#but that's not really the case with luca. for me at least. everything feels so fade and empty... blah....
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Cruel Summer - Part 11
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pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader
summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…
word count: 8k
warnings: swearing, some angst (as always) discussions of closeted queer folk (just in case) probably a lot more - will go back in and edit as needed!
A.N.: I'm back, Chat! After a million years and some change, I really hope you like this chapter even though to me it feels a tad like filler, so sorry it took so long to get back into the swing of things!! - Also, my taglist is broken, so if you would like to be put on it for the chapters going forward, please let me know!
To call the last few days a blur would be an understatement, more so considering how everything that had happened over the course of the last few hours could have filled the duration of those days themselves.
And everything happened so fast, events falling into place one after the other in such quick succession that Dustin has barely had time to process all the steps he’d taken down the road since he and Max first left his house in search of Eddie – in search of you.
Presently, he’s stuck trying to rationalize just how he’d come to find himself sitting huddled on the Wheeler’s sofa, stuffed in between Max and Lucas under the tense scrutiny of the Hawkins PD and the worried coterie of their parents.
Though perhaps “how” is not the question, but why, considering he knows exactly how it happened: they found Eddie, then they lost him, and after a very tense few hours, subsequently found him again, camped out with you at Skull Rock, looking very much like you’d been to hell and back.
From there their road circled back to Lover’s Lake, and now here they find themselves, in police custody with half of their party lost to the gate beneath the water.
It’s the closest thing Dustin can imagine to a worst-case scenario.
That’s not true, he tells himself, Eddie’s still in the clear, so it’s not all bad… not yet…
Still, it’s beyond bizarre to be sitting and getting lectured on the Wheeler’s sofa with Mike so far removed all the way in California.
Karen is nice, sure, and Ted is … well, Ted is Ted, hardly intimidating, but something about being under the direct scrutiny of the Wheelers and the Sinclairs and his mother and the Hawkins PD, all of whom he is actively lying to, has Dustin sinking further and further into the plush cushions in the hopes of somehow shrinking out of existence.
How badly he wishes he was anywhere but here.
It’s not that he’s intimidated or anything so foolish, particularly by the bespectacled likes of Officer Callahan, only that Dustin is painfully aware of how this looks, their merry band of misfits camped out at the water’s edge directly opposite an active crime scene with binoculars in hand. Worse still, he’s painfully aware of how it sounds.
“What were you kids doing out at the lake?” Callahan asks.
It’s as good a question as any, but it leaves the lot of them reeling with just exactly how to answer it.
What are they supposed to tell them, the truth? That they were busy sending half their party through an interdimensional gate at the bottom of the lake to the Upsidedown?
No.
Under absolutely no circumstances will he be telling them the truth, not unless he wants to see the inside of a padded cell.
He could have told Hopper the truth (or at least some summarized version of it), but Hopper isn’t here, so Dustin and his friends open their mouths and all begin to speak at once as they fumble for some sort of credible answer as to what they were doing out at the lake.
“Swimming—” Dustin says immediately.
Max shrugs her shoulders and offers what would have been the most practical answer…
“Nothing—”
… if not for what came tumbling out of Lucas’s mouth.
“Taking a long romantic walk under the moonlight?” He squeaks, voice lilting an octave higher as his sentence comes to a close, making the statement sound much more like a question than anything else.
The silence in the room is deafening, and Dustin suppresses a wince, fully aware of just how well and truly cooked their collective gooses are as he exchanges a horrified glance with you, sitting in a plush chair opposite the couch, wide-eyed and gaping at him from the other side of the room.
It’s a wonder you’re even here, considering Dustin had been sure that you’d go right along with the others, but in a stunning turn of events, you’d elected to stay behind.
It was because, as you said; “I’m the babysitter, it’s literally my job…” – Dustin had been decidedly pleased about that, in stark contrast to Eddie, who had just about capsized the boat right there on the shore trying to reach for your hand.
“Don’t be silly,” He’s insisted, despite how unbelievably practical you were being. “There’s plenty of room,” There was not, as had been evidenced by Dustin’s own rejected application to join the expedition. “– come on,”
But there was no arguing with you, as was always the case when your mind was made up. For as many reasons as Eddie could drum up for you to go, you had just as many reasons to stay, the least of those being that you were injured.
“I’ll only slow you down,” You’d assured him with a slow shake of your head, “It’s gonna be fine, we’ll be waiting right here when you get back.”
It’s yet another thing that is driving Dustin to the very edge of anxiety-induced nausea: they won’t be there waiting on the shore when the others get back … if they get back.
The adults are still gawping at their little group, eyes wide as dinner plates in patent disbelief of their swimming–nothing–romantic moonlit walk at the lake.
“It was kind of, sort of a … field trip scenario…” Dustin says, gesturing flippantly as he fumbles through the poor excuse for an explanation.
“To the lake…” Callahan deadpans.
“Yeah…”
“In the middle of the night…”
It’s less a question than an accusation.
Dustin resists the urge to correct the deputy, considering it’s hardly the middle of the night, and he nods, swallowing hard against the cotton blooming in his throat.
“...I mean, it’s Spring Break.” he croaks, “...No school…”
“Dusty…” His mother presses, “Somebody was just murdered there!”
It sets his teeth on edge.
“We didn’t know that at the time.” He insists, well aware of just how lame this all sounds.
Desperate to claw back some shred of credibility, he elbows Lucas in the ribs. It startles the boy to attention and his head snaps around to regard Dustin with an incredulous look, as if to ask what the hell am I supposed to say?
Max takes the hint for him.
“What’s the big deal?” She starts, “So, we were down at the lake — it’s called healing your inner child, look it up.”
On the other end of the couch, Dustin is vaguely aware of hearing you breathe out harshly, muttering something that sounds very much like “Oh, boy…”
Before he can stop this snowball from rolling, Lucas is nodding emphatically, suddenly very eager to add his two cents to the notion.
“Right, w-we were just trying to …” he trails off, swallowing hard as the rest of his sentence escapes him, and then, “… yeah, like Max said… do that.”
If Dustin thought the first silence was deep, this one is a yawning chasm of infinite depth. They’re great at this, actually, not at all amateurish.
“Right…” Powell says slowly, “...and this has absolutely nothing to do with Eddie Munson?”
Once again, they’re all speaking simultaneously, shaking their heads, gesticulating, and doing anything in their power to make themselves even remotely believable.
No really, they’re doing great.
“No, not at all.”
“Of course not.”
And then, because this is already going so well, Dustin opens his big mouth.
“That weirdo?” He scoffs, refusing to refer to Eddie by any harsher language, and cringing at the way his voice breaks on the word, “We don’t even know the guy.”
Erica Sinclair erupts into a bark of incredulous laughter from her position in the far corner of the room, and Dustin realizes his mistake the moment the words leave his mouth.
Erica… how could he have forgotten about Erica, who very recently had been caught up in the brief euphoria of reading from the Good Book of Eddie Munson.
Erica, who has just caught Dustin in what is perhaps the most blatant lie he has ever told and is trying her damnedest to strike him dead with the daggers she’s hurling in his direction from the other side of the room.
Oh, whoops… it’s the understatement of the century.
“You know they’re lying, right?” She snarls, “The whole couch is on fire.”
Her mother is quick to silence her with a harsh utterance of her name.
Dustin can’t help but feel a sharp stab of betrayal as he gawps at the younger Sinclair.
He’d thought, perhaps foolishly, that their triumphant victory against Vecna during the last Hellfire meeting would be some kind of a turning point for their friendship.
He kicks himself for being so naive and sinks a little further into the couch, pouting as she sneers back at him.
To make matters worse, the police are clearly not buying what they’re attempting to sell. Chief Powell and Officer Callahan exchange wary looks before, slowly, their gazes slide across the couch and over to you.
You begin to fidget under their collective scrutiny, doing your utmost to look anywhere in the room besides directly at the officers.
It’s only when Powell addresses you with the firm and formal usage of Miss followed by your last name that you finally look at him.
It takes him what feels like a very long time to speak.
“Care to chime in?” He finally asks, gesturing to the absolutely bafoonery of the couch.
You glance at Dustin, and he feels a stab of anxiety lance through his midsection as he fails to decipher the unreadable look splashed across your face.
Your attention snaps back over to the police when Powell repeats his overly formal addressing of you, the well of his patience growing ever shallower.
You pull an innocent face and gesture dumbly to yourself.
“Me?” You chirp, like you can’t imagine how they could possibly think you’re involved in this.
You? No, surely not you, who had pulled Dustin and the rest into a quick huddle and quietly instructed them on how best to lie to the cops when they’d found themselves ambushed at the lake.
Dustin had been caught somewhere halfway between impressed and appalled, but he’d stopped himself before the question could even take root in his mind: how do you know anything about lying to the cops?
Eddie. Naturally.
Officer Callahan doesn’t seem to have the same patience as his direct superior for your act. He heaves an overdramatic sigh and rolls his eyes behind his glasses.
“No,” he scoffs, “The other delinquent in the room.”
The mask of innocence slips immediately from your face as you level the man with a hateful look.
“Oh, sure.” You snap, “Because name-calling is the best way to ensure cooperation — real mature, Phil…”
“Wha— how did you—?” Callahan splutters indignantly before clamping his mouth shut and setting his jaw.
Strangely, Chief Powell coughs harshly into a closed fist, and Dustin only realizes that the man is masking a chuckle when his deputy levels him with a dour look.
After a moment to collect himself, Callahan returns to you and shrugs.
“Okay, fine – why don’t we put you in a pair of handcuffs and take you down to the station, see if that makes you feel any more cooperative.”
You blanch at the prospect and Dustin’s heart seizes in his chest in outrage. Before he can leap to your defense, however, the Sinclairs and Wheelers alike erupt into loud protests of the notion.
The collective vitriol of the adults is enough to cause Callahan to balk and suddenly he’s standing a little less tall.
“Oh, really, Officer!” Dustin’s mother tuts, “There’s no need for that — I’m sure whatever it was they were doing was completely innocent,”
He’s not entirely certain how sure she is of that, but evidently enough that she’s managed to overcome the horror she’d previously been experiencing at the thought of them going down to the lake where someone was just murdered.
Still, considering you’re more or less an honorary member of the Henderson household, she goes on to paint a shining picture of you, insisting that you are a good girl – responsible.
The others respond with varying degrees of enthusiastic agreement and Dustin’s chest swells with warm, golden pride.
Damn right.
While you were only ever officially his babysitter, it never stopped the Sinclairs from asking you to carpool Lucas and Erica to and from school twice a week, or Karen Wheeler from enlisting you to look after Holly when she had the odd errand to run – though perhaps more specifically, covering for her last summer and remaining the soul of discretion when a momentary slip in judgment regarding a certain public pool lifeguard had seen her very nearly destroying her marriage and perhaps by greater extension her family as a whole.
Karen Wheeler would have defended you like one of her own children if it came down to it, as is evidenced by the way she comes flying to your rescue.
“She’s their babysitter, for God’s sake.” She scoffs, gesturing toward you in a way that makes the chunky bracelets sitting on her slender wrists clack loudly together, “She takes the boys to the arcade and plays that …fantasy game with them – I mean, really… what kind of trouble could they possibly be getting into?”
Unfortunately, as Dustin realizes too late, the Hawkins PD happens to know exactly what kind of trouble you could be getting into, and they are all too happy to share.
“Listen, folks…” Chief Powell sighs, taking the floor and rubbing a tired hand over his face, “I’m sure you mean well, but I’m afraid that your word just isn’t enough – the fact of the matter is that your babysitter has been caught trespassing at two active crime scenes in about as many days.”
Callahan is quick to chime in.
“Not to mention she’s a known associate of Eddie Munson.”
Dustin bristles. He’d been waiting for that shoe to drop, and now that it has, he feels a thin sheet of ice beginning to form across his stomach lining.
A sticky silence falls heavily over the room as the adults all exchange bewildered looks. Not even Karen knows what to do with that reveal.
“What does that mean?” Charles Sinclair demands, brows furrowed tightly as he turns a hard eye on Lucas, as if his son somehow held the answer.
He freezes like a deer in headlights, but Erica is more than happy to explain, pushing forward to stand in front of her father and remind everyone that she is still there, hands propped up on her hips as she levels you with a particularly snotty look.
“It means he’s her boyfriend.” She drawls, peering back at the denizens of the couch and looking entirely too pleased with herself.
Dustin’s heart seizes with terror.
How the hell does she know that?
“Shut up, Erica!” Lucas hisses.
She reels on him.
“You shut up!” she snaps, and her mother quickly admonishes her for it.
“Erica!” She hisses.
“What? It’s true – I used to see them at the mall all the time, swapping spit, sticking their tongues down each other’s throats… you know, making out?” She makes a show of visibly shuddering before twisting to address you, sitting mortified with your hands fisted in your hair and your face flushed crimson, “You guys are super nasty, by the way…”
“Er-i-ca!” Her mother warns her sharply.
She puts up her hands defensively and retreats a step.
“It’s just the facts!”
Still, the sentiment causes a nervous murmur to pass through the adults… you and Eddie Munson?
Apparently, your dating habits had been as shrouded in mystery to them as it had been to Dustin, and unfortunately, they are less likely to be as forgiving about it.
His mother’s voice quavers as she turns to you and quietly says your name. He watches as, in spite of yourself, you shrink back a little further into the cushions as if you yourself had been hoping that information would not come to light.
“Is that true?” She squeaks.
You don’t answer right away, but to your credit, when you do you try to laugh it off.
“Which part?” You scoff, “The dating thing or that incredibly vivid description Erica just painted for us?”
The attempt at humor falls short on the adults, and in the silence that follows, Dustin can’t help but feel a little angry at how ridiculous this all is.
True, the descriptors were a bit much, Dustin doesn’t need to be picturing that any more than he already had been, but they’re all acting like she’d placed you at the scene as an accomplice to the murders, like you and Eddie are some kind of modern teenaged versions of Bonnie and Clyde, which is ridiculous – Eddie wouldn’t harm a fly, and if anything the truth bomb Erica just set off in the middle of the room means you’re the one who can personally vouch for that.
It would be a pointless endeavor, of course, they’re only going off of what they know of Eddie’s reputation, one that is currently telling them that he is a cold-blooded killer going on a rampage through the Hawkins High School student body…
Dustin feels himself begin to sweat.
Suddenly everyone is holding their breath to see how you will react, and how everyone else will if the truth comes out.
“...Technically we broke up…” you mumble sheepishly, tugging a the hem of your worn t-shirt.
The room erupts in a cacophony of noise.
All at once, the Wheelers and the Sinclairs find themselves split down the middle over whether they find that information credible, waffling between thrusting accusatory fingers at you, at the police, at the couch, and every direction in between.
Ted Wheeler and Charles Sinclair demand to know if they’re lying to the police and what kind of trouble you’re getting their kids involved in, and their wives insist on returning to the rescue of your character, assuring the men that this is all a huge misunderstanding and that you would never dream of putting their children in danger.
Boy, if they only knew the truth.
Dustin’s mother begins to weep, wailing about the state of her poor nerves, all the while you sink further and further into the cushions and do your best to become invisible.
It’s a madhouse.
Dustin wishes, not for the first time, that he was back on the shore of the lake, and silently hopes Eddie and the others are having a better time than they are.
Wherever they are, he hopes they are okay.
+++
Eddie is absolutely positively not okay. He can’t speak for the others, who all seem to be doing a much better job at handling the whole “crossing through a portal into another dimension” thing.
They’re calling it the Upsidedown like it’s the next town over, like they simply hopped in the car and drove down the interstate to arrive in this bizarro version of Hawkins with monsters and nasty shit.
They’ve apparently been through this before, so Nancy says, and Eddie can’t even begin to wrap his head around what that could possibly mean.
That they’ve swum to the bottom of the lake where someone has just been psychically murdered and passed through to another dimension only to narrowly avoid being eaten alive by a swarm of demonic bats? Somehow he highly doubts it’s that specific, though only because he’s having a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that basically, everything he thought he ever knew about Hawkins is complete and utter bullshit.
Eddie supposes he always knew Hawkins was one of those places, the cliche of the happy little midwestern town pretending everything is nice and shining and wholesome meanwhile grandma’s skeleton is rotting in the hall closet. He’d always assumed there was something going on just beneath the shining veneer, just not on the level of “a literal hell realm existing right beneath his feet”.
Nancy is maddeningly calm about all this as if she didn’t just go diving into the pitch black of the unknown to rescue Steve, or rip off the bottom panel of her blouse and tie a tourniquet around his midsection to keep his guts from spilling out.
Harrington himself is taking the whole “almost being eaten alive” thing in stride in a really frustrating way, already walking and talking like someone died and made him king of the goddamn Upsidedown.
In fact, the only one who seems even remotely in the realm of appropriately manic about this whole thing is Robin, talking a mile a minute about rabies and the logistics of bat bites in the Upsidedown, but as far as Eddie knows, Robin is just like that.
Naturally manic, naturally caffeinated, probably on some kind of prescription drug like Ritalin if he had to guess… not that he’d hold any of that against her, Robin’s cooler than most.
They’d had intermediate band together one semester before he realized he’d actually be expected to wear that stupid uniform and dropped out.
They’d even been somewhere halfway to friends during that brief period of time, though that “friendship” could be summed up to nothing more than the casual snide, sarcastic remarks during class, a joke here and there, and one instance of Robin getting way too high on half a joint they’d smoked under the bleachers.
It resulted in her becoming paranoid that Eddie was trying to get into her pants, which he most certainly was not, and inadvertently coming out to him in a moment of panic.
He swore to take her secret to his grave, quit showing up to class, and they didn’t speak again until she came riding in alongside everyone else on Dustin’s little rescue mission.
Eddie wonders if she remembers any of that…
He supposes it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, particularly since Eddie seems to be the only sane one among them, which is to say the only one teetering on the edge of losing his shit, and it’s really pissing him off because none of this is normal.
It’s a fucking nightmare.
Beyond the dark, however, the perpetual red lightning storm, the alien network of hive-minded vines, and literal goddamn monsters trying to kill them, Eddie is, foolishly, most concerned about you, as always.
He’s well aware of just how stupid that is, to worry about you up on the surface with all the subterranean dangers that pose a direct threat to his life and limb - he’s not even sure that’s the correct way to quantify it, but it sure as hell seemed like he’d swum through the bottom of the lake and crawled out on the other side of the world.
He wishes more than anything that you were here if only because then at least he’d have someone who he could turn to and know with confidence would agree, “Yes, Edward, this is in fact insane.”
Normally he rails against the utterance of his government name because the only people who call him that are typically authority figures preparing to dole out some sort of capital punishment, or his mother when she was royally pissed at him – “Edward Munson if you think I’m about to let that slide you have got another thing coming,”.
And you, of course, though you only ever do so with the utmost fondness… and very often in an affected English accent, which despite being one of the worst impressions he’s ever heard, Eddie actually likes very much.
What he wouldn’t give to have you right here, trying to liven the mood by doing that stupid accent. He can almost hear you chewing through it.
“We’re in a right mess, innit, Edward?” You’d say, “Pip-pip cheerio and the lot…” or whatever.
Still, a decent-sized part of Eddie’s brain is attempting to crawl out of his skull and abandon him to the madness of this place, and imagining all the ways you would try to make the situation seem less dire if you were there is doing nothing to help.
Because you’re not there.
Why in the hell hadn’t you come with them in the boat?
He knows why, of course, rationally so – there was no room, someone needed to stay with the kiddos, and most of all you’re hurt – but there are spiders in his skull, skittering around and irrationally whispering that the real reason you stayed behind was that after everything that happened, you couldn’t wait to get away from him.
A larger part of Eddie than he is ready to acknowledge is pissed about it because you’d only just finished agreeing not to split up anymore.
Together is better, you’d promised him that, but another part of him understands why you might be desperate to get away.
First Chrissy, then Patrick? He’s got to be cursed, why else would he be made to bear witness to those deaths?
Eddie is laden with the feeling, wrestling with the guilt and the misplaced anger and the confusion, and everything else his body is trying to feel all at once as he trudges through the nightmarish woods.
Step by aimless step he follows, careful to avoid the network of vines and the concerned gazes of unlikely companions, who all continue to treat this like it’s nothing more than a casual stroll through the woods, like this is just another Tuesday.
Is it Tuesday? He has no idea what day it is… and he can’t stop thinking about you, playing the moment on the shore over and over in his mind. Thinking about the way he’d reached for your hand, and how instead of taking it you’d carefully curled his fingers back in on themselves, shaking your head and insisting you’d only slow them down.
“Hey, you doing okay?”
The voice startles Eddie, wrenching him violently – thankfully – from the mire of his thoughts.
Steve is there, giving him a strangely concerned look, having fallen back into step with him at some point over the last few contemplative minutes.
Eddie blinks back at him, not entirely sure how to answer and wondering just how long he’s been there. He almost doesn’t realize he’d asked him a question until Steve’s brows jump up toward his hairline.
“Me?” Eddie scoffs, he briefly considers lying, but the truth is out before the notion can really take hold, “No, Man. I’m pretty goddamn far from okay.”
Harrington nods solemnly, in a way that seems, weirdly enough, almost remorseful, like it’s his fault they’re down here in this mess… which, it technically is, if they’re pointing fingers here.
True, Eddie didn’t have to follow them out of the boat, he could have sat there and waited for them to come back, but he knew they weren’t coming back, and he didn’t have to swim to the bottom of the lake, he could have just as easily swum to shore …
It hits him like a brick to the face.
Why the hell didn’t he swim to shore?
Steve casts his gaze down to his feet, exposing the dark, angry ligature marks ringing his throat and Eddie fails to suppress a shudder.
That’s why – because Steve was in trouble, and some repressed kernel of do-right in Eddie, the same one that drove him over the side of the boat and down into the depths to the bottom of the lake, wanted to help.
Or at least it didn’t want the shame of having to look Robin and Nancy in the eyes if he didn’t help and the bats went and pulled Steve’s head off anyway.
Ego is a funny thing, sanity even more so, because as crazy as it had seemed at the time to dive in after Robin, crazier still was the concept that had he not, it could have resulted in yet another death – or deaths, perhaps – that he would have been indirectly responsible for.
Still, his body is still thrumming with adrenaline from the fight, and not in the good, buzzy way either.
He’s been picking at the blackened, drying blood on his hands for the better part of an hour now, and part of him has started to wonder if it’s ever going to come off, if any of the blood on his hands is ever going to wash away.
Before he can get very far down the road with that line of thinking, Steve tries again.
“Thanks for this… by the way,” he says, plucking at the collar of Eddie’s battle vest sitting across his broad-shouldered form in a sorry state.
It’s filthy, splattered with ichor and viscera, and several patches have torn loose, much to Eddie’s dismay, but it’s the strangest combination of freezing cold and unbearably humid down there, wherever they are.
The way he figures, Steve needs it more than he does – that and it’s the only thing shielding their eyes from the knitted sweater he has got sprouting from his chest.
He basically had to hand it over, if for nothing more than modesty’s sake.
Still, the sentiment startles him– gratitude? Really?
Unaccustomed to basic human pleasantries from the likes of Steve Harrington, he finds himself at a loss and he suppresses the urge to twist around and make sure he’s actually talking to him.
For lack of anything else to do, he gives a lopsided shrug and gestures vaguely.
“Oh… yeah – no worries.” He stammers, “Least I could do.”
“...And thanks for... s-saving me… that was–” Steve clears his throat in an attempt to keep his voice steady – it’s awkward, “Yeah… anyway. Thanks for that.”
Eddie gestures vaguely, suddenly unsure of whether he wants the burden of Steve’s gratitude.
“Wheeler did all the work, I just tried to stay out of her way…” He mumbles, “She’s badass,”
Steve chuckles in a way that feels oddly secretive.
“You have no idea.” He says.
Of course, Eddie can’t possibly know what that means, but it’s compelling, nonetheless, and entirely true.
He makes a mental note of it in the Rolodex of his mind:
Wheeler, Nancy: Good grades, pastels, kinda prissy. Dated that douchebag, Steve Harrington – Badass.
A sticky silence bleeds between them after that, and Eddie passes the time stealing a handful of looks at Steve, casually walking alongside him, on purpose.
He can’t help be feel ever so slightly amazed.
If his shitty friends could see him now – only he’s fairly certain Steve isn’t friends with his shitty friends anymore, at least so he’d heard.
Normally it wouldn’t be enough to wash away the history of torment between them. Steve had, for a time, been the driving force behind a campaign to make Eddie’s life a living hell, but this situation is just too bizarre, too outlandish to discount – there might be some merit to Dustin’s hero worship of the guy after all.
Suddenly he can’t help himself.
“That was pretty metal what you did back there…” Eddie posits, and when Steve casts a curious look his way, he continues with tentative enthusiasm, “Biting that thing’s head off? Major Ozzy energy.”
Steve furrows his brow.
“…huh?”
Uh oh. In an instant, the feeling is gone, replaced by the much less desirable panic of an impending social failure.
Eddie scrambles to explain himself and bridge the valley between their interests.
“Ozzy Osbourne?” He tries to no avail, “Bit a bat’s head off on –?” Steve’s face remains unbearably blank, so Eddie abandons ship for his own sake, “Nevermind…” he hums, “It was – yeah, it was cool…”
Another one of those awkward silences falls heavily across their shoulders, and because he’s never learned to leave well enough alone, Eddie simply cannot leave it undisturbed.
Surely Steve has got to know what he’s talking about, even if only indirectly. It’s not like Ozzy is an obscure reference.
“You know Ozzy though, right?” He tries, “Black Sabbath?”
He pulls a face and shakes his head, much to Eddie’s chagrin.
Shit. Okay, lesson learned.
Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is.
He dismisses the notion too late.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Thankfully, they are not doomed to yet another unbearable silence as Steve quickly changes the subject, sweeping the interaction away with a wave of his hand.
“Hey, so… look, I’m sorry for what I did back there… starting that fight between you and...” He trails off when he realizes the reference has flown right over Eddie’s head, “Back in the boat house?”
Oh. He doesn't know how to respond to that. Eddie is not entirely sure anyone has ever apologized to him for anything... ever.
Still, it strikes him as an odd thing to say.
Almost everything Steve has ever said to him has been something worth apologizing over, but try as he might, Eddie can’t think of any particularly noteworthy zingers from the last few days.
And he does try, wracking his brain and coming up empty – but he doesn’t trust it, whatever this is, so Eddie levels Steve with an unimpressed look.
“So, this is the part where you get all mushy and remorseful because you almost died, right?” He starts slowly, “You’re gonna tell me you’re sorry for being such a fucking asshole back in the day and I'm just supposed to forgive you because you almost had your head pulled off?”
Strangely, it doesn’t elicit the expected response - no defensive comebacks, no biting retorts, just a weighted sigh that carries the heavy burden of guilt.
“Oh, shit… wait, seriously?”
Steve runs a hand through his hair, which is still somehow maddeningly perfectly coiffed – it makes Eddie feel frizzy and unkempt.
“Look, we’re not in high school anymore…” He starts, then stops like he’s only just remembered that isn’t expressly true, “– well, you know what I mean…”
“Careful.” Eddie warns.
Steve forces out a hard, frustrated breath and rolls his eyes – he’s barely even begun to make his point and he’s already fallen flat on his face.
“What I mean is that there are bigger things happening here,” He huffs, “It kind of puts things into perspective and makes all the stupid petty shit seem…” He trails off as he searches for the right word.
Eddie is more than happy to help.
“...Stupid and petty?” He offers.
“Exactly. I was an asshole – I’m still an asshole, and I’m working on it, but some old habits die harder than others–”
“Clearly,”
Steve clenches his teeth and flexes his jaw and apparently resists the urge to make some kind of snide remark, electing instead to swallow the blow and nod.
He's doing it on purpose, and Steve knows that as well as Eddie does, even if it's not an overt show of effort. Part of him figures if he can get under Steve's skin and rile him up, it will make him drop whatever bullshit act this is and they can go back to hating each other like normal. But try as he might he can't seem to break him.
This may, in fact, be a genuine show of remorse.
He can’t make heads or tails of it, except that Steve had very nearly died less than an hour ago, and nothing sets someone’s head on straight like facing the precipice.
Eddie can’t help but feel a little more than dumbfounded, because this has never happened even in his wildest flights of fancy. He almost can’t believe it, and what’s more, part of him knows he shouldn’t believe it.
He should know better, that at any moment the rug will be pulled from beneath his feet and he’ll find out it’s nothing more than a big elaborate joke, he’ll be doused in pig’s blood and find out he’s not actually the Prom Queen, and that will be that.
Still, he seems genuine, as if Eddie would know what genuine even looks like one Steve.
Maybe Robin’s right and those bats are affecting him in stranger ways than they realize.
“I guess what I’m trying to say,” Steve continues, “Is that I treated you like shit and you didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry about that.” he averts his gaze then and gestures vaguely in Eddie’s directly, “I mean, Henderson says your decent, and he’s usually a pretty good judge of character...”
Eddie fails to repress a sardonic snort of laughter, though not at Steve so much as the concept of Dustin being a good judge of character when he's out here double teaming friendships with people who are meant to be enemies.
“Is he though?” He presses.
Steve fails to repress a smirk and shrugs broad shoulders beneath torn, dingy denim.
“Yeah– well. The kid’s biased, anyway, he’s pretty much obsessed with you." He mutters, "It’s annoying as hell.”
It strikes Eddie that this is the first real conversation he’s ever had with Steve that didn’t involve him antagonizing him one way or another.
Still, he can't help himself
“Don’t tell me Steve Harrington, arguable deposed King of Hawkins High, is jealous of the town freak?”
Steve pulls a face, brows pinched tight over his eyes and glares back at him.
“Don’t be a dick," He says, though his tone is oddly not malicious, "This is embarrassing for me, okay? I’m opening up here.”
Part of him wants to hold Steve on the hook for it, out of some long-buried yearning for payback for all the shit he has put him through over the years, but in spite of everything and against his better judgment, Eddie suddenly feels a bizarre, misplaced fondness for the guy.
You used to say that Steve was a mean girl with a God complex, but looking at him now, Eddie can see he's really never been much more than a big fish in a small pond.
Popular kids who don’t extend their shelf life by way of scholarships and collegiate glory tend to fizzle out and implode, and Eddie imagines that every day Steve spends in Hawkins, that little pond gets a little smaller, and he shines a little less brightly.
“So…" Eddie begins tentatively, crossing his arms over his chest and hugging his biceps, "You’ve been holding on to this for a long time, huh? The guilt?”
Steve mirrors his posture and casts his gaze down to his feet, shaking his head.
“You have no idea.” He chuckles.
Eddie scoffs.
“Don’t I?” He counters, “Guilt is my bread and butter, Man… I was raised on that shit.”
He doesn't seem to know what to do with that knowledge. The sheer valley between their upbringings is evidently too wide a gap to bridge, so Steve pivots and yet again changes the subject.
“So, are you and the Psycho getting back together or what?”
It only takes Eddie half a moment to realize Steve is talking about you.
He gives him a terse look of warning, but when Steve raises his hands in an show of no offense, Eddie shrugs.
Before he can think better about divulging the intricacies of his lingering heartbreak to the likes of Steve Harrington, the words come tumbling out.
“I don’t know…” Eddie hums, “Things are pretty much fucked in that department.”
“What’s the problem?”
He swings his foot to kick at a rock, send it skittering across the forest floor, but remembers where they are and thinks better of it at the last moment, electing instead to roll in under his shoe as he passes it over.
“It just feels different now. Kind of like we’re just pretending…”
Another one of those heavy pauses passes between them.
“Hey, listen, Man, I don’t wanna step on your toes or anything, but you guys broke up." Steve says, "Things are always gonna be different the second time around. That doesn’t make it any less real. Don’t be so goddamn cynical–”
It's hardly a blow, but in spite of himself, Eddie bristles. He levels Steve with a hard, armored look.
“Look, don’t patronize me, okay? I’ve got no delusions about what I did. I made my bed, now I’ve gotta be a big boy and burn it.”
“I don’t think that’s the saying.”
“You know what I mean.” He snaps.
He supposes Steve means well, but Eddie can’t help but get defensive. It's like he said ... old habits and the like.
Still, Steve meets his gaze stares back at him long enough to make him regret his tone. Long enough even to make Eddie uncomfortable with the proximity, and so he clears his throat, averting his gaze and staring down at his sneakers, tinged nearly black from the ichor of bat’s blood.
He realizes with a start that Steve is still barefoot and wonders how much further they've got to go before they're out of this mess.
“Did you cheat on her?” Steve asks suddenly.
It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut.
“No,” He says immediately, feeling ever so slightly winded.
Steve nods then, pursing his lips like he understands what happened.
“Got in a fight and called her a bitch or something?” He says, "That's what did Tommy and Carol in–"
The notion makes Eddie's heart seize in his chest because beyond the fact that it makes him sick to have his relationship (or lack-thereof) compared to the likes of Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins, he would never stoop so low, no matter how angry he was, no matter what you did.
He may have been raised with a shocking lack of social skills, but Wayne had made damn sure that he knew better.
Of course, Steve could never know something like that, but he can’t help the way it leaves him bristling.
“No.”
Steve continues to nod slowly, then pauses a moment like he has to really process the information before he knows what to do with it.
“What was it then?" He asks, "What’d you do?”
“Nothing –” Eddie insists, feeling suddenly foolish for how defensive he sounds because it wasn’t nothing and Steve can see that as well as anyone, “I broke up with her – and I was kind of a major prick about it… I mean, not just kind of… I was mean about it.”
“Why?”
He’s loath to admit it, but now that the stopper is out, it’s hard to put it back in, and the truth comes spilling out.
“... I got scared…” Eddie mumbles, crossing his arms tighter over his chest and reaching up to tug at a snarled lock of his hair.
“Scared of what?”
Eddie exhales harshly under the duress of this bizarre interrogation, hating the way he can feel his guts seizing up. When he got in the boat that evening, he didn't expect he was going to have to relieve all the mistakes of his recent past.
“Jesus, what are you some kind of cop? You’re kind of intense, you know that?”
Steve rolls his eyes and makes a chattering little mouth of his hand to mimic Eddie’s whining.
“Quit deflecting and just answer the goddamn question, Munson – what scared you bad enough to end your annoyingly perfect relationship?”
He could almost laugh out loud at the concept of Steve not only referring to his relationship with you as perfect, but apparently to the point of being annoyed by it.
“Perfect relationship?” Eddie splutters, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Come on, Man – she and I used to run in the same circle, remember? I was there when you showed up. Don’t pretend you didn’t come in and sweep her off her feet like something out of a goddamn movie.”
It takes Eddie a moment longer than he'd like to admit to realize Steve is teasing him. Once again, he doesn't know what to do with that information.
Finally, Steve prods him sharply in the chest in a way that could almost be construed as good natured.
“What happened with you two?”
“Nothing happened…" Eddie insists, and wills himself to shut up about it after that, but now that he’s started he can’t stop, "That’s the problem." Goddammit. "It was the same as it always was and I started getting scared that it was getting too good to last … that she was gonna wake up one day and realize everybody’s right about me.”
The silence the follows is deafening with Eddie's confession hanging in the air between them. He braces himself for a tirade of teasing and razzing and all the other kinds of verbal abuse he can expect from anyone else in this town, but instead Steve just nods sagely.
“So you pushed her away – hurt her before she could hurt you and inadvertently proved that everybody is right about you? That sound about right?”
It's the kind of observation he might have expected Wayne to make, if he'd actually had to stones to open up to him about what happened with you like this, and it leaves Eddie reeling.
Well… what do you know, turns out Steve Harrington is actually pretty goddamn insightful.
For lack of anything better to do and more than just a little bit indignant at being so easily read, Eddie stuffs his hands into his pockets and pushes his shoulders up toward his ears.
“Pretty much.” He sniffs.
“You fucked up,” Steve says matter-of-factly.
“Sure did.”
“...And what about that makes it so unforgivable that things are never going to be okay again? How come she's never gonna forgive you?”
Eddie shrugs and wonders idly how getting trapped in another dimension had turned into receiving a lecture about love.
“Because I broke her heart.”
Steve scoffs.
“Nah, that’s bullshit.” He says, dismissing the notion with a flippant wave, “It’s a speed bump."
Eddie realizes too late he's staring at Steve when he quirks one of those thick eyebrows at him.
"What, you’ve never gone over a speed bump? No way, I've seen the way you drive." He says, and then all the teasing goes out of him and he becomes the one things Eddie never expected to see, sincere.
"Listen," Steve starts, "I know for whatever reason you can’t see it, but ask anyone here – she’s crazy about you, Man. Trust me. Apologize for whatever you said, or whatever you didn’t say – don’t roll your eyes, that goes a long way with girls – and let her know how you feel.”
Eddie shakes his head, more than a little frustrated that he could think it’s as simple as that, like he hasn’t tried apologizing again and again and blanketing you in his affection – smothering you, more like.
“I’ve told her, Man,” He sighs, "Over and over again..."
“So you tell her again. Keep trying until something sticks. It’s all you can do.”
He supposes if he really sat down to think about it, it's as good advice as any.
Still, he can’t wrap his head around the fact that he’s standing there getting unsolicited relationship advice from Steve Harrington, who’d once spectacularly thrown him into a dumpster behind the movie theatre.
He reaches out and claps him on the shoulder, and Eddie fails to suppress a flinch.
“You guys are gonna be fine – hey, who’s the expert here?”
“I’m sorry …Expert?” Eddie snorts.
Steve shrugs like it wasn’t the dorkiest thing anyone has ever said in the history of mankind.
“Yeah, they don’t call me the Love Doctor for nothing.”
Nevermind, that’s the dorkiest thing anyone has ever said or will ever say in the history of mankind and the world forever.
Harrington, Steve: Fucking jerk Not so bad, I guess. Worshipped by Henderson. Doesn’t know who Ozzy Osbourne is. Total fucking cheeseball.
Eddie cannot wait to tell you about this.
“Nobody calls you that.” He’s almost giddy as he says it.
Steve dismisses the notion with a flippant wave of his hand.
“That’s not the point, the point is trust me. I’ve been around the block — I know crazy when I see it, and that girl? Totally crazy about you, and I mean certifiably bat shit…”
Eddie shrugs.
“You aren’t wrong – she’s pretty much nuts.”
“Hey, crazy’s not always a bad thing…” Steve says, and Eddie follows his gaze up the path to where the girls walk far ahead of them, blazing the trail.
He can't help but notice the faintest hint of longing pass across Steve's face, and Eddie feels his face begin to split in a wry smile.
“You know, Nancy’s pretty fucking crazy, diving in after you like that?" Eddie starts, "I mean, you wanna talk about what’s real? That’s as unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.”
He forces himself to swallow the bitter lump swelling in his throat and along with it the silent wish that he could somehow be different, be better, be a version of himself worth going after that like that.
Eddie clears his throat to banish the notion.
"You sure this isn’t some elaborate scheme to win her back?”
“No.” Steve says firmly, “Absolutely not.”
Eddie is not convinced - he gives a lopsided shrug.
“Well, I sure hope it isn’t Buckley you’re trying to impress, because I think you’ll find you’re barking up the wrong tree with that one.”
Steve's head snaps around so quickly that he's half surprised it didn't twist all the way around to the other side.
“What?" He yelps, "No, I mean – no. Look, let’s get one thing straight, Robin and I are completely – we’re just friends and I would never… h-how do you know about–? I mean… what do you mean?”
Eddie can’t help but roll his eyes at Steve’s fumbling attempt to stop himself from what he can only assume is outing Robin.
It’s noble, to be sure, and he’s got to give him credit for that, but Eddie’s no fool. Even if she hadn’t outright told him, he’s lived long enough in Wayne’s company to recognize the signs of a closeted person living in a conservative midwestern town, faint as they may be.
"What do you mean?" Eddie counters.
The question seems enough to stagger Steve, though not for the obvious reasons, it would seem.
“Nothing." He says quickly.
"You sure about that?"
"This isn’t about Robin, okay? It’s about Nancy – I mean – no, it’s not! But even if it was… look, it doesn’t matter because she’s with Jonathan now, and they seem… fine…”
Eddie stops short and reels on Steve, causing him to stagger a step in an attempt to keep from crashing into him.
In the distance, Robin and Nancy continue on none the wiser.
Eddie drops his tone and leans in to invade Steve's personal space. Steve inches back ever so slightly, out of impulse, he imagines, and Eddie smirks.
“And yet, you will notice that Jonathan is conspicuously absent from this endeavor.” He says slowly, quiet enough that Steve is hanging on his every word.
He lets the notion hang between them, breathe a little, and waits to see if Steve will catch on.
He doesn’t, he just gives him another one of those quizzical looks as the yawning chasm of Jonathan Byers's absence grows louder and louder, and Nancy disappears further up the path.
Eddie tilts his head toward Steve and raises his brows, willing him to understand.
He only knows Jonathan in passing, and from one social pariah with a mean daddy to another, he typically commiserates with him to a degree. He might feel bad about failing to discourage such behavior, but some opportunities are not worth passing up.
If Jonathan is the type of guy to stay out in California and leave his girlfriend to spend spring break swimming in Steve Harrington-infested waters, that’s his poor decision to make.
If it were you, and you had some stupid new boyfriend off in another state, Eddie would not hesitate. He'd go and bang down your door.
Steve shakes his head, still failing to see what Eddie is practically spelling out for him, and he wonders with a brief astonishment whether he could really be that dense.
“What do you –” He starts, then stops as it dawns on him, and his eyes go wide, “Wait… did she say something?”
Eddie shrugs and stalks off.
“Not to me,” he calls over his shoulder, casually lengthening his stride in order to catch up to Nancy and Robin.
It leaves Steve standing dumbfounded at the revelation, and in an instant, he’s scrambling to catch up.
“Do you think Nance is into me?” He asks, and then when Eddie doesn’t respond, “Hey… Eddie–!”
Eddie laughs.
“You tell me. You’re the Love Doctor.”
#cruel summer fic#eddie munson#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x you#eddie munson imagine#stranger things fic#eddie munson fanfic#i hope you all enjoy this even though it's a filler chapter#i kind of just really wanted to write that scene between steve and eddie
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3.55 We and ours
At some point, we finally left the table. I put away the food, cleaned up, and took out the trash. When I came back inside, I found Sophia in the office rather engrossed in a serious task. I asked what she worked on, and she said she'd been thinking about what I said on our first date about trying university. Namely the part where I suggested it possibly wouldn't be so bad since she'd be learning about things in which she had an interest. After doing some research and reading blogs about experiences with non-traditional students, she found a prep course to help her get ready for the entrance exam if she decided to enroll. Maybe going through the course and studying for the exam could get her in the spirit of going back to school. Even if it didn't, at least she would have the clarity she needed to move on and make some career decisions.
"I think that's great," I said. "How can I help?"
She briefly glanced at me with a smile.
"I wish we had a couch in here so you could keep me company."
I loved how quickly everything that was hers turned into ours. I still called Dad's house home and hadn't gotten the hang the whole "we" and "ours" yet, but the fact that she did made me more comfortable and welcome.
"I can get a couch," I said.
She whipped her head toward me with a hopeful smile.
"Really?"
"Yeah. My mom gave me some money when I moved in with Dad. I can get things. Just tell me what you want."
She stared at me for a moment with a serious, pensive glance.
"Well... If you want to get a couch, that's fine. This is your home now. Get whatever you want, but don't go crazy. Remember, you have a studio to save up for."
We were so invested in each other's lives. It was a beautiful thing. I rarely thought about my end game plans, but here she was, factoring it into our everyday financial decisions. We were a good team.
Speaking of my mom giving me money...
I remembered the special birthday present she gave me in Mt. Komorebi. It was a rare treasure from El Selvadorada worth around §10,000. She told me to pass it down to my child, but if I ever had a rainy day, I could sell it and take care of myself. That money would sure come in handy right now. I could build my studio and forget about moonlighting at spas and begging for places to teach my classes. But I had no idea what my financial future would be like. I made decent money, but if I threw kids and a bigger house into the mix, would it be enough? Would I have anything left over to give my child when he moves out? I liked the idea of giving my child a leg up in life, especially being a recipient of such help, so I couldn't sell it. I needed to continue working hard making money the "old-fashioned" way, heh.
"I'm gonna go for a jog and let you study," I said.
"Okay. Be careful out there. It's dusty at night sometimes and hard to see."
"Thanks. I won't be long."
She was right about the dust. Between not knowing where I was going, and the decreased visibility, I made a loop around our street and came right back to find her waiting for me outside.
"Is everything okay?" I asked.
She grabbed my hands and gave me a look I'd never seen, but totally understood what it meant. The temperature in my body began to rise.
"Everything is perfect."
She stepped closer.
"I know asking you to live here and jumping into a relationship was crazy. I told myself you'd need time to process everything and to follow your lead in case you weren't ready, but..."
She stepped even closer. So close, she could surely feel the answer to what she was getting at.
"I want you, Luca. So badly. I'm not trying to pressure you, but I just wanted you to know...whenever you're ready, I'm ready."
"I appreciate that. And...I've been ready."
She grinned and led me back into the house.
#ISBI challenge#sims 4 story#sims 4 gameplay#adolting#adolting gen 3#luca winston murillo#sophia aguilar
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I'm reading through the book Star Wars on Trial and it's interesting. I completely disagree with almost everything I've read in it so far, but at least it's well-argued and written light-heartedly, it doesn't take itself that seriously.
The book is framed as a court hearing in which the prosecutor and defense attorney - both hilariously pompous and petty - debate their points and hear from witnesses. David Brin speaks for the prosecution, and Matthew Stover (author of the Revenge of the Sith novelization) speaks for the defense...
... and the thing is, I find myself disagreeing with both of them.
Example: Brin doesn't like or get the Jedi's rule of non-attachment, sees it as cutting off any and all relationships or emotions.
"In order to be a skilled and good and worthy warrior, you must cut yourself off from the very attachments that make a decent coworker, lover, spouse, parent and citizen. [...] One can understand demanding that a young adept avoid undue distraction while focusing hard on his training. But to cut off all thought of loved ones, even when they are suffering? Where is the "wisdom" in that?"
But when you look at his whole argument, at least it's clear that his real issue is with the narrative itself, he's disagreeing with (what he thinks is) Lucas' message regarding attachments.
What really surprises me, however, is Stover's response:
"One can hardly hold the Saga accountable for teaching that the "skilled and worthy warrior must cut off all attachments, etc." because this is explicitly defined in the Saga as the primary error of the Prequel-Era Jedi. With apologies to Opposing Counsel, he simply missed the boat here. That's all there is to it. Not only is that "cutting off all attachment" business defined as exactly what drives Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader, but it's precisely the error that Yoda is determined to correct by allowing Luke and Leia to be raised by real families."
His argument is "you misunderstood the narrative, the 'no attachment' rule is intentionally framed as bad."
I mean... no? It's not.
And, like... you know this @Matthew Stover. I know for a fact that you get what the whole "no attachments" deal is about and what the intended narrative is (not just because you spent an afternoon talking to George Lucas), because I've seen you explain it:
What he says in the above video perfectly aligns with the many comments Lucas made on the subject of attachment.
So what's with the 180° in Star Wars on Trial?
And, btw, that's how the whole book goes, so far.
First, the prosecution will nitpick by ignoring or misinterpreting the intended narrative, and point out something they don't like about the Prequels, eg: the Jedi as retroactively reframed by the Prequels, heartless, detached and callous.
The defense (who should know the narrative) will counter with "you're missing the point, it's supposed to be perceived badly because:
the Prequels are actually this subversive commentary about how the good guys are actually not that good,
Anakin was destined to wipe the Jedi out and the Sith to bring Balance to the Force
the Jedi's rules are dogmatic and Luke triumphs because he rejects them."
Instead of defending the message of the movies and standing up for it, he clearly implicitly agrees with the prosecution's argument and thus reframes the message by stating that the films actually agree with what the prosecution is saying.
Again, the arguments are interesting and well-researched in some cases, and I get that the whole book is playful in tone (the judge is a friggin' droid for crying out loud 😆) but I feel like if you're gonna defend your client, defend the damn client, right?
#best analogy I can come up with is:#supposing that instead of defending a movie Stover was defending a man who shot and killed Hitler#the prosecution is saying ‘killing is bad!’ and the defense is arguing ‘my client knows and he’s sorry’#‘he did it to save lives’#when he SHOULD be saying ‘it may have been illegal but there’s no fucking way that killing Hitler is bad’#dunno if this makes sense#the Prequels are indie movies made by an experimental filmmaker… you can like or dislike them#you can call them unconventional#but calling them ‘bad’ doesn’t apply because they don’t adhere to the general audience’s standards of quality in the first place#they’re not meant to be blockbusters they’re myths reintroduced to an audience of 8-12 year olds#attachment#revenge of the sith#matthew stover#star wars#anakin skywaker#jedi order
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Paradise. (2/10)
Pairing: Javi Gutierrez x f!reader
Rating: E
Tags: Javi is baby, fluff, holiday romance, Nick Cage is Nick Cage, reader is bilingual
Warnings: swearing
Summary: Working as Nicholas Cage's personal assistant was your favourite job; so when he asked you to accompany him to Mallorca for this birthday party he'd been invited to, you were more than happy to go. What you didn't anticipate was the host himself.
Will also be posted on my AO3
(Part 1)
When you woke up the next morning, you were still buzzing from your interaction with Javi. It put a smile on your face and a spring in your step, it was such a small thing that possibly meant nothing but if it made you happy, you were going to enjoy it. You stretched out in the plush bed, checking your phone before getting up and getting ready for the day. You made your way out of your room and towards the dining room, half expecting to see Nick or at least Javi there. Instead it was just Gabriela finishing up her breakfast. She smiled warmly as you walked in.
"Good morning! How did you sleep?" You smiled back at her as you poured yourself some juice from the jug on the table.
"So amazingly! That bed is genuinely the most comfortable thing I've ever laid on." Gabriela laughed, wiping her hands on a napkin.
"Come, sit with me. I'll make you something to eat." You thanked her and sat down as Gabriela disappeared into the kitchen. You looked out of the huge window, admiring the garden beyond it with a content hum in your throat. Gabriela came back with a plate of food, handing it over before sitting back down.
"Is Nick up yet?" You asked, suddenly feeling like you should have gone to his room first. Gabriela nodded.
"He took a little encouraging but he is. Javi took him out to the cliffs. It's one of his favourite places, he goes there a lot to write or think." You smiled and nodded, glad Nick was getting out and spending time with Javi.
"Well if they're spending the day together, I think I'll explore the town and see what's out here." Gabriela smiled and agreed, giving you her phone number in case you needed anything as well as the details for Javi's usual driver that would be happy to drive you into the town. She named a few spots she personally loved and a few local areas that not many tourists would know of.
The town was as beautiful as you'd expected, a mixture of new and old architecture. You took a bunch of photos as you wandered around, bought a couple of things to take home for your parents and a bottle of wine to thank Gabriela for all of her recommendations - as well as a bottle for yourself since the shopkeeper said it was one of the best in Mallorca. You took a break in a little cafe, using their wifi to call your mother and tell her all about Mallorca and about both Javi and Gabriela, skipping out any details of Lucas as there was just something about him you really didn't like. She asked you to send photos so she could see what it was like and you promised to bring her here one day. You spent all day in the town, exploring everything it had to offer. The sun was beginning to set when the driver came back to pick you up, an older man who seemed happy to take a scenic route back to the villa and show the sights his home had to offer. You put all of your shopping in your room and grabbed the bottle of wine, planning on sitting in the garden and having a drink in the warm evening. As you pulled a glass from a cabinet, you were startled by Javi coming in the side door, damp from the pool and wrapped up in his dressing gown. He looked adorable.
"Hey Javi!" He looked over at you, almost like he'd forgotten you were here as his eyes went wide. "Hey… are you okay?" You asked softly, placing a hand on his shoulder as you studied his face.
"He finally has my screenplay. He's gone into town to sit in a bar and read it. I feel so nervous it's making me nauseous. I think I'm going to just… try to sleep." You tilted your head a little, watching the man for a moment.
"Or you could come and have a drink with me? Some company might help ease your mind, Javi." He looked at the bottle in your hand then up at your face, debating it for a moment.
"Yeah, that… that would be nice." He gave a small smile that made you want to bundle him up in your arms and give him the biggest cuddle. He took a breath before turning to lead you out to the garden, leading you through to one of his favourite spots amongst the trees that overlooked the ocean on the left and the lit up town on the right. You sat on a bench beside him, pouring wine for you both. Javi was quiet for the most part, twisting his fingers together nervously until you put the wine glass into his hands.
"I'm sure it was great, Javi. Don't worry so much!" You nodded your head, squeezing his hand gently. Javi just nodded as well, returning the squeeze before taking a swallow of wine. He glanced at the glass then at you.
"This is my favourite wine." You tilted your head and smiled at him.
"Really? I picked it up in town today, the shopkeeper made a great show of telling me how it was locally sourced and made and how it was his best seller." Javi finally laughed, nodding.
"I know which shop you mean. I've paid him to supply wine and champagne for my party." You chuckled a little, taking a testing sip of it before humming.
"It is really good Javi. You clearly have good taste." You teased lightly, nudging him as he smiled almost shyly. "So how was your day?" Javi tilted his head as he thought about it.
"I took Mr Cage to the cliffs, I tried to talk him out of quitting acting and tried to act out some of my screenplay to get his inspiration going. It was silly." You chuckled, watching him.
"Did it work?" Javi shrugged a shoulder.
"I think so? We ended up jumping off the cliff, that was such an adrenaline rush! We sat on the beach, had a smoke and just talked for a while. He made me tell him my top three favourite movies, he refused to believe my number one so I made him watch with me." You held up a hand, leaning in closer to study his face.
"Go on. What is your number one favourite movie?" Javi studied your face for a moment, taking a breath before answering.
"Paddington Two." He said matter-of-factly, watching for your reaction. You blinked, that was definitely not the answer you expected and yet it suited him.
"Adorable. It is an incredible movie." Javi seemed almost relieved that you agreed with him, a genuine smile breaking out over his face.
"Right?!" He laughed, finally relaxing a little more. "He finally agreed with me after watching it though. We went for a swim, had a few drinks and he talked me into sending him my screenplay right there. He wanted me to go with him while he read it but… I couldn't. My heart is racing just thinking about it." Javi rest his free hand against his chest, you smiled at him and took a sip of wine.
"Don't worry Javi. Remember? Believe in your work! I have no doubts it's great!" Javi nodded a little, you could see he was disappearing into his worried thoughts again. You placed a hand gently over one of his, giving him a smile. "So your party… are you excited?" Javi watched your hands for a moment then looked up at your face.
"Usually no, birthdays come every year but having Mr Cage here made it exciting. And you as well of course." He smiled, you had to fight every fibre of your being to not grin like a fool at the addition of you.
"I'm sure it'll be a great night! I'm looking forward to it. I usually don't do much for my birthday so I'm excited for a big party!" Javi laughed a little, finally distracted as he spoke about the band he'd booked, the food Gabriela had organised and everything. He had an excited twinkle in his eyes as he spoke, pausing to sip his wine now and then. You couldn't help but watch and admire him, Javi was so easy to be around. Such a warm person, he seemed genuine and the way his smile lit up his whole face was just beautiful. You found you could listen to him talk for hours, regardless of the topic. Yeah, you definitely had a crush on your host. And it was only the second day of being there.
The two of you sat talking for a while, only realising how long it had been when the wine bottle was empty.
"I'll buy you a new bottle, promise." Javi laughed, placing his empty glass by his feet as he relaxed into his seat. You waved one hand slightly.
"It's fine Javi, it's better to have good company with good wine. I doubt I'd enjoy it as much sat alone in my apartment." You smiled, finishing your drink as well.
"We should probably sleep soon though, I don't want to be here with Mr Cage comes back. I won't be able to look him in the eye." You shook your head and stood up, reaching for the empty glasses and bottle but Javi grabbed it all first. You followed him into the kitchen and got some water to take to bed with you, Javi walking with you to your room again.
"Thank you, again. For distracting me and keeping me company so I didn't just pace my room worried." You shook your head and smiled up at Javi.
"Any time. I quite enjoy our evening chats Javi." He beamed at you and surprised you by wrapping you up in a tight hug. You practically melted into him, the softness of his dressing gown and how good he smelt. You hugged him close, unable to fight the smile that broke out over your face. The two of you stood like that for a moment before he stepped back, taking one of your hands in his own like before.
"Sweet dreams." He said softly, kissing your knuckles before eventually pulling away to go to his own room. You bit your lip lightly, watching him go before slipping into your room. Waiting to make sure he wasn't there before having a moment of childish excitement. Usually you never were one for these fast crushes or romantic whimsy's but Javi was just something else entirely.
(Part Three)
#no use of y/n#pedro pascal#javi g x you#javi x you#javi g x reader#javi gutierrez#the unbearable weight of massive talent
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The Raven and the Vampire
Chapter 2
Previously the raven and the vampire, had to redone this story to fix it thank you to everyone who read te original and will read this one
This is a jasper Cullen x oc reader daughter of Loki
Deep in the woods, the illuminating lights of the Bifrost open into a small clearing. Light rain is falling from the sky, but of course, to the humans, nothing is happening. It wouldn’t help to cause a scene now would it..Elara steps out her two trusted attendants/ guardians step out behind her
“So this is Midgard. How beautiful, just like the ancient Forests of Asgard”
“My lady, we need to find somewhere we can generate a homestead to mask our presence.” Mila speaks.
Mila was one of Sigyn's most loyal friends, She was a beautiful woman with long auburn hair and soft brown eyes. She held the same warmth about her that many of the healers of Asgard had but she was much more than that
Having been a maid to sigyn when she was young Mila quickly rose in the ranks and became not only an incredible healer but also a personal bodyguard and advisor to lady sigyn, practically an aunt to Elara and her two brothers.
“My lady, if you and Mila will follow me, I actually have already scouted the area. Up ahead is an area without so much foliage; it's secluded enough for us to not be detected easily, but not so far to draw suspicion. It will make a perfect homestead.”
“Perfect as always uncle lucas”
Lucas was Elaras second guardian for this adventure. Lucas wasn’t really your uncle, he was originally a warrior in asgards armies, having done everything to suppress his magic since he was young due to his family's belief in strength over magic. Until one day it finally exploded, my father found him and trained him, the two actually becoming friends. Lucas asked to be appointed as one of Loki's personal guards and Loki readily agreed, wanting a talented warrior and magician guarding his family when he could not be with them.
Elara and Mila follow Lucas up ahead, the clearing coming into view. It was a decent clearing perfect to set up a home without destroying any of the native foliage or wildlife.
“This is perfect with the little gizmo Mr. Lang gave to us, we should be able to make quite a decent home.”
Taking the small toy house from her pocket and to follow the directions Mr. Lang gave her.
“Ok, set the house where we want and then throw the small blue device at it. Let me make a shield just in case and then we can start moving in.”
Setting the model on the ground you throw the device and hurriedly step. Back as the house begins to grow and take form. Large bay windows make up the front while the slanted roofs will keep the rain from puddling anywhere, the house has a great porch overlooking the forest while all the wood is dark. It’s a beautiful modern home but was missing something
Using her magic, Elara softens the landscaping. Adding a front step, driveway and rocks to create a more lived in atmosphere
“ There, we are home sweet home… away from home. Now all we have to do is get comfortable and come Monday, thanks to Auntie Natasha, I'll be able to start at the local highschool.”
”Are you sure you're ready, little raven?”
“yes aunty im sure. I can feel it. This is where I'm meant to be.”
Monday rolls around with the seemingly never ending cloudy sky, light rain hits Elara's cheeks as her favorite motorbike a gift from Stark propels her towards the local school. It felt just like riding her horse back home, the wind in her hair and views spreading by, it felt normal, to her at last for when she pulled into the school's parking lot reality came crashing back.
At least if the look on the kids' faces around her told her anything.
It didn't occur to Elara that most teenagers don't ride motorcycles in the rain, ice and snow. Elara didn't really feel cold due to her heritage and had faced much worse than a slick road, so she thought nothing of riding the bike.
Well crap, not standing out a lot is not going well, but Elara couldn’t help it. The bike spoke to her this morning, oh well she adjusts her outfit and keeps moving forward is all i can do at this point.
What she didn't take note of though is the confused looks of the seven people across the parking lot.
The Cullen pov
“Well they said we were gonna get a new girl and damn does she know how to make an entrance look at that bike”.
“Emmett I’m pretty sure judging by her face she didn’t mean to make a big entrance” Rue Cullen exclaims as she stands next to her cute little girlfriend Alice and the rest of their coven
“It’s odd though I couldn't hear any of her thoughts, not a single peep.”
“Do you think she could be a like Bella”
“No idea.”
“Either way we should probably be careful around her. Last time we met a new person Edward couldn’t read we ended up having to defend her from a pack of rouges.”
“Rosalie babe chill it will all be fine” Emmett throws his massive arm over his wife trying to bring her some comfort.
“What about you, Jasper, did you get any readings from her?” Silence echoes around them
“Jasper, hello earth to jasper” Alice says waving her hand in front of her best friend's face.
“What, what were we talking about?”
“The new girl cowboy, did you get anything off of her?”
“ No,nothing just like Edward”
“ Well I don’t know about the rest of you but I feel like something good is gonna come with this girl. And I'm sure Bella will be glad there is a new person to take more attention off of her.”
“Sure Alice whatever you say sweetie”
Jasper, still in a daze silently agrees with Alice and Rue there’s something about this girl, something almost pulling him towards her. The other Cullens share a look as they wait for Bella Swan to join them at their cars so they can start another tedious day of highschool.
Elaras Pov
The building itself is somewhat old but well maintained. Taking a deep breath and fling open the door heading to the front office she heads inside to retrieve her new school schedule. The front lobby was brightly lit, and slightly warm, the office small with a little waiting area, ugly padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, and a big clock ticking loudly. The only saving grace for the poor space was the multitude of plants that grew everywhere in large plastic pots. The room was cut in half by a long counter, cluttered with wire baskets full of papers and brightly colored flyers taped to its front. Behind the counter was a large, red-haired woman wearing glasses.
“"Can I help you?"
"I'm Elara, Elara Lane ,"
Immediate awareness lights the women’s eyes. Thankfully I was expected, Mila had come earlier in the month to help set up everything for my human cover, cause although Uncle Thor, father and everyone where well known and respected I was not and wanted to keep it that way, at least for now.
"Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for.
“You must be very smart to most of these classes are advanced”
“Yes ma’am school has always been important to me and my family” and the 750 plus years of experience I had on the oldest person here didn't hurt either.
“Well I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school."
She brought several sheets to the counter to show me what my classes were and where highlighting the best route to each on the map, and gave me a slip to have each teacher sign, which I was to bring back at the end of the day. She smiled at me and hoped that I would like it here in Forks. I smiled back as convincingly as I could, education not really being my priority. Before i walked away to start the day
Fishing out the map I go around the cafeteria, towards building three with ease. The classroom was small, people pushing past me to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them,hanging up my black leather jacket. Taking in the room I notice how boring this world seemed compared to Asgard, it's almost colorless in comparison. I also notice I may need to rethink some of the things I'm wearing, seeing as everyone is bundled up to fight the chill in the air. Not really feeling the cold due to my heritage left me sitting in a simple shirt looking very much out of place, maybe i should put my jacket back.
Before I can move to grab the leather, a tall, curvy woman whose desk had a nameplate identifying her as Mrs Jones walks in. Already liking the aura around her, I introduce myself.
“Good morning I’m the new student Elara Lane”
“Oh hello dear, welcome to forks and Ap English, I’m Mrs jones well find an empty desk and we can all get started. We are currently on page 394 of the textbook.”
Taking an empty desk at the back I managed to make it harder for my new classmates to openly stare at me, keeping my eyes forward and a kind smile on my face. Once the lesson started and everyone’s attention was directed at the teacher I took the opportunity to reach out with my aseir, trying to see if I could feel my soulmate.
The auras fill the room but nothing speaks out to me. Well that’s a handful of people out of the running. I can’t really decide if that's comforting or boring, well it's only the first class we'll see what happens in the next one.
Jasper's pov
Sitting in my first period class as the teacher drones on and on, i feel a prickling on the back of my neck, like an invisible hand reaching out for me, even though i'm in the back corner of the room, Rue nudges my side and gives me a worrying look, a silent asking of my wellbeing. Nodding back I went back to looking at the window and thinking again of the girl this morning. Could she be this feeling, it would make sense she’s the only new variable. I’ll just have to make it til lunch and i can speak with Edward and Alice on what they think or if they felt what i did.
elara pov
When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.
"You're elaura lane, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.
"Elara its Nordic” I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.
"Where's your next class?" he asked.
I had to check in my bag. "Hmm, Government, with a Mr. Jefferson, in building six."
"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful.
" oh also I'm Eric," he added extending his hand for me to shake
I smiled tentatively returning the gesture .
"Thanks."
Picking up our jackets and heading out into the rain. I could feel the several people behind us, who were trying to walk close enough to eavesdrop.
"So, this is a lot different than (insert random place) huh?" he asked.
“Very, it's a lot darker here than where I'm from.”
“Oh does it not rain a lot there,”
“No it does but I guess it just feels more blue here if that makes any sense”
“Oh no I get that.”
We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Eric walked me right to the door, even though it was clearly marked and could have just as easily pointed me there.
"Well, good luck," he said as I touched the handle. Seeming a little deflated like he wanted to integrate me a little more
"Thank you and hey maybe we'll have some other classes together or something."He smiled hopefully as I continued inside.
The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, who I hated instantly, his haughty personality already grating on my nerves,he actually made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself like i five. Reading him I could tell he hoped for the new student to be embarrassed so he could show some sort of authority. Typical bully behavior, unfortunately, for him, I was raised better fortunately for him I had a mission and would definitely have to watch my tongue while near him lest I get myself expelled.
After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied, a lot. At least I didn't need the map anymore. One girl that sat next to me in both Trig and Science, and escorted me to the cafeteria for lunch.
She was tiny, several inches shorter than me but her wildly curly dark hair made up a lot of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she prattled on about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up, my thoughts occupied as I still hadn’t found my soulmate. She ended up sitting at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. The boy from English, Eric, being one of them.
They all went around and introduced themselves. While they all seemed nice I could tell they were only interested in me cause I was something new to look at. I simply smiled and continued on with the small talk and questions people had been asking me all day when the doors in the back of the room flung open drawing my attention to the other side of the room. It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with curious strangers, that I first saw and felt them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were six of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't necessarily gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, just quick glances of curiosity that I returned. There were three girls and three boys all looking around the same age group.
The three girls were all beautiful in their own right. The tall one was statuesque with a beautiful figure, her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back, she reminded me of the elves from Alfheim or could be an asgardian if not for her pale skin. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction. Next to her holding her hand was a beautiful full figured coco toned girl with the prettiest curly hair I had ever seen.
Just as I was about to move to the males another girl walked up to the table. She was actually a very normal pretty compared to the others, her very pale complexion with long, straight, dark brown hair, a widow's peak, unique chocolate brown eyes and a heart-shaped face. She sat down next to one of the three boys sitting at the table. He was kind of lanky like your father, less bulky with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, especially when compared to the big muscled boy ,who kind of reminds me of my uncle, except with dark, curly hair.
The last boy however was the one that caught most of my attention. He was tall and lean, but I could tell he was still muscular, and had beautiful honey blond hair waving around his head. While the rest of them were all looking away and back again trying to have at least some decorum as they quietly conversed with one another he just stared. I could tell the rest of them were talking about me, but couldn't find it in me to care as I was transfixed by the beautiful honey blond male.
Our staring contest was broken when the small girl suddenly rose with her tray — and walked away with a frantic look on her face drawing concern from the others.
"Who are they?" I asked the girl from my Spanish class, whose name I'd forgotten.
“That's Edward Cullen and his girlfriend Bella swan, she was actually the new girl last year. Beside them is Emmett Cullen, his girlfriend Rosalie and her brother Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; and the one she was sitting next to is her girlfriend Rue Turner; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife." She said,
“They all live together, as couples?”
“yeah its a complicated story.” jessica the girl that was sat at the table with us spoke up
“Emmetts family were in an accident before they all moved here, what I’ve heard is that because he was dating Rosalie at the time Dr. Cullen being the supper dad he is, he adopted Emmet for Rose since Emmet didn’t have any other family left. Same with alice and rue. Even though rue isn’t officially a Cullen she still lives with them. She came out to her parents and the cullens took her in when her parents kicked her out" Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town.
“You seem to know a lot about them” I can’t help but feel like this girl knows an awful lot and is not shy about speaking of others' family matters. It made me feel bad for the group sitting at the table, my whole life being taught etiquette and what she was doing. Now was incredibly rude.
“Not really,oh things ive heard they all are in a few years ago and it was the biggest topic around here, I think that Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, and that's why they’ve adopted so many," she added, as if that lessened their kindness. I got the impression that she didn't like the doctor and his wife for some reason even though she knew an awful lot about them. With the glances she was throwing at their adopted children and their partners, I could only presume the reason was jealousy.
Throughout all this conversation, my eyes flickered again and again to the table where the family sat. More towards the blonde than the others as they continued to look at eachother and back to me no doubt trying to ignore the people talking about them. The lunch period was ending soon. I had to know why I felt this connection to the honey blond. Inhaling slowly I let my aesir fill the room. Putting out feelers for anything out of the ordinary, and as soon as it hit the family's table all of them looked towards me. Keeping eye contact I genuinely smiled, my soulmate was there and evidently he and his family were not quite human.
How interesting!.
Now the real question is what are they. Could they be enhanced like aunt Wanda or could they be a type of alien-like race here for sanctuary hmmm all the possibilities.
“So elara how are you liking forks?” Jessica asks from her side of the table, trying to bring the conversation and attention back to the group instead of on the cullens.
“Oh it's very interesting now. I'm liking it a lot more than I thought I would.
“ Why did you and your family move here if you don’t mind us asking?
“It’s fine Angela. I actually didn’t move with my immediate family, my parents are very busy people and I wanted to travel a little. My uncle Lucus got positioned here for his job and I decided to stay with them for a little bit. At least until my parents get done moving around.”
Not technically lying, I tell my story to the group, I mean my parents are busy, they are royalty,however I can’t really tell a group of midgardian teenagers. I'm 800 plus years old and I'm only in forks to look for my soulmate.
“I do miss them though and my baby brothers”
“You have siblings?”
“Yes they were just born so they still have to be with my mum, who goes with my father everywhere.”
“What are their names” I go to say Narfi and Vali but remember those aren't really midgardian names,
“Their names are um Vance and Nate, their twins”
“Aww that’s so cute babies are adorable” Jessica gushes
“Oh crap guys lunch is almost over, what class do you have next elara”
“ I have art, ap foreign language and then ap history.”
“ I have journalism next but art is right next to it. I'll walk with you.”
“Thanks Angela.”
The bell rings and I quickly turn back to the cullens table where they have all disappeared. Fast things aren’t they , just more clues to the puzzle. Ill have to ask Lucas later on if he has any ideas.
#twilight fanfiction#jasper hale x y/n#last twlight the series#twilight masterlist#the twilight saga#twilight#lokis daughter#loki x reader#loki x sigyn#marvel x twlight#jasper cullen x you#jasper hale x you#jasper hale x reader
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Hello!!
I'll start by saying that I love your fics and really like your blog ♥️ I agree with great part of your takes, especially about how dark of a character Anakin/Vader truly is, despite the fandom woobifying him! I also apologize in advance by how big this ask is 😭
That said, there's something that always made me curious and I'm burning to ask... You've said in a previous post that you didn't like how easily Padmé forgave Anakin for everything he did in canon, that you thought it was psychotic. So what separates Padmé's unconditional forgiveness of Vader's crimes from Luke's equally unconditional forgiveness, for you? I mean, both characters were personally, terribly hurt by Vader. I admit that my knee-jerk reaction when I see people with a similar opinion is always "oh, it's sexism, because Padmé is a woman and Luke is a man, and compassion from a man is revolutionary while compassion from a woman makes her weak" 🙄 but you've always seemed so sensible and reasonable and that can't be the case with you. So I'm genuinely curious about your perspective! Especially because you ship Vaderluke like I do, and Luke and Vader's relationship under romantic lenses gets easier to compare with Anidala.
(Also this entire ask works under the assumption that you do appreciate Luke's forgiveness of Vader, despite knowing he was a terrible father in canon—a far cry from fanon's Dad Vader—and obviously didn't deserve it. I got the vibe from your fics and your posts that you do! But if you don't and you think RotJ shouldn't have ended like that, actually, then I understand that I clowned and you can just ignore this 🤡)
I agree with you that a lot of the heat Padmé gets in the Star Wars fandom (while Luke is canonized for essentially carrying her legacy and vindicating her beliefs) is the result of sexism. But in my own experience within this fandom, anon, I’ve seen sexism against her in the opposite way that you’ve described, and it was that sexism that I was reacting to in the ask you’re referring to here, and the reason why I unintentionally sounded so snarly.
Playing that ask game came on the heels of reading post after post after post praising Padmé for her unwavering faith and loyalty, for her selfless forgiveness, for her unconditional love for her husband. And while, yeah, sure, those things are technically all virtues, praising a woman for having those qualities in response to her mass murderer husband slaughtering hundreds of children REEKS of sexism and tone-deafness to me.
Because that really is the perfect woman, isn’t it? She’s loyal to you no matter what you do, you are the only thing she wants in the whole galaxy (despite being rich, with an important, full-time career, pregnant, or a fucking QUEEN). She will defend you after you’ve physically assaulted her and die believing you were a good man. She will forgive you, love you unconditionally, ignore every single one of your red flags and literally die of a broken heart if you betray her. A flawless, devoted woman!
…At least, at the time of answering that ask, that was the spiel I had gotten from a myriad of stanakins, and from George Lucas’ writing after watching AotC for the first time. I was reactive and unnecessarily vicious in that ask — and I apologize for being that way — because I don’t think Padmé’s unwavering dedication to Anakin is admirable, anon. I think it’s unhealthy. And I LOVE that it’s unhealthy — I’m a darkfic writer, I love unhealthy ships! — but I was just so sick and tired of people giving Padmé the Virgin Mary treatment when her relationship with Anakin was fucking UNHINGED.
Luke’s forgiveness of Vader has its own undertones of unhealthiness, but it also has things Padmé’s doesn’t. Even when Luke can feel Anakin’s conflicted feelings through their Force bond, he still has moments where he doubts there’s actually still good in his father, where he declares him dead like Obi-Wan did, when he lashes out and tries to KILL him for threatening Leia — Luke forgives Vader, yes, but at least we get to see him being ANGRY with him. We don’t get that with Padmé. Anakin confesses to murdering Tusken children and Padmé looks at him like THIS for fuck’s sake
The only reason we don’t get to see Padmé pick up a blaster and aim it at his grinning face on Mustafar IS sexism, imo. She’s eight months pregnant! Where’s the rage? Where’s the resentment? She has none, she isn’t allowed any! Why? We can debate it till we’re blue in the face, but I will always consider it a massive disservice to Padmé’s character that she was denied the humanity Luke was given in the OT, to the point that her and Anakin’s relationship came across as so ridiculously codependent it was almost silly.
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+1. Eddie has a surprisingly insightful conversation
Part 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Read on AO3.
Nearly a month had passed since they finally defeated the Upside Down for good. Since Eddie was welcomed back with tearful hugs and a very thorough dressing down from one Dustin Henderson for being a reckless self-sacrificing idiot. Since they celebrated finally putting Henry-slash-Vecna-slash-One in the ground.
Nearly three weeks since Eddie got to see his uncle again and hug him.
One week since a shadowy government organization sweeped everything under the rug and managed to clear Eddie’s name.
And two days since Eddie finally felt that everything had calmed down enough to give into the kids begging to have him DM another game for them. Only this time he had two extra players in Lady Applejack and the infamous Will the Wise.
He’d already had the honor of playing with Erica so he knew any campaign he planned had better be good enough to meet her meticulous standards. And while the 11-year-old was intimidating, Eddie was much more nervous about DM-ing for Will Byers.
The whole year Mike, Dustin and Lucas kept talking about their friend Will who used to play with them before he moved to California. They credited him with a lot of their more memorable strategies and also their general caution when it came to hidden traps and such, which had meant their characters made it through relatively unharmed compared to other Hellfire newcomers.
They had hyped up Will's campaigns so much that Eddie really wanted to impress the kid. So he thought he would add in some of the old characters and other references from Will’s old campaigns into the storyline.
That's the reason he now finds himself standing on the Hendersons’ doorstep. He had hoped Dustin might have some of his old notes and character sheets still lying around somewhere and to his relief Dustin said he did.
“Wait here, I’ll see if I can find them!”
Eddie awkwardly perched on the floral sofa and tried to look less like a bad influence in case Dustin’s mom happened to walk into the room. He looked around and fiddled with the rings on his hands when he saw a cat walking into the room and jumping onto an armchair like it owned the place.
Suddenly he remembered the examples of resurrections Steve had listed off for him.
He vaguely recalled Steve mentioning that Dustin's cat had gotten eaten by a demodog and then was the second being to be brought back to life.
And look the thing is, he still hadn’t quite come to terms with his whole painful death and sudden reawakening in the upside down. Unlike the other horrors he had witnessed during spring break he hadn’t had a chance to talk to someone about it either. Or at least anyone who could really understand what he went through.
He had accepted that at least for now talking to someone else who had died wasn’t in the cards for him. But according to Steve, technically Mews had experienced the same thing too. Hell, their deaths were even very similar because they had both been eaten by demo-monsters.
Feeling silly Eddie slowly kneeled in front of the armchair and carefully reached out a hand for the cat to sniff.
“Hey there, I‘m Eddie and I don’t know if you can tell, I’m, well, kinda like you.” Mews gave a little mrrp and butted his head against his hand, apparently satisfied with whatever he had smelled.
Eddie smiled a little. “ Well, not like you in that you are of course a very honorable feline and as you can tell by the lack of ears and whiskers I am but a lowly human - only good for scritches and treats,” he continued, dramatically laying a hand on his forehead in shame. Then his smile dropped and his expression turned more contemplative.
“I’m pretty sure you can’t even understand me. Not completely sure because after, let’s say, recent experiences; I’m willing to believe anything but cats understanding human speech seems a little far fetched. But I can’t really talk to anyone else about this. Steve said Will seems to still be sensitive ‘bout the whole undead thing and I don’t not want to like, further traumatize the guy by making him talk about it again.”
He started slowly petting Mews as he talked, falling deeper into thoughts as he justified why he was talking to a cat about his issues.
“I could try to talk to the chief but me and him aren’t really on the best terms with each other. He still doesn’t completely trust me even if I’m trying to appreciate my new lease on life and stay on the straight and narrow. Hah, and it's not like I’m gonna start respecting authority or anything like that so fair to say the dislike‘s mutual!”
“I know Max would get it and she would not hesitate to hit me over the head if she thought for a moment I was trying to not hurt her feelings or whatever but.” He swallowed looking down. “I don’t think I could stand to hear about her death. Not after seeing Chrissy– ”
He took a deep breath, physically shaking his head as if to shake off the horrific memory.
“So that leaves you. Because apparently you also got eaten and then brought back. And you seem happy and calm and relaxed and I don’t know if you have happened to notice but I am very much not handling this as well as you are! I was hunted down and eaten like, like some kind of zebra in a nature documentary! And now I am alive again and I have to just keep living my life like a normal human being as if I wasn’t a zebra for a hot second!”
He stops, realizing that he was getting loud and might attract attention if he continued. He definitely did not want Henderson or his mom walking in and seeing him right now.
“I died and now I’m alive and don’t get me wrong, I’m super grateful supergirl bothered to resurrect me but I don’t know how I’m supposed to move on when I still remember dying.”
Mews turns to lie on his back, closing his eyes and purring as if the armchair was the most lavish king size canopy bed to ever exist.
Eddie stared at the cat thoughtfully.
“I guess you’re right. This is my second chance at life and my last chance ended with me feeling miserable and hopeless. I was sure I was either going to die or spend the rest of my life in prison. But now here I am - alive and a free man. Maybe I should just focus on living this second life to the fullest. I ended my first life being worried about the future so why should I waste time doing the same thing in this one?”
He stood up, suddenly filled with determination.
“Thanks Mews. You felines clearly are as smart as they say!”
With a final pat for Mews, Eddie walked off to see where Dustin had wandered off to, a new pep in his step, resolved to find joy in whatever the future threw at him.
#stranger things#eddie munson#5+1 things#stranger things fic#my fic#and it is finally done!!#my first proper fic🥳#hope you enjoyed!
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Brian Bird via Twitter: Just like none of our lives ever goes in a straight line... so it goes in Hope Valley. My advice to #Hearties is open your arms wide to whatever transpires. This show has always been more about the forest than the trees. It will make sense soon and I believe it will be transformational for all, as long as our hearts are open.
Oh no we’re back to Brian Bird’s insanely cryptic messages.
BB has definitely gotten Team Nathan’s hopes up before so this wouldn’t be anything new from him, but since the post he was replying to stated that Nathan and Elizabeth would never be together, “transformational” was an interesting word to use. He also asked everyone to “open your arms wide to anything that transpires”.
I suppose this post could be taken either way, maybe he’s trying to reassure Lucabeth fans that despite the weird path they’re taking this season, by the end it will all be ok?
I have never been more confused in my life, at least in season 8 there was a chance that it wouldn’t be Nathan. Whereas now it all seemed so final in season 9, so this change of tone in season 10 is so confusing.
While i’ll always be open to a flip (Nathan and Elizabeth are just incredible together!!), it would be naive of me to think it could be done in a way that would make the hardcore Lucabeth fans happy because at the end of the day, as seen with Team Nathan in season 8, their guy not getting picked even if he’s treated like absolute GARBAGE by Elizabeth is a loss. (I am aware she was grieving so I suppose you can’t really blame her? Maybe a little?)
Could be entirely a ratings thing at the end of the day, whether it was the Nathan hostage situation or the sort of reigniting of the Triangle, episode 9 did get 2 million viewers (I believe). Is that the highest this season? While I wouldn’t take total credit for Nathan bringing in the viewers, the drama of it all CERTAINLY does.
I've gone a long time not seeing a post from that man. I can't stand him. We can't really go off anything he says since it could definitely be taken multiple ways and he loves to stir the pot.
I read an article (this one) that had some snippets from an interview with one of the writers and he sort of had the same message about trusting that things are going to be okay... however they end up being.
“When we were trying to figure out what to do with Elizabeth this year… (we thought) let’s not make it such a straight line,” he said. “Let’s just explore how she gets there. There are no wrong answers. Of course, the fans will read into everything that happens with her, but … she’s an interesting character… Without giving anything away… (that’s) the journey that we’re on with her.”
“I hope it ends up in a position where everyone is supportive of Elizabeth and happy for her and excited about the future,” he said. “…And I think the resolution…is the right way, and hopefully the fans are happy too… Again, we’re mid-season, we’re trying to create questions…”
They've certainly created a lot of questions! I honestly have no idea what's going to happen. Maybe we won't know until next season. I could see them ending on some big cliffhanger where things are left undecided and that would be really frustrating. Hopefully that's not the case.
It would be a really huge deal for them to break up Lucas and Elizabeth but I feel like there's been some seeds planted this season that they might be using as a way to explain it. We see them being pulled in different directions and not always on the same page. She clearly has doubts about the wedding that seem like more than cold feet. It wouldn't be a shock for them to break up if this were the real world. She has her son to consider as well. There's also the whole issue of maybe she's in love with another man. That's a good reason to end things. Her grief could explain why she didn't pick Nathan but it could also explain why she was drawn to Lucas as the safe choice. Are we able to trust her judgement either way? Maybe she wasn't ready at the time to pick Lucas either but felt like she had to make a choice. I think it has to apply to both men in a way if they're going to throw that reasoning around.
It'll be really interesting to see how this all unfolds. Neither side is necessarily all that happy right now. Team Lucas fans are upset with how Elizabeth is acting and rightfully so. Team Nathan can't trust any of this and we always think he deserves better than what he gets.
I really don't think they did this plot for the ratings but it's giving them a little boost because of everyone freaking out, surely. Maybe they predicted fans would react this way but it's also a gamble. They might get some people to tune in again but if they get screwed over they're not coming back. I think ratings would be higher if they just let Nathan be happy and have a decent relationship. It doesn't have to be with Elizabeth but it's almost like it needs to be at this point since they won't let him be happy with anyone else when there was literally no reason why. Maybe Elizabeth is the reason.
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Yours, Forever | Chapter 9
PAIRING | Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader
WORD COUNT | 2.6K
SUMMARY | Y/N gets brought in on a legal case after the Avengers are sued for destroying private property during their last big battle in New York. She has to work closely with everyone on this case, which brings up some old feelings with both Y/N and Bucky.
WARNING(S) | This is your official trigger warning. Do not proceed if any of these topics upset you. Light swearing.
A/N | Hi all, thanks for all the love I have received for the last few chapters of this story. As of right now, I am working on a version of the attack in chapter 7 from Bucky's point of view, so please be on the lookout for that as well! 💜
Likes and reblogs will be very much appreciated 💜
Main Masterlist | Bucky Barnes Masterlist | Series masterlist | Chapter 8 | Chapter 10
Walking into the meeting room after months of being cooped up at Tony's house felt like a breath of fresh air, albeit slightly heavy to do breathe now. ''I'm ready'' Y/N said after Tony asked her to go in, so they walked into the conference room together. He put his hand on the small of her back to know everything will be okay and to give her a bit of security that she isn't alone in this. She never was, and she never will be. Her hand went to her necklace to make sure it is still there, before walking past Bucky and gently laying her hand on his shoulder as a form of reassurance. If therapy for the last 6 months has thought her anything, it's that it wasn't her fault and she is doing a lot better now.
''Looking good Y/N. I'm glad to see you wearing your necklace again.'' Steve whispered to her, the butterflies in her stomach started to go wild. Steve was there for her like no one else the last few months, and the bond between her, Steve, and Lucas grew stronger than ever. Now that she has Steve by her side, she feels confident and starts telling everyone that she will return to work for 3 days a week. ''This means you will see me around more often, starting with the reason why I am here today,'' she said and gave the word back to Fury. She looked at Bucky and gave him a small, reassuring smile and she saw the relief washing over his face. They weren't back to who they were yet, but at least now he could start building up what he had broken down all those months ago.
''As you all are well aware, there was a lot of damage done after your most recent battle here in New York and people have decided to sue all of you for the destruction of their properties. This means that none of you will be going on a mission any time soon, we don't want to create more chaos when we're done working through this pile of shit you all created,'' he said in a stern voice. ''Y/N has agreed to help all of you out as your lawyer, but seeing how this is her first case since coming back from her leave, you all better take good care of her, and do exactly what she says, when she says it. If not, each and every one of you will be fired immediately,'' he said. ''Meeting dismissed.'' was the last thing he said before walking out of the room.
''So, Y/N, how does it feel to be back?'' Natasha asked when she got up from her chair and pulled her in for a hug. ''It is still a little surreal, to be honest, but this way I can get back into the rhythm pretty easily. Thank you for asking, Nat, it means a lot,'' she said when she pulled away. After not seeing most of them the last few months, she could use some long overdue hugs from everyone - except Bucky, she wasn't ready for that kind of affection quite yet. ''Hi Buck, how are you?'' she asked when he was the only one left in the room with her and Steve. ''Thank you for the letter and for my necklace, I'm really glad I got it back, especially seeing how much it means to me,'' she said with a little undertone of sadness in her voice.
''Honestly, I've been a whole lot better. Still going to therapy and that does seem to help, but I still can't get over the fact that I hurt you, and I can not express how sorry I am for what I did,'' he said, but he couldn't look at her, as much as he'd want to. ''Like I wrote in my letter I'd love to make it up to you every day if you give me the chance. It won't be easy for either of us, I'm well aware of that, but I'm scared I've lost you forever, doll. I know it isn't my place to ask this of you, and if you don't want to, I'll walk away and never mention it again. Our relationship can me strictly professional if that's what you want. It is what I deserve, after all.'' Bucky ranted so fast he almost stumbled over his own words.
''I want you to do that Bucky, there's never been a single doubt in my mind about it. However, I don't think I'll be able to go back to the way we were any time soon. As much as I love you, you did hurt me, and not just physically. For now, I do think it is better if we keep it strictly professional, so our emotions won't be able to get in the way of this case...'' Y/N said in a soft voice, trying to reassure him. ''You.. love me?'' Bucky asked surprised. ''Of course I do Buck, I have so much love in my heart for you, and that is why I still want to give you a chance. We still have one hell of a road ahead of us, but I do think we will be able to come out stronger on the other end. There is no one else I see myself growing old with, just you.'' she said and she put her hand on his bicep squeezing softly as to show she really meant it.
''I love you too, doll,'' Bucky said barely above a whisper. ''I am sorry to have to go now, but I actually have an appointment right now,'' Y/N said and she said her goodbyes to both Bucky and Steve, leaving them behind in the conference room. ''It will be okay, Buck, she just told you that,'' Steve said and he grabbed Bucky by his shoulders, but it didn't really sink in yet. At least he found some comfort in the fact that you still wanted him, although he didn't really understand it. He knew he wanted her so badly, but after what he did he just couldn't grasp the fact that she still wants him too. He doesn't deserve her in his mind, even though she just told him the complete opposite. He lets a small smile form on his lips before turning around and walking to the gym with Steve, so they can get some of their energy out now.
~ Two weeks later ~
After a lot of preparation and talking back and forth with the lawyer of the other party, Y/N is finally ready to talk to all of the Avengers and hear their side of the story. ''I need all of your statements one by one, so we can present them in court if it comes to that. In the meantime, Tony and I are working very hard with the opposing party to settle out of court, since that would be the best outcome for all of you, and your reputations. These statements will be taken over the next week, so please be ready at the times I have given you earlier. The sooner we can get this over with, the sooner we can all go back to normal and we can send you guys back on missions.'' Y/N told everyone, before grabbing a pastry from the middle of the table that was made by her dad. She moans softly after biting into it and tasting it, it was her absolute favorite. ''So, any questions?'' she asked after the bite.
''Yeah, will there be more pastries when we have to give the statements?'' Sam asked jokingly, making everyone laugh because everyone knows he has a soft spot for his baked goods. ''Of course,'' she said followed by a chuckle. Hearing this made Bucky's heart beat a little faster, he was glad he could hear that little laugh again. It was a sign that everything would be okay in the end. ''Speaking of which, I do have to leave now and go help my dad in the bakery, but you know where to find me if you want more!'' she said with a wink and quickly got up, accidentally knocking her bag over. ''Shit!'' she muttered and quickly went to pick everything up, but Bucky was already ahead of her. ''Let me help,'' he said and she gladly accepted. ''Bye everyone!'' she said after this and ran out of the conference room because she was running late.
''Hi dad!'' she said when she walked into the bakery. She hasn't seen her dad much since the Avengers had been sued, but she made some free time to help him out in the bakery today. ''Hi sunshine! How are you doing today? I've missed you the last few weeks!'' he said and pulled her in for a big hug and a kiss on her cheek. ''Actually, I'm doing good! I just talked to everyone about the case and that I'm going to need some statements, so I'll be starting those on Monday.'' she said. ''What do you need help with today?'' she asked and he pointed her to some cakes ordered by clients that need to be decorated, one of Y/N's favorite things to do. ''Did you really leave those for me to do?!'' she asked and laughed at the idea, which he quickly said yes to before helping another client.
Decorating the cakes gave her something else to think about for once, and just as she was about done with the last bit of lettering on the first cake, her phone started to ring. ''Dad, can you check who it is?'' she asked and quickly put the piping bag down before washing her hands. ''It's Steve, honey. Want me to answer it?'' and you agreed. ''Hi Steve, it's Will here. Y/N will be with you shortly, she's just washing her hands!'' he said and Steve asked about the bakery, so they started talking about that a little bit. ''Dad, I believe he wanted to talk to me?'' Y/N said shaking her head. ''Right, we'll catch up another time, she's getting impatient!'' her dad said with a wink. ''Steve, how can I help you? Is everyone okay?'' she said with a bit of worry in her voice.
''Hi Y/N, yeah everyone is okay, I'm sorry for bothering you now, but it couldn't wait. Is it okay if I come by the bakery for a bit? I really need to talk to you and it kind of can't wait.'' he said making her even more worried. ''As long as you don't mind my dad hearing it, then sure. You know you don't have to ask right?'' she said, and Steve said he would be there in around 20 minutes. They said their goodbyes and she went back to decorating another cake. ''Hi Will, it's good to see you again. Looking good as ever!'' Steve said in a happy tone. ''Oh Steve, you know I'm not looking for a relationship, right?!'' her dad joked and they both laughed whole heartedly. ''Thanks though. Y/N is in the back decorating some cakes for me. I'll just get some pastries ready for you to take back to the compound in the mean time.'' he said and Steve walked to the back.
''Hi Y/N. Looks good!'' he said, quickly adding ''I meant the cake!'' knowing she would make the same joke as her dad if he didn't. ''Thank you! So, what is this important business that couldn't wait? Is it about the case?'' she asked, with a bit of a confused look on her face. ''Uh, no it isn't. It is actually some very personal matter, but you can't tell anyone about it...'' Steve started a bit unsure of what to say next. ''Okay?'' she said in a wondering tone, putting her piping bag down so she could face him. ''Whatever it is, you can trust me. I won't tell anyone. AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU DAD, I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING!'' she said to her dad who just chuckled as confirmation. ''Well, as you know Lucas and I have been going real steady and I actually want to ask him to marry me on our next date night. He is in California for 2 months for work so I won't be able to see him, but after that, I'd love to pop the question to him,'' he said in a soft voice, his face turning bright red at the confession.
''OH MY GOD STEVE, REALLY?! He'd be so happy if you ask him that, I'm positive he'd say yes!'' she gushed and practically jumped into his arms out of pure joy for him. He couldn't stop laughing, she was practically happier about it than he was. ''Would you be able to help me to set up this proposal? If you have time between work, the case, and working here?'' he asked, but she couldn't possibly say no. ''Of course, I'll help my best friend get engaged, that's just a given!'' and she squeals out of pure excitement. ''I'm so happy for you, does anyone else know?'' she asked, but he told her no one else knows, but he was going to tell Bucky later. ''I'm sure he'll be happy for you too, Steve. He will support you no matter what,'' with that, she gave him one more big hug before he left for the compound with her dad's pastries.
The statements went by very quickly, and they pretty much all said the same thing. Tony was getting closer and closer to being able to settle out of court, and today there was one more meeting about it. ''So, Mr. Stark, Ms. Y/L/N, we have made a decision after talking about it with every party involved, and we would like to settle out of court, if you agree with that too. I have a contract made up right here, which you can go over with our demands. If there are any questions, or anything is unclear, please let us know.'' the opposing lawyer said, and the both of you felt a big rush of relief washing over you. When the lawyer left, Tony grabbed Y/N in his arms and said ''Honey, I'm so proud of you. Your first case back and we get the outcome we hoped for. I knew it was a smart choice to hire you!'' he said. ''Shall we tell everyone now, or do you want to wait?'' she asked.
''I have great news everyone, and no, I'm not pregnant.'' Y/N started the meeting, already guessing Sam would come up with a comment like that. ''Tony and I just came back from a meeting with the lawyer from the opposing side, and they said they want to settle out of court. This means that IF we agree with their terms, everything will be done once the contract is signed. Congratulations!'' she said and everyone started cheering, some giving each other big hugs. Y/N looked at Bucky and she saw a twinkle in his eyes from happiness, one she was sure could be seen in her eyes too. After all this, she was slowly ready to accept him back into her life, no matter how much time it would take, she couldn't live without him. Going up to Bucky and stretching her arms out for a hug, he stood up and was a bit unsure at first, but gave into it anyway. ''I'm proud of you, doll.'' he said and a silent tear ran down her cheek, which she quickly wiped away before anyone would notice.
#bucky barnes#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes x y/n#bucky fanfic#bucky x female reader#bucky x y/n
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Okay so in 7x08 Hondo finds out from Nichelle (who was told by Annie lol) that Deac is retiring and there are a couple of scenes with the photo of OG team and Hondo's being all "Street just left, Luca retired, I can't lose Deac too" and this genuinely seems perminent.
Looking through the lens of final season I thought hum, whatever, okay, who cares, it's ending anyways. But now that obviously isn't true and I just cannot wrap my mind around the fact that writers have dug themselves a pretty weird hole. I guess it could've been worse and someone could've been killed off but still, all the heartfell goodbyes now make no sense if they are just going to reverse it and bring those characters back (which I will forgive them in that case because I don't care, I just want my men back) or, in my very biased opinion, if they don't bring them back you have... two main characters and a bunch of new kids which is literally now just a new show. And unfortunately, they didn't do their new characters justice at development either. I love them, but their stories just feel empty and fall flat in comparison to the OG team we knew.
I'm seriously curious how they managed to get yet another season when all the perception I saw about this season has been negative 🤷🏿♀️ And digging themselves out of this hole will be so hard for them, especially if they don't bring some/all the OGs for at least third or half of a season. They have 22 episodes so for their sake I hope they do the smart decision but looking at this dumpsterfire of a season, I'm not really holding my breath.
(Sorry for the lengthy message, I just had to vent a little)
~🧡
Annie Kay, mind your own business.😭
Don't apologize for the lengthy message! Thank you for sharing!
I actually watched a YouTube clip of the scene where Deacon says, "I wanted to be the one to tell you" but I didn't know Annie told Nichelle! One thing I did appreciate about that scene is the Hondo seemed genuinely upset that 20-David was breaking apart and wasn't the squad he had grown to love and trust anymore. That said, thank you for putting it in context and sharing all these great thoughts with me!!
I agree that the writers have put themselves and the characters in a very strange position going into season 8! Part of what makes it so weird to me is that from the very beginning of this season (even the announcement that the cancellation had been revoked), the writers claimed that everything would be tied together and ended nicely. And then with the s8 news, they've now added "but it also sets up another season." Because, like, you can't do both at the same time in my opinion. You can end it, or you can keep opportunities open for the next season. As you said, they've taken away those opportunities by ending story lines and eliminating character roles from the team and the show.
Your opinion on the flat characters and how the original cast was written out doesn't sound biased to me! It really does feel like a new show with every cast replacement they do, and unless they bring back the fan favorites who were there from day 1, I honestly don't see the point in watching or keeping the show on. You're 100% correct in saying it's a new show now, and it's not as good as it was.
"Looking at this dumpsterfire of a season" made me laugh!🤣 I was actually just talking to someone about how it got renewed. CBS claims that it's still one of their most-watched shows and averages 8.8 million or something viewers per episode (plus all the Netflix streams). HOWEVER, a bunch of people watching it doesn't mean it is good or needs to stay on! If they read any of the reviews or feedback, they'd know this! They're looking at numbers and not feedback, I think, which is the only reason they decided to keep it on. Personally, I'll be very surprised if s8 has many viewers as it airs.
Again, I wholly agree that the hole that they dug themselves into is a tricky one. If they continue without Luca, Street, and Deacon, they're going to lose a good number of viewers, but if they bring them back they run a risk of just making s7 pointless. In which case, people may assume s8 will be just as futile and inconsequential as s7. In the end, either way, they kinda screwed themselves. It seems like a lose/lose situation, and after a season of bad reviews and people begging for their favorite characters back, the future of S.W.A.T. seems pretty dismal.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and if there's any other spoilers or anything you want to discuss or share with me, I'd love that! (I've heard that the whole Luca getting shot story line was poorly done, so if you have an opinion on that, I'm all ears👀)
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Hi there! I love your guides for Curse of Strahd! 💞 If it's not too much, could you give some tips for running the abbey of St. Markovia? Or really just how you dealt with the module's ableism in general, since it's a lot to tackle and I'm not sure where to begin. Thank you! 💋
Hello! Sorry this took me a while to work on, like you said, it's a lot to tackle. Curse of Strahd suffers from being both a product of its genre and a product of the typical carelessness D&D likes to serve its marginalized fans. As much as I adore the genre, (modern) gothic horror does often rely on ableist tropes to create fear and suspense in what I'd call a misguided attempt to recreate the scenarios present in the literature that formed the basis of the genre in the early 19th century. Ableism is rife in early gothic novels, in part because of the rampant ableism of the time and in part because a lot of these works were critiques of ableism written by both disabled and abled but progressive authors. Then there's just WotC, who isn't exactly known for always making good moves in their settings. Sometimes they at least realize they fucked up, like with the Hadozee (😬), but as evident with their CoS "Revamped" edition, they thought making a meager attempt to Remove the Slurs was... more or less enough work for it. Lol.
So, here's some of my notes of what I've needed to fix up and how I did it. Abbey of St. Markovia will be at the end because... yikes. Major spoilers for CoS and CW for ableism below!
Casual Ableism A.K.A. The Real Curse Of Strahd Is Mental Illness
There are questionable story beats about mental illness from really early on. Mad Mary is the first NPC I can think of that really explicitly exemplifies this, but Stella Wachter in Vallaki and Luca Barbu in Kresk both also fit the bill of being random NPCs who got painted with the ableism brush. Treating these characters with empathy I think is the best way to fix a lot of them.
In ATSBB, I chose to keep the name "Mad Mary" as a pejorative title from the other villagers, because my game includes an amount of real-world ableism that is portrayed negatively. The party heard her cries and went to her house to find a lonely woman grieving the loss of her daughter. They spent a snall fortune at the mercantile to make her a big pot of soup she could simmer for days over her stove and helped her clean up her house a bit, before giving her hours of company over dinner. Mary was kind and appreciative and treated them terribly well. They did eventually sneak upstairs to find evidence of the circumstances of her daughter's disappearance (I just turned her into a werewolf to avoid the Yikes factor there). We see that Mary is unwell because upon seeing that her beloved daughter was cursed with Lycanthropy, she did everything (even too much) to ensure her safety, and then Gertruda still got out. Mary is more than "mad," she's heartbroken. She's devastated of grief and feels like a failed mother because she couldn't protect her baby. That amount of empathy gives her more depth and makes her portrayed as not ableist, but as a victim of vilified in-world ableism because nobody will give her the time of day.
In Stella's case, I did have a hard time. I wanted the party to have a clear reason to fight Victor (I don't know how some parties make him an ally, that guy is such a tool) and I did like the idea fleshed out in MandyMod's guide of Victor trying to leave Barovia through self-taught wizardry. Instead of changing much about Stella's cat curse, I just gave it privacy. They saw Stella very, very briefly--just enough to note the condition she was in and see that interrogating her would do very little for them, and then her siblings came in to tell them Stella needed her rest and it was time for them to go. Stella was not a spectacle to them, and it was portrayed as bizarre, but ultimately a product of Victor's abuse and Fiona's neglect to fix it. The party kicked Victor's ass and made a plan to sneak Stella out and get her to the house of a particularly nurturing NPC.
Luca Barbu was a little easier for me to fix because they tried to write him with sympathy but the module still certainly isn't nice to him, and it felt really gross a lot of the time. Luca is an adult man "with the intelligence of a 3 year old" who was "hit in the head with a rock" as an explanation for it, whose father and presumably full-time carer passed away, leaving him no support. If you didn't catch on yet, yikes. My Luca Barbu is autistic and had a farming accident that gave him a head injury that causes him to have a hard time processing information quickly, particularly numbers and the passage of time, and that can make him vulnerable to manipulation because he's a good hearted guy who has a hard time discerning if people are being genuine or not. He's very smart about farming, and good with the sheep like nobody's business, but he sometimes will forget to take care of himself when nobody's around because his dad isn't around to remind him. The townsfolk are not suspicious of him at all, and only have the chance to become so inclined if the party truly fails the encounter with Ilya. In fact, in my campaign, the situation with Anna Kreskov and the broken fence can only happen because she brings him dinner and bread every night since his fathers passing so she can make sure he eats every day. Anna's betrayal is then portrayed as desperate, not malicious, and it's a lot more tragic than it is evil.
Ez d'Avenir
Weird move of CoS to make an explicitly disabled character in a blink-and-you-miss-it passage who uses the coolest prosthetic ever and then just hide it from shame (???) They did add in a passage that changes this in the errata and in the revamped, as well as fleshing out Ez a lot more in Van Richten's Guide, so I'm giving them half a pass for this, because at least they admitted and fixed how they fucked up. That said, I think it's weird to do that with someone who is apparently the only disabled person in Barovia. This can be helped by letting Ez play a more active role in your campaign, as well as by having other disabled characters. You don't need to be ablebodied to be important to the world, so why should it be in fantasy? You don't really need a reason for a character to be disabled either, because disability doesn't happen because of a Reason in the real world. Not giving Ez the burden of being the only disabled rep in Barovia lets you have more fun with her and with other NPCs.
Finally, The Abbey of St. Markovia
The Abbey is infamous in ATSBB for me having planned out my alterations in advance and still finding places in the text I missed in which I said, "Oh, god, well, we're not doing that," and had to improv in several areas. To preface this, for my campaign, I did give my players a red/yellow/green light consent list in advance in which I included "asylum horror" as one of the potential triggers, and it was greenlit by my party, so we all went in knowing that there would be some ableist medical type horror. I explained that I wanted the vibe to feel less like Arkham Asylum and more like the way people treat asylums and old hospitals on ghost hunting TV shows--with the knowledge that something is deeply, deeply wrong here, but the fault never lies with the patients. Now, a lot of my edits are additions to MandyMod's "Fleshing Out CoS" on Reddit rather than on the official text, so if you're not familiar with it, I highly reccommend you check that out and then return here.
First off, I didn't call the people here Mongrelfolk, because... who thought that was a good idea in the first place, much less one that wss good enough not to fix in Revamped?? Anyway, I simply referred to the people residing at the Abbey as "patients" and it worked just fine. Inspired by MandyMod's guide, I wanted the Abbot to be an angel who lost his way in his desperation to help people in the absence of the Morning Lord, an angel who doesn't really understand the intricacies of sustaining life in humanoids, and treats sick and injured people with the same curiosity and naivety as a child "fixing" their broken toys by sticking together parts that only kind of fit with duct tape and glue. My abbot tried to heal the people as best he could with his limited magic, without understanding the differences between people and animals, or why a person with a broken hand might not be able to return to his every day life when that hand has been replaced with a turkey's claw. He's not trying to be evil, he just doesn't realize what he's doing isn't helping, because he's distracted by his own goal of building Vasilka. Now, I know Vasilka is sort of controversial in the CoS scene, but I think the concept is So Fucking Cool. I also think that building a little Frankenstein's monster that should be able to stop Strahd from hurting people is a suitible gothic, but ultimately noble goal for the Abbott to have. Does it justify the Abbot "borrowing" pieces from people who asked him for healing? Well, no. But it certainly makes sense for an angel desperate to escape Barovia to lose his shit a little bit and use unethical means to a supposedly moral end.
I also wanted to give agency back to the patients at the Abbey. Rather than the hallway of rooms of "laughing mongrels" and "violent mongrels," I just filled the rooms with families of patients. They were trying to start their own little civilization at the Abbey, far from their old lives, that they felt they couldn't return to for a variety of reasons. Some patients were too in shock and horrified by the results of their 'surgery' to return home alone, as the Barovian mountains are dangerous. Others had sought out the Abbot because they had already lost everything they had at home. Some people needed continuous upkeep on their replacement bits, just like Vasilka does, and don't want to stray too far from the Abbey. The Belviews and Clovin exist, but more as middlemen between the Abbott and the patients, who often understandably do not with to communicate with the Abbott. The Belviews will go hunting in the local woods and bring back stew meat for everyone at the Abbey (a plot point that makes them an easy suspect in Ilya's plotline). In short, the patients aren't 'insane,' they're disabled and/or chronically ill, and were failed by the Abbott. Again, this only works if you lean into the tragic, gothic horror tilt and lean away from the more modern "freakshow" type horror that was written in the text.
I think those are the main points I really wanted to make regarding the ableism in CoS, but if there's anything glaring I missed, please feel free to add on!!
#dexadin answers#dnd#dungeons and dragons#curse of strahd#cos#atsbb#dm tips#dungeon master#ableism in dnd#thank you for the ask!#abbey of st markovia#stella wachter#luca barbu
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A continuation of my casually feral Ethan post because ppl liked it so much. Note, my previous take was mostly canon-based, this is more headcanons:
So Chris does indeed get approval to bring Ethan into the BSAA, at least for assessment. He disguises it as wanting to take a statement from Ethan and Ethan, with amazing survival skills but zero social awareness skills, agrees.
Chris brings Ethan in through a back door so he doesn’t have to go through the front scanners which would immediately have identified him as a BOW and activated remote defenses to try and kill him. After what he’s seen Chris is not entirely sure who would win, the guns or Ethan.
Ethan is, as any middle-management office drone would be, very impressed with how sleek and technologically advanced the BSAA HQ is. He gawks around like a tourist. Claire walks out of a conference room and scans Ethan up and down then gives her brother a look like “this guy? Really?”
Chris gets Ethan settled into a reinforced conference room and sits him down. BSAA staff are standing by and all officers are viewing the meeting room remotely.
Chris sighs and sets his hands on the table. Ethan looks a bit confused at the lack of any writing equipment. Best to just rip off the bandaid. “Ethan, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this but you are indeed infected.”
There’s silence. Ethan lifts one of his arms and stares at his skin for a moment then says, “but I’m not black and goopy?”
“You’re not, and as far as I can tell you don’t seem to be manifesting any visual signs of the virus but the scanners and your blood samples don’t lie. You are not only the most whole infected person we’ve ever seen, you’re also the most infected person we’ve ever seen.”
“Dammit.” Ethan puts his head in his hands. Chris braces for everything from sobbing to sudden mutations. But Ethan just whines, “I fell unconscious after Mr. Baker hit me in the head with that shovel but I was hoping nothing happened to me while I was out.” He peeks up at Chris. “Was that naive of me?”
Yes! Chris wants to scream. No shit! “Also, while you did not ingest the fungus while you were conscious, you came into pretty much every other kind of contact possible.”
The tech team had managed to salvage some of the footage from Lucas Baker’s cameras and Chris still couldn’t tell if Ethan was crazy brave or just didn’t feel fear.
“Um.” Chris refocused. Ethan was scratching his head. “I’m not gonna turn into one of those things am I? Like I don’t really want my brain growing out of the side of my head.”
Chris didn’t ask. It was far from the strangest mutation he’d seen in his day. “To be perfectly honest we don’t know. The fact that you haven’t mutated yet is a good sign. You’ll have to stay away from your wife though.”
Chris felt a little shitty for including this stipulation. The man had walked through hell and worse to see his wife again and now they were being separated. The true reason behind the separation was to keep an eye on Ethan and to allow the BSAA to build the case that Mia was a Connections scientist. Hopefully some more distance would help Ethan take the news better when she was officially arrested.
“Can i video call her?”
“Yes you may. As often as you want.” Chris himself had argued for this, unwilling to hurt Ethan more than they had to.
“So I guess you’re not going to kill me then.”
Chris startled. “What?”
Ethan laughed. “I’m not an idiot. This is the BSAA. You brought me here then told me I’m a BOW. The BSAA literally exists to kill them. I was expecting you to pull a gun any moment now.”
Well he had seemed remarkably relaxed for someone expecting his imminent death. Or was he so confident he wouldn’t die? Chris leaned back in his chair. “And what would you have done if I had?”
Ethan thought about it. “Well I suppose I would have tried to get away. Natural instinct, the desire to survive, but I’d probably end up running to somewhere remote where I could hide and not hurt anyone.”
This told Chris two things: one, Ethan was confident he would be able to make it out of the building, consciously or otherwise, and two, that Ethan’s primary drive was to protect not to kill. That was good, they could use that.
“As our first sane,” that might have been a bit of a stretch, “BOW, you are in a unique position. Your biology is integrated with the infection in a way we’ve never seen before. The science team has been chomping at the bit to get a look at you. Also, while your supernatural abilities are somewhat unclear, the one we can pin down is accelerated durability to injuries that would kill regular humans. We could use someone with that ability on one of our squads.”
“You mean, I could work here?” Ethan’s jaw had dropped open.
“You could. You’d be under strict supervision, have to be cautious, you understand, but yes you could work for us. Our mission is remarkably simple, you’ve probably even heard it already, to destroy all sources of the infections we can find, including BOWs, black market auctions, science labs making new virus strains, criminal organizations trying to use BOWs as soldiers, etc. We’d train you on the weapons we use so you won’t have to improvise with ancient guns again. In return you’d get room and board, a job, and have to submit to various tests.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
“Time will tell if it is.”
Ethan rubbed his upper lip. “It’s not safe for me to be in regular society anymore is it?”
Chris shook his head. “No Ethan. We wouldn’t let you go out there anyway.”
Ethan deflated like a sad beach ball. “So I’m a prisoner.”
“You have to be. We can’t take the risk. I’ve lost too many friends and the world at large has lost too many lives to BOWs. I wish we could afford to treat you like any other human, but we can’t.”
Ethan nodded. “I’ll do it, on one condition.”
“What?”
“If I ever do start to mutate, kill me.” Chris’ eyes widened. “Kill me, kill me immediately. Don’t try to pull me in for experimentation or try to cure the virus. Just kill me. I’ve had enough of experiments and viruses and foreign substances invading my body. I claim that autonomy, if I can claim nothing else.”
His expression was fierce. Chris was reminded of Claire and Jill. He held out his hand to Ethan. “Done.” They shook on it.
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rambling thoughts on the finale now that I've watched it again (spoilers, of course)
Even as I was watching initially on the discord, I was shocked by how quickly things were going by -- Luz gets murked not even 25 minutes in, for instance. I've been thinking over the series's cancellation -- I've seen it argued Dana should have cut more stuff out, but in fairness, it's hard having to make drastic cuts in a short amount of time, especially when cutting out certain characters would have meant redoing plot elements, not to mention skipping over or rewriting entire characters' backstories.
I think about Luca vs Encanto -- Luca had a lot of ideas pulled out, whereas Encanto very obviously tried to cram an entire mini-series into one movie. I like Luca better than Encanto for a bunch of different reasons, but I have to ask, Should you try to tell a simpler story better or a truncated story as best as you can? The answer seems apparent, but there is something to be said about Dana putting as much as she could on the table and all but outright asking fans to enjoy rebuilding her vision in their own. It's one thing when certain characters and ideas can be taken and made their own standalone stories, but not everything can, and given the state of the animation industry, the chances of that new show happening would've been slim, anyway.
A show like The Owl House -- a queer story cut short by a company that funded homophobic politicians while chasing woke brownie points for good publicity -- feels like the best-use case for Jenkins's idea of fanfic as repairing culture, as fans are now left to take this obviously compromised text and show our love by doing the reparative work of trying to fill in the cracks. Even if you don't engage with the fandom much, your perception of the text is still informed by these cuts, so there really isn't a reason not to think of the show as the sum of its canon and your own reparative fandom experience.
I compare TOH to SU a lot in my head, and the reason I'm willing to be so forgiving towards TOH for having a lot of dropped threads and blank spots is because, unlike SU/SUF, I don't feel like the creators wasted their time. Arguably there are episodes in season one that can be cut, but it's nothing like SU, which spent just so many episodes across every season prioritizing Steven's relationships to the humans in Beach City and neglecting its actual main cast, only for SUF to then stand up and admit it was all for fucking nothing.
Speaking of SU, though, the Collector fucking off back "to the stars" at the end gave me similar vibes to Spinel leaving with the Diamonds, though I will give SU the point here. Literally why is the Collector leaving when they've just NOW found a support system and friends? When their powers would be immensely helpful for rebuilding the Boiling Isles? "to the stars" TO SEE WHAT. WHOM. even on my first watch I thought this was fucking lame.
My main issue is that I felt like there was a big Belos-Luz beat missing, especially when their confrontation in the throne room was just him saying "oh you can't beat me." I would have rewritten that line, at least. I needed just a little extra, especially since he ended TTT with telling Luz he's doing this "for the good of [her] soul." I loved the death scene though (he's so mentally ill <3), as well as Arin Hanson's Titansona responding to Luz asking if they're "just as bad" as Belos with "do you smoke crack?"
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How we feeling today?
(also: can you associate a basic taste quality to each party member? Here's the list: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (+ spicy so no character is left out)
Ahh hi! I haven't been here in a while, things have been busy busy, but I'm pretty good! I'm ahead on a lot of stuff I have to get done and I'm feelin' productive! I also just got over a cold, so yay me.
And that's a very interesting question. I had to think about it for a while!
Mike is salty because he's kind of sassy sometimes, but a little bit of salt can be good too! Unless it's too much, but I'm usually fond of salty foods. Mike's personality reflects that, I think. Like, he's this super enjoyable and relatable character, but he can also be really mean sometimes (but only sometimes).
Lucas is sweet bc I love him and he's so sweet. Case closed. He's just a really good friend and boyfriend and brother and he deserves the title of sweet. No argument.
Eleven is bitter. I think mostly because she's the most dangerous in the party. And also because of her backstory and everything. I feel like this fits her best out of anyone, but nothing against her ofc ofc.
Will is sour. It took me a while to figure it out, but I think that his whole conflict is very much sour. At least it sours my mood when I think about it :( But, maybe also bc he might be a little resentful of everything. (Maybe it even represents the little bit of the tangy sassy personality he has sometimes!)
Max is spicy. I just feel like her personality is very spicy. Like, her quick little quips and sorta mean jokes and everything. She's just spicy.
And Dustin, last but not least, is umami. He seems kinda savory to me, so it fits. Like, he's not sweet, (well, he is sometimes, but he's got a little mischievous side to him), and umami is honestly a pretty good flavor category, right? Like, freakin' pasta and stuff. Yum. Dustin can have it!
And those are my answers. Tada! That was a fun question!
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i'm planning on posting my thoughts on each chapter i read of FLIGHT OF ICARUS because I think it's generally worth talking about, I finished chapter...seven I believe but let me talk about the things before that I didn't. I understand some of ya'll hate this book. That's fine. Just as long as you don't make those that do like the book feel guilty or one inkling of bad about it, it's all good. That's honestly the only thing disheartening about seeing the hate on this book, because I for one had been jazzed about it and it was genuinely bumming me out seeing so much hate for it. So like, idk, be mindful of that? However I will be tagging my posts about it — 📖 — flight of icarus — in case ya'll wanna blacklist, giving your opportunity for that rn. Being as fair as I can about this whole thing. I've never seen such a reaction out of a book like this, it's kinda crazy. we all here for a good time, guys. at least I hope so. I'll also be putting these under a cut, hopefully that works with mobile folks, idk. ANYWAY. Gareth and Chrissy thoughts under the cut as well as everything i've read thus far.
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS AHEAD!
first thing's first! let's give a round of applause to caitlin schneiderhan, because she living all our dreams. not only a professional writer and part of the ST writing team, but she got the holy grail of being offered a chance to write about our boy. like pls, i love that. i really don't mind the first person ( which from what i gathered, the other books like Lucas on the Line and Runaway Max, Rebel Robin are done the same? correct if i'm wrong ) but mostly it gives me and readers a chance to really be in our boy's head, read his thoughts and hearing his lovely voice in my head.
And honestly.... and some folks will probably disagree... From what I read so far, and what got me excited the most about this book... the writing really does, to me at least, don't have to agree, it feels very Eddie to me. Right from the scenes of Gareth, Freshman Gareth with the floofy hair and chrome mouth, being upset that his character ( that he didn't even make ) became fish food and Eddie being like, "...then we just make another character" because that boy was so pissed that he got himself, in his mind, kicked out and Eddie being the one like, "...no? After the gutsy move you did, there's no way we're not going forward without you" and taking moments of his time to help him create another character? And the glee Gareth had over it? Come onnn.
and cutting to that, one of the excerpts that came out, creating that character and being patient, as any 18 year old would be, and guiding Gareth to get that spark for the game, in creating a character from scratch, and all in a risky move of basically breaking into an empty classroom that they could have been caught in, just added to it. the fact that this act, seeing Gareth so into it, lifted Eddie's mood after Al came back was....ahhhh.
AND THEN! THEN!
The line that killed me, when Eddie asked him why he wanted to be in Hellfire so bad since he never played D&D and Gareth's answer being, "...where else was I supposed to go?"
OH MY GOD.
THAT FUCKING KILLED ME!!!
The start of Eddie the shepherd, herding his little ship. are you KIDDING.
Which then led to the whole Tommy H, which, fuck this guy. His cronies, including JASON CARVER and Chrissy Cunnigham.
DEEP BREATH.
I do love the talk of Steve, well after the breakup with Tommy and even what, Sophmore?? Jason being like, "Harrington won't like this" BECAUSE JASON IS A BITCH.
But can we appreciate Chrissy just not being for this and tried to PRY TOMMY'S HAND FROM GARETH????
I remember someone made a post, i can't remember who you are! If you remember, let me know! That Chrissy wouldn't have been the cheerleader that would be okay with bullying, i mean, god, her own mother bullied her all her life, and like, to that person, THAT MAKES TOTAL SENSE and I feel it was backed up with this.
I'm not a HELLCHEER stan per say, but I will admit, the thought is cute and there was def potential in my eyes but also like... I don't have an actual ship in this show, just like... I could see it and leave it at that lmao. And I'm not bothered by the thought of Eddie having a crush on her. It's clear if he did, it wasn't so much on the rising "queen of hawkins high" but rather the girl at the middle school talent show that, when he said his dad wasn't there, instead of making him feel bad about, little chrissy just went, "Wow, I wish my mom wasn't here!"
LIKE?
LIKE???
And even said she'd cheer for him when he played, like come on. whatever we feel about chrissy, i stand she was not a horrible person, and if she lived, probably an amazing person to see.
Fuck you, Vecna.
I do love that even when Higgins rolled up, she was like, "THAT BITCH IS LYING!" when Tommy tried to make it like Eddie was the aggressor. Because --
TOMMY H IS A BITCH THAT SHOULD GET PUNCHED OUT, WHEN WILL I SEE THAT.
But anyway.
I covered not as much, but Higgins is a bitch. Most of these adults need a slap. I so felt for Eddie, constantly being marked by his last name, by his dad. This grown man calling this 18 year old a felon even though he's never been arrested. I mean???
but can we appreciate that nothing got under his skin as bad as when Higgins essentially was like, he's a rotten apple, infecting everyone around him. Like Gareth? Like the only reason he was targeted bc he was in Hellfire?? Under EDDIE'S association???
I wanna hug him.
Let's roll back though. Since we done the Gareth and Chrissy bits.
Al.
AL.
I hate him lmao. So the new thing that came to life was, Eddie didn't live in wayne's trailer all his life, but it seems was in a constant yo-yo kinda of living between the house and wayne's trailer, especially when he was younger and Al would take off. It would make sense, as he got older, being more insistent on staying home and Wayne doing the grocery shopping( of spaghetti-o's and microwave meals! oh, wayne ) every two weeks and keeping an eye on him.
Bless anyone, again, i can't remember WHO that fancasted skeet ulrich as Al because i can so see it
this man screams — munson magic, no??
Also, Eddie saying he doesnt' have said Munson Magic? False, sir. You most definitely do. We've all fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.
also, I do love the complicated mess that is their relationship. The sight of his boots sending Eddie in a whirlwind, a near panic attack at having to see him again, but also even craving his attention. The fact that Al is inviting Eddie into one of his schemes has him conflicted because, "he never came for me, he could have asked his friends, but he came to me" like... my boy. Can someone hug him?? It's very realistic to have this complicated relationship, as those that do have those types of parental relationships could attest. I def could. ( neither of my parents were felons and doing schemes but def emotionally distant so :))) )
I craved for some wayne x eddie moments, and in part, i do, though with wayne it feels like he's def holding back. it seems to be of his nature, which I can buy, tho still offering Eddie a place in his trailer if he needs it. I feel like by the end of the book, this could change, i feel a def shakeup is gonna happen with Al and Eddie as he seemed dead set against his dad in s4. do not correct me if I'm wrong as I wanna find that out myself!
I love Ronnie.
I love that Caitlin gave Eddie a childhood bestfriend, though the angst of Ronnie having a chance out of Hawkins and Eddie feeling left behind but still happy for her. At least to her face. Another aspect that feels like him, not giving her shit about it, wanting the best.
I also loved the part where young eddie thinking she was his girlfriend and the disastrous first kiss that had him running away lmaoo like god. what a little goof. I love him.
another controversial take. I ACTUALLY LOVE THAT HE ISN'T A VIRGIN.
Listen
LISTEN !!!
This boy is gonna die in a horrific way.
I'm glad he didn't do so as a virgin, I'm glad he got to FUCK, he DESERVED TO HAVE HIS DICK WET OKAY. I'm glad. I'm happy for him. GO YOU, EDDIE MUNSON.
What made me sad though was the two girls he mentioned, it seemed they dared themselves to be with him, wanting a taste of the freak — which i mean....
I mean....
Fuck, don't we all...?
Wanting to find out if he a freak in the sheets as well in the streets -shot-
And ah yes, Paige....
I don't mind Paige so far. She like us, wanting a piece of Eddie, I can't fault her for that. When I found out there was a romance plot, or, well, most likely not true romance, I didn't mind, because I def wanted to see how this boy handles someone that wants him. The part where she made him feel like a person, or rather, liking him for himself was.... ouch, my precious boy. he would be so flustered around us, i swear to god
I do love that we get bits of the Hideout and Corroded Coffin.
And I'm gonna take a pause because like.... I love the set up that to get stage time, Eddie working as a barback there and like........ can we appreciate that.
Can we picture Eddie running around, hair tied up, sweating, maybe wearing a white shirt... Jeans.... Going from table to table, wiping it down...them forearms, twisting that slutty little waist for whatever reason, you're at the bar, having a drink, and he gives a smile...........
Anyway.
I always wondered if Corroded Coffin wrote their own songs.... AND THEY DO. The only downside I really wished it was the Corroded Coffin we know. I love Ronnie but I'm like WHO IS DOUGIE?? It makes sense, it's two years prior, but at least we have Jeff and hail the 80s where they don't really give a fuck if a minor is drinking at a bar lmaoo but i love he's nervous about it. Shroud Fire sounds metal af i wish we could hear it.
but all this leading to Paige. And her freckles. I love that Eddie, and even he himself calling it very Caveman like, that his mind went, freckles. This man has the Munson Magic bc he is a dork but he could get with ANY ONE OF US. He has no play, his brain would short circuit, BUT WE WOULD BE SO INTO THAT.
I don't know of Paige's intention, but I feel for her struggles at her job, getting the dream job but still having to try and claw your way to the top and it being difficult bc not taken seriously.
She def after Eddie. I cannot blame her.
Which lead to the recent chapter where he goes to her and is like PLEASE SIGN US. Her taking a chance because she needs a big break as well.... I like that.
But I def laughed when she was like, "God, you just want to get to Dave and I thought--" we know what you thought and you so real for it, Paige. i'm just gonna chant MUNSON MAGIC okay. it is part of my vocabulary now. that is what got us all.
THE MUNSON MAGIC.
So far, I do like it. I feel it's a really easy read. Will I take it as canon? Idk. Maybe. Or at least take parts of it as canon, aka the things I like, which seems to be the majority of it so far. I'm not a novice at books tied to shows I watch, or movies even. I was heavily into the star wars books that turned to not be canon ( rip, mara jade skywalker ) but it doesn't take away my enjoyment of it. Enriches it, if anything. I think that's the most important thing.
That's it for now. enjoy my ranting!
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Zinfogel just recently posted a showcase of Variety Lance (he said Variety Lance is extremely good for Clair) and Variety Agatha, including his thoughts about Masters nowadays and Variety Scouts. I wanna know what you think about it.
Goddammit Zinfogel, this couldn't wait until tomorrow? I'm trying to save gems over here.
Oh wow, nevermind, that's depressing. The video itself is short, and having run Clair constantly, I'm content with her ability to off-type with just SS Kris/Lucas, Lance isn't necessary. Moreover, his discussing is exactly correct. Variety scouts are a known scam, they're far lower effort, and it seems wholly unnecessary in the era of 5/5. I actually agree with the 5/5, there's something to that. Not always, but it's a nice boost for older pairs, and brings in incentive for long-time players to try again for old favorites. The Variety thing is...odd. The Eevees all being copies of one another, Bruno and Lorelei being virtually identical pairs, they're just not doing much that's interesting. And we're in this odd space of a lot doing the same jobs as always, unless they're Master Fair, which the rats set the tempo at "unspeakably broken for the game we're in, to the point they're not fun to use."
I agree with him that the game is flatlining. I think the problem is an over-emphasis on too much at once. There are just too many sync pairs being thrown in each month, with like a whopping six in most situations. It's a lot of focus on developing the kit and the grid and doing something new without being broken, and it comes at the cost of everything else.
That said, one thing I will argue is the irrelevance of sync move animation. Bro, I'm sorry, but you watch those one (1) time and then skip forever to get back to the action. Even in showcases, that's how it's done. From a design perspective, why would you shell out the money for those animations that literally no one watches? That's not the problem. The problem is really more in the lack of unique designs, the unnecessary "limited" gimmick, and that the game hasn't done anything too novel in a while. I think it's at least trying with the rebuffs, but it's just not enough to be interesting when Zones are better.
And to argue with myself, I realize six sync pairs is a lot in a month, but also that if we didn't get that, a lot of characters just wouldn't get anything. The Variety scouts are a lame cash grab, but in the case of Lorelei, it was a lame cash grab for a sync pair I kinda like, that definitely wouldn't exist otherwise. So it's this awful space of recognizing yeah, this sucks, the game shouldn't be this way, but also if it wasn't it's not like all our dreams would come true either. There's a healthy middle ground between the two somewhere, but I don't think DeNA has a reason to pursue it.
The last thing I'll say, and I hate saying it but it's what happens to me...I wonder if Zinfogel isn't just burning out of the game. Doing the same things for so long wears on you regardless of enjoyment, and maybe he's just hitting that wall. There are times I feel like I'm hitting it. And to be frank, the explanation of "I gave in to my impulses" occurring multiple times in the last two months between variety and SC and tapu? From experience, that's the feeling of chasing a feeling no longer there. That's when you step back and make sure addiction isn't creeping in, because now you're pulling stuff you weren't that excited about to hope it's more fun than you thought. The insidious thing is sometimes it works. Sometimes you get SC Zinnia. Other times, you get Palentine's Mallow. It's unreliable and a bad habit to form. So I dunno. I'm kinda worried about him, honestly.
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