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mortemoppetere · 1 year

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TIMING: early april PARTIES: @rhythmicmeow & @mortemoppetere SUMMARY: leticia rescues emilio from a chatty bar patron and decides he's her friend now. he doesn't get a say. for once, he's not mad about it. CONTENT WARNINGS: alcohol consumption

It wasn’t exactly rare for Emilio to find himself sitting at the bar. While he did enjoy cheap whiskey in the comfort of his own living room more than a bar full of strangers, it was important to… unwind, sometimes. Talk to someone who could talk back, even if it only served to irritate him. And right now? It was irritating him.

The man had slid next to him and just started talking. Another night, Emilio might have found some way to shut him up — a punch to the face, or maybe an offer to get out of there that would at least make the man’s company a little more bearable — but he found he wasn’t in the mood tonight. He should have stayed home, really; all he wanted was to drink in peace. But here was this man, rambling on and on about something Emilio couldn’t even keep up with anymore. He dropped his head against his fist, eyes screwed tightly shut. Fucking Wicked’s Rest.

Leticia ducked into a bar after work. The shop had been open for just a week and the store had been swarmed with teenagers and young college students from the local campus - it had been a lot. And after the closed sign had been flipped over, she had been left with a lot of extra energy and no place to direct it. At least until she saw an overly exhausted man sitting at the bartop and someone else, a few seats down, yell-talking to the other man. A life story that no one had signed up for, it seemed.

Taking a seat next to the exhausted man, Leticia shrugged off her jacket. “Sorry, I didn’t realize how late it was but you know teenagers, you say the shop is closing and suddenly they’re invested in the fly on the wall and won’t leave.” She flashed the man who had been ranting earlier a bright smile. “Thanks for keeping him company! Lord knows he would have died from boredom without you.” She had dismissed the stranger in the friendliest of ways, she just needed her new friend to play along unless he wanted to suffer through another rambling story.

For a moment, Emilio thought the stranger who slid onto the barstool next to him had mistaken him for someone else. She spoke with a familiar tone, as if they knew each other well and planned on meeting up here tonight. He was about to let her know she had the wrong guy when she turned to the man who’d been talking his damn ear off and things clicked into place. Ah. Not a case of mistaken identity — a rescue attempt. Emilio hid a smile behind his glass, taking a swig of whiskey and offering the woman a nod. “No problem. It happens.”

The stranger on his other side looked disappointed, something flickering across his face as he glanced between Emilio and the new addition. “Ah, my bad, bro,” he said, shaking his head. “Didn’t realize you were meeting a date here. Hey, if you want my number —”

“I don’t have a phone,” Emilio deadpanned, sliding his phone off the bar and into his pocket. The man looked a little offended, but seemed to have gotten the idea. With a shrug, he slunked away, off to find another victim. Emilio let out a small sigh of relief, turning to face the woman who’d ‘saved’ him from a very boring fate. “Appreciate the assist. Five more minutes and I think I would’ve put my head through the bar.”

Covering her mouth, Leticia hid an ill placed laugh as her newfound companion claimed to not have a phone. It was cold and brilliant all in one. “I’ll have to remember that line, that was good,” she whispered. Though considering how many times she had been in this position, where someone had asked for her number and refused to take a hint - it wasn’t as funny as the moment felt. A simple no should have been enough, but considering the short snapshot that Leticia had seen of their behavior, a no would have led to some uncomfortable begging.

Some people refused to take a hint. No matter how obvious it was.

“I wasn’t sure if you were going to fall asleep or yeah - put your head through the bar. Wouldn’t blame you either way. Five minutes is longer than I would have lasted. But mom always did say I lacked patience.” Leticia huffed a laugh and waved down the bartender, ordering a drink before turning back to her ‘date.’ “Leticia,” she offered. “And I’m… well, I’m new in town. Please tell me this isn’t the bad bar in town and that it’s just that one guy who is ruining it.”

“Gets the hint across,” Emilio replied with a shrug. It wasn’t a position he was in often, of course; he got the feeling she dealt with things like that a lot more than he did. Maybe that was why she’d stepped in as she had — maybe she was returning a favor someone had done for her once, when she’d been in such a position. Emilio wondered if he’d be expected to do the same now, if there was some chain reaction he’d unwittingly become a part of. He’d do it, but Christ, it was annoying that such a thing was necessary.

At least this conversation was better than the one that had preceded it. So far, she was much less annoying than the man she’d chased away. It wasn’t saying much, of course. Most people would fall farther back on the ‘annoying’ scale than that guy had. But it was something, at least. A way to pass the time. He needed that, sometimes. “Ah, you don’t think it’s a virtue?” His tone was dry, with a slight teasing lilt. He’d never been particularly good at patience himself, truth be told. Five minutes might have been a generous estimate. “Emilio. Not here long myself, but it usually isn’t so bad here. Better than other bars, at least.”

The word risky hung on the tip of Leticia’s tongue, but maybe, in this scenario, it wasn’t. He had her as backup, so if the man had pushed any further, there would have been a witness - and it would have been messier than the usual brand of uncomfortable. But there was an ease in the transition from creepy unwanted conversation to something lighter. A shade friendlier than Leticia had expected. “A virtue, yeah. And humility. Both I’ve, uh, failed on several fronts?” In her line of business, humility might have been good in some cases, but in most? It was a weakness that critics would have used to tear her down. A crack in the armor that would have been exploited. And seeming to be untouchable was preferred to looking vulnerable.

Words hurt less when you pretended they meant nothing.

Funny, coming from a musician.

“And it looked like you were suffering for your virtue. And dying of boredom? Worst way to go.” Leticia let out a small, dramatic whistle, all the while smiling. “Emilio?” She repeated, committing the name to memory. “Not the tour guide I was looking for then.” Regardless, he had a view of this place that Leticia didn’t. A different experience. And if nothing else, a companion to waste the night with in a bar. “What made you pick Wicked’s Rest? The amazing company and conversation?” She teased lightly.

“Humility is overrated,” Emilio replied, smiling faintly. That was one virtue his mother hadn’t cared for. If you were good at something, she’d said, make it known. Humility served no purpose when lives were on the line. It hadn’t come up as often with Emilio as it had with his siblings, of course. He’d never had to worry much about humility because he’d never been good enough at anything to inspire it. His siblings were better hunters than he was, his sister a better parent. It was only humble to claim you weren’t the best if it wasn’t true.

Not that it mattered now, he supposed. Mexico was a world away, and no one was left to comment on his feelings outside Emilio himself. And, for the moment at least, he’d rather drink than dwell on them. Maybe that would be different tomorrow. The possibility made him think he ought to enjoy tonight while he could.

“Ah,” he said, clicking his tongue and shaking his head, “I’m nothing if not a martyr.” It was funnier if you knew him, he thought, if you knew just how badly he wanted it to be true. Or maybe it wasn’t funny at all. His sense of humor had never been a universal thing. “Not much of a tour guide, I’m afraid. But I can tell you which bars won’t kick you out for not paying your tab.” It was, in his opinion, very useful information to have. At the question, he shrugged a shoulder and lifted his glass to his lips again. He knew the answer, of course, but telling a stranger that you were a vampire hunter who’d moved to this town because it seemed like there was a high probability of dying for your cause there was probably not the best idea. “No specific reason, I think. It just… seemed like a good place to rest for a while. How about you?”

“My mother would hate you,” Leticia huffed a laugh, but that warm feeling of familiarity was fleeting. It was too soon to be happy and mention her family. Too soon to think about her mother, who was running with the wind, and be comfortable. Grief was quick to pull down her mood, but Leticia covered her mouth and coughed, pretending like it was a passing moment - just something stuck in her throat. Nothing more. Humility would keep her alive, her mother would say. It would keep the rangers from sniffing her out, it would keep her safe - it would keep her unknown. Something that she had echoed time and time again. And Leticia had ignored her every time. Maybe she should have listened. Maybe things would have been different.

Taking a quick sip of her drink, burying the grief as deep as she could. Drowning it in whatever she could find. She needed this more than she realized.

“Very noble of you. Your drunk brethren are eternally grateful, I’m sure.” But the dry humor was enough to cut into the thoughts she had given more life to. “Can you tell me which bars have an open mic?” It’d probably be the kind of bar that Emilio didn’t enjoy, but he would be sure to remember it as one to avoid. “Ha, rest.” It likely wasn’t the joke that Leticia made it out to be, but she snickered nonetheless. The question turned on her, and she should have expected it - should have prepared a lie that was convincing. Instead, she looked at her drink and shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. It was one of those… throw a dart at a map and just go sort of moves, ya know?”

“Eh, most mothers do.” His own had never been his biggest fan, and Juliana’s mother had soured on him over time, too. He glanced to the woman at his side, recognizing that look on her face in spite of how fleeting it was. Emilio knew grief well enough to pick it out of a crowd. It was like an old friend, one so familiar to you that you knew their face with as much surety as you knew your own. No more talk of mothers, then. That was preferable to him, too. Thinking of his own still hurt in ways he couldn’t quite wrap his head around, for reasons he wasn’t sure he understood. There was a selfish sort of comfort in knowing he wasn’t the only one sitting at this bar that felt such a way.

Her next question caught him off guard. Looking at her, he wouldn’t have taken her for the sort of person who might enjoy an open mic… but, in all fairness, Emilio didn’t know enough about karaoke to know what kind of person would. Maybe it would have been obvious to him if things like that were things that made more sense in his mind. “Maybe a place downtown. College kids like that, ¿sí?” Emilio tended to avoid such scenes. He preferred dive bars, where the drinks were cheap and the questions came few and far between. He furrowed his brow, taking a moment to understand what she was laughing at but huffing a quiet chuckle when it dawned on him. “Guess I walked into that one.” He nodded as she told her own story, though he suspected it was abridged. “Might not be the best place for a dart to land.”

It would be a stranger in a bar she randomly decided to stumble into that would make Leticia think. He hadn’t pressed any buttons, it was entirely her own doing. But between the sadness and the grief, she didn’t feel the judgment she had expected from the wider world. A blessing, perhaps, that she was just another face in the crowd in this town and not the girl who shifted on stage. Maybe she was no better than that ranting man who was sitting in the corner now, unloading his entire life on Emilio just a few moments before.

But if Emilio felt the same way about her, he was doing a masterful job of hiding it.

Leticia wrinkled her nose, imagining a bar filled with the same young adults she had been dealing with for the better part of the morning. Probably not a good idea to hang out with the same crowd after hours. “Gross,” she mumbled, before quickly going to correct herself. “I mean, yeah I’m sure that’s where some might be. I just see a lot of that crowd at my shop,” she quietly admitted. “So, spending after hours with them too? Not high on the list. Oh well.” It took him a moment but eventually the joke landed and Leticia chuckled again. “Well, there are worse places to be, believe me.” Caught in the woods. Back home, in an empty shell of a house. “Besides, you came here for no reason. Don’t think you’ve got the high ground on this one.”

He huffed a surprised laugh at her response to his suggestion, shaking his head. “No, I think gross is right. Those kids are always so…” He trailed off, making a vague gesture with his hand. “Llenos de energía. Makes me tired just looking at them.” Certainly not something he wanted around when he was trying to unwind with a drink. Emilio liked kids, he did. But there were times when he would rather be in adult company. Like here, like now. This conversation wasn’t one he could see himself having with a college student looking to test the limits of their fake ID.

“You have a shop? What kind?” It caught his attention a little, if only because of the nature of many of the shops in Wicked’s Rest. If she owned a magic shop or a weapon store, it would tell him a thing or two about her. It might also come in handy if he needed something in that area in the near future. Befriending someone who sold weapons would be a wise move for someone who went through as many knives as Emilio did… but if most of her clients were college kids, he doubted Leticia was slinging blades. “Ah, but there were no darts involved. I think that gives me some high ground.”

Snorting, Leticia covered her mouth to muffle a laugh. He wasn't wrong. There were times where Leticia wasn't sure how the hell they managed to keep up the energy - it was as if there was an endless stream of energy that only they could touch. There was a time when she had been able to bounce off the walls and use that energy to perform, but that was so long ago. (Was she getting old?) "A shame we outgrew that trick."

Though, if she had that kind of energy now, would it be any good? Or would it be just a path quicker to death?

"A record shop, The Vinyl Countdown. Doubles as a radio studio." It was the most mundane business to have in a town like Wicked's Rest. But Leticia was clinging to normalcy. And the fragile memories of her father. "I actually think not using a dart is worse. I came here by the pure will of God. You chose to come here. We are not the same," she teased.

“Ah, speak for yourself. I’m young and spry.” He wasn’t. He hadn’t been full of college kid levels of energy since before he became a father, and he’d certainly lost whatever was left of it when he stopped being one. But he thought the joke might be funny, anyway, even to someone he’d only just met.

A record shop. Nothing of interest to Emilio, really, though he tried not to let the disappointment show on his face. He didn’t want to be rude, after all; he just didn’t have much use for music. It wasn’t something his mother had found particularly important growing up, for a lot of reasons, so there was none of the nostalgia that most people felt when a tune started to play. It was just… one of many, many things that Emilio didn’t quite understand. “Sounds nice,” he offered, because it seemed the polite thing to do. He snorted at her insistence that ending up here by chance was far more understandable than coming here intentionally, because… well, she wasn’t entirely wrong, was she? “Okay, fair enough. You regretting that dart practice yet?”

Another laugh came as easily as the last, and for a moment, all the shit in the world felt further away. The exact thing Leticia had been looking for when she stepped into the bar. It felt like ages since she was able to simply exist in her body around someone. "I'm sorry young man," Leticia teased. "When you get to be my age, it's hard to tell the age of anyone. All you kids look the same. You'll understand when you're older."

There was no excitement in his voice when he replied and Leticia found herself wondering why there was a distance between himself and music. Most people would share their favorite bands or something else - but sounds nice? She thought about raising the question, but thought better of it. The last thing that Emilio likely needed tonight was an impromptu interrogation about music of all things. "You know..." Did she regret it? Leticia had never given herself a moment to think about it, if this was the place she wanted to land and come home to. "Of all the bullshit I do regret, I think ending up here is pretty low on the list. Save the self pity for the big problems, right?"

A smirk ghosted across Emilio’s face, rare but genuine. It was always better when someone played along with your stupid jokes, even for someone like him whose jokes were often little more than dry remarks or wry comments. “No, no,” he said, waving a hand. “I’ll be young forever. You know how it is.” Maybe that joke was funnier in a town like this, where a decent size of the population really didn’t age.

Something seemed to cross her face at his response, which wasn’t entirely surprising. Music was important to people, and they often didn’t understand why it wasn’t important to Emilio. It was one of those many, many things that set him apart from other humans, one of those little quirks his mother had beaten into him to make sure he’d always be just a little different. He wasn’t sure how much of it was intentional and how much of it was a strategy to ensure he wouldn’t find himself too ingrained in the portion of society she’d thought he had no business being a part of. He wasn’t sure how much it mattered. He studied Leticia as she spoke, nodding his head thoughtfully. Save the self pity for the big problems. Not bad advice. “Think that’s a nice way of thinking of it,” he offered. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is the worst place you could have ended up.” Not bad for him, either. She was a decent conversation partner, at least.

Young forever. On the surface, that seemed like a dream. People loved their youth, wanted to stay in that same frame of body for their entire lives. But forever was a long time. Even longer with the mental struggles of dealing with... everything. Leticia didn't envy those who did have an eternity here. But still, she laughed. The ache that came with the idea of eternity felt further away in his company. It was strange that a stranger could keep the darkness away while playing with it in the same motion. "That's what they all say. Call me when you get your first gray. I'll give you the over the hill speech."

Irrational optimism was something that Leticia had mastered early in life. She had to focus on the silver linings otherwise she'd lose control and be the monster that rangers hunted and humans feared. Control over her outlook was the one thing she had, and nothing could make her give that up. Meeting his gaze, she returned the nod with a slight shrug, a smile in the corner of her mouth. "This place isn't boring at least," she replied, eyeing the man who had been rambling to Emilio earlier. It felt like such a shift, now that she was sitting down and thinking about it. Her life on stage. In New York - around the world. And this is where she ended up. "You know, for someone who wanted to drink in peace, you sure are making me think a lot."

“You’ll be waiting a while for that call.” And that, at least, was probably the truth. Hunters didn’t tend to end up with gray hair and wrinkled skin, though not because they were immortal. Dying young was its own kind of loophole to aging, and hunters were good at that. Emilio had already made it far longer than he’d ever expected to. If he was being generous, he figured he had a year or two left. Probably less. Not enough time to end up with gray hairs to call strangers about, in any case.

Not boring was certainly one way to describe Wicked’s Rest. There was always something going on, always some strange event twisting the town up into something else, something different. Emilio had only been there a short time, but he’d already taken notice of it. It was an easy place to disappear, if you weren’t human. It was an easy place to die, if you were. His answer for which option was the most tempting seemed to change day to day now. He huffed a quiet laugh as Leticia said he was making her think, shrugging a shoulder. “What can I say? Soy perspicaz. I have lots of interesting things to say.” He paused, picking up his glass and swirling the liquid around. “But drinking in silence could be fun, too.”

Wrinkling her nose, Leticia leaned to the side, looking over his face carefully. Leaning back into her seat, she made a noise and then shrugged a shoulder. "I think it might be coming sooner than later. But don't worry," she offered with a smirk. "I'll make sure to have some options for you. Hair dye - some face cream. You won't look a day over twenty." Part of her had felt the need to tell him that aging wasn't the worst thing that could happen to him, but judging by the way he drank, maybe that wasn't what he was talking about at all.

But who was she to judge? He was doing exactly what she had wanted to do. But Leticia was too scared of losing control again. Too scared of her own shadow to breathe properly. Maybe another drink would settle her mind, so she waved slightly to the bartender, silently ordering another drink.

"Uh huh," she murmured. "I could always call your friend back over if you need more conversation. Maybe he'll appreciate your perception." There was no heat behind the threat, but Leticia wiggled her eyebrows and pretended to look half interested in calling them back over. "Too late for that," she waved her hand at his glass. "It's your turn. What do you do for a living here?"

Faint amusement danced in his eyes as she looked him over, brows shooting up when she insisted that old age was coming for him sooner or later. The idea of putting cream on his face or dyeing his hair to stop it seemed laughable. If a hunter did grow into a wrinkled, gray-haired thing, they tended to wear it as a mark of pride. A trophy of sorts, for surviving against all odds. It wouldn’t be Emilio, but he’d seen others get there. His mother, his uncle, Rhett. “I think I’d rather… ah… age gracefully. No dye or cream for me. No shame in looking your age, is there?”

He leaned back in his seat as she ordered another drink, taking the opportunity of the bartender’s attention being turned in their direction to do the same. He’d had enough already that the bartender gave him a dubious look, but not so much that they refused to serve him. A few more, and he knew that would be the case. Until then, he’d take what he could get.

“Ah, let him move on. You’re going to serve him a broken heart, letting him get hung up on me.” He knew there was little chance of her actually calling the man back over, despite not knowing her well. Detectives were perceptive, after all, and he could tell that Leticia wasn’t the sort to engage in such ‘punishments.’ Even if Emilio might deserve it for the comment. Huffing another quiet laugh, he tapped his finger against his glass. “Private investigator,” he replied. “You’d think that would mean less college kids bothering me. Not always true.”

Leticia moved on without lingering on why he was so adamant that he wouldn't switch grays up and that if he did he wouldn't hide them. Hoping he'd see it for what it was, a buffer of respect. Not disinterest. "Maybe you'll get lucky and it won't be just one random white spot on your head. Could end up with a skunk stripe. Might look cool, actually."

She held in a laugh again, pulling her gaze away from the man before he noticed the pair eyeing him again. Not to spare the man from another ‘broken heart,’ but to spare herself from having to look him in the eyes again and say no, it wasn’t an invitation for conversation. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as the heartbreaker type. Besides, I think I broke his heart for you last time. I’m due some credit here.” Leticia noticed the look that Emilio got from the bartender, and she shot him one herself. An arched brow and a silent question. Were they going to get kicked out because of him?

A private investigator. Leticia found herself ready to ask Emilio his rates and see if he was taking on more cases. The only thing that held her back was the reality of who she was and what she was. Could she ask a human to help her? Would he be able to if she had to censor half the important information? She bit her tongue but kept his profession in mind. If she couldn’t make any headway in the next few months - turning to a human wouldn’t be the worst idea she’s had. “What do teenagers need help with so much they need a PI? Rich kids mad the poor kid scored higher than them and need dirt on them?”

“I don’t think that happens to people,” Emilio protested. He’d never seen anyone with a single stripe of white in their hair before, but, to be fair, he hadn’t seen many people with white in their hair at all. Growing up exclusively around hunters would do that to a guy. “Maybe you’ll get a skunk stripe.”

Smirking, Emilio looked at his glass on the bar to avoid the urge to look at the man they were speaking of. He was the type who’d take it as an invitation to rejoin them, Emilio could tell. And neither he nor Leticia wanted that. In fact, he doubted anyone wanted this particular man engaging them in conversation if all his attempts were like what he’d subjected Emilio to. Getting stabbed sounded like more fun. “Ah, I’ve broken plenty of hearts.” Absently, his thumb rubbed against the wedding band still sitting upon his finger, the one he’d never managed to convince himself to take off. He was good at breaking things. Hearts included. “Okay, you want to be the heartbreaker? I’ll let you have it all to yourself.”

Something seemed to cross her face, though not the usual curiosity people seemed to carry when they heard what he did for a living. Most people were curious because they assumed it was something more exciting than it was. Leticia seemed curious in a much more personal way. But she didn’t voice whatever question was on her mind, and Emilio decided to respect it. If she wanted to ask whatever it was, she’d ask it. If she didn’t, he wouldn’t get anywhere by forcing the subject. “Had one come to me about a lost cat. Another had someone blackmailing her, wanted me to look into it. And… a few do want dirt on their classmates. I usually tell those no.” Digging up dirt on adults was one thing, but kids? Emilio couldn’t justify it, no matter how much he needed money.

“It absolutely happens to people. Just because you haven’t seen it, doesn’t mean it’s never happened.” Leticia brought two fingers to her eyes and then pointed them at Emilio’s, “You better watch out or your first experience with it is going to be you.” Taking a glance at her own hair, she frowned. “I could pull it off. You might come out blotchy, but I’ll age like fine wine, thanks.” The words came out easily, like they had been friends for a few decades and not for under an hour. It was strange. But a good kind of strange.

“I don’t want to be a heartbreaker out of pity. That’s insulting.” Leticia had broken the hearts of fans before, she was sure. A romantic connection, though? Never. Fame had put her out of touch with most people and out of reach of anyone she might actually want to talk to. It… muddled things too much. And Leticia had never been sure if the highs of having a partner would be worth all the risk that came with it. Even without the fame, she wasn’t sure how to open that door without revealing too much. Shit was complicated. But wasn't everything?

“Tell me you found the cat,” Leticia said quickly. Clearing her throat, she leaned back in her chair and then shrugged. “I mean. Pets are important, you know? They’re like family.” The college students blackmailing each other was just as alarming, but it only brought one thought to the forefront of her mind: “Glad I skipped college if that’s how they act. Christ.” It was an interesting occupation. She couldn’t imagine he was ever bored - but that was likely why he was there, drinking himself numb with a bartender giving him glances that looked like harsh warnings. Too much to drink or was the bill too high. Leticia made brief eye contact with the bartender again before awkwardly looking away. “I thought high school drama was bad. Where do these kids have all this free time to have a job and go to college and blackmail?”

“Have you ever seen it?” He challenged, raising a brow and crossing his arms over his chest. She’d probably seen old age more often than he had, though he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t say yes just to make herself look more reliable here regardless of whether or not it was the truth. “I don’t know about that. I think you’d look more like a skunk than I would, with the long hair. I could make mine look like a choice, if I wanted.” As if anything about Emilio’s appearance was a choice instead of just something that happened. Even his clothing style was limited to what he could ‘find.’ He’d gotten lucky that someone in his building had been throwing out a few trashbags full of clothes that fit him shortly after he’d moved in.

She was easy enough to talk to, which was odd. Most people weren’t, especially for Emilio. But Leticia responded to everything like it was a joke, like it didn’t matter, and there was something relaxing about that even if it was all for show. Sometimes, you needed something light to keep you on your feet. “If you stop taking things out of pity, you might not be left with much,” he warned her, tone dry even as amusement sparked behind his eyes.

Uncrossing his arms to take his glass in his hand again, he smiled faintly. “Never even had to leave the kid’s apartment. It was under her couch the whole time, just hiding out. Couldn’t make myself charge her for it.” That was the problem every time he took a case that wasn’t the usual fare — he always had a hard time taking money for them. When a case was important, when it meant something, there was a strange sense of guilt that came with the concept of making someone pay for it. Something that stemmed from his upbringing as a slayer, he suspected, from that old idea that everyone and everything with a heartbeat was so much more important than he was. “Eh, half of them don’t work. Live off their parents’ dime, you know? Easy taking money from those ones.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Leticia retorted quickly, pretending like that didn’t reveal everything at the same time. It was the equivalent of saying no comment and pretending that it was enough to rebuff the question. Leticia only made it more convincing when she shrugged a shoulder and took a long sip of her drink. Far more important than answering the question, wasn’t it? “You said that with your full chest not realizing I could just… cut my hair. You know that, right? Or I might get really lucky and have it only on one side of my head so I can use it like an accent piece to frame my face.”

Wrinkling her nose, Leticia gave Emilio a look. “Fine,” she accepted. “But that means I’m going to pity you too. Fair is fair.” He wasn’t far off the mark, though. The only reason she had landed on her feet here had been a helpful fae that Leticia had given a promise to. It wasn’t so much pity as it was an exchange, but she knew that anyone standing on the other side of that promise would be standing tall and claiming that they had taken pity on her. It was only a matter of time before that pit came back around for collection to a debt owed.

Letting out a slow breath, Leticia nodded her head. “Good.” Not that he hadn’t made any money from it, but that he had found the cat. And maybe the kindness he showed too - it was refreshing. Was that normal in Wicked’s Rest? She didn’t know a soul in the city that would be as generous as to find a cat for free, even if it was in the same room as the person. People here could be equally cold, but the warmth was easier to find. “And they have the audacity to look at other people’s problems to use against them?” She shouldn’t have been shocked. In New York, she wouldn’t have bat an eye at the comment. But as different as this place, it wasn’t as different as she had hoped. “Couldn’t be me. Ma would have kicked my ass if she got a whisper of me acting that way.”

“I knew it,” Emilio scoffed, looking pleased with himself. He took a celebratory sip of his own drink as if he’d achieved some great victory, ignoring the fact that Leticia did the same. One thing he’d learned through the art of having three older siblings was that if you acted like you’d won with enough gusto, it would eventually become the truth. “I could shave my head, then,” he replied quickly, because two could play at that game. If she could find a loophole, so could he. Never mind that he hated the idea of shaving his head; it was all hypothetical, anyway. “That a thing? Using hair as an… accent?” His brow furrowed, confusion clear in his expression. Fashion, unsurprisingly to no one, wasn’t something in Emilio’s wheelhouse.

Immediately, he wanted to argue. Pity wasn’t something he wanted or needed, made his chest feel tight with the thought of it. Best case scenario, pity got someone killed. Emilio didn’t want that. But, at the same time, he could recognize that it was a joke. In an easy, lighthearted conversation like this one, there was no need to catastrophize even if his addled mind so badly wanted to do just that. He shook away the thought, shook away the argument, replaced it with a deadpan expression that was only half-forced. “No reason to pity me. I’m doing great.” He took another swig of his drink, as if to prove it.

He nodded in silent agreement to her statement. He was glad he found the damn cat, even if he didn’t get paid for it. Most of his cases were depressing stories with sad endings. It was nice to have a happy one, even if it was something small like a cat. It was big to someone. Huffing a laugh as she continued, he nodded his head. “Eh, people are assholes.” That didn’t surprise him anymore. People would always do whatever they had to do to get ahead. Emilio knew that. “Your mom seems smart, then.”

Leticia clicked her tongue and huffed, letting Emilio have the temporary victory. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d turn it around. Maybe even pass off someone’s intentional hair coloring and pass it off as proof that she was right. Was that lying? Only if he found out. “What if your eyebrows turn white? Are you going to shave those too?” It was a pointless argument, but Leticia wasn’t backing down. She held up her hand, covering the top part of his face. “You’d be dangerously close to looking like a cartoon villain if you did that.” An unexpected laugh escaped her. “Sorry — yeah. I’m more surprised you haven’t seen it in person. A lot of people use their hair, kinda like tattoos, another form of self expression.”

Shaking her head, Leticia frowned again. “No, that’s not how it works. Two way street, buddy. If you don’t want the pity, you have to stop giving it away too.” Grabbing her own glass, she turned towards him more fully, arching a brow as he took another sip. If he was hoping she’d drop it there… well, unfortunately and fortunately for him, he had no idea how stubborn she could be. “Here’s to new friends, a well pouring bar, and no pity— okay drink up.” She lifted her glass quickly and put her hand out, tipping his glass up to, trying to force him to drink in acceptance to her claims.

People were assholes. There was no disagreeing to that statement. Years ago she would have said there was a light in everyone, you just had to find it. That being an asshole was usually just a defense mechanism — used like an impenetrable mask to hide. But grief had a funny way of muddying her thoughts. “Human nature, I suppose.” With a thin smile, Leticia nodded. “She is. But she’s also, maybe, the dart that chose Wicked’s Rest as the landing place.”

“My eyebrows aren’t going to turn white. Where do you come up with this shit?” She seemed to have an endless supply of ‘what ifs’ for him here, and they only seemed to be getting more ridiculous. Was baldness a common feature of cartoon villains? Emilio wasn’t even sure. “Maybe I have seen it in person,” he replied, “but I wouldn’t know it. I don’t really, ah, keep up with those things.” Fashion trends were not something Emilio understood in the slightest. No one he’d known growing up had ever been concerned with them, and he didn’t think any of the people in his life with long hair had ever cared about how it framed their faces.

At least she was funny. Between the friendly conversation and the alcohol, Emilio felt more relaxed than he typically might, more at ease. Leticia wasn’t so bad, even if he’d never tell her that. “All right, all right, fine. I’ll drink to that. But only because I’ll drink to anything.” He clinked his glass against hers with a roll of his eyes, draining the whiskey from the glass.

Human nature. Not the best way to phrase it, given the significant population of assholes in Wicked’s Rest who weren’t human, but Emilio made no argument. It took him a moment to understand what Leticia meant when she admitted her mother was the ‘dart,’ and he huffed a quiet laugh. “Now that makes more sense.” But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

Cracking a smile, Leticia quickly bit it back down. Pretending not to be thrilled at his reaction. “I am just a curious person. So naturally, I ask questions and contemplate the existence of others in broad ways. It’s good for expanding the mind.” It was a PR answer, and if her manager could have heard her now, he would have thought that maybe she had learned something. “Fashion trends tend to change rapidly too, so I’ll give you a pass this one time.”

Leticia should have protested his reasoning. Any reasonable person would have. Instead, she looked smug. “A win is a win, Emilio. I’ve learned to take ‘em where I can get ‘em.” And this, everything about it, was a win. It brushed against the feeling that she had been looking for since she had come into town. Being known without being known. Emilio chose to keep talking to her, even without the pretense of being a rockstar. If anyone knew who she was, would they choose to be her friend? Or would other motivations muddle it?

Or would her emotions muddle it?

When the bartender passed again, Leticia clicked her tongue and sighed, covering the top of her drink. She was starting to feel it - not drunk in the way most people felt, but the humming of the spirit she shared this body with. It wasn’t a line she wanted to toy with. “Hate to be a party pooper, but I have to tap out. I’ll pay off the tab. Consider it a thank you. Or a fuck you, I hope your hair turns white first.”

#rhythmicmeow #leticia: another round #wickedswriting #alcohol tw #s1 writing #season 1

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anxresi · 3 years

Text

I could line my wall with all the posts Thomas has made about Chloe tonight. (around 50, by my count)

If you wanna read them, don’t bother.

I certainly won’t be sharing any of them

What would be the point?

Because basically, they amount to one thing...

Chloe is bad, and we’re bad people for liking her.

That’s it.

And for anyone thinking that he kids around a lot with his comments...

I’m pretty sure this is something he feels VERY strongly about.

Or he wouldn’t expand so much energy in constantly talking her down.

So no, I don’t think we’re going to get a Chloe redemption.

No, I don’t think she’ll be Queen Bee again.

No, I can’t see any real change in her behavior.

She’ll just remain the same ol’ hatable Chloe, the ‘evil’ girl that young kids apparently ‘get’ that adults don’t understand...

Yep, apparently we’re ‘dumb’ for wanting her to improve and develop!

To provide a good example for bullies out there that they can be more than just abusers all their lives!

Children couldn’t possibly grasp the delicate subtleties of self-improvement as you grow up!

It’s all so clear now!

Stupid us!

Also, her merchandise doesn’t sell very well.

Another good case for her staying as a villain, I guess.

And she’s compared to a monster and a domestic abuser.

This damaged teenage girl.

Yeah, sounds about right.

And all those tender moments where she showed empathy and love were just ‘fake outs’ all along.

Makes total sense!

And anyone who wanted more from her is just ‘delusional’ and is ‘writing the show in their head’.

Exactly!

Except...

That’s not the way it seemed on screen at all.

When she hugged Miss Bustier

Or had a heart-to-heart with Ladybug

When she risked her life as Queen Bee

Showed genuine concern for Adrien

When she finally appreciated Jean-something

And shared moments of friendship with Sabrina

These did NOT come across as part of an elaborate plot twist

From a show which isn’t exactly known for its complex writing.

They seemed to form part of a ladder...

Which would inevitably climb to a true character shift.

Where this flawed teenage girl could take a long, hard look at her life.

And realize she didn’t HAVE to be like her awful mother.

Or as power-hungry as her father.

She could learn lessons from her favorite superhero Ladybug...

Become a better person...

And an even greater superhero.

She could still keep her sassy attitude.

Just be a bit kinder and selfless, that’s all.

But, nope.

EVERY bit of niceness we witnessed on screen...

None of it was real.

It was all influenced by ‘class’.

Even her childhood friendship with Adrien was nothing.

If he was as poor as the rest of his classmates, she would’ve bullied him too.

Straight from Thomas’s own mouth.

One of the best relationships in the show, gone just. Like. THAT.

He also said to ‘redeem’ her at this stage would be too ‘unconvincing’?

ORLY?

I hate to return to critical mode...

But the show ain’t exactly known for its consistent writing.

One minute Marinette is confident around Adrien...

Next she’s a nervous jumble of words.

It sets up two new ships for Mari and Adrien with great fanfare...

Only to ditch them both two eps later.

(Also, what the **** did they plan to do with Lila?!)

In other words, this isn’t a show that plays the long game

Whether this is to satisfy the networks’ demand to air the eps out of order idk.

The point is that trying to tell us that Chloe’s ‘arc’ was some grand scheme...

Where she’d have a few sympathetic moments only to emerge worst than ever afterwards....

I simply don’t believe it.

Either this is terrible, amateurish writing of the worst kind...

Or Thomas flexed his influence behind the scenes...

And put an abrupt end to Chloe’s development before it really got started.

It doesn’t really matter which reason I guess.

What DOES matter is this petty and spiteful man sees fit to bash her in around 70% of his online interactions right now.

He could just ignore the posts but nope, he goes right in there, full throttle.

You can just tell how smart he is with his intimate psychological breakdowns of why Chloe is the way she is...

When we all know the actual reason... he just couldn’t be bothered.

Far better to create a whole new character, give her none of the depths that could make a developed Chloe such a pain to write...

And then 'reward’ her with the position of Queen Bee, for being super-sweet and as shallow as a puddle.

And oops, make her Chloe’s half-sister or whatever to further rub salt in Chloe stans’ wounds.

Is the show even gonna tackle the angst that would arise from Mayor Andre discovering his beloved wife had an affair?

Or Chloe discovering her much-loved mother is in fact a cheat?

What about coping with the SHOCK revelation that she... GASP... has a long-lost sister?

Forget it. All that rich potential for human emotions sounds B O R I N G.

Don’t forget that if there’s a major event in this show that doesn’t include the words ‘Love Square’, the makers just don’t care.

Let’s cut straight to a giant golden Zoe (who now looks like a giant golden Chloe) trying to smoosh her now much smaller sister...

While Chloe pushes Marinette and her parents towards the beast to save herself.

Because of course she does.

Never misses a trick to make Chloe look bad, does Thomas.

It’s a skill you can tell he’s very proud of.

Anyway, back to Zoe...

Despite my harsh words above, I harbor no ill-will towards you.

Your design is decent and you seem like a stand-up gal.

But I hate to say this...

You shouldn’t exist.

It was completely unnecessary from a storytelling POV to create a sibling for Chloe, and your mere presence will diminish the show.

I can say this with utmost confidence after looking at the situation from every conceivable angle...

Without even needing to watch your eps or know why you were created.

(Although, I have a pretty good idea)

Some people might say WELL GIVE HER A CHANCE!!!!

Hmm... no.

Everything the show needs to be successful with Chloe’s character...

It’s already right there.

She does not need a secret sibling

She does not require a sweeter counterpart

And she definitely DOESN’T need Thomas constantly bashing her to impressionable fans online like she’s the Antichrist personified!

Seriously dude, if you hate her so much why bother creating her?

And if you hate her so much... why spend so long talking about her?

Despite his repeated denials, I think something another user here said is very true...

She DOES live ‘rent free’ in his head.

It sickens him that, despite his best efforts, she still has so many fans.

Not to worry, Thomas.

From what I see, there are still plenty of sycophants who agree with everything you say (even if they actually don’t)

After all, it’s enough for some to get a reply from the ‘great man’ himself

Why jeopardize that by trying to engage with him in a meaningful debate?

Especially when we know how handsy he is with the ‘block’ button.

Anyway, this went on for about a thousand more words than I meant it to.

I guess me and Thomas have just ONE thing in common (Thank God)

This is a topic which we both feel VERY strongly about.

The differently is of course, I have far less power in the process, and preach to a much smaller audience.

Still, I won’t let that stop me ranting away like a loon.

Hey, if it’s good enough for him... ;)

#miraculous ladybug #chloe bourgeois #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #adrien agreste #ml salt #ml rants #lila rossi

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

Text

MVA In Memoriam (3/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia) (Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party)

Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade

Chapter 229 – All It Takes Is One Bad Day

• The full first page, of Jin getting mobbed by Puppet!Jins, them tearing his mask off, and flinging it and then him away. Saved them a bit of budget, I suppose, but it’s a shame to lose the drama and the violence of Twice having his mask pulled away, since it’s decent foreshadowing (indeed, possibly intentionally so, on Skeptic’s part) for the violent bewilderment he’ll be subject to shortly.

• Re-Destro’s line, “Not when he’s using his meta-ability to puppeteer, unless you want another nagging lecture.” They didn’t keep the first nagging lecture, so of course they wouldn’t keep this. I’m still annoyed, both on general principle and at the loss of RD’s implication that these nagging lectures are a regular occurrence, especially if one tries to bother Skeptic when he’s using his meta-ability. Has RD himself been on the receiving end of one? Possibly so! But you’d be less likely to think so just from the anime.

• Re-Destro’s line, “This allowed our warriors to momentarily hold back and stay out of danger.” Because why would the audience need to know that Skeptic planned for and Re-Destro cares enough to observe something like that lol?? Obviously the MLA is perfectly content to just throw their peoples’ lives away because, whatever, more where that came from! Dammit, anime, the fandom believes this enough as it is without confirmation bias from your cuts!

• Skeptic’s “fufufu” laugh, because the anime is allergic to the MLA having fun.

• The police officer’s line, “Sure, but in a case like this, you’re still to blame.” The rest of the exchange hints at it, of course, but there’s a horrifying callousness to a police officer just saying straight to the face of a teenaged orphan facing his first offense, “Yes, you were obeying the law perfectly and this guy just ran out in front of you, but it’s going on your criminal record anyway, whatever.” A weight the anime lost, and another that makes me very suspicious of the patterns behind what, precisely, was put on the chopping block.[1]

• Jin’s narration, “That police officer couldn’t have known. Me neither.” Demonstrates that Jin doesn’t really hold his fall against the one policeman. It’s a consistent thread with Jin’s character that, while he’s very jaded, he’s not actually vengeful, nor is he looking to enact systemic change. While he’s very defensive of his friends, people who hurt Jin himself are never in any real danger of him coming to collect his pound of flesh in return; he just rolls with it as part of how the world works, in the way of someone who was never given reason to believe any different. This line is a good example of that.

• From Jin’s old employer’s angry rant, deletes the note that the client that called is angry, and that the client said, “That young punk of yours did this!” It’s nothing that wasn’t obvious from the rest of the conversation, but I do I think cutting it loses a sense that this guy is just unloading all of his frustration and fear on Jin. The length of the screed, the extra details—it clearly communicates that Jin’s boss is so angry and upset he’s not paying any real mind to filtering, but just recounting every point of contention the moment they come into his mind.

• In modern society, when you’re someone without roots… Well, not a lot of people can relate to that.” It isn’t just the police that failed Jin; it’s a whole society that’s distrustful of people who don’t have a place in the fabric, and thus are unwilling to try and bring them into it. Like Tenko, there are a thousand little places where someone could have reached out a hand, but no one ever did. The audience can intuit this, but I feel it’s better to be clear about it—it’s not just the legal system that screwed Jin over; it’s every other person that never tried to help him because they were afraid of his eyes or distrusted a guy who had no connections. When Shigaraki comes, he’s not going to be coming for heroes alone; he’ll be coming for this entire tapestry of indifference and timidity.

• Skeptic’s lines, “Hrm? Fighting back? I was sure he’d either flee or cower in place... We didn’t anticipate such unity between them.” This gets at two things. Firstly, and once again, that the MLA did their research; that they came into this with educated expectations and a definite plan. Secondly, an in-character observation of what the arc has been showing the audience all along: that the League isn’t just a disparate gang of hoodlums anymore; that they’re developing real bonds. Those bonds mark them as unusual—Re-Destro comments on it in 223, as did Overhaul in 147; even Mr. Compress remarks disapprovingly on Twice’s “habit” of getting overly attached to people. It’s striking that, even though the MLA knew from Giran’s records that the League was uncommonly well-bonded, Twice’s devotion still fell outside Skeptic’s parameters.[2]

• Again Skeptic’s line, “Now his legs.” The drones don’t actually get this far (though you can see them gearing up for it on the next page), so it’s a reasonable enough cut, but it does emphasize the ludicrous, over-the-top extremes Skeptic in particular is willing to go to in securing what he wants. If, you know, “Kidnap the doubler so we have a method to make copies of the Grand Commander at our leisure,” wasn’t bonkers enough.

• Twice’s line, “Even against Gigantomachia!” It really highlights just how much mental energy Twice has been dedicating to avoiding injury, that he was able to keep it in mind even fighting a foe as overwhelming, and for as extended a period, as Machia. And like, the anime blitzed over the Machia fight so quickly, and with so little visible wear and tear to the League, that it really could have used all the reminders it could find room for about how intense those six weeks were.

• Twice’s line, “I won’t watch a friend die!” Such an important line that the composer named an entire track for it, not that the anime gave us that track in the moment it was clearly scored for. They added in a new line later in the scene which mostly gets the important sentiments back in, but loses out in being slightly less fitting to his breakthrough. See the Additions portion of the write-up on Chapter 230, following.

Framing Shifts

• The policeman in Jin’s flashback looked up at him in the anime, where in the manga, his eyes stay down on his paperwork the entire time. I realize that anime can’t just still-frame every panel of a manga and call it an adaptation,[3] so characters will do things like move and look around in different directions just in the course of inhabiting a room, Still, in this case, it has the effect of making the officer look more alert and engaged than he was in the manga, and given that this whole chunk of backstory is about Jin slipping through the social safety net, it feels appropriate to me that the officer should be completely checked out.

Additions

• A new shot of Jin(s) in his pre-massacre doppelganger army days. Didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know—it’s little more than a new angle of the gang in the truck—but it was nice to see.

Bonus Note

• They left Re-Destro’s phrase, “My company,” alone when he was talking about the micro-transceivers Skeptic was using. That’s accurate to the manga, but I’d like to remind everyone that, at that point in the anime, viewers whose only reference is the anime itself have no idea that Re-Destro is a businessman. The show skipped the commercial, RD’s intro, the dinner scene where his company comes up, and Giran’s association of RD with Detnerat; it will further go on to skip Shigaraki recognizing him from the commercial. The news report mentioning Detnerat was ten full episodes prior to Episode 110, and was followed up on in not the faintest degree. For heaven’s sake, would it have been so hard to have Hirata Hiroaki say, “My Detnerat’s,” instead of just, “My company’s”?

Chapter 230 – Sad Man’s Parade

• Deleted the MLA members that are attacking Compress as they get pushed off by the Twice wave. Not the first time, and not the last, that the anime didn’t animate the random MLA people on the street. It’s hard to take the threat of their numbers seriously when the anime kept deleting them from what are supposed to be crowd scenes, you know?

• Mr. C thinking worriedly about Dabi as he’s mulling over Geten’s strength and disregard for catching his own people in the collateral damage. It’s just a, “Dabi—!” but it’s yet another tiny cut that shaves away at the manga’s clear depiction of Leagues’ concern for one another—even Mr. Compress, who claims that such things aren’t very villainous.

Framing Shifts

• Changed the random MLA’s exhortation to kill all the Twices to a generic, “Damn—!” I know American censors have often taken issue with the words “Kill” and “Die” in kids’ cartoons, but I was never of the impression that that was the case in Japan. And it’s not like the show made any bones about Curious planning to kill Toga. A rephrase to save a second and a half on dialogue, maybe?

• Had Skeptic give his lines about failure on the way over to the elevator instead of stalking over in silence, and then dumping the whole monologue all at once. The manga’s extended silence over three identically sized panels is much funnier and more characterful. I grow ever more confident in my assessment of Skeptic as the second-most ill-treated MLA character in this adaptation.

• The return of the Doom Choirs for the Twice Parade. I really wish the anime would lay off slathering Doom Choirs all over everything, especially a moment like this: a triumph for Twice, and, true to form for Twice, also crammed to the gills with visual and verbal gags. The Doom Choir is out of keeping with both the victory and the comedy—Mine Woman, later on, served the Parade much better.

Additions

• Gave Twice a new line, “I will protect my comrades!” It was nice to make up for his, “I won’t watch a friend die!” but the latter is more characterful, especially since a more literal translation is, “I won’t kill my friends!” Which is, you know, relevant to the fact that Twice has problems telling himself apart from things that just look like him, and he just had to intervene to stop some of those look-alikes from killing one of said friends. At least it got his use of nakama back in.[4]

• A new little cut of animation as the action went back to Geten and Dabi. I suppose the Dabi fans liked it, and it was nice to see more of Geten’s ice dragon, but I’d have much preferred they could keep the scenes we already have before adding new ones.

Chapter 231 – Path

The scene of Hawks wondering why he hasn’t heard from Dabi and his subsequent flashback to the last time they spoke were relocated to the beginning of Episode 102, the first thing the audience saw after the prior episode ended with Shouto inviting Bakugou and Deku to come intern with him at Endeavor’s. In the manga, of course, it’s not “a few weeks ago in Kyushu,” it’s “meanwhile in Osaka.” Also, the order of the scenes was flipped—the episode led with the flashback, then returned to the modern day. It really makes the timeline needlessly confusing—the viewer has no real context for what we’re seeing and when, especially since the anime neglected to specify how much time passed between the two scenes. You have to assume it was enough time for an outcry to be raised over Jeanist’s disappearance, but the random shot of a bird flying over was not at all helpful there.

Alterations included (as usual, outright removed material is in bold text):

1. Cut Hawks’ thought, “That’s why you keep calling,” and his line, “What’s the job?” I know I should give a breakdown here about Hawks’ mentality and training, but I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to complain about any lines Takami Keigo loses. God knows the anime gives him plenty enough bonus material.

2. Spliced in the flashback scene of Hawks reporting to the Commission from Chapter 243, but subtly changed it to suggest that it took place after the phonecall in which Dabi demanded Hawks kill a non-Endeavor top hero, rather than it taking place right after Hawks and Dabi’s first contact, which is what the manga implies.

3. Deleted several key shots in the Jeanist apartment scene, with the effect of making Hawks way less creepy. We got an anime-original shot of his eyes, narrow and serious, but not either of the shots of his big, off-putting grin and widened eyes as he pulls a feather-blade on Jeanist. We also lost a shot of Jeanist turning to face him, framed between extended primaries of Hawks’ Fierce Wings. It’s not like the anime dropped the fake!Dead Jeanist plot, so I’m not sure why the shift, unless it’s just that they wanted to keep Hawks likable for the merch-buying crowd, not creepy and unsettling. And while I personally never believed that Hawks really killed Jeanist, a lot of people thought it was plausible, no doubt based on how off-kilter he comes across in this scene. It loses a real frisson, to just play it straight.

• Shigaraki decaying a missile in mid-air. So Dabi can get those little animation flourishes but Tomura can’t, huh, anime? I see how it is. I. See. How. It. Is.

• Spinner’s little side comment about all the ice everywhere. A nice demonstration that Geten and Dabi’s fight really is affecting huge swathes of the city; that’s certainly apparent already in a bunch of the wide shots showing exactly that, but it’s helpful to have the more zoomed-in moments, too. Also, I do enjoy those little side quips wherever we get them, and the anime often removes them.

• Thinned out the crowd guarding the route to the tower somewhat (it’s particularly noticeable on the mid-distance rooftops) and, as best I can tell, removed Shigaraki and Spinner from the shot. Why keep all the lines harping on the 110,000 number when a) it’s not even accurate to the MLA’s forces, just the League’s assumptions, and b) the studio doesn’t even have the resources to adequately convey the numbers the manga does portray?

• Somebody in the crowd being defiant about Twice’s multiplication and vigorously declaring that the League are all just sacrifices for the MLA’s Revival Party anyway. The background nobodies? Allowed to express even bog-standard over-confidence? Well I never. How dare those people think their lives count enough for them to get dialogue.

• Spinner’s, “This keeps happening!” Of course he couldn’t have that line in the anime, since the anime cut the other big place Trumpet clearly used his power to rile up his followers. What other times were you even talking about when you said, “Every time he talks,” Anime!Spinner? That scene was the first time we even saw Trumpet since he welcomed you guys to town.

• Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. He just called him a damn moron (bakayarou) in the anime; he uses the considerably more specific baka kyouso (Google Translate gives “guru”; jisho gives “founder of a religious sect”). He uses the same term again immediately afterward—Viz’s translation gives, “More like chrome dome cult!”—which the anime also deleted.

So here’s another example of the anime doing everything it could to erase the presence of cults in the HeroAca world. The easy assumption to make is that this was tied to broadcast standards about the depiction of what Japan refers to as “new religious movements,” which—and pardon the brief swerve into real life historical horrors here—have been very unpopular in Japan since Aum Shinrikyo and the sarin gas attacks in 1995. But were these elements removed because the anime didn’t want to represent anything that smacks of new religious movements at all, or because the depiction of both the MLA and particularly the CRC are explicitly villainous and calling religious movements, even made-up ones, evil on TV leads to a lot of angry phone calls?

• Re-Destro’s line, “Unlike my good Miyashita, there’s nothing charming about you.” Of course they’d cut this, having cut the Miyashita scene, but I hate it anyway. As I said earlier, RD’s invocation of Miyashita in front of two people who are going to have not the slightest clue who that is tells me that Re-Destro really does miss and feel bad about killing the guy. Cutting the reminder that RD still feels that sting makes it much too easy to assume that Shigaraki’s right about RD hiding up in his tower, uncaring of the blood shed on his behalf, when if you read Re-Destro with even the slightest of attempts at good faith, it’s clear that those losses weigh very heavily on him.

Incidentally, and not to harp on the art again, but in the manga, Stress is still visibly spread down from RD’s temple to the ridge of his brow over his eye socket. The anime returned it back to its normal resting state, again suggesting that the death toll mounting in the streets below (as well as, possibly, the new stress of confronting a quirk as powerful as Double) left RD completely unmoved. The spread was back in the following shot, so it was probably just an art error, but it would be nice to have had fewer of those, especially when they impact characterization as much as what RD’s Stress blots are doing at any given time.

Framing Shifts

• Had Machia doing this weird cannonball skim just over the ground, when in the manga, he’s still half-buried, spraying earth and stone everywhere. The manga never namedrops Machia’s Mole quirk during the story itself, but it’s important to know for later that Machia can not only tear through obstacles, he can tear through obstacles extremely quickly.

Additions

• Gave Hawks a few new lines about how too many unexpected things happened for their last arrangement, and that Dabi should have given him more warning. Largely seemed to be there to give the anime an excuse to flashback to the High End fight, in case the viewers had completely forgotten about Hawks and Dabi having a clandestine meeting and sniping at each other in the aftermath of that event. An understandable addition, but deeply frustrating in the context of all the lines that got cut.

Chapter 232 – Meta Abilities and Quirks

• Dropped a third instance of Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. I don’t know what the S&P restriction is on this, but given that the movie was allowed to create and villainize an entire international terrorist cult, it is really incomprehensible that the MLA doesn’t get to keep their designation as such. Why?? Because the movie involves going out and defeating its cult, but the series is going to engage in a more sympathetic treatment?[5] Because the self-selecting movie crowd is less likely to complain than the TV audience? Did they just not want to draw attention to how much the movie was ripping off the MLA’s whole shtick? What??

• Missed that RD’s swole arm swipe wipes out the puppets Skeptic left behind; they just vanished from the scene entirely after Twice’s arrival. It’s hard to blame the anime for this; the manga also seems to lose track of the fact that they’re right there in between RD and the elevator—they’re nowhere to be seen anywhere between the end of Chapter 231 and the aforementioned arm swipe, where you can see them getting obliterated. Both versions could have stood to be more attentive to this; indeed, the anime could have fixed it, small error though it is.

• A sort of twitchy sparking around Shigaraki’s hand right after he decays the tower. This is foreshadowing that Shigaraki’s big AOE decay attacks are hard on his body, which will become extremely apparent after he unleashes it on the city at large during the climax, and factors into his decision to accept the mysterious power Ujiko offers. The damage Shigaraki sustains there doesn’t come out of nowhere; Horikoshi is, on the whole, extremely good at layering in foreshadowing many chapters before the foreshadowed elements come fully to light. It makes the writing look much messier than it actually is—more convenient, more pat—to delete this stuff.

• Shigaraki recognizing RD from the Detnerat commercials. Well, they ditched the Detnerat commercial, so of course they ditched this. Still, it lost one of the indicators that Shigaraki is, despite not receiving a formal education, actually quite up to speed on current events—even, apparently, when those current events are happening while he’s been fighting Machia in an isolated stretch of mountains for six weeks! I already suffer enough through fanon characterizations of Shigaraki in which he’s a basement-dwelling feral manchild glued to his gaming console whom AFO bans from accessing information about the outside world, anime! I don’t need you dropping the scenes that most clearly demonstrate otherwise!!

• In the anime, Baby!Chikara’s face was unmarked, just a normal infant face—you’d never even know the kid had a meta-ability just to look at him. In the manga, the skin of his face is clearly darker, contrasted against the paleness of his mother’s hand. It’s obvious that he’s not “normal” looking, and thus equally obviously would have attracted negative attention in his era.[6] Also had his mother smiling; her face in the manga is too shadowed and vague to make out an expression, befitting the murky tragedy of her story and the fear she must have been living with.

Framing Shifts

Additions

• A little thing: they had Twice echo, “Cushion?” when Clone!Shigaraki told him to get ready to cushion Giran’s fall. If anything, Re-Destro and his little thought-bubbled question mark is probably the one who should have had this reaction line.

• Added a visual for Clone-araki catching himself on the window. A perfectly reasonable way to fill screen time while a dialogue beat was ongoing.

• Added a panning still over a reaction shot from a bunch of Twice clones when the tower came down. It had a few good faces in it.

---

So, generally, this episode was better. I definitely still had issues with it, but compared to what came before, when they were trying to cram 5+ chapters into the episodes, there were far fewer cuts, and what cuts and tweaks there were, were relatively minor. Definitely nothing that made me want to throw chairs Jerry Springer-style the way 108 and 109 did.

Sadly, I can't say the same for the remaining two episodes. Come back next time for Part Four, Episode 111: Shimura Tenko, Origin.

FOOTNOTES

[1] After witnessing the massacre that was Episode 108, I was convinced they were going to cut the policeman scene entirely, and just go right to Jin getting fired for hitting someone with his bike, letting the audience think it was his fault completely rather than cast aspersions on police and the justness of the law. I was pleased they kept it at all, but less pleased with the steps taken to soften the sharpness of its accusation.

[2] Of course, it’s not like the MLA themselves don’t understand the willingness to give everything for the people who matter. They just label those feelings Devotion To The Cause, and don’t think the League is capable of such resolution.

[3] Netflix’s Way of the House Husband, be told.

[4] Nakama is, of course, a shonen standby, but, to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly limited; I don’t follow a lot of shounen series), it’s pretty rare to hear the word coming out of a villain’s mouth! Jin calling the League his nakama ties into how the League are both sympathetic villains in the larger story and also the protagonists of the current arc, thereby operating under a lot of protag tropes for the duration—foreshadowed by Spinner’s earlier talk of Shigaraki and his boyish, dream-chasing eyes.

[5] Sometime after the mass arrests, one hopes.

[6] This could well be a coloring error in the manga, but if so, you’d think they’d have corrected it for the volume release. Especially given that, again, the color is in a different shade/screentone than the shadow that covers most of his mother’s face, and her hand stroking Chikara’s chin isn’t shadowed at all.

#my villain academia #bnha #bnha meta #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #my writing #stillness has salt

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secondhoekage · 4 years

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Ignore this long rant I’m high as shit but I... can’t take the hero commission oR HONESTLY THE HEROES THEMSELVES, seriously anymore

They’re BRAINLESS they all share one (1) brain cell and it belonged to Crust. THESE GUYS had MONTHS to strategize this attack and what did they do? They fucked it up. They want me to believe this was planned and not written on a chalk board the night before? Sent out to all heroes the next morning at 8am in a CHAIN EMAIL?

Unpopular opinion(?): they sent the worst possible, ill-suited heroes to each location for this PLF raid and I’m mad at them for it and I’m mad at Hori for making me be mad at it even tho he had to do it beCauSe oF pLot but I’m mad.

The MLA’s plans to take on The League of Villains? Spotless. Chef’s kiss. The detail. The one-on-one counters they planned out. Accounting for each enemy’s quirk. Yeah there were like 6 of them to account for but?? Heroes, yall had enough info and enough time to think of ways to go about this raid and I’m supposed to believe that you did, BUT DID YOU REALLY? MONTHS TO PLAN, and saw one electric Sir Crocodile rip-off and immediately threw Kaminari on his ass. Good move. Kinda. But the rest of the PLF? Heroes just gonna make shit up as they go I guess??

To make myself feel better here’s a long ass useless rant on what could’ve damn happened and which heroes should’ve gone where and to make this an epic ass rumble. ugh. Even just doing some of these things would’ve made this arc (imo) feel more... convincing and delicious

under the cut tho bc damn this is too long

In this essay I will—

Edgeshot??? EDGESHOT?? EDGESHOT?? i’M GOING TO GO OFF.

I swear to shit Edgeshot could’ve soloed the hospital but they had him at the PLF mansion for Some Reason like... like they didn’t make him run up on the League’s bar instead of the Nomu factory bc they knew he would take care of shit immediately. Make it make sense. If he was at the hospital eye just—Nomu in the way?? Doctor running off? Say less. Electric slide all the way in there Shinya. DID NO ONE SEE HOW EASILY HE HANDLED KUROGIRI? Did everyone just forget this man can pull a K.O in .3 seconds flat? Heroes didn’t think it might be a good idea to have him there, ready to give Shigaraki the paper cut of his life the second he woke up (if he even did bc my mans likely could’ve prevented the ‘doctor getting away>high-end awaken>rush to get shiggy out of the tank>shiggy wakes up’ chain of events)? Didn’t think to send him instead of this guy X Less just sitting there with That Look on his face?

I get they needed heroes like Edgeshot at the mansion to take out a handful of enemies in one go but COME ON NOW. There were more than enough long-range AOE heroes there. And even if you don’t wanna believe he could solo then STILL, EDGESHOT DUOING WITH MIRUKO, ANYBODY? If anyone was gonna keep up with her happy ass zooming into the lab it could’ve been him. We were robbed of an Edgeshot/Miruko teamup and I’m not okay. Could’ve had a sexy ass panel of the hospital-team hyping up Miruko and Edgeshot as they dashed to Ujiko’s lab, two fast as shit bad bitches, zooming through these Nomu, absolutely obliterating them at lightning speed, watching each other’s backs too, PROBABLY SAVING MIRUKO FROM BECOMING THE PRE-DEATH ORGAN DONOR THAT SHE IS NOW. I know it was hot watching Miruko take on these high-ends but I’d have rather Edgeshot share the spotlight if it meant Miruko was in one piece rn. Hori played her

Anyways the literal dumb bitch energy that went into not sending Edgeshot to the hospital is sending me. Could’ve at least let him just be on the team and on standby while Shigaraki was waking up. With those sharp as shit reflexes of his we’ve seen? Shigaraki would’ve been out like a fucking light the second Edgeshot saw him sit up. X-Less you had a nice thicc upper lip that lip was too shaded for you to die, but F in the chat bitch. Useless plot fodder I’m sorry X-Less. There isn’t a hero there right now (besides Aizawa but like... idk, plot is nerfing him) that could’ve incapacitated Shiggy so quickly and prevented the mess they’re in now like my guy Edgeshot could’ve. Feels like a cop out

In conclusion: Edgeshot sweety I’m sorry they did this. I’m sorry you were nerfed. I’m sorry they didn’t let you deliver Kamino Pizza to this hospital. I’m sorry they ignored you and now everyone’s gonna die bc they didn’t they respect your Ninpo rights

CEMENTOSS??? y’all sent him to fuck up the mansion FOR WHAT??? If I were the hero commission and thought :

“Dang we need to completely ass blast this huge PLF resort to make room for our heroes to run in... but it would also be good if we had someone to do that at the hospital too just in case things get tricky and we need to pave a quick way to Ujiko’s secret hideout... but I’m single-celled and can’t weigh my options logically so ok. Cementoss, to the mansion.”

...................... Ok but can I in interest you in PIXIE BOB? I get the mansion is huge but going by the shit we’ve seen her do?? I’m not about to underestimate ol’ girl. I know she could’ve fucked that place up if they let her, switched her out for Cementoss, who could’ve made THE EASIEST route for the hospital team to get into the secret lab, trapped Ujiko, also trapped a couple nomu/high-ends in cement while he was at it, rearranged some tunnels for optimal tactical movement, probably could’ve done a decent-fucking-job at slowing the onslaught of Decay too if it got to that point (AND IT MIGHT NOT HAVE BC THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS RANT IS TO INSIST THAT A BETTER SELECTION OF HEROES WOULDN’T HAVE RESULTED IN SHIGGY’S CURRENT THANOS SNAP ORdEAL)

I know Pixie’s mostly on rescue operations and that’s what she’s doing at the hospital/surrounding city but WHY?? EVEN IF THEY REALLY NEEDED CEMENTOSS AT THE MANSION—WHY NOT HAVE PIXIE BOB DOING SOMETHING IN THE ACTUAL HOSPITAL BATTLE? JUST A LITTLE? The hospital is built on uh.. oh yeah... EARTH? And considering in the Forest Training arc she was using her quirk from a remote location (to make that Earth golem, or whatever) she wouldn’t even HAVE to be IN Ujiko’s lab to be useful

Can y’all PLEASE put at least ONE of your terraforming heroes at the place where y’all REALLY need them?? And not after-the-fact like y’all just did with Pixie Bob? Because clearly she didn’t do shit this last chapter trying to stop Decay. I’m sorry girl. You may be dead. Terrible.

I would have legitimately sent Snipe to get Ujiko before I sent Miruko and that’s that on that. Where is he even? He was there during the briefing but he’s gone? MIA? Idk. No way Ujiko is getting away from those bullets. Target locked: Ujiko’s hand. Fire. High-end Nomu remote goes bye bye. Then another bullet in the leg. No need to worry about him escaping and waking up high-ends/Shiggy when he doesn’t have kneecaps. Problem solved. No way it would’ve taken that long to break Shiggy’s tank either with a few well-placed pew pews zigging around some Nomu (not that we really wanna break him outta his tank bc look what happened). Snipe’s 6/5 technique stat deserves better!!!!!

Gang Orca did not go off and give a bunch of kids brain damage during the License arc to be so thoroughly ignored here. He’s clearly about to get his shit rocked by some gauged-out ex-Hot Topic employee in the next few chapters and ugh you’re TOO GOOD FOR THAT ORCA. COULD’VE BEEN OF USE AT THE HOSPITAL. PARALYZING SONIC WAVES? WE’LL TAKE IT. Who knows if any of the high-end Nomu would’ve been affected by paralysis but the small fry? Probably. Shiggy’s little twink ass? I would bet on it. Not that it would really stop him from using Decay but still

At the risk of sounding like someone I know who endorses child labor (the hero commission) here me out: CAN I GET A UHHH JUZO HONENUKI??? AGAIN YEAH good that he was at the mansion to do some long-range AOE action but if y’all are gonna force kids to join in on this war anyways, put your strongest and most useful ones at the place you need them. Shit it would’ve been real nice if Honenuki was there to trap some Nomu—uncertain if it would work against the high-ends that show some pretty flexible quirks but who knows—and even at the risk of reaching, maybe in some universe where Shiggy and Honenuki face off, it would be interesting to see Decay against Softening, since Decay’s one big weakness is that it can only work on solid objects sooOooOo? Idk. Would’ve been a cool match up but I hate that the kids are fighting anyways so we’re gonna ignore this Juzo rant. Just know it would’ve been cool

And as for the mess that’s going to be this fucking mansion soon... .. We’re just gonna ignore a whole ass Geten, big destructive power, big fucking threat, and not gonna throw Endeavor’s ass in there? Makes sense. They’re leaving it to Shoto I guess. They said time for you to fucking shine kid. Get in there. I mean really trading Endeavor for Edgeshot would’ve been top tier strategy but...

I MEAN THEY?? Made up a whole ass plan to counter ONE greasy-looking PLF guy by throwing Kaminari in there, but they couldn’t make up a plan to counter Geten? Are they just?? Pulling names out of a hat to see who gets to fight who? Did they spin a bottle to see who it landed on? Did Mt. Lady pull the short stick? I swear on shit when Geten starts going feral soon I’m not gonna feel sorry about it. Unless heroes got a plan and someone’s gonna make a sexy ass top 10 anime entrances to counter his ice then I’m disappointed. We went ape shit over Kaminari countering one of the commanders but are we not gonna get anymore ‘I’m your perfect counter and I’m here to stop you’ moments? No? I’M PISSED.

I would have also settled for my kween Nejire being there to blast away some ice because who tf else is gonna do it? But eh.

Dabi will also be trouble depending on what he decides to do. He only has about 3 good ideas a month and he’s used them all up by now so he’s in dumb slut territory as we speak. But you’d think that a villain as widely recognized as Dabi with such a destructive quirk would urge the heroes to have some plan to take him on but?? So far I don’t really see anyone quick to take on the role. Not that it’d be that hard bc he’s dangerous but also dangerously dumb. Where is Inasa. Maybe he can just blast the flames back in Dabi’s face. I love him but at this point he deserves to have some of his rights taken away

Don’t even get me start on Gigantomachia. I get the heroes had little choice except to attack before Shiggy was full-power but just?? NOT having a plan in case by some little chance Gigantomachia DID wake up? You stupid bastards. You absolute fools. I guess there’s not much you CAN do but FUCK y’all just gonna let him SIT THERE? No counter measures? No ‘Let’s execute this incredibly thorough and thought-out plan we’ve spent months formulating to restrain Gigantomachia in case he does end up waking up, because better safe than sorry’? When he tramples like 50 students I bet that shit gonna hurt

I hate it all. I was really happy about seeing Shiggy go off 272 bc he’s a king but after rereading from like, 258 I feel... weird. Maybe this will be resolved with more chapters but. eh. Now that I’ve thought of this, I can’t go back. I miss the brain power that was behind the MLA fight

#bnha spoilers #bnha 272 #i'm mad #bnha #Why did I make this? It’s so dumb #i'm gonna wake up tomorrow and scream #they're 2d bro LMAOOOO #is htis a meta #meta #bnha meta

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goldeneyedgirl · 3 years

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mcu xover: jar of hearts 3/?

Oh yes, my MCU x Twilight crossover is still happening.

And this chapter may even reference the MCU directly. SHOCKING.

Seriously, I’m so sorry this took so long. I’ve been writing a lot, across a lot of different fics and this one slid to the back of the queue. Also, I wrote myself into a corner and needed to get out again.

And yes, we’re inching closer to joining up the MCU. These things take time, but it’ll happen.

part two here

roadtrip.

They’re almost in Arizona when Charlie calls to find out where the fuck Seth Clearwater is, because apparently he’s been tangling up his story all over town - he’s told anyone on the Res who asks that he’s staying with Charlie. He’s told Charlie that he’s staying with Colin or Brady.

Alice scowls at Seth through the rearview mirror and begins to weave a tale of being told Seth had permission to join them to go see their cousins - in between lecturing Seth about setting them up for a kidnapping charge across state lines.

By the end of the conversation, Charlie’s trying not to snigger at Alice’s increasingly indignant rant at Seth, at law breaking in general, and at fucking son-of-a-bitch moron drivers, sweet Jesus. Emmett and Seth are howling at Alice’s cussing and even Charlie is a little bit shocked at her language (later, when the boys are picking on her about it, she rolls her eyes, looks over the top of her heart-shaped sunglasses, and reminds them both - quite primly - that she married a goddamned soldier.)

Seth’s favourite part of the whole ordeal is that Alice isn’t even driving.

But Charlie clears Seth accompanying them, so that’s one less problem. Of course, it means his Jeep stinks of human food, and that they have to stop, but they still make good time up to Alaska.

It’s a hard drive to make - closer to the cities and urban, abandoned cars have been moved off the road. But in the rural areas, cars are still scattered, seemingly abandoned or crashed. Most of the bodies have been removed, thankfully. But still, only most. And it’s been weeks - months - since it happened, so those bodies aren’t in good condition.

And not all of them are adults.

They start out burying the people they find (well, Emmett and Alice do - they both insist Seth stay in the damn car), but then only the children.

Then they just stop because they are both tired of handling rotting bodies who never should have died, let alone forgotten on the side of a long, empty stretch of highway. The graves they’ve already dug haven’t got markers or anything. Just a hole on the side of the road.

It doesn’t feel like enough.

The house in Denali feels wrong before they even get out of the car. The house has always had a sense of otherness, thanks to the fact that it’s the permanent residence of immortals. But right now, it feels more forgotten, lesser in a way.

Tanya’s walking out the front door the second the car pulls up, and she looks old. Tired and strained, and she walks straight into the hug Alice offers.

Seth gapes at the house - the enormous glass-and-wood lodge, tucked carefully in the wilderness where it is mostly forgotten. It might be on a map somewhere, might be noted down in some database, but it is mostly overlooked, a sanctuary in the middle of nowhere.

There’s not really much for them to say or do in Alaska, Emmett realises; Carmen and Tanya are more than capable enough to manage on their own.

Except… Carmen looks like a ghost. She looks disorientated and disinterested, and there’s a part of Emmett that is cold and dead that is perversely fascinated with all the different ways there are to fall apart after the loss of a mate. He’s walking around like a hollowed-out old man, Alice is… not quite there, a little unbalanced.

Sometimes he wonders if Rosalie should have stayed, should have taken his place instead. He would have given it to her, without question. Rose only deserved good things, easy things.

But then he wonders. If living through it all really was easy or good. It doesn’t feel like it, most days. It’s a heavy weight in his chest and a constant feeling of leaving something behind (he’s got one of her hair ties around his wrist; it’s dumb but he always had one on him just in case - at school, when they went hunting, everywhere; he’s also got one of her shirts in his bag. It won’t smell right, being crammed in with his stuff, but he brought it anyway).

Rose wouldn’t have been happy in this world. She wouldn’t have known what to do with Alice or Seth. She would have been angry at the disruption to her life. She would have been afraid and lonely and lashed out at everyone.

No, not good and easy at all.

Then he wonders how Jasper would have faired, without Alice, and that is a grim, grizzly train of thought. Thanos would have begged for death, if Alice had been taken and Jasper left behind. He’s only ever seen a glimpse of the monster behind the man over the decades since Jasper and Alice joined the family, and it’s enough to think that perhaps nature intervened and tried to protect everyone from what Jasper would become without Alice.

They stay in Alaska for two days; Tanya and Carmen are ill-at-ease with Seth, even after they explain who he is.

“But,” Tanya had frowned, “why is he with you?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

Because Seth was… he was Other, like the Cullens. He understood what it was like to be special and expect to be strong enough to survive and to save; to be beyond the reach of petty mortal shit. He was a fucking kid, who’d lost his family, his friends, and most of his community. Fuck, at this rate, he’d lost his childhood too. He was the natural leader of what remained of the pack, and he’d done something fairly smart - looked for adult guidance.

A shame that the only thing he could find in its place was him and Alice. If someone had ranked his family by ‘best choice to care for a teenage boy’ he, Alice, and Jasper would have been dead last. Edward would have ranked higher.

(It still feels weird to think or talk about Alice without adding ‘and Jasper’. Like he’s mispronouncing a word.)

But it is what it is, and Seth’s still clocking more hours doing online school than online games on the laptop Alice gave him, plus there’s a bunch of food in the back of the Jeep, so they aren’t failing too badly.

Seth turns red when Tanya smiles at him, and Alice banishes him to a guest room, loudly forbidding any imprinting for the next decade, and that just means Emmett has to explain imprinting to Carmen and Tanya, and Alice has to read the riot act to Tanya about not flirting with the fourteen-year-old boy upstairs and it almost feels like old times.

They go hunting whilst Seth is asleep, and it’s obvious that nothing is the same. So much of the forest surrounding the house is just… gone. Empty, as if there was never trees looming over them, underbrush to push through. There are less animals to track and hunt, no excuse to be picky.

It was probably the same around Forks, truthfully, except there was that cloud of grief and horror surrounding him and Alice when they hunted - that was where Edward stumbled and fell. That was where Jasper couldn’t run any longer.

That was where he heard Alice scream when Rosie disintegrated.

In the harsh light of day, the situation feels much bleaker, much bigger outside of the insular forests of the Olympic Peninsula.

They don’t see a single bear.

He’s not entirely sure why they’ve come to Alaska, except he sees Carmen and Alice go off together, finds them sitting quietly together talking. On one hand, he wishes that he could sit with them; that he lost Rose just like they lost Jasper and Eleazer, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to be a part of that particular club. Doesn’t have words left to comfort Carmen. Most of his platitudes have started sounding hollow.

Alice vanishes one morning, and leaves him to help Seth with school work, and he grimly realises they have nearly four more years of this until Seth graduates. But things will be different before then; they’ll be back in Forks and Seth can ask paid professionals to explain algebra to him.

When Alice returns, it’s time to go - she’s been off in the wilderness, trying to See around Seth, and deciding to go off on her own is, apparently, the best way.

“Call us if you need anything,” Tanya says, pulling all three of them into crushing hugs, and if Seth turns red and tries to look down Tanya’s top, Alice pretends not to notice.

“Where are you headed next?” Carmen asks, as Seth climbs in the back, clutching an energy drink they’re all going to regret.

Alice smiles. But it’s the wrong kind of smile; it’s sharp and sinister and looks wrong on her face. A Cheshire Cat smile, a Joker smile, and Emmett wonders if after all these years together, if Jasper’s reactive violence hasn’t bled into his wife a little.

“We’re going to Mexico.”

—

The trip to Mexico can be described as long.

If the Jeep wasn’t Rosalie’s last gift to him, then they probably could have run there faster, even with Seth in tow. But there won’t be anymore perfectly modified cars ever again, so he’s staying with the Jeep.

Alice gives up the passenger seat once they make it through to Alberta, apologetic that Seth’s been crammed in the backseat. But then Alice starts muttering to herself, tapping away on her phone, and seems distracted and irritated when Emmett tries to get her attention.

He can’t make out what she’s saying at all, it’s just an irregular hum, and he wonders if she’s having more of her one-sided conversations with Jasper.

The trip takes a week, winding through landlocked states. It shouldn’t take so long except everything is in chaos; they lose an entire afternoon carefully shifting some abandoned cars off the road to get the Jeep through in the middle of backwoods Montana. They spend hours waiting for gas every time they stop. And Seth might be a mystical shapeshifter, but he needs a proper bed, and hot food, and human moments; they have varying success at finding all three, but they try, and Seth is nothing if not agreeable and grateful for even the smallest attempt at making him comfortable.

They find an abandoned farm in Wyoming and they let Seth transform and run for a few hours at dusk, sitting on the front of the Jeep in silence until it’s dark enough for them to hunt, as well.

It feels like the world has ended, some days, and they are the only ones left - to him, at least. Maybe that’s why Alice is talking to herself - it’s the only sensible answer she’ll get.

Some towns are empty; no one for miles. The information that filters through the internet mentions people heading to the cities, to the larger towns, because the population is too small to keep so many different settlements functioning. There’s no money or survival if you’ve lost your entire farm, if the hospital or the school is unmanned.

And Emmett wonders if he’s been cured of human blood for good now he’s seen so much of it spilt, stale and rotting, on the backroads of the country. It feels like everything smells just a little bit like decomposition right now. He’s not sure if that’s him or if that’s everything.

And they get closer to Mexico.

—

They arrive just as the day turns to night, and he expects… he’s not sure what he expects, honestly. Maybe setting up in the motel they’ve found, that Alice has declared a safe distance from any of Maria’s plotting, and getting Seth some fresh food - he hasn’t complained, but even Emmett’s tired of the pre-packaged, long-life crap.

Instead, Alice slips from the car, clad in jeans and a leather jacket, tucking her phone in her back pocket.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she says, like she’s going alone.

“What?” Seth looks suspiciously at the pair of them, and it’s only later that he realises the kid is terrified of being left behind. That he’ll cling to their belt loops with his dying breath. His mom left, his sister left, his friends and pack left, and he took a chance on leaving everything else that was left to stick with them.

That makes Emmett feel guilty for no reason he can name.

“I can’t see with you around me,” Alice says gently. “It’s a simple clean-up job, it won’t take long.”

Seth frowns and looks at Emmett.

“You aren’t doing this alone, Alice. Even if we wait in the car,” he says with finality. This isn’t going to be an argument, because there’s nothing to argue about. He’s not letting Alice roam around in a city full of uncontrolled newborns, no matter how talented she is.

Alice scowls. “I know what I’m doing, Emmett,” her voice is sharp, and she never likes reminding them of how long she was alone before she found Jasper; what the family knows about those years is quite vague and patchwork - as far as Alice is concerned, nothing important happened before she met Jasper, as if she popped into being on a diner stool just in time.

Rose always suspected Alice’s real story was very lonely, very frightening, but no one asks when she so obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. He knows what it costs for her to bring it up now.

“I know. But that doesn’t mean I’m letting my only sister go newborn hunting alone,” Emmett says, and Alice sighs and nods - her visions have gone dark, obviously this is not a battle she can win.

Emmett ends up wishing that he and Seth had stayed behind.

Alice is like a laser, zeroing on her targets with a single-minded intensity. He hears that hum faintly, of her talking to herself and he wants to ask her what she’s saying, what thoughts are so important she needs to say them almost out loud but he doesn’t get a chance.

The first one of Maria’s abandoned acolytes is a girl around seventeen with matted black hair and a dress that Emmett mistakes for some kind of lace at first, except it’s the remnants of dozens of meals dried across the front of her, ripples of dried, stale blood that have solidified into a repulsive black and red mass.

She snarls at them, her face bloody, and the pale form of a man beneath her. Alice just walks up to her and backhands her with a crack that makes Seth jump; Emmett flinches but he’d never admit it.

The newborn snaps at Alice, and in one movement, the girl is pinned to the brick wall behind them, cracks spiralling up her neck from Alice’s tight grip.

“Who the hell are you?” the girl snaps in Spanish and Alice says nothing, just rips her head off by her neck, the screech sounding deafening so close. Moments later, her body is in pieces in a dumpster, along with her victim, and Alice has set the entire thing alight, her face blank.

Emmett makes a decision then, to leave Seth in a brightly lit burger place with a promise he’ll be back in one hour because this is nothing a kid should see.

And he’s so, so glad that he made that choice. Alice’s hunt is something that will be burned into his brain for the rest of his life.

The next newborn is a middle-aged male who reminds Emmett of his English lit teacher back at Forks, right down to the salt and pepper streaks in his hair and the slightly off-centre nose. He’s the worst of the night, Emmett silently decides, as he guards his hunt - a family of five that he’s only half-finished. The father is extremely, viscerally dead and there’s no putting him back together; the mother is choking and struggling for a breath that her torn throat will never give her as she bleeds out; the baby in her arms is long dead with its head taken up by a gaping wound. There are two young girls, clinging to each other in terror, and there is no way this ends well.

The newborn obviously thinks Emmett is more of a threat than petite little Alice, practically frothing at the mouth as Emmett approaches him, and grabs at one of the children. It all happens in seconds - the girls scream, there is a crunch of bone and more screaming, the rich scent of fresh blood, another crunch of bone and muscle, and then the newborn’s head is half-torn away before Alice can get better leverage and finish the job. The dead child dangles from his grip, bent the wrong way; her sister has her head half caved in, and the mother still chokes on her own blood. It all happens so fast.

He should have stayed with Seth.

He lets Alice handle the rest of them - she’s located six of Maria’s surviving nine, and after the family, she takes them down swiftly and wordlessly, just a diminutive blur and the sound of tearing metal.

The sweet smoke clings to them as they make their way back to Seth, Alice’s head down.

“I thought,” she began and just shook her head. And he reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

She thought it would be closure, would feel like an ending or an achievement. That there would be some peace in ending Maria’s life’s work. Instead, she’s just the same, but with blood on her boots and a tear in her jeans. The newborns barely got an opportunity to fight back, to give her the pound of flesh she was looking for.

Seth is waiting for them in the window of the store, a broad grin on his face when he spots them. Back to the motel for the night, now. And then tomorrow…

“So,” he says finally. “What now?”

#twilight fic #alice cullen #emmett cullen #seth clearweater #mcu crossover #my fic: jar of hearts #marvel #mcu fic #why yes we did need a twilight x mcu crossover #it felt necessary

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fandomimaginegoddess · 3 years

Text

“She’s got spunk” Yu Yu Hakusho Jin X OC fanfiction (Part 2)

The next day Team Urameshi went to the stadium. Kurama and Hiei were missing though…

“Hey, where are those guys?” Kuwabara grumbled.

“Probably training and lost track of time. I’m sure they will be here.” Yusuke said.

“Okay next up! Team Urameshi vs team Dr. Ichigaki! Will three fighters from each team please step forward!” Koto announced.

Ivy, Yusuke, and Kuwabara stepped into the ring, along with three men from the other team who caused Kuwabara to gasp.

“What’s the matter?” Ivy asked.

“I saw those guys in my dream last night… they are being forced to fight!” Kuwabara said.

As it turned out the men were being controlled by a device on their backs that messed with their blood. Which is where Ivy came in handy. Ivy took back control of their blood and caused the device to pop off of the men. The men then surrendered. But then Dr. Ichigaki attacked.

“You think you can beat me that easily?!” He shouted as he transformed into a huge beast. The three Urameshi fighters took him down pretty quickly after that. Ivy delivered the killing blow using a pistol she pulled out of her purse she carries with her.

“looks like we can...” Ivy mocked, glaring at his dead, bloody body as she stowed away her weapon.

Kurama and Hiei then came into the stadium with an older man. The men that had been forced to fight were incredibly happy to see him. It turns out he was their teacher/father figure who they thought was dead. They ended up in the tournament because Dr. Ichigaki tricked them and said he could save their teacher, despite having been the one that caused him to fall ill in the first place. Well on the bright side, the teacher is alive. So it looks like Ichigaki kept that promise at least. But he is still an asshole…. I mean, didn’t he ever hear “do no harm”? Dr. my ass….

“Shut up!” Sophia yelled at the sky

“Who are you talking to?” Asked Piper, raising an eyebrow.

“The narrator! She’s going on and on! I mean come on! We get it already!” Sophia ranted.

Piper opened her mouths to say something but was stopped when Olivia put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at Olivia who simply shook her head as if to say “just let it go.”

Team Urameshi then went back to the hotel to get some rest, but Ivy was feeling rather restless after the fight so she decided to go for another walk through the woods.

She walked into a clearing and there was a gentle breeze with rose petals flowing through the wind. She looked around and saw Jin leaning against a tree with a rose in his mouth.

“Who are you supposed to be? Tuxedo mask?” She asked, crossing her arms and glaring.

“I’m the man of your dreams…” He told her as he removed the rose from his mouth and held it gingerly in his hand.

“More like nightmares…” She grumbled as she turned to walk away.

“Wait! Baby come back!” He called out.

“Not in this lifetime…. Not in any lifetime…. Not in any afterlife-time…” She told him.

“Lassy! I can change! Sweetheart please!” He called out desperately.

“We will see about that ya douche” She said as she continued to walk away, rolling her eyes. He watched her as she disappeared in the distance, his ears extended to a point wiggling away. He’s determined to win her heart.

Ivy headed back to the hotel and got some rest for the night. The next day the group headed back to the stadium for the next fight.

“Team Urameshi Vs team Masho! ...Um where is team Masho?” Koto asked.

Before anything else could be said a small tornado appeared in the stadium. Once the tornado subsided, in its place was a group of men wearing black cloaks.

“Ah there they are! Team Masho everyone! Team captains, please step forward!” Koto exclaimed.

Yusuke stepped into the ring and one of the cloaked men's cloaks blew off with a gust of wind revealing…. Jin. Much to Ivy's dismay.

“God damn it not this asshole!” Ivy shouted.

“Hiya lassy! How ya doin my love?” He asked as he winked at her in an attempt to be seductive.

“What’s this? A forbidden romance? ….Ah…. Maybe not though...” Koto began but then rethought her statement when she saw Ivy flipping Jin the bird with an angry glare.

Yusuke and Jin decided the rules for the match which was one on one elimination.

The first match was Kurama Vs Gamma. Gamma uses a special make up as a weapon. When Ivy heard this she got hyped.

“Ooh! Gurl! Me and you gotta go to sephora!” She called but was ignored. But she did very much irritate the make up user.

In the end Gamma died but not before sealing Kurama's spirit energy along with making him immobile.

The next fight ended up being Kurama Vs Touya. Well that’s not fair… don’t they know he can’t move or use his energy??? What the fuck dude?

“Of course they know! They are cheating! God! What kinda narrator are you?” Sophia ranted at the sky.

Touya is an ice user. Kurama stalled him for a while by talking and that worked as when Touya was done talking Kurama could move again. In the end Kurama won by sewing a death plant seed in his arm and attacking Touya with it. Kurama fell unconscious on his feet while still standing in the ring.

The next fight was Kurama…. oh you’ve gotta be kidding me…. He’s not even conscious!!!

“We. Know.” Sophia said, unable to look at the scene before her, holding back tears.

Sorry… the next fight is Kurama Vs Bakken…. Bakken, who is a total tool, began beating up an unconscious Kurama. Until…

“That’s enough Bakken” said one of the members of team Masho. Bakken looked confused. “Well do you think you could survive a bullet to the back?” The voice said. And Bakken then looked over and saw Yusuke aiming his spirit gun at him.

Bakken threw Kurama out of the ring, only to be caught by Yusuke. Yusuke was filled with rage and was about to jump in the ring and kick some ass but Ivy beat him to the punch.

“Ivy what are you doing?” Yusuke said.

“Let me handle this jackass Yusuke.” Ivy said lowly.

“Ain’t that cute…. the little girl wants to fight…” Bakken mocked.

“Ooh you're in for it now…” Jin thought.

“Begin!” Koto said.

Bakken was about to move to attack but Ivy took control of his blood and made it boil. She made it so hot his skin began to bubble. Steam was coming off his melting skin. He screamed in agony, begging for mercy. Ivy increased the temperature of his blood more and more until she was sure he was dead.

“Ooh that’s my girl…” Jin thought as he made his way to get his ass kicked next, I mean to fight next.

Koto started the fight and Ivy went to punch Jin. Something she has been wanting to do again for a while. But he flew straight up, high in the sky. Ivy smirked, once Jin got a few miles up Ivy made his blood increasingly heavy by increasing the iron in it. She made him too heavy to fly, which caused him to plummet to the ground. He smashed hard into the pavement and Ivy then began to continue to beat the shit out of him.

“The chair! Give him the chair!” Oliva shouted as Ivy took a chair out from under Kuwabara and whacked Jin with it.

Ivy continued to pummel Jin until…. “You can stop now you know… you won the fight and we need to move on.” Koto told Ivy from a distance.

“Oh! Sorry!” Ivy said as she stopped her punches and then glared at Jin as if to say “this isn’t over.”

“What a woman…” Jin muttered as he was dragged off the stage by his teammates.

“The next fight is Ivy Vs Risho!” Koto announced.

A voice then came over the loudspeaker. “Due to the fact that Ivy continued to beat up her opponent after the ten count was over, the fight, Ivy Vs Jin is considered a tie.”

“What?!” Ivy exclaimed, clearly very pissed. “No! No! I beat him! Fuck you guys! Who the fuck is asking to be killed?! Come on out and take your death like a man!” Ivy raged.

“Down girl. I will handle the last one. Don’t worry.” Yusuke said, stepping into the ring as Ivy growled and walked off the stage. Sitting down on the ground, seething with rage.

“Correction, the next fight will be Kuwabara Vs Risho” said the voice on the loudspeaker.

“What the fuck?! Are you fucking kidding me?! Why?! Fuck you guys! That is totally unfair! Why are you deciding who fights for us?! Assholes!” Yusuke exclaimed.

“Don’t worry guys! I got this!” Kuwabara said as he hopped into the ring.

Risho used earth attacks and also wore different kinds of clay armor. Kuwabara however used his spirit sword to break it and then whacked Risho with it, sending him into the wall, thus defeating him.

“Winner of the round, Team Urameshi!” Koto announced.

The group then began to head back to the hotel to rest, about halfway to the hotel they saw a staggering red headed figure.

“Oh no…” Ivy mumbled.

“What?” Kuwabara asked.

“Keep quiet and keep walking.” Ivy told them as Kuwabara looked around “Keep your head down!” Ivy commanded.

“Oh isn’t that your boyfriend over there Ivy?!” Yusuke yelled.

“I’m gonna kill you!” She exclaimed, she was about to strangle Yusuke but before she could, the red headed demon was at her feet kneeling down reciting poetry.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, you kicked my ass and I love you.” He said looking at her with puppy eyes.

“You are crazy...” She said.

“Crazy for you.” He replied.

Yusuke herded the group away from Ivy and Jin. “We will leave you two love birds alone! Don’t have too much fun! Wear a condom!” Yusuke called back to them.

“Wait don’t leave me!” Ivy called out but it was too late. “Bastards…”

“I really admire how strong you are. You really kicked my ass.” Jin told her in a serious voice.

Ivy looked at him for a moment, surprised “um thanks?” She said, rubbing the back of her head.

“To tell you the truth, when we first met, I never meant to make you think that I thought women couldn’t fight. I was just taken back by how beautiful you are, I couldn’t think of the right words to say.” Jin explained.

Ivy blushed ever so slightly at this confession but hid it before Jin could see. “Oh well in that case, I suppose I can give you another chance…” she told him.

Jin grinned a huge grin and embraced Ivy in a huge bear hug.

“What are you doing?!” Ivy exclaimed, trying to wiggle free.

“Thank you lass! You won’t regret this! I’m gonna make you the happiest lassy there's ever been!” Jin babbled on.

Ivy hit Jin over the head knocking him to the ground. “Don’t push your luck!” Ivy growled. She then began to walk away but stopped and turned to look at Jin “I will see you later okay?” She said with a smile.

“That’s my girl…” Jin thought to himself as he watched her depart.

Ivy was on her way back to the hotel when she saw her friends talking to an unfamiliar girl with blue hair and red eyes. Olivia seemed very taken with her.

“Hey, who’s this?” Ivy asked.

The girl looked at her with big doe eyes as Keiko spoke up “Hi Ivy, this is Yukina. She is a friend of ours.” She explained.

“Ah, nice to meet you!” Ivy chirped, taking notice of how much she looked and smelled like Hiei… “I wonder if they are related? I will have to ask the group about that later…” Ivy thought to herself.

“May I just say, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on.” Olivia said, taking Yukina's hand and gently kissing it, while being glared at by Kuwabara and Hiei.

Yukina blushed. “Oh um, thank you. You are also very pretty.” She said with a shy smile.

“I think we will get along very well.” Olivia said with a wink as she released Yukina's hand.

“Yukina! I think you are even more beautiful!” Kuwabara exclaimed.

“She is not just beautiful in her appearance, it’s her entire essence.” Olivia stated.

Yukina blushed as Olivia handed her a purple rose and Kuwabara was dumbfounded, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. The whole time Olivia could feel Hiei’s intense glare on her, burning a hole through the back of her head.

“Where the hell did you get a rose from?!” Kuwabara asked, looking at Oliva surprised.

Shizuru punched Kuwabara, knocking him down and stepped on his back rubbing her foot on him. “Don’t ask such stupid questiond little bro!”

“...I want her to step on me too…” Ivy muttered to herself.

“What? Did you say something Ivy? Botan asked.

“No! Nothing!” Ivy said quickly.

Piper quickly went over to Kuwabara after his sister removed her foot from his back. “Are you okay?” She asked helping him to his feet. He looked at her and blushed.

“Thank you, how lucky of me to be saved by a beautiful lady such as yourself” He flirted as she giggled.

The group soon headed back to the hotel to rest up for tomorrow.

The next day, the team was at the arena ready to fight team Uratogi.

“So how are we going to decide who goes first?” Kuwabara asked.

“I have a suggestion…” Said a fighter from the other team, Shishiwakamaru is his name. “We will let fate decide who fights using these.” He said as he pulled out some dice with each of the fighters names on them.

“Sounds good to me…” Ivy said, stepping forward, cracking her knuckles. “Wait where’s Yusuke?” She asked looking from side to side, realizing that their team captain was not with them.

“Don’t worry about it, we don’t need him to beat these jokers.” Kuwabara said with a smirk.

“We’ll see about that… Now if you don’t mind, fate is calling.” Shishiwakamaru said as he rolled the dice.

The first roll of the dice landed on Hiei and Makintaro. Makintaro was cocky and underestimated Hiei, Hiei chopped one of his arms off and he didn't even notice. Going so far as to make fun of Hiei, who was hiding the severed arm, saying he had an accident when he saw his dripping blood. Then Hiei pulled his opponent's arm out from behind his back which caused Makintaro to freak out a bit. Hiei began to walk away but the Makintaro regenerated his arm into an axe and ran and swung it on Hiei, who dodged at an unbelievable speed and moved to stab Makintaro through his skull and kill him.

“The winner is Hiei!” The new announcer, Juri said into her microphone.

“Raise your hand if you are super turned on right now…” Ivy said, raising her hand as Kuwabara tried not to barf.

Somewhere in the forest near the arena... “What's wrong Jin?” Touya asked, having noticed the windmasters' sudden stop.

“I sense a disturbance…” Jin replied.

“What do you mean?” Asked rinku.

“I don’t know why… but I suddenly want to kick Hiei’s butt…” Jin explained.

“Hiei would destroy you…” Touya grumbled.

“Shut the fuck up! I do what I want!” Jin exclaimed.

“Does that include dying?” Rinku laughed.

Before Jin could say anything else, “Quit yer yabbin! Let's just get to the arena! I'm almost outta booze…” Chu scolded, muttering the last bit.

The next fight was Hiei Vs Kuro Momotaro, Kuro used weird little smoke balls that when he breathed in the smoke it gave him different types of special armors. In the end Hiei killed Kuro using the sword of the darkness flame attack.

The next fight was Kurama Vs Ura Urashima. They fought long distance for a bit until Ura surrounded the arena in a trap and used a special item to de age Kurama causing him to revert to Youko Kurama. In the end Shishiwakamaru was the one to kill Ura by throwing his sword at him to keep him from revealing too much information. Which meant kurama won the round.

Sophia saw Youko and let out a wolf whistle “damn he's hot” She said.

“Fuckin furry...” Leon muttered.

“You're one to talk, Mr. Lola bunny body pillow!” Sophia exclaimed.

“One time!” Leon contoured, embarrassed. “And don't talk about Lola that way! You will never understand our love!”

“The next fight is Shishiwakamaru Vs Kuwabara!” announced Juri, distracting the two from their bickering.

This fight went rather quickly as Shishiwakamaru sent Kuwabara away to an unknown location with the cape of no return.

After that it was Ivy Vs Shishiwakamaru. “Begin!” Juri said, with a wave of her hand.

Ivy ran at Shishiwakamaru at an unbelievable speed. She stopped in front of him and kicked him hard with her stiletto shoed foot, stabbing him and then sending him flying into the wall with her pure strength. He got up though and began to use an attack.

“Chorus of a thousand souls!” he said as demon souls emerged from his sword and began killing everything. Everything but Ivy. “What?! Why?!” He exclaimed.

“Because I'm not a weakling. You are going to have to do better if you want to defeat me. Which by the way won't happen.” Ivy said as she delivered the final blow, knocking Shishiwakamaru to the ground, rendering him immobile.

“Damn... I think I might have fallen in love. Maybe if we had met under different circumstances, we could have had something…” He said before falling unconscious.

“Well aren't I the lucky lady?” Ivy said sarcastically, with a roll of her eyes.

“My Ivy senses are tingling…” Jin said.

“Oh that's right! Aren't you Ivy's boyfriend?” Keiko, who had just been rescued by Jin and his friends, asked adorably

Jin grinned. “Why yes, yes I am.”

“Jin are you crazy? She will kill you if she finds out you said that!” Touya warned only to be ignored by Jin gushing about Ivy.

“I sense a disturbance…” said Ivy

“What are you talking about?” Hiei asked with a glare.

“I don’t know why… But I suddenly want to kick Jins butt…” Ivy muttered

“Who?” Hiei asked with a confused blink of his eyes.

“I believe he was the windmaster from team Masho, the ninjas.” Kurama explained.

“Why do you want to kick his butt? We already beat his team.” Hiei asked.

“I have seen them hanging out together quite a lot.” Kurama added with a smirk.

The announcer, Koto spoke up next. “What’s this??? Do my ears deceive me??? Do we have a forbidden romance between Ivy of team Urameshi, and Jin who she defeated, of the team Masho?”

“Did you guys hear that??? Did you guys fucking hear that?!?” Jin said, shaking Touya after the group walked into the stadium.

Ivy then walked over to Koto and snatched her microphone and spoke into it. “No. No we don’t” she deadpanned.

Jin fell to his knees in despair as his friends tried to console him

“It’s okay Jin! Please stop growing mushrooms in other people’s closets…” Rinku said patting Jin on the back as Jin bawled silently.

“Oh, ok… Are you sure???” Koto asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I would never date that Irish Mr. Potato Head.” Ivy stated as Jin cried.

Jin suddenly stood up full of life again. “She loves me! I know she does! She’s Just playing hard to get” Jin said optimistically.

“You keep thinking that pal.” Touya said as he patted Jin on the shoulder and shook his head.

“Well! Now that that’s done! Let’s move onto the next fight!” Juri announced with a roll of the dice. It landed on Kuwabara and Onji.

“Well, since Your fighter is not here I guess that means I win! Unless you wanna pick someone else?” Onji laughed.

“Hold it right there! I’m here, and I’m going to kick your ass old man!” Kuwabara shouted, marching angrily into the stadium.

The fight did not last long as Kuwabara was again transported out of the stadium almost immediately.

“Well, I hope your next fighter is more of a challenge!” Onji laughed. The dice was rolled again, this time landing on Onji and Ivy. “Oh... Now, you will be a challenge…” Onji muttered to himself.

“Begin!” Juri exclaimed.

“All right, but first why don’t you take off that disguise hmm?” Ivy told Onji, who looked rather surprised after she had said this.

Onji smiled “well, all right, I suppose that’s only fair. After all you are almost as beautiful as myself!” Onji said as he removed his disguise to reveal… his true self… a blond clown? “It is I! The beautiful Sazuka!” he exclaimed dramatically as Ivy then punched him hard in the face, knocking him to the ground.

“Are you just going to stand there yapping or are you going to fight me like a man!”

“Hey! That's cheating!” whined Sazuka.

“This is the dark tournament jackass! Anything goes! And besides that! The fight already... Started! Ivy said, picking him up as she spoke and then throwing him into the wall, making a Sazuka shaped hole in it.

Sazuka picked himself up off the ground, angry. He then ran at Ivy readying a punch which Ivy dodged and then kicked him over top of his head knocking him to the ground once more leaving a large dent in the arena, breaking lots of Sazuka’s bones in the process rendering him unable to move.

“Winner of the fight! Ivy!” Juri announced.

“Well… you certainly were a challenge…” said Sazuka weakly before passing out.

Ivy hopped down out of the ring only to be greeted by a familiar Irish Demon.

“You were amazing my love!” He exclaimed as he went to hug her as she dodged, causing him to fall on his face.

“Why are you so obsessed with me???” Ivy asked in a clearly annoyed tone.

Jin leaned his head on his hands, laying on his stomach. “Because you are amazing…” He told her, looking up at her with love struck puppy eyes.

Ivy blushed and looked away, but quickly hid it. “Ugh! If I go out with you will you leave me alone?” Ivy asked, pretending to still be annoyed.

#yyh #yu yu hakusho #fanfic #fanfiction #imagine #writing #oc #jin #reader #windmaster #anime #manga #scenario

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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years

Text

mtmte liveblog issue 35

ooooh baby functionist universe time

the cover with the neon ‘everything is fine’ sign is rlly good but also the pile of dead data stick bots makes me so sad omg noooo they're so cute leave them alone :(

minimus and rewind...! its so cool seeing them interact

also I just love the crowd shot, and you can immediately see that there are a ton of data stick bots like rewind around - which isn't what we’re used to at all

also some good ole totalitarian govt stuff like the ‘you are our eyes’ sign (which, in retrospect, is fucking evil damnnnn)

also I'm so [eyezoom] on this functionist universe stuff bc like, this is basically the only time we ever see dominus be a character (rather than hearing abt him thru other characters), and even so he remains pretty ambiguous

like, minimus clearly isn't thrilled that dominus didn't show up to see him at the space airport or w/e when they've been apart for two million years - and even tho we later see why he didn't show up, it still shows that there's some tension there

the amount of crowd shots in this issue is insane

oooof, the fact that they sold luna 2 - and to the black box consortia, who we just heard about last chapter when they previously got into a space battle w/the galactic council and the djd

fu!minimus being part of the primal vanguard is interesting, I wanna see more about that. what was he doing w/them for 2 million years?

rewind just casually saying this completely fucked stuff, like that the govt ‘outlawed the intellectual class’ and ‘deported the knock-offs’ (which I'm assuming is cold constructed bots?)

I really like the sense we get thru minimus and rewind’s convo that all of this fucked up stuff has happened slowly enough that its become almost normal - like, they talk about it casually, even though its clear they don't necessarily agree with any of it

plus the sense of ‘even if things get really bad ill be okay’ that both rewind and minimus seem to adhere to - rewind having been upgraded from being in the disposable class due to his connection w/dominus, and minimus saying ‘I like to think that obsolescence is something that happens to other people’

I love all the fucked up signage this issue. ‘take pride in being a means to an end,’ yikes

god and the fact that there isn't MORE data sticks, there's just LESS of other alt modes bc of how many alt modes the govt has wiped out completely...

oof, and continuing the whole ‘slow change’ thing - minimus saying that ‘the council never touches the astro class,’ and maybe that used to be true, but the govt will keep pushing that line, clearly...

and we get to see minimus’s alt mode! altho we the readers know that this isn't minimus’s true form...

‘amazing, the lengths some people will go to cross class boundaries,’ minimus says, as if he isn't doing exactly what rewinds describing, but even moreso as a loadbearer wearing an entire suit of armor

and then the casual public execution of the last lunabot...oof.

love the ‘cybertron. the present day’ text overlay...I was so confused about this when I first read it lmao. I figured it had to be some sort of au/quantum nonsense but STILL

back on the lost light, chromedome is going full kool-aid man on rewinds door

mannnnn I absolutely love the plotline of rewind 2 and chromedome 1...im so glad the story acknowledges that they ARE different, they did experience different stuff on their own lost lights, and rewind 2 being a quantum duplicate doesn't mean he had the same experiences as rewind 1...

and I love so much that chromedome just Doesn't Get It, bc of course he wouldn't - he’s too relieved that rewind is back to even consider that its not quite the same, that the rewind he was forced to blow up is still dead (which is a fucked up thought, so of course chromedome, the master of pushing the past away and moving right along, would want to avoid thinking about that in favor of continuing his relationship w/rewind 2)

it also makes a lot of sense that rewind, who records everything and puts a huge emphasis on history/the past, would be hyperaware of all the differences between him and rewind 1, and his chromedome and this chromedome

AUGHHHH and chromedome referring to an offer he made to rewind that was pretty clearly ‘if your memories of the djd slaughter are too much, I can remove them for you’ ooooof...I love these two so much, like...their absolute opposite approaches to trauma is fascinating

oooh mannnnn and then rewind starts ‘remembering’ stuff from the functionist universe...the plot thickens...!

I really like how one of the main ‘things’ in a lot of tf universes is energon/energy shortages, its interesting when the angle is kinda like, ‘energon is a finite resource and the methods to obtain more often involve destroying other planets,’ that's a pretty unique, alien problem for the tfs to have

it also makes sense that the functionists would form partially in response to that (perceived) shortage, and any sort of scarcity would push them further into their extremist views

I like how expressive the characters with visors are...its cute...

poor rewind has to go thru So Much

WHY can just anyone go into the morgue and touch the dead bodies. I mean I guess megatron being one of the captains explains why he’s in there, but that still shouldn't be allowed

‘megatron mountain’ vhbjdkshfbjskfbhhk that's so fucking funnyyyyy I love rodimus....I quote that line a lot, especially when watching g1 lmao

the fact that swerve diluting his engex bc he’s a cheapskate saved everyone's s lives is amazing lmao

also like...damn brainstorm sure tried to murder Literally Everyone huh. like I guess the logic would be that if he succeeded in changing the past it wouldn't matter that they had died there cause the timeline wouldn't exist, but STILL. I guess that shows how confident brainstorm was in his plan

it makes so much sense somehow that rung doesn't drink. and we’ve seen firsthand why magnus doesn't lol

mannnn that panel of brainstorm shooting magnus with some wacky beam and causing the magnus armor to fall off in vehicle mode...Super Cool, just peak mad scientist vibes there

ok but if minimus switches to alt mode when ultra magnus does - as we see here, where minesweeper-minimus is inside big-ole-car-magnus - does that mean that inside the minesweeper is turbofox-minimus?? I want to seeeee

ghsdufjkbvksadfbhjs the panels of rodimus telling megatron that brainstorm time travelled are so fucking funny

and megatrons rant about how absolutely bonkers the lost light is....hvbhjdskfbasjh that's so funny oh my god. like yeah dude you're right and you gotta roll w/it sorry

'on this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage’ vbjdsnfbkasdfn its true and I love it

goddddddd it kills me how at this point in the story its So Obvious to everyone that brainstorm travelled back in time to do evil decepticon double agent stuff - and we as the reader can even buy that bc brainstorm has been so sketchy until now, and nothing he’s done contradicts what rodimus suggests - but it turns out in the end, it was all just for love. AUGHHHHHHHH its about the LOVE!!!! that's why I love this arc so much.

back in the functionist universe - god I cant believe rewind waited until Now to reveal to minimus that dominus has a tv face...like I get that that's a difficult topic to bring up in conversation but like, a little sooner might've been good hbvhjkdhnfbjaksl

oh man it hurts...rewind saying that they're in a ‘blind spot...’ oh man :(

rebel rewind, tho!! I love it sm

oh man and rewind never even broke the news about dominus to minimus oof. that's a tough reveal

MANNN I really like the whole ‘flathead’ thing, its so awful and brutal. its such a logical extension of empurata, and as dominus says, once people get used to seeing empurata’d bots, it loses its punch...and the flatheads thing is even more invasive

and writing wise, both empurata and the tv-heads are such good devices to show evil govt bs. I talk abt it a lot but I like all the ways jro gets creative with the ‘alien robots’ thing; a lot of these concepts wouldn't work at all with humans or other organic aliens

GODDD and dominus’s chilling speech being interrupted by the functionist propaganda....fucking horrifying I love it

also seeing dominus here is fascinating - clearly the council managed to pin him down enough to turn him into a flathead, but they never discovered his true alt mode...same with minimus, actually

the cog is so fucking ominous. just floating there...

and the council is scary too! their names, and the fact that they all look the same...seems about right for an evil alien governing body

mannnnnnn and then the reveal that the data slug alt-modes will be ‘recalled’ next...rewind noooooo...and the one council guy even admitted that they still served some purpose in society, BUT that their ability to mass store data made them dangerous to the goverment...evil!!

meanwhile, rodimus doesn't know enough about science to be appropriately frightened about their timeline being wiped from existence, so he’s having a grand ole time

‘no one’s nodding, perceptor’ bvhjdbfasdfhbk their expressions....the lost light command crew are all clearly team ‘leave the science to the scientists’ lmao

I do love the paradox stuff, and brainstorm’s way around it all

‘so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic?’ hvbjhsdkfbjhkdf ily sm rodimus

but also like....rodimus suggests a parallel universe could've formed and perceptor is like ‘no way, that's not scientifically possible,’ as if brainstorm didn't basically defy science by time travelling at all...and more to the point, functionist cybertron DID get created, so rodimus was actually RIGHT this time

love that we’re already seeing perceptor’s admiration for brainstorm and his invention even here....sapiosexual mfer

a time travel chase....so beautiful...I love sci-fi so much

seriously time travel is one of my favorite tropes ever, this arc was inevitably gonna be my fav

‘he’s going to kill orion pax.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

meanwhile, on functionist cybertron...aw, is that bulkhead? great cameo! oh wait what's going on with all the data sticks...? uh oh!

the fact that their heads just EXPLODE....soooo fucked!!

god and then the council picks up their dead bodies, for...probably something evil, I’d assume

god and then dominus got even more fucked....

‘there are certain words you cant afford to lose’ ;_; REWIND....GODDD IM SAD

GOD GOD GOD the reveal that minimus has CAMERAS in his EYES GODDDDDDDDDDDD that's so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and rewinds reaction...ME TOO BITCH TF!!!!!!

all the ‘you are our eyes’ messages are even worse now huh!!

they did it while minimus was asleep...that's so fuckedddd

FUCKKKK and then rewind’s impassioned rebel speech, which I adore.....rewind ily sm...he’s such a good revolutionary, I wish we could've seen him leading an anti-funtionist rebellion....BUT THEN ‘oh? what about the back up?’ and its just like HHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and then his head starts smoking and we see another billboard, but this time it says ‘WE are your eyes’ - is the implication that everyone is now a surveilling spy, whether they like it or now, so now it’s ‘we?’ like, we’re all in it together, spying on each other! ooooof

also. this is like the third time rewind has died on-screen in this series lmao (well, if you count the fake-out death where he thought he’d be cancelled out during slaughterhouse)...he ALMOST died in issue 12 too....poor rewind

‘the custom-made now’ is such a great title. jro always killin it w/the titles

plus ‘elegant chaos’ is such a cool arc name. fucking epic

M A N NNNNNNNN THIS ISSUE WAS BALLER...this ARC is baller....I talked a lot hvbhdjkhfndsak lmao but there's so much to talk abt!!! I love the look into the functionist universe, I love seeing alternate versions of characters and settings so much, and I love time travel, so this issue is basically made for me

plus I fuckign love alien robot politics and seeing the absolute control the govt has over cybertronian society in the functionist universe is fascinating - plus from a storytelling standpoint, I think it was brilliant to show the ‘other side,’ aka what things would've been like without the war...which is something ill talk about later when its more directly addressed in the story but man do I enjoy that

basically I love this arccccc I cant wait to read more hhhhhhh

#lj rereads mtmte

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themanicroom · 3 years

Text

Buckle up friends. She’s a long one.

Today was another rough day. Back to my previous post, my state of mind and behavior is heavily dependent on the ones around me. I was ok until I noticed that my partner’s mood changed. They weren’t in a bad mood, just not as lively as they were.

The thoughts kicked in. Did I do something wrong? Is there a reason they’re acting like this? I worked up the courage to ask what was wrong. I was told they were tired. Ok. I can deal with that.

Then, while I was in the middle of making dinner they went to bed. No goodnight to the kids, didn’t tell me they were going to bed. Just disappeared into our room. Now, I’m in a state of taking it personally. I feel upset, and insulted for no good reason.

My youngest asked me to go get them for tuck ins. All I could say, was sorry baby they’re already asleep. I got the same look of disappointment from her as I do most nights.

I try to be understanding, especially considering I myself struggle to get out of bed some days, however I’m finding more and more frequently I become irritated or resentful.

I find myself more and more looking for that white picket fence. Mom and dad (step-dad) going to work. Putting the kids to bed together. Making dinner together, or taking turns.

Right now I feel like I’m holding up the weight of everyone in this house. I feel like I hold the weight of everyone’s wellbeing and mental health when I can barely handle the weight of my own. I feel like if I crumbled tomorrow, this household would crumble with me.

I feel like that thought alone is enough to make me collapse, yet I keep going. I barely make it some days.

I find myself reflecting more and more on my past relationship with the father of my children. I do not miss them, not in that way I guess. They were what I like to call an enabler. They willingly put up with my shit because they loved me so unconditionally it hurts me to even think of it. I did so much damage to that man from being so self destructive and yet he was still there after every stunt.

I could treat him like complete and utter garbage, and he would tell me it’s ok. It’s the illness. This is what I mean by an enabler. I was never forced to take any sort of accountability with him.

The man I’m with now is the complete opposite. If I’m being honest, he was so good for me when we met. He forced me to take accountability. He forced me to recognize whether I had an illness or not, I am still responsible for my actions and how I treat others.

I truly have come a long way because of him.

But then I can’t help but wonder, did I destroy him too? He had goals. A job. Savings. He bought himself nice things. He was so picky about cleaning, and had such a high standard due to his upbringing.

Now, I can barely get him to move from his desk. Or he’ll hide away in our room some days. We had a very toxic start to our relationship, and have had some very bad moments since then. There are trust issues on both sides, him more so than I, I believe. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beyond warranted, but I don’t know how to move past it.

I’m trying so hard to better myself, and look after myself so I can be heathy for my family. I just don’t know how to do so when I feel like I have to coach my partner into doing it for themselves as well. How do you remedy your own wounds when you’re constantly using any healing energy on them?

The father of my children may have been an enabler, but at the end of the day he still showed an interest in his family. He was more than up for multiple trips to the park in a day. He was up for my unorganized last minute ideas that rarely ever worked out. Honestly, he was just along for the ride and he never had a complaint about it.

We constantly had friends over to our place just to game, or hangout. Now, I haven’t had a friend in my home to hangout with my partner and I in approximately 4 years.

I feel isolated. I feel like anytime I leave the house my partner is so stressed and anxious about it. They have never told me this is how they feel, this is just me assuming by their behaviors, and that doesn’t mean I’m right by any means. I’m constantly feeling guilty when I take too long doing groceries, or going to visit a friend.

When they do go to bed early, or they sleep in on a day that I’m not working I drive. I get out of the house and just drive with my music. It feels so nice to just get out of the house and not have that weight and guilt. It’s truly nothing that they did to make me feel this way, it’s just... a feeling.

I know it’s not fair of me to compare these two people. They are just two separate times in my life. Even now, I’m a completely different person compared to who I was then. I just feel like I’m going through life alone sometimes, like I’m just barely scraping by. I don’t know how to tell my partner these things. Every time I try to have a discussion about things like this, I feel guilty like I’m being demanding. Like I’m asking for more than they can give. I want to be fair, but push them towards better things like they did for me, I just can’t seem to get a grasp on how to do that.

So instead, I hold it all in and talk to my counsellor once a month for an hour and hope that will be enough to get me to the next session.

If anyone made it this far into my rant, and vent session I applaud you. I feel like this has needed to come out for a while, and I’m not even skimming the surface. I truly am happy in my relationship, this is just the struggle that I myself am facing with my thoughts and emotions.

I constantly feel the need to remain strong, to remain emotionless (although that one is a bit more difficult) and remain stable in order to keep my partner happy. I just don’t know how much longer I can continue to do so.

#mental health #mental health awareness #mentally unstable #The Manic Room #bipolar disorder #bipolar #bpd #bpdthoughts #depression #anxiety #vent #rants n rambles #rant post #this is my therapy #i wish i wasnt like this

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churchyardgrim · 3 years

Note

#2 from the d&d ask meme? it is a fantastic question

before they met their party, what was their main goal?

oooo excellent opportunity to plug my boy’s four page backstory that i just realized i never posted here!

tldr Silas wants to study a perfect immortal in order to defeat death, bc death insulted him once and he never got over it hghdfg

Silas Edelhart has a problem. That problem is death.

He was born to minor nobility, old money making use of their hereditary ambition to generate new money on the merchant routes, and he was lucky enough to not be his father’s preferred heir; he was allowed to take to academia, or else join some priesthood and curry favor with the lesser sons of other noble houses. He chose academia.

He was enamored with it. The libraries! The minds to learn from. The men. The women! The men. The only disappointment was that apprentice physicians did not get invited to many parties, something Silas was hard at work remedying when he was presented with an unwittingly significant patient.

A farm hand from outside the city had been delayed in reaching them for medical care, and his injuries - an accident with a plow, they were told - had gone gangrenous. He was insensible with fever, and would have lost the leg even if his people hadn't taken so long in getting him to the medics; as it was, despite amputation and efficient treatment for blood poisoning, he expired overnight, in Silas's care.

Silas was crushed. He had done everything right, double and triple checked his protocols, and still the man had died. “No one blames you, of course,” one of the senior physicians said to him, “these things simply happen.”

Maybe they ‘simply happened’ to other people, Silas thought bitterly, but he was better than that. He had decided the man would live, and his performance had been flawless! The terminity of a mere natural law to stand in the way of his will was intolerable. Incensed, Silas threw himself at his studies, dead set that it should never happen again.

Resurrection magic wasn't what he was after initially; he only wanted to keep the living where they were. But he found quickly that the popular consensus was that healing magic could only do so much, and most simply accepted its failures as they did any other misfortune. So he hunted out spells to wrench the dead back, hidden and fragmented in books his instructors only grudgingly let him read. Time would tell if they would be enough, however; none of the accounts of their use he had read gave any indication of the effects being permanent. It would be so embarrassing, to put so much work into defying death only to have his prize killed in a careless accident! He would not settle for anything less than complete immunity from death.

His practice only pushed him deeper into this conviction; plenty of his patients lived, much improved from treatment, but a few still died despite his efforts, reigniting his rage at death every time. He began to get a reputation for it, and some of his peers started tactfully funneling away those patients that seemed likely to die with or without medical care, to spare themselves his rants. Many of them thought his anger came from an insult to his skills, but this was all wrong; he knew his skills were exceptional, the failure was not his.

It is the gods’ fault, Silas decided. The gods had set this wretched law in place, to kettle and humble mortal creatures. But... no, the gods themselves are yet subject to death, have died in scores. So, death is a greater power than even them.

But in one book, ill-used and forgotten, Silas found mention of a god returning from death. A resurrection on a divine scale. And once that possibility had revealed itself, the hints between the lines of other books made themselves apparent; someone had performed that resurrection, exercised mastery over death in such a way that it left Silas’s mouth watering. How? How had it been done?

The next few months of frantic research and evasion - the concern from his tutors was enough to warn him that no one wanted him to go looking for this - led him eventually into the university’s vaults. To a broken-legged construct, dormant, containing a withered, desiccated hand. Not the hand of the godly resurrectionist, no, but the hand of someone who, certain books implied, might have been a devotee of that individual. A relic of a necromantic saint.

Silas stole it, of course he did. Made use of a debt owed by an engineer of the local guilds to repair the construct housing, and treated it as a treasured prize. Such mysteries, opening to him now with the artifact’s communion; he graduated quickly from books to practice, retreating into his own rooms to make frogs twitch and test ancient ideas on the animation of flesh. He took on fewer and fewer patients, withdrew from the society of his peers… for the most part.

Sera Mournleaf was brilliant. Sera Mournleaf was intense. And some days, Sera Mournleaf was the only thing that could distract him from his work. An elf with connections, she did him many favors in getting him subjects to work on, meat with which to test his theories, and had an insightful and sparkling mind with which to discuss the less publicly acceptable aspects of spitting in the face of death. So what if she stayed up later than him some nights, reading and rereading his notes. So what if every time she visited her aging human father she came back slumping with worry. He cannot expect things to be about him all the time!

Besides, he had little focus to spare for things not his research, now. He had been forced to take up the shovel himself, more than once, to find fresh bodies that would be more difficult to trace back to him - they keep a close eye on the university morgue, he learned better than to try that more than once. And he had had no small success, stripping corpses of their unnecessaries and stitching the most promising parts to one another, speaking to his prized relic with equal parts demand and prayer.

The results infuriated him at first. Lurching, wretched things, no better than flesh constructs, most of them had to be destroyed; that shriveled hand granted Silas holy fire as easily as it had clues to the resurrectionist arts. But he persisted, and grew to view them as necessary stepping stones towards a greater perfection. He grew more bold, more reckless, and felt himself forever on the verge of a cataclysmic revelation.

It was not to be. He was found out. The right word in the right ear brought the law crashing down on his shoulders, and he watched them burn his experiments with a guardsman kneeling on his back. It was broken, all of it, his research carted away in boxes (fewer boxes, maybe, then he thought there should have been), and Silas himself thrown in prison to scream his rage at the uncaring stone.

The trial was a farce. Somehow, Silas's family managed to find reason enough to pull half the lawyers in the city to his defense, while at the same time making it very clear that under no circumstances was he to darken their doorstep ever again. In the same two hour span his prospects went from life imprisonment to a mere slap on the wrist of exile, and then summarily informed that he had been neatly removed from the last will and testament of his every living family member. It was a very trying day.

At the end of it he was stripped of his qualifications, most of his wealth confiscated, and ejected from the city with his mouth sewn shut with wire; an archaic punishment for heresy, invoked here merely as sorry consolation on the part of the law that they couldn’t execute him outright. In the proper spirit of the thing, he should have left the stitches in place and let himself starve, and in deference to the bare truth of his crimes Silas endured it for three days before getting sick of the whole thing and cutting himself loose.

He had managed to keep his precious relic in its construct housing, the only thing worth bribing a minor official to sneak out of evidence lockup, and he quickly put distance between himself and wretched Misthaven, thinking nothing but bitter thoughts towards his betrayer. Selfish, horrible Sera; she had gotten cold feet, most likely. Come over all moral about what he had been doing, let slip to the magistrate that perhaps she knew who had been plundering the city's burial grounds at night. Well! She will just have to wait and see, won't she. Wait until he can begin his work again, reach as yet unseen heights of resurrection. Then he would return to Misthaven and enact some fitting revenge, on her and all those who had a hand in ruining him.

(Miss Mournleaf could have argued, the better part of a year later, that his unwitting parting gift was revenge enough. Babies scream like they’re being murdered, and the damn thing looks just like him. She left it with the nuns and got on with the business of saving her father.)

And so he wandered, working as a physician in small towns and middling cities, trying his damndest to reestablish his research in some capacity. But his funds never stretched that far, and neither did the patience of his neighbors; more than once he had to flee under cover of night, for misdeeds real or imagined. Most of these were unmemorable affairs, and only irritated him. Once, the mercenary paid to kill him proved a delightful match, in combat and energy, and the man made an affair of running away with Silas, and Silas ended up growing remarkably fond of Cassian Hellier, for all his unrefined brutishness. They still keep in touch, whenever either of them is in civilization long enough to hire a messenger to carry letters.

A decade passed in this fashion before Silas began to hear rumors. Travelers between worlds, fading in and out of unearthly mist, serving a genuine immortal. He seized upon these threads, passion alight again; a near perfect undead, far superior to the wretched things he had managed to raise back in Misthaven, yes. He would follow the travelers, seek out their master, see what, if anything, of the rumors were true. If they are... he would study, and learn, and replicate the results. And if not? Well, the corpse of even a lesser undead would be a beautiful thing.

#dnd #silas #boyo's a death cleric/graveyard rogue and i LOVE HIM #Anonymous

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heave-hyung · 4 years

Text

Save The Drama For Yo’ Mama

Inspired by real experience, in which Jin doesn’t believe Taehyung’s actually sick and it ends up with Taehyung vomiting literally everywhere.

- Taehyung has always been the type for dramatics.

He has a deeply rooted love for cuddling and attention and affection, so the second he stubs his toe, he’ll go whine about it--or maybe he’s sore from practice, he’ll go to a member craving a massage. When he’s sad, he’ll want to be held, and when he’s happy, he wants the world to know. Taehyung has always had a thing for pulling theatrics and overexaggerating his ailments, and the others always find it absolutely adorable.

Except for on days when they’re in a time crunch to get a new choreo down and have absolutely no time for bullshit. Days where they have to get to the studio as soon as possible to work from morning to night to perfect the setlist for their next performance. It’s on these days that Tae’s whining goes right over their heads and straight to their nerves, and as much as they love him, nobody has the time or energy to put up with it.

“Kim Taehyung,” Seokjin’s voice is stern, the way it is when one of the boys does something stupid and it’s his job to handle it as the eldest, lacking all of it’s normal joy. “Wake up. We don’t have time for this.”

The older boy shakes Taehyung by the hip, earning a low whine from the second youngest. Taehyung buries his face in his pillow and takes a deep breath, curling up tighter.

“No, get up, stop it,” Seokjin shakes him a little harder. “I know you’re tired, we all are, but you have to get up, Tae.”

Taehyung mumbles something incoherent into his pillow and moans.

“What? I can’t understand you with your face in a pillow.”

“I said I don’ feel good, Jinnie-hyung,” he flips over so he’s on his back, but keeps his eyes screwed shut. “My throat hurts--”

“-probably from singing too hard yesterday-” Seokjin tries making excuses for all of his symptoms. There’s no way he’s sick, they haven’t been exposed to anyone but each other and their well-kept studio.

“--no, and my stomach hurts--”

“--didn’t you eat a lot last night?”

“--and I feel sick, hyung, I feel so nauseous.”

Seokjin blows out a frustrated exhale, running a hand through his hair. “Look, if you get sick, we’ll take you home, alright? But come on, you have to try. For me, tiger, try for me.”

Taehyung gives a shaky exhale, pushing himself to sit up and immediately regretting it; his eyes aren’t even open and he can feel the world spinning. “I really...I really don’t feel good…”

“You’ll be fine.” Seokjin insists, assuming all of it could just be nerves or from pushing himself, and any other day he’d give all the sympathy in the world and coo and hold him but they just don’t have time for it today.

Taehyung rubs the sleep out of his eyes, hiccuping. “Fine, I’ll...be out in a second.”

Seokjin nods, getting up. Just before he closes the door behind him, he says, “I’m trusting you not to go back to bed,” and gives him a stern look. The younger singer nods in return.

Seokjin can’t help but feel a little guilty--something seemed off about the younger man, but he tells himself it’s nothing and moves on, telling the others that he managed to get him out of bed and he’ll be out in a second.

Taehyung stumbles out to the living room some ten minutes later, looking disheveled but dressed enough to leave the house nonetheless. Jimin and Jungkook both shoot their fellow maknae a concerned look while the hyungs are already out the door. Jimin puts an arm around Taehyung’s shoulder, a wordless comfort, hoping that Taehyung is just tired.

When they get in the car, Taehyung takes a seat in the back, immediately pulling his legs up to his chest and leaning against the window. The coolness of the glass feels nice against his cheek; despite it being the early fringes of winter, he’s hot and sweating. Jimin sits beside him and leans on his shoulder, running his fingers through the younger boy’s hair. He seems to be the only one that notices that something isn’t right--or at least the only one paying any mind to it.

The whole ride to the studio, Taehyung is taking shaky breaths, like he’s trying to take deep breaths but his body can’t do the full job of it. He keeps his eyes closed, occasionally trying to breathe through his mouth to get more oxygen in his lungs. The last thing he wants to do is throw up in the car; he’s fortunate enough to not be a member who gets carsick, like Jimin or Yoongi. And Hoseok was right this morning; they don’t have time for him and his bullshit.

Taehyung can’t help but fight tears at the feeling that nobody cares.

→ ←

“Tae, wake up,” it’s Jimin’s voice that breaks into Taehyung’s half-asleep state. When did he manage to fall asleep? “We’re here, come on.”

Taehyung nods, inhaling deeply to steel himself. He steps out of the car, watching his exhale turn to fog. Once more, the world spins, and a wave of nausea overtakes him. He leans heavily against the door for a moment, willing his stomach contents to stay in place. He did eat a lot last night, so if he did throw up, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Hey, are you okay?” Taehyung didn’t realize Jimin had been standing there waiting for him.

The younger of the two is tempted to confess to Jimin about his symptoms too, but it seems like there’s no use. There’s no way out. So he nods and follows Jimin and the rest of the members inside. The normally cozy temperature of the room hits him in the face like he just stepped into a furnace, only worsening the uncomfortable, sticky warmth that’s plagued him since he woke up. The nausea still hasn’t faded and his stomach is audibly roiling and churning sickly.

Taehyung is broken out of his trance by Hoseok clapping and ordering everyone to get into place. The singer stumbles to his spot, and without any more second glances spared to him, the music starts. Shortly after it begins, it stops, however, and Taehyung is disoriented for a moment. He wonders if he managed to blank out and do the choreo without thinking, but he knows that’s unrealistic. Now, there are no glances; all eyes are on him.

“What’s up with you today?” Taehyung knows he’s just stressed, but Hoseok sounds angry and that’s how it’s registered through his brain fog--Hoseok’s mad at him. “I--” Taehyung’s voice cracks, almost making it clear to the others that he’s on the verge of tears. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’ll do better.”

Hoseok crosses his arms, looks up and down the second youngest’s shaky frame, but after a moment he nods anyway. Nobody notices Seokjin, who’s sipping his water and looking awfully guilty in one of the corners of the room--everybody seems to be getting a little concerned, though.

But they don’t have time for messing around. So the music starts again. Taehyung does his best to focus, to actually do the moves right, and he makes it a little farther until the music stops again and all eyes are on him once more.

“Tae, really, don’t you practice at all alone? You’re normally so good at picking up choreo, the one time we need you to get it toge--”

Taehyung cuts off Hoseok’s rant by lurching forward with a heave, bringing up a copious wave of sick that splatters on the hardwood floor. Hoseok freezes, caught off guard--he saw that Taehyung was pale, but he wasn’t expecting to get specks of puke on his shoes today. He looks back at the others, who all quickly jump into action when Taehyung heaves again, his knees giving out.

Jimin runs to his side, holding him up so he doesn’t fall too close to the rapidly growing puddle of sick and get it all over him. He has one hand across his chest and the other pulling back his bangs. “That’s it, get it up,” Jimin knows Taehyung won’t be able to move to the bathroom--he can’t even stand--so he does his best to comfort here, voice soft and light, nothing but love in his tone. “You’re alright, you’re okay…”

Namjoon comes and joins the two with a bottle of water, putting it beside Jimin to give to Taehyung when he’s ready. Jungkook grabs a towel to try and clean some of the sweat off of him, knowing that it can’t be very comfortable to feel soaked, cold, and sticky. Yoongi comes with a washcloth, dampened with cool water, to place on the back of his neck instead--Taehyung is burning up.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone you weren’t feeling good, Tae?” Namjoon asks, wiping tears off his cheek with his thumb.

“I--” Taehyung tries to answer, but he just retches again, and again, his stomach refusing to give him a break.

“He did.” Suddenly, Seokjin--who’s been awfully quiet this whole time--speaks up. “He said he wasn’t feeling good this morning, and I thought he just...I thought he was just stressed.” The oldest crouches down to Taehyung’s eye level, narrowly avoiding the lake of vomit that’s on the floor now. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you…”

Taehyung coughs and belches hollowly before he finally gets a break. “N-No, it’s okay,” he says, voice hoarse. “M’sorry I made a mess…” Taehyung can’t stop himself from crying beyond the tears that had already fallen from exertion. Jimin places a kiss to the crown of his head, slowly helping him to stand and get away from that mess he’s apologizing for as he reassures him that it’s not his fault. Jimin sits Taehyung down on the bench they normally put their stuff on, moving bags around to make room for him and handing him the bottle of water. “Sip slowly, okay? Try and drink a little for me, I don’t want you to get dehydrated.”

As they sit for a moment, the others get their things together--there’s no way they were letting their schedule get in the way when one of the members was horribly ill--and Hoseok returns from the bathroom where he’d gone to wipe the thankfully small amount of vomit off of his shoes.

“You think you’re okay to go, TaeTae? I’m sure you’ll be much more comfortable in bed at home than here,” Jimin asks softly, brushing the younger’s sweaty fringe away from his forehead.

Truthfully, Taehyung still feels really nauseous, but Jimin is right; he does want to go home and lie down. So he nods, albeit hesitantly. Jimin sees his uncertainty, able to assume why he doesn’t necessarily want to get in a car.

“We still have bags in the car, right?” Jimin asks whoever may be listening. “I think I just used one recently…”

“We should, yeah,” Yoongi confirms. “It would be stupid to not have bags when some of us get carsick.” Jimin turns his attention back to Taehyung. “You won’t make a mess...if you get sick I’ll hold the bag for you, baby, it’ll be okay. Okay?”

Taehyung nods, taking a shaky breath. “Okay.”

And with that, they head off; Namjoon takes a final glance at the mess before they leave and makes a mental note to make sure a janitor comes by soon. Taehyung returns to the seat he sat in on the way here by the window, leaning his cheek against it once more. Jimin sits next to him and offers his hand to hold. Taehyung accepts the offer gratefully, squeezing his hand tightly and getting a squeeze back.

Taehyung closes his eyes, trying again to take deep breaths and keep the water he’d drank down. He doesn’t want to throw up in a car--he doesn’t want to throw up again in general. His stomach gurgles and groans, and he presses his free hand to his abdomen, chewing on his lower lip. Still, despite all of his effort, his mouth starts watering again.

“Y-You said we have bags?”

Immediately, they jump into action, Namjoon taking two plastic bags from the glove compartment and handing them to Jimin. Jungkook, sitting next to Jimin, takes out his water bottle so he can hand it to Taehyung as soon as he’s finished, if not to drink than to rinse his mouth out at least. Jimin sees how shaky Taehyung is so he doesn’t bother trying to get him to hold the bag--the second it’s beneath his chin, Taehyung is retching again. Yoongi, who’s sitting behind them, reaches forward to pull back the singer’s hair.

“We’ll be home soon,” Hoseok reassures from the front, being the one driving. He’s a smooth driver and some of the others are not, so he was trusted with that position. “A few more minutes, TaeTae.”

Taehyung can barely hear him over his heaving, comically loud as always, painful and grating as he heaves up the water he’d drank and a considerable amount of stomach acid. He groans when he has a chance to catch his breath, swallowing once, twice, before picking his head up.

“I think--I think I’m good,” he chokes out between panting, and Jimin nods, tying off the bag and holding his hand once more. Jungkook wordlessly offers the water, but Jimin just shakes his head, figuring he’ll try and get him to drink again when they get home, knowing that it’s much less comfortable to vomit in a moving vehicle than it is at home and in bed with a trashcan.

Just as Hoseok said, they get home a few minutes later. Taehyung moves as fast as he can on shaky legs. The second they get inside, he heads directly to the bathroom. The boys exchange glances--he’s still throwing up? What else could he possibly have in him?

Before following him, Jimin asks Seokjin to make some tea and Jungkook to get some extra blankets so he could tuck Taehyung in nicely once he finally managed to calm down enough to sleep without retching up a lung. And then Jimin is by Taehyung’s side once more, rubbing his back and holding his hair away. He feels all of Taehyung’s muscles tense as he retches, bringing up nothing but trickles of bile, saliva, and foam.

“Taehyungie, I really think you’re empty…” Jimin insists, getting worried that Taehyung will break a rib from the force of which he keeps dry heaving. “Try and breathe, baby, just try to breathe,” he encourages, hoping that Taehyung will calm down soon.

Luckily enough, he does, reduced to panting and burping and groaning once more. Jimin reaches up to flush the toilet for him before hoisting him up to his feet, guiding him slowly but surely to bed. Taehyung plops down on the mattress, happy to be home, and he drags Jimin down with him, immediately clinging to him.

Jimin doesn’t stop him, smiling fondly at the younger boy and placing a kiss to the top of his head once more before continuing to card his fingers through his hair. He covers them both up with the blankets Jungkook had given them, holding Taehyung close. “My poor TaeTae...I’m sorry you’re feeling so sick…” Jimin comments after a moment.

Taehyung doesn’t respond--Jimin would expect at least a hum. He just shifts a bit, clings tighter to Jimin, and exhales deeply. His breathing has evened out--Jimin realizes that he must’ve fallen asleep already. He must’ve been so exhausted.

And taking care of your ailing bandmate must also be pretty exhausting, because when Seokjin comes in with a cup of tea, both boys are fast asleep.

#emeto #bts emeto #emetophilia #bts vomiting #vomiting #bts sickfic #sick!tae #caring!bts #caring!jimin

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beerecordings · 4 years

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Do you mind explaining a little more of seven seven Henrik’s backstory? I checked the tag, but tumblr only gave me two posts for it -River

yeah, i’d love to! i haven’t talked about him much, this au comes mostly off the top of my head and then occasionally yanks me down into more complex scenarios, which i enjoy a lot.

okay this is long and honestly it’s a horror story so i’m going to put it under a read more. careful it is creepy and there’s a lot of talk of blood and stalking. seriously it’s a little messed up i used to be scared as hell of the Pooka when i was a kid lol. the short story, if you don’t want to read, is that a creature called a Pooka chased him out of Germany and nearly made him a prisoner, but Jackie and Marvin saved him!

but anyway yeah so Henrik is the seventh son of a seventh son, like I’ve mentioned, which pretty much means he A) is bizarrely lucky, impossibly lucky, B) can sense some magical activity and tell when things are supernatural even if they’re disguised to other humans, either seeing their real nature or just being able to tell that the thing in front of him is, on some level, not quite human, and C) a lot of people or creatures who are clued in to the mythological world might want to hurt him :( there are a lot of myths (Henrik doesn’t know how true they are) about how his hair or skin or blood could be used for really powerful spells or luck talismans or how even just keeping him around could increase luck or magical energy. to be fair, this does seem to be true in the households he’s lived in, as his family was really lucky with a lot of stuff when he was with his wife and kids, and recently his friends have been really lucky. he doesn’t consider this real luck at all, though - he’s constantly paranoid that something will come to kill him for a ritual or hurt him to get something out of him or just lock him away as a lucky charm for the rest of his life.

and he has good reason to be paranoid after what happened! A couple years ago, he caught the eye of a Pooka, a nightmare shape-shifter hardly more intelligent than an animal and generally not classified at the level of a human the way a Selkie or higher spirit or satyr or something like that would be. (okay there are some legends that make Pooka clever tricksters who come after bad people and others that say they’re even friendly but in the stories i was always told, Pooka were monsters and you did NOT want to be targeted by one, because they never let their victims go and enjoyed tormenting innocent humans for reasons never explained to me). Henrik still doesn’t know exactly what it wanted with him, because it never spoke. It’s just one night he woke up at the witching hour and sat up in bed beside his wife and outside his window there was a donkey.

but it was horrible, it wasn’t… it wasn’t normal. The Pooka takes a lot of different forms. usually a huge black dog, or a huge black bull, or a huge black hare, or a huge black-haired man, or the donkey. And the donkey, to Henrik, was the worst of them. It would be the body and head of a donkey, but it would stay on its hind legs like a man and wear a coat, and there would be something in his eyes far too clever for a donkey - an ability to watch, an ability to be interested in him, an ability to want to hurt him. That first night he thought it was a sleep paralysis demon. He held stock-still and stared at the blank yellow eyes with the rectangle pupils on either side of its head and wondered why it seemed to stare directly at him, as though hungry. It reached up a hand - grey and covered in fur, but the hands of a man - and pushed open his bedroom window.

His wife woke up and asked him why he was shaking so hard and when he whirled around to look at her, the Pooka disappeared again. He had to stay home from work the next day he was so afraid, and even though he and his wife had been having a lot of problems lately, she pulled him right into her arms and stroked his hair and let him cry because he was just so terrified. she’d never seen him that scared. his vision was telling him that thing was real even though he’d never heard of anything like it and wanted it to be a nightmare.

and the thing was, he was the only one who seemed to be able to see it.

He kept trying to go to work as usual, providing for his kids and looking after his family, but the Pooka began to get closer and closer. he would get on the subway and look up and the Pooka would be a dog sitting across from him, staring at him with donkey’s eyes, bigger than he was, big enough that its head touched the top of the subway and pressed its ears down. or he would be in the middle of an intensive surgery, and suddenly the window would open, and this hare the size of the operating table, with the yellow eyes of the donkey and all its horrible ribs jutting out, would crawl into the room and stare at him while he worked, sweating and trembling so hard he could barely perform, though he sometimes didn’t have a choice depending on how serious the surgery was and how far he was into it, the hare staring at him the whole time and just breathing. or the huge black-haired man, donkey-eyed and twice his size, stepping into his home while his wife and kids were all asleep, stepping over to him, its boots thudding across his dining floor, leaving blood in their wake, its yellow eyes fixed on him as he shook, shattering a coffee mug, trying to make his voice work, to say something like “what are you? what do you want with me?” but it never answered, it never spoke, just stepped closer and closer, fixed on him, staring at him, and then, for the first time, it reached out with its sausage-sized fingers, and it touched his fucking throat, and he felt blood come spilling out of his mouth for reasons he still doesn’t understand, and it swiped up the blood with its thumb and began to drink.

it turned to go after a drop of it, but it wasn’t satisfied.

Henrik, understandably, just about lost his mind with fear after that. he had seen the bull standing over his wife and kids enough times by then that he knew none of them were safe, and besides, no one believed him. his wife thought he was having a nervous breakdown or developing a psychotic illness or something because even though she knew about what he was, the story was just too ridiculous, too insane, and whoever heard of a donkey like that anyway? so he ran away. didn’t even think about it or mean for it, really, didn’t have time to leave them notes, to tell them that he loved them, just… ran and hoped the Pooka would leave them all alone. but it just kept following him. and now he was all along, and it started to get bolder.

it sat beside him on trains destined for countries he picked at random. it swam across the channel with him when he ran to Ireland. in his hotel room, it stood over him, and when he ran to sleep on the streets instead, terrified and exhausted, still it followed him, the donkey towering over him, the yellow eyes fixed on him, and it started to eat his blood whenever it wanted to, touching his throat and making it come welling up and drizzling from his mouth again while he was paralyzed by the strange power come over him, frozen still by the Pooka except for tears running down his face. he tried to run away again, but now, he found, it was no longer just watching, it would grab him and force him to stay in the hotel room, or snatch him off the streets while he searched for any help and drag him to the forest to drain him, and then it began pulling him deeper and deeper into the forest every time and letting him wander for less and less time, and then one day it brought him a big cup of milk in its horrible donkey hands, and he realized, in a moment that nearly killed him, that it was going to make him a prisoner for the rest of his life. but he didn’t know what to do. he’d been hunted for months. he was exhausted and terrified and exhausted of being terrified. there was no way to get free of it. in his dreams every night the Pooka made him see himself sat on the back of the great black bull, clinging on for dear life, blood running from his mouth, unable to throw himself off. it felt like a dream. in retrospect, it’s like it didn’t even happen to him, just like he watched it happen to someone else. it was extremely traumatic for him and he knew he was going to die and gave up on finding help.

until, of course, a little star spirit who loves to explore happened upon him. Marvin had never met a Pooka before and he was very curious when he noticed its spirit!! he went zipping off into the woods all excited and fascinated, but then he came upon the little man curled up beneath an outcropping in a worn doctor’s coat, shaking and passed out, anemic and freezing and very ill with the toll all this took on him. Marvin has rarely been so distressed in all his life. Henrik woke up to a very sweet white cat kissing at him and keeping him warm. he let Henrik hug him and pet him and mumble to him about dying and wanting to go and Germany and his family and blood from his mouth for a long time before he heard the Pooka come and decided this was too much for him to deal with alone. he zipped off to go get Jackie, but not before he saw exactly what the Pooka had been doing to the stranger. Jackie was horrified, of course, and finally here was someone who actually had an idea of what this creature Henrik had been ranting about to everyone he could think of actually was. In the end, it’s his luck that brought Henrik to Ireland, the homeland of the Pooka, where someone might know where it was and where a friendly star might wander onto him. they found Henrik silver spurs like in the stories Jackie had always been told as a kid and the next time he dreamed, Henrik could dig the silver spurs into the side of the Pooka and make it scream, a horrible shrieking noise like a half-dozen animals being slaughtered that has never left Henrik’s head since. The Pooka tried to come back and punish him a couple times, but Jackie and Marvin protected him and eventually it was killed with silver because, while Jackie rarely kills anything at all, it was clear that it wouldn’t stop coming for Henrik, perhaps having developed some kind of an addiction to him.

It took months for Henrik to believe it was really over. Jackie kept him in his home the whole time - apart from a brief sojourn to the hospital once or twice, since Henrik was seriously ill - and nursed him back to health with Marvin’s help. for the first couple weeks, Henrik was just silent, wrapped up in Jackie’s bedsheets staring at the wall, blue with blood loss and illness and a certain sort of grief that will never go away, letting Jackie and Marvin feed him and comfort him. eventually he started to get better, but he never left Jackie’s house. only place he really feels safe now. he has, however, set up a secret little clinic just a few blocks away, where mythological creatures in need of help can come to a doctor who has some understanding of what they are and real expertise, too. Between him, Jackie, and Marvin, they started picking up some pretty expansive knowledge about mythological creatures and he’s learned how to treat so many different things!! It keeps his life really interesting, especially now that he’s developing a national reputation among the other folk. and it’s how Chase and Jamie both came to be a part of their family!

What happened really haunts him, but luckily he has happened upon the best group of friends he could ever ask for and he has a great support system :) so that’s where he’s at!! that was very long but yeh!!!! i am filled with love of him!!

#blood tw #stalking tw #mythology au #seven seven henrik #schneeplestein #horror tw

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sonicfanj · 4 years

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Hi! I saw your response from a post related to idw! Amy from the last number of the comic. For some reason I don't feel satisfied with the way idw is handling amy and your response got my interest cause you mentioned really good points. I don't know if you want to continue to talk about the topic but if you do I would love to read more about your point of view Thanks for reading

I rant quite a bit about how IDW Amy has been handled as a good deal of it is a betrayal to her character concept which you can hear Kazuyuki Hoshino explain himself here.

https://youtu.be/0nzxRoIX4QU?t=2315

Sorry I can’t embed in an “Answer”, but the general gist of it is, Amy was created as a character who was to be the Minnie Mouse to Sonic’s Mickey Mouse, but as Sonic is not that type of character they needed to mix it up. As was very true of the early franchise where traditions were turned upside down for the time such as Tails being a nerd and athletic enough to keep up with Sonic while Amy was both a girly-girl and a tomboy at the same time, Sonic and Amy’s relationship was inverted from guy chasing after the girl to much less commonly seen girl chases after guy trope. So Amy could actually survive in a role as the love interest of the main character where she had to the chasing of a character always seeking out his next adventure and challenge she needed to have the energy, good cheer, and optimism to never give up chasing him and the willingness to partake in and love his lifestyle.

Early on you would see this in the Japanese manuals so naturally they were missed outside of Japan, but localization and not bringing content out of Japan (no less cases of Amy erasure by SEGA of America with her even having several scenes cut from the western airing of Sonic X removing a lot of her humanizing scenes showing she was a well meaning girl but acts on a foundation based on having the necessary energy to keep chasing Sonic unendingl) still did not stop that foundation from appearing in the games that brought her into the forefront of Sonic stories. The Sonic Adventure games.

Now there is a lot here that could be unpacked, but I’m going to focus on two moments.

1) At the beginning of her story Amy laments her boredom and pines for Sonic to be in her life again so she can enjoy excitement again like she did back when he was around. This out of the gate shows you that Amy detests being bored, yet IDW has her actively announce it at one point while doing Restoration paperwork, and also has Sonic have to practically drag her out on an adventure.

So not only is she betraying her character by refusing to do what she was created to do, with even her great handling in issue 2 has her actively reject her own character function, but when she is pulled out onto an adventure what is her reward? Well of course the start of the Zombot crisis, in which she gets to see herself maim someone and then see Sonic infected with the same stuff. From there her role in the entire arc is to just be a mouthpiece for how bad the crisis is on a global scale. Yet her character foundation states this should not be the case.

At one point during the Zombat arc we see Cream after losing Cheese and Chocola have to cheer up Amy who can’t herself understand how Cream is able to smile. Yet before this point, Amy’s history has always shown her to be the one who keeps people optimistic, who doesn’t let people get down, who always has the energy and ability to believe in Sonic saving the day in the end and is able to smile because of that. So again, not only is her character down and betraying who she is supposed to be, but a character she should be cheering up is instead cheering her up. Who Amy is and the foundation for her character is completely absent, and again, Amy is sitting still instead of taking action and going out into the world and doing her best in her way. Her adventurous spirit and get out and do something attitude are completely absent.

2) Now, the other line from the Adventure games which shows a problem with Amy just growing lifeless in a dark room is from Adventure 2 where aboard the Arc she complains about how the boys always leave her behind. She’s there because she wants to be and has done everything she can throughout the game to keep up, and started by infiltrating Prison Island and acquiring a key card to Sonic’s cell. She is demonstrated to be proactive and again has a love for adventure and a desire to travel with Sonic. Yet again this is actively ignored in IDW to plug her into a role in the Zombot Arc meant for Sally Acorn during the Archie New 252 run.

Ian Flynn has on record stated that the Metal Virus Arc was originally meant for Archie starting at or a little after issue 300. It was inspired by the “Metal” skins from Sonic Heroes and would have seen the Freedom Fighters tested against the horror of the Arhieverse version of Eggman like never before. At this point though a problem becomes abundantly clear, and that’s that you have a role to fill where Sally Acorn is absent in a more gamecentric setting. How Amy ended up in the roll is in part due to Ian Flynn typically righting characters and only really being able to use Amy, though he has admitted it’s not a role he believes she should have. Yet SEGA OKed it and for the Zombot Arc Amy has had to become Sally Acorn. Instead of being the cheerful girl who chases after Sonic and does her best to keep up with and help Sonic she has become the girl in charge he checks in on. Instead of being out in the field leading through motivation, encouragement, and example, she has become a war room tactician. These roles all fit Sally to a tee and she is a character designed to be able to serve the purposes of those roles and thrive in them. It is what she was made to do after all; lead a desperate group of mismatched people through an impossible situation. That is her core role and part of why she doesn’t work for the games where the narrative is simply where is Sonic now and what is he getting involved in. But for the Zombot Arc she was perfect, yet Archie’s bunglings put an end to that and to force his story into only the second story arc of a new comic before the characters had room to grow and become established with distinct identities in IDW, he took Amy and shoved her into Sally’s skin in what is one of the worst ill fitting results I’ve ever seen. She is at almost no point in the arc given even a single moment that speaks from the foundation of her character as she can’t for the sake of he plot. The plot needed Sally Acorn, but Amy was the only one available to fill the role, and as is typical when Sally is needed, Amy gets mistreated, misused, and winds up getting nothing in the end except more comfortless stress and worries with none of her actual character there to show she can actually smile through it all.

The funny thing is though, Amy’s actual character makes it into the Zombot Arc. It’s one of the best written scenes in the whole arc and occurs at a point when Sonic really needs that traditional Amy spunk to put the spring back in his step. In fact, the way the whole scene is written it is likely had the story been told in Archie it would have been the moment when Amy fell to the Metal Virus. And I would not have been mad in the least. In fact, I would have been eagerly anticipating Sonic’s eventual victory to see her faith rewarded and her sacrifice rewarded. Unfortunately though the scene was handed off to someone else, and I have had a hard time appreciating the character since as a result.

You see, in IDW there is a very energetic character who shares most of Amy’s core traits. Energetic, optimistic, and almost always full of good cheer. Where they differ is in their secondary traits, or more accurately the traits they don’t share with Amy. Being romantic, in love with Sonic, childish, occasionally bratty, and very old-fashioned girly. Those five secondary traits are completely absent from this character, and as a result, anytime they do something Amy would based on the otherwise same foundation they get praised where Amy would have been derided simply for being Amy. But the peak of it is again a moment that felt 100% like it was meant for Amy but as she was assigned to be Sally couldn’t have it. And yet, no one seems to notice, but rather cheers the entire scenario because Sonic needed that hug and physical contact. He needed those words of a faith that is placed solely in him. He needed to see that ability to smile and stay optimistic even when infected, and keep giving their all with boundless energy, good cheer and optimism. He needed Amy Rosy, Rosy the Rascal, the pink hedgehog girl who has followed him as best she can since Sonic CD. But instead, Amy’s very foundation and role was cheered not when carried out by Amy, but instead when carried out by relative new comer with none of the history or even reason to have faith in Sonic like he needed in that scene, Tangle the Lemur. And the scene was cheered even more due to the love that Whisper the Wolf has as her despair at losing the first friend she allowed herself to have since she lost everything just drove it completely home for everyone. And don’t get me wrong, the issue was brilliant written. Just enough was done to make sure you knew it was Tangle and not Amy at a casual glance. But I don’t look at scenes that scream Amy at me from the start casually. Her and Sonic are easily my favorite characters, so when I see her role being played by someone else you can bet I notice. And Tangle played it brilliantly.

But what did Amy get as a reward for playing Sally’s role in this issue? What else? She had to play the role of the incompetent villain. They barely saved anyone. Another town was lost on her watch. She had hold Whisper back from going out to try in vain to save Tangle. It would have been quite engaging to see Sally challenged as a leader of people and crisis manager as she specializes in it and this arc would have been great to see her character deconstructed and see what really makes her work. Instead, Amy was given her role when she has no business having it, and is shown to be completely worthless after a scene that reads like it was handcrafted for was played out by another character. And of course, that other character when finally cured even gets another huge hug, while Amy is left watching the skies to despair.

It’s hard to see Amy as being treated well by IDW when you really break it down, but because she has been stripped of her character and generally sidelined, her detractors are pleased and as new fans don’t know any better they can’t see what is wrong no less call it out. She played her role in the plot as written so time to move on. She doesn’t matter beyond that, though fans of Amy Acorn/Sally Rose have surely been born as a result, and as an actual Amy Rose/Rosy the Rascal fan that hurts as one of my favorite characters will continue to be slowly killed off as her heart and sole is siphoned out of her and only a shallow doppelganger is left in her place.

Thanks for the Ask anon. I hope that rant and breakdown wasn’t too long or cynical, and that it clearly illustrates why at least I’m not happy with IDW Amy. Maybe even it will help you reflect and see why you aren’t satisfied with her either.

Of course though I rant quite a bit about the franchise in general and have a whole list of other rants of mine you can track down by dropping ‘rant’ into my blog’s search bar. Though that won’t connect you to these four from twitter (though one is kind of segmented)

https://twitter.com/kokoloko45/status/1284905784531398661 (Quite a bit of ranting in here though you have to fish around through the replies to find it)

https://twitter.com/JoshTarwater/status/1283088147576795137 (this one I go off quite a bit about the depreciating meta narrative of the IP)

https://twitter.com/JoshTarwater/status/1254439910422925312 (And this one I go into where I see Amy’s character as mishandled and the necessary steps as I see it to put her back on track)

Thank you again anon, it was a pleasure to answer, even if it did get me riled up again XD

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marriael · 5 years

Text

Saving the Day (Felix x Reader)

Request: (anon) could you do a felix scenario where he’s a bad boy and his girlfriend (or significant other) is having a really bad mental day and he takes care of her? really fluffy :-) thank u love

Word count: 1308

a/n: My second thing posted on tumblr and first writing thing for @skzrequests! Anonnie I hope you see this and I hope you like it even if it’s kind of short.

Felix had a reputation around the school and it was not a particularly good one. He was mostly known for piercings, mouthing off basically every time a teacher spoke to him, and occasional mischievous activities. Only a small group knew what he was really like, you were a member of that small group. The real Felix. The one who would do anything to protect his friends. Who gets in fights, but not for fun, usually, but to stand up for people.

That sense of morality was how you ended up meeting. You knew him from school, everybody did, but seeing him like this was different. He didn’t hesitate to step in after hearing the creepy guy next to you making less than appropriate comments. He hesitated even less in making it physical when the guy showed no signs of stopping. You wanted to say thank you but you were still a little fearful, come on he basically just destroyed that guy. He could tell and quickly left without a glance back.

However; you were determined. So much so that you went up to his little group, that were known for generally ignoring strangers, when he wasn’t there to ask what you should do for Felix. They all agreed that food was the best way, particularly rice cakes (tteokbokki).

Felix was a little confused when you showed up with a container for him the next day. You weren’t really surprised he forgot you but it did sting a little.

As you were walking away he called out, “hey! Meet me at the gate after school!”

Everyone looked at him, and you, but you ignored them smiling and giving him a thumbs up in affirmation.

From then on Felix consistently showed his soft side to you. He made extra effort to take care of you when you were ill, even if he had to climb through the window because your parents wouldn’t let him in. He pretty much knew how to treat any bad physical days but bad mental days were an unknown. So far on bad mental days you just avoided him by saying you had a lot of homework to do and he would just distract you. Not entirely a lie but you just never ended up doing that homework.

Apparently today that wasn’t flying.

No one was home other than you at the moment so Felix was free to go straight to your room. You didn’t even hear him, instead only feeling the dip of the bed when he sat next to your blanket lump self.

“Darling, are you awake under there? Do you want to talk to me or do you just want silence and some junk food?”

You appreciated how well he knew you because at the moment you had no energy to speak. Probably because you really hadn’t eaten much. Wiggling a hand out the blanket you held up a 2.

You hear his sock padded feet walk away and then come back a few minutes later. Accompanied by the delightful sound of crinkling wrappers and clanging metal spoons.

“So I have some granola bars since you would need something kind of good for you. I can’t cook but also you probably weren’t up for soup or whatever anyways. I also have ice cream!"

You lay there, unmoving, for a few more moments while you listen to Felix opening the wrappers and ice cream.

"Can you come out of the blankets or should I just let you be?"

You could have sworn you felt tears well up because of how sweet Felix was being, also maybe because of how down you were feeling. Shuffling out of the blankets you blink at the sudden brightness of both the general room and your boyfriend. Felix abruptly looked up when you groaned and covered your eyes and gasped when he realized. He hurried to close the curtains a little.

"Oh no, darling I’m sorry I didn’t even think.” He rushed back towards you concern all over his face. Stopping abruptly just in front of you and asks “can I touch you?"

You gave a small nod. He wrapped his around you and plants a quick kiss on your forehead.

"It’s o-,” you attempted to speak but your voice fails and you coughed, throat feeling like sandpaper. “It’s ok, Lix."

He pulled away to look at you, eyebrows furrowed. He fully retreated to grab the ice cream container and spoons, turning back around to you, bright smile on his face.

"Ice cream, cuddles, and Netflix?” He said it like a question but both of you know you would never decline. You’d have to be out of your mind to decline Felix of cuddles.

You curled up into his lap while he scrolled aimlessly. Eventually he stopped on some series that looks like interesting enough you could watch it but just mindless enough you could miss a few minutes and be ok. Just what you need to be distracted.

Felix snaked his arms around your waist to hold and play with your hands and rested his chin gently on your shoulder. You both settled in to discover the mildly engaging plot.

After a while you have left behind your turbulent thoughts and were enjoying the time with your boyfriend. Felix occasionally talked over things he finds ridiculous. Though with the nature and budget of the show it still happened quite often.

At the end of the third episode Felix exited and scooted back to face you.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” He said softly. He looked concerned and you didn’t like that you were the cause of that.

You extended your arms towards him. “Hold me and I’ll tell you. Fair warning I’m still drained so I might fall asleep.”

Felix willingly came and wrapped you up. He was warm like always and it seemed appropriate for his personality, always sunny and hospitable.

You talked about how it was just your general mental health that causes these bad days but school can get overwhelming which makes them happen more often. You ranted about how the year has barely started how do the teachers have the heart to do this to the students. Felix was solid, emotionally and physically, which was a nice reminder of how supportive he is.

You eventually drain yourself of words and energy and Felix pulls you closer. You were grateful for how he took this all in stride despite never seeing you like this. You would tell him that later, you could already feel yourself falling asleep.

“Go to sleep, angel. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

You fell asleep with those words filling your heart.

You woke up some time later. The curtains were open but it wasn’t too bright. Felix was sitting on the floor and you studied him for a moment. You wondered how he deals with the same things you do but does so much better.

“Feeling better?” You blinked rapidly and realized he’s looking at you.

“Uhh, yeah. I didn’t think you’d still be here. How long has it been?” You shook your head slightly, looking for your phone to check the time.

“I said I’d still be here didn’t I?” He stood and haphazardly pushes several notebooks into his bag. “I should get home though, my mom should be texting me about dinner soon.” As if on cue his phone pinged in his back pocket.

You got up to hug him, hoping to indicate your overwhelming affection and gratitude

“Thank you, Lix.”

“What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t support you? Just call me next time this happens and I’ll be there.”

The urge to kiss him was overwhelming and so you do. You pulled away and looking at him you wondered how he could possibly be seen as a bad boy.

#skzrequests #felix scenario #felix imagine #felix fluff #stray kids scenario #stray kids imagine #stray kids fluff #this is the longest thing ive written (i don't count my shitty sss gift) by ~400 words!#felix #lee felix #felix lee #stray kids #my writing

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thesickpanda · 4 years

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The Theme for this Season is Despair

It's hard to overstate just how much the fires have cost people this summer. Obviously, my losses cannot compare to those who have watched their homes burn to the ground or their businesses. Nor can I relate to those who have serious lung conditions who are struggling for every breath right now. They have it way worse than me. But on a personal level, this summer has had me absolutely wild with frustration, stress, anxiety and pent-up energy.

[Image description: map of the fires burning around Sydney. The monster fire above the Blue Mountains National Park is significantly larger than the entire metropolitan area of Sydney and the mega fire burning to the south of the mountains is a third of that size.]

In October, I hung up my activist hat after 8 years of service to the Sydney community, with the intention of formally moving into the Blue Mountains and focusing on my health, well-being, hobbies and happiness. I had clawed my way through a particularly nasty winter during which time I barely left the house as my Fibromyalgia was so severe. My light at the end of the tunnel was knowing that once we settled into our house in late spring, I would be able to enjoy my mountains home and take up all my neglected hobbies once more. Most of those involved going outdoors as I am a nature person.

Instead, I've been crying almost every day as I watch footage of all the trees and all the parks and all my favourite places burn to cinders. The Wollemi Park: burning. The southern slopes that I had always wanted to see: burnt. The Jamison and Megalong Valleys I took my sister to see this time last year: on fire And now the fire is threatening my favourite place in all of NSW: the Capertee Valley. It is incredibly distressing for a citizen scientist and nature lover, who has spent years documenting the local wildlife, to know that all those animals are being burned alive; to watch the big beautiful trees that you have enjoyed walking among come crashing down because, although they evolved to be fire resistant, they can't hold up to both the drought and ferocious flames. It is beyond upsetting. And there's no escaping it. I have an app on my phone that I need to have active that alerts me when fires are coming near. Everyone is glued to these apps so that they know if their lives are in danger. I can't put my head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. Especially when the reality of it is literally choking me.

[Image Description: Sydney’s Centrepoint tower and two other skyscrapers barely visible through a thick grey smog]

The smoke is ranked as hazardous when it is above 200 on the PM 2.5 air quality index. In some parts it has reached 22 times that level and in Sydney 12 times that level. It is triple that level today in my area of the mountains. I can barely see the trees it's just so thick. It has been like this nearly every day for over two weeks. Sydney has had it more frequently and for much longer than we have, but the fires surrounding us are dumping on us now. Burnt leaves and ash are landing in our shopping carpark and on our balcony. The smoke gets inside the house; my eyes are red and my throat hurts all of the time. I'm constantly coughing. I feel ill, worse than usual. We're lucky enough to have two air purifiers for two of the rooms in the house. I have one in my office where I dictate this blog and one in the lounge room where I have kept my pet rat. And those are the two rooms I am mostly confined to, day in and day out, because to go outside is literally toxic. I do have a mask that filters out the worst of the bushfire smoke but it is heavy around my head and neck and gives me terrible pain and headaches after only 10 to 15 minutes. I put it on to water the plants with a bucket after 4 PM because of the water restrictions.

I wanted to go for bushwalks and look for spiders. I got up at 4 AM a few days ago to try to see the Geminid meteor shower, something I have been looking forward to. But I couldn’t make out anything in the sky through the thick haze. I wanted to go for an ice cream and a walk in my local park, but the smoke is too thick. I haven't been to the beach since winter and had to cancel the one beach that we had planned because, again: the smoke. My photography, my outdoor activities, my hobbies, they have all stopped. And when you’re chronically ill and unemployed, your hobbies mean the fucking world to you. They are what defines living as opposed to merely existing. I know I can do some indoors, but I absolutely detest been confined inside. There is no way I could exaggerate how badly I get cabin fever. I grew up in South Africa in a nature reserve. I'm not an indoors person. I don't relish sitting in front of Netflix for hours or binge watching YouTube. I like to go out. And walking is so much better for my Fibromyalgia than sitting. Sitting is the thing that I cannot do at the moment because my lower back is in spasm and will be for the foreseeable future. Walking is the only thing that gives any relief.

[Image description: Australian trees silhouetted against a backdrop of 70 metre flames, turning the sky a dirty orange. This was the fire at Mount Tomah].

Yesterday, I saw the sun for the first time in a long while due to a wind that blew the worst of the smoke away for a brief spell. As soon as my partner got home from work we went to the entrance of our local bush trail to take advantage of the ok air quality and be in nature...only to find that it had been sealed off due to bushfire risk (with a $1000 penalty for entering). My partner told me that it’s not because the fires are so close to our local bush that it's dangerous for us to walk; it’s to stop arsonists from going in there. Typical government: punish the many to hurt the few. Like a bit of red tape is going to stop them, for fuck’s sake…

I normally love the warmer seasons because it's easier on my body, but to have been cooped up like this has been just as bad as winter. I never thought I'd say it, but I just want summer to be over. I don’t look forward to winter because I know I'm in for a world of pain but, at least I can breathe.

[Image description: a Boeing airplane dumping pink foam over a bushfire. The headline of the screenshotted article reads: “NSW fires, Gospers Mountain Fire: Mount Piper power station, Springvale Coal mine near fire”. If the coal mine catches fire, not only will it burn for weeks, it’ll put out extremely toxic gasses that would poison the air for hundreds of kilometers. The fire is only 6km away.]

I have another rant about the healthcare system screwing me over for the millionth time, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. Only so much rage I want to spew out into the ether at any given time, I guess. Tl;dr version: my body’s fucked in two newly diagnosed ways, and next year is going to be disgustingly expensive.

#chronic illness #chronic pain #australia burning #Australian bushfires #spoonie #Fibromyalgia #climate anxiety #eco anxiety

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donttouchmyasymptote · 5 years

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Old Enough To Read Again || Darabella

Happy Holidays, @eccentricextrovert ! I know you love Darabella (as well The Adventure Zone, which doesn’t feature at all in this fic, but I also love TAZ so let’s talk about that too sometime), so I wrote you some for the @eah-exchange <3

It took a good month for Daring to realise that dating- no, courting, Rosabella was a bit more than extravagant gifts.

To be fair, courting any princess at Ever After High was more than extravagance. For some, being born with a silver spoon in their mouths meant that the taste dulled their senses until they could accept no less than platinum. For others, raised by wet nurses and with dead mothers and distant fathers and the lived experience that a jewelled crown came with a political weight, every bit of gold seemed that of a fool’s. For many, they knew that if someone had to put a monetary value on marriage, and that they were priceless and deserving of things better than riches, like loyalty or trustworthiness, or like, really good biceps.

(Rosabella was pretty fond of his really good biceps, if linking arms on the way to classes or dates was any sign, so Daring knew he wasn’t doing too shabbily.)

And to be fair, Rosabella kept all of the gifts. She had a few expensive rocks tucked up on one of her bookshelves, and all the flowers placed in a vase until they expired their time. She shared chocolates with Daring, but not without small tangents on rising sea levels, on how dwarf mines were an unsustainable power resource, on how magical energy was not being harnessed in renewable ways and that the waste was spreading to other magical regions, most notably Wonderland, and because of all that, the fairytale universe was getting hotter and that wasn’t just because natural selection meant that only those regarded as most beautiful in their lands got shots at marriage, and that meant that the cacao plants were going to die out and with that so many sweets-filled destinies and--

Unfortunately, he only fixated on the most minor of parts. “No fear, Rosabella! We shall sort out this waste issue. Dragons fly vast distances, surely they can take any trash off to some far, far, far off land. I’m thinking America.”

To which, she had only lightly scolded and told him not to dump their own issues on other, unsuspecting people. “Think of the Ozians! They’re unstable as it is!”

The next time Daring bought her chocolate, he made a deal about it being Fair Fairy Trade, with practises, through what research he could do, that were environmental friendly and didn’t involve underpaid fae labour. When Rosabella kissed his cheek and called him thoughtful, he felt his heart warm up inside.

~*~

“Am I doing well?” he asked, when Rosabella came up to him after classes, handed him a coffee, and looped her free arm around his.

“What do you mean?”

He blanked. “Uhm.” Daring Charming did not lose grace in social situations. “I’m totally dashing and cool, right?”

“I like you, yes,” she said, and leaned up to gently kiss him on the nose. “You are the next Beast. I’d be a little miffed if I didn’t.”

Daring wasn’t confident with that response. Author Grimm-it, he was quite fond of Rosabella. He was determined to impress her, to stand out among Ever After High’s avalanche of handsome princes, but it seemed naught when all he had to offer was pretty when she was that too, and on top of it, clever and dedicated and knowledgeable…

“The next Beast,” the words ran in his mouth strangely. It had been a while since he realised that he would soon follow Rosabella in her destiny, and abandon what he thought was his future life for the past decade. With Rosabella, things felt right. “Rosabella, I’m sorry if I don’t quite seem as princely as I do normally. My real role is just a completely, fair-y, fair-y different role from the one I thought I had.”

“I think you’re doing royally well,” she squeezed his hand. “There’s a lot to being the next Beast. For starters, you’re no longer just a trophy husband.”

He looked down at his coffee. Trophy husband. Daring knew of princes who resented that term. He never did, but he would always pass by conversations in common rooms -- ‘no matter how the world sells the narrative, we are naught but prizes for princesses’, ‘it doesn’t matter how many witches or woods they endure, we deserve autonomy too’. Ill-complaints, he had thought. The World of Ever After was still tilted in princes’ favours. His roommate, Hopper, had once tried to offer his input to these common room rifes, but was shot back with ‘isn’t your princess meant to kill you in your original? No amount of revisionism will save you, amphibian boy’.

How did Rosabella know this term? She liked activism circles, didn’t she? How much she did absorb from these princes?

Just-- what a fascinating princess. So steadfast, always holding her ground. Daring felt like he couldn’t keep up. Sometimes, he wanted to just sit back and listen to her talk for hours. Whatever topic, whatever rant, that voice, that mind, her ideas.

“For an eldest son, you never had to do much outside of hero stuff, did you?”

Rosabella was right. Daring never really thought much about ruling. Destiny for him used to be so simple - be handsome, and be certain about being handsome. Kiss a princess, wave a weapon around or so.

He thought about Apple and the role of Snow White. He thought about how, once, he had to ‘rescue’ her. How simple it was - a quick kiss.

Did he ever think about Happily Ever After afterwards? Not really. Snow White had been named one of Faebes’ top world leaders for decades now, with pretty much a monopoly on rare Dwarf minerals. Apple was the one that would have been crowned queen; they were not meant to be joint monarchs.

“No…” he confessed. “I mean, I get good grades in Kingdom Management. But I used to think that Apple would handle the political side of things.”

She grinned, and loosened her looped arm to grab his waist and pull him in. “Good. You won’t have to.”

“Rosabella, don’t think so little of me!” he tried to amplify his voice to sound strong, but a slight whinge remained. “I am not completely useless--”

Having finished her coffee by now, Rosabella put her free hand on his chest. “No, no, I didn't mean to insult you. I meant, you won’t have to rule over anyone. We don’t have people.”

“... what?”

“Other than the castle staff, we don’t have subjects,” she said. “Beauty’s the youngest daughter of a rich merchant. My coronation will be an incorporation.”

Daring blinked. “Coronation… incorporation?”

And she explained. How, because each generation, the beast’s castle would be secluded, so when destiny was done and over, him and Beauty had to live and move into it. Twenty to thirty years was too short of a time to cultivate any stable population, so the kingdom was not remodelled into a county, but a company. It was a versatile move on her predecessor’s part, so that no matter the gender of the heir, their lives would be properly set up in a manner to fulfill the story accurately.

He never realised how much he failed to ask about her.

And to think -- the times she thought about him: how she got through all the list of action movies he loved, or how she remembered his ever-complicated drink orders and the moods in which he preferred them, or the efforts she put into being friendly with Dexter and Darling, and reminding Daring about their lives. No detail seemed to slip from her mind.

“A lot of words! A lot of thought!” he said. “No wonder you’re as you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so smart. And well-read! I cannot keep pace with you all the time. It’s highly empress-ive.”

She beamed. “I think highly of you too.”

“I feel like every time we hang out, I learn more. I just… I just hope I’m not boring you. Maybe I should read like you, too.

There - her smile faltered.

Daring felt a very sudden, cold fear that he had upset her.

“I mean, other than for activism purposes, I haven’t really been reading. Legacy Year really thrones you in for a loop,” Rosabella took off her glasses and dusted them with a handkerchief - one that Daring recognised, for he had gifted it. “Too much time spent memorising crowns from birth to coronation, or looking into newly passed legislation. I want to read again.”

“You can read to me.” The response was instantaneous. “I like your voice. I like hearing you talk.”

“If I read to you, those aren’t my thoughts. But I appreciate it, Daring,” she smiled up at him. Even the roses that frequented her family castle’s gardens could not compare to her.

Daring recalled the warm feeling in his stomach, when Rosabella had kissed him for the Fairy Trade Chocolate.

“As a prince that should dash to every lovely princess’ needs, I will make time for you-- so you can make time to read!”

“We’ll start simple. Animal Farm.”

~*~

It had started out simple: hours spent under the trees in the Legacy Orchard, or Rosabella trying to read over the sound of the wind while dragonback riding, her voice starting to sound like a death metal song, or secluded areas of the Castleteria.

But the pages of the books dragged out longer, and Daring grew more eager for fiction, and by the time Rosabella cracked open a copy of Robert Iron Heinrich’s Stranger in a Strange Far, Far Away Land, reading already became an evening past-time on one of their couches in one of their dorm rooms.

At some point in these evenings, he would be comfortable enough to tuck his head between the nape of her chin and clavicle. Comfortable enough to have one arm across her waist, comfortable enough for his breathing to fall in sync with the weight of her words.

And eventually, comfortable enough to kiss for a bit, though never for long. There were books to get to, after all.

(Besides, Rosabella’s voice was perhaps one of the nicest things to fall asleep too.)

#ever after high #darabella #daring charming #rosabella beauty #eccentricextrovert #eahexchange

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