can be a difficult thing to reconcile.

And then the Queen dies and it’s like “huh. That person who’s on all of our money, who was always this weird background figure in our social studies classes, who the PM would always talk about chatting to on the phone is gone.” Of course this is really a Pakeha reaction, because the only reason we got to have that early fairytale image of the queen is because we were blissfully ignorant of the atrocities her institution represents.

Me, personally? I’m staunchly against the Monarchy. My ancestors moved to New Zealand because of the Irish famine, I strongly believe Aotearoa should be a republic. I grew up reading Horrible Histories which did a pretty good job of shedding light on British behaviour overseas that we didn’t learn about. But I still wrote letters to the Queen as part of primary school projects, I wasn’t immune to royalist propaganda.

Something else to remember is lots of other people - especially the generations above me - had very little education about what colonisation really meant for Māori. And many older people still consider NZ to be a “dominion” of the United Kingdom, because that’s what it was for their parents.

Ultimately it comes down to ignorance, and I hope that now a symbol of the royal institution has passed on we can have more conversations about its irrelevance and the reparations that should be paid to indigenous peoples.

But yeah, there are a lot of Pakeha who are going to feel kind of sad. Even the ones who are well aware of what colonisation did. Again, it’s that having to reconcile what you were told growing up, with what you learnt later on, and what that means for your own identity as a Pakeha. Rosie is one of those people, as opposed to someone who’s both a royalist and a “sick of all this colonisation talk the Mow-Rees need to get over it” type of person. There are plenty of them around too, unfortunately.

As for people asking if Rhys knows what Rosie is saying? Of course he does. He’s a middle aged Pakeha man. He may well feel the same way. He’s not your morally perfect idol whose beliefs match entirely with yours.

#Rosie Darby #rosie carnahan darby #Rhys Darby #OFMD

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mannatea · 9 months

Text

Luck of the Draw, a Fire Emblem 7 ‘fic

Words: 4,949 words Summary: They all ended up dying anyway. Pairing/Character: Mark, Fargus, Oswin, Hector, Lyn, Kent, Fiora, Farina, Dorcas, Raven, Wil, mention of others. Extra Info: This was originally written and posted sometime around 5/11/2012. This fic is told in reverse chronological order! Rating: T Genre: Gen, character study-ish, bit of friendship.

The title is the link to Ao3. Comments welcome as always. <3

Notes under a cut.

This was one of my least popular Fire Emblem 7 fics, garnering very little attention when it was posted and confusing all four people who were brave enough to read through to the end of the story. This was my own fault; I failed to mention at any point that it was a story told in reverse chronological order. 🙄

Huge shout-out to Sentury from the old days though, who was pretty much the only person who seemed to genuinely like the concept of the story. Re-reading their old review motivated me to do this rewrite the most.

I will always use the default name of Mark for the FE7 tactician. I'm very attached to it.

I'm certain this story was born in part thanks to a rewatch I did of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor that year + the memory of the 'fic Famed Genius (which, if you haven't read as an FE7 fan, I would highly recommend).

2011 and 2012 were weird FE7 years wherein a good number of people tried to make sense of the tactician's role in the story. Famed Genius is the one I remember best for using the concept of control over time to marry the fourth wall to the other three. How else could there be no casualties? There was something truly genius about explaining the player's constant resetting to prevent any permanent death with the actual story/character of the tactician.

Luck is what this 'fic tries to explore, or at least the concept of luck as being more than just coincidence.

I wanted to start this story off with the end already solidified: everyone has died but Mark and he wonders what good his luck or careful planning did anyone when they all ended up dying anyway. Sure, they had longer lives this way, but to survive a fight with a dragon only to learn later that many of his old companions died of mundane bullshit feels pretty bad.

I really trimmed back the Fargus scene from the original because not only was the original dogshit, but it didn't really...go anywhere? This took a long time to rewrite because most of it ended up having to be scrapped.

I like the idea that Fargus believes in luck but not in good or bad luck. He feels luck is a component that factors in but cannot be blamed or held in high esteem. It is what it is.

The Davros was Fargus's ship in-game.

Mark studying strategy in Etruria is just something I made up for this story. I wanted Mark to really feel like he belonged in the world and wasn't just a player insert character.

Farina's dominant hand being her left: this is just an old headcanon. This scene is meant to imply that the loss of her fingers and therefore her ability to fight might have led in some not-insignificant way to her eventual death.

Since this story goes in reverse chronological order I wanted to cover things from the FE6 canon (loosely), including Hector's imprisonment. While the tactician's ending in FE7 suggests they are never seen or heard from again after the end of the story, I want to reiterate that I like viewing FE endings as "what the history books say (that may not necessarily be the actual truth)."

In this instance, Hector recruits Mark to lead his forces and they lose. Mark (along with Oswin and other higher-ranking survivors) end up being imprisoned here. This is the battle that ultimately claims Hector's life in FE6 (for those who do not know), so we can assume Oswin does eventually die here as well.

Regarding the deaths of the characters: I didn't want to go over every single person's death just because it felt like it would bog down the story too much; you have to kind of assume that Mark has heard of many deaths not discussed or mentioned in this story.

Serra was married to Oswin and would be the mother of Bors and Wendy (or Gwendolyn, I guess is her localized name now?) in this story. (Don't @ me, tying FE7 to FE6 in the dumbest ways was a tried-and-true tradition of ye olde FE days.)

That everyone lifts up Mark as this big-brained tactician should make sense from the characters' points of view. Like, it all seems so calculated to them! But to Mark, they were all just lucky/fortunate guesses. He couldn't have known the pillar would break or what side of it to have Rebecca stand on. He couldn't have known Kent wouldn't die in leading that charge against Lord Darin.

Speaking of Darin, I always let Kent lead the charge in that chapter because he asks for it. Here's the actual dialogue in-game for Chapter 19 Dragon's Gate:

“Mark, let me take the point. I will break through, even though it may cost my life. If something happens to me, Mark... Lady Lyndis... Please watch over her.”

While FE7 has a lot of "leader" characters (Hector, Eliwood, Lyn, Oswin, Marcus, Vaida, Kent) I don't think any of them can come close to understanding the burden placed on Mark to direct them better than Fiora does.

While all of these characters have been in charge of others and have had to make calls that may have lost people their lives, Fiora is the only one who understands what absolute defeat feels like. The original story did not give her a scene so I added one.

I liked the idea of her seeking a purpose in being a survivor (maybe as kind of a parallel/foil to Lyn).

I wanted to add like 10 more scenes to this story for a bunch of the other characters, but I couldn't find a place to put anything where it wouldn't feel clumsy.

Going from a scene talking about Fiora's experience on Valor all the way back to before the group reached Caelin in the prologue felt like a huge jump but I don't know that an extra scene or two in there would have helped. I'd be interested in people's thoughts on it, though.

#mannafics #fire emblem #fe7 #i honestly don't know wtf to tag this as lmao

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ashcroft-writes · 6 months

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20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @bluedaddysgirl! Thank you; this fits well into my master plan of attempting to be more alive online hahaha @unmarked-credits @xinambercladx @sinisterexaggerator Not obligated to do this, I'm just trying to be social and thought it may be fun!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 5 🥹 I am baby compared to some people I see answering these

2. What's your total A03 word count? 512943 words!

3. What fandoms do you write for? Actively, right this second, Star Wars! I do have a huge Fallout 4 WIP that hasn’t been updated in a hot second, but I love it dearly and do wish to finish it one day.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Idiot’s Array

Rot, Dust, and Steel

Strong Hands

Homeworld Elegy

We can pretend this last one doesn’t exist lolololol (It’s the .hack Penguin Fic of DOOM, a reposting of my very first fic from the twee LULZ SO RANDOM era of my high school days. I like to have my history all together, and I own it, but goodness no one should read that.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Oh I desperately wish I still was. I used to, every last one, and I still read and treasure all the ones I do receive. Over the last couple years, my life kept getting quite… upended, however… and I my well of communication energy just… died… and this is also partially because I find it physically impossible to just say “wow thank u <3” in a few seconds; I usually get really into it! Still, the kindness and joy folks have left for me has been so deeply appreciated and cherished. I can’t help but want to go back and respond eventually (“Hi! I know this was left like, two years ago, but you pretty much gave me the gift of sunshine then, sorry this is so late <3”) Hopefully it won’t be weird.

(If you’re reading this and you are, in fact one of those whose delightful comment I have not responded to, hi, I see you, and thank you so much for the gift of sunshine)

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Ooo. So though my stories definitely contain some angst, they usually end in very hopeful ways. Even the one about the collective grief for a destroyed planet 😆 Especially that one!! The future yet contains light! So perhaps the answer’s actually in a story that I never finished and isn’t available anymore.

I had this series I was writing when I was a lot younger set in Sonic the Hedgehog. It has this character who had been a villain switching sides and helping the Sonic group win their fight, and thusly secure his own pardon and freedom, a redemption sort of story. And it ended pretty sunshine and roses for most! But for the POV character, he never really would belong among the victors. They gave him a ship and his freedom in payment, and he took it and left for a world he didn’t know, off to try and find some new life on horizons where he would be either at best a stranger, and at worst hated for what he’d done in the past. I suppose there is still some hope in all that! New chances, new beginnings. Like I said, I’m a hopeful writer. But it was the most uncertain and melancholy of the lot, for sure.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? HA, almost certainly The Idiot’s Array; there’s a frickin’ romantic poem, a hopeful promise to see each other again, healing and reconciliation, and a man who flings himself out of the window dramatically in lieu of saying goodbye. What more could you want, I ask you.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Fortunately, no!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Sure have! The Gunslinger’s Paean series has been my first public work with a couple hot and heavy sort of scenes, mostly because at the time I was dying to write Cad Bane, who is an extremely blunt and direct character, told initially from the POV of someone bringing what he feels are shameful parts of himself into the light. Thematically, it just didn’t feel the sort of story in which smut should be anything less than on the page in every last detail where it had to be unpacked. I guess you could say they were the sort of scenes meant to reveal the changes in the characters because smut scenes are vulnerable scenes.

But judging how I’m talking about it, you might detect I’m running some obscure ace algorithm in my internal software that demands a very particular ratio of what it deems smut too unprompted 😆 AND THAT WOULD BE RIGHT AHHHH. I don’t write a lot of pwp, though I’m known to partake (and I hope this even answers the question lmao)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? Not really my thing, but it sure is a valid lifestyle!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge, unless you count the LLM-training data scraping of Ao3, which I suppose doesn’t precisely qualify as theft in the classical sense 😅 I do wonder if a shard of my characterizations will some day jump out at people using those chatbots. Weird to think about.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have not. I think I’d like to try some day, however, if I vibed with someone hard enough on an idea!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship? Hilariously, I don’t even write for this fandom I'm about to name. I HAVE NOT READ A SINGLE FIC AND THE FANART ARRIVES ON MY DASH WITH NO ACTIVE SEEKING. But Good Omens really went off with Crowley/Aziraphale! Gives me SO many warm fuzzies. What a great queer yearning story.

And I know, I know, that’s weird, someone probably expected me to say something I read/write for at the very least, but the character ships I adore exploring creatively genuinely exist on such a different brain circuit for me than the “fave ship I cheer for like a sports team” heh, though they are in no way lesser.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? You know that Sonic the Hedgehog series I mentioned earlier? That. My remaining mojo-energy in the Sonic-verse is just not powerful enough to overcome the inertia of revisiting something YEARS AND YEARS gone, and I have too many works other works open and waiting, but I’ll always look on that unfinished beast with affection. Yes that means all other stories I haven’t updated in a long time I still intend to finish 🥺 Please don’t throw rocks 🥺

16. What are your writing strengths? I’ve been told it’s my worldbuilding and characterization! And boy howdy do I love doing those things, so I’m really happy I’m doing it well!

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I get real maudlin sometimes in my early drafts! A LOT of characters on my pages work through a complex array of feelings and internal monologues before I can wrest a moving story from their emotional morass. You would not believe how much I tone down in editing. And oh god I write a lot of words. Somehow my chapters are now often 9-12k words and I just can’t stop myself; they feel complete when they’re complete 😭

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I dislike it usually, because in my work I’m often trying to immerse my (sometimes monolingual) reader in the headspace of another person… and if that’s the case, and my character runs into someone speaking a different language than the story's overall text, there’s usually three outcomes:

The POV character understands the other language fully. In that case, the reader should likewise feel the understanding is effortless, or they might get jarred out of the flow of words and character headspace. So I just write the translation of the words, i.e.

“I really wish I had a pet raccoon,” said Talky McTalkerson in soft-spoken French.

The POV character does not understand the other language at all. In that case, why would they mentally be able to give us a perfect transcription of the foreign words for readers? In that case, the character experience really is:

The man was saying something in a bashful sort of French—at least I think it was French. But I didn’t understand.

The POV character partially understands the other language. In that case, the translation struggle might even be part of the reader experience, and remains immersive, i.e.

“I really wish I had a…” Talky McTalkerson was saying in his quiet French, my poor student-learner brain straining to pick apart the mumbled crumbs. Something about… laveur? Washing? “I really wish I had a new washer too,” I tried in solidarity, and he looked at me as if I was an idiot.

(Note, I do not speak French and picked it out of a hat for examples <3)

Anyway, I think some exceptions can be made for words that don’t have precise translations! I like to do that with some of my alien language stuff if talking about the words deepens some understanding about the culture and people who speak them.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Pokemon, when I was a wee sprout in elementary school. It was never published lol but it was so incredibly dramatic and terrible. And it rocked

20. Favourite fic you've ever written? I will never get over Homeworld Elegy. It gets a little less attention than its predecessor—ah, such is the fate of all sequels, especially when it's not quite the same sort of story! But it means just as much to me. I don’t know how I pulled it out of my brain in six months, though I think I was processing a lot at the time, and looking back at the themes, hoo, it makes sense. I’ve never written something quite that complex before, the multiple POVs, all the wholesale alien culture invention, the making use of a past and present timeline, and the endless little circles connecting the two right up until the end. That and bringing in a stable of OCs and hoping people would like them… and I think it all worked even better than I’d hoped. I had no idea if I could stick the landing writing it, but I’m so proud of how it turned out and the things it’s inspired in some of my readers since.

Here’s hoping the next thing I publish will continue the trend of being my new favorite thing!! I’m really excited about literally everything I’m working on!!!

#ashcroft answers #ashcroft has opinions

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