#any continuous/ongoing story is going to be a tragedy more often than not

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I have a theodicy-adjacent question if that's alright. How can I offer prayers of thanksgiving without implying that God "likes me better" than They like other people? For example, I often want to thank God for keeping my loved ones safe through this pandemic, but it feels weird when so many have lost dear ones. I've learned a lot about how to wrestle with God through your ministry, but how to bring your positive feelings to God without toeing the line of a prosperity gospel-esque mindset?

Anon, I feel you! Some point a few years ago I had a similar unsettling realization. I knew that gratitude is important not only for our relationship with God, but for our psychological wellbeing — yet I felt so guilty for thanking God for things i knew others didn’t have. Did attributing the good things in my life to God imply that God wasn’t with those who lacked those good things? 

I brought that guilt and discomfort to God (and still do, whenever it arises anew). asked Them to help me sit with it, accept it, and then transform it into something more fruitful.

guilt transformed to motivation. discomfort transformed to commitment. what i was left with was an understanding that i did not need to stop my prayers of thanksgiving, but to expand them.

i take time to really feel and express my gratitude for the abundance i experience. and then i ask God to help my gratitude move me to a desire for others to experience that abundance too. I ask for guidance in how i can help make that abundance happen in the the lives of those around me and far from me. 

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i also make time for lament. many of us are taught how to ask God for things and how to thank God for things, but grief and lament are not taught. however, thanksgiving and lament are not opposites, but work together. they enrich one another. we need to take time for both.

a book that helped me embrace lament was Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark. You can read quotes and whole passages from it in my tag over here.

one of my favorite songs/psalms to sing/pray in lament is this one. The psalmist empowers us to question God, to ask why and how and when? and then the psalmist leads us to praise God anyway — to praise in spite of and with our doubts and our questions. 

when we look at all the pain in the world — in our own lives, the lives of loved ones, the lives of those we don’t even know, and in the struggling pulse of all Creation — we feel all sorts of things. Distress, despair, anger, grief. But some of us are afraid to bring those feelings to God. We’d rather avoid the feelings in general, repress them, not sit inside them for a while. (And certainly, we should not wallow in the bad all the time.) Bt when we dare to assign intentional time to sit in those feelings, God sits in them with us. 

And there is a strange thanksgiving in there, too — that we aren’t alone in the lament. We come to see that it is true that God does not will suffering upon any one of us — that the fact that sometimes i experience blessing while you struggle, or you find success while i go without, is not because God is choosing which happy few to bless that day. God really does will abundant life for all, and grieves when sin (individual, systemic, the rot that eats at this world) blocks that abundance for anyone. 

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in continuing to make time to feel and express gratitude, and then to make time to lament and to both desire and participate in abundance for others, thanksgiving does not elevate me above others as “better” or “more blessed” than they are. instead, gratitude reminds me of how interconnected we are with one another. In the Body we all share, “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor 12:26).

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When abundance wins out in spite of sin, we rejoice! When it is we who enjoy that abundance, our gratitude should not lead to smugness or self-congratulations, but to humility. it should shape us, move us to bring similar abundance to others.

A book that has really helped me understand that concept is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (which you can read online for free).

Christian texts have told me that the appropriate response to all God’s gifts is gratitude, but it’s Kimmerer’s book that helped me digest and embody just what that means. We acknowledge abundance, and we use that gratitude to connect us to the giver, and to others to whom that giver would also share Their gift.

Here’s one passage from her chapter “The Gift of Strawberries,” starting on page 33 of the webpage linked above:

Even  now,  after  more  than  fifty  Strawberry  Moons,  finding  a patch  of  wild strawberries  still  touches  me  with  a  sensation  of surprise, a feeling of unworthiness and gratitude for the generosity and kindness that comes with an unexpected gift all wrapped in red and green. “Really? For me? Oh, you shouldn’t have.” After fifty years  they  still  raise  the  question  of  how  to respond  to  their generosity.  Sometimes  it  feels  like  a  silly  question  with  a very simple answer: eat them. 

But I know that someone else has wondered these same things. In  our Creation stories  the  origin  of  strawberries  is  important. Skywoman’s  beautiful daughter,  whom  she  carried  in  her  womb from Skyworld, grew on the good green earth, loving and loved by all the other beings. But tragedy befell her when she died giving birth to her twins, Flint and Sapling. Heartbroken, Skywoman buried her beloved daughter in the earth. Her final gifts, our most revered plants, grew from her body. The strawberry arose from her heart.

In  Potawatomi,  the  strawberry  is ode  min, the  heart  berry.  We recognize them as the leaders of the berries, the first to bear fruit.

Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it.  And  yet  it  appears.  Your  only  role  is  to  be open-eyed  and present.  Gifts  exist  in  a  realm  of  humility  and  mystery—as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.

...Gifts  from  the  earth  or  from  each  other  establish  a  particular relationship,  an  obligation  of  sorts  to  give,  to  receive,  and  to reciprocate. The field gave to us, we gave to my dad, and we tried to give back to the strawberries. When the berry season was done, the plants would send out slender red runners to make new plants.

Because I was fascinated by the way they would travel over the ground looking for good places to take root, I would weed out little patches  of  bare  ground  where  the  runners  touched  down.  Sure enough, tiny little roots would emerge from the runner and by the end of the season there were even more plants, ready to bloom under  the  next  Strawberry  Moon.  No  person  taught us  this—the strawberries  showed  us.  Because  they  had  given  us  a  gift, an ongoing relationship opened between us.

...It’s funny how the nature of an object—let’s say a strawberry or a pair  of  socks—is  so  changed  by  the  way  it  has  come  into  your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran  the  knitting  machine.  I  hope  so.  But  I  have no inherentobligation  to  those  socks  as  a  commodity,  as  private  property. There is no bond beyond the politely exchanged “thank yous” with the clerk. I have paid for them and our reciprocity ended the minute I handed her the money. The exchange ends once parity has been established, an equal exchange. They become my property. I don’t write a thank-you note to JCPenney.

But what if those very same socks, red and gray striped, were knitted  by  my grandmother  and  given  to  me  as  a  gift?  That changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship. I will write a thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild I’ll wear them when she visits even if I don’t like them. When it’s her birthday, I will surely make her a gift in return. As  the  scholar  and  writer  Lewis  Hyde  notes,  “It  is  the  cardinal difference  between  gift  and  commodity  exchange  that  a  gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people.”

That  is  the  fundamental  nature  of  gifts:  they  move,  and  their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to  us  and  we  made  a  gift  of  them  to  our  father.  The  more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp  for  societies  steeped  in notions  of  private  property,  where others are, by definition, excluded from sharing. Practices such as posting  land  against  trespass,  for  example,  are expected  and accepted  in  a  property  economy  but  are  unacceptable  in  an economy where land is seen as a gift to all.

Lewis  Hyde  wonderfully  illustrates  this  dissonance  in  his exploration of the “Indian giver.” This expression, used negatively today as a pejorative for someone who gives something and then wants to have it back,  actually  derives from  a  fascinating  cross- cultural misinterpretation between an indigenous culture operating in a gift economy and a colonial culture predicated on the concept of private property. When gifts were given to the settlers by the Native  inhabitants,  the  recipients  understood  that  they  were valuable and were intended to be retained. Giving them away would have been an affront. But the indigenous people understood the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity and would be affronted if the  gifts  did  not  circulate  back  to  them.  

Many  of  our  ancient teachings counsel that whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again. From the viewpoint of a private property economy, the “gift” is deemed  to  be  “free”  because  we  obtain  it  free  of  charge,  at  no cost. But in the gift economy, gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that it creates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity. In Western thinking, private land is understood to be a “bundle of rights,” whereas in a gift economy property has a “bundle of responsibilities” attached.

...

In  material  fact,  Strawberries  belong  only  to  themselves.  The exchange relationships  we  choose  determine  whether  we  share them  as  a  common gift  or  sell  them  as  a  private  commodity. A great  deal  rests  on  that choice.

For  the  greater  part  of  human history, and in places in the world today, common resources were the rule. But some invented a different story, a social construct in which everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. The market economy  story  has  spread  like  wildfire,  with  uneven  results  for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one.

One  of  these  stories  sustains  the  living  systems  on  which  we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the world. One of these stories asks us to bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our  kinship  with  the  world.  We  can  choose.  If all  the  world  is  a commodity,  how  poor  we  grow.  When  all  the  world  is  a gift  in motion, how wealthy we become.

#gratitude #prayer tag #prayers of thanksgiving #prayers of lament #thanksgiving #lament #pandemic mention #braiding sweetgrass

[superman86to99]

Superman #85 (January 1994)

Cat Grant in... "DARK RETRIBUTION"! Which is like normal retribution, but somehow darker. On the receiving end of Cat's darktribution is Winslow Schott, the Toyman, who suddenly changed his MO from "pestering Superman with wacky robots" to "murdering children" back on Superman #84, with one of his victims being Cat's young son Adam. Now Cat has a gun and intends to sneak it into prison to use it on Toyman. She's also pretty pissed at Superman for taking so long to find Toyman after Adam’s death (to be fair, Superman did lose several days being frozen in time by an S&M demon, as seen in Man of Steel #29).

So how did Superman find Toyman anyway? Basically, by spying on like 25% of Metropolis. After finding out from Inspector Turpin that the kids were killed near the docks, Superman goes there and focuses all of his super-senses to get "a quick glimpse of every person" until he sees a bald, robed man sitting on a giant crib, and goes "hmmm, yeah, that looks like someone who murders children." At first, Superman doesn't understand why Toyman would do such a horrible thing, but then Schott starts talking to his mommy in his head and the answer becomes clear: he watched Psycho too many times (or Dan Jurgens did, anyway).

Immediately after wondering why no one buys his toys, Toyman makes some machine guns spring out of his giant crib. I don't know, man, maybe it's because they're all full of explosives and stuff? Anyway, Toyman throws a bunch of exploding toys at Superman, including a robot duplicate of himself, but of course they do nothing. Superman takes him to jail so he can get the help he needs -- which, according to Cat, is a bullet to the face. Or so it seems, until she gets in front of him, pulls the trigger, and...

PSYCHE! It was one of those classic joke guns I’ve only ever seen in comics! Cat says she DID plan to bring a real gun, but then she saw one of these at a toy store and just couldn't resist. Superman, who was watching the whole thing, tells Cat she could get in trouble for this stunt, but he won't tell anyone because she's already been through enough. Then he asks her if she needs help getting home and she says no, because she wants to be more self-sufficient.

I think that's supposed to be an inspiring ending, but I don't know... Adam's eerie face floating in the background there makes me think she's gonna shave her head and climb into a giant crib any day, too. THE END!

Character-Watch:

Cat did become more self-sufficient after this, though. Up to now, all of her storylines seemed to revolve around other people: her ex-husband, Morgan Edge, José Delgado, Vinnie Edge, and finally Toyman. After this, I feel like there was a clear effort to turn her into a character that works by herself. I actually like what they did with Cat in the coming years, though I still don’t think they had to kill her poor kid to do that -- they could have sent him off to boarding school, or maybe to live with his dad. Or with José Delgado, over at Power of Shazam! I bet Jerry Ordway would have taken good care of him.

Plotline-Watch:

Wait, so can Superman just find anyone in Metropolis any time he wants? Not really: this is part of the ongoing storyline about his powers getting boosted after he came back from the dead, which sounds pretty useful now but is about to get very inconvenient.

Don Sparrow points out: "It is interesting that as Superman tries to capture Schott, he at one point instead captures a robot decoy, particularly knowing what Geoff Johns will retroactively do to this storyline in years to come, in Action Comics #865, as we mentioned in our review of Superman #84." Johns also explained that the robot thought he was hearing his mother's voice due to the real Toyman trying to contact him via radio, which I prefer to the "psycho talks to his dead mom" cliche.

Superman says "I never thought he'd get to the point where he'd KILL anyone -- especially children!" Agreed about the children part but, uh, did Superman already forget that Toyman murdered a whole bunch people on his very first appearance, in Superman #13? Or does Superman not count greedy toy company owners as people? Understandable, I guess.

There's a sequence about Cat starting a fire in a paper basket at the prison to sneak past the metal detector, but why do that if she had a toy gun all long? Other than to prevent smartass readers like us from saying "How did she get the gun into the prison?!" before the plot twist, that is.

Patreon-Watch:

Shout out to our patient Patreon patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Dave Shevlin, and Kit! The latest Patreon-only article was about another episode of the 1988 Superman cartoon written by Marv Wolfman, this one co-starring Wonder Woman (to Lois' frustration).

Another Patreon perk is getting to read Don Sparrow's section early, because he usually finishes his side of these posts long before I do (he ALREADY finished the next one, for instance). But now this one can be posted in public! Take it away, Don:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

We begin with the cover, and it’s a good one— an ultra tight close up for Cat Grant firing a .38 calibre gun, with the titular Superman soaring in, perhaps too late.  An interesting thing to notice in this issue (and especially on the cover) is that the paper stock that DC used for their comics changed, so slightly more realistic shading was possible.  While it’s nowhere near the sophistication or gloss of the Image Comics stock of the time, there is an attempt at more realistic, airbrushy type shading in the colour.  It works well in places, like the muzzle flash, on on Cat Grant’s cheeks and knuckles, but less so in her hair, where the shadow looks a browny green on my copy.

The interior pages open with a pretty good bit of near-silent storytelling.  We are deftly shown, and not told the story—there are condolence cards and headlines, and the looming presence of a liquor bottle, until we are shown on the next page splash the real heart of the story, a revolver held aloft by Catherine Grant, bereaved mother, with her targeting in her mind the grim visage of the Toyman.

While their first few issues together meshed pretty well, it’s around  this issue that the pencil/inks team of Jurgens and Rubinstein starts to look a little rushed in places.  A few inkers who worked with Jurgens that I’ve spoken to have hinted that his pencils can vary in their level of detail, from very finished  to pretty loose, and in the latter case, it’s up to the inker to embellish where there’s a lack of detail.  Some inkers, like Brett Breeding, really lay down a heavier hand, where there’s quite a bit of actual drawing work in addition to adding value and weight to the lines.  I suspect some of the looseness in the figures, as well as empty  backgrounds reveals that these pencils were less detailed than we often  see from Jurgens.

There’s some weird body language in the tense exchange between Superman and Cat as she angrily confronts him about his lack of progress in capturing her son’s killer—Superman  looks a little too dynamic and pleased with himself for someone ostensibly apologizing. Superman taking flight to hunt down Toyman is classic Jurgens, though.

Another example of art weirdness comes on page 7, where Superman gets filled in on the progress of the Adam Morgan investigation.  Apparently Suicide Slum has some San Francisco-like hills, as that is one very steep sidewalk separating Superman and Turpin from some central-casting looking punks.

The  sequence of Superman concentrating his sight and hearing on the  waterfront area is well-drawn, and it’s always nice to see novel uses of his powers.  Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman does a similar trick quite often on the excellent first season of Superman & Lois.  The full-bleed splash of Superman breaking through the wall to capture Toyman is definitely panel-of-the-week material, as we really feel Superman’s rage and desperation to catch this child-killer.

Pretty much all the pages with Cat Grant confronting Winslow Schott are  well-done and tensely paced.  While sometimes I think the pupil-less  flare of the eye-glasses is a cop-out, it does lend an opaqueness and mystery to what Toyman is thinking.  Speaking of cop-outs, the gag gun twist ending really didn’t work for me.  I was glad that Cat didn’t lower herself to Schott’s level and become a killer, even for revenge, but the prank gun just felt too silly of a tonal shift for a storyline with this much gravitas.  The breakneck denouement that Cat is now depending only on herself didn’t get quite enough breathing room either.

While I appreciated that the ending of this issue avoided an overly simplistic, Death Wish style of justice, this issue extends this troubling but brief era of Superman comics. The casual chalk outlines of  yet two more dead children continues the high body count of the  previous handful of issues, and the tone remains jarring to me.  The issue is also self-aware enough to point out, again, that Schott is  generally an ally of children, and not someone who historically wishes  them harm, but that doesn’t stop the story from going there, in the most  violent of terms. In addition to being a radical change to the Toyman  character, it’s handled in a fashion more glib than we’re used to seeing  in these pages.  The mental health cliché of a matriarchal obsession, a la Norman Bates doesn’t elevate it either.  So, another rare misstep  from Jurgens the writer, in my opinion.   STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I  had thought for sure that Romanove Vodka was a sly reference to a certain Russian Spy turned Marvel superhero, but it turns out there  actually is a Russian Vodka called that, minus the “E”, produced not in Russia, as one might think from the Czarist name, but rather, India.

While it made for an awkward exchange, I was glad that Cat pointed out how  her tragedy more or less sat on the shelf while Superman dealt with the "Spilled Blood" storyline.  A lesser book might not have acknowledged any  time had passed. Though I did find it odd for Superman to opine that he  wanted to find her son’s murderer even more than she wanted him to.  Huh?  How so?

I love the detail that Toyman hears the noise of Superman soaring to capture him, likening it to a train coming.

I  quibble, but there’s so much I don’t understand about the “new” Toyman.  If he’s truly regressing mentally, to an infant-like state, why does he wear this phantom of the opera style long cloak while he sits in his baby crib?  Why not go all the way, and wear footie pajamas, like the lost souls on TLC specials about “adult babies”?

I get that Cat Grant is in steely determination mode, but it seemed a little out of place that she had almost no reaction to the taunting she faced from her child’s killer.  She doesn’t shed a single tear in the entire issue, and no matter how focused she is on vengeance, that doesn’t seem realistic to me. [Max: That's because this is not just retribution, Don. It's dark retribution. We’ve been over this!]

#superman #dan jurgens #joe rubinstein #cat grant #adam morgan #toyman #dan turpin #joke guns that only exist in comics #cat grant the dark retributor #coming soon to image comics

[greycappedjester]

Since I log the fanfictions I read, I’m realizing that June 19th marks the first day I read one of your fics! I read All in the Cards and was blown away by the storyline. Then, I continued to read your HQ series, the other cards fics, and your Dr.STONE fic too. I want to read your DC fics as well. I don’t know much background on it though, so I’m working on it. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your writing and how it has honestly made this past year a lot better. With all that being said though, what’s your favorite thing/theme to write in each of your individual series? Like world building, relationships, etc.? Also, what inspired you to write in the first place?

Ahhh, thank you so much! This is honestly such a sweet ask and I am so, so glad that I could make your year better.

For what's my favorite thing/theme to write in each series, that's a tough one as a lot of times in changes; but, after thinking about it, I think these are my favorite things overall for each....

(I also thought I'd do something fun and put what my favorite line to write was in the last few chapters for the ongoing works. I always wonder what lines are people's favorite so figured it would be fun to add mine)

Hq at Hogwarts: I really love writing Oikawa and Hinata's relationship. Which is kinda an odd thing to say since they purposefully only have a few conversations spread out through each story. But, they're my two favorite Hq characters to write hands down and so I absolutely love showing them as foils to each other in the series. That said, I also love writing them (and especially Oikawa and Suga) as foils/parallels to the Giant and Hisashi (Suga's grandfather). I love both foil relationships and writing parallels between generations--especially if the next generation is completely unaware/uninformed of the previous generation's mistakes

Favorite Recent Line to Write: Kenma met his eyes and his voice broke: “Why am I the only one you have to hide?”

*Note: Okay, technically not the most recent chapter but fun fact: I wrote the Kuroo/Kenma conversation waaaay in advance and used it a lot as a reference to where I wanted this relationship to be headed and I viewed this line as one of the biggest break points (along with "I am waiting" from the dance)

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Cards: This one is the most tricky for me to think of one since it changes a lot. I love doing the world building for this one (like the huge long time line I have for the history of the country). I love writing fantasy politics. As I consider a Hearts Civil War story more, I'm getting back into the groove of just really love writing Oikawa's complicated relationship with being King. And, of course, I love writing Tsuksihima and Hinata's relationship

Favorite Recent Line to Write: Oikawa swept across the office, never seeming to pause for even a second as he pointed a quill at Iwaizumi. “So, tell me, are invasions just like a semi-annual thing?”

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The Hq/Scooby-Doo AU (Investigations Inc.): the humor and banter

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Walking With My Eyes Open: I think this might be my favorite romance thing I've ever written. I really, really wanted to show a view of romance that emphasized the choice to be in love (and the work that goes into a functioning relationship). I especially wanted to do this with Hanahaki since this trope is so tied to the forfeit of choice on the patient's end and the inherent unfairness/weight on the person they're in love with. Couldn't imagine it with any other characters but Senkuu and Gen tbh.

Favorite Recent Line to Write: But, human shoulders weren’t meant to bear the expectations of divinity.

*Note: Lol, this scene got cut and reworded so many dang times in editing, the one thing that stayed consistently I feel like is me really wanting to keep this specific line

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After the Fall of Olympus: Three things and I find it really hard to pick which one is my favorite.

(1) I love that this story format lets me show the slow growth/aging of Dick as a character and (I hope) that each chapter shows how he's grown to the point that Dick at age 14 in Ch. 1 is noticeably younger in internal monologue than Dick in his 20s in the latest chapter.

(2) I love writing tricky political/social issues where all characters have their points and there truly is no write answer...with that, I love writing Dick and Jay Garrick's relationship.

(3) If I had to pick, I don't know if it's my favorite but I think it's the most important element of the story. I very much wanted to show a more realistic view of grief where it feels like the world ended; but, it's not actually an apocalypse. They recover. At the start of the story, it is without a doubt the lowest/most devastating point, but they rebuild. It's slow and there's set backs but they are rebuilding a world that isn't (and shouldn't be) the same but is there and is new and is important. I know a lot of stories that focus on grief view it as a tragedy and an end which it is in a huge way. There's the phrase "it gets better" but a lot of times I think it's viewed as "things will go back to what they used to be" which is understandably hard for people to believe because a lot of times, it fundamentally is impossible for what's lost to be regained. That doesn't mean it's the end of everything. I think sometimes we forget that the previous world (be it actual in this story or what feels like the entire world) may not exist anymore but something different can still be built. The new world and old should never be compared because they can't be. It won't be the same. But, it can be good and they can be happy.

Which is honestly the recovery of what Dick Grayson, to me, should represent rather than the constant grief/vengeance of Batman.

Favorite Recent Line to Write (technically the last line here, just doesn't make sense out of context)

“You need someone with you. I’m not just leaving you alone!” Selina shouts.

“No? Why not?” Dick spits back. “You’re so good at it !”

Selina flinches back and Dick is viciously, painfully glad.

“You don’t get to care just when it’s convenient, Selina,” he says and it hurts, a wound that’s never going to heal. “I needed someone eight years ago. I needed someone when Bruce died, when Batman was gone, and the city was falling apart, and you weren’t there. You didn’t call. You didn’t check on me. You didn’t even say bye. And that’s fine. I lived, I rebuilt it.”

He steps away. “But, you don’t get to come back now and pretend it never happened. I don’t have to let you just because it hurts either way.”

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Flash Facts of Bart Allen: Lol, what might be my least popular but in my opinion best written story. Favorite thing is Bart and Len's relationship hands down, followed by showing Bart's relationship with how he navigates the weight of the Flash legacy while feeling like he's fundamentally different than the Flashes that came before.

Partly since this is getting so long and partly because personal story, I'm putting why I started writing under the break.

I started writing for a lot of reasons.

My first fic--and the first book I ever finished--was the first Hq at Hogwarts story (Mirror of Erised). For background, I started the story when I was in my first year of getting my master's degree (which was surprisingly a lot less busy than my undergrad for a number of reasons but me getting sidetracked into that is a whole other ask about grad school).

My first reason I started writing was that I had more time. I'd had the idea for the story for years; but, I finally had enough details that I was like "okay, now, I gotta write it" so I did. I'll say exactly what the final straw was when I actually get the series finished since it's a major spoiler.

My second reason probably didn't consciously occur to me at the time but is what I consider the most important reason I write and continue to write. I fundamentally want to write stories that make people's days better. It doesn't have to be anything big; I just really wanted to write the kind of story that people could get lost in for a few hours when they're scrolling through AO3 and looking for a distraction. I wanted to write something with happy endings.

Here's the more personal part. I really don't mean this in a sad way so please don't take it as such. However, when I started writing and posting, my dad had just died completely unexpectedly a few months earlier and right before I had to move cross country for masters. It was definitely a hard time (though I had friends and a good support network, again please don't worry--it was years ago now). But, writing then definitely helped me be in a positive happy attitude while thinking of plots and friendships in my favorite anime that always puts be in a better mood.

My point here is that while that was never the reason that I wrote, it's something I reflect on a lot for why fanfic can be such a positive force. Someone can have either the worst day ever, a mildly inconvenient day, or a perfectly fine day and still want distraction. To have a community with both writers and readers interested in the things you're interested in. To have a site where fic can be easily shared and for free. There's something just wonderful about that.

So, most of all, why I write: I want to show people that care about each other. I want to make someone's day better and often that day is mine.

That's really all there is to it.

#atfo #hq at hogwarts #cards #wwmeo

[dreamersleeps]

So, as someone whose father is very similar to Endeavor, I've never understood the notion that Horikoshi is trying to whitewash or excuse his abuse by giving him a character arc. Abusers are awful people, but it's not often that they're one-dimensional villains. Nobody ever talks about how confusing it is when your abuser wakes up and sees the damage they've caused, much less when they clumsily try to make ammends. It seems fans would rather it all be simple, when it's anything but in reality

/2 Are there ways it can be handled better? Of course. But a writer making an effort to explore the complexities of abuse through all its angels is far from abuse apology. It’s much more respectful (imo) to treat the situation like the confusing, complicated mess it is in reality, rather than reduce it to some simple cartoonishly evil bullshit that either limits the survivors of his abuse to being lifelong victims, or enables the continued abuse perpetuated by a former victim (i.e., Dabi)

Hello, I’d like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions. I was actually surprised to open up Tumblr to see your messages in my inbox. I spent the past couple of days sitting on and thinking about it. I’m not sure if you were asking for my thoughts and opinions, but I’ve finally sat down and written my response. It’s late at night so I apologize if there are any statements below that are poorly worded or expressed. 

As you express, it’s a very complicated topic as a whole, because Endeavor, or Todoroki Enji is a complicated character. 

I can not and will not claim that I understand abuse like those who have experienced it. Additionally, It’s not in my place to tell people how to feel or think. However in response to what you shared, I will give some of my thoughts as a reader and fan of BNHA on the topics surrounding Endeavor. (Btw to the anon: some of what I have to say below will be my general opinions about the topic as a whole.)

When I try to write meta and other analysis pieces, I try my best to go back to the manga and base my analysis and arguments on the (official) translations instead of my opinions and thoughts from the beginning. I sometimes have to go back and re-read chapters to remind myself what is “canon” and then try to understand and express my interpretations on the matter. This is not to talk down on those who do not do this: this is just something I do for myself. I am most definitely influenced greatly by what others have to say but I also want to figure out my own interpretation of the story and characters.  

So, as someone whose father is very similar to Endeavor, I’ve never understood the notion that Horikoshi is trying to whitewash or excuse his abuse by giving him a character arc. 

I personally never really saw it as Horikoshi trying to excuse Endeavor’s abuse by giving him a character arc as well. As many others have stated, I don’t see it as a “redemption arc,” because it isn’t. 

I think that we all have to remember the diversity of the fans and readers of this and other fandoms. There are those who can personally relate to or understand what the Todoroki family has gone through, and others who are unable to. Those who are unable to fully understand certain experiences but can sympathize with the characters however even then, this lack of knowledge or exposure to the topic has led to people accidently expressing opinions that hurt or offended others. Additionally, based on what I’ve seen and read on Tumblr, there is quite a wide range of differing viewpoints from those those who can relate to the experiences of the Todoroki family.

Abusers are awful people, but it’s not often that they’re one-dimensional villains. Nobody ever talks about how confusing it is when your abuser wakes up and sees the damage they’ve caused, much less when they clumsily try to make amends. It seems fans would rather it all be simple, when it’s anything but in reality.

Abuse is complex. There is a very wide range of complicated feelings, emotions, thoughts and opinions that surround it. Everyone has a reason as to why they feel or think the way they do. Because we all have had different experiences and reactions to the events of our lives, we can not expect everyone to think similarly. 

Given that BNHA or shounen manga in general is catered towards a younger audience (compared to, lets say seinen manga) and Horikoshi is working with topics that are difficult to read or understand even for adults, I’d argue that part of the discourse may result from that. 

It seems like when we say that we like a certain character, people tend to automatically assume then that we approve of what they stand for and what they’ve done. I first watched the first two seasons of BNHA before I began reading it. I absolutely hated Endeavor in the beginning, however after I caught up in the manga and began to follow the chapter releases each week, ultimately the characters that really pulled me in to the story was Endeavor, Hawks, and Bakugou, arguably some of the most controversial characters of the series. 

Are there ways it could be handled better? Of course. But a writer making an effort to explore the complexities of abuse through all its angles is far from abuse apology. It’s much more respectful (imo) to treat the situation like the confusing, complicated mess it is in reality, rather than reduce it to some simple cartoonishly evil bullshit that either limits the survivors of his abuse to being lifelong victims, or enables the continued abuse perpetuated by a former victim (i.e Dabi) 

What truly drew me in was the complexities that came with their characters. I haven’t personally experienced abuse however I have lived through other experiences to recognize in my own understanding that life is both so negatively and positively complicated, confusing and messy. Some people want to see Endeavor fall, and others hope to see him actually change. These wishes are shaped by what we’ve seen or experienced throughout life. 

We like simple, clear cut, perhaps one dimensional characters because it’s easier to form an opinion about them. It seems like we struggle with characters like Endeavor and others because we are sometimes faced with the contradicting collision of our own thoughts, morals and beliefs with the actions and story of these characters. 

For some reason a lot of my analysis posts have revolved around Endeavor, Hawks, and Dabi and if anyone is interested, I personally believe that as much as we may love a character, whoever it may be, actions should and will be met with consequences. Tragedy does not excuse one’s actions. They may explain one’s actions but we are responsible for and should be held accountable for the consequences that result from it.  

If anyone was thinking it, this all does not mean that I think Horikoshi should be exempt from critique. And as you ask and answer, “Are there ways it could be handled better? Of course.” Additionally as I have written on the top of my blog, 

There will be posts found here that you may not agree with, however different perspectives are what keeps the meta conversation going. 

I think that many of us would prefer it if people would refrain from accusing, insulting or bullying Horikoshi and other fans because of their thoughts and opinions. Although it is understandable that it is difficult when we respond to the story and others emotionally, taking part in these types of activities is not the same as critiquing something. 

Boku no Hero Academia is still an ongoing manga. We get one chapter every one or two weeks at a time and so we only get little snippets of the full story. Based on new info and what we’ve read in past chapters, we make predictions, assumptions and have expectations about the future. However, I think that we all have to remember that the story of Enji, Rei, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo and Shouto is not complete yet. We are still in the midst of an unfolding narrative that Horikoshi is working closely with to present his readers. 

#endeavor #todoroki enji #thoughts #cw abuse #luna answers

[nextwarden]

Webtoons are good for the soul PART II - ECLECTIC BOOGALOO

A continuation of this.

Sea Salt and Sand by neggut [ongoing]

In the autumn holidays 3 months ago, Brynn and Bailey shared a kiss. When Bailey left, Brynn tried to forget all about her and continue living an unremarkable life, only for Bailey to suddenly transfer to her school! What follows is a coming of age story full of pining, misunderstandings and confusion as Brynn and Bailey question the true nature of their relationship. 

It’s cute and a bit angsty but not too much. The art style often feels incomplete or rushed but in a good way, its flaws give character to the characters and the story. One of my all time favourites.

Apathy meets labrador/10

Dragonbourne by Gummy Shark [ongoing]

After a troubled past, Sir Ross Edmund Avery is somewhat content to lead a mundane existence, alone in his house. However, when he stumbles upon a child in the woods on Solstice Night who is anything but mundane, his simple life will be turned upside down.

A scar(r)ed man adopts a feral child, hijinks ensue. Once again, the art style is endearing, full of curves and long lines. Haven’t checked on that one in a while but the first twenty chapters were very promising.

Found family/10

The Last Human by Zack Jordan [ongoing]

She's the galaxy's worst nightmare: a Human. Fortunately, she's the last one. Now her adoptive (alien) mother is realizing that raising a young Human is no easy task.

Basically the badass and child duo trope but the truth may surprise you. Fun, cute, very wholesome, and surprisingly emotionnaly philosophical at times. Spidermom is best mom.

Recommend/10

Vampire Husband by Scragony [ongoing]

The life of Charles the Vampire an Cheryl the human after years of marriage.

What if tragic romance between human and vampire but they had their “happy-ever-after”? This is after. It’s funny and cute.

Relationship goals/10

Blood Stain by sigeel [ongoing]

A story about courage, growing up and finding friendships in most unlikely places... spiced with some MAD SCIENCE! 

Haven’t quite wrapped my head around this one yet, but it’s fun and drawn by sigeel (a.k.a. Linda Sejic) so of course it’s beautiful. Enjoyed it a lot, will have to keep reading.

Bloody merry/10

Punderworld by sigeel [ongoing - on hiatus]

Hades' and Persephone's love-struck misadventures.

Another take on Hades and Persephone’s love story. Once again, sigeel, so of course I love the art.

Bumbling idiots/10

The Queen and the Woodborn by Shiniez [ongoing]

Far away behind seven hills and seven forests, seven fields and seven rivers, there lived a Queen... welcome to the queen and the woodborn. a fairy tale romance for the mature readers about the unseen Queen and the Goddess in the woods. a tale of the two forgotten by the world around them who will make the world remember their names. expect gods and monsters and a romance for the ages.

Not many chapters yet but very long ones to compensate. This one is by Shiniez (a.k.a. Stjepan Sejic) so, once again, love the art. The story, the character designs and concepts, and the pace are all amazing.

Very wow/10

P.E.T.S. by Gyxks [ongoing]

Just when Tasha was about to start a new life, she was abducted by aliens. Fortunately, she and other humans were rescued by an interstellar general named Tourmaline. She soon discovered that her body was unfit to return home without endangering life on earth. Join her on her journey traversing this new world and these new feelings for an alien general. 

POV: You’re living your best life as a young adult, at the shopping mall at 2am in your pyjamas, when suddenly death aliens rain pain all around and you’re abducted only to be saved by tall buff alien commander lady. Romance ensues. Maybe, it’s slow burn but quite enjoyable to read.

Blush/10

Scoob and Shag by Misterie Krew [ongoing]

Scoob and his best pal Shag are up to their usual hi-jinks, but everything is not as it seems in their latest adventure. 

No relations to any character whatsoever. None. None at all. Also no relations to any kind of sense at all either. Can’t quite explain that one except that it’s genius. Just read it.

Is that a gun?/10

Bewitched by peachyytown [ongoing]

The witch who keeps "kidnapping" the princess is actually her girlfriend and they're just going on dates.

Short but cute alternative take on all that witch/monster/princess shenanigans. In the same vein as Our days in Lumain. Also the art is very nice.

Meetcute/10

When the Pink Trees Bear Fruit by neggut [completed]

A sweet love blooms between two women on an orchard in 1973.

A short story, five chapters only, but play devastatingly well with one’s heart. In the same vein as It Stems From Love by Soya S. Holm. neggut ist sehr gut.

Tears/10

Rooftops & Roommates by Zaanart [ongoing]

Jeb is an architecture major at university, rooming with his best friend Todd. There's just one problem... Jeb’s secretly a gargoyle! Between studying, partying, and a bad ghost problem, will Jeb be able to keep his true identity a secret?

Jeb is sweet, Jeb is fresh, but Jeb is decidedly not very good at keeping a secret. It’s funny, slice-of-life, roommate college shenanigans at its finest. With a magical twist.

Ship/10

Everything is Fine by Mike Birchall [ongoing]

Sam and Maggie are a normal couple, in a normal house, in a normal neighborhood. There is nothing strange about their heads, their neighbors or their sweet little dog. Everything is Fine.

I haven’t actually started this one yet, but the premise is very very very interesting. Perhaps not for thos who are faint of heart? Deceptively cute. Or is it?

It’s fine/10

Castle Swimmer by Wendy Lian Martin [ongoing]

What happens when your entire life is ruled by a prophecy – your future foretold by people you’ve never met, who died long before you were born.  Such is the story of two young sea creatures.  One believed to be a guiding light for his people, a Beacon who will lead them to a bright, prosperous future.  The other is a teenage prince for who’s destiny is to KILL the Beacon so that HIS own people might thrive.  When both reject the course set for them, it leads to a raucous adventure as big and unpredictable as the ocean itself – and a romance that nobody could have predicted.

It’s fish. It’s gay. It’s under da sea and ya gotta kiss the boy. I haven’t read it all yet but enough to vouch for it and to have some vested interest in the universe and its lore.

Enemies to lovers/10

Demon Highschool by Kiiyoko [ongoing]

After a compromise it was agreed that criminals would attend a "demons highschool" where they would work as slaves for demons And while it was all in good favor, things take a very dark and twisted turn at said, highschool.

There’s something, some kind of twist, about the MC which I haven’t gotten to yet, and which I am very interested to discover. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one as of now, mostly curious I’d say.

Pet/10

Hooky by Miriam Bonastre Tur [completed]

Dani and Dorian have missed the bus of the school of magic. Now, they must find someone who teach them how to be a great and good witches... Or maybe not.​ 

This one is a strange one about witchery and family. Surprisingly deep and serious at times, very enjoyable. Unfinished on Webtoon but a good start to get into the story.

Siblings/10

Loving Reaper by Jenny Jinya [ongoing]

Animals struggle. Pets and Wildlife alike. The reaper cares for their stories and helps them with the crossover. Short stories about the "Loving Reaper" to raise awareness and collect funds. Breaking hearts for a good cause.

Beautiful bittersweet stories about animals, pets, life and death and love.

Tissues/10

Batman: Wayne Family Adventures by StarBite, CRC Payne, Kielamel Siba, Lan Ma, C.M. Cameron, and Camille Cruz [ongoing]

Batman needs a break. But with new vigilante Duke Thomas moving into Wayne Manor and an endless supply of adopted, fostered, and biological superhero children to manage, Bruce Wayne is going to have his hands full. Being a father can't be harder than being Batman, right? 

What if Bat-family but happy? Official comic, barely started, very fun.

Wholesome/10

The First Night With the Duke by MSG, Taeva, from an original work by Hwang DoTol [ongoing]

A handsome, selfish noble falls for a beautiful, kind commoner -- at least, that’s how the story’s supposed to go. When an average college student wakes up as Ripley, an extra in her favorite romance novel, she resolves to enjoy the luxuries of her character’s status while watching the novel's plot unfold from the sidelines. However, her plans are soon derailed when she finds herself in bed with no other than Duke Zeronis, the novel’s hero! Dodging the villainess’ schemes, the Duke’s advances, and her own feelings, can Ripley keep the story on track and survive beyond the first night? 

Haven’t read that one but a very dear (and respectable) friend (*cough*  @berigolote​  *cough*) of mine keeps pestering me to give it a try. So here it is, try it.

Do it before me and you get a cookie/10

HEART Anthology by Marvin.W, caw-chan and many other artists. [ongoing]

Featuring stories from the 2020 Short Story Contest!  From wholesome stories to tearjerkers, are you ready to catch these feelings?

A collection of beautiful stories on the shorter side, all about the many kinds of love in life, the many beauties of it, and the pains that make it worth living.

Tears that warm the heart/10

In My Heart by Redfield42 [ongong]

Sasaki Mari is a typical delinquent troublemaker whose only goal is to get a boyfriend, but due to her reputation as bully and low grades, all the boys reject her. Then she decides to change her style, and asks for help from the student with the best grades in the class.

It starts off light and fund and progressively seems to delve a little bit more into the seriousness of life. Not a tragedy, however, and very much worth a read still.

I think I have a trope I like/10

My awkward princess by LazyArts [ongoing]

This love story is about a girl named Luna charlotte, and the student council president Alice Evelyn. Luna is a delinquent whom often gets in trouble, as Luna reaches the end of the line she almost gets expelled, now luna has to become a model student with the help of Alice. Will Luna be expelled or will she succeed, read to find out.

Along the lines of Not So Shoujo Love Story, In My Heart, and Susuhara is a Demon. Delinquent/Good Student meetcute, romantinc hijincks ensue.

Seduction/10

RAINBOW! by Rue & Sunny Gloom [ongoing]

This is the story of a girl named Boo. She has pink hair and a vivid imagination and she is about to discover a side of herself that she never considered before. 

Okay, so yes, this one is also also a delinquent meets cute nice girl, but - BUT! - there’s an element of story telling that I love about it: the way we see Boo’s anxiety incorporated visually into the story. Just for that it is one of my favourite recent discoveries!

Protecc/10

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

Okay, that’s all for part II. Hope you enjoy those as much as I do. Thanks for your attention, sorry for the length and, please, do keep on reading, they all deserve it! As do you.

PART I

#webtoon #webcomic #comic #comics #recommendations #part 2 #the return of the revenge #wlw #mlm #long post #mega thread #keep reading punk

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: How To Your Eternity Teaches Us the Importance of Life's Little Moments

  2020 was a year of almost universal hardship, and I myself experienced much of the grief firsthand. Around the very beginning of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a dear relative passed away from the disease in a loss that shook my entire family to its core. The initial cabin fever and isolation of the quarantine’s early days ground my writing inspiration and creative drive into dust. And even as we approach a turning point in the pandemic where we can all get vaccinated (I received my second Pfizer dose late April), another of my loved ones has been undergoing treatment for a completely different illness. Traversing a year of strife and anxiety hasn’t been easy, but it has taught me some very important lessons. Namely, I’ve learned to appreciate all the little things I have in my life and how important each of them is and continues to be. But I couldn’t really put words to that experience. At least, not until I watched the first episode of To Your Eternity. 

    If you haven’t checked it out yet (and you really should), To Your Eternity was one of the spring 2021 season’s most anticipated anime. In this emotional sci-fi epic, an omnipotent being sends an orb down to Earth. Having no form or identity, its only goal is to observe the world around it. Over the course of its seemingly infinite lifespan, it begins to take on different forms and accrue information in order to better understand its surroundings. Eventually, the Orb comes across humanity and civilization and begins to learn even more.

  There is no shortage of heart-wrenching narrative depth in To Your Eternity. The first episode is already wrought with tragedy and drama that doesn’t pull any punches. The scene that truly made an impact on me was the very first when the Orb took on its first living form. After spending some immeasurable time as a rock and moss thereafter, the Orb comes into contact with a dying wolf and undergoes its transformation.

    I felt so much gravity behind these deceptively simple actions, this onslaught of firsts for the Orb. Its first sense of consciousness, its first clumsy steps, its first sensation of pain. Watching the Orb have all these new experiences felt so raw and scary and absolutely spellbinding all at once. In less than two minutes, To Your Eternity presented an astounding amount of emotion as new life cropped up before us as the Orb achieved awareness of itself and the world. As a living being, the Orb observed life and pain and the sensation of its surroundings, even if they held no meaning for it at first.

  These little actions — walking, feeling, knowing — held so much grandeur and emotion that I was overwhelmed to tears. I could feel the weight of each step it took learning how to walk, the stinging of its first wound, and its senses being assaulted by harsh snowfall and unforgiving winds. As it began its journey of observation, the world was already unkind to it. But it still went on to make its first friend and learn kindness and loss. It walked and learned and felt, and something inside me just resonated. By the time the episode ended, I had found something more than just a pitch-perfect pilot. Those moments of tiny growth and gradual change served to exemplify a lot of what I’d been going through up to that point. 

    I fired up To Your Eternity at an emotionally vulnerable moment in my life. I was waiting to hear back on a loved one’s test results on a medical condition that cropped up as they grapple with an ongoing illness. Tensions were high, and as I waited to hear how they were, I took a lot of time within the day to relish every moment I shared with them. Be it birthdays or dinners or even just watching TV, I knew exactly how precious my time with them was and will continue to be as they fight the good fight. It was that mindset that made the pilot for To Your Eternity so important to me.

  Each new piece of information the Orb (eventually named Fushi) gleans is a meaningful experience in their existence. Not all of them are as important as, say, dismantling the religion of a backwater tribe that sacrifices young girls to a giant bear — there’s also eating fruit, basking in warmth, knowing pain, and learning how to say “thank you.” No moment is wasted for Fushi because they always fulfill their purpose of learning something new. I often ponder on what it must have been like for Fushi to start from absolute zero, coming into existence with less awareness than a newborn and having to learn the fundamentals of life and survival almost immediately. That only magnifies the lessons I’ve learned throughout this pandemic.  

    Because in the end, the little things mean so much when you add them all up. I had to learn that the hard way, but it’s something I won’t ever forget. I do what I can now for myself and the people I love, and even on the worst days, I try to remember that everything I do has a little meaning to it. To Your Eternity helped me solidify this little lesson. And as Fushi learns and grows and presses forward through the highs and lows of its existence, maybe we can too. 

  Are you keeping up with To Your Eternity? Which part has struck the biggest chord with you so far? Comment below and tell us your thoughts!

      Carlos (aka Callie) is a freelance features writer for Crunchyroll. Their favorite genres range from magical girls to over-the-top robot action, yet their favorite characters are always the obscure ones. Check out some of their pop culture pieces on Popdust and Looper as well as their satirical work on The Hard Times.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Carlos Cadorniga

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Holy Hands | Houses With Teeth Update #2

HOLLA guess who’s back for another writing update!

If the title of this update seems unfamiliar--Houses With Teeth, what? who? when? why?--that’s because the last time I talked about this project on here was the first time, back in July! For a refresher, check out THIS very rambly post where I “intro” the project (very minimally as I had no idea what I was doing).

I still don’t know what I’m doing *exactly* but have made a semi-break through with this project and felt inclined to share. The last I spoke about HOUSES WITH TEETH at length was to vaguely describe what the project was. This book for those who don’t want to read the previous post, is the seventh book in my (very ongoing) series, Fostered. This book comes along five years after writing the first book in the series, after a major writing revolution.

I haven’t shared much about this on this blog because I wasn’t sure how to, but I really struggled with this project. HWT comes as the book after Rewired (book 6), which I finished drafting in March-ish of 2019. From then, until two days ago, I had no idea what I was doing with the series--if I could even continue it, and how I would continue it with all the changes my writing evolution presented. I chose to distract myself/keep busy with Moth Work, a spinoff of this series and my current novel, however, HWT sort of nagged in the back of my mind for many months. 

HWT is actually one of the reasons I ended book 6 so hastily! After getting a few ideas for new scenes, I fell in love with the idea of writing my protagonist Reeve in a city by herself, with new people we’d never met before. These rose-coloured glasses worked to my detriment, as the premature idea took over my decision-making process before I could properly understand what I wanted from it. 

After the end of Rewired, I thought everything was all fine and dandy! I had a new novel idea set up, ready to be written whenever I wanted. But something unplanned happened--I didn’t end up returning to the project. This is mostly because my desires for the book--whether to write it as a “real” book, or continue it as a semi-disjointed Fostered book (which isn’t shade to my past books, just the tea loool)--started to conflict. Though I started many openings (about 3k words of first scenes), nothing was sticking. I felt like I was misjudging my main character Reeve and making her more of a caricature than she really was. I feared I forgot who she was, and that her story was ending (scary!). 

This is where I (recently) found the root of the problem. My mischaracterization of Reeve worked against me, as I’d done exactly what I’d feared doing--misjudging who she was. It had been a long time since I’d written with Reeve, a character I’ve written with since I was thirteen, and though I felt I knew her, I also felt like I’d lost her in translation. While I was back home a few weeks ago, I began re-reading a few passages of book six to get a feel for a character, which helped, but didn’t cause any revelations. 

It was only a few days ago, when I helped @sarahkelsiwrites crack the plot of her novel that I felt an itch to try to crack mine as well. I first did this by paging through my (very minimal) notes for the book. This notes document consists basically of only two scene ideas I had that were a few thousand words long. Somehow, re-reading them helped me realize Reeve’s priorities, but most importantly, how much this book focuses on her vulnerabilities. It made me realize the root of her flamboyance toward the end of book six, and where her genuine side resided. 

So this leads to the actual update! 

Let’s first chat setting, y’all. This was a hard call to make, because I’d initially determined Reeve was going to be in NYC at the start of the book. The problem is, I’m *very bad* at writing real places, especially places I don’t personally know well. The thought of having to engage a five character cast (which seems small, but in a big city where they could be doing other things, feels big), and also have to write in this city accurately made the realism of this book too much for me to handle. I’m all for realism! But I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock that was “welp these books used to take place in an unknown unlocated subway station” to “so this book takes place in a real city”. It made too many things too real for me, the time period included (which is another crisis)! Setting this whole book in NYC overwhelmed me and I knew I wouldn’t do it justice. 

The problem is, I’d planned this entire book around NYC. At the start of my initial plan of HWT, Reeve is supposed to live in an apartment above a bakery with two housemates who I’d already sort of gotten to know! I couldn’t just throw all of this away, especially since I’d set Moth Work in a direction toward NYC so everyone could meet up easily. So what did I do? After reading those initial notes I mentioned above, I made it all backstory. ;) And boy! Did this also crack the book open. 

This was the first revelation I had with HWT 2.0. Allowing myself to move the book out of this setting, but still have the important parts got me to ask myself why Reeve would move to a big city with a new identity, and oh, did the pot start stirring ITSELF. I then decided to create a smaller town just outside of NYC where I can run amuck, lol. The town’s name is Wicker (for now) which I don’t dislike, though it hasn’t grown on me. I’m very bad at making up town names, and after many attempts, I settled for a very real word?? Lol.

This post is getting long, so I won’t explain the story unless y’all want to know, but I came to the decision that in this town, our fave soft boi Foster would have a nice house and his ideal cottagecore life, and all would be SWELL. Until!! This leads to our very hasty summary:

After escaping a toxic relationship, twenty-year-old Reeve disappears for the second time in one summer. She’s drawn to Wicker, a mealy town outside New York City, whose disappearances of affluent girls has caught her attention. The day she arrives, a sinkhole buries one of them in the front yard of her new home, a fixer-upper she shares with estranged friend, Foster. Quickly she falls prey to speculation by herself and others, who try to connect her to the tragedy. And even stranger, false recognitions as the girl in the ground, and the many other missing Wicker girls make her feel more and more like one of them--these alluring unknown women. 

(A huge thanks to @sarahkelsiwrites​ for literally cracking this book open for me, and for all the conversations we’ve had regarding this project! Literally this book wouldn’t exist without Sarah!)

Now let’s get into the first thing I wrote for HWT 2.0!

Holy Hands is the prologue of Houses With Teeth, and marks a milestone for the first prologue I’ve written! 

This prologue was a very impromptu thing. I drafted this a few days ago, and immediately felt something I’ve never felt writing any of the other (many) openings I’ve tested for HWT. It felt very right, but most importantly, I felt like I had Reeve back. It’s very possible for your own characters to hide from you (which is how I felt with Reeve), and though it’s taken very many months for her to really reveal herself to me, I’m so happy I’ve waited because I’ve never been so stoked to write her. 

As y’all know, Reeve is a bit of a no-bullshit kinda gal. The last chapter you would’ve seen her in, she was lounging in a motel bathroom drinking margaritas on her own and you know? We love that for her! Except, after that chapter, I couldn't figure out who she wanted to be--the ‘no fucks given’ woman in the bathtub, or the vulnerable, porous person she often was in earlier books. I love no fucks given Reeve, however, I think I got caught up in her no-fucks-givenness that I missed the time she does give fucks (which is! often!). This prologue really opened me up to her, and I feel a closeness to her that I haven’t felt in a long time. 

The prologue itself is rather short. It’s about 1300 words pre-edits, and I wrote it in! one! sitting! A phenomenon! We begin as Reeve is getting out of a taxi to enter her new home, AKA her old pal Foster’s house. She invites herself after a horrific encounter that scares her out of NYC and closer to her old pals (who she’s estranged herself from). Reeve outlines first, the disappearances of these affluent girls, and then fixates on Irene, her future housemate, whom Foster describes as many things that summer. Reeve is semi shook by Irene because she’s startlingly pretty and also startlingly looks like?? her?? (Reeve is just into herself? Who knew?)

Excerpts:

Here are a few excerpts from the prologue that I kinda dig! Here is the first paragraph:

Four girls went missing the summer the ground opened up. I was the unofficial fifth. They were girls I knew, in some iteration at least. Girls who wore their hair down, collars up. Anklets from their football boyfriends, like voguish ball-and-chains, pretty lingerie no one would see for at least another decade. Things I’d never worn, but wanted to wear. They were wealthy girls with the kinds of parents who dressed them in tights and midi-skirts, sent them to boarding schools, paid for piano lessons just to display a trophy. Girls with parents who wanted synthetic children. Girls who lusted over the romance of marriage—the ultimate form of female liberation. Girls who cast spells with each other and chose their friends based on zodiac signs, the amounts of vowels in their names. Girls who kissed each other in secret and stayed missing until they wanted to be found. None of them knew me.

This is a description of Wicker (CW: a bit of a gory descriptor):

That summer was pallid and bitter. Wicker sat in a valley an hour outside of New York City, and rarely caught sunshine. The locals explained it had always been like this—anemic, unexciting. Women came here to raise quieter children, and those quiet children threw stones at each other’s eyes to see who’d go blind first. The first one who did was found floating face-down in the creek behind the church and the women and children left hastily. It worked in waves like this: people coming, people going. Wicker was empty and both full—of the dead, and alive. I’d chosen it for this reason. 

Here’s an excerpt that comes right after the previous (all of these actually make up the first three paragraphs lol, TW: eating disorders):

The cabbie I’d given the last of my savings to took my bag out of his car trunk and walked it up to the house. It was one of the few nice days in Wicker, one of the last while I was there. Sunshine slit my face in two as I watched myself in the cab’s reflection. I reached for my cigarettes and realized too late that I’d left them back at the apartment. That summer, I was the thinnest I’d been. The hollow ache of me more of a victory than a loss. I know why I stopped eating in those first two weeks, why every meal Foster would later serve me in that house felt cryptic, and it had something to do with the body they never fully recovered. I wasn’t hungry when I’d gotten to Wicker; I wasn’t hungry for a long time after.

Some Foster gentleness (I missed him!):

Chickadees chattered in the birdfeeder Foster had set up a week earlier. Though I hadn’t been on the road long, the drive had exhausted me. The midafternoon clouds pilled, hardly overcast, something I’d come to miss when the sun stopped coming. He hadn’t invited me to live with him, but didn’t object when I called to say I’d be coming up. It was the first I’d spoken to anyone who knew me as Reeve and not Evie in half a year. That day, he greeted me from the porch and took my single carry-on from the cabbie with a boyish thank you. It was one of the last times I’d see him wear it—his bashful gentleness, like he always felt the need to apologize even when everything was brilliant. 

Here’s an intro of Irene, where the chapter title comes from:

Irene sat at the kitchen table inside the house. I caught her in glances through the doorway. The first thing I thought was that she’d look better as a blonde. A small thing who held her mug like she was holding a holy object. I’d later be haunted by those hands when I remembered how they looked by the time she was partly pulled up. Foster described her as many things to him over the course of that summer: a housemate, a partner, a friend, sometimes just a person he knew. She was reading something, something French—I could hear her reciting parts of it, at times loudly, like she knew she had an audience, at times at just a whisper, the most personal parts, I later found. I’d translate the line I’d heard most prominently later: Don’t let the house consume you. 

“Cigarettes?” I said to the cab driver as he was nestling back into his car. When he didn’t hear me, I knocked on his window. The sound of it made Irene’s head bob to attention, though only for a moment. “Cigarettes?” I mimed smoking one when he only blinked at me. We spoke minimally on the drive up, though I learned more about him just by looking. Two daughters, their pictures pasted neatly on the dash. Candy coloured flyers for take-out restaurants jittering against the AC’s shutter. In all that time, I hadn’t learned his name.

When he rolled up the window, I had to jump back so my nose didn’t get clipped. The sun shifted through the glass in wisps, like cobwebs, and my face disintegrating from the surface of the glass was the last thing I saw before he zipped away.

I was surprised to see Irene standing on the porch next to Foster when I looked up. My cheeks warmed. The cabbie’s drive-off had embarrassed me, and I realized how I looked to her, a woman I didn’t know, that I already wanted to know. A bit pathetic. Frazzled. A city person who couldn’t navigate a city. A weak woman—already needing a fix on her first day of a new life.

“I’m quitting,” I said, even though she hadn’t said anything. In the sunshine, she was prettier than I wanted her to be. Her hair hip-length, a length I’d always been too impatient to achieve. Wearing a camisole and a midi-skirt. Pearls in her ears, like the others wore. In New York City, she would’ve been plain to me. The kind of girl I would’ve marked up with a pen in a magazine. Outlining her hips as to say they weren’t good enough, squiggling over her eyebrows because her face was too pretty for a body so average. It wasn’t long after she was gone that I became mistaken for her.

And here’s a bit from the very end of the chapter:

The ground opened like a cracked egg, so slow at first, I didn’t notice. Some say she pushed me. Others say it was the other way around. It melted under us, and one minute I was thinking about how embarrassing I was, how crude it was to still be addicted to cigarettes, and the next, there was a belly in the ground and Irene was somewhere in it. Her dark hair wisping around her, like a tornado. How I thought she’d look better as a blonde. Holy hands, camisole, midi-skirt, pearls in her ears. This was all I’d ever know of Irene. A body was found the summer the ground opened up. I still don’t know exactly who she was.

So that’s it for now y’all! Obviously lots of stuff is subject to change, but I’m finally feeling confident with this path (if I scrap all of this you will know lol)! I’m very excited for this book, and hope to take some more notes on it soon to see where it will go. For now, I’ve got an idea for the first chapter I can play around with, but I hope y’all enjoyed this little piece so far!

--Rachel

#writing #amwriting #writeblr #writingupdates #fostered #houseswithteeth

[ambagelbraindump]

Song: Fairy Tale

Album: They Live on the Sun

Year: 2003

Note: Just as an aside it may take me a hot minute to find my stride again in regards to this little project of mine. Somewhere between quarantine and never stepping foot in the MWC again I completely lost my motivation, I think partly because I would always work on it during between shifts or when I didn’t have any clients, and when that context was suddenly taken away I found that I did not have a time or place in my life to continue it.

Yet here we are, 8 months and 1 (ongoing) pandemic later, I’m still as in love with cloud cult as ever and I’m excited to get back in the saddle :)

Thoughts: In general, Fairy Tale feels sort of frantic and angry, but also feels closer to the current cloud cult than a lot of other songs in this album (at least in terms of sound and style). The mixing of fairy tales is interesting if mildly confusing, as well as the fact that this story does not seem to have a happy ending for anyone involved.

Little Jack Horner fell in love with the witch upon the moon

Her name was Mother Hubbard she kept whiskey in her cupboard

So her wings were made of spoons

Right off the bat this song is interesting as cloud cult often substitutes “mother hubbard” for “mother fucker” when trying to play for a more kid-friendly audience. I’m not sure that was what was intended here, but it is an interpretation as that would indicate the narrator’s absolute disdain for “mother hubbard”.

There’s a bit of a disconnect between “she kept whiskey in her cupboard” and “her wings were made of spoons”, but that seems to be a recurring element in many songs in this particular album.

It’s also interesting to see “wings made of spoons” come up again, although I really have no idea what image I’m supposed to be conjuring up or what this represents (perhaps a very noisy, nonsensical person?), although it also seems to have some kind of recurring connection with the moon as this line shows up in Man on the Moon (My hands are made of wind, my fingers made of spoons).

They dated for a week and then married on the beach

But the wolf thought it was too soon

The three blind said it was all very nice so they moved up on the moon

I’m gonna be honest I’m not sure how to interpret these lines, except that clearly these two people got married way too fast, and someone in power (a parent? A wise but controlling mentor?) is telling them they’ve made a mistake (although their friends, represented by the three blind mice, seem to be telling them otherwise). From reading the book they put out a while back I also know the lead singer and his wife got married really young, so this could also be a reference to that somehow (please see my ‘dislikes’ section for further details on this topic).

They had a little girl, her name was Bo Peep

She was pretty, she was bright

She put on her red coat and went to see grandma

But disappeared in the night

I feel that this one is very clearly an analogy for what happened to Kaiden, who also passed away suddenly during the night; the mixing in of fairy tale elements to a very real tragedy is definitely an interesting, if also very sad, way of coping with the grief.

Jack wouldn't eat fat, Hubbard wouldn't eat lean

So they got into a fight

Jack grew a beanstalk, big and green

So they climbed into the sky

As someone whose parents fought (and continue to fight) constantly, I can definitely see how something as small as eating habits can very quickly escalate into something absurd and impossible (i.e., a giant beanstalk). 

“They climbed into the sky” is a somewhat confusing line, however, as it was just established not long ago that they had moved onto the moon, so I’m really not sure what’s going on here.

Somewhere in the clouds they lost each other

When the cow jumped over the moon

But old Mother Hubbard found little Miss Muffet

Now their on their honeymoon

Regarding the first two lines, I’m imagining this bickering couple fighting each other as the beanstalk continues to grow, until perhaps they both fall off or cannot see each other anymore as they’ve been obscured by clouds.

The last two lines are fascinating as this seems to be implying a romantic relationship between two women. LGBT concepts are not really something that ever show up in any cloud cult songs to my knowledge (with the exception of “Its Gay” which unfortunately is not actually about being gay) so this little bit caught me off guard. However, I feel that this relationship is not a healthy one; I get the feeling that mother hubbard is simply looking for her next victim, and finds it in sweet and innocent little miss muffet.

Likes: as I mentioned quite a few times I like the mixing of fairy tale metaphors, although I’m not really a big fan of them in other contexts (probably the same reason I can’t stand alice in wonderland tbh). As I said I also like the sound as it is somewhat familiar, and also has a good rhythm.

Dislikes: Quite frankly this song makes me a little sad; most cloud cult songs from this album on are about love and how vitally important it is that we love one another (see: Love (2013 album), Pretty Voice, etc.), so when I see them singing songs about hate and violence my heart goes :(

I also know you shouldn’t theorize about real life people’s lives, but I can’t help but wonder if this song (and several others in this album) are about the lead singer and his wife. They seem to have a pretty healthy relationship and are still together all these years later, but I remember hearing that they did have to separate for a while after Kaiden’s death as they “had different ways of coping”. Writing angry songs about his partner really doesn’t seem like Craig’s style at all (especially considering she’s a major part of the band???) but still, just a thought.

#cloud cult #cloud cult fangirl for life #they live on the sun #@ craig pls don't ever find this blog #I love cloud cult with every fiber of my being #which is why I'm writing all these harsh analyses of their older music

[bigskydreaming]

Which Dick ship(s) do you like the most out of dickbabs, dickkory, dickroy, dickwally, dickjoey and dickhelena? Also curious, do you watch Titans?

Of those? Dick/Kory for sure - I have so much fondness for this ship and how good they were for each other when they were ALLOWED to be...and I maintain that the vast majority of their problems and the reasons they didn’t work out had nothing to do with their lack of compatibility or things they couldn’t work through, but were all external based and motivated by DC’s desire to split Dick off from the Titans and migrate him BACK to the Batfranchise after originally doing the same thing in reverse to take him AWAY from the Batfranchise and centered more in the Titans. 

But they are EQUALS in the way Clark and Bruce are equals despite the massive power differentials (to me the real Trinity of the Titans generation would be Kory - Dick - Donna, with Kory in the Superman niche that would be Supergirl’s if she’d been centered more in their generation of heroes instead of so frequently off on her own.) 

But anyway, they are POWERFUL, they are RESPECTED, they are PASSIONATE, they balance each other and complement each other so well but also they challenge each other and change each other for the better. 

She’s a Princess of Tamaran, he’s a Prince of Gotham, but for all the heights each of them have been raised to at times in their lives, they’re just as familiar with being sent plummeting to the pits of what life can have in store for anyone. In the rare times when their stories ALLOW them to think about something other than desperate struggles of life and death, they know how to seize the hell out of life and live a day to its fullest, milk every last drop of enjoyment out of it, because they both also know better than to take anything for granted, trust any moment of joy to linger instead of being fleeting. I really feel that Kory’s one of the only people who’s never actually taken Dick for granted (except for a couple instances of wildly OOC behavior) and I think Dick’s one of the only people that’s ever managed to make Kory feel both safe and protected and dangerous and protective all at the same time, like...even when she didn’t know what she wanted or needed at certain key times, he managed to be it anyway. 

They were together at a VERY confusing time in both their lives, with a lot of huge changes thrown at each of them rapid fire, and it wasn’t so much that they were a rock of stability or a lifeline for each other or anything like that, it was more that like....they both changed so much while with each other because they both wanted so badly to BE with each other, and it wasn’t even about shaping themselves into specific things it was more about like...in order to be together, to be good for each other, they needed to figure out who they themselves were....and so they were like...each other’s reason to keep working towards figuring out who they were and who they wanted to be, even when everything was so confusing and constantly changing it would’ve been easy to just say fuck it and just....let go and react to wherever life took them rather than always working towards staying and being proactive, wrestling back control of their own fates and destinies.

And then DC went and fucked that all up because who wants happy couples am I right? LOL.

Dick/Joey is next - like.....pre-death Joey and Dick were just...so good. They had so much respect for each other, and were so comfortable around each other and like...the chemistry was real. And I maintain that there was subtext between them and that if Dick hadn’t been with Kory for pretty much the entire time Joey was a member of the Titans up until he died, like....they could’ve been a couple in a heartbeat. Hell, I maintain they could easily have been an angsty love triangle with Kory, or a happy threesome with Kory as well. There was so much potential based on stuff that was already there between Dick and Joey...and also plenty of foundation for more interactions and a heightened dynamic between Joey and Kory as well.

Dick/Roy is next - they are my ultimate angst ship because they are both geniuses but they are also dumb boys who insist on being dumb. Like...they clash, a lot, and all of their clashes are clash of the titans, pun intended because like....they are both BIG personalities. And VERY opinionated. But also loyal as hell, even if that loyalty spans years of not even talking to each other, but one phone call and the other would drop everything to be racing to the side of the man the last time they spoke, it was nothing but strings of four letter words shouted at each other and punctuated with “yeah well your face!” 

But then they grow up a little and Roy has Lian and Dick is AMAZING with kids and she’s Roy’s kid, how could Dick NOT instantly love her, but the angst still reigns supreme because just because Dick is and could be the best thing to ever happen to Lian and Roy, try convincing him that, and he’ll come up with a thousand reasons to stay away because he’s convinced he’ll screw up and Lian will get hurt emotionally and that’ll be the final straw between him and Roy because that’ll be the one thing Roy couldn’t forgive, because Dick knows he wouldn’t if it were him. 

But the thing is, its not like I don’t think they could be good for each other....they absolutely could and would...it would just be a long and winding road to get there, because they are both DRAMATIC as fuck, even while insisting that they aren’t, and they just....sometimes they just don’t know HOW to not make life difficult for themselves, and I feel like a large part of that is because of the double edged sword that is how often the best things in their lives have come from the worst tragedies they’ve endured....I think on some level, they both tend to self-sabotage because they don’t TRUST anything to be easy, and like, they both convince themselves that shit’s gotta hit the fan before anything worthwhile can come their way.

Also, to reiterate - they are both absolute dumbasses who absolutely fuel each other’s dumbass energy and they are That Couple that doesn’t HAVE a voice of reason in the pairing. Its just like DICK YES! and ROY YES! and enabling each other’s worst ideas because they’re just. Like that.

Dick/Helena is next - but like, pre-Flashpoint Helena, and not as an actual ongoing relationship, just a lot of dramatic hookups and then each of them recommitting the morning after to like...their view that this was Absolutely A Mistake and it’ll Never Happen Again...at least not until next time. They’re just too different ideologically and just in terms of like...what they want out of life, except the irony is they’re actually not...its just they’re CONVINCED they are, because they’ve always seen each other with blinders on and they’ve never taken those off and to be honest they probably never would, because like...they don’t talk much? LOL. They snark, they bite at each other, they squabble, they fight, they hook up...They Regret Everything, and they do it all over again. There’s not a lot of room in there for actually getting to know each other...but like, that’s not what they’re really looking for from each other. Sometimes you’re at a certain stage in your life where you don’t WANT something meaningful or lasting, you just want....passion and chemistry without the weight of worrying about it going anywhere because like...you don’t really even want it to.

But again, this is them pre-Flashpoint, because the thing is, I actually prefer the New 52 Helena in a lot of ways, but them as a pairing in the current continuity just does not work for me at all, because of the power dynamics given the nature of their relationship at Spyral, and like...the fact that so much of their interaction is rooted in betrayal and subterfuge and hidden agendas and lies. They’re this weird blend of they trust each other but also know better than to trust each other so maybe its more just that they WANT to trust each other so that makes them even more wary of actually trusting each other...bottom line is its messy and there’s not really any practical way through that, and any kind of relationship between them, even a casual one, is kinda doomed to hurt each other.

Dick/Wally is next - And in the sense that like....I don’t really ship them at all, and never have really? Like, they’re an ultimate BrOTP for sure, but I don’t really ever get romantic chemistry from their dynamics in like...any universe. They’re best friends, they have each other’s back, they can appreciate the hell out of each other’s aesthetics, but like....they just don’t go there, because they don’t need to, its not what they want from each other and they’ve always kinda known that and just accepted it as it is what it is, and that’s more than okay with them. Dick/Wally is the counterpart to Dick/Donna for me....it only exists in a platonic, familial way. They’ll die for each other, they’ll erase timelines for each other, but they’ll do it without fucking because like....that’d just be weird, bro.

And lastly Dick/Babs - lololol and I swear its not even because I’m a Dick/Kory shipper. I don’t see Kory and Babs as competition for each other and don’t like any narrative that has them see each other as competition. My issues with Dick/Babs are entirely separate from Dick and Kory’s relationship and actually predate my shipping the latter two. I just...don’t feel it between Dick and Babs, it always comes across to me as like...them trying to force it, or the writers trying to force it, its like....they keep trying because they WANT it to work, they’re convinced it SHOULD work, he’s the first Robin, she’s the first Batgirl, its iconic, they’re partners and best friends, they’re each other’s equals just as much as Dick and Kory are, just in different ways, like....all the ingredients are there! But put them all in a blender and stir it all up and the end result....is still just...not quite right, for me. 

I just think they are amazing as friends, they support each other, bring out the best in each other, challenge each other, don’t let the other pull any crap...but the second they get together as boyfriend and girlfriend, like...a switch is thrown, and suddenly they start bringing out the worst in each other, they start seeing problems where there weren’t any two seconds ago when they were just friends....idk. Its like...the writing always lacks something for me, because I feel like so many writers who put them together feel like...their iconic status and thematic compatibility just does all the work, and thus they don’t really need to put in any work writing them as a couple...and then even just when I think about tackling them as a couple and trying to write them together....again, there just always feels like some essential something is lacking...like they SHOULD work, but for some reason they don’t for me, and so I spend the whole time trying to figure out what’s missing instead of like...looking at what’s there. Idk. 

Sometimes there are people who are totally compatible, but just can’t make it work romantically, and they’re that couple for me. Maybe its that they know each other TOO well, and that includes each other at their worst as much as their best....and so even by the time they got together the first time, they already had these expectations and also these preconceptions about each other and how each other tended to act in their other relationships....so I feel like part of it is like....half the time they react to what they THINK the other is going to do, based on previous history, before the other actually even has a CHANCE to do things differently...because it would be different this time, given that its with a different partner...except the other had already boxed them into their previously anticipated behavior? *Shrugs* Like I said. I don’t even entirely get why I have such a problem with the two of them together, I just always do. I love Dick, I love Babs, but put them together and I usually end up being like...I do not like these people.

So yeah. That’s me on those various relationships lol. But also Dick/Kyle for the ultimate win, no the fact that they’ve only interacted like, five times total, like, does not matter to me in the least, look I am aware this sounds like a crack ship but it is REAL and it is a FUNGI and it kept growing and growing until it took over everything and its not my fault, I didn’t give them permission, they just did it.

As for Titans - I have trouble watching things streaming right now because of shitty wi-fi, so like....I’ve literally only watched the first few episodes of S1. All the rest of my knowledge of the show comes from keeping up with the spoilers and summaries and gifsets, lol. I very much WANT to watch it, I just...will have to binge it at some point. So I have a general knowledge of it and what’s going on, and peoples’ reactions to the episodes, and I have a basic awareness of the characters based on those first few episodes and like...matching their acting in my head to their gifsets and stuff, lol, but I can’t really do the kind of analysis of their characters and dynamics on the show as I do with the comic book versions because like....I haven’t really been able to watch all the way through to pick up on all the little stuff that forms the basis of so much of my thoughts and takes on things.

[fanfics-of-marvel]

Please Stay

One Shot

Release date: 04/02/2020

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Y/N: You’ve been working with Bucky at S.H.I.E.L.D. for about a year during which you both had kept aside the fact that you like each other. Until one day Bucky unexpectedly shows up at your apartment with a most valuable present.

Words count: 3.1K

A/N: This was supposed to be a Christmas fanfic but I was unable to finish it before Christmas, so I decided to re-write it with a different theme but keeping the original idea.

Warnings: None!

One Shots | Masterlist

Taglist: @all-things-marvel-related ; @steeeeverogers ; @chipilerendi ; @starkershomelife ; @itavero-pater (still unable to properly tag this person) ; @merlin-288 ; @nutellakirb ;  @livsheph ; @ivvitm1109 ; @misstummelisa ;

I’m not a native English speaker, so there might be spelling or grammatical mistakes.

This fanfic is my own work, it is not to be re-posted on this site or posted anywhere else without my knowledge and consent!

——————————————————–

“Bucky?” You asked surprised after you opened the door and saw him standing outside of your apartment.

You had been working for S.H.I.E.L.D. for 4 years during which you had gradually become a top level agent proving countless times your abilities. You usually worked alone or in a small team of people upon the most dangerous missions. And about a year ago you started having common missions with Bucky.

The first one happened shortly after he joined the organization alongside Sam. They were a duo, only sometimes partnering with Sharon on bigger missions. Until about a year ago.

There was a rumor of a big gang of people who were supposed to be new followers of Hydra. More agents were immediately sent to help the trio, including you. The mission was tough and you had to do a lot of spy work trying to infiltrate the alleged criminal organization. It all turned out to be a false alarm which made everyone angry. All that exertion for nothing.

It wasn’t until you had to prepare your report of the mission when you actually noticed Bucky. He’d always been just the biggest weapon of Hydra for you. The longest serving POW. A tragic victim. You never paid any attention to him while he was at the base, nor when he was at the café for lunch as well. You’d always passed by him as any other colleague at S.H.I.E.L.D.

But after your vain mission was over the task for writing the report was given to you two. And on that day for the first time you actually looked at him. Not just for a quick glance while passing by him at the corridor or coordinating your next moves on the mission. You actually looked at him. You noticed the beautiful features of his face. You sank into his captivating steel blue eyes. You melted at the sight of his smile.  Your knees felt weaker at the natural scent of his body. His voice sounded like music to your ears, finally hearing it speaking softly for a normal conversation, other than yelling in the walkie-talkie how the suspects were getting away or that something was not going according to plan.

Your breath was taken away and secretly your heart was stolen. But you didn’t realize that until much later. For a while your missions were different than his, so you rarely saw each other. It wasn’t easy to forget Bucky once you’ve met him up close but your job totally consumed you, so your mind was constantly distracted. You rarely even saw him at lunch breaks.

This continued for a while until you got another order to follow Bucky and Sam into another mission. Your heart skipped a beat as you felt butterflies in your stomach knowing you would be close to Bucky again. It only got reinforced when there was a direct danger for you two and he bravely grabbed you in his arms and covered you with his body in case of bullets being fired. Face to face you could feel his warm breath upon your face. His muscly body was roughly pressed against yours. You got lost into his eyes which were looking straight into yours. You completely forgot about the ongoing situation until a nearby explosion blew the two of you few meters away.

The mission was successful and Fury started putting you on assignments alongside Sam and Bucky more often. Work was work, so you two usually kept a distance from one another. That little distraction from the previous mission could have costed both of you your lives. Completely synchronized you two started avoiding each other and only allowing some momentary glances here and there.

Until that tragic day.

Completely unexpected there was a terrorist attack with a suicide bomber. 115 people dead and more than 500 people injured. You were immediately sent with Bucky, Sam and other agents to investigate the premises. The hardest mission you’ve ever had.

With a heavy heart you learned that amongst the victims was your beloved aunt – your only living relative who adopted you after your parents died when you were just a teenager. You were devastated.

Then it was the only time when Bucky allowed closeness between you two. He held you in his arms as you cried and cried until his jacket was very wet. His soft right hand stroked your head as he spoke gently in your ear assuring you that everything would be alright. How she was at a better place now and he would always be there for you when you needed him.

But shortly after the funeral the distance between you two got bigger again. Your strength didn’t let you have any breakdowns and you took the hit like a hero. You didn’t need Bucky. Not at all.

“What are you doing here?” You asked a little shocked. Bucky didn’t know where you lived which meant he had asked at the base particularly for your address.

“I’m sorry to be bothering you.” He replied seemingly uncomfortable.

You looked at him concerned. Your heart skipped a bit. Could it be that another tragedy had occurred?

“May I come in?” Bucky finally asked after a short pause.

You took your time too. You weren’t certain whether you wanted to let him in or not. Nobody at S.H.I.E.L.D. really knew where you lived except some high-ranking agents such as Fury and Hill. And you preferred it that way. It gave you a certain level of calmness and you knew the chances of complications were lower. You loved your privacy and intimate zone. And now suddenly Bucky was invading it.

“Of course.” You finally said as you walked away from the door, so he could walk in.

You noticed he was caring a small box nicely wrapped as a present. The paper was dark purple with a light purple ribbon on top. Your favourite colour.

As Bucky stood in front of you as close as possible you noticed everything about him again. His beautiful blue eyes, the handsome manly features of his face, the barely perceptible scent of a cologne. Had he dressed up for you? He was wearing a nice plane shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans. He was clean shaven and his hair was nicely combed. His metal arm was discretely hidden underneath a glove. During missions and at the base he was always at his battle outfit, his hair was messy, he always had a stubble beard and he never wore any cologne. This was either for you or he was going on a date afterwards.

So many thoughts of him passed through your head. So many old memories which you had suppressed because you thought it was wrong to seek any closeness with him for he was your colleague at S.H.I.E.L.D. An agent with whom you had common missions. A forbidden man even though there was nobody to forbid Bucky from you.

You suddenly remembered how beautiful of a person he was with a most soft soul. You remembered a particular mission during which he had risked his life in order to save a small puppy from eminent danger. How, during another mission, he had fed some homeless people on his way to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s target. Or about the fact he could often be seen spending time with some WWII veterans as he told them stories of his own, too.

But most of all you remembered the mission during which your bodies were entangled together as Bucky protected you from a possible direct hit. And when he held you in his arms while you cried after losing your aunt. You had never felt such warmness and caring prior to it.

“Is there any particular reason you came here?” You finally asked even though you knew there must be one.

“Erm…” Bucky seemed nervous and slightly uncertain of what he had preliminary intended to do coming to your apartment.

He was looking down at the present he was holding as if it would tell him what to do next.

“Is this for me?” You finally asked. You didn’t want him to torture himself any longer.

Bucky took a deep breath somewhat relieved. “Yes.” He said after which he handed it towards you.

You were looking at the box wrapped in purple at Bucky’s hands. What could he possibly be giving you? It wasn’t your birthday, nor Christmas. Maybe he was confused?

“Thank you.” You quietly said after you took the present from his hands. You looked at it for a while. “Why purple?” You finally spoke.

Bucky looked down seemingly embarrassed. “You mentioned once purple is your favourite colour.”

“I don’t remember talking about it with you.”

“You didn’t.” Bucky replied even more embarrassed. “I overheard you during lunchtime once. You were talking to agent Ross.”

You observed him for a moment. Perhaps while you hadn’t paid attention to him during lunch, he had paid attention to you.

With very careful and uncertain moves you started unwrapping the present. Bucky observed you cautiously. The box beneath the wrapping paper looked like a jewelry box. You gasped. Why would he be giving you any jewelries? You slowly opened it and found a medallion inside.

You looked at Bucky a little bit confused. The medallion looked awfully familiar.

“I found it during our final mission.” Bucky started. “I knew about the medallion and what it meant to you because I’ve heard you talking about it during lunch.” He paused for a moment. “I saw it lying on the ground covered with dirt. Easy to miss.” He pointed at the locking mechanism. “It was broken and I guess that’s how it fell. I bought you a new chain but if you want the old one I still have it at home.” He added speaking so softly.

With watery eyes you looked down at the object in your hands. You took the medallion out of the box. You pressed the mechanism and it opened like a book. You saw the only photos which you had left of your parents whom you lost in a fire alongside all of your belongings prior to it.

“Oh, Bucky…” You gasped overwhelmed of reuniting with your invaluable possession.  “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything.” He replied gently. After a short pause he continued. “I didn’t know how to give it back to you. I thought I could hand it to somebody else who would then give it to you. Maybe send it to your apartment or leave it on your desk at S.H.I.E.L.D. But…” There was another pause during which the two of you just stared into each other’s eyes. “I thought it’ll be best to give it to you personally.”

By this time actual tears were falling down your face. Your lower lip was trembling. You couldn’t even find any words.

“Thank you.” Was the only thing you could say.

Then abruptly you felt Bucky’s burly body pressed at yours as your hands were wrapped around his neck. Your breath stopped for a moment when you felt his hands replying to your hug by putting them around your waist. You stayed like this for a few seconds inhaling the divine scent of his body mixed with the cologne.

“Come here.” Bucky said as he gently pushed you away and then turned you around still holding you.

You felt his warm right hand moving your hair away revealing your neck exposed. You could feel the gentle tickle from his breath. Shivers ran throughout your entire body.

Suddenly, both of his arms were around you as they gently took the medallion from your hand. You noticed he had removed the glove as his metal arm was gleaming underneath your corridor lamp’s light. He put the medallion around your neck.

Bucky’s hands remained upon your exposed skin for a moment while his lips were just a few centimeters away. You felt like he was fighting against the desire to kiss the nude skin of your neck. You closed your eyes expecting this to happen any moment breathing heavily. Instead you felt Bucky stepping away.

“I guess I should be going.” He said.

You opened your eyes disappointed. Not the sequence you hoped for. You slowly turned to him and looked him straight in his eyes.

“Stay.” You whispered.

The closeness of his body and mind, his breath upon your skin, his scent, his soul was all that you wanted right now.

“Please stay.” You whispered again as you made a step closer to him.

“I can’t.” Bucky whispered back.

You knew very well why he was saying that. He was afraid of what might follow. You were colleagues at S.H.I.E.L.D. There was no direct ban against two agents dating but such relationships weren’t much tolerated because the management thought it might affect their work or might lead to compromising the missions.

“Y/N, you know I can’t stay.” Bucky was insistent as you made another step towards him.

“But I want you to stay.” You were right in front of him looking at his sparkling eyes.

“Bucky…” You whispered as you put your hands around his face and gently pulled it down towards your lips while lifting yourself up.

Bucky didn’t fight it. He couldn’t fight it. A moment later your lips touched his. Both of you shuddered. The kiss was long and sweet.

After that you moved away and looked him in the eyes hoping to read what they were saying. Instead Bucky put his arms around your waist again and pressed his lips at yours. Your bodies trembled even more. The kiss turned into a gentle making out. You ruffled Bucky’s hair while he pressed you even harder at his body.

When the kiss was finally over you held Bucky’s cold metal arm in your small warm hand. “Stay.” You whispered again as you walked further inside your apartment.

Bucky obediently followed you without any resistance. While smiling and looking back at him you suddenly bumped into a wall. Bucky took the chance by pressing your body at it with his and kissed you passionately until you got dizzy and sweaty.

Then for the rest of the day you two got completely consumed by each other. You spoke about your parents. You told Bucky who they were, what they did for a living. How your mom used to make a Sunday cake for the three of you every week. Or how mad your dad would get every time you said you were going out with a boy. You told him of that time when your mom almost forgot you at a supermarket when you were little because she got carried away talking to a friend. And how loving and caring your parents were until a house fire took them away from you.

In his own turn Bucky told you about his life when he was growing up. What meals his mom used to make and what a troublesome son he was. How he used to do mischiefs all the time and how often he would drag his sister into them as well. And how she always got away with it because their parents knew that it was entirely his fault. And even though his dad would punish Bucky for his misbehaviour he couldn’t have been more proud of his son when Bucky joined the army. But Bucky’s smile slowly faded as he reached the point of the war talking about the misery he had gone through.

You two absorbed any word told by the other and before you knew it a few hours had passed. Completely drained by each of your stories you two were just sitting and looking into each other. You had never felt closer to anybody beforehand and same was applicable about Bucky.

Then he took any chance to kiss you again and again as you tried to make dinner. He helped you prepare it while holding you from behind with his body pressed at yours. Whispering gently in your ear how much he’d always liked you since the very beginning. How you had taken over his mind but he had always kept it inside in fear of compromising his or your work at S.H.I.E.L.D.

And after you two had dinner Bucky held you in his arms for a slow dance when the proper song came on the radio. His metal arm was pressing you at his body as to ensure that you wouldn’t run away from him. And once when the song was over he continued holding you for a while without saying a word as you two were consumed in the moment.

Then came your sudden muse to make cookies when Bucky trashed your entire kitchen. Remembering the times when his mom used to make cookies when he was a kid the child in him awoke. The naughty little boy returned as he blew some flour in your face as a tease and held objects in the air knowing you were too short to reach them. When you tried to protest Bucky grabbed you from behind and kissed your neck purposely tickling it. You screamed in hopes of help even though you loved this. In these acts you pushed down numerous objects off of the countertop breaking jars and spilling ingredients. Then Bucky started eating the dough before you had made the figures in which you wanted to bake the cookies. You wanted to stop him but he started running around the kitchen pushing down even more things.

Once you had managed to put the cookies in the oven you pretended to be angry and offended, even though you had fun. But Bucky read straight through you as he started tickling your entire body. You screamed and tried to run away. Bucky was chasing you throughout the entire apartment when you accidentally tripped and fell. You laughed like crazy as Bucky sat down next to you laughing as well. Then he held you and lifted you up.

Your bodies were close again and your lips found each other on their own. Bucky put you on the countertop with his hands wrapped around your waist. Your hands were around his neck gently stroking the back of his head while your legs were squeezing the sides of his hips.

Kiss after kiss, abruptly, you sensed the smell of something burning. “The cookies”, you screamed but it was too late. You were disappointed that all of your efforts were ruined. But Bucky gently kissed your forehead and said “It doesn’t matter”. Then he lifted you and carried you the couch. He ordered to stay there and find a nice movie to watch. Few minutes later he came back with two mugs of hot cocoa. You smiled like an idiot as you snuggled at him drinking the sweet delicious drink.

Once you finished them Bucky took the nearby blanket and lied down on the couch making sure your head was upon his big chest. You sunk in the divine scent of his body. What a luck it was that you happened to lose your medallion.

——————————————————–

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This fanfic is my own work, it is not to be re-posted on this site or posted anywhere else without my knowledge and consent!

#i'm with you till the end of the queue #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes #mcu fanfiction #mcu fanfic #marvel cinematic universe fanfiction #marvel cinematic universe fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #the winter soldier x reader #the winter soldier x you #the winter soldier x y/n #bucky barnes and reader #bucky barnes and you #bucky barnes and y/n #bucky and reader #bucky and you #bucky and y/n #the winter soldier and reader #the winter soldier and you #the winter soldier and y/n #james barnes #james buchanan barnes #the winter soldier #mcu

[carolina-valentina-bramente]

Chapter 1: Special Agent Bramente

Rossi picked up the chapter and handed it to Morgan who read the title out loud. “Special Agent Cara Bramente: Missing in Action” Morgan’s eyebrows furrowed, “Missing in Action? You just said she was dead.”

The older man nodded, “Well she was declared dead but as a team, we could never really accept that. The bureau had given up and they couldn’t fund a ‘goose chase’ anymore as they called it. Cara was already a liability. They wanted her gone and when she was missing, they were glad. You have to understand, we didn’t have the funding, the technology, or the backing to look for her. When they closed the case, we couldn’t do anything other than comply.” Penelope listened intently but Derek was still confused, “Alright, but who was she, to Hotch? You said it’s been seven years. Seven years is a long time to hold onto a hunch.”

Rossi’s eyebrows furrowed for a few moments, “To Aaron… Cara was everything.” He leaned back with a sigh as though he was reaching back into his mind, trying to find where exactly he could find the story or perhaps... he was just looking for the perfect place to start it. After a few moments he finally began, "It was 10 years ago, before either of you joined the BAU, we were still a small team back then. It was me, Jason, Katherine Cole, with Max Ryan leading the team. We had just taken on Aaron to the team- back then he was still called probie."

Morgan looked shocked that Aaron ever answered to 'probie'.

“Probie!” Agent Rossi called across the room. They were in the police bullpen of Chicago 1 Police Plaza. A young, optimistic agent jogged across the room to David’s side as they inspected the file in his hands. He had short brown hair and believed that he could change the world with the work he was going to do here. He believed that he could really make a big difference. Agent Rossi estimated that this sort of optimism would die within the next two weeks. Unit Chief Max Ryan believed it would only take one. They called him probie but his name was Aaron Hotchner. The kid was cocky and quick to please. Of course he did good work but good work was expected in this unit. Here, you needed to do more than kiss ass.

Here you needed to pull your weight.

This was Aaron's very first case with the BAU and it was not an easy one. There was a murderer going around Chicago. They were targeting members of the mafia. Killing them, stringing them up by their feet, and bleeding them out at significant mafia establishments. It was probably the goriest that Aaron had ever seen. Rossi was tasked to stand by his side, rubbing his back while he threw up on the other side of the street behind a tree. They were lucky they arrived at night and there was no press on the scene. The mafia seemed to be very good at things like that.

The kid was still new blood. SWAT and the Seattle field office hadn't prepared him for things like this. Honestly, in Rossi's opinion, nothing ever could. These things came with time. He'll get on his own feet eventually.

Still, Aaron was feeling a little bruised in his ego so he had been overcompensating all day. He walked to the middle fo the bullpen, organizing charts and helping out everywhere he could. He wasn't experienced enough to take the lead on any profiles or interviews, but he was doing his best. Max Ryan was by Aaron's side guiding him through what they had already collected.

Suddenly- on the other side of the room, the front doors to the bullpen flew open with a huge force. They slammed into the walls- creating holes in the wall where the door handles were. She had a deep scowl etched onto her features as she stomped into her room. Rossi still remembered the way Cara looked that day. She was pale and had a very small frame. Long waves of red hair tied back into a looped bun with strands fall around her face. Deep dark eye bags collected underneath dark brown eyes and her cheeks were red with rage. You didn't need to be a profiler to tell that she was pissed.

The chief of police approached her, "Ma'am, I'm gonna need you to-"

She grabbed him by the collar and front lapel, throwing him over her shoulder and slamming him on the desk. Officers jumped back, too stunned at the amount of strength in a woman of her... stature. Aaron got over his own initial shock first and tried to reach for his gun. Ryan placed a hand in front of his wrist, preventing him from such actions.

The woman growled to the man she had just slammed into the desk. "I'm gonna give you three seconds to tell me where the hell you locked up Orion Bramente and I'll give you three minutes to free him! You! Ungrateful, pompous piece of shit!"

"Ma'am!"

All heads turned to see Aaron stomping towards the woman. Both of their faces looked to be reaching the boiling point of anger, "I don't know who you are or who let you in here- but Orion Bramente is the chief suspect in an ongoing serial murder investigation. We don't just-"

"Carolina Bramente. Orion Bramente is my adoptive father. Those three serial murders were my god brothers." She seethed at Aaron, cutting him off promptly. She then turned her attention back to the chief of police. "And you! Orion has protected this precinct for years! He called off cop killings for you and this is what you do! This is how you thank him!" She growled, shaking him roughly, occasionally slamming his head back into the desk receiving a grunt of pain every time.

"The police didn't arrest him."

The woman stopped shaking the officer.

"We arrested him."

Carolina slowly released her grip on the officer. Holes where her fingers had gripped him. Her voice was level but visually, she was ready to explode. "Who is we?"

Aaron stepped closer so he was towering over her. His arms crossed over his chest, "We're the Behavioral Analysis Unit with Federal Bureau of Investigation and you are interfering with a federal investigation."

Carolina looked up at him. Her eyes roaming over his body from head to toe. She looked as though she was sizing him. Debating on whether or not she could throw him over her shoulder too. Aaron was at least a head taller than Carolina and then some, but she had also just thrown a full grown man aside so really no one knew what she was capable of. When he told her she was interfering, Carolina rolled her eyes. She placed a hand square on his chest and pushed him away. Aaron had been standing two inches in front of her resulting in her having to look up to look him in the eye. Her neck hurt and it made her feel smaller than she was comfortable with. She managed to get him at least a foot away but she could still smell his body wash and the bargain brand vanilla detergent he used to wash his black suit. Her fingers rolled over his pectorals and trailed down his abs. Aaron didn't flinch from her touch. He wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of a flicker. He held her gaze in a collection of tension filled seconds. His onyx black pupils boring into pools of honey brown that shined in the remnants of sunlight. Neither of them were planning on yielding.

But Carolina blinked first. She let out a sigh filled with annoyance. "He spends five minutes at the BAU and suddenly he's a hot shot. Calm your tits, boy scout." She growled as though there was a threat hidden in her teeth. Her hand fell from Aaron's chest and he felt a sudden coldness on his chest. She then spun around, "Ryan! Where the hell are you!"

A few minutes later, Max Ryan was able to usher Carolina into an interrogation room. It succeeded in muffling their screams and yells. Everyone was a few volumes quieter as they watched SSA Max Ryan receive a verbal beating on the other side of the oneway mirror. Carolina kept poking him in the chest whenever he tried to defend himself. Max was keeping his voice level but every now and then he'd rise up into a level of rage that combatted her screams. Both of them were angry and frustrated at the situation.

They continued on for about 20 minutes. At some point, Max suggested something to Carolina which made her go quiet for a few minutes. Aaron had been watching them outside during his impromptu coffee break. He watched them through the one-way mirror, sipping his black coffee in long languid slurps that made it look like he was actually focused on the coffee.

Rossi joined him with his own vanilla latte in hand. "You know, no matter how long you stare- that's a soundproof mirror, probie. You won't be able to eavesdrop on them."

Aaron shrugged his shoulder, "Does Ryan always let suspect's families yell at him like that?"

Rossi resisted the urge to laugh, "Cara isn't just family of a suspect. She's an agent with the bureau too. Same as you, probie." He sang through a sip of coffee. "Formerly with Counterterrorism- now teaches at Quantico after being taken out of the field."

"You know her?"

"We've met. I know her story and the rumors."

Aaron looked over at Cara. His neck arching in curiosity. "What rumors?"

Rossi's head shot over, "Tell me you've heard of the BoneHunter Case."

Aaron nearly dropped his coffee. The BoneHunter Case, often known as the BoneHunter Tragedy, was a recent bombshell within the bureau. A failed mission which resulted in three demolished teams and produced three rouge agents turned murderers within the FBI. It happened about three years ago and it was a blood bath. No matter how may times he heard it, Aaron still had a hard time believing it was true. "I thought that was just a rumor."

Rossi shook his head. "I read the file. Nope. All true. Each detail as gory as it's been told."

"How did you get a hold of the file?"

"Ryan asked me to assist on her psych evaluation. She wan't allowed in the field but they had to make sure she was sane enough to teach students."

"Not Gideon?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rossi huffed, insulted at the insinuation that Jason Gideon was in any way better than him. He then let out a laugh, "But- Ryan did call me in because Gideon and Cara didn't get off on the right foot."

"Cara?"

Rossi shook his head, "Don't call her that until she lets you. In your case- maybe just stick to Agent Bramente." He sang- shooting Aaron a wink as he motioned over towards the room where she was standing. "Pretty isn't she?"

Aaron let out a snort, "If anger management issues are what you consider pretty."

Rossi smirked, "In fact, I do."

After their earlier encounter, Aaron didn't want to give Carolina any positive credits towards her character. she was rude, tactless, and violent upon entry and his impression of her almost couldn't get lower. Still, it was hard to deny a blatant fact in front of him. When she was standing in front of him and not pissing him off, Aaron's face softened at the sight of her.

She was, indeed, pretty. Her long red hair had completely fallen out of her bun, tendrils now slipping over her shoulders and framing delicate features. Her eyes when cleared, held a softer distinction of chocolate brown with thick but neat eyebrows above. She had high cheekbones and a compact frame. She looked small and she looked pretty.

Aaron could at least afford her 'pretty'.

Max and Carolina finally exited the room. Max whispered a few words to her and Carolina nodded her head as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and noticed the Aaron and Rossi watching her from across the room. She jerked her head upwards in greeting. Rossi raised his coffee to the woman as she approached. Rossi leaned over to Aaron, "Play nice." He mumbled under his breath.

"Dave." Carolina sang in greeting. A charming smile danced over her features and he pulled her into a tight hug.

"Good to see you, Cara. How's Quantico." Rossi smiled amicably

"Eh." She shrugged nonchalantly, slipping her hands into her pockets. "I'll whip them into shape one of these days." Her humor was witty and danced off gentle pink petals of lips. Aaron found it difficult not to stare. "I met your boy scout here. You're new at the BAU right?" She asked. This time her words directed to Aaron.

Aaron blushed when she called him boy scout, again. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes. I just transferred from the Seattle Field Office. This is my first case... and my name is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, ma'am." He finished coldly.

Cara pressed her lips together. Her eyes squinted. "I've never met someone named, Special."

This time Aaron rolled his eyes. He grimaced a smile of annoyance. This woman was a real piece of work. "Agent Hotchner is fine, Agent Bramente." He smiled quite sourly. Aaron was getting over this woman very quickly. Beauty can only cover up so much.

Max walked over with two cups of coffee before Cara could continue to tease Aaron. He handed one to Cara and looked to Rossi and Aaron. He then looked around the bullpen for the rest of their team, "Cole! Gideon!" The remaining agents made their way over to them. Cole and Gideon both shook Cara's hand upon seeing her with a sense of polite amicability.

"Cara." Gideon greeted, "Doing well?"

Cara shrugged her shoulders, "Quantico is nice. My father's been arrested. It's a give and take day." She teased. Her anger had obviously been staved by Ryan as she came off as humorous rather than her angry introduction earlier.

Gideon smile, "I hope you're not upset about my-"

Cara raised a hand, "Don't worry about it. I wasn't going to be allowed into the field. Doesn't matter what my psych eval said." She shrugged her shoulders, "Bygones be bygones, Gideon."

Gideon's shoulders sagged in relief.

Aaron wondered if it was because he was worried she hated him or worried she was going to go full cell block D on his ass.

Max clapped his hands together with a smile, "Everyone, I'm sure you know, Special Agent Carolina Bramente. Specialist in Organized Crime and Combat and Defense Techniques." Max shifted his weight again, "Agent Bramente will be joining us during this investigation. I believe her in-depth knowledge of organized crime and connections within the Chicago environment will be a great asset to us in the investigation." He explained quickly, not addressing the fact of her real presence her was more of a product of his preference to her.

The rest of team nodded their heads, accepting Cara's expertise easily enough. Aaron knew that they had all previously met before, but it seemed that he was the only one who was skeptical about her presence on this case. She was immature, violent, and had little to no tact. As far as assets go, Aaron just didn't think she'd be a very good one during this case.

"Good." Max smiled before clapping his hands together, "Cole, Rossi, you two go interview our latest suspect in lockup. Jason let's work on victimology. Probie! You and Cara go down to the latest crime scene and see what you can get from there. We have most of the evidence but- they might've missed something." He noted with a shrug, not letting on that he was just searching for grunt work to push on the new kid and the interloper. It was well intentioned and they might actually find something.

However, it was still grunt work and Aaron looked less than pleased.

Everyone split off into their groups, leaving Aaron and Carolina together. Aaron half expected Cara to make an effort towards an apology for her earlier behavior but she made no such effort. Instead she offered an easy smile with her hands on her hips. "Ready to go... boy scout?"

Aaron rolled his eyes before walking towards the car, brushing past her in annoyance. Cara grinned cheekily before following behind him with her arms folded behind her back.

Max and Gideon watched them walk away. Max keeping a close eye on the woman as she walked off with his new probie. Gideon watched as well with a curious look in his eyes, "How do you think they're gonna do?" Max's head moved from side to side in deep thought before he answered honestly,

"I think they're either going to fuck each other or kill each other."

#Carolina Bramente #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x oc #derek morgan #david rossi #Max ryan #Katherine Cole #jason gideon #Penelope Garcia #Criminal Minds #Fanfic #Criminal Minds Fanfic

[scifigeneration]

Renewed space rivalry between nations ignores a tradition of cooperation

by Scott Shackelford

A composite image of a satellite firing an energy weapon at a target on Earth. Marc Ward/Shutterstock.com

The annals of science fiction are full of visions of the future. Some are techno-utopian like “Star Trek” in which humanity has joined together in peace to explore the cosmos. Others are dystopian, like the World State in “Brave New World.” But many of these stories share one thing in common – they envision a time in which humanity has moved past narrow ideas of tribe and nationalism. That assumption might be wrong.

This can be seen in Trump’s calls for a unified U.S. Space Command. Or, in China’s expansive view of sovereignty and increasingly active space program as seen in its recent lunar landing. These examples suggest that the notion of outer space as a final frontier free from national appropriation is questionable. Active debate is ongoing as of this writing as to the consistency of the 2015 Space Act with international space law, which permitted private firms to own natural resources mined from asteroids. Some factions in Congress would like to go further still with one bill, the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act. This states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, outer space shall not be considered a global commons.” This trend, especially among the space powers, is important since it not only will create precedents that could resonate for decades to come, but also because it hinders our ability to address common challenges – like removing the debris orbiting the planet.

End of the golden age

In 1959, then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson stated, “Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation.” In this spirit, between 1962 and 1979 the United States and the former Soviet Union worked together and through the U.N. Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to enact five major international treaties and numerous bilateral and multilateral agreements concerning outer space.

These accords covered everything from the return of rescued astronauts and liability for damage from space objects to the peaceful use of outer space. They did not, though, address space weaponization outside of the weapons of mass destruction context, or put into place mechanisms for managing an increasingly crowded final frontier.

Progress ground to a halt when it came time to decide on the legal status of the moon. The Reagan administration objected to the Moon Treaty, which stated that the moon was the “common heritage of mankind” like the deep seabed, in part because of lobbying from groups opposed to the treaty’s provisions. Because no organized effort arose in support of the treaty, it died in the U.S. Senate, and with it the golden age of space law. Today, nearly 30 years after it was first proposed, only 18 nations have ratified the accord.

Rise of collective action problems

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union space governance has only gotten more complicated due to an increasing number of space powers, both public and private. National and commercial interests are increasingly tied to space in political, economic and military arenas. Beyond fanciful notions of solar energy satellites, fusion energy and orbiting hotels, contemporary political issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, economic development, cybersecurity and human rights are also intimately tied to outer space.

The list of leading space powers has expanded beyond the U.S. and Russia to include China, India, Japan and members of the European Space Agency – especially France, Germany and Italy. Each regularly spends over US$1 billion on their space programs, with estimates of China’s space spending surpassing $8 billion in 2017, though the U.S. continues to spend more than all other nations combined on space related efforts. But space has become important to every nation that relies on everything from weather forecasting to satellite telecommunications. By 2015, the global space industry was worth more than $320 billion, a figure that is expected to grow to $1.1 trillion by 2040.

Private companies, such as SpaceX, are working to dramatically lower the cost of launching payloads into low Earth orbit, which has long stood at approximately $10,000 per pound. Such innovation holds the promise of opening up space to new development. It also raises concerns over the sustainability of space operations.

At the same time, the Trump administration’s public desire to launch a Space Force has fueled concerns over a new arms race, which, if created, could exacerbate both the issues of space weapons and debris. The two issues are related since the use of weapons in space can increase the amount of debris through fragments from destroyed satellites. For example, China performed a successful anti-satellite test in 2007 that destroyed an aging weather satellite at an altitude of some 500 miles. This single event contributed more than 35,000 pieces of orbital debris boosting the amount of space junk by approximately 25 percent.

Without concerted action, Marshall Kaplan, an orbital debris expert within the Space Policy Department at Johns Hopkins University, argues, “There is a good chance that we may have to eventually abandon all active satellites in currently used orbits” due to the growing problem of space junk.

Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford and cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov shake hands in space on July 17, 1975 to ease Cold War tensions. NASA/Wikimedia Commons

Avoiding a tragedy of the space commons

The tragedy of the commons scenario refers to the “unconstrained consumption of a shared resource — a pasture, a highway, a server — by individuals acting in rational pursuit of their self-interest,” according to commons governance expert Brett Frischmann. This can and often does lead to destruction of the resource. Given that space is largely an open-access system, the predictions of the tragedy of the commons are self-evident. Space law expert Robert Bird, has argued that nations treat orbital space as a kind of communal pasture that may be over-exploited and polluted through debris. It’s a scenario captured in the movie “Wall-E.”

But luckily, there is a way out of this scenario besides either nationalization or privatization. Scholars led by the political economist and Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom modified the tragedy of the commons by showing that, in some cases, groups can and do self-organize and cooperate to avoid tragic over exploitation.

I explore this literature on “polycentric” governance – complex governance systems made up of multiple scales, sectors and stakeholders – in my forthcoming book, “Governing New Frontiers in the Information Age: Toward Cyber Peace.” Already, we are seeing some evidence of the benefits of such a polycentric approach in an increasingly multipolar era in which there are more and more power centers emerging around the world. One example is a code of conduct for space-faring nations. That code includes the need to reduce orbital debris. Further progress could be made by building on the success of the international coalition that built the International Space Station such as by deepening partnerships with firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

This is not a “keep it simple, stupid” response to the challenges in space governance. But it does recognize the reality of continued national control over space operations for the foreseeable future, and indeed there are some benefits to such an outcome, including accountability. But we should think long and hard before moving away from a tried and tested model like the International Space Station and toward a future of vying national research stations and even military outposts in space.

Coordination between sovereign nations is possible, as was shown in the golden age of space law. By finding common ground, including the importance of sustainable development, we earthlings can ensure that humanity’s development of space is less a race than a peaceful march – not a flags and footprints mission for one nation, but a destination serving the development of science, the economy and the betterment of international relations.

About The Author:

Scott Shackelford is Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics and Director, Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance. He is also Cybersecurity Program Chair at IU-Bloomington, Indiana University.

This article is republished from our content partners at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

#science #space #technopolitics #science fiction #space force #SpaceX #Space Junk #space debris #space commons #space race

[elizabethrobertajones]

It’s interesting how we interpret things diff in fandom. For ex, I’ve always felt negatively towards dean’s use of sex as comfort Bc of my own experiences w csa but to some other people this reads as more positive on the whole. Do you think that maybe this is what makes people have such astronomically different takes on a character/plot event ?? Maybe this would also apply to 8x17 being read as conversion therapy while others wouldn’t see it. Not original thoughts but interesting nonetheless

Yeah, this is a whole thing in literature/media interpretation classes… You know what’s wild, it’s a pretty postmodern concept that everyone has their own interpretations and there’s rational reasons why we would see things very differently based on our own experiences. Incredibly this wasn’t always the case, and it used to be that there were definitive interpretations and analysis created by a sage literary critic which were then the be all and end all of the interpretation, even if with modern eyes those might seem inherently flawed. It’s why when we learn about historical texts they teach us both the context that the original audience would have interpreted it in, the stuffy academic opinion, a range of other thinkers, and importantly the modes of interpretation to attack it for ourselves, and a chance to write our own opinions. 

When it comes to fandom, people as a whole seem very set in the original stuffy one true interpretation thing, which is completely wild to me. I don’t see it as contradictory to read and reblog a dozen different metas on a scene and even if there’s one I personally lean towards, I find it fascinating to consider multiple interpretations and how they come across to people. And, often circumstantially, certain things seem to fit better than others. For example there are a few Dean hook ups I’m quite positive towards that he seemed to be in a healthy place and it wasn’t too weird, while others are quite tellingly wrongbad to me where he’s in a very poor place and it makes me very sad to see him trying to apply that comfort to very little effect. If someone writes meta that ALL of them are good or ALL of them are bad then I’m probably going to end up reblogging meta that says both to get both viewpoints to have the meta background to pick and choose to where it seems more suited to me to say either.

But I guess a lot cases people get really invested in their particular theory or analysis and can’t see past it either to how other people could think different things, or to find it interesting that they do, and to see how those ideas can be equally merited either talking about the same instance or how it can’t be applied uniformly. Some people just aren’t very flexible and get very angry about their one idea being challenged, even though something like a very specific read of a scene, like that 8x17 reads as Naomi putting Cas through conversion therapy, could be given a few different readings but it never hurts to say “this scene also can be interpreted as…” even if when you have your overall opinion of what’s going on there it might not mean as much overall. 

I personally read a huge overall narrative of Cas vs Heaven as a queer kid in a conservative family so it makes a lot of sense for me to read it that way. Someone who generally leans towards interpreting him as various other things such as portrayed as a soldier first or a metaphor for him being an immigrant among humanity, or other ways in which this metaphor don’t apply so neatly might have much less use for that interpretation but I find it super weird to think of the ones that apply less to a personal read as therefore wrong. There shouldn’t be a right and wrong in this case, but a collection of interpretations you can understand, respect, see the reasoning for, but at the end of the day are not the ones you fall back on for your overall personal meaning and understanding of the show. 

But then at the end of the day, I think the way we all approach the story differently and that leading to different interpretations also comes down to our need for validation etc. I approach it with a somewhat detached academic curiosity when it comes to the fandom’s meta project, as much as the story and characters mean to me, the analysis can be super fascinating but also not particularly relevant or “useful” in the sense of getting a clear grounding in tools to keep on understanding the ongoing show like abstract literary parallels to old episodes or whatever. Like, I just like reading essays branching off and exploring themes and parallels and such, while a lot of people are more interested just in hashing out a clear picture of what happened in each episode, what influenced it, and how to use those tools to guess what happens next or something, which is a fascinating practical application of analysis which is really a hallmark of fandom for ongoing projects and something I’d never even thought you could use analysis for before I got to fandom… 

But for people who are much more interested in a clear interpretation of validation of their readings of characters an plot, they just want the things which will prove to be the most accurate to canon and give them the clearest answer and vindication with new episodes, and that means a lot less room for theoretical asides, and for clear answers for what things mean so that when that thread of the story continues there’s certain ground on what it’s telling them… It means a lot less room for having multiple points of views on events and knowing clear right and wrong interpretations means that it’s easy to determine how things are going. 

Which I think in some ways can lead to quite aggressive fandom behaviour, not just in the obvious gatekeeping of ideas and fighting over interpretations, or refusing to engage with theories that contradict the one you’re most invested in instead of dabbling in them all, but also that when new content appears, people get upset or argumentative about events in very odd ways about what things meant. Obviously you can see it most with anti-factions which are aggressive about people applying interpretations about ships and stuff, but also with getting so rigid about a reading that if the story changes meaning, people are left in the lurch. 

To not be contentious about any current specific stuff so I’ll just use a large vague example, Carver era had very clearly defined symbolism and themes and tropes, but Dabb era didn’t use these and Dabb’s approach to storytelling is very subtle in some ways and really brash in others, none of which can be read like the carefully weighted symbolism of Carver era. I find a LOT more use in analysing the emotional arcs than the symbolism between showrunner eras, even when there is symbolism, it’s often… topically applied? Presifer sat with flames burning behind him in his staff meeting, but Cas sat in front of a similar open flame pit in 14x01 and I don’t think there was any parallel in their intent or behaviour, and I wouldn’t draw the two together, but to take the symbolism of each. But for some people who had been really hugely into the language of Carver era, Dabb era completely threw them, and was physically enraging by how much Dabb wasn’t writing like Carver used to, and there was a lot of upset about how basic his writing was and how wonderful Carver’s symbolism was, and how the show didn’t MEAN anything any more. Of course it still meant TONS, but it wasn’t being expressed in the same way any more, and by running headlong into Dabb era still trying to read it like Carver era, these people bounced off completely and could never get into it in the same way as when there were very prescriptive symbolic and metaphoric rules to follow which made understanding events so easy you could just take a glance at a single screenshot towards the end and explain everything about the scene and its wider meaning in the mytharc. 

(What’s interesting is that the show wasn’t previously written like this - Kripke era runs on mirrors and flips in a way which is actually more similar to Dabb era but minus, of course, 10 years of show history which makes Dabb have such a meta, kaleidoscope version of this, and it was in a very heightened, dramatic form which is very elegant and sublime and worked well as the tragedy it was set up to be… Gamble era was more like Dabb era in running more off emotions but lacked a clear symbolic language AND didn’t have the back to front structure Kripke did, being caught in the middle of completely overhauling the story, and I honestly don’t blame her showrunning in a sense that it was an almost impossible job to salvage the subtextual telling of the show from itself in the wake of Kripke essentially ending the show in 5x22 with raised middle fingers at anyone who dare continue past the original vision. Leaning into their trauma and the story’s trauma was a sensible bridge, all things considered, but it makes hers the least elegant storytelling >.> Anyway this is a total aside… it’s early in the morning and I’m just sitting here :P)

Anyway. Yeah, you can tell I do find it interesting to think about how everyone has all their own interpretations :P I mean I know it’s my own experiences which make me so annoying about having this uwu all interpretations are valid sort of approach to it as well, which is just another interpretation at the end of the day. Though I will be snobby and say I do think it’s better that people could read each other’s analysis and even if it doesn’t go hand in hand perfectly with their pet interpretations at least acknowledge it’s interesting and has its own merits, rather than dumping on it in a knee jerk reaction. But then, some people come to the show and end up with their interpretations because the emotional meaning they give is so intrinsically personal, another interpretation DOES feel like an attack, and trying to deal with people who CAN’T accept that some of us are just shooting the breeze and aren’t in a death grip to any one meaning can get very sticky. Especially when someone seems rational for a while but then on disagreeing they get very emotionally violent and it takes you completely by surprise when you thought you were just chatting and then it turns out you’ve hurt them in their most deep emotional place by being like, anyway lol whatever I still mostly ascribe to this other idea - OH NO SORRY D: WE WEREN’T ON LOL WHATEVER TERMS OH GOD OH - 

#Asks #this blogs stance is 'lol whatever' on most subjects :P #fandom problems

[trollhuntingdirectory]

What It Takes To Survive

Changelings.

To the common troll, the very utterance of the word evokes worry, suspicion, a suspicious glance to those around us. We all know our history with their people, a history full of deception, espionage, assassinations and infiltration. To the common troll, a changeling brings with them tragedy and misfortune.

But indeed, it is not just the common troll that suffers. To be a changeling is to never know peace. If they are found by trolls, they are killed. If they are found by humans, they are killed. This is the life of a changeling.

(Please click below for the full story)

Let’s make one thing very clear. I don’t excuse the horrors brought to our communities by the hands of these half-trolls, half-humans. There have been many deaths, and many tears shed, all for a purpose that none of us have yet to figure out, and may well never know.

But, at the same time, I will not deny that their existence is an ongoing hardship, and even those who have attempted to return after being taken have been chased away with stone and steel and the cries of ‘Impure’ at their backs. There is no home for them among trolls, or with humans, where they must always play pretend. Pretend has many more downsides, I’ve learned. Man may not be made of living stone like my people, but they are just as bloodthirsty, and capable of the same evil as Gumm Gumms and those who worship Gunmar.

Now, I know it’s going to be foolish to admit, but I did try tracking down a changeling up in Arcadia a while back. Not to capture or fight, but to speak with. It wasn’t easy, obviously. They hide in plain sight, and I cannot be out during the day like them.

Perhaps they got tired of my snooping, or suspicious at the very least, but I did catch the attention of one. Death threats aside, he was polite, and with a few exchanged words, a deal was struck.

He would grant me audience, I would agree to leave his people alone and not disclose any information that could be seen as a threat to their security. I imagine he was also amenable to the idea that a story may make sympathizers among trolls, making their goal easier to obtain. Doubtful, of course, but the idea of sympathy was not a poor one.

“The old Vespa Warehouse,” he told me. “Tomorrow night. We shall speak there, and you may ask for whatever story you wish. I cannot promise that it will be legitimate, though.”

Of course not, I thought. But the cataloguing of a real changeling’s life would be a welcome addition to my archives of Trollkind, and I’ve always been told that my curiosity was my constant lead to trouble.

Say what you will about changelings, but they keep to their words when bargains are struck, regardless of if they intended a backstab or not, which I had a feeling wouldn’t be necessary here.

He was in a small office within the building, sitting alone in a deteriorating room, waiting patiently. He seemed rather pleased that I’d shown up, at the very least. He greeted me, I took a seat nearby, and he asked a definitive question. What did I wish to know. I asked for only two things. His name, and what he’d done to survive among humans for so long.

The first was easy, just Otto. A surname was inconsequential, he was bound to change it in a few decades anyways.

The second, he found, was harder to answer.

“I am not sure if I understand this question fully, mein freund.” He said carefully, arms crossed.

“You’ve been on the surface for the last couple of centuries, right? We all know the humans have gone to war with themselves more than a few times. What was it like going through them, pretending to be human?” I asked.

Again, he found trouble finding his answer.

“I... hm. The last I was caught in, I did not pretend to be human for very long, I will admit, but that is a long, and difficult story.”

I encouraged him to tell his tale, though I could tell that the memories were something he did not want to bring to surface. This was a story to earn sympathy, to show the hardships of his species, to keep record of their stories as I would any other troll. It took some time, and some silence, but eventually, he told me his harrowing years in Poland, back in the human year of 1939.

“You must forgive me now if I do not remember everything correctly, but these times, they were chaotic, and I did a great many things to survive them. You trolls had long left to America by this time, with very few communities remaining as far as my people could tell, so I doubt you’d know much about World War Two outside of books. Back then, I was just another changeling, so to speak. A bit of muscle, just a quiet ear to the ground to send word back to the others in the area as was needed. My human life was nothing important... but that meant that food got harder to come by at that time, and neither of these things seemed to deter German soldiers from seeking me out. They were looking for magic, you see. Their fuhrer wished for power, be it from the deaths of other humans or from that which they call supernatural and arcane. Fellow changelings were captured, and it makes me understandably sick to think of what was done to them, but the most important thing was the safety of our sanctuary at the time.”

He paused, and looked me in the eye.

“I only mention it because it is gone now. Months before its destruction, sights had finally been set on me, and that place was the only that would keep me safe. We are not as indestructible as you, after all. Humans are always looking for ways to kill things even faster, even more painfully. One could easily brush off an arrow or sword, but wartime ballistic weapons pierce and hurt even our hardiest changelings these days. That much has been the way of things for a hundred years or so, now. But that is is aside from the point. You wish to know how I lived through such a dangerous time, when humans could easily shoot me down and were actively hunting me. The truth is, I’m... not proud of how. It was certainly not my first option, either, but one does what they must when they are cornered.” He paused, pushing his small glasses up his face a little.

“The first time it happened, I was cornered by a soldier in a back alley, in a town that I doubt still exists. He’d shot me in the leg, I was limping and helpless. I’m not sure how I’d been exposed, but he was after me because I was a changeling. A lucky reason to be hunted, many humans did not have that luxury, and were taken for far more mundane reasons... The first time it happened, I was cornered, and I was injured, and something in me snapped. I was a younger troll then, more quick to act on instinct.”

He shook his head, and looked troubled. I assured him that he didn’t need to continue if he didn’t wish it so, but he told me it was fine. It was difficult, but it was indeed something to be archived. If anything of changelings should be remembered, it’s what happens when they are pushed from all sides.

“One moment, he was approaching gun raised, the next... I was no longer in my glamour, and no longer hungry. It was... Hm. I was, scared, I think. We changelings were never part of the Pact you trolls follow, but we also normally don’t... eat, uh, humans. We ourselves are half human, so in a way it is cannibalism, yes? I was horrified, naturally. Killing a fleshbag is easy, but to lose control and eat was something different entirely. That’s when I knew I needed to return to my sanctuary. They would have food there, and shelter, and surely safety from the soldiers who wanted my capture. It was months before I reached it, having to hide often, trying to avoid losing control, and... occasionally losing it.” He laughed, nervously, as if it was an embarrassment. “The safe haven was gone when I came across it. Whether those inside had destroyed it to keep our existence safe, or there had been a lucky strike from a Luftwaffe, I will never know. It was still burning when I got there, with the soldiers pouring over it for anything useful. Those bastards, they do not realize how easily we crumble to dust. There was nothing for them there, but for me, it just meant there was nowhere for me to go... This is where things get fuzzy. I lost control, again, I think. And there are... moments, I remember, of lucidity, after that. Forests, snow, sometimes I think I came across soldiers, but I don’t know if I killed them or not. I was... not myself, then, but I still was particular. Only the soldiers and men with the armbands were eaten. You look in those history books from the surface, mein freund. You’ll see I did the fleshbags a service.”

“Ah, but that’s beside the point. The point is. Humans drove me into the woods. I did not have any changelings alive to help me anymore, and the local trolls would easily sniff me out. You asked me what I did to survive? Apparently, I lost my mind and ran off into the wilderness, for a length of time I still cannot seem to comprehend. I’ve been given numbers numerous times after being found, but they mean nothing to me. I survived by becoming a wild animal, because there was nowhere else to go.”

It’s been a few days since the meeting with the changeling, and I still wonder about a great many things. What is it like to lose yourself to instinct to survive? How do you life your life unable to find community, unable to trust others of your kind? What must it be like, to not be welcomed by anybody in times of trouble? The life of a changeling is a complicated one, and despite what many full blooded trolls may believe, they are still as much troll as any of us.

Perhaps Otto told a lie to earn sympathy, perhaps he told a truth to get it off his chest and forget about it for good... Or, perhaps, he hoped to have something of his people remembered in some way that wasn’t of fear or distrust. I don’t think I’ll ever know the truth, I don’t even know if he still lives, though changelings are notorious for faking deaths. There is only one thing for certain that I learned from this.

What would we do to survive in a world that is against us from all sides? Who would we turn to out of desperation and anger? What would we do to keep our people from extinction? These are questions we should always ask ourselves in the face of changelings who work against us. You do not have to like them or what they do, but you cannot deny their existence.

These are real trolls, three dimensional and complicated as any other, and we must never forget this.

#Archived Works #Species: Changeling #trollhunters #otto scaarbach

[stylinbreeze60]

My “WIPs”

Thanks @sugaandyams. I don't get tagged too often, so thank you!

“The Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.”

Oh my goodness. I had stuffed saved in all different places. I’ll start with the folders that contained fics that are incomplete. Welp, here I go!

Great Galactic War - this folder is the dump for my Haikyuu space/war AU, one of three or four fics I may focus on writing in the near future (first chapter is already published); the folder has very little atm, but I have about two dozen different scenes on my phone that aren't saved on PC

Kenma Project - the dump for my actively ongoing Haikyuu next gen captain war AU. I have a file in here further titled Ennoshita chapter. I wonder what that’s about? ;)

Three Kings - the dump for my Haikyuu samurai AU starring Hinata and Noya, the second possible fic I may commit to writing (first 2 chapters already published); there’s a chapter outline (which is dated because I’ve updated it in my head so much), and there are notes and many chapter tidbits on my phone too

Vice - the dump for a canonverse Haikyuu fic that was borne from a desire to write more Nekoma, so I subjected them to debilitating angst. There’s a rough chapter outline in here, and there are a couple of chapter drafts saved as emails on my phone. It’s the third fic that I might commit my time to (first 2 chapters, starring poor Inuoka, already published)

March of Justice - this folder was the dump for my aborted One Piece/My Hero Academia crossover, in which a couple of One Piece villains travel to the BnHA universe to conquer it

And here’s the rest I found. Some of these are just notes on fanciful ideas I had for a day and then never revisited. Others were never intended to see the light of day whatsoever

Abe dake ga Inai Machi - Oofuri-Erased - oh goodness. I had to stare at that title for a while to figure out what was wrong with it. An Oofuri/Big Windup fanfic that I didn’t play with for very long, but I was surprised to find I actually wrote the first chapter. Like Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (Erased), there’s a murder and then Abe finds himself transported back to the start of the Oofuri series, 10 months earlier. I reread some of this first chapter, and by my standards, it’s awful

Ace of Diamond - scandal fanfic - one of the ones never intended to see the light of day. It’s just notes. Basically Seidou pulls off its own Black Sox scandal and gets nailed, with some drama over whether Eijun is actually guilty

Ace of Iron / Ace of Swords - a Diamond no Ace samurai AU, mostly notes but also including drafts of a first chapter. It grew so huge there was no chance I could ever write it as a fanfic, so I actually converted it into an original story idea that I may do something with some day

Big Windup - cheating ploy disaster - this one is just notes and also never intended to see the light of day. An Oofuri idea in which Nishiura’s defeated rivals suspect them of cheating and kidnap the club boys to force them to confess. It goes even more downhill. (I’m very glad that, since discovering Haikyuu, I now conceive fanfics I actually want to write.)

Day of the Countercoup - I had to dig to find this one cos I knew it existed, but it wasn't a file. It was a tab in an Excel doc I used for my Haikyuu political AU, Coup d’Etat. It’s notes for an aborted sequel (Coup d’Etat’s original title was “Night of the Coup,” hence this contrasting title) that I scrapped soon after starting work on it. So glad too! Coup d’Etat got its due, and that AUverse shall be left to itself now

Haikyu - Gospel of Shouyou - oh goodness. I’m not gonna explain this one. Me experimenting, not intended to see the light of day

Haikyu - Nightmare from Heaven - this one may be the fourth candidate for continuation as a long-term fic but is currently unpublished. A war/occupation fic in which Miyagi Prefecture is conquered during a contemporary World War III, and the Karasuno boys must now live under foreign military occupation. The first chapter and part of the second were written, and I've got several notes on my phone and PC about subsequent chapters. Thank goodness tensions in that part of the world have simmered down since I devised it

Life Hereafter - Chapter 6.5 alternate ending - oh no. Life Hereafter is my darkest and most sensitive fic, published only on FFN, written to process a RL tragedy I was distantly affected by. I struggled with the ending of Chapter 6, which covered Tsukki and Yamaguchi’s coping with the canonverse tragedy. One draft (called “6.5″ in case I ever wanted to publish it, but I likely never will) featured Tsukki, seeking solace and desperately wanting to console Yamaguchi, giving in to poor judgment and kissing him. Only to then learn Yamaguchi doesn't have the same feelings back. Topping off their hurt with this was far too cruel and painful, and even before I started typing it, I knew I wouldn’t actually publish it. Rereading the draft even now made me feel uncomfortable which is why I kept it because it’s perhaps the best friendship-ruining moment I’ve ever written

Oofuri fanfic - Sakura Conspiracy - I thought I wrote a chapter 1 draft too, but this is an outline for a WWII Oofuri AU in which Nishiura, after winning Koshien in the late 20s or early 30s, moves on to military and political careers, one of their former teammates dies under suspicious circumstances, and Mihashi fears one of his old teammates may be responsible. The story stretches from 1937 to 1945

I'm actually surprised I found no notes on my Haikyuu mafia AU idea. I guess I never actually transcribed any, even though the plot is substantially complete in my head!

These four are all notes for gigantic crossovers:

Periods of World fanfic - This was an experiment, in which each century from 2000 BC to 2000 AD was listed out, a different part of the world selected for each century, and then a different anime or manga assigned to each part of the world. The idea was to write a chapter set in that century in that area starring those characters. The last chapter, for the new millennium, would have covered all parts of the world. The file is dated 2013. It never became more than this list

Periods of World fanfic 2 - and so it seems I tried again! This file is dated 2014 and shows just a teeny bit more dedication, with the 20th century further subdivided into decades, then every year from 2000-2009, and then every six months for 2010-2014. There are some different anime choices than the 2013 version. Never went anywhere with it, never gonna

Reborn epic crossover anime tribute layout - yes, that’s the literal filename. This is from my days as a Katekyo Hitman Reborn fan, and I don't even recognize most of the character names anymore. Apparently the villains of Reborn travel to seven other anime universes to kidnap major characters to sacrifice them as part of some weird magic scheme that I can’t properly decipher now

Random multi-anime WWII fanfic plan - yes, that’s also the literal filename. This is an outline for a 50-chapter crossover set before and during World War II, where the main characters of Naruto are Russian, One Piece are British, Bleach are French, Katekyo Hitman Reborn are German, Blue Exorcist are Italian, Fairy Tail are Japanese, and Ed and Al from FMA are American. The plot is emotionally devastating, doesn’t pull the punches on all sorts of WWII-related triggers, and frequently and cruelly denies catharsis.

To be perfectly honest though, rereading it, I swear this is the best story I have ever invented! It has a heartrending blend of tragedy, poignant poetic justice, subplot causality, and social commentary and contains few of the traps I sometimes fall into like cheap shock and subplots going nowhere. I really wish I could do something with this narrative now

And I’ll count the hefty handful of TV scripts I’ve written in an effort to practice and hone my scriptwriting skills. All but the last one of these are hypothetical new seasons of real anime:

Blue Exorcist s2 - 1 episode. My attempt to write the Impure King arc, years before they actually produced the Impure King arc. This was not my best work

Noragami: God’s Secret - 2 episodes for a manga-based Season 3. These were pretty decent imo

Oofuri/Big Windup: The Coming of Fall - 17 episodes. I got really into this one. A speculative season 3 assuming three cours (imo we probably won’t be blessed with that many episodes if season 3 comes), covering everything up until the end of the fall tournament. The first 13 episodes covered the story up to chapter 84 minus the Kasukabe match, followed by an OVA (ep 13.5), and then I was working on the Kasukabe match told in hindsight before planning to continue with the big game of the fall prelims. The third cour would have covered the fall tournament itself

Mekakucity Actors XX - 4 episodes. My own idea for a season 2/alternate ending. Because I was very conflicted with how the anime ended

School Babysitters - this was an original episode idea for Gakuen Babysitters that I enjoyed writing very much but turned out too long (40 pages) and features the babies turning into insects. I wouldn't mind publishing it somewhere actually!

I am going to tag @wire-pudding and @kemoiunder! Anyone else who reads this and wants to explore the abyss that is non-started WIPs, be my guest too!

#shooting the breeze #haikyuu #diamond no ace #oofuri #big windup #boku no hero academia #bnha #one piece #noragami #gakuen babysitters #school babysitters #mekakucity actors #kagerou project #boku dake ga inai machi #katekyo hitman reborn #naruto #bleach #fairy tail #fullmetal alchemist #blue exorcist #ao no exorcist #stylin' breeze fics

[chimpukampu]

His Lady Behind The Mask, Day 8 - Secret Meeting

For @ladrienjune Monthly Challenge

Synopsis: Adrien Agreste is just a normal boy with a normal life, until the Akuma invaded Paris and took not only the peace in his city but also the existence of his Lady he once knew and loved. AU.

AO3 | Fanfiction | Wattpad

Days: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

Some Adrinette Childhood Friend AU for the soul

"Master Fu?"

"Ladybug," the old man beamed, waving his hand rapidly when the spotted heroine entered his office "Come in - and please lock the door. Thank you."

She immediately complied by pressing the lock button on the knob, then asked: "I don't understand your message about not informing Tikki or anyone about this meeting."

"That's because it's a secret," said Fu, pulling his own seat when she walked towards his office desk and sat on one of his visitor's chair "And something personal."

He noticed how her face twitched, albeit subtle, as well as the way she clenched her hands tightly on her lap but decided not to point it out.

"We're not talking about your parents. Rest assured that your family is safe," he clarified, and saw how her expression gradually relaxed "What I'm referring to is your connection towards the young civilian named Adrien Agreste."

Her posture went rigid "Adrien Agreste, Master?"

"I didn't call you here to scold you about saving him again if that's something you are worried about," the man chuckled at her bewildered gaze "I called you here because I'm a curious old man who wants to know about this young man's personality, his lifestyle…and how you two became friends."

"For what reason, Master?"

Fu cracked a smile despite her defensive tone "I'm fully aware that everyone knows about the ongoing dissolution panel between our organization and the French government. If the proposal will be signed on its third reading and wins the majority vote, the Order of Miraculous is going to be separated from the state and considered as a private entity. Which means that us, Miraculous wielders, will lose our state immunity and can be arrested for treason."

She snorted indignantly "For what, defeating Akumas?"

He cocked a brow "Aren't you aware of the rumors surrounding on the Miraculous wielders?"

"Ah," her face immediately turned sour "Are we talking about that rumor of us kidnapping some children and experimenting them to become Miraculous wielders? Or the other one wherein we steal corpses in the cemeteries and turn them into dummies we now call as Akumas?"

"Stealing corpses? I haven't heard that one yet," he caressed his chin with bemusement, much to the girl's chagrin "Must be something new. Anyway," he cleared his throat "Fallacy aside, the Congress made a proposal that we should end this war by having a truce with Papillion."

"A truce?!" her voice shrieked with disbelief "Are they out of their minds?!"

"That, or we'll just surrender ourselves to Papillion."

She almost leaped from her seat at the absurdity "That's bullshit!"

"Exactly," the old man remained unfazed as he went on "But there are proponents, the so-called elitists of our society, who are standing behind the proposal. One of them happened to be the CEO of Gabriel's fashion house."

Ladybug glowered "Gabriel Agreste,"

He concurred with a nod "Now, here's my question – why is it that Gabriel Agreste wants to dissolve the Order of Miraculous? Did we do something harm on his business? Did we fail to protect his family from the Akuma? If so, what can we do to rectify that?"

"Are you proposing to use his son in order to reach him?"

"Is that a smart decision, Ladybug?"

"No, it's not," was her adamant answer "Gabriel treats his son as nothing but a poster child. Ever since his wife died, he dedicated his life to work and never once he spends a single moment with Adrien that is outside the fashion arena. He's a cruel, selfish, manipulative bastard and most of all, a heartless father that must be removed in this world at all cost."

"And how about Adrien?"

"Adrien is a…sad person," she trailed off with looming eyes staring on her lap "He's a loving, kind and compassionate being. He loves his father despite his cold demeanor. He's friendly but socially inept due to his tight upbringings. He might be submissive, but he's self-sufficient. He can stand on his own, especially if he knows that he was right."

"Do you think Adrien can also stand himself against his father?"

Ladybug shook her head forlornly "I don't know, Master. Adrien may be persistent but Gabriel's words are absolute. You'll end up talking to the wall."

"I see," Fu reclined his back then eyed the masked heroine with fondness "Marinette must be friends with Adrien to know his life story."

"They're not just friends, Master," she sighed with a nostalgic smile "They're best friends."

"And probably more, if the circumstance allows it."

Ladybug didn't give an answer.

"How did you two become friends?"

"We grew up together," she told him as she reminisced the past "His mother Emilie was one of our frequent customers; she often brings him every time she makes a shopping. He was home schooled, you see, so Emilie wanted him to have some friends other than rich kids like Chloe."

Fu noted how she sneered at Chloe's name.

"I never liked him, at first," she continued "Especially when he threw a bubble gum on my hair. I recalled having a meltdown when the gum got stuck and the only way to remove it was to cut my hair. My hair was long during that time - I think it reached around my elbows - so having a bob cut was a tragedy for my six-year-old heart."

"I cried and cried the whole day. I didn't even eat my supper because I was so sad, and I slept that night with tears in my eyes. The next day came and he was there, standing outside of our door alone, and I remembered the anger of seeing his face; the desire of hitting him with anything but solid. I also remembered yelling, blaming him for ruining my hair and asking him to leave me alone. He didn't. He remained at our doorstep until I stopped crying."

"Then he presented me this beautiful wreath, and I was like 'his money won't buy me' but then I saw his dirty little hands filled with band-aids. He told me how sorry he was for my hair, that he didn't mean to throw the bubble gum on my direction. He confessed that one of the kids stuck the gum on the bench, so he tried to pry it but the gum went all over his hands. Before he realized it, the gum flew out and landed on my hair."

"Adrien must have sacrificed his sleep to make that wreath."

Ladybug nodded "Afterward, Emilie told me that Adrien combed their garden to find the 'most beautiful flower fit for the Princess' and spent the entire night weaving my flower crown. I think it was a combination of hyacinths, carnations, and orchids."

"Ah, the flowers of forgiveness," the old man sighed dreamily "And I believe young Marinette accepted the apology of her great Knight."

"We became friends that day," said the heroine. Until last year...

Sensing the shift in the atmosphere, the old man patted the underside of his eye "Your glamour didn't break this time."

"I didn't make any eye contact, Master," she replied, touching the edge of her spotted mask "He didn't remember me, or anything about Stoneheart's fiasco."

"Well, that's good," he nodded casually "Cataclysm is a very strong spell, Ladybug. No one has ever dispersed it except those with an ancient magus' blood."

"Adrien is just a normal boy with a normal life. He was born with normal parents with a normal lifestyle. He's not like me."

Fu only made a non-committal hum "Do you think Gabriel loves his son?"

"By love, you mean imprisoning him in a cold, lifeless fortress he called as home? I'd say yes to possessive love."

"Was he like this before his wife died?"

Ladybug tilted her head as she mulled over "I don't think so? Emilie died when Adrien was eight so my memory was a bit hazy…. but I do remember seeing Gabriel carrying Adrien in his back."

Fu patted his thighs then stood up "I think I got the answers that I needed."

"Are you sure?" the heroine hastily followed suit "I mean, about Adrien –"

"Oh no, you don't need to worry about Adrien," he gesticulated as he ushered her towards the door "And, Ladybug?"

"Yes, Master?"

"If Marinette can't stay as friends with Adrien," he suggested, "Why can't Ladybug befriend Adrien?"

Fu had to stifle his grin when he saw the confusion ebbed on the girl's face, but after he shut the door closed and engaged the locks, his expression turned into somber.

"Wayzz?"

A tall, lean man in green clothes emerged from the shadows "Yes, Master?"

"Call Plagg," he commanded, "Tell him that we found the magus who bears the power of Destruction."

#ladrienjune #ladrien june #day 8 #day 8 - secret meeting #his lady behind the mask #ladrien #adrien agreste #marinette cheng #marinette dupain-cheng #a bit of adrinette #ladybug #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #miraculous fanfic #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #tales of ladybug and cat noir #reverse love square #ml au #chimpukampu #my fics