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crypticminx · 4 months

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Enemies to lovers au ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Felix Catton was a popular student body that seemed so utterly artificial to you.

From his lean, supermodel like body to his outrageous facial piercing and even his ridiculously expensive clothes—everything seemed to irk you to no end.

Even the man’s whole life and every teeny bit of information you heard from gossip sounded like something that sprung from an unrealistic movie.

What made it even worse was his attitude, one that wasn’t too far off from the cocky cliche types you had no patience for in high school.

While you would sit and mind your own business, your mind attentively focused on the information in your textbook, you’d see him happily stroll on by—his hand always intertwined with a girls, of course. It almost infuriated you how those girls would chase him around like love sick puppies, a poor character trait on their part.

There were so many other men on campus, but only one Felix and that was the problem.

Felix this and Felix that, couldn’t you escape him for just one second?

It appeared not, as when you found yourself smoking a cigarette to escape the party filled atmosphere for a quick minute on the balcony of a flat, which belonged to someone’s name you didn’t even know, in walked the man himself.

“Got a light?” he asked you, interrupting the peace that was supposed to be your only moment of freedom from the obnoxious drunks inside.

Taking a minute to observe his flushed face, a result of one too many beers, you hesitantly handed your lighter to him after fetching it from your purse.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, taking a few clumsy seconds to light the cigarette poking through his lips.

In perfect unison, you both painfully stood in silence, keeping your distance from each other as nicotine would slowly trail down both yours and his throat and release with each exhale. The two of you creating quite the cloud of foggy smoke.

“I’ve seen you around, y’kno,” he took a small drag, gently tapping off the ash growing on his cigarette.

If this was his way of starting a conversation as an attempt to bring you home with him, he was doing a miserable job.

“I’ve seen you too,” you replied, sounding disinterested as you continued to face the distance ahead as opposed to Felix.

“Always got your head in a book, drinking beer by yourself,” he slowly dragged his feet as he circled around you. “…giving me dirty looks whenever you have the chance.” You couldn’t see it, but you knew he had to be sporting one hell of an arrogant grin.

No, he wasn’t trying to take you home, he was flat out insulting you.

Rolling your eyes with a disdainful expression, you tossed the remaining cigarette to the stone cold ground, crushing its entirety in one stomp.

Okay, if he wanted to play this game, so be it.

“What’s your point,” you questioned him with hostility, feeling your blood boil when his face was sporting the exact look you pictured it to.

“My point is,” he swallowed, his structured jaw clenching, “even with all the drinking I’ve done, I can sense you don’t like me.”

You found it comical, not even ten minutes with him and he was getting to all the nitty gritty. You absolutely pitted any girl who spent more than twenty minutes with him. you could probably name a few.

“And do I need to like you, Felix?” You inched yourself closer to him, not caring if you crossed some sort of stupid boundary that was created between the two of you.

“No no, of course not darling,” he shook his head while you cringed at the subtle name calling. “But nobody likes a bitch.”

Oh, he was a fucking piece of—

“However, you’re the fine exception.”

Your eyes squinted with confusion, finding yourself surprised that you weren’t about the cuss the tall man out. Instead, pure tranquility roamed through your composure as your mouth didn’t budge.

“What if I kissed you?” He interrogated you, his voice was loud and serious, not one ounce of alcohol collided with his system to say the things that flew out of him. “Would you still dislike me then?”

“Excuse me?” You aggressively spat out, starting to feel more frustrated than full of your previous rage.

“I said, what if I—“

“I heard you!” you profoundly interrupted him, coming to your senses that all your douchey assumptions about him were right.

“Wait,” he called out, almost sounding desperate like he had some good point to be made.

You refused to let this silly conversation continue for any second longer. Dashing straight for the the door, but one swift tap of your shoulder and suddenly you found your back against the brick wall and Felix’s lean arms alarmingly barricading you from exiting.

“I also know that you’ve got the highest grade in our lit class.”

Great, so he was gonna make some joke out of that too.

“And when I read your work that was on display, I found myself in love with how beautiful your writing was.”

It was a simple assignment. A poem based on a classic Shakespeare play, you just happened to have chose a midnight summers dream. Felix’s favourite.

“You….,” confused eyes scanned him up and down as you tried to picture him reading any sort of literature, “like poetry?”

“I like pretty girls who can write,” he flashed a confident smirk before his body mindlessly pushed him to do something he hopefully wouldn’t regret.

He leaned his tall frame down to the perfect level of letting his lips slowly embrace yours. The second you felt the softness from them, you wanted to pull away with all your might, but a weak part of you felt curiosity win you over.

As his tongue danced away with yours in circles upon circles, the taste didn’t stench of alcohol. Instead there was some sort of sweetness to it, something that made it all seem worthwhile.

Closing your eyes in an amused way of defeat, you savoured the moment from the long kiss. Soaking up his touch that maybe felt too alluring once his hands smoothly made way to your hips. You could feel the ambience of enjoyment twinkling it’s way in the air and you wondered how the hell you got here.

Felix was as good of a kisser as he was an asshole.

Breaking free from a passionate kiss turned make-out, you witnessed a side of Felix that almost made every negative aspect of him vanish from the depths of your mind. You trailed back to the very feeling that was his lips on yours and you wanted to possibly continue as you noticed Felix looked just as stunned as you.

Until—

“Felix, mate,” a man with piercing blue eyes and dark locks popped his head out the door, looking at the two of you dusting yourselves off while trying hide your sheer content that sprouted in the form of rosy cheeks. Luckily, his pal didn’t seem to pay any sort of mind. After all, this was typical Felix behaviour.

“Been looking for ya, get your ass inside and have a shot with me!”

“Duty calls,” Felix whispered in your ear, holding your soft hand for a quick second before letting go, even though it was clear he didn’t want to.

As he was about to part ways from you, he stopped before he turned to you for one last time before the two of you would go your separate ways into the long night ahead.

“See you around, if you’re not too busy with all your books.” He blew you a cheesy kiss.

You didn’t say anything to his antics, instead you tossed him your final smile, while on the inside, you were squealing with foreign joy.

Fetching another cigarette to help you process what just happened, maybe he wasn’t so bad after all…

#saltburn #felix catton #felix catton x you #felix catton x reader #felix catton x y/n #jacob elordi #saltburn 2023 #felix catton fanfic #oliver quick #barry keoghan

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gargoyleandgremlinpress · 8 months

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My final Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day package has been delivered! Ten Prides in Portland by Leiascully and Simple Machines by coffeesuperhero continue the Leverage OT3 theme I've got going on this year. The fic aren't necessarily a series, but are thematically connected, and also the authors are married to each other. (It happens! My wife and I met writing Due South and Hard Core Logo fanfic lo these many years ago!)

There are some similar things I adore about both these fics. I love the sort of playing with structure in both of them, and watching the characters evolve, and also, seeing the queer community in all of its heartfelt messy occasionally infuriating glory. I also adore the thoughtful Eliot character exploration.

First off, Ten Prides in Portland! What it says on the tin. Ten years post-series at a certain brewpub in Portland, as Elliott finds queer community and figures himself out. This book is the reason I now have rainbow ribbon for bookmarks. As you can see, I went so very literal with this one. Homemade book cloth, acrylic paint, and cardstock endpapers printed with a map of Portland.

I had way too much fun with the layout on this one! It was an easy theme to lean into.

Eliot navigates a relationship with two people he loves, runs a restaurant, and figures himself out. I love the character dynamics, the cast of queer characters, and the way the second fic in the series is structured around brewpub menu items. The titles are from the iconic Mary Oliver poem Wild Geese, which is where the bird theme comes from. I used a really lovely fancy liquid mirror silver paint for the geese on the cover, which is gorgeous in person but hard to photograph.

More geese! Some menu formatting! Also, a food-themed illustration at the beginning of each chapter to match the menu item. (Thank you, stock images on The Noun Project.) This was another fun one to play with.

Not pictured here for either book: the insurmountable printer issue I was having where any page with an illustration turned out extra-dark, and the flip side was correspondingly lighter. BUT. I'm still pretty pleased with how they both turned out, happy to have both of these on my shelf, and even happier to send them off in a set together to the authors' hands.

Happy slightly belated FFWAD, Leiascully and Coffeesuperhero!

#fanbinding #ficbinding #ffwad 2023 #fanfic writers appreciation day #renegade loves fic #leverage fic #leverage ot3 #eliot/parker/hardison #operation: give queer characters queer community #ten prides in portland #leiascully #simple machines series #coffeesuperhero #just another really elaborate fic rec

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doctorofmagic · 7 months

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Why magic in the MCU has failed

I remember the "good" old days when Doctor Strange was about to debut back in 2016. I was obsessed with spotting every single little magic detail in the MCU in the hope that magic would slowly grow in status and importance, only to give up after so much disappointment.

But the major issue? The moment Feige stated that every side project was a part of the MCU. People who experienced phase 1 and 2 will remember that magic was a taboo. "It's just science we don't understand yet". While it's a common line quoted by Marvel's greatest geniuses, we all know it's pure arrogance on their part. Otherwise, they'd be doing what magic users do.

It was not MCU's case. Magic was INDEED treated as science. From Ghost Rider's portal being reproduced by a robot through the Darkhold to Wanda's powers being a product of an experiment but not explained at all. From a loooong season of Cloak and Dagger taking its time to finally introduce magic elements to Nico's staff almost falling to the same old "technology" trope. From whatever is happening in Asgard to Loki's limited magic. It's frustrating, but we'd still find a way to turn the tables, right? The Dark Dimension was introduced (twice?), the (third) Darkhold was finally attached to Chthon, Morgana and Lorelei debuted, Nico's powers were finally acknowledge as magic... So what happened?

My best guess? Structure.

There's no structure to define what is magic in the MCU. Doctor Strange (2016) tried. Really hard. And, although it got several things right, it failed in two fundamental aspects: pre-established comic book knowledge and magic deities.

Remember how we got three Darkholds? The first was just so detached from magic that it became a book used to create a VIRTUAL world in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The second was used by Morgan le Fey, but how was she associated with the Dark Dimension? Moreover, that was NOT the Dark Dimension from the first DS movie (or any comic book, really). Its last appearance, as seen in WandaVision and DSITMOM, finally mentioned Chthon, but it literally did NOTHING it was supposed to do. That MCU!Wanda has nothing to do with her 616 version, this is not new. But if we're going to use comic books as foundation to adapt a story, the very bare minimum you can do is do it right. Point is, the book does corrupt people, but it's because of Chthon's influence and his connection to Wanda. Where's Chthon in the movie? The corruption was badly explored and her journey towards evil and redemption doesn't make any sense from a magic point.

Now, the "main" magic cast in the MCU could have worked... Except that there's little to no information regarding how Kamar-Taj works as a temple/school for new sorcerers. And worse even, magic isn't connected to its deities. Sure, there were a few name drops, but does it explain where it comes from? And who chooses the next sorcerer supreme if the Vishanti isn't involved?

The truth is, magic was all over the place, and the creative minds were either too oblivious to the importance of learning about how magic works in comics (to the point of adapting a second Dark Dimension that has nothing to do with the original one) or too shy to introduce a magic hierarchy (as in, deities).

There's an actual attempt to create this structure now, but it's too late. Sure, you can ignore past tv shows, but the mess remains. Eternity was supposed to be an abstract entity, deeply connected to magic, cosmic aspects and life itself.

Loki is still so embarrassing because the very foundation of Asgardian mythos started wrong (and why is that? Because no magic, of course!). While I find funny that Stephen trapped Loki in an endless freefall, there's no way the god of stories would be humiliated like that. Loki being taught magic by his alts is infuriating (and it's, again, mostly illusions).

Remember when Stephen was beaten by math? That also happened.

This is the moment I completely give up to see magic portrayed at its fullest, in all its beauty and complexity. Because it's not treated the way it deserves. It has never been.

And here's my boldest take: if you really wish to see the full potential of magic in the MCU, go for What If. The price you pay, the cosmic proportion of being misused, the creative elements... It's all there. Which is sad because it's not the main timeline. Anyways, this is it.

PS: This post may age poorly as DS3 comes out in 20 years. Let's wait and see.

#ds3 being my only source of interest regarding magic bc agatha and loki are NOT it #i keep loosing #mcu #mcu discourse #analysis #magic

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marvelmaniac715 · 10 months

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A short while ago I posted about my hope of Chucky’s human body being in Season Three, and it got me thinking. How would Nica react to the original Chucky now that he can tower over her? I decided to write that as a fic. I hope you guys like it, because if it doesn’t end up happening in Season Three, at least this fic exists to entertain the idea of it :).

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There was something deeply wrong. Nica didn’t know exactly what it was, but she could feel it deep within her bones. Some sort of forbidden knowledge made her shiver in both fear and anticipation, as she grew antsy at the multitude of terrible possibilities. There was only one person who had ever made her feel this way, but he was dead now. Wasn’t he?

Pushing down her looming dread of something horrible happening, Nica went about her day, running a few errands, grabbing a coffee and a chocolate cupcake, even buying herself a new book to cheer herself up. She had almost forgotten about her bad feeling by the time she was nearly back home, but just as she approached the elevator that led up to her apartment, she felt someone grab hold of her wheelchair.

Nica tried to pretend that her chair had gotten caught on something, but then she felt someone breathing down her neck. With a rising sense of horror, she craned her neck upwards, only to be met with a horrifyingly familiar set of blue eyes and a twisted grin. There was no reason to ask who this was. She knew, even if he looked much older, and there were bones and maggots poking out of his skin. This was Chucky. Alive. But… how?

Nica began to hyperventilate in her immense panic, and she hardly noticed when Chucky stepped out from behind her chair and rested his far too cold hands on her shoulders, squeezing very tightly. Deeply confused, Nica took a gulp of air and asked:

“Whose body did you steal this time?”

Chucky simply shook his head and smirked, infuriating Nica, who immediately continued.

“What do you mean? You can’t just shake your head and not-‘

Chucky cut her off with a laugh and responded in a patronising tone:

“I didn’t steal this body, Nica. This is me.”

It didn’t click in Nica’s brain for a second, then it suddenly made sense. This man, whilst clearly older than the pictures and home movies she’d seen of Charles Lee Ray, looked exactly like him. They had the same eyes, the same face structure, even the exact same voice. Sure, Chucky could use something similar to his voice in most bodies he possessed, but this was an exact match.

Then the terror set in. She was staring up at Charles Lee Ray, in the flesh. All of a sudden, she understood the terror people had felt when he’d slaughtered them in the eighties. Her heart ached for her poor father, because the last person he’d seen was this terrifying man looming over her. Then of course, a secondary realisation set in. One of the hands that was currently squeezing her shoulders far too tightly had paralysed her, put her in a wheelchair, all before she was even born.

These horrifying realisations had left Nica stunned, unblinking. Seemingly noticing this, Chucky smirked and leaned in so that his face was mere centimetres away from Nica’s. Cold, mocking blue eyes met frightened, almost glazed over in terror blue eyes. The sensation of his breath on her face brought Nica back to reality, and her eyes landed on the maggot that was still burrowed in his cheek. Almost self-consciously, Chucky’s confident act dropped for a moment as he took a hand off of Nica to poke at his face, asking:

“Is there still one on me? I thought I’d gotten rid of these little bastards for good.”

Losing herself in the absurdity of this situation, Nica helpfully pointed and responded as Chucky began fumbling around:

“Yeah, you’ve … got one right there. No, no, not there, look where I’m pointing. Yeah, that’s it, do you want me to grab or are you gonna-‘

Her sentence was cut off when Chucky yanked the maggot from his face and slammed it against a wall, effectively and brutally killing it. Nica’s stomach turned, and her disgust returned tenfold. As Nica cringed, Chucky backed away from her and did a little spin, spreading his arms out as he asked with a grin:

“Well, what do you think? You reckon I can still get some tail like this?”

Nica’s brain short-circuited again as her mouth began moving on autopilot. If she’d been rationally thinking things through, she would’ve stayed silent. But instead, her nose wrinkled as she scornfully scoffed:

“You’re old!”

It was a rude thing to say, but that fact did come as a genuine shock to her. Of course she’d always known at the back of her mind that she was battling against a guy who was 31 in 1988 so he’d have to be in his sixties, but what has to be understood is that hearing a voice and trying to kill a children’s toy is one thing, but being confronted with the fact that she’d tried to slaughter a senior citizen was something else altogether. Chucky looked very hurt by this, and, looking down at the floor, he muttered:

“I’m 65.”

Trying to cover up her blunder, Nica queried:

“How is that possible? The bodies you inhabit don’t normally… age. It’s not that you look bad per se, it’s just that, it’s unexpected, y’know?”

At this, Chucky looked less hurt and grinned again as he began to explain.

“Well, as you probably already know, after a certain amount of time the human body begins to decompose. By the time I gathered enough remnants of my soul in various doll vessels in order to return to my original body, there wasn’t a scrap of flesh left on my bones. I was just a skeleton, which gave me the weirdest out of body experience of my life, let me tell you. But I still went through with it, and because there wasn’t any skin or features left, the voodoo magic I used improvised and aged my body to the age of my soul, making me look, well, old as you so eloquently put.”

His last few words were said with a pointed glare in Nica’s direction. This made the woman gulp as she began heavily regretting her choice of words. She knew that Chucky was vain, and as a doll he wasn’t that hard to get rid of- a kick or a punch could send him flying. But now he was human again, and tall. If he wanted to, he could simply put the brakes on Nica’s chair down, trapping her there as he killed her. The only reason she still lived was by the grace of Chucky’s benevolence, as fleeting as it was.

Instead of confronting her word choice, she decided to change the topic, gathering some of her courage as she asked defiantly:

“Aren’t you scared of dying soon? Flesh isn’t as resilient as plastic.”

There was a bitter laugh, then…:

“Nobody lives forever, Pierce. I’ve made my peace with death by becoming an executioner of sorts. I have plenty of doll bodies roaming around, not to mention two kids who carry my bloodline and the parts of me that I’ve left in you, Kyle and Andy, meaning that part of me will never die. I didn’t possess my original body as some sort of power play, I just wanted to return to something familiar. I missed the feel of my own teeth.”

Brushing off the last part of Chucky’s confession, Nica immediately became drawn to the part about him never dying, the parts ‘left’ in her, Andy and Kyle. Was that just metaphorical or something related to voodoo? She had to know.

“What do you mean about leaving parts of yourself in me, Kyle and Andy?”

Chucky sat down on a nearby bench and inspected his fingernails, seemingly ignoring her for a good long while. Then, he glanced at her and said:

“I like to think of my influence as a weed. Your once noble and heroic brains are the gardens I’ve slowly overtaken. The part of me in Andy Barclay led him to torturing a vessel of mine’s head for an entire year. Would a purely good man do that? The part of me in Kyle Simpson made her drug teenagers for God’s sake. That’s something I’d do, hell, I once swapped paint darts for real bullets so teens would shoot each other to death. The part of me in you is a little harder to spot, but whilst sharing your brain I noticed that your perception of right and wrong was becoming slightly… crooked. I didn’t think much of it until I learnt that you tried to shoot Tiffany. Of course, I wasn’t happy to hear that the bullet hit my kid, and I’m still not entirely over it, but I suppose there was nothing to be done.”

It took a special brand of narcissism to see one’s influence as being so powerful, but given the evidence that had been presented to and by Chucky, his view of the situation made a lot of sense. But that throwaway comment about Glen didn’t seem quite right to Nica. It seemed kind of flippant, like he didn’t really care, so she pressed further.

“Wow, you’re really torn up about your kids ‘dying’, aren’t you?”

Chucky’s expression became unreadable, and his tone emotionless as he said:

“They’re together in one body again, just like when they were first born. What sort of father would I be if I wasn’t happy for them?”

After that, there was an almost amiable silence between them, interrupted every so often by someone coming up or down in the elevator. Eventually, Nica softly asked:

“Why did you come here? You don’t seem like you want to hurt me.”

Chucky replied in an unsure tone, as if he wasn’t quite sure.

“I… wanted you to see me. Yeah, I wanted you to know what I actually look like. We have quite a history, don’t we Nica?”

All Nica could do was nod as she watched Chucky raise his right hand in a little wave. She knew what was coming, but still she stayed silent as he continued.

“I think it was this hand that did it, all those years ago. To think that such a small stab could have such life altering consequences, it’s weird to think about, isn’t it?”

Again, Nica nodded, eyes brimming with rage-filled tears at the injustice of it all. Then, Chucky did something very strange. He got up from the bench, walked over to Nica, knelt down in front of her and took hold of her chin with his left hand. With his right hand, he brushed a strand of hair out of a now quivering Nica’s face as he mused aloud to himself:

“Y’know, you look quite a lot like me when I was young. You’ve seen the photos, you know what I mean. You remind me of myself too, over the last few decades. Trapped inside a body you can’t escape. Ironically, both of our predicaments were my fault. I think that’s why I like you.”

Nica didn’t even get a moment to think about what he’d said before Chucky stood up and regarded her with a cold stare. He folded his arms behind his back as another maggot poked out of the bony holes in his flesh. As he began backing away, he commanded her in a voice that was worthy of his former reputation as a terrifying serial killer - the Lakeshore Strangler.

“Now, when you get home, I want you to call your little friends, Barclay and Simpson. Tell them that I’ve got a new body, and that they’ll never guess which one. Also, please let them know that I’ll pay them both visits soon so that they get to ‘play’ with someone their own size.”

With that, he walked away, whistling under his breath as Nica processed what had just happened.

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flynndesdelca · 7 months

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For Day 15 (Chell) of @chelltastic’s Portal Drawtober 2023 Challenge. As I’m not really an artist, I chose to write short pieces for the prompts.

Wipe those tears off and make your heart proud

The first day had seen her not move from the spot, sitting curled up next to the Companion Cube as though in a sort of trance. Her mind had felt so sharp on the elevator ride up, coming up with plans and contingencies and courses of action, but actually being free had killed most of that momentum. She had been content to sit in the silence, listening to the wind rustling the stalks of wheat and the distant sounds of animals. It had felt like some sort of fever dream to Chell after so long of the sounds of Aperture, of the background hum of ventilation and the distant sounds of machines and the constant creak of the structure itself. It was impossible to believe that this was real, and she truly did expect to wake in utter disappointment in a corner somewhere that she'd tucked herself into in order to take a nap.

The next day forced her to move because without the cocktail of adrenaline and whatever else GLaDOS had pumped into the air her body was falling into a more natural cycle. Specifically, she was hungry. Alarmingly so, she realized. Who knew that sitting for a day without eating would have that effect? As she'd been in and out of hibernation and kept in carefully controlled environments for so long just how her body functioned had become a sort of a mystery. She could remember distantly how it worked, but actually experiencing it again was just as feverish as being outside had been. Being surrounded by wheat had the promise of flour, but as she lacked the means to grind it efficiently, as well as a the other things you put into flour to make it not just ground wheat, it was unpalatable. Plus the whole concept of wheat grown above the land that Aperture occupied...it certainly looked normal, but much like everything else about the place, she suspected that it was definitely beyond it.

In the distance she could see trees, and that was where she headed off to. She left the Companion Cube where it was, a landmark. A pointless landmark, as the electrical shed itself stood out well enough in the sea of gold that contained it. Still, she felt better knowing that it was there, rather than lugging it with her on what her mind was saying would be the trip of a few hours. She set off through the field, eventually finding a large copse of trees to wander through. The shade was nice, she felt, and more than that, she could hear birds. It was a simple matter to climb the trees and look for nests, and she found a few small eggs that way. She had no idea if the eggs were even edible, but it didn't matter at this point. Either it would be nourishing, or she'd wind up dead from hunger. She also found a couple of mushrooms, small brown ones that she distantly remembered from books as a child. Whether that meant they were poisonous or not she couldn't remember. Again, she could eat or she could eventually face starvation. Cutting through the woods had been a small cold spring, the water clear. She didn't see any fish in it, but perhaps she could follow it and find a larger lake where there could be fish.

Figuring out what to do with her obtained food had been tricky. With everything laid out on top of the Companion Cube she had set about the next step, which was starting a fire. She understood the basics of starting a fire, but finding the materials to do so had been trickier than planned. It was infuriating to think that all the materials she needed were just underground, but she was not going back. She was not going to be deterred by a little camping. She had just gotten out, and she had known that it was not going to be easy. She hadn't backed down from anything thrown at her so far, so why should starting a fire be an unsurmountable challenge?

It was already sunset by the time she managed to coax sparks from the small firestarter she had concocted, but that was enough, and she gently nursed the tiny coals into a small blaze. Thankfully there was a lot of dry vegetation she could use. The little fire seemed homey somehow as the shadows of night fell across the field, its light blazing in defiance. Just like her, she thought. She could see herself in that hard-won little fire.

Actually cooking the things had been another issue she'd been thinking about during her preparations. Finding a long, flat rock had given her an idea, and now she quickly set up the other rocks she'd dug up, making a stand for the flat rock to rest on over the fire. She let it heat up, waiting until she could feel the heat emanating off of the rock when she held her hand over it. Hopefully that would be hot enough. She cracked open the first egg, which made a huge mess of broken shell everywhere. As she didn't particularly feel like wasting it, she grit her teeth and went with it, starting to mix the egg around on the hot rock with a flat stick she'd found and felt would be a good spatula replacement. Another egg, cracked much more carefully given how delicate they apparently were. The yolks were dark, so much darker than she remembered seeing before. They were so small, the amount of egg she had gotten from them was negligible, but it would do. She added one more, deciding to keep the rest for later. Once the eggs had really started to cook she dropped the mushrooms on top, stirring the whole thing around. A really crude omelet, but an omelet all the same. Better than nothing, after all. The smell was driving her crazy and it was so hard to wait until she felt as though whatever dangers might have lurked in said food had been cooked out of it. She ate it off the rock with the spatula-stick, and it was burning hot and slightly crunchy from the egg shells, but somehow it was the most delicious food she could remember eating in a very long time. It was a victory, she decided. She'd overcome another hurdle. She couldn't help but glance at the shed smugly.

The next day she managed to revive the fire, and ate one of the eggs that way. She was hoping to explore along the river a bit more now that she'd found it, maybe finding fish or other food. She returned much later in the day sweaty and tired, but with a couple more eggs, some more mushrooms, and a fish that she'd managed to spear with a broken stick. She had plans to improve on said stick design, and that meal was much more triumphant than the last, the fish roasting pleasantly skewered over the little fire.

The next few days passed in much the same way. She followed along the river and the small lake that it fed into, exploring more and more. Yet each day she found herself returning to the shed in the field. As her exploration took her further and further, she would have to push herself to make it back before it got too dark. One night as she sat there, trying to rekindle the fire that had gone out hours beforehand, she couldn't help but wonder why she kept coming back there. She'd gone far enough and figured out enough to make small camps anywhere else. She'd seen some signs of actual human life last time. If she had kept going instead of turning back, she might have found civilization of some kind.

The next day she tried exploring in a different direction, pushing the previous day’s thoughts out of her mind. Again, she ranged far, and returned late in the day, and couldn't help but wonder why. She'd torn off one leg of her jumpsuit to make a little pouch to carry food she found in, and she was so good at starting fires now that she wasn't worried about that. There was no reason to come back to that place. Her thoughts chased themselves in circles around her head all that night, and left her in a dreamless, restless sleep.

The next day she went out again, but it was a passionless, drifting effort that took her along places she'd already been. It was nothing new, but it was familiar, and comfortable, and all at once she turned and ran back to the field and the shack and the Companion Cube. Grabbing onto it as though its rough surface and pointed corners would comfort her, she found herself crying. Why was she crying? What had happened? She already knew, just like she knew why she had not strayed from that spot. Having a place to return to that was familiar had been a comfort in a world that had left her behind. Perhaps it hadn't been the implied hundreds of years, but it had been long enough that there was nothing familiar left to her. Whatever had happened had swept the world clean, and anyone left there were the descendants of strangers. Despite her drive and her fierce determination to survive and to be free, the thought of leaving behind the last bits of everything she had known was a terrifying prospect. She'd faced down death how many times now? All the horrors that Aperture had to offer she had borne… but yet, the idea of leaving the facility and all of the trauma it had inflicted onto her sent her into a dull panic, one that had driven her to return there every night.

Mechanically she set about making food and eating, and attempting to sleep. But sleep did not come that night, and she tossed and turned and stared at the stars, stared into the dying embers of the fire that she had coaxed into being one more time. She stared at the dark shadow that she knew was the Companion Cube, and the nearby electrical shack with its tiny emergency light that cast dim shadows all around. All comforts, but all reminders of just what she had suffered... and what she had overcome, in the end.

The next day she packed up everything she could take with her in her little pouch. She put out the fire carefully, stamping it down and digging up the ground to bury its remains. She cast one last long look at the shack, then hefted the Companion Cube in her arms and turned away. She walked through the field, letting her feet take her down the familiar path she'd worn into it, towards the trees and the river and the lake and whatever else laid beyond. She didn't let herself look back, not even once. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she forced herself to march onward until at last she was in the shade of the trees and the shed was too far away to see anymore.

She sat down and let herself cry again. It shouldn't hurt to say goodbye to all that had happened, but yet it did, somehow. She had been given her freedom, she needed to take it. To find herself. Who was Chell, in this world? Not a test subject for Aperture, not anymore. That chapter of her life was closed, the Companion Cube the bookmark to remind her that it existed, but that it was over and done and behind her. It was time to find out who the new, free Chell would be.

#portal drawtober 2023 #portal 2 #chell portal #chell #saying goodbye to aperture is hard to do

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jacketpotatoo · 1 year

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I was watching clips from Little Women 2019 on YouTube (im so normal about that movie) and on the one with Jo Friedrich getting together at the end, people were commenting “oh I’m so glad Jo found the capacity to love another person romantically because she would be a static character if not. They were so sweet together 🥰” and I had to close the tab because HNG,,,,,,

Firstly, it was heavily heavily implied that the ending where Jo gets together with him was simply made up for the sake of the publisher due to prejudices and constraints of that time period (which was reflected in Alcott’s own experiences of trying to get little women published). This was supported by the colour grading of the scene and it’s place in the story: it’s warm-toned and Jo hadn’t been characterised in any way that would suggest she wanted to be in a romantic relationship for the whole story. Her loneliness is not a byproduct of wanting romantic love, but of living as a struggling artist in the oppressive patriarchal standards of her time; there’s also the fact that her family is moving on and growing up all around her as she’s the only one left behind in her family home, which is further emphasised by the fact that she’s the one constantly clinging to the simplicities of the past. She considers accepting Laurie’s proposal not because she loves him in a romantic way or wants romance, but because life is a fucking struggle. And that’s why Friedrich showing up at her doorstep, from the perspective of a viewer, especially because he hadn’t shown up at all since the film’s opening, is jarring as hell. But it’s deliberately paced to be and ignoring this in order to make such a statement as “oh finally the perfect man for Jo” INFURIATES me. Especially when the scene under the rain? The confession scene? Was the cheesiest culmination of every romantic trope ever. This - accentuated by the jarring shift in themes and character - was a brilliant meta-commentary on actual criticism of the book where it felt like Jo married Friedrich out of nowhere.

Which brings me to the next thing - romantic love being seen as the be-all, end all for… everything. (coldest take of all time but unfortunately, not cold enough apparently) It’s not!!!!!!! Absolutely nothing against it (I love my ships as much as the next person) but when a filmmaker pays such attention in her commentary to love and societal perceptions around it, when she explores sisterly love and motherly love and platonic love etc. all so thoroughly. And you still leave thinking Jo was happiest and fulfilled when she gets together with Friedrich. I… I don’t know what to say. I’ve seen people say that the ending is ambiguous (and it is rather) but I’ve only ever seen it this way and I just don’t agree with the interpretation that Jo just gets married happily in the film because if so, holy crap was it paced/set up badly. All evidence just points to the contrary in terms of character, and themes, and just how the film is structured. And it’s genius! It’s one of the reasons why the film is one of my all time favourites. It’s such effective satire on how society (back then and evidently now) views romantic relationships. So it just makes me so annoyed when people ignore the nuance

Ok *breathes* I’ll stop

#little women (2019)#the idea that you can’t be in a relationship as a ‘strong independent woman’ is also an issue though #and I get the personal pressure to not ‘succumb’ to love because it could feel like a betrayal of your beliefs #especially for the time period the story was set in #but in terms of Jo as a character i think it’s clear or at least heavily implied that she doesn’t care for romantic love at all #I… should probably mention that I’m on the aroace spectrum #BUT I saw the movie before knowing what being aroace even was and I did not watch the movie through that lens #(which doesn’t change the fact that that’s just how I perceived things but oh well)#I’ll stop adding disclaimers #sorry for the rant lol #I’m so normal about this film I promise #jp musings #film analysis

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ladycatofwinterfell · 2 years

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Blood and ghosts

The Starks are a little strange, that has been known for a long time. And the people spreading those rumours definitely aren’t wrong, they are peculiar creatures, them Starks.

Part 4 of my monster Starks fic that I began writing last autumn. The three other parts can be found on my ao3 and here on tumblr under the “monster starks” tag

She strongly considered just walking out into the lake and spending the night there, but if she was to go to work the next day she would have to take a proper shower. Though after having spent the last couple of hours cutting up and burying yet another dead deer she wasn’t very excited about looking at her husband.

She tiptoed through the quiet house, the children were already asleep. She didn’t know what the time was, but it had to be quite late. It getting dark so early messed with her sense of time, and it didn’t really help that she had never been good at adjusting to the clock. She wasn’t meant to live by a structured schedule and still she did it because if she was to partake in a human world she had to follow their rules.

Ned sat on their bed when she came into the bedroom, leaning back against the headboard and reading a book.

“You are so sexy.”

Catelyn walked right past him, didn’t even spare him a glance. With determination she steered her path towards the bathroom.

“You don’t get to be mad at me for bringing you gifts” he continued.

She heard the amusement in his voice.

“This wasn’t a gift to me, this was a gift to yourself” Catelyn said.

She stopped, but didn’t turn to look at him. She flexed her right hand, could already feel how it had become slightly stiff. Her left one was the same. Both because of the quickly drying mix of blood and mud that covered her forearms all the way up to her elbows.

It was cold outside but she had worked up enough warmth to not wear a jacket. She had rolled up the sleeves of Ned’s sweater to get as little blood on it as possible, but it had been a lost cause.

“I’m being a good husband, I’m providing for you through hunting.”

“I know you have that urge and I know you can’t help it and I know you can’t bring yourself to get rid of what you bring home” she sighed. “But that doesn’t apply right now, that deer you brought home because you’re a whore and want to see me all bloody.”

There was a significant difference between when he had to go out for a little hunt because the urge of it was too strong to resist and when he brought things home simply to mess with her. The children did the same thing. She wouldn’t have cared that much if it hadn’t always fallen on her to get rid of the various animals they dragged back to the house because their brains just wouldn’t let them do it. What if we run out of food, Mom? What if we need the pelt, Catelyn? We worked so hard to take that one!

She left him in the bedroom and went into the bathroom, immediately starting the shower. She let it run while she got undressed, putting her clothes in the sink so that the blood she had all over her wouldn’t get on the new rug. When she saw herself in the mirror she also saw that she had specks of blood all over her face, as well. It wasn’t she that had killed something and still it very much looked like it. It was a sweaty and bloody and dirty woman staring back at her from within the mirror, her hair hanging in stripes around her face.

She made eye contact with Ned while she closed the door. He just smiled back at her. It was infuriating how satisfied he was with himself. She would absolutely give in, she needed an outlet for the rage she had built up cutting up the deer, but she wouldn’t be nice about it.

Catelyn always showered for as long as absolutely necessary and not a second longer. As soon as water hit her skin she get the urge to change form, and it was like an itch that wouldn’t stop until she was dry. She wanted to change, it was the only thing she wanted, the only thing she could think of and she couldn’t do it. Her species clearly hadn’t developed far enough to keep up with the concept of water that wasn’t a lake or river.

So a few minutes later she had left the bathroom, free of blood and dirt and wearing only a bathrobe. She only put it on to dry up a little bit, she didn’t plan on staying clothed much longer.

Ned had undressed and was under the blankets, still reading. He didn’t turn his eyes towards her when she came to stand next to him, so she had to make him. Burying a hand in his hair and forcing him to tilt his head backwards.

“Have you had a change of mind?” he said, putting aside his book.

“No.”

Without letting go of his hair she got into the bed and straddled him.

“Neither have I.”

One of his hands went up under her bathrobe and landed on her bare hip, squeezing lightly. With the other hand he took the belt keeping the robe closed and slowly began pulling so that the knot became undone.

While he did so she leaned forward and caught his bottom lip between her teeth, biting down. He didn’t make a sound, but his grip on her hip tightened. She hoped it would leave a bruise.

As her robe opened, revealing her naked body, another thing also happened. That thing being that the ghosts in the attic began making noice.

She was still for a moment, waiting to see if they would stop, and she noticed he did the same thing. The children had learned to sleep through their grandparents’ episodes, so that didn’t worry her at all, but it didn’t make it less annoying.

“If they keep this up I’m calling an exorcist” she muttered as she let him go and tied her bathrobe again.

It wasn’t the first time she threatened with that and they both knew that she would never make reality of it, but it became more tempting with every passing day. Lyarra and Rickard Stark were really nice, but they also never seemed to understand when it was time to seek contact and when it was better to be quiet.

“Feel free to” Ned said.

He leaned his head back against the headboard and closed his eyes, a long sigh escaping him.

Swiftly she climbed out of the bed and opened the door to their bedroom. She took the chair that always stood along the wall and placed it under the ladder that was fastened in the ceiling.

As she had done a thousand times before and would do it at least a thousand times more, she pulled the old wooden ladder down. She never got used to having her parents-in-law in the attic, but they were stuck there and couldn’t get out. Sometimes she wondered if the same would happen to her and Ned one day.

Catelyn climbed up the ladder and pushed the trapdoor open with one hand, ready to tell them to stop making noise. Though the moment she poked her head up through the floor, before she even had time to open her mouth, a cold wind swept through the room. Dust blew up in her eyes, but it didn’t hurt and she couldn’t blink it away. She couldn’t do anything except accept her situation.

Catelyn was a bystander in her own body, could only see and hear. She was too tired to fight it, she simply let the ghost steer her. It wouldn’t last long, it never did.

Lyarra or Rickard, she could never know which one of them before they used her for speaking, made her go down the ladder and walk back to the bedroom. She saw how her hand pushed the door open and how Ned smiled at her. If only she could have told him it was not quite her that came back to the room. Fortunately he was still beneath the blankets.

“Eddard, lad, what day is it?”

“Why are you– Mother! Stop possessing Cat’s body!”

His surprise was not strange, it had been a while since last time it happened.

Catelyn would have agreed if she had been able to speak. Maybe if she just focused enough she would be able to force Lyarra to leave her body.

“It is necessary, you never come up to speak to us. Now answer my question.”

“Leave Cat be and I will come up to you.”

“But I’m here now.”

“Mother. You can’t keep doing this to her.”

“Can you not allow me the kindness of being human for just a few minutes?”

Catelyn gladly would have let her mother-in-law be human if it hadn’t come at the expense of her own body.

“That’s not your body, it’s Cat’s body! You can’t use her as you please.”

Catelyn felt herself take a deep breath and then suddenly she could move again. She shook her head, as if to shake out any remains of the ghost. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience to be trapped in her own body. First time it happened she had been shaking for an hour afterwards, but over the years she had learned to be unbothered by the lingering feeling of that something or someone else was in her.

“I can’t believe I just accept that sometimes my dead mother-in-law possesses me” she said. “I can’t believe I agreed to move into this house.”

“I wish she would stop doing that, I really do” Ned said.

There wasn’t much more to say, they just looked at each other. She always felt so empty afterwards. Empty and annoyed. As if the ghost had taken everything else with it when it left and was busy with hiding joy and anger behind all the dusty boxes in the attic.

All she longed for was the cold, dark pressure around her. She wanted to feel water in her gills and bury her webbed hands in the muddy bottom in search of things that moved. She didn’t at all feel like sleeping in a bed, the barely green plants growing in the deepest part of the lake were much more tempting.

“I need to swim” she sighed. “I’m back when I’m back, don’t come looking for me.”

Ned knew, she didn’t need to say more than that.

“Sleep well, I’ll see you in the morning” he said softly.

“Goodnight.”

He would whistle on her when it was time for breakfast. He always did.

#catelyn stark #catelyn tully #ned stark #ned x cat #monster starks #this is a fun little in between chapter i hope you’ll enjoy it!

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bookish-words · 1 year

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04.23.23// I’ve read 6 books this year already. That’s a personal best! 👇 so here’s a list 👇

1. Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

A bit chaotically structured but still an interesting memoir. In it Susanna takes you through a particularly rough time in her life, one in which she found herself checking into a mental health facility. She questions her sanity and what it means to be sane or insane.

2. Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I was a little lost in the beginning with this one, not having read The Scarlett Letter. You don’t technically have to read it but I imagine it helps, I feel like I missed out on whatever references were made to Hawthorne’s novel. Really considering a reread of this one after I read The Scarlett Letter. Anyways, Hester is the story of Isobel, the woman who fell in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne and inspired him to write. I loved this one and 100% recommend it.

3. The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I’ve really been in the mood to read non-fiction, classics, and just about anything with a contemporary feel to it. I really liked this one, having read Into the Wild some years ago. I find that Carine McCandless can talk candidly about her life and her brother without exploiting her brothers story.

4. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Read it after watching the movie and I still enjoyed it. It’s suspenseful in all the right places. I think it’s well written, with a good pace. I recommend it, I recommend the film which was a pretty solid and accurate adaptation.

5. When we were Bright and Beautiful by Jillian Medoff

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I’m still a little conflicted with this one; it’s hard to say I either disliked or liked it. It is entertaining I’ll give it that much. It struck me as almost like a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode. Specifically the kind of episode that doesn’t have a conclusive ending and the way they leave it is just a tad bit infuriating and you just have to live with that. That’s this book.

My biggest issue though, was that it tackled really heavy and controversial topics and at times it felt like it just didn’t approach them in the best way possible. Sometimes it did seem like the characters personalities were the reason the information was presented the way it was, but at some point it is not just the characters being awful people, it’s a bad plot point in general. Half way through I was practically just “hate reading” it because I was hooked, so there’s that.

6. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I really recommend reading this one before or after reading Song of Achilles, it offers such a neat perspective of the same events but from vastly different points of views when you read both of them. The Silence of the Girls to me seemed more brutal and raw, it didn’t make me cry but it definitely left me thinking about how war is hard for women in an incredibly different way than it is for men. While I cried my eyes out at the end of Song of Achilles, Silence of the Girls just has a more hard hitting realistic sadness about it.

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morrow-dim · 2 years

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I came across “Remember, I Am the One Who Took Off Your Cape” the other day and can’t stop thinking about it 😭 Thank you so much for writing it!! 🖤💛 Have you been enjoying Triple Crown so far (and are there any other BL webtoons you’re enjoying)?

Hello, Anon! I haven’t posted on Tumblr in nearly a year (11 months!). I had to reset my password. 😅 But it’s great that Tumblr’s notif system still works because I’m so keen to talk about BL webtoons! 😍

But before that . . . wow. “Remember, I Am the One Who Took Off Your Cape” will (probably) be my sole contribution to the fandom, but it’s close to my heart. I’m touched that you’re touched by it! 😭 I’m also embarrassed to say that I’m only 4 episodes in to Triple Crown. (Yikes!) I had a lot of hesitation because I have issues with Tappy Toon (I’m only on Lezhin or Tapas these days). Then I got distracted by Solo Leveling (yes, I’m about to rec the webtoon), which I devoured in roughly three weeks. Am now waiting for the side stories. Whatever hype you’ve heard about Solo Leveling is true (and I’m currently trying to finish a fic). Although it’s not BL, you don’t have to squint very hard to find those ships. 😉 But getting back to Triple Crown . . . I’ll get there eventually! Though I have to say that the ‘Prologue’ is the perfect webtoon. ❤️

So, aside from Solo Leveling, I have two BL webtoon recs for you and both can be found on Lezhin. They’re character-based stories with art styles that I enjoy. Neither are as gorgeously drawn and colored as Kingmaker, but really, how many webtoons are? What these two webtoons have going for them is brilliant storytelling.

1. “Do You Still Like Me?” Technically, this is an ABO webtoon but it features two alphas, which is the most interesting dynamic to me. The relationship between the two leads is fantastically developed and very rich. The webtoon is a slow burn that begins with a ‘fuck buddies’ trope. (It’s a contract relationship. Literally.) I’m also attracted to the inter-racial aspect of it since one of the characters is Korean and the other British. Most of the story takes place in London. I’d go so far as to say that the way this creator treats the alpha-alpha relationship has fundamentally changed how I view alpha-alpha dynamics moving forward. The structure of the webtoon is also complex, moving between multiple (contemporary) time periods and places. If some parts don’t 100% make sense the first time you read them, have a little patience. The creator always rewards you. When the pieces fall into place, I’ll go over certain episodes and think, ‘Wow. That has even more layers than I originally thought.’ Highly recommended. (This is an ongoing webtoon in its second season.)

2. “The Beast Must Die” This webtoon is my favorite webtoon of all time, BL or otherwise. It’s also one of the darker webtoon I’ve read because the central character – Kang Moo – is a true psychopath. The creator clearly researched psychopathy so that his/her depiction of it is fairly accurate and the situations created very plausible given the conditions of the webtoon. When I decided to jump into fanfic, I read the two books that are referenced in the webtoon just so I could have a basic understanding of the condition. I won’t spoil the plot for you, but I love this webtoon to pieces. It begins when the two main characters are university students and spans over a decade. Like the rec above, the dynamic between the two leads is truly unique. I have never read anything like it in the webtoon world. However, I’d warn you that the weakest part of this webtoon is the second side story (it was infuriating, tbh), but the main fic, the first side story, and the side tracks/collections are exceptional. (This is a completed webtoon.) Kang Moo is an utterly compelling character. (And gorgeous. Really gorgeous.)

That’s it from me, Anon! I bet you’re a little sorry now that you asked for webtoons I’m enjoying after reading all my rambling. 😂 There’s more! (There’s always more. 😉) But these two are a cut above the rest, as is Kingmaker. ❤️

#ask

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an-aura-about-you · 2 years

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fuck it, I'm gonna bitch about the book.

possible spoilers for the first half of Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King but honestly this is gonna be pretty spoiler lite. Also to clarify: a friend loaned me her physical copy of the book, but I was struggling with actually reading it, so I borrowed an audio copy from my library. I refer to both in my rant.

So here's what we've got for the story: the action's set in a small Appalachian town during a strange global sleeping pandemic. (This came out in 2017.) But the thing about the pandemic is it only affects women. We're just gonna put a pin in that for the moment. Anyway, the people who fall asleep begin generating this webbing around them like cocoons. If someone cuts or tears the webbing away, the sleeping people wake up in a violent rage and mindlessly attacks whoever is there before going back to sleep. There are a ton of characters in this thing, but most of the action is taking place in a local women's prison and most of the characters are prisoners, police, or people related to the police or otherwise working in the women's prison.

Before I get to some of the big gripes, I'm going to actually talk about issues I have with the story itself. The first thing I noticed is that it's extremely repetitive. We've got four pages of characters when they're all listed out. (I know this because the book has four pages dedicated to listing them out.) And every single bleeding character has to have an encounter with the sickness they end up calling Aurora. Now that idea by itself is a good thing: I want to see the characters reacting to this. But I don't need the book acting like I don't know what the sleeping and the cocoons are every single time we do this. I understand that there are characters that don't know, but just because they have to go through the step by step of "What The Hell Is That?" doesn't mean I need to go through it again. Surely we can cut some of this down.

I know there was a post recently about giving critique and trying to make the story into one you would tell instead of the story the author's trying to tell. And I hope I'm not veering into that. But if I could suggest an idea here, I think this idea would have worked better as little vignettes. Hell, with the way the chapters are structured in different segments, it kind of seems like that's what Stephen and Owen were going for? But I'd probably prefer it if it were more focused like, "This chapter is all about X group of characters on Y day of the pandemic," and that's all we get of those characters until the end or unless they show up in someone else's story. Then the next chapter could do the same thing with some other characters at a later time.

But all of that feels like a moot point because I hate these characters! Seriously, the only character I liked at all is Evie, and apparently she's the villain! A lot of the characters I think we're supposed to like are cops and the story is trying to sell us on them being good people, but the story still includes the problems with the institution by making a character we're supposed to hate a cop, too. You can't tell me the cops are good if it takes them more than 10 chapters to fire a cop that's a known sex offender.

And since I'm starting to get into these issues, might as well keep going. Y'all know me, I enjoy my media, and sometimes I will engage with works that are Problematic. I'm not gonna go through my whole laundry list nor am I gonna attempt to justify anything as far as "why this and not that" arguments because really it's on a piece by piece basis. But this book infuriated me with its issues.

In addition to the stuff I've mentioned about the cops, I'm really uncomfortable with the fact that the one explicitly mentioned black character in the book, Frank, is a violent man. By that I mean he resorts to manhandling his daughter and using intimidation tactics to get her to listen to him, he trashes another person's car, the book repeatedly brings up an incident in which he punched a wall, and he once beat a man half to death. Though honestly I think that last one gets a pass because the asshole Frank beats half to death is a violent antisemite goosestepping son of a bitch. Because yeah, that's the dose of reality I needed right now! But holy shit, the book frames that whole reveal in a weird way because Frank's estranged wife brings up that incident and is like, "After you did that he beat his pregnant wife and she lost her baby. He wouldn't have done that if you hadn't kicked his ass." And I'm like, "??? Frank didn't tell that man to beat his wife! That part of the matter is in no way Frank's fault! Why are you throwing that man's responsibility dodging bullshit on Frank??"

And now it's time to get to the real sticking point: the bullshit gender essentialism. Available in misogyny, misandry, and transphobia! For how much they could have done with the premise, the people we see affected by Aurora are "everybody with a set of XX chromosomes." Every person who is depicted falling asleep and being cocooned in the story as far as I've listened is depicted as a cisgender perisex woman or girl. And nothing about the story that's been given to me indicates that it's thought any further than that. There's no talk about who might be affected among trans, nonbinary, or intersex people. The narration mentions XX chromosomes, but it's never in the context of anyone actually checking the chromosome makeup of anybody falling to Aurora. It's just given as another way to say, "women." There hasn't been any mention if it has to do with actual body parts, so I have no idea if, say, a woman who's had a hysterectomy would be affected. And I wouldn't even be thinking so much about the biology of this obviously supernatural illness IF THE BOOK HADN'T BEEN THE ONE TO BRING IT UP! And to top it all off, there's also a charming moment when the character Clint wonders if Evie might not be a woman since she is able to sleep without being cocooned, but he dismisses it since he knows she was seen naked when she was arrested and thus the cops would know if she's trans or intersex. And this isn't even going into the shit like multiple male characters thinking women are an impossible to understand hivemind, female characters that have managed to stay awake complaining about men suddenly being forced to take care of their own children and having no idea how, women lashing out at men to the tune of "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS LIKE BECAUSE YOU HAVE A PENIS SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT!"

It was just so fucking exhausting, and I have no idea how I got as far as I did before I stopped.

#I will have to find a way to put this gently to my friend who loaned me the book #she seemed to think I would like it

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ratcatcher0325 · 2 years

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2, 9 and 10 for Alexander ?

Hi Anon!!! Thanks so much for your asks! Man, you just really wanna know how to break our angry little lawyer, don’t you? Well, here you go! (Alexander would hate me for telling you this, btw. Don’t let him know I told you or I’ll be in big trouble!)

2. Their emotional/moral weak spots

Well, we definitely started to see behind the curtain on this one in the last chapter (Chapter #19), but our favorite tiny intellect is definitely struggling with proving himself. He may be all bark, but underneath he’s terrified of being exactly what everyone around him perceives him as: a tiny, helpless, insignificant object. Out of his desire to rise above this, he has no moral qualms with loudly reminding everyone within earshot how smart and important he is 😂. He definitely has a superiority complex with like… literally everyone he encounters. I don’t think Alexander has ever met anyone in his life that he would consider his match, cerebrally.

So, basically to sum it up, he has a need to rise above the station he’s been forced into because of the way society is structured in his world, and he won’t hesitate to do that by being an obnoxious little prick about it all the time.

9. Humiliating memories

Oh man. Uhhhh read chapters 1-14?? 😂 no but here’s one that isn’t already in the story…

When Alexander was a kid and teen (11-17) the old man still consulted with clients in his home office. When this would happen, Alexander would always end up tossed unceremoniously into a desk drawer, thrown inside a decorative box over the mantle or simply placed up on the book shelf and instructed to stay out of sight until the meeting was over. He always did so, obediently. Since many of the old man’s clients dealt in the pet trade themselves and were constantly navigating loopholes in state and national law to perpetuate their businesses, it was thought the sight of Alexander may be off-putting, so the old man insisted on denying his existence to any of his clientele.

These meetings could easily take hours and it infuriated Alexander because all he wanted to do was learn details of the case and how to consult with clients but often would be stuck in a place where he could barely hear and see nothing of the goings on. When he was younger, this always made him cry, but he’d make sure to hide it when he was finally let out for fear of retribution.

10. Fears/phobias

Well, I think we all know he has a major (understandable) fear of dogs. He’s convinced every dog he meets will turn him into a chew toy, instantly. And so far… he hasn’t been far off base.

Emotionally, I think his greatest fear is being unstimulated intellectually. Alexander’s personal nightmare is finding himself in a situation where he has zero access to books, or other materials that he can use to better his knowledge. An extension of that is he’s terrified of being surrounded by idiots who can’t carry a meaningful conversation. Now, granted, this sort of happens to him already, since, in his opinion, no one can match him for turn of phrase, but… being around nothing but true imbeciles would basically crush his will to live.

Click to read A Fraction of Justice HERE.

Click to send me some asks, if ya want, HERE.

#ask Alexander #a fraction of justice #giant/tiny #g/t #g/t community #g/t writing #g/t related #g/t au #size difference #g/t angst #g/t fluff #gt

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meltingpenguins · 7 months

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Through several fandoms recently I've gotten increasingly more bitter and have realized that there will always be a large, loud group of people in fandom who wholly love anything and sing it's praises without any doubts in their mind that maybe it kinda sucked or wasn't as good as the last one. There's always going to be people whose only voiced opinion on the matter is that it was perfect. It was so good, funny, did x thing, or was better than the last, even if it wasn't for many, many reasons. A matter of taste, I suppose, but it ends up feeling like at least some of those people just don't actually process what they're watching/listening to/reading or are just very, incredibly easy to please and simply latch onto things they like. It isn't the worst thing and it only changes from annoying to infuriating when those same people take any criticism as an attack, which also often happens. I guess all I'm really here to say is fandom these days is giving me a headache in all honesty lol

Fandom has always been wild.

It has a lot to do with how people are and were raised in terms of 'worth and selfworth'. It's an issue of validation, psychology and so forth, often deeply tied to bigotry and upholding power structures, that I am not qualified to go into (but there's several papers on the topic I believe).

You see the same problem on the flipside:

People who hate unquestioningly and without reason. Usually this approach is tied to the same roots as the above.

These days, worse than ever, lbr, we also have the added issue of asshole companies with their 'market research' that will cut all sorts of corners but still charge more and more, just so the big ceos can buy more hyperyachts a year. This can result in pointless fanservice, anti-fanservice (to upset as many people as possible) or a weird mix of all.

So little of what we see in media really takes risks, most things look and feel same-ish and lack a love for material and fandom.

With the Good Omens miniseries (cause, after all, that is prolly what brought forth this ask), a quick example is the 'easter eggs' to the book that are done in a way that can (can!) be read mockingly:

the deleted scene explaining the noodle-incident of how crowley brought down the mobile network is shot in a way to look very 80s, and even the first person we'd see when crowley leaves the building is playing into that (worse so in the script). Only to then go PSYCHE it's the 2000s. Why?

The ping-pong table at the convent. If you know the book you wonder why it's there because on the show these nuns are the most quiet chattering order you'll have never heard

'Jim's' outfit looks peculiar like what the fandom dressed aziraphale in for a long time (and still does), which can leave a bit of a sour taste given just -who- gabriel is on the show.

and so forth.

These are the kind of little things that at first glance look like fanservice, but leave a sour taste.

But long story short:

I'd say the important thing is to keep some thing in mind:

If something makes you happy, good. if someone dislikes it and can back it up, that's not automatically an attack on you

Same if you dislike something (just make sure you can back things up either way)

your headcanon becoming canon does not make you a better person. often, when the headcanon isn't really backed up well by the canon so far, it just means your headcanon promises the studio tons of money

stay safe, stay sane, stay creative

thank you for reading

(also, if you dislike something, and can back it up, that's always a good way to learn for your own craft if you're writing. After all, in ShOwmens case, it has an onslaught of good ideas, just the execution stumbles, and we have yet to find out for certain why that is. Hanlon's Razor et all)

#good omens critical

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sarandipitywrites · 7 months

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crawling out of my gremlin den to bring you some spooky season-themed short stories, enjoy!

"Alright, out with it." The silence in the car, having stretched for eight seconds, has finally become too much for Navin to bear. "You can't keep it from me much longer, anyway: where are we going?"

I used to hate Nav's impatience. I hated most things about him, come to think of it. Not that he thought any better of me; he saw my patience as indolence, my silence as self-importance. I thought that a louder, more impulsive, more irresponsible man could not exist in this or any universe.

We could only have hated or loved each other. That we ended at the latter surprises no one more than myself.

Though miracles clearly do happen, I know I will never be such a morning person as Nav. Between the road, the harsh early morning light, and my half-finished breakfast sloshing in my travel mug, the best I can manage is, "You'll see."

"Rob, man, don't be like that."

I hated that once, too. But now I can only smile and roll my eyes at our oldest game. "That's not my name."

"Robin."

That's not my name, either. But for this game, it is a deep compromise. So I pry the words out. "You... wanted to see where I grew up."

Nav, after a moment of wide-eyed silence, begins to bounce in his seat such that I worry he will brain himself on the roof of the rental. His enthusiasm, though charming, borders on the dangerous in small spaces. I knew I should have complained when they downgraded us to a compact.

"You mean it? You're going to show me the castle?"

"For the final time, it is not a castle." If there is anything I still dislike about Navin, it is that he reads far too many historical romances. "But yes. We are going to see it." We've nearly an extra day before our flight home, as I'd underestimated the speed with which Nav could drag me through the Louvre.

Which, I suppose, makes two things I dislike about Navin.

It hardly matters; those will grow on me, the same as everything else about this infuriating, impossible, incredible man.

The village we come to is nothing like the one from my youth. It is still small, yes, but a hundred times larger than when I last was here. The roads are paved. There are hotels. There is a bloody water park.

Even the name is no longer the same, merged with some other commune, incorporated and disincoporated a handful of times before that.

Nav, however, is charmed. He pulls me to each bakery and cafe, coerces me into booking a room at the pastoral hotel. He asks me to show him where my house was. I take him to a random, if appropriately rustic cottage.

I don't tell him that the river now flows where my house once stood. The idea of shattering his fantasy holds none of the appeal it once might have.

Here is another thing I like about Nav: nothing pleases him quite like the patina of antiquity. Rust is lacquer; decay is rebirth; the ancient is romantic. I have asked him, many times, if that is the only reason he likes me. He has assured me this is not the case.

On the way back to the hotel, Nav nudges me. "Thought you said there wasn't a castle?"

He nods back towards the river, towards the water park. A slide stands above the other structures, crowned with a turret.

Hatred licks hot along my spine.

I shouldn't care. This place is not my home. It hasn't been for longer than I can say. And yet—

"You know what that means, don't you, love? This town is ripe for its very first siege."

I snort. I can't help it. "I shall prepare the trebuchets at once."

"Only if we load them with flaming sheep shit."

There are no trebuchets and no sheep shit in our future — Nav talks, but actual violence seems to be beyond him. I don't mind; he's the only person in a long time who notices when my darkness begins to creep in. The only person in longer still to brush it away with gentle fingers, as though it were nothing worse than cobwebs.

One thing between us has never changed: Navin has never, for a single moment, been frightened of me. I thought him foolish, before.

I was wrong.

Tired from the trip, Nav is down before midnight. It's just as well — I've been feeling that burn in the back of my throat, that throb in my skull. A drive across France and a flight, in my condition? Unbearable.

Luck is on my side tonight — I've hardly walked ten minutes before I find a likely candidate. Young — no older than thirty-five, certainly— fit, alone. Wobbling a bit; drunk. Likely a tourist.

They stumble, and I am there to catch their fall.

The tourist is a giggling, stumbling mess all the way back to the row of cottages. "Here I am — first on the left." Their accent is American — that's good. No chance of them seeing me again. "Just need my— oops!"

The keys clatter on the cobblestones. I scoop them up. I don't offer them back. "Perhaps I ought to go in with you? Just to make sure—"

"Oh, you're sweet! Please, if you don't mind—"

I don't bother to lock the door behind us — I won't be long. I take the tourist to the bedroom, where they kick off their shoes with a scowl. Their eyes are bleary, unfocused.

"You're a long way from home," I comment, inching closer. I sit on the bed beside them.

They don't react.

My heart flutters behind my ribs.

Easy. So, so easy.

"I could say the same to you. You're... what, British? But that's not that far, I guess..."

"I was born here, actually."

"Really?" They look up from their hated shoes and I catch their eye.

Their jaw goes lax. Their shoulders slump. They stare at my eyes, transfixed.

"Yes. A long, long time ago." I take their chin in my hand — they do not resist — and tilt upward, exposing the rich brown skin of their neck.

The first taste is euphoria. After weeks of stale, packaged blood, I drink it in like a glorious sunset. Their blood brings with it a heady rush — definitely drunk, possibly high as well — that muddles my senses, narrows the world to myself, the tourist, and the warmth flowing from their neck to my mouth.

"Robin?"

I bite back a hiss and wrench myself from the trourist's skin. Paler than before, but not dangerously so; I could have drank for far longer without any harm done.

Nav stands in the doorway. Moonlight pours into the entry room, the front door flung wide.

Comfortable. Careless.

"What are you doing?"

"Crocheting you a scarf." The tourist has gone limp in my arms — I won't be able to start feeding from them again, not without risking myself going too far. A pity. A waste.

"But aren't you — I thought you were a vegetarian?"

"...Navin, I mean this in the kindest possible way: vampires cannot, by their definition, be vegetarian."

"No, I mean — you know what I mean! You follow the treaty. You have a social worker. You get your blood from the damn NHS, you don't—"

"You know about that?"

"Well, yes. For ages. Absolutely impossible to find resources on the whole affair — you'd think there'd be a—a brochure or something, friends and family, or— But I found it. I had to. As soon as you told me, I had to." Nav looks down, suddenly intrigued by a stain on the carpet. Not one of my creation, mind — I haven't spilled a drop. I never do. "I had to, to be sure I could stay with you. To be sure you weren't doing..." He waves his hand at me, still staring at the floor.

Or, more likely, he waves at the unconscious person slumped against my shoulder. "...They're not going to die, if that helps at all."

"It really doesn't."

Blood trickles from my host's throat in a slow, treacly rivulet. I draw my tongue along the trail, lave over the punctures. The flesh knits together. I lay them down on the bed, head on their pillow. They'll be lightheaded in the morning, but will attribute it to the crossfade. To them, I never existed.

Navin thinks otherwise. "Darling... I'm not going to report you. But this? I can't do this."

"No one made you follow me," I remind him. "I waited for you to fall asleep." He refrains from talking to his plants while I'm reading, and I wait until he is asleep to hunt. Relationships are built on such small acts of consideration.

"It's not the knowing, it's— I'm complicit. And I can't do that."

Heat flares in my chest, different from the warmth of the stranger's blood. "Well, what do you want me to do, Nav? You want me to play by their rules, wear my leash, eat every meal from a plastic bag? Because I tried that. I did. It does not work for me, and I will not do it again. It isn't that easy."

Somewhere in my tirade, Navin has come to stand beside me. He takes my hand and guides me up. His eyes, deep and dark as a midnight wood, grab hold of me.

I never want them to let go.

"Robinet." My name falling from his lips — so rare, so perfect, from the proper French 'r' to the silent 't' — draws me in until I am falling, drowning in his depths. "You know I love you."

"I... and I, you." It isn't a lie. Damn my untethered soul, but it isn't a lie.

"There must be something we can do. Some compromise. We don't have to be unhappy, Robinet. Neither of us do."

My eyes burn, their corners prickling. I do not weep.

Because perhaps he is right. Perhaps we don't.

"Welcome aboard, Robinet and... Navin?"

The man in line behind me shrugs and shakes his head.

I drop my gaze, stare at the airline worker's shoes. "Navin will... not be making the flight. It was all very... last minute. I meant to cancel his ticket, but... I apologize." I bite my lip and look up at her.

Her expression shifts from confusion, to shock, to pity. "Oh! I am sorry to hear that. Please, go on ahead."

Ignoring the 'rough luck, mate' from behind me, I proceed down the jet bridge, my head down.

The flat will be so empty without him. I never know what to do with all the things — the artifacts of the life we had. His plants will perish, certainly. I have never been good at keeping things alive.

"Sir?" A flight attendant hovers over my seat, her smile too tight and too bright. "It seems we've an extra seat in business class, if you'd like a free upgrade?"

"Oh. Ah... yes. That's very kind."

They offer me a drink — I take a vodka cranberry and nip in a little extra.

As we take off, the sun bleeds across the sky, staining the French countryside sanguine.

Though indulgent in many ways, Navin has never been one to compromise on the things that truly matter to him. Another thing I hated. Another thing I love.

I will miss him. I will for a long time, I think.

I sip my drink.

Dear Reader, you understand, don't you?

I killed him.

I bled my dear Navin dry and tore his carcass to bits, scattered him from the south of France to Roissy.

I would like to be able to tell you why. I would like to say that we could not change ourselves any more than we could change each other, that I could not stand the thought of him being out there in the world while I could not have him. I would like to say that the tourist's blood addled my mind, caused me to forget myself and him somewhere in the haze.

I would like to say that I regret it.

But I do not. I never do.

#fiction #short stories #monsters #vampire #halloween #sarandipitywrites #writeblr

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ftvs4607globalmelodrama · 2 years

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Ksusha’s Final Part A: Blog Post

Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1964)

Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1964) follows a failed playwright Paul who is hired by an American producer Jerry Prokosh to work on the rewrite of the script of The Odyssey. Jerry is interested in Paul’s wife, and the latter seems not to do anything about it, which becomes the first straw in their relationship disruption. Paul is willing to use his wife’s beauty to his advantage as he operates under the assumption that he is “giving his lower-class wife the one thing she wants most, a middle-class home of her own” (Kehr, 21). Paul is a man with very few talents and great insecurities. In his relationship, he uses Camille as a means to raise his confidence, as with her, he always feels smart and powerful as he sees her as naive and foolish. As a result of that, he thinks he can get away with anything, whether it is him touching another woman’s bottom at work or leaving her alone with a powerful and predatory man who Camille was visibly unsure about.

While Godard sets the difficulty of communication in the center of the film as the German director, French scriptwriter, and American producer need a translator to understand each other, the director emphasized that even deeper misunderstanding happens at an intimate level. The couples’ physical attraction to each other is established from the beginning of the film. Godard introduces the two when Camille is lying on the bed naked and asking for Paul’s assurance that he finds her attractive. As all attributes he names are physical rather than emotional or personal, it is quite apparent right away that he values her looks over her personality. When Camille comes to Cinecittà to visit Paul at work, she notices how Paul is acting towards her: he forces her to go in the sports car with Jerry even though he is hitting on her and Camille is visibly uncomfortable. Paul himself arrives 30 minutes late, claiming there was traffic, while Camille (along with the spectator) “construes that Paul has intentionally done this to give Jerry time to seduce her”(Sharits, 27). It seems almost as if Camille is an object Paul is lending to Jerry, which makes her question Paul’s honesty and intentions. In selling his talents, Paul loses respect and power in Camille’s eyes. When the couple spends time alone, Paul still treats his wife as a problem. When Camille reads aloud from the Fritz Lang interview book while in the tub, Paul does not take anything serious as he regards she doesn’t know what she is talking about. He is also infuriated when Camille criticizes him for stealing other men’s ideas after Paul proposes going to a movie for writing inspiration. Paul sees himself as the breadwinner and ultimately much smarter than Camille. Paul sees her as nothing more but a beautiful woman. From the way he talks down on her, one can see how he perceives himself as intellectually superior and sees her as nothing but a “stupid 28-year-old typist”. When Camille finally tells Paul that she doesn't love him anymore, he cannot see that it is due to his wrongdoing, so he keeps questioning her reasoning, making it seem as if she is merely insane for not loving him anymore, which only pushes her away even more.

The film uses a traditional structure with the story being told in three acts, each being established by changing a couple’s location. The first act takes place in the back lots of famous Cinecittà studios in Rome and at the producer’s house. The second act is a lengthy sequence in the couple’s apartment and provides the main examination of the couple's relationship. A slow and steady camera tracks the couple as they move around their apartment and interact with each other. By showcasing Paul and Camille’s interactions at their shared home, Godard highlights that the couple is faulty at its core and foundation. In their white-walled and incompletely furnished, except for a few pieces of brings blue and red furniture pieces, apartment Paul and Camille are never placed in the same frame as the two continuously try to express themselves to each other. The couple’s inability to understand each other stands at the core of their issues, thus Godard further isolates the two from each other in their already empty apartment. The third act takes place in Capri, where the group arrives to shoot Odyssey. The three acts act as a chronicle of the couple shifting apart and Camille becoming more and more contempt towards Paul. The couple’s last interaction mirrors the opening scene of the movie with Camile being naked. While in the beginning, she uses her nudity for Paul’s admiration and approval, as Camille is tanning naked in Capri at the end of the film, through her naked body she now portrays her independence and freedom to do what she pleases.

With Paul and Jerry working on the remake of Odyssey, the characters ironically mirror Homer’s story with Paul as Odysseus and Camille as Penelope. As Paul and Camille are arguing in the apartment, Paul wraps himself up in a towel, reminiscent of a toga - him attempting to connect to mighty Odysseus and regain the sense of the power he has over the weaker Camille. The latter, “hinting at developments to come, wraps herself in a red towel that matches that eye-popping color of Jerry’s convertible”(Kehr, 22). As Paul and Camille drift around their apartment in the midst of an argument, Godard places a statue of Penelope in their empty living room thus mirroring Odysseus’ voyage in their long and moving conversation. While watching the footage of Odyssey, Jerry says, "I like gods. I like them very much. I know exactly how they feel - exactly.” As he arrives in his red sports car, it imitates Zeus's chariot. In his remake of The Odyssey, Jerry wanted to portray Odysseus’s departure from home due to his wife's infidelity. When Paul agrees with that plot change, Camille's suspicions of her husband's excessive desire to please others are confirmed. Throughout the film, Gorard shifts color filters to show the “overall movement of the mood from warmth (red) to ambivalence (white, pink) to coldness (of course, blue), or, literally, from love to contempt”(Sharits, 26).

With Camille growing contempt towards Paul, she realizes that Jerry (and his bright red convertible) can fulfill her desires - starting with escaping Paul. When she gets into his red convertible for the second time, it is voluntary and because she yearns for the satisfaction of her desires - but as she finally pursues her own dreams it ends up in a detrimental crash as Jerry’s red convertible collides with a truck - in melodrama traditions, Godard shows that women following their natural desires ends in tragedy and suffering. As Godard zooms closer to Camille and Jerry’s dead bodies, we hear the last words of Camille’s letter to Paul about going back to Rome.

Work Cited

Kehr, Dave. “GODS IN THE DETAILS: Godard’s Contempt.” Film Comment, vol. 33, no. 5, 1997, pp. 18–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43454510. Accessed 16 Apr. 2022.

Sharits, Paul J. “Red, Blue, Godard.” Film Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 4, 1966, pp. 24–29, https://doi.org/10.2307/1210398. Accessed 16 Apr. 2022.

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thepremedthatwrites · 3 years

Text

Insufferable

request: Hi lovely, can you do Peter pevensie x reader imagine, please? The reader meets Pevensies in Narnia, but from the beginning she and Peter can't get along together, lots of arguments, while secretly and slowly developing feelings towards each other they don't want to admit, lot of sexual tension before smth happens but eventually they'll end up together. you can include some smut stuff. Thanks xx

hi, so i was gone for a while sorry about that haha but now school is done for the year so i can focus on writing more also this is going to be a multi part story cause it’s enemies to lovers

part 2 | part 3

A soft breeze brushed my face as my eyes fluttered open. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion as I turned to where my bedroom window should have been. Instead, a large bookshelf filled with a myriad of leather bound books was there. The confusion grew as I took in my surroundings. Where my nightstand should have stood was a trunk. My dark blue comforter was now a deep maroon. My sheets felt softer than they ever were. As I ran a hand over them, I realized they were silk.

“You’re up,” a voice said. I jumped, my head snapping in the direction where the voice came from. A tall, blond man sat in an armchair across the room. “Lucy found you laying in the meadows. I carried you here. I should fetch you a maid. You look like a mess.” He spoke quickly, not giving me any time to interject until he was finished.

“Where am I?” I asked, choosing to ignore the man’s last comments about me.

“Narnia,” the man said. He stepped closer to me and as he approached, the light from the lantern on the nightstand illuminated him. On top of his head sat a golden crown decorated with jewels. He had good bone structure, his jawline strong and sharp. His sparkling blue eyes studied me.

“I’m being serious,” I said, crossing my arms. I wasn’t wearing a bra and the shirt I was wearing did not offer much coverage concerning my breasts. The man pulled his full lips into a smirk.

“And so am I.” I took a deep breath, not wanting to start a fight with the man who seemed to have some power if his crown was any indication.

“Please just tell me where I am. I have a very important presentation for school tomorrow and I cannot be wasting time sitting here.”

“You’re from Earth, aren’t you,” he said, the smirk still on his face as he sat down on the bed.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I am.”

“I hate to break it to you, darling, but you aren’t on Earth anymore.”

“I seriously don’t have time for this. If you don’t tell me where I am, I’ll have to call the police.” I started searching for my cell phone which had been tossed somewhere onto my bed before I fell asleep. My hands moved the sheets around, my eyes frantically looking for the familiar rectangular shape of my phone.

“I already told you where you are,” the man said, laughing at me. “You are in Narnia.”

I let out a huff as I gave up my fruitless search. “Alright fine, whatever. I’m in Narnia. How do I get back to Earth?”

“How would I know?” I wanted to bury my face into the pillow and scream. Was he being serious?

“If you won’t be of any help, you can leave.”

“I’m afraid not, darling. You see, I’m the high king here which means I have to make sure you aren’t a threat to my nation.” I let out an incredulous laugh.

“Who let you be king?”

“High king, actually.”

“King, high king, whatever. You most certainly aren’t acting like any sound ruler right now.”

“Would you prefer I tied you up and interrogated you?” I bit back my response. I wasn’t sure if he would actually do that if I weren’t careful enough.

“Okay fine. What must you know in order to determine that I am not a threat to your precious nation?”

“Well first, you could be a bit more respectful. You are talking to the high king after all. Second, tell me your name.”

“I was told not to tell my name to strangers.”

“I’m hurt, don’t you trust me?” The man feigned a look of betrayal as I stayed silent, narrowing my (e/c) eyes at him. “Okay fine, I’ll go first. My name is High King Peter the Magnificent, Lord of Cair Paravel and Emperor of the Lone Islands.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“Now that you know my name, will you tell me yours?”

“Okay, fine,” I sighed. “My name is (y/n). Happy now?” King Peter smiled, nodding his head slowly.

“Very good, (y/n). My second question is how did you find your way to Narnia?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, my voice softer as I tried to rack my brain for any memory of how I could’ve ended up here. “All I remember is falling asleep in my bed and then waking up here.”

“Interesting,” the king said, almost more to himself than to me. “Well, I’m not sure how you got here or how we can get you back but I’m sure Aslan would know.”

“Who’s Aslan?” I questioned. King Peter looked at me, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Perhaps I’ll have Lucy explain that to you.”

“Who is Lucy?”

“My sister. You’ll meet her tomorrow along with all the others. But now, you should sleep. It’s late. I’ll see you tomorrow (y/n).” He walked over to the large mahogany doors.

“Good night, Your Majesty. It was a pleasure talking with you.”

“You should drop that sarcastic tone if you want to survive here,” King Peter said as he started to open the door.

“Is that a threat?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.

“Only if you want it to be.” And with that, he left the room, closing the door behind him. I buried myself deep into the covers, squeezing my eyes closed. Maybe when I woke up, I’d be back in my bedroom. That’s what I hoped. Instead, I tossed and turned in the sheets. Although they were of the softest material imaginable, I couldn’t fall asleep. I let out a sigh, admitting defeat before getting out of the bed. I looked around the room, spotting a wardrobe in the corner. I pulled open the door to see a white robe, along with a few other articles of clothing. I grabbed the robe, wrapping it around my body before opening the door.

The door opened to a hallway, torches lighting the way. The cool stone pressing against my feet as I walked along the corridor. Every now and then I would pass a few doors. All of them were always tightly shut. I wasn’t sure where I was going and I was definitely not sure of how to get back to the room I had been in before. That didn’t matter to me. I just needed to clear my head. The hallways I was walking in seemed to be reaching an end, two large wooden doors waiting for me. The right one was slightly ajar, candlelight spilling from behind it.

I crept towards the doors. I peeped in to see shelves upon shelves of books. I felt my mouth fall slightly open as I cautiously walked into the room. The shelves reached up to the tall ceiling. In the middle of the ceiling was a large glass dome where the full moon was visible. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” a voice said. I tore my eyes from the moon to see a man sitting in an armchair near a fireplace, a brown book in his hand.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” I said quickly. An amused smile formed on his face.

“Don’t be. You must be the girl Lucy found in the meadows.”

“Apparently I am,” I said while slowly walking towards the man. “May I?” I asked, motioning to the empty seat across from him.

“Of course.” I quickly sat down, fidgeting with my hands.

“Am I truly in Narnia?” I asked.

“Trust me, if Peter was lying you would know. He is a horrible liar.” I couldn’t help but smile.

“I just never heard of Narnia before.”

“Most people from Earth haven’t.”

“I feel like I should do my research on the place. I don’t want to offend anyone.” As soon as the words left my mouth, my mind immediately flashed to my interaction with Peter. “Well, not offend anyone else, I mean.”

“I’m guessing Peter wasn’t the most welcoming.”

“I don’t know. There was just something about the way he talked to me that was infuriating. It was like he was amused by me. I couldn’t stand it.”

“Well, I apologize for my brother’s actions.”

“You’re his brother?” The man nodded. “Does that mean you’re a king too?” He nodded again. Great, I’ve met two royals and both meetings had been in my pajamas.

“King Edmund, that’s me.”

“Why isn’t your title long like your brothers?”

“Oh it is, I just don’t like stroking myself.” I let out a chuckle, King Edmund joining in. “You’ll get to meet Susan and Lucy tomorrow morning at breakfast.”

“Oh, I’m invited to dine with the royals?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“Only if you choose to grace us with your presence.” I felt my lips tug into a smile.

“Of course, I couldn’t disappoint the kings and queens of Narnia.”

“How generous,” King Edmund replied, a matching smile on his face. “We should head to bed now. You don’t want to be sleeping at the dining table tomorrow.”

“Yes, we should,” I said, exhaustion finally hitting me as I got up.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I can show you, I have a feeling I know which room Peter put you in.” He got up from his seat, walking towards the doors with his book still in his hands. I quickly followed as he opened the door, holding it open for me. We walked down hallways that seemed somewhat familiar to me.

“How do you remember where to go?” I asked as we walked.

“I don’t. I just walk and hope I go to the right place.” I let out a soft laugh as we passed a door where guards stood. “I would use the guards as reference,” he continued, motioning towards the standing guards, “but they all look the same with that ridiculous face.” He mimicked the face of the guards, eyebrows furrowed, nose flared, and mouth twisted into a frown as they stayed focused on protecting whatever was in their room. “They look constipated all the time.” I let out another laugh, louder than the other. I immediately covered my mouth, hoping the noise didn’t disturb anyone. Edmund laughed at this, the sound of the door opening cutting him off.

King Peter stood in the doorway, sleep still clouding his eyes. “What are you doing, Ed?” he asked, before his eyes landed on me. “You both should be asleep.” His voice was sterner than before as his cold blue eyes focused on me.

“Don’t worry Pete. I was showing her back to her room, that’s all.”

“You two shouldn’t be alone together, lest someone believes you two to be partaking in a scandal.” My face warmed at his accusation.

“I’m sure my reputation isn’t going to be ruined by being seen with King Edmund,” I said.

“I wasn’t talking about you. Ed, you are a king. You shouldn’t be seen with any girl, especially a peasant.”

“I’m not a peasant.”

“Well, you certainly aren’t royalty.”

“So that makes me less than?’

“Technically, yes.”

“Well being royal doesn’t make you any more pleasant!”

“You should be thankful I’m letting you stay here. Unless you want to live on the streets.”

“At least the streets don’t have you.” I made my eyes meet his. My face felt like it was on fire as I narrowed my eyes. His jaw was clenched as his eyes stared down at me.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Edmund softly said, his hand wrapped around my arm. “And you, go to bed,” he added, looking at King Peter.

“Good night,” King Peter said roughly.

“Good night, your majesty,” I replied before mockingly curtseying. He turned around, slamming the door behind him.

Edmund and I walked on in silence for a moment. “Well that went nicely,” Edmund finally said as we neared a door.

“He truly is insufferable. Did you hear what he said? Calling me a peasant like I was worth nothing. The audacity!”

Edmund only nodded, a small smile on his face. “You should go to sleep before you get yourself kicked out by Pete.”

I let out a huff. “I’ll try to be on my best behavior tomorrow,” I promised as I opened the door. I was surprised to see it was the same room I had woken up in. “How did you know which room to take me to?”

“This is the room Peter has his most important guest stay in,” Edmund said, the smile still on his face.

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