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thran-duils · 3 years

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Dubious Representation (P.4, Final)

Title: Dubious Representation (Part Four, Final) Summary: Fem!Reader x soft Dark!Hank Palmer. Reader’s husband is facing jail time and although Hank Palmer entered the counsel for pro bono, he is still going to get a form of payment. Recently single, he’s been lonely and he’s looking for some comfort. Even if it means obtaining it from less than savory means. Words: 3,110 Warnings (for entire fic): Eventual smut, sexual coercion, infidelity, mention of past domestic violence, verbal abuse

Part Three || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

Hank came downstairs, buttoning up his dress shirt. You looked over your shoulder from where you were making breakfast, something you had gotten accustomed to when you stayed over. It was relaxing. He was right about one thing; you did love to cook. And it was nice you had someone who actually seemed to appreciate it rather than taking it for granted. Not to mention, his kitchen was top notch, and his fridge was always stocked cause he gave you the money to do so.

He caused you to pause for a second as he grabbed your shoulders to hold you while he kissed your temple.

“Morning, doll,” he spoke against your skin before he pulled away. “Did you sleep well?”

“Mhm.” You always did on his expensive mattress. Especially after he wore you out.

You finished up and made up two plates. Turning around you found him at the island, clicking away on his phone. You placed his plate in front of him, him thanking you, and slid onto the stool next to him.

He swore under his breath and tossed his phone down before he started eating.

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

“Lisa is being a bitch as usual.” He held a lot of contempt for his ex-wife.

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry about.” He took another bite and eyed you. “I’ve got Lauren this weekend again.”

You made sure you were away when she was there. He never made you feel like you had to be but the few weekends he had with her since you had started seeing him, you made yourself scarce.

“Good. You haven’t seen her in a while,” you told him, and you meant it. It had been a couple weeks. “I need to clean my apartment too, so this is good.”

“You don’t gotta go home.”

You shot him a look at that and saw he was staring at you with purpose. You swallowed your bite and forced a shrug. “It’s okay. It’s good you guys have time alone together.”

“We don’t have to always be alone together,” Hank said, taking another bite. He shrugged in turn now, fixing you with another intense look. “I’ve thought about you moving in.”

That was unexpected. And all you could muster was, “Oh.”

“‘Oh’ what?” He sounded like he was going to get on a combative route.

You rested your hand on the counter, meeting his eyes. “That… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? Explain it to me.”

You blinked. How did you explain how wrong you felt about falling into another man’s bed so soon? The same day Rich had left, you were back with Hank. Not that you had not slept with him before then but… and how guilty you felt about your feelings for him? His relationship had already been done and had been for a while. You were moving on without a consensual party who had no idea what was happening outside their jail cell. No matter how free you felt since you were not afraid of what kind of mood Rich was going to be in when you got home, there was still history.

“It seems too quick.”

“It’s been six months.” Hank grabbed the jug of iced tea you had placed on the counter and began pouring you and him glasses.

“A lot of people would say too quick.”

“Rich is refusing to see you when you have gone to visit. I don’t think it’s quick enough we make this more serious.”

He sounded bitter about the Rich comment. When you had told him you were going to visit Rich in prison the first time, Hank had been frigid. And then the next two times, he was still bristled. And he had had a “told you so” attitude about it when you came back mopey because he was right about that: Rich refused to see you. He would walk in and see it was you at the table and turn around and walk back through the door.

“Don’t you think?” Hank continued as he finished pouring the iced tea. “You are already sleeping here half the week. It’s a waste of money for you to keep the apartment.”

You chewed on your bottom lip. The apartment was yours now. Something you had not had to yourself for years. But you felt more comfortable here.

“I guess when you put it that way,” you said.

He saw your resolve crumbling and he capitalized, leaning on his arm to come closer to you. “Then what’s the issue?”

“My apartment—"

“You know. I brought it up to come to the point to just tell you: Don’t worry about it. I’ve already contacted your building manager about paying off the rest of the lease. You had only four more months left so that wasn’t a huge expense. You need to sign the paperwork though.”

“Hank!”

“What?”

“You didn’t even ask me. And they just spoke to you about my lease when you’re not even on it?”

Hank waved you off, “You’re getting distracted. Did you wanna keep living there with no AC in the summer and then shitty heating in the winter? And that carpet was atrocious in the halls. Do you not like my house?”

“I like it. A lot.”

“Then again, let me ask, what’s the issue?” You had nothing to say, and he grasped your hand. “Doll, all you need to do is go pack up the things you want to bring here — I’ll get you boxes — and then the rest of it we can send to the thrift shop. AND—" he rose his voice as soon as he saw you were going to protest, and you closed your mouth. “The other stuff — you know things of his — we can ship to his next of kin.”

“His parents.”

“Good. They can inherit it. Just like they’ll inherit him when he’s out.”

You let that sink in for a couple moments before you realized a way out of being here while Lauren was here. “Well, then I should go to my apartment this weekend to do that…”

Hank looked impressed for a split second before he agreed, “I suppose so. But I want you available on Saturday morning. You don’t have to stay here but we are going to the botanical gardens and then getting lunch. I want you there. Is that fair?”

It was a type of compromise, a rarity.

“Yes.”

He had still gotten his way. As usual.

<><><>

Lauren was a sweet girl, eleven years old. She was headstrong just like Hank, and you had to smile watching them go back and forth about their opinions. She was going to be a force to be reckoned with.

When she got you alone for a moment, she was watching you closely.

“What’s up?” you asked, trying to hide your unease.

“I told my dad that daddies don’t get lonely when he asked me who I wanted to live with when they were getting divorced.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. They move on quick.” Your stomach clenched, worried where this conversation was going. “But my mom was dating someone before he was. Like almost immediately. It’s just weird. But I’m glad he has someone now.”

You relaxed and nodded before you told her, “Me too. He makes me happy.”

<><><>

A week and a half later, there was a voicemail on your cell phone. You did not recognize the number.

You pressed on it and your blood chilled hearing Rich’s voice.

“Y/N, what the fuck is this about all these boxes of my shit showing up at my parent’s house? You know they don’t have the space in their two bedroom. And what the fuck are you sending it away for in the first place? If you’re even thinking about kicking me out, you’ve got another thing coming, you little bitch. Do you understand me? Moving on like a fucking hussy now that I’m in here and you’ve got space in the bed? I know you’re helpless when it comes to providing for yourself but if you think I’m gonna let it slide that you are spreading your legs for some other fucking guy cause you can’t hack it on your own, you are sorely mistaken! I—”

The voicemail cut off. He must have run out of time.

Your lip was warbling as you stared down at your phone.

“What is it?”

Hank’s voice startled you. He was rubbing his hair with a towel, another one wrapped around his waist, straight from the shower.

“Nothing,” you said wiping at your eyes.

Hank’s arm dropped from his head, and he stalked over. He reached his hand out, gesturing for you to hand over your phone. He did not buy it when you said nothing. You slowly relented and he took it from you. Pressing play, he replayed the button and you flinched, the words hurting just as much if not more than the first time you heard them.

Snorting, Hank deleted the message. “Fuck him. And his condescension. You’re doing what’s best for you, and you are hacking it on your own. I say it’s about time you got a new number, Hmm? To avoid that bullshit.” Your lips parted in surprise, and he held your phone back out to you. You took it as he said, “I’ll add you to my plan, baby. We can go tomorrow. I don’t have meetings in the afternoon.”

With that, he turned and walked back towards the bathroom. He had not waited for you to respond.

<><><>

As soon as you were two weeks late, Hank brought home a test. He had stopped using condoms months ago when things had progressed. That same night, he had taken you out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate. He had taken you there before and you had adored it. That time though it was like a fog was clouding the room. You were happy, you had wanted to be a mother, and he was happy. But you were still married.

Hank had obviously been thinking about that too because a couple days later, he brought it up bluntly as he was watering his flowers.

“You should get a divorce.”

Pushing your sunglasses up, you stared at him in shock. You were reclining on a lawn chair, reading a magazine.

When you did not respond, he looked over his shoulder. You knew this conversation was coming but the knowledge of that did nothing to soften the blow.

“That seems heartless.”

“What? Fully leaving? Or are you telling me you’re planning to go back to him?” He was using that challenging tone.

“No!” you blurted. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

He turned the hose off and dropped it turning to face you.

“Y/N, he’s been in jail for over a year. You’ve already sent his shit away, he’s gotten mad about it, you don’t know if his family cares cause you aren’t at the apartment, you’re living with me. And you’re not at your old job. So, they can’t find you there. And you got a new number so no one can contact you. I think the writing has been on the wall where this is going. So what’s with dragging your feet?”

“It’s… hard.”

“A lot of things are hard, but we deal with them. Look, you’ll feel better once it’s over and done with and so will I. I don’t like knowing you’re still legally tied to that bastard. Can you understand that? Not just as the man you’re with but from an attorney’s viewpoint. It’s not good news. I’d sleep easier at night knowing he’s not gonna try to pull some shit.”

“Isn’t that a conflict of interest if you initiate and oversee this?”

Hank gave a brief chuckle, “No. I’m allowed to represent blood family even. I’m supposed to be unbiased of course but it’s legal to do it. I’m allowed to represent anyone.” He came closer, looking down at you on the chair. “And honestly, if I have it under my belt I represented him — that is if the bastard decides to take it to court, which I’m doubtful he will — and ‘saw the errors of my choice’ and now I’m trying to help you out, that’ll help in court.” He saw the look on your face and shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t mean to be insensitive but that’s how juries are swayed. Sob stories. And I could hit that shit out of the park.”

Swallowing, you contemplated. You had been thinking about divorce for a while. Even more so now that you knew you were carrying Hank’s baby.

You had taken too long to respond again, and Hank added, “Free of charge for you of course.”

You gave a small smile and said, “Hank… yeah, fine. I know.”

“‘Fine’? ‘You know’? Doll, you know I like you to elaborate your firm feelings.”

“I’ve been thinking about it. And I need to take a plunge. I wanna be invested in us. Fully.”

Hank nodded, “That’s better.” He nodded once more. “I’ll get them drafted up tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

“And?”

“Don’t you wanna enjoy the weekend?”

Hank simpered, “What’s a weekend?”

<><><>

Hank strolled past the security gate and swooped his briefcase up. The visiting room in the prison was bare and beat up. He was seated at the table, waiting, reading emails. As soon as the prisoners were trickling into the room, he kept an eye on the door.

The moment Rich walked in, he hesitated seeing Hank. Unlike with Y/N, he ventured into the room and pulled the chair back, sitting across the table from Hank.

“Surprised you haven’t found yourself in max yet. I was expecting to talk to you through glass. Whatever works though,” Hank clipped, sitting up straight.

“What are you doing here?” Rich asked, his tone tight. He ignored Hank’s jab.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Hank said, opening his briefcase and pulling out the pile of papers. He tossed them onto the table and leaned back, waiting for Rich to respond.

Rich stared at them for a few moments and shrugged, “What are these? Early release? I thought I made it clear I didn’t want you representing me anymore.”

“Ah, no,” Hank laughed. He was unable to hold it back. “Divorce papers actually. And I’m not representing you. I’m representing Y/N.”

Rich’s face darkened and he snapped, “What?”

“She’s divorcing you now that she’s not afraid you’re gonna bash her in with a monkey wrench. You’re right here, my man. And she’s free out there.” He leaned in closer and said, “Seriously, you fucking up the way you did worked out best for everyone. She’s positively glowing.” He tapped the papers and said, “So, it’s all in here. Just need you to read it over, get your signature, and it’ll be solid.”

Rich was staring harshly at Hank and Hank could pinpoint the moment the realization washed over him. He looked murderous. “You.”

“Yeah, me.”

“You son of a bitch. Just swooping in when you saw weakness,” Rich growled, slamming his hand on the table. The guards took notice and he immediately reeled it in, much to Hank’s amusement who had not even flinched. Through gritted teeth, Rich vowed, “You’re not going to get away with this. She’s my wife—"

“Yeah, a wife you have refused to see for over a year because what? You’re mad you had to come to her rescue because you were rolling too hard to pay proper attention as she almost got assaulted? Great. Husband of the year award right for you. I’ll make sure it’s delivered.”

“I’m not going to roll over on this!”

Hank waved him off, quipping. “Take it to court then. We know how well that worked out for you last time.” He smiled cruelly, “Do you understand how even more easy it would be for me this time to get them to turn against you than the DA did last time? I could easily paint myself as the white knight and yeah, sure, you would get a day out of the prison to come to court, which might seem worth it to you, but it is worth the cost for good representation? I don’t think so. You will get the floor mopped with you and the end result would be the same.”

Rich looked furious and Hank threw his hands out. “Think about it this way. Once you’re out, you can find another woman who was just as naïve and young as Y/N and do what you will. It’s wiping the slate clean for you, fresh start. Plus, Y/N’s already pregnant, so she’s pretty settled in already with me. Don’t wanna go messing that up cause trust me, motherfucker, I will make that hell for you. I’ve got the resources to do so. And man, do I have a vendetta against your ass. So, do you really want to try me?” If Rich could look more furious. His fists were clenched on the table, shaking, but he was keeping himself from lunging across the table. Hank was even impressed; the bastard really did not want to go to max.

Clearing his throat, Hank leaned over and grabbed his briefcase, standing up. “Anyways, you can wipe your ass with that if you want, but it’s still going to go forward. And I have more copies. Just let me know what you wanna do.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and carelessly tossed it onto the table. “In case you forgot my number, champ.”

<><><>

Hank came up behind you and kissed at the nape of your neck. “You didn’t need to do this.”

“You weren’t home when you normally do it,” you told him, running the water from the hose over the hydrangeas that he cherished so much.

“I’m only thirty minutes late,” Hank chuckled.

“But you are particular.”

“That I am,” he breathed, kissing you again on your shoulder. He nuzzled in and nipped at your ear, drawing a smile out of you. “I got the papers back today.”

That caused you to stall, your hand dropping every so slightly, the water not arching as high. It had been a couple weeks since Hank had gone to the prison and all he had told you was that he had left the papers with Rich. You had not heard anything since. Hearing that he had actually sent them back signed…

He noticed your demeanor and his hands came around you, coming to your stomach. He held you protectively there and breathed reassuringly, “Looks like our family is going to be okay.”

~~~

Marvel tags: @coconutqueen21 @undecidedsworld @holl2712 @agustdowney @biiskuitx

#hank palmer x reader #rdj character #my shit #dark!hank palmer #hank palmer

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littlemessyjessi · 3 years

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“Come Away With Me” : Regulus Black: Plus Size and Shortie : Chapter One “Prisoner”

Reggie deserved better and by Godric he’s gonna have it.

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You keep makin' it harder to stay But I still can't run away I gotta know, why can't you Why can't you just let me go?

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“Prisoner” - Miley Cyrus ft. Dua Lipa

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The turning point for Regulus Arcturus Black came the summer before his sixth year.

History was repeating itself.

Walburga Black stared down at her youngest son, seeing nothing more than Sirius in that moment.

She'd warned him about that girl.

Aurora Monroe, or Rory, had been Regulus' best friend since their first day.

It would seem that the Black brothers had a penchant for befriending half blood, half breed combinations.

But that wasn't why Walburga hated the girl.

She didn't even know Rory was a werewolf.

But she did know that she was a half blood and she knew that she was a Monroe.

And that was enough for her to hate her.

Two families who had been at each other's throats since what seemed like the beginning of time.

It all came down to money.

As most things did.

They were two of the wealthiest families in the wizarding communities of England.

Thus it was a constant competition and rivalry set in a long time ago.

The Black had old money that came from a long line of aristocracy.

The Monroe's built their fortune and built it rather quickly and also managed to spite a Black ancestor in the process.

And thus began the fued.

Walburga had warned her son, over and over again about being around her but he didn't listen.

Regulus was far more mild mannered than Sirius but at his core...he was actually truly very stubborn.

And he refused to budge on that.

She'd threatened to blast him off the family tree just like she had Sirius.

A moment that was still burned into Regulus' memory.

But still he held steadfast.

But then she snapped the final chord.

Her and Orion had never joined Voldemort and his band of followers but she supported them.

And she had every intention of Regulus joining the ranks.

Even if meant she had to force him.

It wasn't even that she was willing to force him to do something.

He was used to that.

But he knew what that meant.

It meant a death sentence for Rory and Regulus would burn it all down before he let that happen.

He flew up the stairs and into his room rummaging around for the mirror he and Rory had gotten from Zonko's before the summer.

"Rory! Aurora!" he called into the mirror.

He could hear her fumbling for a second before her freckly scarred face appeared.

"Hey, Regs!" she broke into a grin but it quickly faded when she could see the distress on his face. "Regulus, what's wrong? What happened?"

"I gotta get out of here." he said, struggling to breathe. "Right now."

"Ok, ok. What happened? Are you ok?" she asked, amber eyes searching him through the mirror.

"I'm fine. But I gotta go. I'll be ok. But I needed to tell you just in case you don't hear from me for a bit." he said holding the mirror with one hand and shoving things into his trunk with the other.

A loud banging at the door caused his head to snap the side and the unlocking charm could be heard as his mother opened the door.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" she screeched and Aurora gasped.

"Who is that?!" Walburga snapped and snatched the mirror out of Regulus' hand.

She seethed as she took in the sight of Aurora Monroe on the other side of it.

Regulus didn't even have time to prepare for impact when Walburga backhanded him and threw the mirror across the room.

Aurora's angry scream could be heard right before it shattered and Regulus looked at his mother in horror as she advanced.

"The only way you leave this house is over my dead body." she whispered and Regulus looked up at her in horror.

"That can be arranged."

The two of them turned to look at the tiny figure in the door who had clearly just apparated into mass chaos.

Amber eyes ablaze and white hair like a halo around her.

She was furious.

Aurora looked nothing short of an angel of death.

"You little bitch!" Walburga growled. "Stupid filthy mudblood! You'll be expelled for using magic outside of Hogwarts."

Aurora smirked, "I'm of age, you musky hussy."

Walburga drew her wand and Regulus panicked.

"No!" he said lunging at his mother but Aurora had already cast the spell to disarm her.

Walburga grabbed Regulus by the hair jerking his head back.

She narrowed her eyes at Aurora who absolutely refused to back down.

"You're not taking him." Walburga spat.

"You let him go or I snap this in half and turn it over to the ministry. And I'm betting there's a fair share of unforgivable curses lingering in this wood." Rory said.

She and Walburga stared at each other for the longest time before Walburga's eye twitched.

She pulled her hand back and Regulus squeezed his eyes preparing for the blow when suddenly the pressure was released from hair and he stumbled to regain his balance.

Aurora had stunned Walburga and sent her flying back into the wall where she now lay unconscious.

She performed the body bind curse on her and turned to Regulus.

"Get what you need, Regs. We gotta go. Right now." she said sternly but he was too shocked to move.

She sighed and reached out to touch his arm, "Reggie, we gotta go. Right now. Get the essentials."

He seemed to snap out of it and shoved a few things in his trunk before grabbing his broom out of his closet.

"Is there anyone else home, Regs?" she asked as she kept a watchful eye over Walburga's unconscious form and the door.

"No." Regulus shook his head. "Just Kreacher. Oh fuck."

It dawned him in that moment.

"Kreacher!" he called out.

A second later the house elf appeared with a pop and promptly began to freak out over Walburga.

"Mistress!" he wailed.

"Kreacher, please." Regulus said. "I know, I know. But she was..."

"She was attacking Master Regulus again?" he asked and Regulus nodded.

"I have to go, Kreacher. Come with us. I can give you clothes and free you. I haven't been blasted off the tree yet." he pleaded with the elf who had become his friend over the years.

He knew better though.

"Kreacher must stay in the Noble House of Black." he said solemnly.

And suddenly Regulus understood how Sirius must have felt when he had to leave.

He didn't really have a choice but Regulus wouldn't go with him just like Kreacher wouldn't go now.

"Kreacher will keep the Mistress asleep." the elf said.

Aurora watched and Regulus knelt to hug the elf once more before grabbing his trunk and slinging his broom over his shoulder.

"Ok." he said, passing a hand over Kreacher's head once more.

Aurora stepped forward and Regulus wound his arm through hers before she turned and apparated away.

As they disappeared into thin air, Regulus' eyes watered.

Sadness, relief, fear.

It was all mixed into one but one thing was for sure.

Everything changed from that moment on.

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Chapter Two Coming Soon

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Keep Scrolling after author’s note for additional story pics!

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Hello, loves! I hope you enjoy this Regs story! It’s a tragedy what happened to Reggie and he was done really dirty both in his story and the lack of story we get for this multi dimensional selfless character! So he’s gonna have some good times in this story, dammit!

Anyway, I love you all and I would love to hear from you! Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, via reblog or just hit up the ask box!

I love you all.

Love,

Kenny

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Also, feel free to imagine Regs anyway you like but I do like him as Timothee Chalamet... like a lot of people because Timmy is precious. Also, I feel this gif perfectly encompasses his time in that hell hole. It’s ok, Reggie bebe. Mama’s got you. I’ll give you cocoa and noms and blankies. It’ll be ok now.

Some inspiration pics for Rory!

These all played a part in the inspiration for Aurora’s hair. Rory’s hair turned white with stress due to her condition much like how Remus’ hair started greying early.

I particularly loved the color of the first and how floofy it was. But I love the texture and also the poof of the second. I also absolutely adored the second lady’s freckles which I picture Rory’s being absolutely littered with.

Aurora has golden brown eyes. Warm like the sun. Here are a few inspiration pics.

I also used these and the picture from the freckled girl with the yellow top as inspiration for her skin tone as I see Aurora as very brown but dashed in freckles and heavily scarred just due to years of being afflicted with lycanthropy. I also think it makes a striking contrast with her hair and such an juxtaposition against Regs’ fair features and dark hair.

This was my main inspiration for Rory’s scars. She has them all over her but perhaps the most noticeable is the one on her face and I feel this one encompasses it perfectly.

As far as height went I couldn’t find many pics for inspiration so I begrudgingly used my own tiny form of 4′11″ as reference lol. She is smol bean like me. I did find some body inspos though! Rory is very fluffy!

I don’t always show my inspo pics for characters but I felt like it was nice thing to start to do as it always helps me begin to form the layout of a character. And I love you all so I figured it’d be a nice thing to share.

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@pleasantdreamqueen @becrazy–beyou

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floatyflowers

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Btw, the only tags I do is for my permanent tag list but if you ever want to be added to that, all you have to do is just go to the ask box and ask to be added! I’d be happy to do so!

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Also, if you love the Marauders feel free to check out some of my recent Marauder works!

Chasing Jess (Sirius Black and Jess Scamander)

A Deal With Cupid (James Potter x Reader)

All Fun and Games (Poly Marauders Fics)

Talking to the Moon (Remus Lupin x Reader)

Torn (Remus Lupin x Rowan Black)

And honestly so many more.

I’m kind of a ho for Harry Potter and an outright slut for the Marauders. Just being honest.

#regulus black #regulus arcturus black #regulus black x aurora monroe #reggie x rory #marauders #marauders era #young regulus black #plus size #ps #short #werewolf character #plus size oc #plus size ofc #short oc #short ofc

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avengerscompound · 3 years

Text

It’s You and Me - Chapter 6

It’s You and Me: A Hawkeye Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing: Clint Barton x F!Reader

Word Count: 1588

Rating: E

Warnings: Nothing much this chapter

Synopsis: You and Clint Barton go way back. Since you joined the circus as a child, he took it upon himself to keep you away from the people who really wanted to hurt you. For years the two of you danced a line between dark and light.

When he chooses light the two of you go your separate ways.

Fifteen years later he tracks you down. Those feelings the two of you shared never went away, but now he is not only an Avengers but a single father. Can the two of you make it work after all this time when your lives have gone in such different directions?

A series told in flashbacks and current day.

Chapter 6: Then

Clint swung the sword in a lazy arc from left to right and back again as he watched you stretch. The springboard was set up between the two of you, and Clint hadn’t quite worked out how they’d hide that in the arena to make this look like you could get as much air as you needed without assistance. That was if the two of you could get it to work at all.

You’d come a long way since you first came to him for help. In the year and a bit since it happened you and he had started performing together. To begin with, Clint had just started training you to use the sword and the bow. While you learned he had incorporated you into his act doing simple things that didn’t require you to have any actual skills. Shooting an apple off your head. Putting you on a rotating wheel and firing arrows around your body.

Jacques kept complaining that it wasn’t enough. He tried to argue that anyone could stand there while Clint shot at them. Thankfully it was enough for the Ringmaster, and so Jacques couldn’t touch you. Maynard Tiboldt was the head of the circus, and what he said was law. Clint had known that it wouldn’t be long until Jacques got in the Tiboldt’s ear and he’d come for you again, and if not that, that Tiboldt himself would think up some criminal activity he needed you to do. So Clint honed his act as you got better. New tricks were added and he trained you in more things. When he started training you in acrobatics, he knew he was on to something. You took to it even faster than you took to the sword. You were a natural and Clint ended up roping in the other acrobats to help train you.

The act gradually grew as your skills became more honed. Little routines were added that had you backflipping out of the way of his arrows even though he was aiming not to hit you, and having you do handstands while he shot through your spread legs. As you got better the routine became more complex. Most recently Clint had you doing flips over the arrows he shot at targets as they traveled through the air. You’d even gotten to the point you could fire an arrow with your feet while you did a handstand. You weren’t particularly accurate but it served as a good starter for Clint to copy and spit your arrow in two.

He knew - the way he knew it about himself too - that you needed to keep getting better or it wouldn’t be enough anymore and they’d drag you right down into the pits with them. So he kept planning out more things you could do together. You were good with the horses, so he thought about incorporating them somehow. He thought about trick arrows and how the two of you could use them together. Anything that would keep drawing in a crowd and make the circus money so neither of you had to make it elsewhere.

“You ready?” He asked.

“Yeah. Are you?” You answered.

He nodded and thrust the sword forward as if he was going to stab you. You jumped rotating straight up through the air and landed with both feet, on the flat of the blade. Clint’s shoulder strained and the blade wobbled. You managed to stay standing on it for less than a second, but Clint couldn’t hold the blade steady and you slipped. You managed to get some leverage off the blade as you fell and turned mid-air, landing in a crouched position on the ground.

“Shit,” Clint cursed, rolling his shoulder. “Sorry. It’s the weight when you land. It’s hard to keep steady.”

“I could just immediately backflip off again,” you suggested. “Make it look like I kicked you in the face.”

Clint laughed. “I mean, sure we can start with that. But I think the crowd would appreciate it more if they get a moment to applaud it.”

“Yeah, but if I wrench your shoulder you’re not going to be good for anything, are you?” You said.

Clint looked down at the blade. “Reinforcing the blade helped with its stability. I wonder if we could rig something for me.”

“I dunno, Clint,” you said. “You’re better with those gadgets than I am. But wouldn’t that make shooting an arrow harder?”

“We can do an overdramatic jacket removal,” he suggested.

“Anything to get your shirt off,” you teased. “You trying to scare the customers away?”

“Why you little shit,” Clint gasped playfully and lunged at you, you ran but he got his arm around your shoulders and pulled you into a headlock and ran his knuckle back and forth on the top of the head.

“Clint!” You squealed, trying to struggle out of his hold. “Stop it!”

He stopped rubbing your head but kept you held under his arm. “I dunno if I should. You’re a big bunch of trouble.”

“I’m gonna kick your ass!” You shouted as you struggled.

“Yeah, yeah. How are you gonna do that when you’re trapped under there?” He teased.

The sound of someone clearing their throat cut through the clearing and Clint turned you to face Eden who was standing at the side of the tent. “What are you doing, Clinton?” She asked.

Clint rubbed the top of your head again. “Someone seems to think I am some kind of hussy that likes to use his body to get attention.”

“And you’re not?” Eden teased.

“Not you too!” She said, and dragged you after his girlfriend, as she backed up against the tent.

“Clinton Francis Barton, you had better not!” She shouted.

He wrapped his arm around Eden’s shoulders but instead of putting her in a headlock, he dipped her back and kissed her passionately, which only made you struggled under his arm more.

“Stop it! I don’t wanna be pinned here while you make out!” You yelped.

Eden pulled back laughing and Clint looked down at you with a smirk, before letting you go. You backed off of him scowling. “You suck.”

“Oh come on now,” Eden said. “You could have broken out of that, surely. Clint? Aren’t you teaching her how to fight?”

“Well I could have punched him in the nuts, but who knows where those have been,” you teased.

“Why you little…” he said and lunged at you. You ran away laughing as Eden caught his wrist.

“Let her go,” she said. “You spend entirely too much time around her anyway.”

“She’s in my act,” Clint said. “We have to rehearse. I was thinking of adding horses… I saw this thing where people did this act, riding them standing up. Jumping on and off. I reckon I could do that and maybe we could do the handstand arrow while riding next to each other. I bet that would…”

Eden stopped him by pressing her lips against his and pushing him up against one of the tent poles. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her even closer, trying to push out the thoughts of potential acts as her fingers tangled into his hair and ran along his scalp.

“I think you spend entirely too much time with her,” Eden said. “I thought I was your girl.”

“You are, baby,” Clint assured her. “She’s just a kid. I only have eyes for you.”

“She’s not so much a kid anymore,” Eden said. “She’ll be turning seventeen soon.”

“Pfft,” Clint scoffed. “She’s a kid. You don’t trust me?”

Eden raised her eyebrow at him. “Do you always trust me?”

Clint furrowed his brow. The truth was he wasn’t sure if he did always trust her. Which had nothing to do with Eden at all, and everything to do with him. It was hard to equate trust and love together when all the people who showed him any kind of affection always hurt him so much. Even his brother who had spent his life protecting Clint was just as likely to hit him as he was to save him. So despite the fact that Eden hadn’t done anything to make him not trust her, anytime he saw her even next to another guy he felt possessive.

“See,” she said. “Maybe we just need a little extra reassurance.”

Clint nodded and pressed his forehead against hers. “You don’t have to worry about me and her. It’s just our act and I gotta keep it fresh so Jacques doesn’t make us take part in his schemes.”

The shadow of a frown fell on Eden’s face so briefly that Clint wasn’t sure if it was really there at all. “Do you worry about me like that?”

“Of course I do, babe,” Clint said. “You and me, we’re gonna keep our noses clean.”

“What if they tell me what I’m doing isn’t enough?” Eden asked.

Clint cradled her jaw and looked into her eyes. “Who said that? Did Jacques - “ he pulled away and squared off his shoulders. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

Eden grabbed Clint’s arm. “No one did anything. It was a; ‘What if…?’ I’m fine.”

“You’ll tell me… if he does? You’ll tell me?” Clint asked.

“I’ll tell you, Clint. It’s fine,” she assured him. “Hey. How about you and I find somewhere quiet, so we can… you know?”

Clint smirked, the worries about trust and Jacques quickly pushed away. He took Eden’s hand and the two of them went to find somewhere private together.

// NEXT

#clint barton #clint barton x reader #hawkeye #hawkeye fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #it's you and me

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davekat-sucks · 3 years

Note

Heya! So I saw you like Eridan x Nepeda and I wanted to ask why? I understand If you dont wanna explain i just got really curious as i honestly dont see that ship a lot in the fandom

The theme of unrequited love is mentioned a lot for the trolls. Eridan wants one with Feferi. And Nepeta wants with Karkat. The violetblood manages to get into moirails, but he wanted it a deeper shade of red. He fears of dying if he doesn’t contribute to the reproduction of his species. Eridan believes that everything about Alternia is right, only because he was luckily born into higher status where he sits nicely on top above everyone else. There is also his concern for Feferi. She is the opposite of how a real troll should act like. Feferi wanted to coddle trolls, get rid of the hemospectrum once she took over. Eridan has doubts and worries her choices would come true, but does not want her to be killed by Her Imperial Condesce, should that time comes. He is the one that offers up to do the horrible things that she would refuse to do, such as killing lusus to help feed hers. Feferi could have done it herself, but she refused to harm another troll’s parent. You could say it is part of Eridan’s desire to help get Feferi’s attention, but I believe he wanted to do all the dirty and horrible work just for her, since she felt uncomfortable doing what trolls should do. So being rejected upon entering Sgrub and not having to be bond by Alternia’s old customs, it made Eridan feel confused and lost on what he was left to do. All his life, he had been used to this routine. To throw it away, it scared him. Adding on top of Bec/Jack Noir about to kill the troll kids, he was desperate of wanting to live. Remember, Eridan only wanted to DUEL Sollux, not kill him. And if he won, Feferi would have to join with Eridan to ally with Jack. It was the surprise of Feferi ATTACKING Eridan first, that made him kill her, only furthering increase the panic built up on the sea dweller. Meanwhile, Nepeta is shown to have a strong infatuation for Karkat. Karkat is aware of how she feels, but doesn’t reject her or push her away. Whether it is out of consideration to not hurt her feelings or even fear from Equius, who would be pissed if he found out someone made his moirail upset. Not only that, but if going by the book commentaries, Hussie said Nepeta would never get to be with Karkat. It is only AFTER she dies and enters the Dream Bubbles, she can be with him. But in Dream Bubbles, nothing matters, since everyone there is from a doomed timeline. Though that means any combinations of relationships and quadrants, like Terezi loving Dave or Eridan and Feferi had a chance to be together(note too because a pair of them were seen after Cascade, with ghost godtier Feferi reviving Wavering Vagabond), could happen despite it being doomed. In all timelines, however, Nepeta and Karkat would NEVER be in a redrom no matter what. Which is honestly fucked up. If someone like Eridan, Gamzee, or Vriska, could manage to get into a relationship while being alive, why leave the oliveblood out for one guy in particular? These two have a strong emotions towards quadrants. One wants to fill them all to help fulfill his planets’ role and not die, while another likes to play matchmaker. Both had flushed feelings for one person, but they do not reciprocate them back. Eridan was able to tell Feferi her feelings, but Nepeta didn’t really confess to Karkat. The shouty troll was just aware of she felt to him, but didn’t return it back. She was too shy to really say it to his face. Eridan would point out that Nepeta should at least confront him about it. He may have broken his flushed relationship, but at least he had some guts to say what he felt. Staying on the sidelines to say nothing will just hurt her more. The two can confide in each other about their crush not returning their feelings back. Both had hunted lusus before. One to eat and use blood as paint, another used to hunt to help feed another’s lusus. They also like to roleplay as well. One is a genuine FLARP player as the other likes to text roleplay. Nepeta would have joined in FLARP, but Equius told her no, out of fear she would get hurt in the games. Which is right, considering what Vriska did to Tavros and the events that transpire. Maybe in a different timeline, in one where all the trolls lived, an Act 6 would have them interact more outside of the implied flirtation Eridan did to Nepeta during Sgrub. Dave and Rose would be in argument on whether quadrants should stay as they travel on the meteor. It would put Eridan and Nepeta in a situation on questioning what they had believed in. True it was a normal for trolls, but it had also harmed them in other ways as well. The two have a bit in common than they think. The two might argue with each other at first, but may come to understanding another that what they went through, was quite the same. They would come to accept their love unreturned, finding a new relationship between them. It’s why I think EriNep could work if Act 6 had not been the Alpha Kids or the meteor situation would have worked better if every troll was alive. But hey, everything can be canon, according to fanbase, so a Catfish ship happened. Part of why you may not see EriNep is because either the little interaction they have besides the implied moments, like with what happened in Sgrub, or in Alterniabound, where she would hint about the shitty wwand pile that causes automatic GAME OVER if slept on. It should have been Eridan saying about it, but why was it Nepeta who knew. Even she admits sleeping on the pile felt comfortable. Had she been on there once before despite her disdain for the violetblood? Hard to say, but it is cute imaging a catgirl sleeping on fakey-fake magic wands. You can also say she would be in much healthier relationship with someone like Karkat. Even he at least defended her when Eridan couldn’t remember her name during one talk between the two boys. So Karkat is not as thoughtless to Nepeta. There is also the fact that Eridan is seen as either abuser or incel, considering his obsession with quadrants and his approach to people makes others uncomfortable or annoyed at him. People mistake his battle with Sollux and killing Feferi as something else, like he had planned to kill them. When in actuality, he just KNOCKED OUT Sollux and spared his life. It was the surprise attack from Feferi that caught him off guard. It was a self defense on his part and somewhat an accident too. Eridan was just a teen that was scared of dying by Jack Noir’s hands, lost his home, and was dumb on trying to think he could go to him and offer alliance. It’s reasonable.

#EriNep #Eridan x Nepeta #Homestuck

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leigh-kelly · 4 years

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The Nanny

So the last thing I should be doing is writing a new fic, but this is a gift for @yourstreetserenade who has been an absolute gift to this fandom especially during such a difficult time. I’m not sure how frequent updates will be, but they will come!

Just after finishing with four separate brides in the bridal shop she works at in Flushing, Queens, Brittany Pierce hops up on the counter and crosses her legs, tossing her head back. Sugar Motta grabs a bottle of water and thrusts it into Brittany’s hand, before jumping up on the counter next to her. The two of them sit in silence for several minutes, taking in the fact that they have no customers, before the bell on the door tinkles and Brittany takes a swig out of the bottle and climbs down, smoothing her dress.

“Oh, hey Dani.” She grins, walking over to her girlfriend. Before she can give her a kiss, Dani puts her hand up, and Brittany furrows her brow.

“No kiss?”

“Look, Brittany, we need to talk.”

“Uh, sure, shoot.”

“Somewhere private.” Dani gestures over to Sugar, who makes herself look busy with her boss’ presence in the store.

“Don’t worry, no one’s in here.” Sugar pops her gum and sticks a pin into the dress on one of the mannequins.

“You are, Sugar. Brittany, let’s go into my office.”

“Aw c’mon Dan, I’ve told you a thousand times, if you tell me something, I’m just going to tell Sugar anyway, you may as well just say it. Besides, we’ve had a real rush in here today, and I don’t wanna leave her stranded if it happens again.”

“Fine.” Dani sighs, exasperated. “We’ve had a good run, Britt, but there’s someone else.”

“Someone else? What are you talking about? We’re pre-engaged.”

“Yeah!” Sugar agrees. “We’ve already been picking out Brittany’s wedding dress.”

“Sugar, this is really a couple’s conversation.”

“How are you going to say it’s a couple’s conversation if you just said we’re not a couple anymore?” Brittany tries to hold back her tears, but she finds that she’s failing miserably. “How could you do this?”

“It just happened, Quinn and I ran into each other a few weeks ago at—”

“Quinn? You’re breaking up with me for Quinn Fabray? How am I supposed to work here knowing that you’re sleeping with that shameless hussy?”

“You sound a little like your mother, Britt.” Sugar interjects.

“Shut up, Sugar.”

“Well, about that.” Dani wrings her hands in front of her body. “Quinn needs a job, and, well…”

“So not only are you breaking up with me, you’re firing me?” Brittany grabs her purse from behind the counter and makes toward the door as Dani reaches for her. “Don’t touch me. You can’t fire me, I quit!” She pushes the door open, gets halfway through and turns around. “No, you fired me, that way I can collect unemployment.”

----

“Kurt!” Santana Lopez calls out, sitting behind the desk in her home office and shuffling through a stack of paperwork. “Come in here!”

“You bellowed, Ms. Lopez?” Kurt opens the door, adjusting his tie.

“Have any of the prospective nannies arrived yet? Rachel is on me—”

“She wishes.” He mutters under his breath.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

“Rachel is on me about the party on Saturday night. If Tyler scares one more nanny away, I’m sending him to boarding school.”

Santana puts her head in her hands on continues to go through her paperwork. Ever since her wife died five years ago, she’s been overwhelmed by the demands of her career and taking care of her three children. Valerie, the oldest, had been thrust into puberty and is off the walls with her emotions, Tyler does everything in his power to force anyone who came into the house to leave, and Abigail, the baby, is in therapy twice a week and trying to deal with the fact that she barely remembers her mother at all, but sometimes Santana thinks it’s making her worse, not better. On top of all that, she has Rachel who is constantly demanding every moment of her attention, and she’s been through eight nannies who just can’t seem to manage her children, so she can give the focus she needs to her career.

“There’s the bell.” Kurt breaks her from her thoughts. “Let’s hope the ninth time’s the charm and this nanny that the agency sent over can actually manage Master Tyler.”

“Tell her I’ll be with her in a minute, I just need to finish up in here.”

“Yes, Ms. Lopez.”

Kurt exits the room and goes to answer the door. Standing before him is a leggy blonde in a bright pink mini dress and stiletto heels. She’s not exactly what he expected from the agency and is certainly a far cry from any of the other nannies they’ve seen over the past five years, but he steps back and lets her in.

“Ms. Lopez says she’ll be right with you. I expect you have your resume?”

“Resume? I—uh…” The blonde clutches the makeup kit she carries close to her chest and looks around.

“Yes, resume. You know, the list of your previous experience as a nanny, which I presume you have quite a bit of?”

“Resume. Nanny. Right. Yeah, I, uh…totally have it. Say, butler man, do you think I could get a glass of water?”

“As you wish.”

When Kurt leaves the room to get her a glass of water, Brittany scrambles through her makeup kit. She had no intention of applying for a job as a nanny, she was just at this gorgeous mansion to try and sell makeup so she could get out of her parents’ house, now that she was no longer living with Dani, but like she always thought, when opportunity knocks, she’s got to answer. Unfortunately, all she has with her is an order form and a few tubes of lipstick, but she’ll make do, quickly scribbling her name and phone number in Monroe Red along the back of the form and trying to write down her years of working at Dani’s Discount Bridal before the butler comes back with her water. She’s just about finished when a dark-haired boy bursts into the room clutching a knife to his chest and collapses on the floor with a pool of ketchup staining his white shirt.

“Eh, mediocre performance.” She stands over his twitching body and his eyes pop open. “Next time, you want to get some of that fake costume blood off of Amazon. Ketchup is so 1990s.”

“I’ll have you know.” The boy feigns a gasp. “I’m dying here.”

“We’re all dying, kid.” Brittany laughs. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“I’m just making conversation. So, you live here, or what?”

“No.” He deadpans. “I just hang around random mansions looking to scare unsuspecting nannies.”

“You’ve really gotta get better at this scaring thing. I’m telling you, I could give you some tips that’ll have you winning Academy Awards.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve scared off seven nannies in five years, and if you’d stop messing with my plan, you’d be number eight.”

“I don’t scare easily, you’ve never met my mother. Trust me, she’ll tell you the story of the time she thought she had to poop, gave birth to me in a barn and wrapped me up in a Mr. Submarine wrapper, and you’ll be scarred for life.”

“Ew.” The boy sticks out his tongue. “That’s disgusting, and I don’t think my mother would appreciate you telling me that story.”

“Your mother will make that decision.” Brittany’s jaw nearly hits the floor when a gorgeous brunette in a pencil skirt and blazer steps into the room. “Santana Lopez, it’s a pleasure to meet you Miss—”

“Pierce. Brittany Pierce.”

“Miss Pierce. Now what was this story you were telling my son?”

“Oh…I…uh…never mind.” Brittany stammers. “We were just getting to know each other.”

“Well, you haven’t run screaming from the house yet, so I suppose that’s going well. Tyler, go get Valerie and Abigail.”

“But Mom—”

“Go.” She shoos him off, and Brittany can’t help but stare at the woman in front of her.

“Santana—”

“I’d prefer if you call me Ms. Lopez, thank you.”

“Right, sorry, Ms. Lopez. Um…he’s a character.”

“That’s one way to put it.” She sighs. “Your resume, please.”

“Oh…yeah. Well, I kind of forgot to bring one with me, but I have this.” Brittany hands over the lipstick scrawled paper, and Santana holds it between two fingers.

“So, you came to an interview without a resume? Is that lipstick?”

“Well, I’m kind of having a bad week, you know how that goes.” She bites her lip, figuring she may as well just show herself the door.

“You’re not here for the interview, are you?”

“I—look, I wasn’t exactly called her for an interview, but I’m telling you, I’m great with kids. I have like…thirty-six little cousins, and I could totally be a nanny.”

“Yet you have no experience. I see here that you worked for…Dani’s Discount Bridal?”

“Mom!” A little girl with her hair in long braids tumbles into the room, and Brittany smiles at how much she looks like San—Ms. Lopez. “Tyler pushed me again!”

“Kid, what’s your deal?” Brittany asks him. “Why do you want everyone not to like you?”

“You can’t talk to me like that! Mom, tell her she can’t talk to me like that!”

“She’s not wrong Tyler. How many times have I had to tell you to keep your hands off your sister?”

“I don’t know.” He rolls his eyes. “About a billion.”

“Look, Miss Pierce, clearly I need more help here than you’re qualified to give. Thank you for coming, I’ll have Kurt see you out.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry. Thank you for your time.”

Kurt enters the living room again holding Brittany’s water, which he immediately sets down on the coffee table, sensing the tone of the room. While he’s escorting Brittany to the door, she catches a glimpse of the oldest Lopez child and she sighs, thinking that she probably could have made some kind of difference in their lives, even if she doesn’t necessarily have any formal training as a nanny. When she gets to the door, another short brunette enters, who gives her a dirty look, and she just exits without another word.

“Santana!” Rachel cries out, looking at the ketchup on Tyler’s shirt with disgust before the kids all scatter from the room in her wake. “I’ve been on the phone all morning with the caterer for Saturday night. I’m telling you, if this party is a disaster, then we’re never going to get the funding we need for our play. They’re going to immediately jump ship and support the next Lin Manuel Miranda production, and we’ll be out in the cold again.”

“Rachel, it’s going to be fine. I just have to focus on getting a nanny for these kids today, and then Saturday will go off without a hitch.”

“What was the matter with that one? Scared off again by Lord Ketchup?”

“No.” Santana looks to the door, feeling like perhaps she’s made some kind of mistake just as the phone rings. “She’s just not right for our family.”

“Well, you better find someone who’s right. We have three million dollars riding on Saturday night being a success, and as much as I adore your children, I just don’t think having them run around our cocktail party will do anyone any favors.”

“Yes, I’m aware, you’ve told me that about forty-six times this week.”

“Ms. Lopez.” Kurt interrupts. “It’s the nanny agency on the phone for you.”

“Rachel, I have to take this. Go into my office and look over the notes for our pitch.”

“You know that I’m your partner, not your employee, right?”

“Okay.” Santana pinches the bridge of her nose. “Decide if you want to look over the notes for our pitch so you can be prepared for Saturday night.”

“I think that sounds like a great idea.” Rachel chirps. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Great.” She takes the phone from Kurt and sinks down onto the couch. “Santana Lopez speaking.”

“Ms. Lopez, this is Mindy from the agency. Unfortunately, the interviewee we were sending out to you today was offered another job and has decided to cancel. I can get someone else to you on Monday, maybe Tuesday.”

“Monday or Tuesday isn’t good enough.” Santana snaps. “I’ve told you a dozen times that I need someone for this weekend.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.”

“You have got to be kidding me. I have three kids who need a nanny, and I have an event Saturday night. Next week is unacceptable.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it work.”

“Goddamnit.” Santana hangs up the phone and looks at Kurt desperately. “Why is it so hard to find good help in this town?”

“I believe I can still decipher the lipstick on Miss Pierce’s ‘resume.’” Kurt offers. “Maybe you ought to give her a shot. She certainly wasn’t afraid of Master Tyler.”

“She has no experience. And did you see what she was wearing? What kind of influence on Valerie would I be bringing into this house?”

“You certainly seemed a little…preoccupied with her wardrobe if I do say so myself.”

“Honestly, shut up.”

“You need a nanny before Saturday, and she clearly needs a job. Hire her on a trial basis, then you at least have yourself covered and you can resume your interviews next week.”

#brittana #the nanny #new fic

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paperficwriter · 4 years

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Your First Date

Some sweet, fluffy batarou. Being teens in love.

Cut is for length, not for content.

“Oi, Badd. Why didn’t we go on a first date?”

“Well, ya hospitalized me, and then ya went on some kind of monster rager and ended up becomin’ some kinda gargoyle thing? With horns, I heard? And then ya ran off for a hot minute until ya showed up here ‘cause Zenko thought you were some kinda stray to bring home, and here we are.”

“...Heh, yeah, that just about covers it.”

Somehow during months of living together, this conversation didn’t even come up until they were sitting together on the couch, watching an anime one evening that depicted a boy and a girl in a very typical ‘is this a date?!’ situation. They were quiet for a little bit after that, until Badd prompted him by elbowing him in the arm. “Did ya want to? I mean, I feel like we kinda skipped that whole thing, yeah? Usually ya date before ya start livin’ with someone.”

“So what’s the difference between going on a date and dating?”

Badd paused the television and turned to him, wedging himself into the back sofa cushion on his side. “The date’s kinda...the thing itself. Datin’ is when you’re, like, ‘Let’s see how this pans out and if I wanna be your girlfriend for the long haul.’”

“Does that mean we skipped straight to making you my girlfriend?”

“Psh. I’m savin’ my girlfriend status for The One. You lose.”

Garou chuckled and pulled one of Badd’s hands over to rub between his. “Never been on a date before,” he mumbled.

“Are ya serious?” Badd winced when Garou bent one of his fingers sideways. “Ow. I didn’t mean it t’ be shitty! You’re good-lookin,’ so I figured ya woulda had to beat ‘em off with a stick!”

Holy shit, did Garou just blush?! “It’s not like I really had a chance, with the whole ‘leaving home and living at a dojo and then dishonoring said dojo and everything afterward,’ you know?”

Badd dragged his thumb against one of the long lines across Garou’s hand. Then he realized it wasn’t actually the love line, or the life line, or whatever. But rather, it was the pink, faded scar left from his hero hunting. “That means if I take ya out on a date, it’s not just our first date but your first date. Officially.”

Garou nodded. “Which means it can’t suck.”

“Hey, my dates don’t suck.”

“They better not. You don’t have an excuse like I do, since it sounds like you’ve been on a million, you hussy.”

Badd snatched his hand back so he could grab him by one of his wild ‘ears’ of hair. “I ain’t a hussy! And I haven’t been on a million dates! Just a few!”

Thin fingers jabbed at his side right into one of his ticklish pressure points, and Badd’s body buckled in on itself. “No, no, you’re clearly the dating pro, so you better wow me or I’m leaving!”

“Fine!” Badd threw himself on top of Garou, grabbing him by his shirt. He dropped his face close to his with a huge grin. “Then I’m gonna take ya on the best damn date o’ your life. So get ready, wolf boy.”

Garou snuck in a kiss onto Badd’s round nose, flashing his own teeth in a smile. “Okay. I’m holding you to that.”

—

Badd ended up borrowing a car. Although he had gotten his license, he didn’t really need one in the city, since he either walked wherever he needed to go or took public transportation. But if he was going to take Garou on a date, they were going to have to head out a little distance from his normal stomping grounds, enough that no one would immediately recognize him or, worse, ask questions about Garou.

And even as it was, Badd still didn’t sport his normal pompadour, and Garou had one of his beanies over his trademark hair. “So, where are we going?” Garou asked as he reached over to play with Badd’s loose strands where they framed his face.

“It’s a surprise, ya goober. Also, I, uh...didn’t wanna talk about it so much in front o’ Zenko or she’d be sore we weren’t taking her.”

“Scandalous.”

“Shut up!” Badd gave him a shove, but he was smiling. The drive itself was nice; the air was cool, they listened to some music (and since it was just them, they didn’t even have to suffer through Amai Mask’s discography), and the sunset was a beautiful bleed of color across the horizon.

Garou grinned when Badd turned into a hotel. “Oh, so it’s that kind of a date, huh?”

“It ain’t like that! Don’t be weird!” Badd’s cheeks burned up to his ears. “I got us a room so we didn’t have to rush back tonight, and so I didn’t have to find some random place to park.”

When Badd got back from checking in, Garou had his face out the window of the car, sniffing, eyes big. It was like he was looking into the distance, at nothing in particular, an invisible interest.

Badd couldn’t help ruffling the top of his head. “What is it, boy?” he asked like he was talking to a dog, “Whattaya smell, huh?”

Garou rolled his eyes but didn’t really divert his attention, though his did close his eyes. “It’s been forever since I went to the beach. I can smell the sand and the water...and I can hear it.”

Badd turned his ear up, letting the wind hit him. He could just barely make out the salty scent, but he certainly couldn’t hear it. “Good thing that ain’t the surprise.”

Tipping his head curiously, Garou got out of the car, and they started walking down the road.

It couldn’t be but so surprising, because they could see the boardwalk from the half-mile mark as they walked up toward it. A large road right beside piers and docks had been lined with shops, stands and various attractions on either side, and there was a huge ferris wheel lit up with sparkling lights.

Badd had insisted on going during the week, so since it was Wednesday there weren't nearly as many people as there probably would have been on the weekend. On top of that, it was also late in the season, so there weren’t visiting tourists to contend with either. “I know ya hate crowds as much as I do,” Badd commented as he took his hand. “And I wanted your first date to be a good experience, ya know.”

Garou was staring in every direction, his mouth just a little bit open. Shit, was it too much? Had Badd overdone it?

What finally came out was: “I want to eat everything.”

Badd laughed. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.”

When Garou said everything, he wasn’t kidding. Like a bloodhound, Garou made a beeline for the spots that had the best-smelling greasy food scents, and Badd found himself being dragged to stand after stand to buy long skewers of yakitori, shioyaki and ikayaki. Each one was shoved into his face to try. “Please at least keep the squid in a different hand. If I think I’m gonna get chicken and bite into the ikayaki, I’m gonna hurl.”

Garou just took a bite of each. To spite him.

Now, the noodles he could get behind: yakisoba with deliciously tender pieces of pork; hot, sour Thai noodles that warmed him up to the core; a ramen burger made with prime beef and huge pieces of near-solid noodles. Garou was about to lead them to the taiyaki parfait stand, when Badd finally put his hand on his arm.

“Babe. Ya know I think the world of ya, but can we digest for, like, five minutes?”

“I guess.” He smirked and kissed a spot of sauce off the corner of his mouth. “You weakling.”

Next, Badd took him to an arcade. It was set up to look like one of the “classic” ones, with pinball, huge games with old displays that were probably twenty years old, and racing games that made Garou have to fold his long limbs inwards to get to the gas and brake.

When he caught Badd laughing, he glared. “I’m still going to kick your ass, even if I do dislocate my hip.”

“You are older than me, Stretch. That’s a real concern.”

“By a year!”

But they figured it was time to go when Garou laid into a test-your-strength punching dummy a bit too hard and snapped it off its support. In his defense, Badd absolutely should have been watching him closer. Garou had a tendency to get carried away.

As they explored the area even more, they came to a set of shops outside a mall connected to the boardwalk. Garou wandered over to an open stand and stopped so hard his heels screeched. “Oh my god, Badd, look at this.” At first, it just looked like they were selling little trinkets and random junk...until Badd got a closer look. “It’s fucking knock-off hero stuff like you find online!”

Badd nearly choked as he picked up a toy that he could only guess was supposed to be Genos with huge neon eyes and a perfectly rectangular mouth. One hand was on backwards, and the paint job was so abysmal it was like it was just dipped in random colors. A figurine of Atomic Samurai actually had a gun for some reason, Zombieman had been painted lime green, and then…

“You have to buy it.”

“I don’t have to do any such a damn thing.”

“Please. I need this as a memento of our first date.”

Badd sighed and paid the ridiculous amount for a Metal Bat action figure: the torso was so big his head was roughly pea-sized, he was wearing a skirt and his bat looked like it was a wooden one. “It’s literally in the name! Metal Bat! They had one job!”

Garou cackled as he pocketed his prize. “Villains beware! The amazing Wood Bat! Special move: Splinter Spirit!”

As the sky was just beginning to transition from a red-touched blue into night, Badd walked Garou out onto the pier that cut into the ocean far enough that it was actually quiet, compared to the street. A torii gate stood alone overlooking the water and the far-off sunset. Garou stared up at it as Badd explained, “There used to be a shrine on the water, but it got destroyed by a typhoon or somethin.’ They left the torii up ‘cause the sun falls right inside it, yeah? And it was still standin,’ so...yeah.”

“You know a lot about this place.”

Badd grinned, kind of lopsidedly. “Yeah…”

“Like you’ve been here before. More than once.”

“Heh, guess I’ve been caught.”

Easily hopping up onto it, Garou sat on one of the wooden rails of the dock and looked out over the easy-going waves. “That’s fine. There are only but so many places you can take dates, so obviously there’s going to be some overlap.”

“What? Oh god, no. Garou.” Careful not to push him over, Badd got between Garou’s long legs, hands holding his waist. “I ain’t...I’ve never brought another date here. Never. You’re the first.” He sighed. “I came here when I was a kid, with my folks. And Zenko after she was born, for a couple of years but I think she was too young to really remember it. This is, uh…” He cleared his throat. “This is the first time…” God, don’t cry, don’t fucking choke up. “Since…”

“Hey.” Garou’s fingers rubbed the back of his scalp and pulled his face into his stomach. “I got it. It’s okay. I like it. A lot.”

“...yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s the best first date. I thought you were just going to drag me out to something really lame and I was going to have to be like, ‘Nooo, Baaadd, I loooove it…’”

Badd snickered and jabbed Garou in the side of the leg. “Jerk.”

Garou continued on in the mock-patronizing voice as he jumped off the ledge and back to the dock. “‘Oh my gooood...no, you put soooo much effort into it…’”

“Well now if I ever do disappoint ya, I’ll see right through you!”

“Of course you will, because I am so transparent and you are so perceptive.” Garou tugged him toward the ferris wheel. “Come on, I think this is a good time for this one.”

Badd nodded, and when they got to the ramp, there really wasn’t much of a line. They climbed into the next available car together. It was one of the new, fancier ferris wheels, with a compartment that people could sit in facing each other while looking out a window on either side, at the sea or at the glittering city skyline in the near-distance. Slowly, they started the climb, and as Badd watched the crowds below get smaller and smaller, he could feel Garou’s eyes on him.

“So, I’m new to this, but it seems pretty obvious that this is when you’re supposed to kiss on dates, right? That’s a thing isn’t it?”

Badd turned his hand over when cool fingers rubbed his knuckles. “Yeah, I think ya kinda...play it by ear, and when it feels right, ya jus’ go for it.”

Garou leaned close, his smile reflecting the bulbs outside that lined the ride’s spokes. “I think you’re supposed to call the shots though, right?”

“Yeah...I think so.” Badd moved like he was going to close the gap between them, but then put his fingers up to block Garou’s lips. “Wait.”

“...seriously?”

“Trust me.”

It was only about a minute until they rounded the curve and there they were, at the top of the wheel. In the grand scheme of things, it probably wasn’t that high up but...here, it was the highest point, and for them it might as well have been the top of the world. And before Garou could ruin it by saying something dumb or complaining about the hold up, Badd yanked him into the softest, deepest kiss he could give, putting every ounce of himself into it.

They didn’t actually break it until they were almost at the bottom again, and even then they stayed close, gazing into one another’s face.

“You know…” Garou gave him another little peck, smiling through it. “I think I could get into this whole dating thing.”

Badd hummed, and he kept his fingers loosely holding his shirt so he couldn’t get far away from him. “Yeah...kinda figured ya might feel that way.”

#my paperfics #one punch man #batarou #metal bat #badd #garou #so much fluff #fluffy fluff fluff #this was fun to write

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deviljho · 3 years

Text

hs on main but

i’ve been thinking a lot about post retcon vriska and the simply epic vriska vs (vriska) confrontation...

i think that before i actually reread the comic last year, my takeaway of it from hussie’s commentary in the books and just general fan analysis online was that it’s vriska showing her whole ass re: her deep seated self loathing & inability to self actualize and move past her trauma. which is actually a defining aspect of her personality (bc as much as she likes to pretend this isn’t the case it dictates so much of what she does) lmao. in the face of a version of herself, in this case, (vriska), who has done some of the work to unpack her issues and is “happy”, vriska goes sicko mode and vents that frustration on her dead alternate self. but i think it goes even deeper than that and i can’t stop thinking about it so allow me to go off for a bit:

first off i think it’s crazy to claim (vriska) is happy or working past her childhood issues...she’s become more aware of them, sure, which lets be real is HUGE for any vriska lol but her existence as a ghost forces her to experience an inertia which prevents her from actually taking that awareness and doing anything with it. this is especially highlighted in her relationship with meenah, who is too much of a self absorbed enabler to really help her. having given up on their heroic cause, they start dating because, it’s something to do. but it becomes completely stagnant, just like (vriska) herself, because there’s literally nothing there for (vriska) to bounce off of. vriska needs more than just someone to let her talk, and feel heard to grow and change as a person imo, but i do think being given the specific environment to do so obviously has changed her, just not necessarily for “the better”.

contrast this with retcon vriska, who is for all intents and purposes now the “real” vriska (and indeed, vriska herself clings to this idea). brought back from her death by terezi for a variety of reasons, mainly that terezi personally regrets killing her and is in love with her LOL but setting aside my vrisrezi agenda for a moment, terezi’s successful use of her seer of mind powers confirms in-story that bringing her back has strategic merit, and from a meta standpoint, narratively i felt like it really worked to reveal that vriska’s presence was needed to keep the meteor crew from falling apart, not to mention her psychic powers playing an important role in protecting the whole team from jade being possessed. i know some people dislike the retcon, but i love it for this simply epic twist tbh.

anyways...this retcon vriska is someone who canonically obsessed over their plan to defeat lord english for three years and had planned it all out to the last detail, she’s clearly taken the reigns on directing the team overall, and talks multiple times about “not having time for relationships” with the exception of being moirails with terezi which lets be real, is a hard friendzoning of their messy, quadrants-transcending relationship but again i digress...

vriska was brought back with a purpose, To Be The Hero That The Story Needs, and she’s more fixated than ever with completing this task, probably because in the epic story that she larps being a part of in her mind, successfully completing this mission is to empirically prove that she was worth bringing back, despite all the harm she’s done (and pretends not to feel badly about). vriska also desperately wants her suffering to MEAN something. we see this in her pesterlogs with john before she’s about to fight jack noir; she passes off having her lusus as a task “only really strong” children are given. i think this is why seeing (vriska) enrages her; she’s being confronted with the version of herself who she perceived as making the selfish choice to fight jack, who “deserved” to die for doing so, and on top of all that this (vriska) is now just sitting around in paradox spacing doing nothing and proving nothing to anyone?? i think it honestly has a lot less to do with (vriska) and a lot more to do with vriska obsessively reassuring herself that she’s doing the right thing, that she HAS to go through with sacrificing herself in a big epic moment for the good of everyone else because anything short of that means she’s failed at redeeming herself. vriska cannot accept that there is a version of herself who is okay with just “existing”, without deriving meaning and purpose from the abuse she suffered as a child and inflicted on her friends and countless innocent bystanders.

it’s markedly different from, for example, jade’s confrontation with her dead dream self which really is her being forced to look back on a younger version of herself who is (obviously) less experienced and or/traumatized. and i think it’s different from dave & davesprite’s interactions too, the small amount of them we get to see beyond like, ironic jokes. but imo this is bc jade and dave are markedly different from vriska. dave openly rejects the notion of glory and heroism, and avoids it whenever possible. jade is continuously forced to suffer for the sake of the timeline and the narrative, but is shown passively accepting this as simply things that “needed to happen”. personally imo in jade’s case i wanna chalk that up to bad writing on hussie’s part; it kind of sucks that jade never gets to unpack that in homestuck proper.

anyways. tbh the existence of both of those dead alternate selves imo further proves my theory that (vriska) is far from happy; the experience of being a dead alternate self is obviously extremely unsettling and depersonalizing. vriska is terrified of dying; her entire childhood was defined by this terror in a lot of ways and by the end of the session she’s died multiple times, pretty gruesomely. i think her hysterical woman(tm) rant is way more about psyching herself up and her own fears of failure than it is about seeing a supposedly “happy” version of herself. i don’t even think vriska can conceive of such a thing for herself; she has no sense of normalcy or purpose after the session to return to the way john, or like, kanaya has.

also interesting to note here is meenah as a foil for both of them; immediately after this fight meenah ditches (vriska) to join up with vriska after admitting (with some regret) that she’s a bad person. meenah doesn’t struggle at all with the self image issues vriska has, and though she may feel some guilt over ditching (vriska) just like she expressed guilt to john about becoming the condescence in a different timeline because it meant that she would probably end up killing all her friends back when (vriska) was first trying to rally up a ghost army, she ultimately acts in her self interest and doesn’t really lose sleep over it. in fact she will readily admit that she’s being an asshole and still do whatever she wants. contrast this with all of vriska’s grandstanding about not caring that she comes off as annoying and overbearing, and her overcompensation for that in the form of confidently insisting that the others “need” her.

my final comment is that,...coming back to the vrisrezi of it all, it’s obvious from terezi’s final pesterlogs to vriska before [s] terezi: remem8er that there was a ton of stuff left unsaid between them and presumably between vriska and the rest of the meteor crew as well because vriska spent 90% of the time bossing them around, either about their plans for the new session or just in general in what i like to think of as her loving nagging scorpio way lol. terezi clearly feels like she’s alone in “needing” vriska because even their relationship post retcon is strained, and vriska is so wrapped up in making plans and making sure she gets it right this time, and is already planning to die again out in paradox space. and then after all of this, her fate after her big epic moment is left offscreen for us to wonder about. which in and of itself is pretty narratively tragic for a character like vriska. it makes me honestly wonder how much of this they’re going to unpack in hs2 because tbh it’s pretty juicy. i would love to see a huge confrontation between terezi and vriska about vriska’s choices post retcon...and just in general what life post-session would look like for a person like her. through the epilogues and hs^2 we’ve seen what “normal” life has been like for terezi, and she obviously can’t let go of the past (or vriska. AUGH)...so who’s to say what’s in store for them? i wish we lived in a world where we would eventually find out, and we could see them continue to be each other’s foils in unpacking that but i don’t know if i have faith that the writers will explore it in a satisfying way lmao.

anyways that’s all i have, thanks for reading this if you did read it. i love vriska

#vriska meta #thats all this is really....i have more hs thoughts since i finished rereading it in november but tbh this is the condensed core of them #the vriska of it all...#homestuck meta

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lochrannn · 3 years

Link

Warnings: Sexual Content (M Rating)

Characters: Lila Pitts; Diego Hargreeves; Allison Hargreeves; Klaus Hargreeves; Hargreeves Siblings (background)

Relationship: Lila Pitts/Diego Hargreeves

Roommates AU; Fake Marriage; Slow Burn; Mutual Pining; Emotional H/C

Chapter 5/?

They meet at city hall just after midday.

Lila worked a half day shift and Diego had already been out of the flat when she got up. She doesn’t know where he’d gone, but now he’s strolling down the pavement to where she’s waiting for him outside the building with a thick folder under his arm.

“Shit, how many documents did you bring? I thought all they needed was a passport and birth certificate? Did I forget something?” Lila asks hurriedly, already rummaging through her tote bag, half hoping she’ll unearth some missing documents that she accidentally packed in without realising it.

“Huh?” asks Diego as he stops in front of her, “Oh no, I brought some work, I kinda assume we’re going to be in there a while.”

Lila looks up at him in annoyance but the angry complaint about how he didn’t warn her and therefore she didn’t bring anything to keep herself busy dies on her tongue as she realises, she’s never really seen Diego out and about before. But here he is, looking confident and like he belongs, in a way she doesn’t really, with his brown skin, dark hair, mahogany coloured bomber jacket, and black pants all warm and earthy, creating a complete contrast to the gray cityscape and sky.

Taken aback by how quickly her anger melts away, and not quite sure why, Lila just turns towards the steps of the building in a huff of mild embarrassment for how irrational she’s being.

Inside, Diego takes a number and sits down on one of the uncomfortable looking wooden benches at the back of the waiting area, and after giving the space and the smattering of people in it a cursory look, Lila decides that there clearly isn’t a better alternative, so she settles in next to him.

For a little while, she tries not to let the boredom get to her, but it’s quite hard, especially considering that she also doesn’t want to let her mind wander to what she and Diego are about to do. It’s not like Lila’s trying to repress the idea that she’s taking the necessary steps to get married to him very soon, it’s just that she’s very strenuously avoiding actually thinking about it too hard. She’s not too sure why this is the balance she has decided to strike and can apparently live with, but knowing her and Diego will be married, in those words, that’s okay. Thinking about what that entails and what it means, instantly makes her heart rate spike in so many different and indescribable ways, that she’d rather not touch that thought.

So she starts nibbling on her nails. But very quickly she has a niggling memory of her mother chastising her, grabbing her wrist firmly and saying, Stop that, you’ll end up looking like some trailer park hussie!

Irritated she pulls her finger out from between her teeth and folds her hands in her lap and starts bouncing her knee instead.

After a little while she notices that Diego who, she registered out of the corner of her eyes, was leafing through his file, has gone still beside her. She turns to look at what's up and is startled by the way he’s watching her intently. For a moment his eyes bore into hers and they are so close that shadows of memories of Diego leaning in to kiss her lips, her neck, and all the way down her body right after looking at her like that play out before her mind's eye, but then he says something and Lila feels completely foolish when she has to say, “Sorry?” in a small voice to get him to repeat what he said.

“I asked if you’re nervous,” Diego says in a very gentle voice, one, she presumes, he would probably use if he were dealing with a skittish animal.

Lila feels like this situation can’t get any worse, but just as she’s pulled herself together and is about to scoff at him, Diego goes on in a very serious tone, “Lila, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to! And if you’re worried about taking back the money, don’t be! I’m not cashing that cheque till you get your visa, okay? You don’t owe me anything.”

This is just too much, so Lila shakes her head, mostly so she can close her eyes and doesn’t have to look at how sincere he’s being, or at the deep, brown softness of his eyes, and says, “I’m not nervous, Diego, I’m just fucking bored!”

“Oh… uh… right,” Diego answers a bit sheepishly and now Lila feels guilty for apparently making him feel awkward. So again she’s just about to speak, tell him, she appreciates his concern all the same, when Diego gets there faster than her once more and flips open his file again while saying, “Uh... if you want... but you really don’t have to, just it might keep you occupied—” he cuts himself off when she levels a raised eyebrow at him, expectantly, “You can help me look through these files,” he finally finishes, holding roughly half the stack of papers that he was going through out to her.

They are searching for a name. It’s barely any less boring than sitting around doing nothing. It’s just a seemingly endless list of unalphabetised names with addresses, a copy of a magazine subscriber list from the 60s. Diego’s apparently helping some genealogist with a project and though he agrees with her that it’s a bit tedious, he also argues that he is apparently being paid very good money.

For a long while they just sit in bored, if oddly comfortable silence, while searching through the names until Lila breaks the stillness, “I got him!”

She’s weirdly excited as she leans over to Diego with her page, finger just under the name Carl Cooper written in slightly faded typewriter letters.

“Show me?” Diego says reaching for the page but not pulling it out of Lila’s grip, they’re hands brushing as he tries to take a closer look at the corresponding address and Lila is suddenly very aware of the warmth radiating off of his body as he leans in so very close to her. She thinks she can even smell his soap.

“That’s our guy!” Diego says delightedly, picking up the biro he’d clipped to his folder and circling the name before taking the piece of paper gently out of her hand and smiling at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling distractingly. “Thanks!” he says with genuine gratitude.

“Yeah, whatever,” Lila grumbles, but she’s not able to hide the smile in her own voice, so to gloss over it, she asks instead, “Is your work always this boring?”

She almost regrets asking him instantly, because only the other night she got to see what it’s like when it’s less boring, but Diego leans his head back against the wall and his expression turns contemplative.

“Well, no… I mean, I guess, some parts are this boring. A lot of looking through files or going on stakeouts in my car. This one, yeah, this was tedious, but usually this kind of work is all part of the bigger puzzle I’m trying to solve. And then, when I get to find the people I’m looking for, it makes it all worth it, you know? Sometimes that’s loved ones who got separated somehow. Totally worth a couple of hours slogging through some files.”

He’s looking down at her, head still tilted against the wall behind them and Lila finds she can’t look away but also hasn’t got anything to say about what he’s telling her. She never took any interest in what a detective does, wasn’t even really ever into cop or detective shows, but somehow, the way Diego tells it, it’s quite fascinating.

“I’ve got a knack for finding asshole dads who are trying to get out of paying alimony as well. Definitely less noble work, but also necessary, if you ask me. And those often end up being the least boring of my cases,” Diego goes on and Lila wonders whether he’s just trying to keep her entertained now that they have no more files to search through. “ ‘s how I got this,” he says, pointing a finger up towards the scar in his eyebrow.

“Oh yeah?” Lila asks, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible about it.

She’s been massively intrigued by all of his scars, but at no point has she felt in a position to ask. Afterall, what if there’s a really traumatic story behind them. But he has a bunch of them. There’s the one in his brow and another behind his left ear. One on the top of his left arm, and one more on his right hip. Lila quickly stops thinking about that one and why she could trace it exactly on a piece of paper if she were given something to draw with, and also doesn’t think too hard about the long scar that reaches from his cheek all the way along the side of his head above his ear. Lila is genuinely a bit wary of what the story might be behind that one.

But she quickly draws her thoughts back to the present and the fact that Diego seems happy to tell her about the scar in his brow and so she asks, “What happened?”

“Asshole father who didn’t want to pay his alimony,” Diego offers with a light chuckle and a shrug, “Fucker faked his own death and then when I found him, I’d barely said a word before he smashed a bottle in my face. Apparently I was lucky I didn’t lose an eye.”

Lila hisses in sympathy at the image.

“Guess we’ll have to talk a bit more about shit like that before our interview with immigration,” Diego says casually and Lila looks at him quizzically as she’s not quite sure what he’s talking about. “Interview?” she asks.

“Yeah, we’ll have to do an interview to prove that this is not just a sham wedding,” he starts explaining, brows drawn together, then his eyes drift off to the side, “Lila, did you not know that they’re gonna want to see proof we’re, like, actually married? … Shit! Our numbers up! Come on, let's go!”

Diego touches her elbow gently and Lila follows him in a bit of a daze, not to one of the windows that are situated all along the long hall that they walk down, but to a small office that they are ushered into by an equally small man, who asks them to sit in the two chairs opposite his desk.

The next fifteen minutes during which they go through all of the proceedings of applying for a marriage license do nothing to settle her nerves, because again she’s getting to see another completely new side to Diego. She guesses this is what he’s like when he’s really on the job and considering how good he is, she misses half a minute of conversation wondering why his business is failing.

He’s commanding, not letting anything slide, but he’s endlessly cool and charming all the same. And for a second Lila is concerned it’s just the fact that she’s slept with him and maybe in this moment would like to sleep with him again that’s making her see him in this way, but she notices that the clerk they’re dealing with seems at least as flustered and is hanging off every word Diego says as much as Lila.

At one point she almost jumps when he confidently takes her hand out of her lap, laces their fingers together, and says, “We were planning on getting married next year but circumstances have changed and my girlfriend can’t continue her degree, so now her visa’s running out and we discussed it and decided to pull the wedding forward, we didn’t want to end up getting separated by this!”

The clerk nods understandingly and Lila could kick herself for not having put even a fraction of the amount of thought into their plan as Diego seems to have. It’s brilliant. This explanation for why they need a license now is believable but also contains enough of the truth that they have very little to prove at this point, except for the fact that they are, indeed, in a relationship.

At that thought, Lila’s heart skips a beat and her focus zeros in on their joined hands for a moment.

When they are walking down the steps after all the application forms have been sorted, Diego offers to give her a lift home, but Lila makes up an engagement with a friend on the spot and quickly heads away in the direction of the bus stop. She needs some time to clear her head after that whole experience.

Diego gets into his car, lets out a very long breath, and then tips forward, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel in frustrated exhaustion.

How can hanging out with one person be both something that is so enjoyable and so painful at the same time?

Lila was fun and sparkly as ever, but she also helped him out, took an interest in his job. And even if that was mostly out of politeness, she asked all the right questions and listened so attentively. And, god, her beautiful, lively face is so distracting, he hardly knew where to look.

Diego’s certain now that he is royally screwed. He’s done a lot of dumb shit in his life, but this takes the cake. Spending time with Lila is so fucking close to the real deal and within the next couple of weeks they will be married, and he thinks, maybe a bit overdramatically, this’ll probably be the death of him.

He sits back up straight, turns the key in the ignition, and moves his car into traffic.

But he can’t back out now, they’ve actually put their plan in motion, and Lila is relying on him to get it together, so the very last thing he wants to do is let her down. Even if it kills him, he mentally adds with a wry smile.

#otp: just be gentle #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #dielila #diego x lila #diego/lila #tua #the umbrella academy #fanfic #ongoing fic

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jj-lynn21 · 4 years

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How A Girl Must Live Ch 4

Ch. 4: Dating

Ch1: A place for singles , Ch 2: Popular Ch 3: opening up Ch 5: Family Ch 6 Violence begets Violence Ch 7 Love Birds

taging: @super-pink-a-palouza @luciferreads @glasglowgrin @loomiz @princessloveme123 @hornyhetero @taintedglass @bohemian-brian @maryan028 , @scxrsgxrd, lizziejorgie, @waywardtigersandwich

Warnings: attempted rape, other angst,smoking, mentions of drinking, fluff

“Good luck finding a date after getting the most sought-after boy thrown out.” Missy snidely threw at Samantha as she was leaving with her escort for dinner. “Unless you are actually dating the creepy, crazy, poor, maintenance guy.”

Samantha was flabbergasted by the statement. There was one more month on dating etiquette and how to be a lady and wife. It was all trying to brain wash young ladies into not thinking for themselves. Bowing to whatever their husband desired whenever he desired it.

Willard made her feel special. He made her feel like her opinions meant something. He was a gentleman already without needing taught how. It didn’t mean a thing he didn’t have a trust fund to set them up for life. And the only thing he had ever taken from her was her heart. She was still in a little denial of that.

When he took her into town for the afternoon it was one of the best times she ever had in her life. They strolled along the sidewalk hand in hand. She adored a lot of the pretty dresses in the window.

He told her that eventual he would like to make enough money to buy her all the dresses she wanted and the house she always dreamed of having. She especially enjoyed sharing a soda with him at the ice cream shop.

A half an hour after dinner had started for those with escorts, Samantha decided to escort herself to the dining room. As she grasped the doorknob there was a knock. When she opened it, she threw herself around him practically in tears.

“There, there sweetheart,” Willard stroked her hair gently. “I was worried when I didn’t see you at dinner. Did your date flake out on you?”

She looked up eyes puffy, “They all hate me because that awful boy. He had money to whisk a girl away for her to live like a Princess. That is all they cared about. They don’t care how he acted towards me. They only care about his station. I don’t care about any of that. I just care about you.”

He talked softly, “I care about ya to. I wanted ya to get the most out of this place. I didn’t know they were treatin’ ya bad. If ya want, we will leave tomorra. Don’t even tell anyone. We will drive to your parents. I’ll tell ‘em what happened here. I wanna to ask your father permission to date you proper. Then I wanna pick ya up proper at your house for a date.”

“Really, Willard?” She started to beam at him forgetting her sadness for the moment.

“Yes, Ma’am.” He smiled back lighting up her soul. “Now let me sneak ya down to the kitchen. Your roommates will probably be back from dinner soon. I’ll getcha some real food. Maybe there’s a couple of them steaks left I can get Miss Jenna to cook up for us with some taters. Pack your bags when the others fall asleep. I’ll come getcha when they go to breakfast.”

She did not care about his station in life. She might be...maybe she could be...she was falling in love for the first time in her life. She held her head high as the others passed them in the hall staring. She held Willard’s hand proudly.

The chef’s helper was just cleaning up as they walked in the kitchen. She looked up puzzled to see anyone in the kitchen after dinner.

“Good evening Mrs. Jenna.” Willard smiled. “Miss Samantha slept right through dinner tonight. Are there any leftovers we could have?”

Mrs. Jenna smiled. “I think there are a few steaks and salads left. Sorry there are no potatoes. But I have some peach pie for dessert. It was for the staff so none of the other students had any.”

“That is mighty kind of you Mrs. Jenna.” Willard found some chairs pulling them up to the counter.

Mrs. Jenna wiped down a few more things before turning to the couple. “Do you mind cleaning up after yourselves? My husband is probably waiting outside for me. I must go make dinner for him next. I think the poor man would starve without me.” She giggled like a schoolgirl.

“No problem Mrs. Jenna.” Samantha said after patting her mouth with a napkin delicately. “Thank you for throwing this together for us.”

“Anything to promote true love.” Mrs. Jenna rushed out the door.

Samantha blushed as she took a small bite of steak. They both ate quietly for a few minutes. It was a comfortable silence.

“I can do up the dishes if you clean off the table?” Samantha suggested before she took her last bite.

She hadn’t looked up so didn’t notice he had finished before her just admiring how she look under the dim light above them. “I can do that and dry the dishes for ya. Anything high I can put away or pick you up to do. It is always up to the lady in charge of the kitchen in my opinion. In this instance that’s you.”

She laughed. “Is that just an excuse to sweep me off my feet Willard?” She picked up his pie plate, main plate and empty water glass to wash them.

It was Willard's turn to blush as he grabbed a wet rag from by the sink to wash off the table. “It is not only that.” he murmured.”

“What was that?” She grabbed a soapy sponge to start cleaning the things they use.

He walked over beside her to exchange his damp cloth for a dry one. “I’ll dry these up quick. I’m good at it I reckon. Better than washin’ for sure.”

“Well, I’m good at the washing so we make a good team.” She handed him a dish to dry. He just put it on the top shelf after drying it.

Willard walked her back to her room. He rubbed is neck a little nervously as they stood by the door. “You still think you are up to introducing me to your Mother and father.”

“I sure am.” she beamed. “As soon as I know all the girls are asleep, I will pack my things quietly. I don’t think they would care much if I left anyway. Good night Mr. Willard Russel.” She leaned up on her toes to kiss his cheek before scurrying off inside the room.

“Night Miss Samantha.” He realized he had not asked her last name yet. It was something he could ask tomorrow. He wanted to greet her Mother and Father proper so her Father would give him permission to date her and possibly marry his daughter someday.

The next morning Samantha pretended to be asleep as her roommates got ready for their breakfast dates. They still whispered about her affair with Mr. Russel. How they thought she was being promiscuous with him. They were such vile girls.

When their escorts had picked them up Samantha sprung out of bed to get ready for her adventure with Willard. She was nervous since she had never gone away with any man in a car other than her Father. But anything was less scary than staying at the resort with people that thought she was trash.

As she finished putting the finishing touches on her light make-up routine there was a knock on the door. Her heart leaped. She opened the door and all the excitement drained from her replaced by apprehension.

“Mr. Preston?” She put her hands on her hips angrily. “What are you doing here.”

Mr. Preston was best friends with Mr. Goodland in and out of the resort. Him, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Jonas had been taking turns with escorting and going on dates with her roommates.

“My roommates have already been escorted to breakfast.” She started to close the door.

Mr. Preston kept it open with his hand. “I know that Miss Samantha.” He grinned lecherously as he walked in the room grabbing her upper arms pushing her back on to the bed.

“This is not how a gentleman acts, Mr. Preston.” She managed to free her hand to smack him hard in the face.

His head bobbed back. A distinctive hand print marked him. “Oh, you like it rough. I have never had sex with a wild girl.” He pinned her arms above her head with one hand as he undid his dress pants with the other. “You give Mr. Russel a piece, you should have no problem with me taking you. Stop squirming.” He slaps her and tries to pull her panties off under her puffy dress.

Suddenly he is yanked off the bed with a stronger force than he had ever felt. Samantha slithered off the bed to the far wall. She was shaking. Her knees bent to her chest. Preston was glaring once he stood.

“You will not treat women with disrespect if I have anything to do with it.” Willard Russel was breathing heavily. He was holding back what he really wanted to do to the boy since Samantha was there.

“You and your little hussy will be thrown out of this place.” Preston screamed as he ran out the door knowing he could never beat Willard in a fight.

Mr. Russel knelt in front of Samantha with his hand extended. “Samantha, I’m sorry about all that violence. Will you still come with me? Just forget this place completely. Mr. Jones already knows we are leavin’.”

Samantha’s eyes lifted to his slowly. “We need to leave.” Her voice was meek and shaky.

He helps her to her feet. She wraps her arms around his neck as tears flood her eyes. He picks her. Grabbed her suitcase. And heads out the door to his car. He puts her in the front seat and her suitcase in the back seat before getting in to drive away from the resort.

“You pay no mind to what Mr. Preston said, Sam.” He popped a cigarette in the left corners of his mouth and lit it. “I already told them we we leavin’.”

Samantha wrapped the scarf from her neck around her hair so her hair wouldn’t go wild in the convertible. “Can, can I have a cigarette Mr. Russel, Willard?” She asked shakily. “It might help me calm down.”

“It sure it will little lady.” He took the pack out of his pocket to offer her one. He lit it politely. “I think it was horse shit they only let the men and boys smoke and drink around here.” He started driving away from the resort. “I was wondering if any of you partook in such things.”

“My roommates were finding places the smoke.” She took a long drag sitting back enjoying the way the wind whipped around them. “I chose to follow the rules but damn I missed it.” Her free hand shot up to her lips. “I am sorry, Willard.”

“Sorry for what, little lady?” He kept his eyes on the road as he puffed on cigarette hanging between his lips.

“That I swore.” She blushed.

Willard chuckled. “Nothin’ wrong with it in my book. Just don’t take the Lords name in vein around my Mamma.”

“You want me to meet your Mother?” Surprise was evident in her tone.

“I sure do Sam.” He smiled. “So, you just enjoy the smokin’ and swearin’. Ya do some drinkin’?

“I don’t exactly enjoy swearing.” She giggled. “I had some White Bordeaux at my cousin’s wedding I liked. I wouldn’t turn down other drinks to try if you offered, I suppose.”

“Good to know.” He took a last puff of his cigarette. Put the bud out on the staring wheel and flicked it out on to the road. “How about we stop to have one of those ice cream sodas you enjoy sharin’ with some burgers and fries. We should be going through that New York City by lunch time. They should have a good soda shop.”

“I would love that.” She squealed. “Finally, some real food.”

#au #willard russel #the devil all the time #willard and samantha #fanfic #fan fiction #fantasy #romance #love #slow burn #1050s #original story

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homespork-review · 4 years

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HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 3

TW: """funny""" sexual and physical assault of a child by another child, extreme bullying, extreme ableism, a very brief discussion of shipping characters outside their canon sexuality.

CHEL: We get some implications of the part of troll culture we ended on last time when a slightly baffled-looking Nepeta, watching through the viewport, updates her SHIPPING WALL. Instead of hearts, some of the hypothetical pairings she’s painted are marked with diamonds. What this means will be explained shortly.

I can’t help but feel it’s slightly creepy to hypothetically matchmake your own friends, but I’m pretty sure the other trolls know at least that the shipping wall exists if not exactly which ships they’re in, and they do live in a society in which it’s stated later that mating is mandatory, so it would indeed be helpful to have at least emergency-doable matchmaking done well in advance and they might appreciate the help.

I’d like to take a moment to note a ship at the bottom row, left of centre; GA/Tavros. Hussie, on his Formspring, later said that GA was “obviously” a lesbian, or anyway was only interested in women, which doesn’t have a specific term for it in troll culture. It’s actually hard to tell going by what’s shown in canon, because she only displays specific interest in girls except for in a complicated case we’ll discuss later, but trolls are supposed to be bi-normative, plus it’s not like the male selection here is particularly inspiring, so, yeah, the evidence we actually see isn't conclusively "obvious". The fandom, knowing this, systematically harass anyone who even muses vaguely about the possibility of shipping her with a boy, even if they don't know about that Word of God. This is why I’m wondering whether the trolls knew about the shipping wall, because if they did, we can presume GA didn’t care. For the record, I’m sex-repulsed ace and have in fact written about.my own imaginary persona fucking (admittedly fucking an opposite sex clone of herself, it was a complicated injoke) and my reaction to someone else writing it would depend on context and reason, so I can imagine her reacting similarly, but not everyone would. A similar thing with a canonically gay male character explicitly on-screen not caring about hypothetical shipping of himself with girls comes up much later; he’s not a troll, but his upbringing was troll-influenced (long story).

BRIGHT: Harassing people over the ships they make content for always baffles me. It’s not like fanart/fanfic for a ship which contradicts canon has any effect on the canon, and playing around with character dynamics (often in a pornographic manner) is a major part of fanfic.

CHEL: On top of all this, gender and sexuality are really shaky concepts to even try to apply to a species which reproduces hermaphroditically. On this side of the fourth wall it’s obviously because Hussie is a not-very-reflective cisgender heterosexual man, and didn’t think about it any further than “girls wear skirts, right?” Plenty of people fanwank up possibilities for how it could happen on the other side. I think we may have to make a “What The Fuck Is Alternian Biology And Sociology” post or two separate from the sporking at the very end.

Discourse discussion over! Next page, we see some of the relevant terminology used in troll culture, though we still don’t get any explanation of what any of the words actually mean, which is a tad annoying for new readers. The context is a discussion between Karkat and Vriska about getting her into the game.

BRIGHT: Specifically, Karkat wants Vriska to get Tavros into the game, leading to this exchange…

CG: WHY DO YOU EVEN HATE HIM, IT'S FUCKING RIDICULOUS. CG: IF ANYTHING YOU SHOULD PITY HIM. CG: ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU WERE THE ONE WHO PARALYZED HIM. AG: I know. I don't really understand it. AG: It's just a really special kind of h8! It never goes away and it doesn't make a lot of sense. CG: THIS IS KIND OF A WEIRD TIME TO BE CONFIDING IN ME ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS OF BLACK ROMANCE BUT OK. AG: Oh god, what? CG: I MEAN IF YOU'RE REALLY IMPLYING TAVROS IS YOUR KISMESIS I THINK YOU'RE BRAYING UP THE WRONG FROND NUB. CG: BOTH PARTIES HAVE TO HATE EACH OTHER EQUALLY, I MEAN LIKE TRUE HATE. CG: MAYBE YOUR FEELINGS COME SOMEWHAT CLOSE TO FITTING THE BILL BUT I DON'T THINK HE CAN HATE ANYONE, IT'S WEIRD, HE'S KIND OF BROKEN IN THE HEAD.

Finally, our long-awaited introduction to troll romance!

And the introduction is an effective one. We now know that there’s something called ‘black romance’, that it concerns hate, and that one’s black-romantic partner is a ‘kismesis’. The conversation also flows naturally and fits the characters having it, rather than being an awkward as-you-know infodump, although brace yourselves, there’s one of those coming up. Thirteen is about right for kids starting to have romantic feelings and being confused about it, not wanting to talk about it is pretty normal, and Karkat lecturing people at a good opportunity is absolutely in character.

Karkat goes on to lecture Vriska about the emotions involved in different sorts of romantic relationships, and wow, it really says a lot about troll culture…

CG: OK, MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T HAD THEIR LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED ARE CAPABLE OF FEELING THE TWO PRIMARY EMOTIONS, HATE AND PITY. CG: PITY IS OF COURSE JUST THE TONED DOWN VERSION OF THE CENTRAL EMOTION, HATE. CG: AND ALL THE NUANCES OF PITY MANIFEST AS VARIOUS OTHER KINDS OF FEELINGS LIKE WHATEVER CHEMICAL REACTIONS TRIGGER MATING FONDNESS OR THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT ARE BEHIND MOIRALLEGIANCE.

CHEL: It’s never really clear if this is just Karkat’s idea of it or if this is how trolls actually work biologically. Trolls do use the word “love” later on, so I always interpreted it as “pity” being a euphemistic term because “love” in such a warlike and oppressive culture could be exploited as a weakness. Fandom has played it with their love actually being based on a weird form of sympathy/seeing the other as needing protection, which is also plausible.

FAILURE ARTIST: I have played with the pity thing before but in retrospect Karkat is the only one who seems to see it that way. Maybe this is all his fake deep teenager view of romance.

BRIGHT: Vriska makes a performance of how bored she is, but Karkat’s on a roll.

CG: A WELL BALANCED PERSON IS IS GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN HATE AND THE VARIOUS PITY HUMORS. CG: HAVING A GOOD BALANCE KEEPS ALL THE EMOTIONS SHARPER, SEE I THINK THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM. AG: Oh???????? AG: I hope you know I already wore out some good note-taking pens today. All the pens. AG: All of them. CG: SEE, MY HATE IS LIKE A FINELY TUNED INSTRUMENT BECAUSE I'M AWARE OF THESE PRINCIPLES. CG: I COULD HATE A HOLE IN PARADOX SPACE ITSELF, STRAIGHT THROUGH TO A NEW REALITY FRESH FOR THE HATING. AG: Hahahahahahahaha, you don't even know how much I'm laughing at this. CG: BUT SEE, YOU'RE TOO HEAVY ON THE HATE SIDE, OR AT LEAST YOU PRETEND TO BE WHICH IS MAYBE WORSE. AG: You aren't reading anything I say are you? You just want to talk and talk and talk. CG: AND YOU THINK YOU'RE HATING UP EVERYONE HARD WHEN YOU'RE REALLY JUST BURNING OUT THAT ENTIRE EMOTIONAL HEMISPHERE. CG: IT'S LIKE LUKEWARM HATE. PRETENDER'S HATE, WITH NO COUNTERPOINT AT ALL. CG: AS SUCH THERE'S NO REAL SUBSTANCE TO YOUR HATE, IT'S LIKE A CARDBOARD MOVIE PROP. CG: WHICH IS WHY YOUR BRAIN IS BROKEN, KIND OF LIKE TAVROS'S BUT ON THE OPPOSITE HEMISPHERE I GUESS. CG: OR MAYBE YOUR BROKEN BRAIN LED TO THE IMBALANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE, I DON'T KNOW. CG: WHATEVER THE CASE IS, YOU'RE KIND OF EMOTIONALLY SCREWED, SORRY TO SAY. CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION. CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU. CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA! CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU. CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED. CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.

Whew.

So now we have ‘kismesis’, ‘moirail’, and ‘matesprit’ as terms for romantic partners, as well as the concepts of black romance, red romance, and ‘moirallegiance’ as the relationship one has with a moirail. Troll romance is not going to get any less confusing for a while.

If Karkat’s grasp of psychology strikes you as amateurish, there’s a reason for that: He gets all his knowledge from romance movies.

AG: Hey asshole, stop watching movies for girls.

I think that’s another strike against the ‘girls are the dangerous ones on Alternia’ argument. Romance movies, per this exchange, are both female-coded and seen as inferior -- Karkat defends his viewing choices by saying they’re INTRIGUING SOCIOLOGICALLY, but Vriska isn’t buying it.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 42 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 33

CHEL: I’m not sure an interest in the workings of romance should be a socially gendered thing in a society where, as it turns out, you have to have an acceptable romantic partner by a certain time or die. You’d think most kids would be trying as hard as they could to learn and put into practice everything they could about it, and you’d also think there’d be better information for them than romcoms.

BRIGHT: Has the mate-or-die part come up yet? I’m not sure when Hussie thought of it.

CHEL: I don’t know if he’d thought of it yet, but it does come up very soon.

BRIGHT: Karkat then moves on to the original reason he contacted Vriska -- he needs her and her mind powers in the game, because he’s just run into a double agent called Jack.

Over on the next panel, Karkat is still talking to Vriska, but he’s glancing back over his shoulder at Jack Noir. His hand is covered in blood, which keeps cycling through a range of colours. The blood, it transpires, is because Jack stabbed him. Karkat is amazingly calm about this.

CG: HE'S COOL, IT'S FINE I DON'T REALLY MIND THE STABBING, IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING. CG: WELL OK I'M PRETTY SURE HE MEANT TO STAB ME. CG: BUT I KIND OF THINK THAT'S LIKE CG: THE WAY HE GREETS PEOPLE? AG: This game is so stupid. CG: IN ANY CASE I THINK HE'S PROBABLY ALL STABBED OUT.

This would be ridiculously chill even from someone who isn’t extremely cagey about his blood colour -- and it’s not that Karkat suddenly doesn’t care any more, because as soon as Vriska says she’ll ask Terezi or Jack what colour he’s bleeding, he tells her that he’s out of Terezi’s range, Jack is sworn to secrecy, and Sollux (who’s incommunicado) is the only one who knows how to make Trollian’s viewport feature work. (Given we saw how easy it is to use earlier, I’m surprised Vriska doesn’t try to figure it out herself.)

Over on the next panel, the viewer is now Jack, a few minutes prior to this conversation. Contrary to Karkat’s protestations, Jack stabs him because He's got a pretty sharp tongue and can't seem to keep it sheathed. He is curious when Karkat cares less about the wound and more about Jack seeing his blood colour, which is apparently some freakish mutation. Jack looks at his knife…

CHEL: While it’s not a realistic depiction of the colour, recall that this is the shade of red used in-comic to depict human blood. This reveal probably isn’t a surprise to anyone by now, if you’ve encountered fanart, and honestly it wasn’t a huge mindblowing revelation on my first read before I knew, but I do think it’s a clever little “aha, THAT’S why!” moment. Skilfully done.

It seems he's the only one of his kind with this mutant candy-red blood. An outcast. He thinks he was put on this planet covered in an ocean of his own blood to be taunted. Punished for something. Saddest story you ever heard. Got to do something to shut him up.

BRIGHT: Awww. That’s kind of sweet.

This little interchange gave rise to the ‘Stabdads’ fandom phenomenon, where Spades Slick is envisaged as Karkat’s father-figure. In Homestuck canon, it’s dubious how much affection Slick has for Karkat. He seems more irritated by him than anything else, but that’s about on par for how he treats the rest of the Midnight Crew. On the other hand, it clearly makes a massive impact on Karkat. We’ve seen how important blood colour is on Alternia and how insecure he is about his own; his sudden rush of fellow-feeling towards Jack is understandable, even if it does make him way too forgiving about having been stabbed.

CHEL: Karkat and Jack shake hands, and proceed to be in cahoots. Cahoooooooots. Doodling on the defaced parking ticket from earlier, they draft OPERATION REGISURP.

Your whole team executes the plan along the course of its journey, employing espionage, mind control tactics, political sabotage, vicious interrogations and cold blooded assassinations. Everyone does their part and you begin to learn the true meaning of teamwork, as well as this troll disease called friendship.

Yeah, it actually happening is skipped over with one paragraph, but that’s probably a good thing with all the complexity already going on, and we do hear more details about it. First, we’re reminded of the existence and functions of the Queens’ Rings, the magic rings the queens of Derse and Prospit have which give them traits and powers from whatever the players put in their sprites. The trolls have put their lusii in their sprites, except for Aradia, whose lusus died long ago, so she got in the sprite herself. The Queen could put up with getting bits and pieces from eleven hideous monsters (well, ten hideous monsters and one adowable little fairybull thing oh my gosh it’s cuuuute) tacked onto her, but what she absolutely won’t stand for is the other thing Aradia put in her sprite…

She could not stand bearing the visage of the most loathsome creature known to existence. So vile is its appearance, so contemptible its purpose, all depictions of the creature let alone members of its population are permanently banned from any jurisdiction in the reach of her agents. Those of its kind go by many names, and so does the reviled patron god they herald - THE GREAT DETESTATION, KING PONDSQUATTER, SPEAKER OF THE VAST JOKE, or most commonly, BILIOUS SLICK.

Recall that AR thought of the hieroglyphs in the Frog Temple as “illegal pictography”. We’ll find out later why the Black Queen has such a revulsion for frogs, it’s important. But the important part right now is that she took the ring off. At the time of planning it’s in the ROYAL VAULT.

We briefly see a moment in the future of the Black Queen wrapped in rags, just like the human sessions’ White Queen, wandering the desert as the BANISHED QUASIROYAL, and the caption notes the plan was a success.

However, Doc Scratch appears in the desert in front of her, and it’s noted she was given a new purpose. This, it seems, is the origin of Snowman.

FAILURE ARTIST: I would like if there was some canon Homestuck material expanding on this REGISURP plot.

BRIGHT: Same! It sounds really interesting. One example of Homestuck’s idiosyncratic pacing, I suppose -- we spend pages and pages on trivial alchimeter nonsense, but skip over something more meaty.

CHEL: The Red Team work on that, while the Blue Team battle their own session… or so they think. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve all already figured it out, but the trolls hadn’t just yet. They note that their prototypes are affecting the opposite team’s underlings, and the readers are shown Alternia’s two Frog Temples, one near Aradia’s home and the other near Kanaya’s, each with six pillars outside (one seems to have five, but the sixth is hidden behind the building). Superimposed on each other, the pillars make a full ring of twelve.

The truth was it had always been the same session all along. That your teams were not competing, but cooperating toward a common goal. In the more drawn out form of this adventure's narrative, figuring this out would have been a huge deal. We would have been completely blown away by this stunning revelation. Wow. Same session all along. Really? Huh.

This is what Aradia’s been so mysterious about. She knew. We’re provided with a handy diagram, in case we haven’t been able to keep up.

After watching the phrases MOBIUS DOUBLE and REACH AROUND toggle for a few minutes while in a sort of stupor, you finally snap out of it.

(I just noticed, the Blue Team are the Derse dreamers and the Red Team are the Prospit dreamers. Neat!)

The reader’s attention is drawn instead to the Aquarius and Pisces symbols in the top left, belonging to characters we haven’t met yet, and the narration promises we’ll learn about them soon. Drawing attention again to GA’s Virgo symbol, the narration muses about her.

It will probably be quite some time before you get to be her. It could very well be pages and pages and pages.

Naturally, we jump right back to her.

GA’s intro is long, so we’ll take it piece by piece.

Your name is KANAYA MARYAM.

The Sanskrit name for Virgo is “Kanya”, and it’s also the name of a town in Japan. “Maryam” is the Arabic version of “Mary”, as in Jesus’ mother. It may also be a reference to Marya Zaleska, the title character of the movie “Dracula’s Daughter”.

You are one of the few of your kind who can withstand the BLISTERING ALTERNIAN SUN, and perhaps the only who enjoys the feel of its rays. As such, you are one of the few of your kind who has taken a shining to LANDSCAPING. You have cultivated a lush oasis around your hive, and in particular, you have honed your craft through the art of TOPIARY, sculpting your trees to match the PUFFY ORACLES from your dreams. You have embraced the tool of this trade, which conveniently is the weapon of choice for those who would hunt the HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD which crawl from the sand at sunrise to feast on the light and the living.

Couple things established here; trolls are not only nocturnal but actively harmed by their planet’s sun, and undead beings other than ghosts exist. Said traditional weapon for hunting them is a chainsaw, which we can see lying against her bookshelf, a reference to the Evil Dead movies.

It would be convenient if you actually hunted them, but it is of course far too dangerous, every bit as suicidal as attempting to poach the terrible MUSCLEBEASTS who roam at night. So you indulge in your bright fascination with the grim through literature. Just before the sun goes down and you join your flora in rest, you immerse yourself in tales of RAINBOW DRINKERS and SHADOW DROPPERS and FORBIDDEN PASSION.

Rainbow drinkers are, as discussed later on, troll vampires. I don’t think shadow droppers are ever expanded on, but they might be zombies or werebeasts. Troll goths, apparently, are the reverse of human goths, dressing in bright colours and staying up in the daytime, which makes sense for a species who can only safely go out at night.

You are one of the few of your kind with JADE GREEN BLOOD. As such you are one of the few who could be selected and raised by a VIRGIN MOTHER GRUB, an event so rare as to elude documented precedent. She would defend you from desert threats, and though her life would be short, in time you would assure her of progeny.

Recall that the Mother Grub is required for troll reproduction.

You are a SEAMSTRESS or a RAGRIPPER or a TREETRIMMER or a LUMBERJACK, whichever you care to be, and your unique hive is equipped with a great supply of advanced technology to accommodate your interests. The technology and indeed the hive itself were all recovered from the ruins nearby when you were very young. The seed of your hive was deployed on the volcanic rocks beneath the sand with the assistance of your lusus and her remarkable burrowing skills, and you have lived there happily together since. You know the ruins and the hive and everything here that is not sand and rock originated from the world of your dreams. You also know that one day you will visit this world while you are awake. That day is today.

Like Jade, Kanaya has been awake on Prospit for years, and the technology in question is Skaian in origin, so that’s how she knows what’s going on with the game.

Kanaya is prompted to equip her chainsaw, which promptly turns into a lipstick in a Problem Sleuth reference. Like Jade, she has a Wardrobifier, set to randomise, which suddenly turns her black shirt and red skirt into a red leaf-print dress. She takes out the lipstick.

You can choose between your trademark jade or black. Even though a troll's lips are naturally black. But they can always be blacker, and a lady with a true sense of style knows this.

She goes with green, her dress turns into a blue kimono, and she’s messaged by someone with a fuschia Pisces symbol. This person, named cuttlefishCuller, turns out to be rather excitable, greeting her in all caps and following it up with Glub glub glub glub glub!

BRIGHT: This conversation is pretty sweet, with some friendly joking about CC’s quirk (they stick hyphens in front of their capital Es) and mention of their Collapsing And Expanding Bladder Based Aquatic Vascular System. There’s another mention of moirails, with CC saying they’ll have to join the game late to keep an eye on theirs.

It also turns out both CC and Kanaya are having some premonitions of what’s to come! Kanaya is seeing visions in the clouds of Skaia, the same way Jade does, but CC hears whispers from a mysterious ‘she’ who needs her voice keeping down. It’s implied to be CC’s lusus, as both Kanaya and CC are aware their lusii are going to die soon.

Kanaya hopes to be with her lusus as she dies, but looks out of the window to find the Virgin Mother Grub has already passed away, apparently of natural causes.

CHEL: The Mother Grub was seen briefly before; it’s a moth-like creature with a huge fat body the size of a bus, with wings too small to ever lift it, horns the same shape as Kanaya’s, and a skull-like head with big lips. The skull on Terezi’s Doomsday Scale was, we can tell now, a Mother Grub, except quite a lot bigger - presumably a breeding Grub.

BRIGHT: Kanaya changes back into her original outfit, and goes down to live up to her end of the bargain… which entails slicing a hole in her lusus with her chainsaw and pulling out a round object covered in spikes the colour of trolls’ horns, called a Matriorb. Kanaya stores it in her sylladex; she’s using a CHASTITY MODUS, which locks each card away, and the key will serendipitously be discovered when it’s time for the card to be unlocked. These modii are getting more and more esoteric.

Kanaya proceeds to have a conversation with her own moirail, Vriska, which we already read earlier.

You then proceed to have the rest of this conversation we already read, bugging and fussing and meddling through the special and magical union one can only describe as being in moirallegiance with another. At least, you guess that's how you would describe it. Maybe. Troll romance sure is confusing!

Yes, yes it is. (Spoiler: It’s not that confusing once it’s explained.)

Kanaya doesn’t have long to dwell on the conversation, as she’s contacted by caligulasAquarium, someone with a violet Aquarius symbol who she doesn’t seem to think highly of. It rapidly becomes apparent why.

CA: kan make her talk to me do somethin GA: Who CA: your no good connivvin fuckin backstabbin girl crush thats wwho

CHEL: Trolls are supposed to come bi/pan as standard, so why does he need to specify “girl crush”? I wonder if Hussie hadn’t decided that yet when he wrote this part, but I’m not sure.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 34

CA’s gender hasn’t been revealed, but let’s not kid ourselves, we know from how he’s talking that he’s a dude. Nice Girls certainly exist but they don’t tend to get portrayed as so whiny in fiction, plus CC comes off as very girly, and that leaves us with six boy and six girl trolls. Balance and opposites and counterparts are a running theme throughout Homestuck. Not that there can’t be nonbinary characters, as some show up in Hiveswap; just that there would most likely have to be an even number of them, split evenly between the groups of players. Fine by me as a nonbinary person with a thing for balance and even numbers of my own.

Also, note that we’ve seen this guy, or at least his hand and foot, before. This is the litter-hater in the bowling shoes.

GA: Overstating Our Relationship Wont Make Me Feel Very Cooperative GA: Its Paler Red Than That Ok CA: pshhhhhh that is a fuckin laugh and you knoww it evveryone does CA: so help me out tell her to talk to me i think she blocked me you got to GA: Why Do I Got To GA: I Dont Got To And Every Time You Take My Help For Granted I Feel Like I Got To A Little Less CA: wwhatEVVER you are so the vvillage twwo wwheel devvice wwhen it comes to auspisticing CA: you cant let a grudge go by you wwont stick your busy stem betwwixt so get wwith the program fussyfangs

BRIGHT: Oh hey, another troll romance term! ‘Auspisticing’ is the last of the lot, don’t worry.

CA: wwho givves a shit wwhy she blocked me or about my fuckin manners come on youvve got a wway wwith her CA: i figure if youre going to auspisticize any twwo brinesuckers wwho sneer at each other a funny wway you might as wwell make it official and be ours right GA: Your Black Solicitation Just Seems Really Indecent

Funny words aside, Hussie does a good job at laying down context for what auspisticism is here; we now know that it involves mediating between two parties who dislike each other and that it’s a form of black romance. Meshing worldbuilding naturally into the dialogue is something Homestuck does really well at times.

Anyway, CA is trying to get in contact with Vriska because he asked her to make something for him and now she’s blowing him off.

GA: What Is It CA: kan stupid wwhat do you think its a fuckin gizmo to bloww up the wworld or somethin CA: ok wwell not that obvviously CA: but somethin thatll kill all land dwwellers wwhat else wwould i be after GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With That CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

While CA is obviously a douche, there’s something funny about how over-the-top he is about it and how utterly oblivious he is to the idea that Kanaya might have a problem with a device that would kill all landdwellers, although the humour is inversely proportionate to how likely he is to pull it off.

CHEL: Maybe I’m strange, but I think he’s adorable. I get the impression of a small kid trying to puff himself up to adult size.

BRIGHT: There’s also more romance talk, and this next bit is one I find interesting:

CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once CA: you should read up on your history instead of poring through that godawwfull sunny rubbish

I’m going to take a step back from Homestuck itself for a moment and talk about kismessitude as it’s portrayed in fandom. People tend to envision it in a variety of ways -- some see it as a BDSM relationship, some as a way of pushing a rival to be better, some as just straight-up hate-sex -- but most depictions show it as something that only affects the two people involved.

Here, though? CA’s talking about kismessitude as something that’s potentially really damn dangerous, to other people besides those involved, and cites history as a backup -- implying it can really be that dangerous, and it’s not just a teenager’s flight of fancy. (Although, that said, CA is clearly using this to try and get Kanaya in a relationship with him, so how sincere he is is questionable.)

CHEL: Later on we do see a little bit of one of the historical cases he might have been citing. We’ll discuss it more then. Also, I do like him saying “sunny” instead of “gloomy”. Makes sense!

Kanaya tells CA none of this matters, and he sneers about the “purity of the bloodline”. That’s an… uncomfortable turn of phrase, especially since he’s speaking to someone not covered by the “purity” standard, but since it applies to aliens and it’s in a society where that’s hammered into its inhabitants it’s not a Problematykks issue. Kanaya tells him it still won’t matter because their race will be wiped out entirely, and his reaction is remarkably understated:

CA: huh CA: wwell ok HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 11

CA says he knows Kanaya doesn’t lie except to herself, surprisingly perceptive for one so puffed-up otherwise. CA might be smarter than he’s letting on? He asks if her clouds told her that; that was the reader’s assumption too, but she says no, she has a different source. Uh-oh. We know what the last source of information was, and it cost Vriska an arm and an eye-sevenfold. CA’s own clouds “hide nothin but misfortune and monstrosities”, so we can guess she’s Prospit and he’s Derse. He goes back to nagging her to tell Vriska to talk to him, and when she continues to refuse he poutily steps off.

CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that

Kanaya denies this, and CA says everyone knows, including Karkat.

GA: Its Unbelievable GA: Her Patience CA: wwhat CA: wwhoa wwait wwho GA: Never Mind CA: ok wwait did she talk to you today CA: wwhat did she say CA: or glub or wwhatevver

They’re talking about CC, if it wasn’t clear. Kanaya, in a callback to John’s comment to Terezi, facetiously tells him that she talked about Longing To Touch You Indiscretely and That Shes Basically In The Scarlet Throes For You. CA, flustered, picks up that she’s teasing him, and she tells him the truth, that CC’s just concerned as a moirail.

CA: if youre not savvvvy about howw you define yourself to people CA: you can just splash into the moirail zone before you knoww wwhich wways upwward

I’m going to comment on this attitude in a bit more detail when we get a clearer explanation of what moirallegiance actually is. CA leaves her with some arc words.

CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands

Kanaya heads back to her room, planning to emphatically not meddle but help her friends, and consults her source; it’s fortunately not a Doc Scratch-related one at all. It is, in fact, Rose’s long-forgotten GameFAQ, saved on a server floating in the Furthest Ring, to which Prospit’s clouds directed her. I have to show you the panel for a moment though…

I’m sure there was a way we could see the screen without having it facing away from Kanaya who’s supposed to be reading it.

You can only assume this took place a long time ago. This race is likely ancient, preceding yours by millions of sweeps. Maybe billions! You like to try to imagine the adventures of these players. Were they successful in repopulating their race? Did they manage to protect their matriorb and hatch a new mother grub? Could they hold it together, or were they torn apart by the complex social dynamics, the matespritships and moirallegiences and auspisticisms and kismesissitudes that will surely plague your group along the way? You have little doubt they succeeded with flying colors.

Oh dear, dramatic irony. Kanaya fantasises about a troll version of Rose, thinking she must have been the leader of this supposedly long-ago group.

And yet they appear to have been the only of their kind to have risen to the challenge in a session stacked heavily against them.

Huh. So is this just because Kanaya can’t find more information, or are the four kids in fact the only humans who successfully got into the game? Picking four specifically white-coded kids to be the last of the human race due to supposedly their own competence is… not a good choice. And why the hell couldn’t other people succeed? This strikes me as more of the whole theme of “nobody matters except the people we’re focusing on”. A good lampshading of video game tropes, but in a literary story, that’s the opposite message to everything I’ve ever read, and it’s a creepy one.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 43 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 12 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 35

BRIGHT: I thiiiiiiiink it’s at least implied later on that there are other sessions going, it’s just that each session is a closed loop of players so we don’t see the others...although if that’s the case, does that mean Earth’s getting hit with meteors from multiple Skaias?

CHEL: That over with for the moment, we cut to Tavros’ house as you take your place as the PAGE OF BREATH in the LAND OF SAND AND ZEPHYR. Vriska, his server player, gets down to the business of building up his house towards the Gate…

… entirely out of staircases.

AT: i THINK THIS, iS, AT: pROBABLY MEANT TO ANTAGONIZE ME,

Okay, this probably makes me a bad person, but I’m crying with laughter at his expression and that line.

It’s more disability slapstick, but here the point of the joke comes off as being more that Vriska is a jerk and Tavros’ reaction is really understated than any reasonable person being supposed to assume Tavros is wrong for not being able to climb stairs. Emphasis on “comes off as”, unfortunately. I’m still gonna give a Problematykks point, and further experience with Hussie’s attitude to disability has soured the joke somewhat, even in just the next couple of pages.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 44

BRIGHT: Vriska tries to get Tavros to crawl up the stairs, first by telling him that he promised not to be boring anymore and then by saying that she’s trying to help him get stronger. She caps off the rant by demanding that he apologise.

AT: oKAY, AT: tHANKS, i GUESS, AT: bUT, AT: sORRY FOR WHAT, AG: For 8eing crippled, you ass! AT: yOU WANT ME TO APOLOGIZE, AT: fOR BEING PARALYZED, AG: Yes. AG: Say you're sorry. AT: i DON'T MEAN TO BE RUDE, oR bORING, AT: bUT THAT'S RIDICULOUS, gIVEN, AT: uH, tHE CIRCUMSTANCES, AG: 8ullshit! AG: It's something called 8asic decency and civility you fudge8looded 8oor. AG: Now get down on your useless wo88ly knees and apologize. AT: nO, i DON'T WANT TO, AG: >::::O

Vriska, what the fuck.

Tavros is really great here. He’s obviously not comfortable fighting with Vriska, and repeatedly tries to redirect her into building him ramps instead of engaging. But, at the same time, he holds his ground and doesn’t let her push him around, and won’t let go of solid hard reality in the face of Vriska trying to emotionally manipulate him.

FAILURE ARTIST: And yet people still call him a wimp.

BRIGHT: Vriska retaliates, because of course she does, by grabbing his wheelchair with her cursor and shaking it about. If Hussie left it at that, everything would be unobjectionable, at least in terms of narrative voice. Instead, well…

Now she's done it. She has awoken the mighty inner fury that is... RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CHEL: It just occurred to me to mention that the name Rufio comes from a character in the movie Hook, the leader of the Lost Boys after Peter Pan left, played by Dante Basco. Tavros’ mental image of him is a reference to that character.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dante Basco did read Homestuck, with hilarious results as we will see.

But unfortunately, Rufio is not real. He's imaginary. A fake. Like a made up friend, the way fairies are. You continue to be sad and alone.

BRIGHT: Eurgh.

Let me be clear: Tavros having no further recourse to deal with Vriska’s abuse beyond his visualised self-esteem is a problem for the character, but it’s not necessarily a narrative problem per se. Escapism is a thing. You could get a decent character arc out of Tavros learning better ways to deal with harassment he can’t escape. It is a narrative problem when the narrator mocks it and makes him out to be pathetic for even trying it.

CHEL: I’d consider this to be just Tavros’ own thought process, but, sadly, this kind of narrative sneering at him carries on throughout Tavros’ presence in the comic and the fandom seems to buy into it. Tavros gets a lot of hate for reasons which mostly boil down to him being a male abuse victim; there’s a feeling that he should “try harder” to fight back, despite him being physically disabled and a member of a caste out of sight beneath her on the social ladder and legally permitted to be killed by her on a whim. Might that count as a point for WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM, for Huss and the fandom not taking the social dynamics into account for why Tavros can’t defend himself?

BRIGHT: I don’t know if it’s fair to count against the fandom when we’re reviewing Homestuck proper, but we can definitely count against Hussie!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 36

CHEL: It’s also notable that the common fandom interpretation of Tavros is as Hispanic-coded, at least partly due to his Spanish username, and of Vriska as white-coded. That’s probably not helping.

Since Hussie appears to expect us to agree with Vriska that this is funny, I’m adding another to these as well.

ALL THE LUCK: 2 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 45 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 3

BRIGHT: What’s weird about this whole mess is that Hussie doesn’t — yet — try to say that Tavros should be trying to get stronger; his disability is fully acknowledged. I feel like this kind of mockery is usually accompanied by the attitude that disabled people should just get over their disability, but Hussie’s clear that Tavros can’t. Which means he should do...what, exactly?

CHEL: Not have let Vriska disable him in the first place, presumably. Never mind that, you know, she has mind control powers so he didn’t really have a choice in that either. That is, however, an argument Vriska fans actually make. Apparently some of them actually blame him for not flying when she threw him off the cliff, which… well, unpowered flight is a thing that can happen in the comic but he certainly couldn’t do it then.

BRIGHT: ...Apparently I retain the capacity for surprise at how awful people can be. The fuck?

Back in the comic, Tavros fortunately does have one other means of recourse. Back in her hive, Vriska is suddenly prodded in the back with a flying toilet, courtesy of Kanaya.

GA: Just Presenting A Floating Reminder That Tavros Will Need Plenty Of Inclined Surfaces For His Ascent AG: That's silly. I made so many ramps, you wouldn't even 8elieve it. AG: I specifically decided I wanted to 8uild something ugly and 8oring. It is now the land of ramps and yawns. GA: Hes Reported Otherwise AG: That lousy snitch! May8e I should take his computer away so he can't go crying to fussyfangs anymore. GA: Maybe I Should Upend This Load Gaper Over Your Head AG: No, don't! GA: Im Still Learning The Interface GA: It Could Happen Accidentally At Any Moment AG: I'm only trying to help him. ::::( GA: Think Of Another Way To Help

CHEL: Did I mention Kanaya is my zodiac troll? I can only long to reach her heights of awesome. Of course the ability to levitate toilets would kinda help.

BRIGHT: Vriska heads down to her treasure vault and retrieves a pair of ROCKET SHOES. The captchalogue code for these is ‘PSHOOOES’, which amuses me greatly. Vriska sends the code to Tavros, who combines it with the code for his wheelchair to create a flying wheelchair. Now that is a good use of alchemising!

CHEL: Awww!

Tavros flies up to the Gate, and we cut back to him later on, leading an entourage of communed-with imps and ogres to move obstacles and help him solve puzzles. Using his skills well, I see! In another set of ruins the imps load jigsaw pieces of rock into a frog-shaped alcove,

Things, however, don’t continue to go so well, because Hussie hates this poor kid. I do not mean that facetiously. Statements he’s made elsewhere imply he has a hell of a lot of contempt for several of the characters he created, which I don’t understand at all. We’ll go into this after Act 7, but I get the sensation that the characters are merely tools to show off the complexity and meta references, which are the parts he really cares about.

BRIGHT: It’s not unknown for authors to dislike characters they wrote; the great Terry Pratchett reputedly hated his character Rincewind. The key difference is that in Pratchett’s case, the audience couldn’t tell. Hussie, on the other hand, tends to make his disdain pretty obvious, to the detriment of the story.

CHEL: That’s a point. Conan Doyle grew to hate Sherlock Holmes, too. He didn’t, however, set up situations solely to shit on Holmes in his books.

BRIGHT: I think that’s the key. I’ll forgive a multitude of failings as long as the author seems to be treating the characters fairly. That doesn’t mean that good things have to happen to them — plenty of bad things can happen and I’ll enjoy it — it just means that the author has to...respect how the character feels and would behave, I guess.

Of course, respect is Hussie’s antithesis, so.

Also, nothing so far has shown Vriska to be anything other than a (granted, entertaining) bully. I wasn’t around while Homestuck was updating, so I’m not sure when her fandom took off, but it has to be later than this, surely?

CHEL: I don’t know. I wasn’t around till about mid-Act 6.

What was I on about? Oh yes. Tavros is interrupted by Vriska again, who bitches him out for doing things the boring way and seeking the boring lore.

AG: The minds of your consorts are very soft and impressiona8le. AG: As easily manipul8ed as all those imps you've 8een 8ossing around. AG: I have picked apart their tiny little lizard 8rains and seen through all the smoke and mirrors of their riddles. AG: I have gotten to the truth they are guarding. The great 8ig mystery 8ehind this planet. And you know what it is, Tavros? AT: nO, AG: It's 8ullshit! AG: Meaningless, 8oring, fanciful 8ullshit wrapped in flowery poems to keep you guessing. AG: It all leads to one thing anyway, and that's what we should put our attention on. AG: Real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold. AG: They cheat, Tavros. AG: It is time you learned to start cheating.

Interesting theory. Tavros thinks befriending his monsters instead of killing them is cheating, and Vriska grudgingly agrees but is annoyed he isn’t killing anything. She claims to have designed a better and more challenging quest for him; he asks after her own quest, and she says she has time because Kanaya’s busy.

AG: Which is just as well 8ecause I was starting to get nannied HARD. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 37

Strange word choice for a species raised by animals, but okay. Vriska sends Tavros a map to the next Gate, and he sets off in his little rocket chair. Little does he know.

You proceed through what seems to be your second gate, into the LAND OF MAPS AND TREASURE. The THIEF OF LIGHT lies in wait.

In a callback to our last meeting of Breath and Light players, Tavros crashes through Vriska’s wall and is left hanging upside-down in the rocket chair from the large cobwebs across the room, while Vriska sleeps on a pile of broken eight-balls. Doesn’t look comfortable, but trolls rest in worse places later. Vriska wakes, and Tavros falls head-first onto the floor.

Here is where it gets incredibly uncomfortable, and we have to show it in detail to assign points properly and so that there’s no ambiguity about what’s happening, so if you have any sexual assault, ableism, underage, mind control, or victim-blaming triggers you may want to skip this part. No clothing is removed but it’s very unpleasant to read and the attitude toward it is worse. Seriously, this is Taklamakan Zoo levels of bad.

(This heading below’s not part of the comic, I just put it there so you can skip. The sequence ends with the piece of fanart of Kanaya looking at the sideways screen.)

~*THE ASSAULT STARTS HERE*~

Vriska sits up. She’s wearing a very short strappy white Tinkerbell dress with her sign on it, and what look like over-the-knee socks, a commonly fetishised style of clothing. I remind you these characters are supposed to be thirteen years old. The dress is also the same as the one worn by the fairy in the artwork on Tavros’ desktop background. I don’t know if Vriska had seen that or not.

FAILURE ARTIST:

To be fair she’s just in an actually-more-modest version of what Peter Pan’s sidekick/love interest wears and the socks come off as more dorky than sexy.

Oh my! It appears Pupa Pan himself has flown through your window while you were asleep. How exciting! Surely he is here to take you away on the adventure of a lifetime. He is more dreamy and heroic than you ever imagined. But what's this?? It seems the legendary Boy-Skylark has misplaced his shadow. He is looking EVERYWHERE for it, to no avail. He is having a devil of a time, what with being paralyzed from the waist down and all. He clearly needs your help.

CHEL: Vriska is prompted to Help Pupa find shadow, and approaches Tavros with a nasty-looking grin on her face, while he lies on the floor, gritting his teeth in noticeable pain.

Pupa! You truly are a silly goose. Your shadow has been trapped underneath your useless torso the whole time! Honestly, where else would it be you stupid sack of shit?

Charming. Vriska proceeds to kick him in the head, or at least nudge him with her foot, while he lies unresponsive.

Of course, the secret to reuniting with your shadow is to get up and walk around. And play and dance and frolic! Your shadow will surely join in your gaiety. But it appears Pupa has lost the use of his legs. There will be no frolicking in this young man's future. ::::( Unless...

Everyone knows that just a pinch of SPECIAL STARDUST along with a happy thought will allow any boy to get up and walk again. Everyone knows this because it is in the classic tale, PUPA PAN. Young Pupa flies through the window of a fairy girl's respiteblock, falls on the floor, and has trouble getting up like an enormous pansy. The fairy girl then helps him walk again, and in return, he teaches her to fly, even though she probably already knows how to fly. Because she's a fairy. They fly out of her window together, and have magical adventures for many sweeps thereafter. To be honest, you hardly know a damn thing about Pupa Pan. But you do not care.

Pupa remains as pathetic and useless as ever.

FAILURE ARTIST: The story just keeps mocking Tavros for being disabled.

CHEL: Not to mention for being interested in fairies. Because how dare a boy have a gender-nonstandard interest, or a young teenager enjoy whimsical escapism from an increasingly horrible and guaranteed-to-be-short life.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 39

I might be projecting because the fandom has made me loathe her, but it honestly comes off like Vriska dressed up like this in the first place less to seduce Tavros and more to make sure she thoroughly ruined his favourite thing to hurt him further, especially if the narration is supposed to be things she’s actually saying to him.

The stardust did nothing! Probably because it is just glittery powder with no magical properties whatsoever and is basically bullshit. Because in case it wasn't clear, magic isn't real, and neither are miracles. OR It could just be that Pupa has failed to have a happy thought! Your duty is clear. You will have to MAKE him have happy thoughts. Vriska: Make Pupa have happy thoughts.

He certainly doesn’t seem to be having happy thoughts now. Notice his expression, what we can see of it, looks terrified, he’s trembling, and let’s recall that he’s paralysed from the waist down. Even if he wasn’t, she’s of a far, far higher caste than him, legally permitted to do whatever she wants to him, including killing him if he tries to resist. It’s kind of gone back and forth on, but higher bloods are a few times stated to be a lot stronger than lower bloods, and if they work like humans, they’re in puberty right now, a time at which human girls tend to get taller and stronger sooner than boys. Again, it’s gone back and forth on, but a common interpretation is that female trolls are stronger than male trolls in general and/or have the social power advantage. Let’s also remember that, even if none of those factors apply, Vriska has mind control powers. There is no point here at which Tavros has the advantage, nothing he can use as leverage on her. She can do whatever the hell she wants, and she does.

BRIGHT: We’ve also been explicitly shown that Vriska has little to no respect for anyone else’s autonomy if she finds it inconvenient, and that Tavros is her favourite punching bag, and that his ability to stand up for himself when she gets going is extremely limited.

CHEL: Despite the odds stacked against him, Tavros struggles against the kiss forced on him, and when Vriska pushes him back, doesn’t respond with anything but a look of horror, though she appears to expect him to, as a flickering heart-spade with a question mark over it appears between them. I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to be the thought process of him or her or both.

Vriska hurls him onto the floor with some force...

… and activates her mind control, causing little hearts to light up in Tavros’ eyes.

BRIGHT: Vriska has used her mind-control powers on Tavros before, and when it happened she walked him off a cliff. There is basically no way that her doing it again isn’t going to be a traumatic experience for him, above and beyond the inherent horror of losing control over one’s body.

I’m inclined to think that forcibly altering his emotions is worse, though. Being paralysed was bad enough, but Tavros knows what happened and he knows how he feels about it. Making him fall in love with her is just…on one level, it’s a horrible assault on his autonomy as a person, and on another level, it’s tailor-made to make him doubt himself and believe the encounter was something he wanted.

FAILURE ARTIST: I hadn’t thought that he might now consider the encounter as consensual, which would explain his later reaction.

CHEL: Tavros paws at her legs, making kissy faces, and she looks vaguely concerned. Note the background still depicts wavy blue rays coming off her, showing her power is still active.

Looking defeated, she drops the control and dumps him on the floor again.

I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be thinking in this last panel. Is she feeling guilty? Is she disappointed that he didn’t like her under his own power? Has she just decided he’s too useless to be worth the effort? Any could be true.

BRIGHT: I read that as disappointment that even when he ‘liked’ her, he didn’t act the way she wanted. (And the way Tavros acted is kind of disturbing. ‘Mindlessly pawing at someone’ is not what I’d expect from him if he was legitimately attracted to someone.)

FAILURE ARTIST: The common interpretation these days was she was realizing she wasn’t into boys which okay that’s good for her but she should feel more bad about molesting him.

CHEL: That also makes no sense, because she shows interest in multiple boys later.

I’m also not entirely sure if Vriska had the intention of actually raping Tavros here (in the standard way, I mean, as one could argue that mind control is a form of rape), or just making out with him. The fact that she dressed up in vaguely fetishy clothing isn’t making it look good, though. Yes, she’s very young, but traumatised kids in particular have been known to lash out sexually like that. It’s a way of reasserting personal power, and I imagine it would be more prevalent in a society with no sapient adult supervision. While there are mitigating circumstances involved in their social situation and Vriska not really having ever had a chance to learn better, that doesn’t make this not a horrible thing to do, or not traumatising for Tavros.

BRIGHT: The clothing could potentially be down to Vriska wanting to look ‘adult’ without fully understanding why it looks adult. That does come up sometimes with teens — they want to experiment with clothing because that’s how adults dress, not because they want to look sexy, or they might dress a certain way for dates because that’s the social model they have for How Dates Work.

And if I read it like that, this basically looks like Vriska having the date equivalent of a dolls’ tea party. Which says volumes about how she views Tavros’s autonomy.

CHEL: Good point. Though honestly it would say volumes about same either way!

BRIGHT: I said earlier that Vriska is better than Equius at recognising when other people’s desires conflict with hers, and she is, but that doesn’t mean she respects those differences. She just recognises that they’re there, and overrides them. This is a prime example of Vriska viewing Tavros as something between a chew-toy and a prop. First she kicks him around and terrifies him, then she expects him to be able to get over those emotions at the drop of a hat and respond to her advances — and, moreover, she wants him to respond in a certain way, which Tavros has zero way of knowing. This is the first time she’s shown that sort of interest in him, unless her earlier behaviour was the Alternian equivalent of pigtail-pulling.

...I think maybe that was in fact Alternian pigtail-pulling. Or at least Vriska’s version of pigtail-pulling.

CHEL: That’ll actually make more sense, once we explain what the spade symbol means.

Okay, how many counts does this cover?

ALL THE LUCK: 12 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 31 CALL CPA PLEASE: 26 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 55 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 13

It also occurred to me during this sequence to think again about how Karkat contemptuously swears at and hangs up the phone on the injured Tavros. This, at first glance, seems to be very much at odds with the “cranky but caring” impression we’re supposed to have of Karkat… but it fits precisely with Hussie’s opinion of Tavros and how pathetic he is for allowing a much more powerful person to permanently disable him. I know at the moment it looks like I’m not separating the character from the author, but it’ll become clear as we go that that is what he thinks.

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 14

Why didn’t we start a FUCK YOU, HUSSIE count?

BRIGHT: It would have ended up longer than all the other counts combined.

CHEL: The actual assault is over now, but there’s one more picture of it. The ramifications must continue to be discussed, so tread cautiously. The actual act is over now, though.

Said ramifications come pretty quickly. Kanaya, having dealt with getting herself into the game and prototyped her own lususprite, decides to check on Vriska.

Ideally she has not gotten herself into too much trouble. And ideally the dramatic irony has not gotten so thick you could draw a dotted line on it with a tube of lipstick and cut it in half with a chainsaw.

Of course, she sees the exact moment Vriska kisses Tavros.

(Fanart source has now been deleted, sadly.)

~*THE ASSAULT ENDS HERE*~

Humorous art aside over, let’s watch Kanaya’s reaction in more detail. She angrily looks at a copy of the Tinkerbell dress, which she presumably sent the alchemiter code for rather than the actual item to Vriska, hence why she still has it.

So THAT'S why she had you make this dress for her??? And you just went along with it like a sucker. Argh, you are such an IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like Karkat, Kanaya is presented as the caring one, the protective one. The “mom friend” of the group. And yet, she looks at this, in which Tavros is clearly frightened and struggling, and her reaction is to be mad that Vriska didn’t want to wear the dress for a date with her. I’m not sure whether this says more about Hussie’s opinion of Tavros or the social system of Alternia or both, but it certainly says a lot.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 56 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 13 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 15

BRIGHT: Kanaya has had to corral Vriska on Tavros’s behalf already! Possibly more than once! She has all the information to realise that this is abusive, even leaving aside Tavros’s reaction! Sure, teens can be self-centred, but even so this is egregious.

CHEL: Kanaya’s Grubsprite comforts her and she throws the dress out the window.

Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands.

Yes, I’m sure Tavros thinks so too.

Charles: "I know Sir can be prickly, but you have to understand he had a very terrible childhood."

Klaus: "I understand. I'm having a very terrible childhood right now."

-A Series of Unfortunate Events

#homestuck #homestuck review #homestuck meta #homestuck reread #let's read homestuck #Homespork

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