#mostly it’s just WEIRD because I grew up with him in my youth group you know??? his sister is closer to my age!

[sailforvalinor]

😶

#oh yes forgot to mention that my mom very suddenly told me that she’s pretty sure that this guy at my church likes me…30 MINUTES BEFORE WE #WENT TO HIS SISTER’S GRADUATION PARTY #LIKE WHAT #he’s 4 years older than me but not necessarily a bad option I just…don’t think we’re all that compatible? #we’re both a little too introverted with weird niche interests I think #I am so introverted that I think it would take a miracle for me to date another introvert I think it’s going to have to be an extrovert #(though I’m certainly not ruling out any boys solely based on that trait) #mostly it’s just WEIRD because I grew up with him in my youth group you know??? his sister is closer to my age! #WEIRD I TELL YOU #anyway dating right now is probably a bad idea considering I’m leaving the country for a semester in the fall #but I am fully preparing myself for an intense theatre crush because boy howdy have I gotten those BAD before #when I was 15 and in newsies I developed a crush on the boy playing Romeo (yes yes ironic I know) and it was like getting hit by a bus #nothing came of that of course because I never do anything in those situations but in hindsight I’m not convinced he didn’t like me back

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Can we take a moment to talk about what a tragic character Minerva is? Y’all know that for the longest time I haven’t been the biggest fan of her, and honestly I’m still not? but I think I might’ve had a breakthrough on why that is. 

Whenever I’ve asked around to see why people find her so appealing or why they consider her their favorite, I’ll get answers like, “she’s such a complex character and she deserved a redemption arc!” or “she should’ve come back to the school with us! Let Minnie be happy, you cowards! Telltale did her dirty! I could write paragraph after paragraph about her!” all sorts of things along those lines… but like, no one seems to want to actually talk about her. I find that interesting? Since when I do follow up with a “care to explain further?” I get nothing. Radio static. Like…. no, talk to me please, I just wanna understand-

Minerva within the context of TFS is such a tragedy. She grew up in a school for troubled youth where all the adults left them for death at the start of the breakout, they had walkers trying to eat the living all around them, and I’m sure she saw her fair share of traumatic violence and despair… but on the bright side, she always had her twin sister, Sophie, and little brother, Tenn. She had her friend and eventual girlfriend, Violet. She had music, and a dorm full of pretty paintings done by Sophie. She and Louis composed a song together to make everyone feel better. There are worse places to live than the school. 

Then one day she got traded away to a bunch of raiders against her will, having no idea what the hell these people were gonna do to her and Sophie. They were made to be soldiers to fight in a war that had nothing to do with them. The delta fucking broke her. If we’re to believe Lilly’s story about the twins, they started their brainwashing process early on when Sophie was still alive, and it seems like Minerva was easier to control as Sophie was still planning a way out and causing trouble. Then, when Sophie convinced her to steal a boat and get the hell out, they got caught and the delta forced her to murder her own twin sister. 

Like…. I’m sorry, not only did Minerva kill her own sister, but she was made to believe that was the right thing to do? That line she says about how she had to prove her loyalty to the place she calls home? That shit’s ingrained in her brain, you can tell that isn’t the first time she’s heard or said that very thing. That is what made her family to the delta. Delta is her home now, her family. Sophie was just a thing that needed to be dealt with. You keep your head down, do as you’re told, and you survive.  You survive and you get to go home, eat a hot meal, take a shower, and be with your delta family.  If not, you end up like Sophie.

What’s also fucked is that Minerva actually cares about these people now. Think about that. After everything they did to her and made her do, she’s been trained to see them as her family and obey. When you save Louis and he kills Dorian, Minerva actually cries out and is visibly hurt by her death. When she’s with the other raiders on land, she's screaming at walkers to get away from them. She cares about the people who made her kill Sophie… and no one ever talks about that??

She fucking hates Clementine. Clementine is just another thing in Minnie’s way. I know the part of the fandom likes to ship these two together and they think it’s hot when they fight and shit, but within the canon text, Minerva wants Clementine gone. Dead. She is the thing stopping her from having her old family merge with her new family. If Clementine hadn’t made them fight, they all would’ve been captured and they’d all be a delta family now. She would’ve had Tenn back. 

Clementine is the problem, she made everyone fight back and that’s why people are dead. Minerva hates her for it… it’s not a “I hate you but like the sexual tension, y’know?” that I see people pretend it is, it’s “you are ruining everything and if I have to, I will kill you myself and I won’t give a second thought about it when they toss your body overboard.”

Like….. seriously, think about how fucked up all of this is. Minerva is a husk of who she was before she was taken away. Sure, you do have to keep in mind that when Tenn and Violet are describing her, their sights are a bit clouded, y’know? But I do believe that she was someone who was kind and cared about people, she wanted to make people feel safe and comforted. 

Now she’s a brainwashed soldier who won’t help the people she used to call friends when they’re about to get limbs cut off. She won’t hesitate to knock someone unconscious or threaten a child.  She’s willing to trick them into being captured with no regard for what’s going to happen to them. … all she knows is this was the mission, and now they all get to be together again back at the delta. 

Then when she finds out there’s a bomb on the boat, she ditches Violet to blow up with it in order to make it to land herself. She loses her shit seeing everyone die and gets her face chewed off by a walker… and then she tries to blow Clementine and AJ up with a grenade. 

Oh, and who can forget the fact that she tracks the group down with plans of murdering Tenn so that they can go to a better place together? And she’ll take down anyone who gets in her way?

Like….. jesus christ, Minerva’s waaaaay too far gone. It’s awful. 

I think that’s what stumps me about why she’s so loved in the way that she is. It’s not that I don’t understand why she’s complex and well-written, I get that perfectly fine. She’s a compelling character study when you comb over all her scenes and take different factors into account.

What I don’t understand is why we tend to just throw everything interesting about her away? For what? 

These days, I never see anyone talking about any of this unless they’re insisting she deserved a redemption arc which…. Eh, I’ll touch on this later. What I mostly see here and mostly other platforms is how great it would be if she and Clementine made out, or hey what if she and Violet got back together if she did come back to the school? Or they just….the best term I have for this is “uwu-ify.” As in she’s reduced to a caricature of a tall, pretty, mean, white lesbian who has “good damage.” 

People insist that Telltale are cowards or bastards because their predictions of her turning on the delta to save Clem and crew didn’t happen. Instead, Minerva ends up being the final baddie you gotta get away from, and she ends up taking someone down with her. But did you really expect to just do a 180 and suddenly decide being brainwashed for over a year was lame and Clementine and friends are cool? Gonna help them out and be with Tenn again? Sure, there’s some left over trauma but love conquers and fixes everything, right?

Uh…. no? That’s not how people work? Honestly, if we entertain the idea that Minerva wasn’t bit and somehow didn’t murder Clementine when they all got back to the school…. romance is the last thing she is ever gonna think of??

I think that’s what bothers me most when reading these au’s and rants about redemption and the entire idea of clemerva as a whole. It’s the same thing that I see happen with Violet- Minerva only has value to fans if she’s in a wlw relationship. By herself, she doesn’t matter. They don’t care about her canon story, they don’t care about Sophie, they don’t care about discussing what could’ve happened if she and Tenn reunited under better circumstances or had a healing recovery together. But why?

Throwing a girlfriend at her isn’t some band aid that’s gonna cover up all the bad she went through?? Having an enemies to lovers romance with Clementine isn’t going to fix a years worth of brainwashing, trauma or the fact that she murdered her own sister and the delta told her she's proved her worth to them?? 

Having the support of those around her is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The idea of the Ericson crew as a whole trying to help her out and do the best they can to accommodate her is bittersweet since there’s only so much they can do. They’re not trained therapists, which is what Minerva would need and plenty of years ahead of her to work through and come to terms with everything that happened as well as taking steps forward. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have friends or that she couldn’t have a healthy romantic relationship someday... but that isn’t the solution, y’know? 

I don’t know how else to explain this, but it makes me feel weird that all of this stuff is flat out overlooked or doesn’t appear to matter to fans of her. 

Look, I get it. We all want these characters to be happy. AU’s are a thing, after all. Sometimes we want to forget about the bad things and focus on the good that bring us comfort. You wanna gush about the idea of an AU where the twins never got traded, the raiders didn’t exist, and Clementine got to meet them the way they were before? I feel that, AU’s are super comforting and fun to explore, and my point isn’t to try and shame anyone who has an AU you like this. 

Hell, you think I don’t have days where I pretend mute Louis isn’t a thing because the whole concept of Louis having his tongue cut out of his mouth breaks my fucking heart? No, lot’s of days I just want to forget everything about that route, I want to set aside all the bad and just intake as much clouis fluff as I can get…. But that doesn’t mean I always ignore or refuse to acknowledge the bad just because I don’t like it. I fucking hate the fact that Louis loses his tongue when you don’t save him, but guess what? That’s a canon route you can play, just like any other route, and the possibilities that come with a mute Louis are vast and compelling. 

This is how it is for me… my favorite characters are my favorite for a reason, and I take all the bad with the good. Louis isn’t perfect, and I don’t want him to be. I was to dive into his backstory about why did that to his parents, I like to talk about what he went through with Marlon’s murder and his feelings about AJ and Clementine at the point, I like to view his love of music as bittersweet. He can stand on his own, and while he is a love interest for Clementine, that isn’t his only purpose. 

I know everyone’s different, they express their love for characters in their own ways, but I do have a genuine question: do you guys actually like Minerva?

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to step on toes or make everyone feel defensive which I know is how people will react to this. “You’re just saying all of this to make us feel bad for shipping clemerva! You don’t even like Minnie so you don’t get to say shit!” yeah yeah, I hear you and look, it’s true that she’s not my favorite character. I know I’ve said I hate her in the past but upon reflection and throwing out fandom interpretations.... I don’t hate her. I get it now. She’s a great character study to dissect and analyze and I think she deserves more than what the writers and the fandom have given her. 

And yeah, what I do hate is clemerva, and I’ve explained why. It’s not for me, it makes me uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, who cares? Me not liking it doesn’t mean anything to those who create AU’s for them. They have their reasons, they can do as they please as long as they’re not hurting anyone. I’m just here pointing out things I see and things that bother me in hopes of starting a discussion.

There’s my ramble about Minerva. I’m gonna go make some tea now. 

#twdg minerva #twdg clementine #twdg sophie #twdg tenn #twdg violet #twdg louis #twdg marlon #twdg lilly #twdg aj #twdg

[modern-vellichor]

Could I please request a fluffy merman!Bucky x human!reader please?

this should be interesting. I'm going to apologise now for my portrayal of mermaids because I am 100% going off of what I was taught as a child by my cooky grandmother :* Warnings: some kind of weird mythology, some angst, some dark stuff, fluff?

Living by the sea was always a dream. Despite the harsh spray and the cold weather, there was never a dull day.

Growing up your grandfather had told you tall tales of mermaids and merrows, lurking under the churning surface of the water. He claims to have seen one, befriended her even. But he was always a little odd. And as you grew older, the tales lost their magic.

You were docking the boat one day, standing salt caked and soaked on the dock, tying the boat up. Dusk was soon coming and you were eager to get home as you shivered in the harsh winds. The water splashed ferociously all around you, obscuring the sea floor, but you were sure you saw something.

You shook it off, returning your focus to tying your knots. A pair of hands appeared on the wood next to you, you let out a short scream, the top half of a man appeared out of the murky water. The weather calmed as he smiled up at you.

You took a long look at the man. Long, dark hair tied back, muscular arms resting nonchalantly by your feet. Piercing blue eyes stared up at you, paired with a toothy grin.

"Hello there, doll."

You didn't respond, instead you just stared down in shock. This had to be a dream. This was the beginning of hypothermic delusions. You had to be going crazy. It was the only logical answer.

"You're not going crazy, come sit with me."

You did as you were told, desperate not to displease him. You racked your brain for all the tales of mermaids from your youth. They were soulless beings with prophetic magic. And they'd cause misfortune if they ever felt disrespected.

"What's your name, doll?"

"Y/N," you offered with a meek smile. Despite the calm weather, you still shivered in your overalls.

"That's a pretty name. A pretty name for a pretty girl, I'm Bucky." You nodded, tucking your feet under you to avoid the cold water. "What're you doing around these parts?"

"I live here, have all my life," you offered politely. You didn't want to annoy him. You were sailing tomorrow and you didn't need more misfortune than you already faced.

"You shouldn't sail tomorrow," you begged yourself to listen to him. Prophetic magic, he knows. "Weather won't agree with you, princess. It's far too dangerous for a boat like that," he nodded to your boat. She was falling apart.

"I should go," you mumbled, smiling softly at the being. "I have a grandfather to take care of, he needs to eat, y'know."

"I'll see you again, doll!" He called out after you before disappeared under the rolling waves with a mischievous grin.

Against all better judgement, you sailed the next day. The weather was mostly calm, until you left the bay. Then the weather turned sour. Thunder rumbled above your head, your men were screaming over the loud crashes of ferocious waves. You should have known. Mermaids were omens of shipwreck. You sobbed out, but no one could hear you.

Rain lashed cruelly against your skin, you were soaked through to the bone. You shook violently where you stood on the bow. you couldn’t see more than five feet ahead of you. But you could still make out a familiar silhouette under the angry surface of the water. His eerie voice echoed through the wind, wafting over the boat. And then it was thrown over.

You and your men were thrown into the unforgiving waters. You struggled to the surface, gasping for air. A strong hand gripped around your ankle. You screamed, water filling your lungs. You felt his lips against yours and you could breath again. The water chilled right to your bones. you watched the sun disappear as you sunk. You had accepted your fate. 

You contemplated your own death. You observed the man who pulled you along behind him. Man, maybe, somewhat. There were dog tags around his neck. Must have been the object of his power. You weren’t dying yet, as soon as he let you go, you’d drown. As long as he held you, you’d be okay. 

You longed for the violent release, this wasn’t the life for you. You had always thought you belonged at sea, and now you were in it, you had changed your mind. You heard his voice echo around you, he was pulling one tag off the chain and shoving it into your hand.

“Don’t let go of this,” he commanded sternly. You wrapped your fingers around it, holding it tightly. “C’mere,” he beckoned, taking your free hand and leading you into a homely looking cave. 

You allowed Bucky to pull you into his chest. You sobbed into his shoulder. He rocked you gently, and the constant pressure of the water soon became comforting. He held you until you stopped crying, and even then he kept you on his lap, his arms wrapped loosely around your waist.

“You know, I’ve always though you were the prettiest girl in that godforsaken village,” he whispered, smiling up at you. You returned the sentiment, a lopsided grin gracing your features.

“Why are you alone?” You asked, mermaids usually travelled in groups. 

He brushed your question off. Truth was, his admiration of you had gotten him abandoned. But he had you now, you two could be together, on land and in sea. 

“That doesn’t matter now. I’ve got you, that’s all that matters. You’re all that’s ever mattered.”

Despite everything that had happened, you smiled. You rested your head in the crook of his neck. Your clothes were soaked, but the cold no longer touched you. The cool metal of the dog tag was welcome in your hand. He felt like home, you were home.

This was home.

#Bucky Barnes #Bucky angst #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky fic #bucky fluff #merman!bucky #merman!au #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fluff

[tallstars-rewrite]

Chapter 36

chapter list / previous / next

“So what is it you call them again?” Talltail’s eyes narrowed skeptically.

“They’re called cars, so I’ve been told.” Jake replied. 

They were crouched a fox-length away from a bright red shiny monster sitting quietly in front of a twoleg den.

“Is it dead?” Talltail asked, instinctively keeping his voice quiet as if he half expected the thing to roar to life any moment.

“I don’t even think they’re alive. At least, it certainly doesn’t smell alive. All I know is when housefolk gets inside one, they start moving”

“Hm.” Talltail kicked a small pebble at it. Nothing. Jake was right about that, they certainly didn’t smell like any living thing. “And what about the lights in their eyes? It’s not fire, but there are lights like that all over the twoleg places.”

“I dunno, housefolk are just good at making light that isn’t hot I guess. Between us, I think their eyesight in the dark is awful.”

“So you don’t even know how twolegs make the things they do?”

“Not really,” Jake shrugged. “But do you understand exactly how plants grow or how birds can fly?”

“Well...no, they just do. I suppose...you sort of have a point.” Talltail admitted. “But I still don’t trust these things. They sound like monsters to me. Let’s keep going, I don’t like looking at it’s eyes, even if they aren’t alive.”

They walked through gardens, keeping to the grass and sparse trees alongside the hard stone Thunderpaths and trails. As the dusky sky turned to a pale gray dawn, they saw twolegs every so often, and many of them paused to look at the two cats walking side by side. Talltail didn’t like going past them, but after narrowly escaping another aggressive group of strays, and a lost dog, Jake eventually convinced Talltail that twolegs were the lesser of the two evils. So, daylight travel it was.

“Just don’t make eye contact,” Jake said. “They’re slow, so even if they want to pet us, we can just run and they’ll give up.”

“They just try petting every animal that walks by!?” Talltail hissed.

“Well some of them, if they can.”

Talltail snorted. The absolute arrogance of assuming that because a couple cats liked them, that meant every cat wanted to be their friend. I don’t try to groom every cat I walk by because that would be weird, Talltail thought with an irritated twitch of his tail. But he was quickly finding most twolegs weren’t necessarily the ruthless predators he’d imagined them to be in his youth. They were, however, incredibly annoying.

But on the brighter side, he’d found that he really had started to get used to the sounds of the town, even though it was still overwhelming. They had to duck behind a house every now and again when a particularly loud string of monsters passed.

“We’re almost there,” Jake assured him. “I’m...mostly sure of it. When we were on the roof, I got a better idea of where we were. The alley cats chased us in the wrong direction, but we should be able to get there without crossing anyone's territory.”

After only a couple more turns down the stone path, Jake raised his tail. “Ah! There it is!” he exclaimed. “See those tall trees up ahead? I’m sure that’s where the park is.”

“Is this ‘park’ actually...safe?” Talltail asked as they grew closer. In the distance, he knew the pines that bordered ShadowClan’s territory were close. There was a ring of twoleg dens blocking it, but such a forested area would surely house prey to some cat.

“Well, twolegs walk through it with their dogs, but they have them on leashes. Don’t worry, I know not all dogs are like Dusty. I won’t make you get slobbered by any more of them,” Jake added quickly when he saw Talltail’s alarm.

“I appreciate that,” Talltail said with a shudder.

The park was a large area with sparse patches of woods and bushes surrounded by large grassy fields. Not the fields Talltail was used to, but very short soft grass that would be impossible to hide in, and most of it stank of stale dog scent. Talltail thought he would be able to relax once they’d reached a more natural familiar area, but even this place felt very...off compared to the woodland and fields he knew. Like the plants and trees were all too...neat.

“Well, it’s still better than the town,” Talltail sighed. “But where to start looking…”

“What exactly are you planning on doing when you find them?” Jake asked with a sideways glance.

“Uh...” Talltail paused. He hadn’t been thinking of it in detail, he’d just been repeatedly telling himself that he’d figure it out when he got there. “I’ll... figure it out when I get there?” he said.

“You don’t want to fight all of them do you?” Jake’s eyes were round with concern.

“No, of course not.” Talltail for the first time felt a stab of guilt for the visitors when he thought of Mole, Reena, and her parents. They had been so kind. Reena had even been his friend for a while. They wouldn’t think so kindly of him after this, but their feelings couldn’t be at the front of his mind. They were protecting a bad cat. Sparrow didn’t even care about the others as much as Hen, he’d practically said so himself. If Talltail could just get Sparrow away from the others somehow, they wouldn’t have to get involved at all.

While he was thinking, Jake had gotten distracted and was looking up at a massive oak tree with long hanging branches splaying out. He had an eager light in his eyes, like a kit hunting a drifting feather.

“We could…get higher? Maybe if we got high up we could see if there are any cats around, or even the pond we’re looking for. I bet you could see the whole area from up there, and the branches are low enough to jump to.”

Talltail looked doubtfully up at the tree. WindClan had keener eyes than most cats, but his nose was still better for searching. Maybe Jake had other motives.

But It’s not as if we’re running out of time. If they’ve hung around for this long, they’ll hang around longer… Talltail thought. He shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

Jake looked back at him, “You don’t think it’s too dangerous?”

“Well...maybe it’s risky, but less dangerous than what we’ve already done. It’s not as if I’ll let you fall.”

Jake’s plumy red tail flicked high, his vibrant eyes glowing with a mischievous excitement. “Bet I can get up it faster."

With that, he crouched and leapt, hooking his claws into the lowest branch and hoisting himself all the way up with an agility Talltail hadn’t expected from such a stocky cat. Talltail bunched his muscles and jumped up after him, and his paws touched the branch without requiring him to scramble the rest of the way. Keeping his momentum, he jumped again to the next nearest branch up.

He got so caught up in the challenge, Talltail was almost on the fourth branch before he remembered he’d never actually climbed a tall tree in his entire life. He made the mistake of looking down, and the ground below felt dizzyingly far, even though it didn’t feel like he’d gone very high.

“What’s wrong? I’ll be napping at the top before you get there!” Jake called. Great StarClan, how had he gotten three branches above him? 

Talltail looked up. “You know uh...there’s not really many trees like this on the moor.”

“Then this’ll be good practice! Every cat should know how to climb trees!”

“What am I, ThunderClan?” Talltail grumbled. Staring up while newly aware of the drop below him, he felt significantly less confident with his leaps. “Er, Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you get up there exactly?”

“Climbed.”

“Alright, yes, but be more specific.”

“You’re half way up! How did you get to where you are?” the ginger tom flashed him a cheeky grin.

“Dumb luck? I don’t trust my paws! Can’t you tell me where you put yours?”

“Well, I trust your paws, and you should too! Just keep your eyes on where you want to be.”

Swallowing his doubt, Talltail balanced himself with his tail and found it a reliable weight as ever as he leapt. Jake stopped past the halfway point up the massive tree. The branches were separated enough that they could see the whole area around them, but too thin to climb further. For a moment Talltail could almost pretend he wasn’t surrounded on all sides by twolegs with their bizarre dens and contraptions. The call of alarmed birds disturbed from their perching was a welcome sound blocking out the distant rumble of crossing Thunderpaths. He had learned his lesson about looking down and carefully lay himself on the branch to catch his breath. 

Jake lay across from him, and looked thoughtfully at Talltail’s paws. “Huh,” he said, “I didn’t expect you to have duller claws than me.” He flexed his small needle sharp claws and scraped them on the branch. 

“They’re not as sharp, but they're a lot sturdier.” Talltail flexed a paw. “And those wounds are harder to close,” he added with a wink.

But it was true his claws didn’t hook into the bark as deep as he would like. He usually only needed them to grip soft earth while running, or digging.

“How high up do you think a cat can jump from without getting hurt?” Jake asked abruptly, gazing below at the dizzying drop with an amused twitch of his whiskers. He looked like he was enjoying himself somehow.

Talltail glared at him. “Do not ask me that right now.”

Jake snorted with laughter which petered into a quiet purr of contentment as the sun dripped through the branches and danced over his fur. He really did have the brightest orange pelt Talltail had ever seen. The sun caught the ginger and it glowed like the warm fire Jake’s twoleg kept in their home, the vivid stripes swirling along his tufted flanks broken up where the fur was longest. Talltail had never spent so much time trying to memorize all the details of a cat's face. It was odd, the little leap of happiness he felt fluttering around in his heart. Sometimes he caught his breath and it skipped in a way he couldn’t recall ever feeling before when looking at a cat. That’s...weird. Am I getting sick?

He scarcely realized he was staring when he noticed Jake was also looking intently at his face as well. 

Talltail blinked at him. “What is it?”

Jake stretched out and touched his nose to Talltail’s cheek. “Thanks for humoring me. I’m glad you’ve let me come with you this long,” he purred.

“I wouldn’t say I’m humoring you, I wouldn’t even have gotten here without you,” Talltail replied. His ears twitched as he tried to hide the fur prickling on the nape of his neck and the warm blush rushing under his pelt from the unexpected touch. What in StarClan is wrong with me? I think the height is making me light headed.

“I mean with this climb,” Jake laughed. “My friends would have said it was fluff-brained or dangerous and told me to stop messing around. Not that I blame them, we are really high up.”

“Don’t remind me,” Talltail gulped. “I just want to enjoy the view and pretend the ground is nearby. Don’t you have friends who do this with you?”

“They’ll come on long walks with me. I like Quince and Nutmeg, but they don’t always understand me. Sometimes I just feel...this pull to do something different, like in my gut, and I have to do it. Like I see a faraway place from my roof and I think ‘what does everything look like from there?’ And I so desperately want to go there and see.”

Talltail nodded, his whiskers twitching in amusement. It was similar to that excitable longing to dash to the horizon he felt when he was young. It had been a long time since he’d dwelled on it.

Jake continued, “I can’t live my whole life every day eating, sleeping, grooming, even though I like it. I feel like...there’s something else out there, and I’ll be restless until I find out what it is. That’s why I was so glad to meet you again... I love my friends and neighbors, well-- most of them, Tyr can get stuffed. But sometimes I worry I’m annoying them with my fancies.”

Talltail blinked at Jake in surprise. “I can’t imagine any cat finding you annoying.”

Jake snorted. “Oh Talltail, you haven’t been around me long enough! Driving cats up the walls is a talent of mine.”

“Well you’ve certainly driven me up a tree, so there’s that. No other cat would be able to do that.” Talltail rested his chin on his paws. The sun felt so nice warming the dark fur on his back, he’d forgotten all about scanning the area for other cats. 

Jake stretched and inched his forepaws on either side of Talltail. “I’m glad I know you,” he purred.

Talltail was a little caught off guard. “Thanks.” 

“You’re welcome.”

“Well…. I’m...glad I know you too?” 

They sat there in the branches passively grooming each other's ears, and Talltail listened to the breeze whisk through his fur. It wasn’t the familiar winds he grew up with, but he swore he could almost smell the moor carried on them from far away. Before the homesickness could creep up on him again, Jake yawned and stretched.

“Ok, we’ve stalled long enough, we should probably get down now.”

“Right, erm, down.” Talltail still wasn’t brave enough to look.

“Don’t worry, it’s not as if I’ll let you fall. Promise.” Jake winked.

“Are you going to catch me?” Talltail snorted. “I probably weigh as much as you do.”

“I could carry you if I had to! It’s not all fluff under here.”

 Talltail was still doubtful of that, but Jake’s confidence in the whole situation was at least easing his nerves a little.

“I climb trees like this all the time, it’s much easier than it looks. Surely you won’t have too much trouble balancing with that tail of yours.”

Talltail swayed on his paws as he, unfortunately, finally glanced down at the dizzying drop through the branches. Oh stars… He kept his eyes firmly on Jake’s tail and paws, one branch at a time, flinching with each tentative jump, but after some coaxing and at least one instance of Jake grabbing his scruff to steady them, Talltail at last landed down onto safe grass again. He still trembled a bit even as he flexed his claws into the soft earth 

“See, that wasn’t so bad!” Jake chirped.

“Says you, I can't believe you put yourself through that all the time.”

“The height is kind of a rush though, isn’t it?”

“If by rush, you mean vividly imagining the air rushing by me as I plummet to my death? Then yes, absolutely.”

“Aw I bet you could climb all sorts of things if you set your mind to it!” Jake grinned at him.

“I prefer to use my tail for steering my turns,” Talltail retorted. “WindClan are not the climbers of the forest. An old clanmate of mine, Aspenfall, took to climbing better than the rest of us, but he was still pretty bad at it.”

“You really do all have such funny names don’t you?” Jake replied. “Who else is there?”

“What, in my whole clan? well...my mentor was called Dawnstripe. I’m sure I’ve told you about Briarpaw, he’s the one training to be a medicine cat. I had a friend called Ryewhisker as well, and Fawnleap and Lilywhisker...” He listed off several more names as Jake stared. Talltail of course still knew everyone by heart.

“That’s so many cats, how do you keep track of them all?”

“That’s not even half of them! They’re your family, of course you come to know them over time.” He remembered how overwhelmed he had been as a kit, trying to learn the names of all his clanmates. They had been so patient with him.

“So how do you get your names anyhow?” Jake asked. “I heard a rumor your get a cool name when you killed your first enemy”

Talltail purred in laughter. “No, not quite. Our names are much more than that. They’re special to us, you get it when you’ve completed your training and officially become a warrior. No murder required. The first name given to you by your parents represents your roots. Your parents give you your colors and physical traits, so them choosing your first name is to honor them and the life you’ve been given. It’s usually a name referencing something from the world around us, to represent our connection to the area we are born in. Our territory is part of us after all, as important as our clanmates. It’s where you’ll spend your whole life.” Well...it’s where you’re supposed to spend your whole life, he thought with a twinge of guilt.

Jake nodded, “That's simple enough. What about the last part?”

“That’s the important part. It represents a small part of the warrior you become, what you're best known for. Some are more abstract than others. Your mentor, the leader, and the medicine cat discuss with each other about your progress over the course of your training to decide what name you're called to have.”

“That’s so cool! My name doesn’t mean anything, I wish I could earn a cool badge like that. But...What about you? Your first name is Tall, that’s not really a thing like the other names you told me.”

Talltail nodded. “My name is old. In the early times of the clans, you had no name at all until you proved you could survive to adulthood. Back then, if you got a name, it always referenced the most noticeable physical trait about you rather than anything else, so cats could tell you apart on sight. Except for the legendary warriors of course, who were named for their renowned feats, but most cats couldn’t hope to be that special. There was only one meaning to their names, rather than two separate meanings. So my name was planned ahead, a traditional one to honor the cats that survived in those hard times. That’s why my father chose it for me. I guess my tail was freakishly long back then too.” 

“You didn’t get to earn a last name yourself? That doesn’t seem as fun.” Jake said.

“It’s not all about fun! Besides, no name can perfectly represent everything about you. Getting a warrior name is always an honor regardless of what it is. Besides, it is pretty notable isn’t it?” he purred, wapping Jake with his tail for good measure.

Jake sneezed as the fur tickled his nose. “Yeah, I could see you from a mile away with that thing.”

After a bit more aimless wandering, they finally paused for a moment to rest. Jake rolled in the grass, getting burs and twigs and grass shreds stuck in his tufty orange pelt. He looked a bit like a hedgehog.

“You're going to end up dragging the whole park along with you if you keep that up,” Talltail chuckled. 

“Maybe I want to take some back with me. Also I like smelling like grass! It’s nice. You always smell like moor grass.”

Talltail didn’t know how that could be. It had been so long since he’d been home, the moor couldn’t possibly still be sticking to him. But maybe it was harder to get rid of than he thought. 

Jake interrupted his thoughts again. “What would my name be if I was in a clan?”

Talltail snorted. “Your name? I have no idea, it’s not something you can just slap on a cat!”

“Well how do cats who join the clan get named? Does that ever happen?”

“We’ve never had an outsider join in my time but...I think the leader chooses? Even then, I can’t possibly imagine what skills you would prove over the course of training.”

“Well let’s say you’re leader, what would you call me? Just if you had to guess?”

Talltail hummed in thought, looking Jake over as he beamed back at him patiently. He had the goofiest gleeful look on his face, Talltail stifled a purr “Oh I don’t know...Perhaps Flameface.”

Jake laughed at that. “Flameface? That’s a name? That sounds so silly!”

“It’s not silly at all! It’s a perfectly fine name. No sillier than Jake, your name is nonsense! It sounds like the noise you make when you hack up a furball. It only sounds silly to you because you don’t know what it means.”

“Ok, ok that’s fair. What’s it mean?”

“Flame is pretty self explanatory. You are the brightest orange cat I’ve ever seen. And I guess I associate it with you now because your twoleg’s den was the first place I ever saw real fire.”

“I like ‘Flame.’ That part’s cool. But...what, does my face look like it’s on fire?”

“No, no it’s not always that literal. Well, maybe it is a little. Some names are for cats who are good at many different things, but master of nothing in particular.”

“What? I could be a master at something!”

“It’s not a bad thing at all!” Talltail purred. “In fact, those are some of the most reliable cats. ‘Face’ is just a variation on referencing your appearance. I think it’s often given to cats who are thought to be particularly attractive in some way or another. I can’t remember what the idea was exactly. Like their face draws attention or...lights up the area? Metaphorically of course. It’s a little sappy.”

“Ohhh...” Jake was silent for a moment in thought. “You think I’m attractive?”

“What?”

“Wow, no cats ever called me that before!”

Talltail’s pelt felt hot as he sat up. “Y-you’re thinking too hard about it, I’m trying to be objective. I only thought of it because--I just mean you’re distracting. But...In a good way.”

“I’m distracting?”

“Well, I don’t mean--I meant like, eye-catching, because of--have you looked at yourself when the sunlight hits your fur? It--No, oh for StarClan’s sake, hold on, I’m explaining this poorly. Stop looking at me like that, the point is that’s the closest guess I can manage. It might not be accurate.”

Jake grinned up at him, “I like that name.”

“...Good. It’s past sunhigh now, so we should start looking,” Talltail mewed quickly, already to his feet, hoping his fur wasn’t noticeably bristling in embarrassment. 

Jake trotted after him, his tail held up high. “So, what would your name be if you earned a normal one, do you think?” he asked, a new note of amusement in his voice that Talltail was trying very hard to ignore.

“I don’t know, Jake.”

“‘Cause I think you could be a ‘face’ cat too, you’re the most distracting thing I've ever seen in my life”

“We are burning daylight here, Jake.”

“Ok, but think about it.”

Talltail would probably think about it for the rest of the day, thanks.

chapter list / previous / next

#FRU36 #chapter 36 #asdfghds this last scene was one of the first ones i wrote back in like 2018 #it still makes me giggle lmao #but also enjoy the light chapters while you can #because i will be pulling out the angst stick again soon

[a-greyromantic-ace]

Personal Ace Journey Q&A

** personal note: I’m not cross-eyed. I’m just doing a weird look because that’s what I do. Also, I’m hanging out with my Niffler buddy Nahum. He’s pretty much my ESA since I’m allergic to “real” animals. And yes, I’m wearing a Taylor Swift shirt (Cruel Summer, anyone?). Okay, that’s it. Carry on.

Below are some frequently asked questions I’ve answered for your convenience. I have not actually been asked these questions, but I welcome and anticipate these questions considering the purpose and heart behind this blog (to share my Christian ace story and welcome other Christian aces). So read on! I hope you feel at home here and feel free to ask me questions at any time! ❤️❤️

“When did you first realize you were ace?”

It’s complicated. Short answer: it crossed my mind when I first heard of asexuality a couple years ago, but I didn’t think of myself as ace until this past June (2021).

The first time I heard of asexuality, I remember being like, “This is interesting… I never thought you could feel this way before.” despite me literally feeling that way for pretty much my entire life 😅😂😂 talk about being in denial! But anyways, I wiggled through the definitions and conversations on AVEN for a short period of time before ultimately shifting my attention to something else. It was like I explored and found something new, but didn’t decide what to do with it. Does this apply to me, how should I approach this, etc.? So eventually I just forgot about asexuality until a few months ago when I came across a bunch of pride posts one day. Asexuality was mentioned and I remembered the time I had looked into it a couple years back. Sometime during the first two weeks of June, I read non-stop about personal ace thoughts and experiences, which ultimately helped me to confirm what I had kind of known all along. I am ace. It’s nice being able to admit it and know that it fits. Things make sense now, and I don’t feel as bad about not wanting kids or obsessing over finding a husband. I am doing exactly what God wants me to do, where he wants me to do it, and I am thriving by his mercy and grace. He is 100% my strength and reason for getting up in the morning. Everything I do is to honor and bring glory to Him, and I hope this blog is just one reflection of that.

“How can you be asexual all your life and not know it? Is that even possible?”

Honestly? I didn’t realize it was weird not to think about sex or feel sexual attraction. As someone who grew up in the church (attended youth group, volunteered regularly, and genuinely believed in and prioritized God’s influence in my life as a child and teen), sex rarely crossed my mind. Those whose paths it did cross didn’t say anything or did so from a state of guilt or regret. I just assumed I was really good at not thinking about sex or just didn’t struggle in that area. After all, everyone has different struggles, right? I’ve never looked (and still don’t look) at someone and think, “Wow, they’re so hot and sexy!” It just doesn’t make sense to me. Someone can look really cute or ugly to me, but they can’t really look hot. Even the ones closest to what I consider as “hot” aren’t ones I want to have sex with or anything like that. They’re just really aesthetically pleasing and the most I would like to do is talk with them or stare at them (with all their clothes on, please and thank you 😅😳😂😂). Seriously. The naked human body (especially male) just makes me squirm. And no, it’s not because I’m sheltered and have never seen a naked teen/adult male body before. Okay, fair, I’ve never seen one live in person (mostly because I don’t want to), but I have watched tv shows/movies that showed a lot more than I was expecting to see. The more I saw certain things, the more I realized I was repulsed by them. I started to question my future. If I didn’t want sex (can I even choose that?), how would I find a good Christian husband? And if I can’t find a husband, then how would I have a family of my own? I know adoption is an option, but my family is big on pushing for biological grandkids. Speaking of family…

“Have you told anyone or come out?”

Yes. My mom on June 22, about a week or so after I accepted being ace. She was very supportive and even suggested that she might be ace or demi, so that was somewhat of a plot twist. I tried to explain asexuality the best I could, and I hope I did it justice. I can see how some Christians might not be very accepting of the idea since man was created by God to “be fruitful and multiply”. Yet I personally believe that our sole purpose is to glorify and honor God by loving those around us in whatever way that looks like. For me and the season I’m in, I feel God calling me to be intentionally single and focus on my newfound career as a teacher. He wants me to invest in the lives of these teens. I can see and feel them changing day by day, and I don’t want that to stop. If a potential future husband comes along, I’ll consider the opportunity if I feel God nudging me in that direction. Otherwise, I’m gonna keep following God’s lead and see where we go 🥰 for the record, I haven’t officially “come out” yet to my family, friends, or local community/church family. I don’t feel like I’m hiding it, but I want to wait to bring it up casually when the time is right. I feel like God will show me when.‬

Update (11/6/21): I’ve worn my ace shirt to church a few times, which has been a “getting out of your comfort zone” moment while also helping me to feel more comfortable embracing my asexuality there. Also, I got to meet up with my college roommate a week ago and I told her I was ace! She was quiet but supportive and I felt like she didn’t judge me or think differently of me after I told her so that was amazing. We’re definitely making slow but steady progress so I’m proud ❤️❤️

Update on the updates (3/23/22): By this point, I’ve told the youth pastor at my church and several students I teach. The first was because I wanted to volunteer with our middle and high school students and wanted to be upfront about my beliefs. My church definitely isn’t homophobic, but it isn’t super supportive either as far as actually accepting that those in the LGBTQ+ community aren’t sinning by loving who they love ❤️❤️ Anyways, I’m definitely more confident than I was back in June and am thinking of getting a more obvious ace shirt. Guess I’ll have to go back and check out my own recommendations (here and here) 😅😂

“Do you know any other Christian aces?”

Not really and definitely not “in real life”. The only Christian aces I’ve come across are here on tumblr and through online chats/discussions on AVEN or other websites/blogs. Still, it seems like there’s a decent amount of people who consider themselves to be Christian and ace, which I think is awesome! 🥰❤️❤️

“What’s your personal attitude towards sex?”

Well, I consider myself to be sex-positive yet sex-averse/repulsed. What that means is that I don’t personally want to have sex (pretty much the opposite regardless of who or when), but I am very accepting of those who choose to have sex. Here’s the official chart on AVEN’s website:

Any other personal questions you were hoping I’d have answers to? Send me an ask or message and I’ll try to answer them if I can!

#asexual q&a #ace q&a #aven #ace #coming out ace #Christian ace #what it’s like being a Christian ace

[gilded-green]

Eeeeeeee!!! Congrats on ten years!! I am having FEELINGS about this! All of your OCs are my favourites and I am so grateful for Stingrae’s support. I would commit CRIMES for a rewrite of GG, but mostly I want to know whether you have any favourite things you want to share? <3 <3 <3

Thank you Polly!!!! <3<3<3

We all owe Stingrae so much I stg.

I would also probably commit crimes for a rewrite of GG but frankly that’d still involve me having to WRITE it so idk if it’d help. XD

Oh jeez MY favorite things??? Uhhhh okay let’s see...

The fact that I am STILL loving this story and very devoted to it even after years, many of which were just radio silence. I knew that I was the slow and steady type, but it’s nice to have confirmation. XD

The fact that when I started writing this fic I was younger than Lu Ten is at the beginning, and now I am older than he’ll be at the end. Jk that’s not a favorite thing it’s just a pathetically hilarious thing forgive me lol. XD

I think I was one of the first people to say “actually Lu Ten would kind of be an imperialist jerk” long before I knew the term “imperialist”

ALL THE HISTORY AND CULTURAL THINGS I’VE LEARNED FROM RESEARCHING FOR MY FICS. I learned a lot of history as a kid but good curriculums on Chinese history just didn’t EXIST back then, or at least didn’t exist in the homeschooling catalogs my mother was able to access, so it’s really nice to have a hobby that also helps me learn stuff.

Huang and Wu Sheng. I love them so much and I’m very proud of them and how they always catch new readers’ attention because they are NOT what you’d expect of Dai Li agents. I can’t wait to expand upon them and their backstories in upcoming fics.

Shirong, and how people can’t decide if they love him or hate him or relate to him or all of them at once. XD

The fact that, ten years later, people have FINALLY STOPPED ASKING ME if I took Shirong from a certain other fic, because the idea of different writers looking at the same baby name lists is a foreign concept :P

Literally everything about the Preservation Branch, I’m so proud of my dumb museum guards

The fact that it’s been so long since I first wrote GG and I’ve written so much other stuff since then that a lot of things people REALLY wanted elaboration on back in the day (Enlai, Huang and Wu Sheng) have kinda fallen to the wayside. I get a lot more questions about Nanyue and the Dai family now. The passage of time sure is funny!

Just the fact that I was actually able to write Gilded Green at all. Like. It’s hard to explain. But I had to grow into my writing. Or my writing style, or approach to writing...idk what to call it. But this thing I do? With the worldubilding? And the OCs? And just the careful web of....stuff? I always wanted to do that, even as a kid, I grew up on massive stories like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings with crazy worldbuilding backgrounds and deep meanings and elaborate politics and I could not figure out how to tell stories like that myself. I remember being 12 years old staring at a bunch of concepts for an original fantasy idea I had and realizing that I had no idea how to make them work because I was too young to understand how the world worked. I remember deciding to shelve that whole story because I realized I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. Tolkien and Star Wars didn’t really explain how the worldbuilding happened, it was just THERE and I couldn’t figure out how to make it appear for myself, it wasn’t exactly easy for a child to figure out. Sometimes I envy kids these days who’re growing up with, like, Elena of Avalor, that show lays out some FANTASTIC political responsibility concepts in ways kids can understand, I could’ve used that as a kid. I was also crap at understanding how people actually interact with each other and just....had all these issues with figuring out how to make a story work, not at the writing level, but on a my-understanding-of-the-universe level, which was kinda humbling and also kinda scary. And some of that was youth, and some of that was undiagnosed ADD making it so that I just didn’t Get Things, but either way when I tentatively started writing GG and realized that wait, I think it’s making sense, and the characters are interacting and it’s not weird, and I think I’m GETTING it, omg, AM I GETTING IT??? That was a great feeling, even if it did feel like I was balancing on a tightrope.

ALSO the way in which you can KINDA track me slowly going from raised-in-a-conservative-Christian-environment to WELP-I’m-queer-and-pretty-progressive-now over the course of my writing, tho that may be hard to see if you don’t know what you’re looking at. I can see it tho, lol. I was fortunate in that my upbringing was just kinda incidental because my mother was too tired to consider any other approach to life, and as time went on my family all actually grew into very different, much better people. I was kind of the trailblazer in that regard tho (not fun) and frankly it was fanfiction that helped me get over my queerphobia and internalized misogyny, and it was the racebending protests that cropped up around The Movie That Shall Not Be Named that made me start to realize how racism actually worked and what cultural misappropriation was. If you squint you MIGHT be able to make out where in my stories I started getting excited over my newfound beliefs and started frantically shaking more sexualities over my characters like “I have GOT to de-heteronormative-ize this” XD But yeah this fic has been a big part of my life and you can see me changing as a person if you know where to look.

MY OCs. The fact that my OCs win people over so well! I had a very volatile relationship with OCs in my youth - self-inserts were A Thing Of The Devil in fandom back then and were to be mocked. I was, I’m semi-sorry to say, part of that crowd - never flamed anyone directly, because I was raised to Not Be Mean, but I joined in on the mocking on private message boards. These days I look back on my youthful indiscretions with eye-rolling fondness, because I can now see how much internalized misogyny I was dealing with and I’m very much over the whole idea of Mary-Sues. But the community I was with did actually have a lot of GOOD writing advice as well, and it was a fun group of people, so I can’t fully regret my time there. When fandom drift eventually caused me to float away, I took those lessons on what made an OC annoying and useless with me, and when I started writing OCs of my own, I made sure to go in the opposite direction. It really seems to have paid off!

The fact that I’ve managed to collect a small but loyal following and see the same names popping up after I post something. I don’t think I could handle being a BNF, but knowing that I’ve got a dozen people who consistently read and enjoy my stuff? That’s so cool. <3

There’s a LOT of other stuff, really, but off the top of my head...here you go! <3

#GG tumblr escapades #GG 10th anniversary #caelum rambles

[finsterhund]

Hey I fucking broke my ankle lmao

“I could really use a break right now” I say as I struggle with my dog having terminal cancer, my roommate pushing my limits, my money being nonexistent, and barely getting one meal a day.

A finger on the monkey’s paw that is me ever wanting anything in life curls again. Must have been a pretty fucked up monkey because there’s a lot of fingers on this thing by now.

So yeah, life thought I wasn’t going through enough already so it added broken fucking ankle to the list of Finsterhund suffering hours.

“I wish I wasn’t broke” is another good one. “here have a different broke then lol. go fuck yourself you rotting corpse of a victorian boy piece of shit”

here’s the goods. Got ex roommate to take photo of the screen. Doctor did not let me email the high res version to myself.

I did not go “waaaiii” on the way down, unfortunately. Life just isn’t like a video game. Probably didn’t look funny either. In reality I am a silent faller/injurer/whatever. Survival instincts of child abuse survivor I land and stay there as quiet as possible. I “grew out of” signals for help before teenage years. Which is a blessing in disguise because I don’t like people looking at me when I am hurt. it’s the “baby deer waiting for mom to come back instinct” I hide from predators.

My brain didn’t really process it when it happened. I just fell and heard a SNAP. If I had watched a video of it happening to someone else I would have found it gross but fortunately my brain just let me ignore it.

I was mostly immediately scared that I had somehow damaged the FIFTY DOLLAR dog calming aid that I got for Cazza in the pet store. I needed something like it for her and just seeing it in person and not having to pay 30 dollar shipping I was like “yeah. getting it here” fortunately the only fragile part is a little plastic capsule that imitates a heartbeat, which was packaged inside the toy inside the box. I hope. I have not opened it.

But the reason I fell is because I was also carrying giant bag of dog food. You see my vet recommended I switch out her food in light of the potential heart disease link. So I got the biggest bag of the best chicken stuff they had. My roommate might try saying that it was because the bag was too heavy. It wasn’t. I could lift that shit just fine. Bag was impossible for my impaired depth perception cringe fail line of vision to see around. The same visual impairment that prevents me from being able to drive a car made me think that I could put my foot down on the curb of the sidewalk. Dumb ass thought I was stepping OVER the curb.

Fortunately the bag of dog food broke my fall. Otherwise I’d have probably smashed my nose and teeth on the pavement. I really hope the expensive puppy calming toy is unharmed :( I say as I have a fucking broken leg.

So yeah. If you’ve seen labyrinth where David Bowie playing Jareth the Goblin King walks over all those weird ass fucked up stairs and ledges that are all a manner of odd angles? Specifically where he just takes steps that are at an angle that you cannot actually walk? Yeah I fucked up Jareth platform stairs walked over the fucking curb and snapp my legs

yes, I said legs.

Only my left is technically broken. It’s a Webber A something or other. I have a sick as hell photo if you wanna see. It’s included in this post.

But my right foot also got fucking fucked up. That one it snapped a tendon or a ligament or whatever the fuck. Get this, it snapped off a small piece of the gottamn bone. It’s not a break but it’s like it came off like a splinter. I made a joke in the hospital about how it’s like when you throw a sticky hand at the wall and when you pull it back a piece of the paint comes off with it. That was really fucking funny but nobody laughed. My friend’s group chat thought it was funny though. I did not get a photo of that foot and the tiny cringe sticky hand paint sliver bone.

I am on pain meds better than my normal pain meds. I can barely feel the legs in bed now.

So back to the parking lot. I landed on the dog food bag. I am hoping the calmeroos puppy is not broken or damaged in any way, I heard the snap but my brain is not registering the snap. This hurts “like a normal fall” I think at first. It hurts a lot of course, but I have the pain tolerance of a truck (thanks for this one Will) and a “heartwarming” story from my youth is that my mom didn’t believe my arm was broken both times it happened because I wasn’t “in pain enough” so I’ve got the firsthand experience to back that up.

Yeah then I try to fucking move my goddamn legs. Left one, broken one, there’s noises. Like cracking pop sounds. And pain. God fuck. It feels like the foot is loose and it’s only connected by fleshy flesh and muscle and skin. Aka like how my dislocated shoulder (that my mom also dismissed because I didn’t scream enough... after the lifeguard had alreayd put it back in...) had felt when I was 12.

So I’m like “oh god oh fuck oh god oh fuck I can’t get up or move” yeah my first response was “how the fuck am I going to escape?” I attempted to better myself to get up but absolutely not. Right foot feels like when I roll the damn thing which happens a lot. That *WAS* my bad ankle. sidkfjsdkfjskdf not anymore!!!!!

So an important note is that I’m technically better about my severe agoraphobia that my roommate can let me go into a store by myself provided he’s no more than a couple stores away. So while I’m waiting for a predator to pick my weak ass off outside the petstore he’s in the dollar store next door where I was supposed to meet him after putting the dog food in the car. The car I am now sitting next to. I have no way to get his attention because my phone is dead and also in my bedroom because it’s useless when not plugged into the wall.

Luckily the people parked next to us come out the store and see Mr fuck leg the fucked leg boy sitting on his bag of dog food between the cars and bless this family they help me out. By trying to get roommate out of the dollar store. Which doesn’t work. So they get the dollar store manager. Who then gets roommate out of the store. I was probably sitting there for 10 minutes or so. They had kids so I’m really trying not to let them see how fucked up the rapidly growing ankle balloon is.

But yeah. Eventually roommate come out the dollar store. And get this, he does the same shit my mom did every time anything ever fucking happened to me and is all “okay if it were really broken you’d be screaming right now” as I’m finally able to prop myself up enough to get into the car. That fucking triggered me real bad and I had a breakdown in the car while he went back into the dollar store to continue shopping.

Then we went to get food.

Then we went to costco.

He said that he would take me home and then if it was “still bad tomorrow” he’d take me to the ER.

So he tries to help me out of the car to the house.

I cannot put weight on the right leg either. It is agony. He’s trying to support the bad leg but the other leg need support too. A weaker man would have screamed but I just dropped to the parking lot ground and cried.

Made an attempt to crawl to the house but the gravel on my knees was just too much on top of everything else.

So FINALLY the ER is back on the menu. Ex roommate comes out because I need someone to support each foot. And they take me to their car and they drive me to the ER and I’m trying to eat a baconator while my foot is reminding me that we should have stayed as tiktaalik. you know, not fucking biped I want semi aquatic too please please please youre nothing

The wheelchairs in the ER are designed to offer full body support but the damn things are so hard to maneuver around and cannot be user operated. So I was sitting there having to get pushed around feeling like a dumb fuck because I hate needing assistance to move I hate it I hate it I hate it. I kept reaching down expecting to find the wheel handles but they weren’t there.

ER was... fun. There was a cool cartoon I’ve never seen before “Craig of the Creek” playing on the TV. I really want to see more of it I really liked it. But a fucking anti vax guy (YEAH REALLY) was swearing and bitching because there were kids shows on the TV This show was the only comfort I fucking had. Craig was spoonfeeding me comfort with his little freeze to death without your winter clothes adventure (RIP to him but I’m different)

But yeah. Once being treated it was all really nice. My ability to make constant jokes about fucked up injury death and suffering is a really good stress relief. Shout out to the xray tech who totally understood I use dark humor to cope and in response to my joke about how if I was a horse they'd just shoot me that I would “make wonderful glue” the other people were also very kind but I kinda felt they were intimidated by how “jovial” I was about the whole thing. Like yeah. I’m “handling it well” because that’s my whole strategy. Inside I’m screaming “please not the plates please not the plates please not the plates” (I am scared of having metal plates and screws.) Fortunately the stupid little cringe bone broke just low enough on the bone that I don’t have to get the plates and screws. I was literally begging Spot and she answered.

In my moment of weakness I decided that the true nature of the “Spot Power” is that she makes it so that when I’m going through shit I’m always “being so brave about it”

I kept thinking about how Cazza thought I had abandoned her though and while roommate did give her her evening walkies she was stressed and puked on the walk. Which fucking ruined my life and I cried more hearing that than the fucking leg.

So yeah. In canada crutches and the foot boot actually cost money. I’m out like 100 dollars. Plus like 30 because roommate wanted gas. I’m just used to it by now. I definitely need to plug Cazza’s gofundme again now though. Have no clue how I’m even going to take her to her appointments. I am hesitant to hope that roommate will give her as good walks as she needs.

There were more tears over the fact that I was going to fail Cazza than that I actually broke my fucking ankle.

This shouldn’t be a shock. I knew that eventually my visual impairment and my physical disability were going to team up on me and fuck up my body even worse somehow. Always thought it was going to be stairs though. A small comfort is apparently the x ray department has had four other people come in about the exact same curb. Yeah I kid you not. The curb between the redacted dollar store and the redacted pet store confirmed for Heart of Darkness 2: Andy Ankle Adventure

They were supposed to give me more pain meds but I guess I didn’t pick them up or they forgot or something. My brain is fried so i have no idea at all.

Crutches are a massive learning curve for someone with depth issues and balance issues. I almost fell face first on the goddamn crutches several times. If I wasn’t broke and you know, if I couldn’t fucking not leg broken walk leg I would go to hardware store and make a wheeling seat thing like those scooters in gym class and then I’d have Cazza pull me on walks. That would work.

Big issue is in and out of our place is fucking stairs. Yeah. I crawled up them on hands and knees. No way in hell with my already fucking broken mobility could I go crutches up them. I have to hold onto railing or I fall down stairs so crawling it was.

I can technically take the boot off to sleep but the tightness makes it so much better so fuck that. Wish I had the rolling elementary school gym class scooter so I could drag myself around the house.

Cazza doted on me like nothing else. She tried to brace me going up the stairs but she’s not big enough for what I’d need with this fucking leg problem. She helped me change out of my clothes though. Even though she’ll never be certified she’s still my everything.

The she cuddled close to me until I had calmed down and now she’s fast asleep in her bed. I am so glad I ended up giving her her bath before going out.

I am going to attempt to make it to my bloodwork appointment tomorrow. I have rescheduled that due to chemo appointments too many times.

I can’t remember if I’m forgetting anything else. Honestly my roommate telling me the exact same shit my mom did just fucking hurt so bad. I think I know my own body better than you do. Like I’ve told him about how she didn’t believe me and I had to beg her to take me to the hospital and he ended up doing the exact same shit. All because I didn’t outwardly exhibit being in enough pain apparently.

I just hate how being disabled you always have to fucking prove you’re disabled. Like I was expected to somehow walk back to the house and up the stairs but when I got to go to the ER yeah fucking broken lol.

I just wish I had parents. I need taking care of. I always did and I never got it.

I’m scared for the future. I don’t know how I’m going to manage or how I’m going to provide for Cazza.

I wish breaking my ankle could have made Cazza’s cancer go away

#text post #negative #long post #cw: injury #broken bones #ask me to tag #cw: medical

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

Evanescence’s Amy Lee Gets Back to Life

She’s speaking out like never before — and burning through a new Evanescence album, pandemic or no pandemic

Amy Lee misses Brooklyn. She lived there for 12 years with her husband (and later their son, born in 2015), before they left their apartment for Nashville a year ago.

“The perfect year,” she says with an eye roll over Zoom. Lee had hoped to be closer to her family in Arkansas and friends in Nashville when she moved, only to find herself stuck at home with the rest of the world. “We haven’t gotten [to see people] as much as we would have liked to because of Covid, but now we are here, and we will be set up for a better next year,” she adds optimistically.

That’s not the only plan she’s had to readjust: Earlier this year, her alt-metal band, Evanescence, returned to the studio with producer Nick Raskulinecz, writing and recording songs for what will be their first album of new material since 2011’s Evanescence. While the pandemic slowed them down, the group has forged onward, working remotely at first and later, after getting negative Covid tests, at a Nashville studio. In April, they released the sobering power ballad “Wasted on You” as the lead single from their very much in-progress LP, The Bitter Truth, which is due to be released in early 2021.

“I’m not going to rush,” says Lee, 38. “I’m just trying to live in the moment, feeding my soul with the music.”

When the band began making a concerted effort to work on new material last year, their one rule was that there would be no rules. They began with a wealth of material and inspiration, along with a couple decade-old songs that finally feel ripe for release. Since August, when her U.S.-based bandmates took tour buses to join her in Nashville (guitarist Jen Majura has remained in Germany), they’ve been powering through the rest of the album.

“The energy was just amped,” Lee says. “We were in there on fire. Now, the guys are back at their homes, and I am wading through the aftermath of all the music, piecing it together and finalizing the record.” In some ways, she says, lockdown has been a blessing: “The upside of this time is that I’ve had to buckle down and focus. Even on the days that I don’t want to, I come out here and I go, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s finish the album.’ ”

The near-decade leading up to The Bitter Truth has been both eye-opening and invigorating for Lee. After the release of Evanescence, the group went on hiatus to deal with a legal dispute with their former label. Lee took some time to work on solo projects, including a children’s album. When the band got back in the studio, it was to reimagine their past hits with orchestral arrangements for the 2017 LP Synthesis.

Those changes, among others, mean that The Bitter Truth will be their first album with the current lineup of Evanescence. The band has changed significantly since Lee formed Evanescence as a duo with guitarist Ben Moody in 1995, the year after they met at a Christian youth camp in Little Rock at age 13. Lee, whose father worked in the radio business, had grown up loving Motown before seeing the film Amadeus and falling for classical music. “I wanted to be like Mozart,” she says. “I begged for piano lessons. I got to take piano lessons. Then grunge hit.”

Soon, she was deep into the radio rock of the day, like teens across America, listening to Nirvana, Soundgarden, Tori Amos, and Beck. At the same time, she was writing poetry and thinking about the connections between her favorite sounds. “It just all fell together,” she says. “The heavier the music — the more it was in the Metallica, Pantera world — the more similarities I could draw with Bach and Beethoven.”

Evanescence signed their first record deal in the late Nineties, when Lee was 19 and starting to study theory composition at Middle Tennessee State University. It took a few independent EPs and a jump to a major label for the duo to become a full band, enlisting a few friends for their first full-length album, 2003’s Fallen. The LP became one of the year’s hugest commercial success stories, going platinum seven times over and making them instant peers to Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, Norah Jones, and Avril Lavigne. “Bring Me to Life,” its thrashing thunderstorm of a lead single, became an enduring goth-pop anthem, with follow-up “My Immortal” not far behind. At the 2004 Grammys, Evanescence took home the Best New Artist trophy, beating out 50 Cent and Sean Paul, and Fallen was nominated for Album of the Year (it lost to Outkast’s unstoppable Speakerboxxx/The Love Below).

Behind the scenes, though, success proved difficult for Evanescence to handle. “It was weird,” Lee says now. “I grew up in public.” She was surprised that an album so informed by real-life darkness, including the tragic death of her sister when they were both young kids, could yield Top 40 hits. “[We were] rock-band kids at the Grammys or the American Music Awards or whatever, rubbing elbows with the pop stars of the day,” she adds. “When we won, it felt like somebody was going to jump out from behind and surprise us and go, ‘Just kidding. Losers. You don’t belong here at all.’ ”

Lee spent the band’s first major tour worrying about an ailing brother, and tensions in the band boiled over with Moody’s dramatic departure halfway through a 2003 trek across Europe; he has never returned to the band. “I remember lots of times just wanting to go home,” Lee says. “I was the only female for miles, and I felt alone in my band and on the road.”

Every rock era has been defined by how few women have been able to break through to the mainstream, and Lee felt isolated even as her operatic mezzo-soprano became one of rock’s definitive voices. At one radio show, a DJ introduced the band by admitting that he had “jacked off” to the Fallen album cover, a close-up of Lee’s face. After the first song and a few minutes of simmering rage, Lee called him out. At another show, she interrupted her performance to confront a few members of the mostly male audience who were chanting “Show your tits.”

It took until this year for Lee to feel comfortable expressing her opinion on politics, speaking out in interviews against Donald Trump and the police killing of George Floyd. On “Use My Voice,” released as a single this summer, she makes it clear she’s no longer willing to stay quiet: “Drown every truth in an ocean of lies,” she sings. “Label me bitch because I dare to draw my own line/Burn every bridge and build a wall in my way/But I will use my voice.”

Evanescence recorded the song with backing vocalists including Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and the Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen — two leading voices in today’s hard rock who told Lee she’s been a major influence on their careers. “That started giving me life,” Lee says. “It made me pour myself into it with a new sense of understanding and purpose and confidence that what I was saying was worth hearing.”

#Amy Lee #Evanescence #2021 interviews

[itsnothingofinterest]

PLF Advisor Headcanons (’cause why not)

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the PLF advisors, probably more than I should be about characters we barely have faces of. All of this stuff’s probably gonna get flushed down the drain sooner rather than later, and I have been meaning to start actually posting stuff on this site. Might as well share, am I right?

I’m sure I shouldn’t need to tell anyone this at present, but just to be safe, or in case of future readers: the latest chapter was 276 & we know next to nothing about any of these guys except Slidin’ Go, so most of is baseless conjecture. Most of it mine, but I’ll source where I’ve borrowed some ideas. The closest thing to a basis for any of these is “this is probably the kind of quirk I could see someone in this position having” & “these motives and backgrounds sound like what Horikoshi would give to a long-term ally of Shigaraki”. We clear? Everybody got their proper expectations in place? Cool, now let’s get to the fun bits.

Black (Tactics)

Twice Advisor #3 (PLF Granny)

I won’t lie, I’m organizing this list this way to talk about her first.

Contrary to her appearance, PLF Granny actually used to be a super dangerous criminal and wanted hero killer, before disappearing off the face of the country (see Spinner Advisor #3 for more on that).

Now she’s the PLF’s resident mother/grandmother figure (depending on how old you are).

(She’s secretly not that old though.)

Always willing to help a fellow PLF soldier out of a problem no matter how minor, but would also lecture them for the smallest misbehavior.

Greatly appreciated because not a lot of high ranking PLF members have the greatest motherly figures in their lives rn.

Her quirk is something like Overhaul’s, but a bit weaker and a bit more gruesome. She can fully manipulate any human body she’s touching besides her own; allowing her to close up wounds, lock up muscles, contort limbs, or even just blow you up.

Illegally experimenting with her quirk caused her to accidentally kill someone in her youth, and she’s been on the run ever since.

She’s working with the PLF to improve quirk counseling, believing a society more accepting of quirks would allow kids with dangerous quirks to understand them better & know how to use them safely, so none of them will end up like herself.

Twice Advisor # 2 (Scary Canadian)

“Scary Canadian” really sums up his personality. He’s actually quite nice and polite to hid friends & allies, or otherwise in his downtime. But also you really don’t want to mess with him. Or else.

Needless to say, he and Twice got a long real quick once the underlying tension of their 2 groups going to war had (mostly) passed.

His quirk (along with a funky entire-upper-torso) allows him to energize himself with stored up energy, making him a bit strong, faster, and tougher.

He can also use a lot of energy at once for laser eyes. A useful skill, but it usually puts him out of the fight afterwords.

The energy stores up during sleep, which means he sleeps for an extra few hours each night and leaves him uncharacteristically grumpy in the morning.

He can also build up energy while awake, but it leaves him lethargic so he doesn’t do it while he has paper work to do.

He never wanted to be a hero as a kid, but as he grew older he found that meant people didn't like him using his quirk so much.

He joined the MLA for the simple reason of his experiences making him feel quirks should just be treated as a normal part of a person, instead of an aspect only heroes should be allowed to use/acknowledge.

Twice Advisor # 1 (King Bradly looking guy)

You remember in chapter 258, they mentioned a guy named Sanctum; oldest member in the MLA and believing all the League members are just in puppet positions? This is him.

He doesn’t really mean to come across as that unapproachable & rude, but he finds making sure everyone takes their jobs seriously is more important than being friendly.

As a result, while he & Twice come at odds quite often, they actually work quite well together. He keeps Twice on track and Twice appreciates that.

Much like Yotsubashi, his family has been in the Liberation Army for generations. Their cause is all he’s even known, but he has no regrets, especially now that Shigaraki’s livened the cause up.

I used to headcanon this guy’s quirk as making portals, but that might be someone else’s quirk no so...Earthbending, his quirk is earthbending.

He’s pretty good with it to, what with training with it since he was a little kid. The amount he can move is between that of Pixie-Bob & Gigantomachia, but he outshines them both in control.

He could make a perfectly square, finely-detailed hall a foot underground and no one above it would even feel the earth shifting.

Violet (Guerrilla Warfare)

Dabi Advisor # 3 (Ana)

So most of this is borrowed from @possessedfuzzybear

To catch everyone up: he’s named Ana (which means ‘hole’), he’s Dabi’s emo friend, and his hair is neon green.

See their blog for more info, but be warned: Fuzzy is horny AF. 18+ only, understand children?

His quirk has already been shown: It’s either making holes in stuff, or possibly making portals.

Needless to say, he and Dabi combo well together.

When he was a kid, one of his parents were arrested by heroes and he ended up running away from home before he got put in the system. He ended up meeting PLF Granny and some other runaways, and when she joined the MLA, he followed along.

He wasn’t originally a very active member, but when he saw the perks PLF Granny was getting for her hard work, and more importantly that she was spending those perks on himself and the other runaways; he started going above and beyond to earn his room & board.

Dabi Advisor # 2 (Tube Face)

Another emo of the PLF, which is probably why he’s with Dabi. That said, he’s less close to Dabi because he’s the exact same kind of loner as Dabi was before he got put in charge of stuff. So they resonate with each other, but they don’t exactly talk.

This guy’s quirk is that he has a snake for a tongue; full-sized and it talks in place of his normal mouth.

That’s actually what the tube is for, it’s snake armor.

(2nd guess, and this probably more likely if I’m honest, is some kind of gas quirk. if that’s true though, he’s related to Mustard.)

His story is a typical one; ostracized for having a particularly freaky mutant quirk that, while impressive, went unappreciated outside of heroics. Perhaps he even tried to become a hero, but dropped out, and the Japanese school system is yet another harsh mistress of society.

Either way, he then joined the biggest game in town that’s trying to make quirks more accepted, so he and kids like him can be appreciated instead of ridiculed.

Dabi Advisor # 1 (Happy with his piercings)

This guy’s something like Muscular without quite so many murders; generally just happy to be here doing whatever we’re doing as long as he gets to use his quirk to do it.

Dabi puts on airs of hating him, but really he...mostly doesn’t.

His quirk is actually super speed, which he combos with his impressive muscles to be quite the lightning bruiser.

That said, he’s not that fast. Like, he is to the flash, what Sato Rikido is to All Might. Probably somewhere between Iida before and after Recipro Burst.

His motivations are, as stated, pretty similar to why Muscular joined the League, except this guy looked into a slightly more legitimate organization because we was looking to legalize the freedom he was after, rather than simply ignoring legality in general.

He’s not exactly opposed to Shigaraki’s methods though.

Geten Advisor #3 (Pointy Head)

My first though looking at this guy is “His color is Blue”.

Generally, the suit and mouth armor make me think he either has or had ties to big business or heroics. Let’s go with the latter.

He was a humble but fairly accomplished hero, or maybe even just a sidekick, when he took down some socially powerful villain the HC didn't exactly want him taking down.

He and his entire Agency were indirectly ruined, and so joined the MLA in hopes of continuing to help people in their own way. Happily for him, that turned out to be fighting against the HC.

His quirk is a simple one: enhanced sight, hearing, and basically all his senses, as well as the ability to process it all very quickly.

To combos this with his swordsmanship to deadly effect.

Having the title of “advisor”, he tends to give lots of advise to Geten (regardless of if it’s wanted), looks out for him, and generally ignores that fact that Geten is his superior, not subordinate.

Geten Advisor # 2 (Sweater Lady)

The PLF Wine Aunt. And she introduces herself like that to people too.

She’s brash but wise, tends to look out for everyone in the PLF when she can, but also shares just a few of Geten’s more worrying views on quirks.

So guys like Dabi & Spinner think there might be hope for her if they can get her to knock that prejudice stuff out, and actually have good reason to think they can, but generally steer clear of her when possible.

Her quirk is something powerful, but disfiguring to her face. My current favorite idea being breathing out a gaseous neurotoxin or something to that effect that makes her mouth look weird. 

Her sweater actually hides a series of soft but sturdy tubes that expel the neurotoxin from her arms, because she can aim her arms better than her head.

Her reasons for being in the MLA are basically that with a lack of social changes in the advent of quirks, standards of beauty are as BS as ever for women, even as women like her get weird mutations to their bodies, and especially to the head.

She believes a society more accepting of quirks would be more willing to accept mutations as beautiful, although this has eventually developed into a complex about powerful quirks being beautiful in order to convince herself of her own worth.

Hence everyone’s belief that maybe they can fix that complex of hers once they build a more accepting society. (That and, y’know, they have to work with her anyway.)

Geten Advisor # 1 (Stressed Baldy)

Probably one of the most welcoming advisors to the League because due to this quirk, this man generally ties to say cheerful at all times.

You see: his quirk is tied to his emotions. All of his emotions. Only by not feeling anything in particular, like in the picture above, does it not activate.

That’s actually why he’s in the PLF, he finds in unreasonable that those with hair trigger quirks like himself be forced to not use those quirks in public or face criminal charges.

Well actually, he’s also from an MLA family like Yotsubashi, but his ancestor joined for the same reason; so he’s probably the person born into the MLA with the best reason for still being there.

Ah, but I didn’t explain the quirk itself, what he does depends on what emotions he’s currently feeling.

When Happy, or otherwise feeling positively towards himself: a barrier forms around him right above his skin & clothing. While in this barrier, hits to him are diminished, and his own hits hit harder.

When sad, fearful, or other such emotions: that barrier disappears from around him and instead forms around his allies.

When angry, or otherwise directing negative emotions outward: the barriers appear around his enemies, and then lock in place so they cannot move. They also can’t be hurt in this state, but he can work around that.

Carmine (Intelligence)

Toga Advisor # 3 (Muscular tank top guy)

The reason he’s in the Intelligence regiment has little to do with his quirk, and a lot to do with his charismatic and friendly personalty. He get’s a lot done just going out and talking to people, and he teaches his subordinates how to do the same.

His quirk is simple x-ray vision. Nothing all that special, but he has learned to use it well in a fight, seeing how the opponent moves like a certain Jojo stand from part 6.

He was also a part of PLF Granny’s group of runaways who joined the MLA when she did. No particularly dramatic reason why, he was just broke & unlucky and she was just nice.

Before they joined the MLA, he did stuff like convince bakeries to give their left over product to the kids at the end of the day.

They ended up joining shortly before the MLA really started making it’s resurgence, so he made a name for himself helping out the new guys. And since everyone was already looking up to him, the higher-ups gave him a good position to keep doing that.

That’s his job with Toga too, introducing her to the ins and outs of the PLF. They also tend to talk romance and cute things (like I said above, he’s good at talking to people), so they get along pretty well despite underlying tension.

He finds her crushes on multiple enemies worrisome though, for multiple reasons, and is trying to build up the nerve to talk to her about that.

Toga Advisor # 2 (R2D2 Expy)

Little can we tell from the above picture, that’s just his head (and extremely long neck). He has a torso and such below.

His quirk is actually being a cyborg, and most of his body is augmentable.

He has multiple weapons he can attach and detach from himself and automatically control like any other limb.

It wares on him to attach to much to himself though, so he won’t be augmenting himself with any large equipment.

The R2D2 head is a disguise he wears to PLF meetings, and he intends for it to be his official villain outfit once he hits the field.

It’s not his only look though. He has numerous faces and various identities to go with them. It’s how he joined the Intelligence division.

He’s a Star Was fan (obvs).

Toga doesn’t talk to him much, what with him not being very cute. He mostly takes care of managerial tasks with his underlings, and organizes reports for her.

He also works at Feel Good Inc., & only really joined the MLA because he was invited by his boss, Skeptic. He got a promotion out of it and still feels like he’s on the winning side though, so he’s not complaining.

Toga Advisor # 1 (Beautiful Woman)

The advisor Toga most depends on, this woman tends to do all the work Toga’s less than qualified to handle as a 17-year old.

Frankly, Toga kind of looks up to her as a powerful feminine figure in her life, especially since she’s largely not quirkiest (like Sweater Lady), and her past is pretty similar to Toga’s but she managed to bounce back into a powerful position.

Her quirk is the ability to read minds in short snippets by making eye contact with people, usually whatever they’re thinking of in that moment..

It’s not perfect because people can sort of feel ‘something’ when she reads their minds, so people who know what she’s doing can just look away. It’s pretty easy to not look someone in the eye.

Giran caught on pretty quick when he was being held hostage.

She pretended to be quirkless to her friends and repressed it well into adulthood, until her quirk was discovered. At that point, not only did people stop trusting her, she was accused of illegal quirk usage and pursued by the police. This was when she found and joined the MLA.

Skeptic Advisor # 3 (Toad Man)

This guy radiates the best and worst of redneck culture, kinda gross, more than a bit judgy; but also inventive, Integrous, and always willing to throw down with corrupt authority figures.

(That said, he’s toned down the prejudice stuff working with so many different people and also Toga threatening him with knives.)

He’s also good at talking to the marginalized and those out in the boonies, which essentially means he’s got an underworld information network all his own, which is half of how he got his position in the Intelligence regiment. In fact, for better or worse, he’s the one who found Giran.

The other half is his quirk; which is, along with general toad-like characteristics, the ability to temporarily eat anything he can fit in that big ol’ gullet of his and analyze it down the the barest physical detail. (”physical” meaning he could find a finger print on a gun and draw it out, but couldn’t read the data on a memory stick.)

His reasons for being in the PLF are simple: like I said, he’s just always willing to throw down with authority figures. He doesn’t care that his quirk isn’t for fighting, he’ll just punch every HC member in the face.

Actually, he’s even more invested now that Shigaraki’s in charge. He wasn’t really feeling the MLA before, but now he’s gung ho about the cause like few others.

Skeptic Advisor # 2 (Ugh...Slidin’ Go)

Being a well known character, there’s not that much to say.

Hmm...

His reasoning for joining the MLA is surprisingly simple: he feels society’s view on quirks is too simple; praising flashy quirks while also forbidding non-heroes from using them where possible, all for the convenience of heroes and the hero industry.

Being so attached to his quirk, he entered into heroics in order to get a quirk licence, but still felt this thought process was backwards and joined the MLA to turn it around.

He’s responsible for a lot of the heroes in the MLA, having found a lot of like minded people in his industry and got them into the Army. A lot of them were actually old classmates of his.

Skeptic Advisor # 1 (Beautiful Man)

The half-brother of Beautiful Woman, he joined because she invited him and he wanted to help her. Not only because she was family, but because he was responsible for her quirk being discovered & he feels he needs to make up for accidentally making her a wanted woman.

He’s not a wanted criminal, so he got a job at Feel Good Inc. and works closely with Skeptic as a sort of secretary that reminds him of his personal affairs.

(In reality though, he manages contact with the MLA/PLF while Skeptic is running his company.)

He gets along with Skeptic as well as anyone can with that personality. Way better than Slidin’ Go anyway.

This quirk is a form of telepathy like Mandalay. There are 3 differences though. 1) he or a part of him must be touching the person to communicate, which he gets around by making bracelets & other accessories with strands of his hair that can be pressed against the wearer’s skin. On the other hand, 2) it’s got no range limit and 3) allows for 2 way communication. 

And on one last note: he can always tell who he’s talking too, as well as who might be trying (& failing) to listen in.

Essentially, he’s a hack-proof human communications network, able to pass along information from key PLF members to each other and Skeptic, who can relay the information to other members through more mundane means. 

It’s a good back-up for if heroes try jamming or otherwise interfering with those mundane communication methods.

Brown (Support)

Mr. Compress Advisor # 3 (Compress Cosplayer)

The mask is actually new, and actually kind of is Compress cosplay. when he met Compress they just kind of resonated with each other, and Compress decided to make him his apprentice.

It’s only been a few months, but he took to showmanship quite well. And now everyone else around him hates him. Dude just can’t win.

His quirk is basically being living hammer space; he can store things in his body like Momo in reverse & pull them out like Momo in forward.

The catch is that his whole body looks something like an astral CGI monstrosity; his skin is this gelatinous looking goop patterned like space that caused him to be bullied growing up.

Though his past is similar to Sweater lady, his motives are actually more like Spinner’s: living a lonely life, he kind of just joined the first cause that resonated with him in the hope of finding meaning.

He has yet to really find that yet, but at least he found a hobby & a good number of good friends.

Mr. Compress Advisor # 2 (Natsuo’s happier doppelganger)

A popular base commander, this guy has made a name for himself in the PLF for his managerial skills. He takes care of his people, completes his jobs promptly, and is generally pretty intelligent when it comes to resource management.

His job as an advisor is less stellar though. Except for reports, he tends to leave Compress to himself and/or his other advisors. Compress has tried to talk to him but he made fun of the magician act once and now they keep their distance.

He probably has one of the peatiest reasons for being in the PLF among the advisors & lieutenants.

You see, his quirk is that he’s able to make or dismiss a kind of wooden golem to do what he wants, and he often had it do menial labor for him.

That said, while it’s legal for him to do that in private settings, it’s actually illegal in public, and people have gotten on his case about that since he was a kid. What’s more, the reprimands got worse & worse the older he got, so eventually he got sick of it and joined the MLA.

Yeah, he’s part of a terrorist group because it’s illegal to use his quirk to carry his groceries for him.

Mr. Compress Advisor # 1 (Electric Scar Face)

Another descendant of a mainstay family in the MLA, he was actually a friend of Yotsubashi growing up. They’ve drifted a bit in adulthood since he isn’t exactly the business type, but they still work closely enough and keep in touch.

That’s actually most of the reason he’s not exactly on board with Shigaraki being in charge now. He only really heard 2nd hand about what happened in Daika, and he’s pretty biased in favor of the old boss.

All that said, he & Compress probably have one of the most stable lieutenant/advisor relationships; agreeable enough, healthy but minimal disagreements, actually pretty similar humor & they’ve both got good heads on their shoulders with just more than a hint of eccentricity.

We already know his quirk, absorbing and discharging Electricity.

Spinner Advisor # 3 (Cementos’ long lost cousin)

While not actually related to Cementos (probably), I’ve actually grown attached to the idea that he went to UA himself, so here’ the continuation of PLF Granny’s story I promised.

So one day, while working on his internship, he ended up pursuing a wanted hero killer, who he found out was just an old lady who lost control of her quirk and has been panicking ever since. He realized she needed help, but for her crimes she’d surely be sent to Tartarus for life (which is a redundant statement), so he decided to leave professional heroism behind to help her disappear, as well as help her in general.

In the process, they came across a good number of other runaways, and when the MLA agreed to shelter them in exchange for labor and generally joining the cause, they agreed.

As an advisor, he has a good professional relationship with Spinner, and they often discuss what they believe heroes should really be like and the failings of their current iterations. As such, he’s ended up growing to the idea of Shigaraki as presented to him by Spinner.

His quirk is the ability to turn into a large whale like creature that’s able to move large numbers of forces in it’s mouth through the water. I think it’d be cool if it could move through the ground too, but that might overlap with Machia.

He’s also able to produce and shoot spikes from his skin in either form to defend himself. 

He’d probably get along with/relate to Kurogiri if he’s ended up getting some of Shirakumo’s memories by the time he escapes.

Spinner Advisor # 2 (Edgy Spider Guy)

(Just a reminder for those who only remember this guy from the above picture, he was shown to have spider legs in a later chapter.)

Spinner’s gamer buddy among the advisors, as well as the main supporter for his crusade of eliminating mutation prejudice.

Having a spider quirk, no surprise he was bullied in school only to be harassed and marginalized in adulthood. He eventually got a job at Detnarat, and was personally invited into the MLA by Yotsubashi himself.

Along with the extra spider limbs, he can also produce especially strong spider silk, which he can then telekinetically control while close to it. He does’t produce it at a very quick rate, but he’s been able to sew it into his cloak to move it, letting him increase his speed and pull off a few other neat tricks.

The main downside though is a particularly freaky face, which he’s developed a complex about. Thus why he hides his face. He’s got friends working with him about it though.

That said, he’ll probably still keep the cloak after he overcomes this complex because it’s cool.

Spinner Advisor # 1 (Cute Bug Girl)

The last of PLF Granny’s old runaway gang among the advisors.

(there are still others, but they have much smaller rolls, if any.) 

She joined after losing her parents to an altercation with the CRC. (Y’know, the Klan looking freaks.)

Her personality is something like a transitioning point between a high school alpha bitch and a wine aunt. Mainly because she looks to sweater lady from Geten’s group as something of a roll model (unfortunately).

Her relationship with her boss, Spinner, is rather tense as a result. She looks down on him for his quirk (though she’s tactful enough to not mention this), but relates to his hardships as a Mutant. As a result, she looks out for him more than she looks down on him, but she’s still kind of waiting for him to prove himself.

Her quirk is the ability to create & control tiny insects about the size of fairy flies (<3mm in length) in vast swarms.

These bugs move pretty silently, so they can act as a fog, fly into people’s mouths and attack them there, or fly into wounds to either stitch them closed or make them worse.

While she doesn’t have an actual PHD, she was trained by several doctors hired by the MLA for many years to make the best of her quirk, and is now the director of the PLF’s medical units, except for small, personal medial units in the other regiments.

General stuff

Just to be clear, though I describe most of these guys & gals relatively nicely, most all of these guys probably have more confirmed kills under their belt than Twice.

(Granted, that’s partially because Twice doesn’t really confirm his kills. We only know of 2, including the guy he murdered after he was himself murdered. But that still means everyone here has killed several people.)

Each of these guys have their own base to watch over, you’ll remember, and part of their responsibilities is either recruiting or eliminating people who learn too much.

Each of them has the job of easing their subordinates into going along with the new leadership, especially the people who weren’t there for Daika. This is kind of tricky because they were also not there for Daika, so they’ve been required to talk with the League members a lot.

It’s helped encourage them to get to know the new management relatively well.

Side note: I’m also willing to bet Trumpet & Redestro have their own regiment; probably an undercover or public relations regiment, and probably have 6 advisors for themselves too. I’m excited to meet them.

And despite how much work I put into all this, I’m also excited to see just how much of it is wrong as we meet these guys for real.

#bnha #league of villains #lov #PLF #paranormal liberation front #twice #dabi #geten #toga himiko #bnha skeptic #spinner #mr. compress #headcanons #I apologize if I come across as overly defensive #my only other experience talking in social media is YouTube comments #still #be gentle I'm new to actually posting stuff

[adozentothedawn]

Saint Waidwen The Musical The Justification

This is an explanation for something I wrote in this fanfiction. Go read it maybe if you haven’t? :) But if you don’t have the time or interest, the relevant thing for this is that I mention a controversial musical adaption of the story of Saint Waidwen in Readceras.

Yeah, so first of all, I just really wanted this to be a thing because musicals about weird things are just my jam. I can however justify why this could totally be a thing! I’m aware that I don’t have to, but I just really want to write this, so I will. Now sit down and listen.

(Also you might know a lot of these things already, but I don’t know what they teach in your countries so I’ll just explain the basics.)

Let’s start off with why anyone would ever do this anyway. 

First of all, people make musicals about weird shit all the time in reality, so why not in Eora. Like look at Les Mis. Does that scream “musical” to you? And, yet it’s pretty cool! 

Second of all, Art moves in cycles. To explain this, I’ll use german literature, because that’s what I learnt in school and therefore know a few things about. Let’s begin at the era of the “Aufklärung” (enlightenment I guess? It’s an era of literature from about 1720 to 1790. Note also that eras can’t be distinctly seperated, they do go on simultaniously for a while). This was the time of logic and reason first and foremost. Art had to be practical, without actually having to serve a purpose. So after a while of this going on, there were a bunch of young people who decided, fuck that. We want emotion to be important again! Among those people were for example Ghoete and Schiller, two names you might know, because they’re kind of famous. So there were these young men (and they were almost exclusively men unfortunately) who started writing plays and poems which are based on extreme emotion and the idea of the natural genius (genius is a relative term here, the characters were still kinda dumb, but they were very poetic about it), instead of sticking nicely to the idea of reason. This era is called “Sturm und Drang” (roughly: storm and urge, these are really hard to translate. Also they’re names, so they’re not really supposed to be translated anyway). Now these young people weren’t young forever though, so they grew up at some point (or died, but you get the point). Both Goethe and Schiller decided at some point that that stuff they wrote was kinda cringy and started writing other things, more focused on harmony, beauty and (as in the Aufklärung) tolerance, as opposed to the more forceful and often tragic Sturm und Drang. This was then called the “Weimarer Klassik” (Weimar being the cultural centre of germany at the time and Klassik as in classic). And then after a while, a new generation of young people decided that that was dumb and started someting called the “Romantik” (romance, not necessarily as in love, but more as in romantifying things). In this time, people wrote about magic, myths and fairy tales, the less realism the better. So you see what’s happening here. One generation says: This is great! The next one says: Fuck that, I’ll make it as different as I can. That generation grows up and decides: eh, maybe let’s tune it down a bit. Then the next generation comes and says: Fuck no! again. Of course there are always some that stick to their style, but that’s the general idea.

Now, how does that apply to my musical idea? For that let’s look at Readceras for minute. Readceras was founded by a bunch of farmers, though there was a tiny elite, as we know because Waidwen managed to win some of them over, most people were pretty poor. Poor people usually don’t have the time or recourses for literature or painting, with music, especially singing, being the most accessable form of art. That’s not to say that farmers don’t make art, weaving and the painting of furniture was a thing for example, but the poorer the people, the less they have to use, even when it’s winter and they’d have time, and Readceras was just pisspoor. Singing doesn’t really need anything, and instruments are reusable if they somehow managed to get one. So chances are, Waidwen and his generation grew up with music as their main form of art. Then the Godhammer happened, which sucked big time for them, and they probably wanted to distance themselves as much as possible from the time before Waidwen and idealize him, which in all likelihood lead to art changing a lot as well. 

Because here’s the thing, art doesn’t just move in cycles, it is also heavily influenced be societal and political happenings (but you probably knew that). For example: the literature era that followed (roughly, it began a bit before the other one ended) the Romatik was the “Biedermaier” (which is a surname and not translatable, you might now it from a furniture style though, that’s pretty big in Austria, not sure how it is where you live), which is a style that was heavily aimed inwards. It was mostly, look how happy my little family is, everything is great, nothing is happening, nothing at all, and could be mostly described as idyllic and quiant. That was, because it was a time of political regression, with the empire getting more authoritarian again and literature being heavily censored. So when Waidwen took the throne art probably already started changing, though he likely didn’t notice much of that as he was kind of busy being king and GOD, and with another traumatic event it would’ve changed even more. So it’s completely feasible that 20 years later the youth would decide to fuck all of that over and go back to find their roots, while changing what they find to fit their style. Admittedly the existance of elves mucks up the timeline a bit, but since the largest group of people there are human anyway, I’ll ignore that. Also, in context with the fanifc I’m writing this for, the timeline is helped by the fact that my Watcher is an Eothas priestess. Might sound weird, but hear me out. Favaen came to the Dyrwood as a missionary, and though she got sidetracked a bit, that was still her end goal. So after everything was over and she was well established as Taynu of Caed Nua, she made it into a sanctuary for Eothasians started to spread the faith there again. Of course she didn’t achieve too much in 5 years, but she set a trend. With Adaryc spreading word about her in Readceras, that would’ve had an effect there too, at least insofar that the Dyrwood wasn’t completely off limits anymore and leading especially young people who hadn’t lived through the war to be more curious about it.

Now, why would the older people not like that? Well for one, it’s different, and different is bad in Readceras. Also, it reminds them of a time both worse and better. Worse, as in the Aedyran colonial times (because I refuse to belive that Waidwen didn’t change the economy at least a little for the better), and better when their god literally walked among them, which he doesn’t anymore, so it rubs salt into that wound.

Then how can they get away with putting it on at all? That I can answer with absolute certainty, because it is entirely rooted in canon. The Ladies of the Aviary. Worshippers of Hylea which work explicitly to help artists portray their art and avoid censoring. They convince higher up people, or if they cannot be convinced, help the artists avoid detection. They don’t discriminate between good and bad art, and only seek to spread it unchanged and as the artist intended.

And while we’re on worshippers of Hylea, the church of Hylea is known to comission plays and poems about Eothas and Waidwen, specifically as a way to mourn their dissapearance, which certainly had a hand in the musicals creation.

For the last point: why does Waidwen like it? Now, aside from a personal preference I just made up, we established that Waidwen grew up with music. While the rest of his generation may have distanced themselves from that sort of art, Waidwen never had the chance to grow up so to speak. His death was one of the factors in the changing of art and so he never got to experience that. Yes I had to end this post on a sad note.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk that I basically just did because I wanted to rant about literature for a bit.

Here the Soundtrack It’s on Youtube cause I don’t have Spotify. The last song was added after the events of Deadfire btw

#Pillars of Eternity #Waidwen #essay #kinda #Saint Waidwen The Musical #tl:dr young people be doing new shit #also i just love the idea

[skyfallensoldier]

Mobile Navigation || Rules & Mun ↓

DISCLAIMER: I just want to note here at the beginning that while I am considering this RP blog to be historically based, i.e. remaining true to the time period and overall details of John Laurens' biographical information and whatnot, I do not consider myself a historically accurate blog, not entirely. Historical fiction is a well known genre of literature and many, MANY creative liberties are taken within that genre. Think of this blog like you would if you saw an Anastasia Romanov blog. She's dead, we know she didn't survive, and she's been dead a long-ass time; so has Laurens. People still have included her in many works of fiction, even after her body was identified and it was proven she did not survive her family's massacre. I saw a romance book a couple of months ago where she survived that was recently published. Historical fiction, while a controversial thing at times, is a legitimate form of literature.

You don't have to tell me if you think John isn't acting exactly like the real man himself would have, I know that. I'm not going to call John my 'perfect sunshine boy cinnamon roll' or dismiss the privilege he was raised on due to his father, I'm aware he was a real person who had his own personality, virtues and prejudices. I won't deny that while he was certainly a progressive thinking man for the time he grew up in he definitely still had racist thoughts and actions that were indicative of his upbringing. But I'm not on here to debate modern, real life politics, or get into arguments about whether he was a good abolitionist or not. At the end of the day, this is still a hobby for me, and I'm writing for fun.

Basically, don't take it too seriously. I'm a 21st century bisexual woman writing from the POV of an 18th century (likely gay) male soldier, the way I write him is obviously not going to be a perfect representation of who he was. I know he wasn't an amazing, perfect person, but I've still chosen to write a fictionalized version of him for my own entertainment. Please try to respect that; thank you.

Mun Stuff

Name: Luna Gender: Female (She/Her or They/Them) D.o.B: July 23rd, 1996 Age: 24 Nationality: Canadian Sexuality: Bisexual Timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) Activity: Daily BIOGRAPHY (SORT OF)

Hello, there! You can call me Luna! I've been interested in writing ever since I first got the internet when I was 14 and discovered FanFiction.Net and now I'm an aspiring author and Roleplay enthusiast. If you include acting/talking out DnD like games with friends then I've been 'roleplaying' since the fifth grade, but I like to think there's always room for improvement. If you ever want to chat I'd love to make a new friend or plot out a roleplay, so don't be afraid to shoot me an ask or send me a private message. Just because my muse can be a jackass doesn't mean I am! I’m a huge advocate for mental health, and if you ever need someone to talk to, please don’t ever hesitate to reach out! Some of my hobbies including literature and writing (of course), digging into mythology from various cultures, practicing solitary eclectic paganism/new age spirituality, drinking tea, and collecting crystals/minerals.

Please note that for the sake of disclosure, I am considered ‘Neurodivergent’, in that I suffer from ADHD, diagnosed at about age six, and have Anxiety and Depression which are directly tied to it. This doesn’t often effect my life on here, but I sometimes have an unpredictable sleep schedule (stay up all night, sleep in late into the morning, etc). I’m usually quick to reply to threads for the most part! I work every Tuesday and Thursday from 5pm to 7pm in addition to odd jobs here and there, during which time I won’t have access to the Internet. The rest of the week I’m on and off all day basically, so you can feel free to contact me any time.

RP Style

⭐️ Please use basic spelling/grammar/punctuation when you RP with me. I'm not a drill sergeant about these kinds of things, I know that typos happen, and if you have a vision problem or such we can absolutely find a way to work around that, I also have no problem roleplaying with people whose first language is not English, so that's totally fine and I’m happy to accomodate in whatever way I can, but it does make it a little difficult to play with you if I don't know what you're trying to say. For this reason I prefer if you not use any text shorthand (lol, idk, brb, jk, etc) unless our muses are messaging each other. Using it in the tags is fine.

⭐️ I roleplay Laurens in a past-tense 3rd Person Point of View (think story-telling format), and generally I don't use icons or text formatting unless I notice my partner does, then I will try to match their style (for example if you use icons and small-text, I will try to do the same, though because formatting isn't possible on mobile, any mobile replies might take longer to be posted than if I were on my laptop). If you have any issues with how I'm writing or need me to adjust my style for any reason don't be afraid to ask.

Contact

⭐️ If you spam me with messages over and over again about something I haven't replied to, chances are I'll drop the thread. I don't mind being reminded because I know Tumblr's notifications are notoriously unreliable sometimes, and humans can forget/lose things, but if you keep poking at me after I've acknowledged you the first and second time, I won't be pleased. Things can get busy on here, or in real life, or sometimes you're just lacking muse for that particular thread, y'know? It doesn't mean I hate you and don't want to RP, I'm almost always up for plotting, but muse tends to fluctuate.

⭐️ My ‘Discord’ is available to mutuals upon request. I don't mind roleplaying on there if Tumblr is being glitchy or you're just not feeling up to formatted/heavily plotted threads, sometimes Discord is fun in that you can do immediate replies without needing the effort of putting icons and formatting into it. I also have a Kik but I never use it. I don't RP in Tumblr's IMs, that's purely for OOC interaction.

⭐️ I also occasionally stream movies/TV shows in group chats or play “in character” Cards Against Humanity game nights, Among Us, etc. If you’re interested, lemme know, I’m always looking for more people to hang out with!

Important

I have no actual triggers that I'm aware of, although snakes do creep me out (mostly shots of them coiled up or images of their pupils), but there are some things I will not roleplay personally for comfort reasons:

⭐️ Cannibalism. You can mention it, for example I won't freak out if someone tells my muse that somebody else ate a person (he might, assuming its not a Supernatural type verse), but I won't RP him engaging in cannibalism, not even in AUs (blood-drinking vampires are fine). I'm just not sure I could stomach writing about eating people. I managed to watch Hannibal, barely, but writing about it? Nah. I can handle lots of horror, gore and disturbing content but not this. Sorry.

⭐ Incest/Pedophilia. I do not SEXUALLY ship with characters under the age of 18. John is not attracted to children, and would never consider sleeping with someone much younger than him.

⭐ I will not write anything sexual with muns who are under 18 years old, even if your muse is an adult. I'll still ROLEPLAY with you if you are under 18 but probably no younger than 16 just because things tend to get explicit on my blogs and I don't want to be accused of corrupting the youth with my foul language and weird opinions, lol. Seriously though, this blog covers a lot of dark subjects and while I’m all for minors exploring that safely through writing rather than in real life, some people aren’t comfortable with interacting with under age people for legal or personal reasons, please respect that.

⭐ Necrophilia. Just... no. Vampire threads don't count, as they're undead and not 'dead dead'.

⭐ Rape. I won't write it with you. I'm okay with mentions of rape, with rape/sexual assault survivor/recovery plots, and even with one character intervening to rescue another from an attempted sexual assault (if an attempted assault does occur, it will be thoroughly tagged and under a cut). I'm fully open to discussing rape recovery/trauma plots as those are things that happen in real life, and it can be interesting to explore how a character reacts to trauma. But anything else is a no-go, sorry!

⭐ Please be aware that I write Laurens as a gay man. However! Because of the time period, violent homophobia and social stigma, he has slept with women before and may be seen flirting with or referencing relationships with women in the past. He is still gay, and still uninterested in being with women long term, he's simply closeted to all but a few individuals. So, unless your muse is Martha Manning (who Laurens DOES love in a manner, and he always will), shipping with female characters on here most likely isn't going to happen unless it's heavily plotted/developed and part of an overall plot, and you understand that it will not be a conventional sexual relationship. I'm sorry if that disappoints you but I've read Laurens as a gay male for so long I have trouble seeing him any other way.

⭐ I will not roleplay slavery plots. This is not up for debate. Roleplaying a highly fictionalized version of a long dead real person who existed during a troubling time is one thing, but I draw the line at that. For this reason, while I'll happily play with non-white muses, muses using non white faceclaims, and crossovers with characters of all sorts, I'll have to decline playing with any muse claiming to actually be writing slavery. There’s a difference between, say, roleplaying a character like Daenerys, a fictional character who was technically a slave-bride sold by her brother, and writing actual slavery from a very real, horrible time period. Slave ownership will of course be mentioned on this blog, that's unavoidable, but just like the mention of rape may happen on this blog from time to time, it will be in reference to a past event or speaking about the subject in general, not roleplaying a scene of it. Please respect this rule, I was hesitant to make this blog at first, because I know it makes some people uncomfortable, but I won't glorify such a horrible real thing that happened to so many people.

Exclusives/Mains

Just a head's up, unless I develop a bunch of chemistry with a particular portrayal of a muse I'm not likely to agree to being exclusives with anyone, unless perhaps it's a very niche or divergent character that has formed a good relationship of some sort with John and I'd have trouble interacting with other versions of that muse. For major characters I just feel it would be unfair to say no to someone who I click with in every other way, solely because I have already befriended someone else writing that character.

I will, however, discuss becoming mains with someone whom I've either developed or plotted out detailed storylines/interactions with regarding our specific portrayals of our characters. This means that I tend to reply to them quickly when I'm online, or may make little gifts (moodboards, aesthetic things, mini ficlets, whatever) for them unprompted, have a verse dedicated just to them, etc. Even if it seems like we haven't done much on Tumblr, there may be a lot of off-site development on Discord or whatnot that led to us plotting out intricate stories for our muses.

Current Mains:

Alexander Hamilton - @quillborn​

DO

⭐️ Send private messages.

⭐️ Send my character asks/starters/memes.

⭐️ Tag me in things.

⭐️ Ask to plot or ship.

⭐️ Ask for angst, fluff, etc.

⭐️ Submit things to me & my muse.

⭐️ Do crack and other ridiculous things with me!

⭐️ Like my RP threads.

⭐️ Like my personal posts.

⭐️ Comment on my personal/OOC posts (if you want to).

⭐️ Comment on my crack threads.

⭐️ Instant Message (IM) me if you'd like to talk, whether we're friends already or not!

DON'T

⭐️ Send hateful messages to me about other people and especially my mutuals; doesn't count if it's about the muse and not the person playing them, however. Also, if I’ve got beef with someone for whatever reason, don’t harass them/send hate to them on my behalf, please. I don’t condone anonymous abuse, attacking others, or harassment. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, I promise.

⭐️ Introduce yourself with ‘wanna ship?’ For one, I prefer if we’ve at least started a roleplay together, or have spoken OOC. Auto shipping doesn’t always work out and I hate promising people something only to realize there’s zero chemistry, because then I feel like I’m letting them down.

⭐️ Come into my inbox with just ‘wanna rp?’ and that’s it. Please at least have some idea of what you want to roleplay, it’s not very fun when someone approaches you to RP but then doesn’t offer up any suggestions at all. Remember, you are always free to send me memes, whether we’re mutuals or not, and hit me up for whatever plot you think might interest me! I want to hear about it!

⭐️ Spam me with "reminder" messages if I've already acknowledged you the first few times.

⭐️ Reblog my RP threads if you're not a participant in them.

⭐️ Send me anonymous OOC hate. Hate for Laurens is fine, it's just another form of roleplay.

⭐️ Kill off my character or severely injure/maim my character without permission or having plotted something involving that with me first.

⭐️ Follow me if you're a porn blog. I don't mind blogs that post NSFW content, or smut a lot, etc. I mean blogs that aren't for RP and are literally just a normal looking blog until you click on it and the header and first twenty posts are hardcore nudity and porn. I hate those things.

⭐️ Shame my ships.

⭐️ Complain about my tagging. I put my smut under a 'read more' without exception and tag them as "NSFW //" with two dashes. Things that are not necessarily graphic but still have sexual undertones go under "Suggestive //". I use these tags to avoid attracting attention from porn blogs and porn bots that track certain key words, as such I do not tag my content with "Smut" or trigger words such as "dick, oral, anal, nudity, etc", please block my NSFW and Suggestive tags if you're uncomfortable. Triggery subjects (mentions of rape, animal abuse, torture, mental illness) will be tagged under the name of said trigger with a space and two dashes, example: "Self Harm //", “Suicidal Ideation //” or "PTSD //".

⭐️ Godmod my character. If you’re not sure what is/isn’t okay, come talk to me! I don’t bite! If you’re looking for an example of god mod behavior, here: “X lunged at Laurens, taking him by surprise, and hit him square in the nose, causing blood to spurt.” It might not seem like a big deal but it means that you decided how your character’s actions affected my muse, and not only that, didn’t give him a chance to dodge or anything. Not cool.

⭐️ Ship with me without permission (sending in shippy asks is A-Ok if you're interested in exploring a ship between our muses, I'm talking about things like claiming that our muses are in a relationship without discussing it with me, referencing dates or sexual acts that never happened, etc. I ship mainly with chemistry otherwise things get boring fast.

⭐️ Assume/act like our characters know each other/are closely connected (friends/family/lovers) if we've never discussed it unless it is established in canon/history. This especially goes for original characters. I'm open to Laurens forming deep relationships with OCs obviously, but those have to be developed in character, not just assumed from the first interaction.

⭐️ Attempt to roleplay with me if you are not a roleplay blog/or if you're just trying to RP as "yourself." I don't do Character X Reader imagines stuff. I don't RP with 'fan' accounts, only RP blogs. You can still send asks so long as you're not trying to initiate an RP scenario. For example, asking Laurens what his hobbies are, asking for a blessing etc? That's fine. Spamming me with different actions "you" are talking to Laurens is weird. Stop that. I will also not RP with blogs that claim to roleplay as real life people, such as Markiplier, that's super creepy. This does NOT apply to "historical fiction" roleplay (obviously since that's what this blog is), which is considered its own genre of literature. I'm talking about the above where people will 'roleplay' as real life, currently alive people like YouTube celebrities and ship them with their friends, even if they've made it clear that they're uncomfortable with it. 

⭐️ Get angry at me for doing something you don't like if you don't even have a rules page for me to go by. It's not fair; you can't expect your partners to just read your mind and magically know how you feel. If something bothers you let me know, I’ll make a note about it so I avoid it during our interactions!

⭐️ Use me as a meme resource blog without ever interacting with me. I don't require "reblog karma" for you to follow me, partners are more than welcome to reblog from me, but if we never interact and I just occasionally see you reblog fifteen posts from my meme tag and then disappear again I'm not gonna be happy. Go to the source or to an archived blog no longer getting notifications, please!

⭐️ Reblog my Meta/Headcanons. If they're from a different blog it's fine but the ones I've personally written are for MY portrayal of Laurens. I work hard on most of my stuff and I'd prefer if you didn't reblog it, not because you aren't allowed to have the same headcanon ideas as me, but because then it ends up getting liked or reblogged by lots of other people, spamming my notifications, etc.

OCs & Multimuses

I love OCs and multi-muse blogs (I have my own multimuse sideblog over at @historyremembers, which has other 18th century characters including the Hamilton children and some OCs), so feel free to interact! That being said, please have an about page of some sort on your blog. I can't follow back blogs that have absolutely no information available regarding their character(s). I don't RP with OC children of Laurens. This is nothing personal, but I'm fairly certain he was gay in real life and prefer to play him that way, and he only had one child - who he never even got to meet - in real life, so it just wouldn't make sense to me for him to have other kids running around unless he'd adopted some. If you're a multimuse, I may not follow you back if I'm only familiar with two of your muses if you have a blog of fifteen characters, simply because I'd prefer to keep my dash clean and only have characters/fandoms I'm familiar with on it. I'll still RP with you if you have a character I'm interested in! I just might not follow back if the majority of your characters I do not know, I apologize for this.

If you’ve made it to the end of this, congrats! I know it couldn’t be easy (my ADHD brain was frustrated trying to just write all this up) but it’s necessary so there’s not misunderstandings on what I am/am not willing to RP. I won’t ask for a password since I trust most people to have the courtesy to at least skim the rules of those they want to RP with. 

Have a nice day!

#Everybody Listen Up! {PSA} #Out Of The Field {OOC} #Long Post //

[in-tua-deep]

OKAY here’s the weird dream inspired au where five was never supposed to exist and was more of,, a late addition by the Universe to the fun mystery birth line-up

Once upon a time forty-three women gave birth around the world. A fact made only odd because none of these women were pregnant when the day began. Forty-three women gave birth to forty-three children. An eccentric billionaire traveled in an attempt to obtain as many of these odd children as he could.

He got six.

But that’s not quite how the story goes.

Once upon a time, the universe was born. She is beyond human conception, and she left nebulae in her wake and lit up all the stars. Beautiful and wonderful and lonely, and so she had a daughter. A daughter who would grow fond of a particular planet in her mother’s playground.

A daughter who, one day, would meet a man named Klaus Hargreeves and tell him that she didn’t like him.

A daughter who, for the most part, was inordinately fond of the human race. A daughter who was displeased when a group of humans who figured out time travel decreed that the apocalypse must occur and safeguarded it. 

She did her best to fix it. But every time she tried, the group stepped up. No matter what factors she managed to tweak, as she could only interfere indirectly, no matter what changed, the apocalypse was always guaranteed by outside interference.

For all the millennia the Universe’s daughter had been alive, she was still a child. So she did what all children do when they encounter a problem too big to take on alone. She went to her mother.

Neither could interfere directly, and indirect measures were doing nothing. The universe was too vast to take a mortal avatar, and her daughter had barred herself from direct interference long ago to establish free will. There was a group whose free will just continued to get in the way. And so the universe had an idea, and she asked her daughter a simple question: if she wanted a little sibling.

For you see, neither the Universe nor her daughter could interfere directly, but the Universe could create someone who could.

So it goes more like this - once upon a time forty-three women gave birth around the world. A fact made only odd because none of these women were pregnant when the day began. Forty-three women gave birth to forty-four children. 

It was easy, to slip her child in next to another who was also not quite supposed to exist. To choose a mother of a child who was already known to the Universe’s daughter to be adopted by the man who would unknowingly cause the apocalypse.

An eccentric billionaire traveled in an attempt to obtain as many of these odd children as he could.

He got seven.

Little Number Five, as he was dubbed upon arrival at the lavish mansion which was to become his home for the next thirteen years, opened his eyes and saw fractals of light. He brought his little hands up to caress the paths and choices that existed just beyond the fabric of the universe, a language only spoken by now three individuals.

And he grew up with a gentle crooning voice in his ear - the voice of his mother. The voice that taught him how to part the veil and fall into the timeless space between worlds and out the other side. One that was constantly with him.

He grew up knowing he had a mission.

“You are here to prevent the apocalypse!” Reginald Hargreeves told his children severely as they rolled their eyes and scoffed. It was a sentiment he echoed often enough that it had lost all meaning to them. 

Do you love you siblings? The Universe asked her child with unparalleled gentleness.

Yes, Five projected back, because he did. He was aware that he wasn’t quite the same as the others, but he loved them regardless with a kind of fierceness that should be scary but mostly just made him feel warm.

Then prove it. The Universe challenged her child, and so he did. He pulled impossible stunts and stole food and spoke back to his father. He directed all of the attention on himself to spare those he could. 

“Why can’t I kill him?” Five asked the Universe one night when he was eight-years-old and sitting on his bed, inspecting the bruises that were still forming on his skin. “I need to protect them - killing him would solve things, right?”

It wouldn’t stop what is to come, the Universe crooned to her child in sorrow, There is much to be done. What is to come is safeguarded - those that guard it must die, first.

“But, you haven’t told me who causes the apocalypse anyway.” Five complained, a frown upon his face.

No matter what changes, the apocalypse comes. They make sure of it. One person does not cause the apocalypse - it is the symptom of a rot. It must be burned out entirely for the planet to survive.

“For my siblings to survive.” Five said, ever so softly. 

More years passed, until Five turned thirteen years old and the Universe whispered in his ear again and taught him how to part the veil and fall into the timeless place between world and travel in it.

Time travel.

I’m going to ask you to go through a trial. The Universe told her son, In order to save the world, you will have to sacrifice so much. You are so young, I wish I did not have to ask this of you - but it is important.

“It’s okay.” Five soothed his mother, ignorant of what was to come and oh so arrogant in his youth. “I can handle anything you throw at me. I’ll save them - I’ll save them all.”

He does not have quite the same attitude when he jabs at his father with words and runs out the door, fully intending to go back in a few hours before the Universe prods at him and tells him now. 

“But I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” Five protested, thinking of Vanya’s face as he left the table. But there was something exhilarating about falling through and riding the wave of time twisting like a snake under the fabric of reality and emerging in the future and he figured he could always return after whatever the Universe needed him to see in the future anyway.

Again, the Universe whispered.

He fell again.

Again, the Universe whispered.

Again, he rode the wave of time, except this time when he emerged it was different. The sky was filled with ash. All around him was rubble. There was a moment where his emotions were almost in freefall, before the ground caught up to him. Without his permission, his feet were already taking him back - back to the only home he’d ever known. Names tearing from his lips as he called for his siblings.

He found them. He recognized them by the tattoos on their wrists, putting names to faces, seeing the people he knew in the bodies that were left behind. 

He turned, frantic, hands rising to part the fabric of the universe again - 

STOP, the Universe commanded her son. If you go back, you cannot save them. And you will save them. This will not be the hand fate deals them. But I need you here, it is important.

“For how long?” Five rasped.

Do not worry. The Universe soothed, Time is a drop in the bucket for us. I will change you, as is needed to be done to make sure that the bait is taken and that you will be in position. I will restore you, have no fear. You will survive this, for you are my son. I will make sure of this.

And he did survive. He survived for years, growing up at the end of the world. He grew taller. His skin changed under the sun. He ate what he could find. He grew a beard. His hair turned grey. And that’s when they finally came for him.

A woman came, with white blond hair perfectly in place and makeup pristine against the chaos of the apocalypse. She smiled at him and offered him a job - and he took it.

“Can I go back now?” Five whispered, staring down the barrel of a gun waiting for his target - someone who he didn’t want to kill at all.

Not yet. The Universe sounded apologetic, Soon.

It was a question he asked with some frequency. Until one day he was staring down a gun at a road and a president and a car, and the Universe said - Now.

He dropped everything he was doing, and with a grin on his face pressed again the fabric of the universe and pushed. Pushed and pushed, and felt himself falling falling falling and changing changing changing and suddenly he was on the ground. He looked up at his family for the first time in so long and felt his heart swell.

And then he staggered to his feet and realized exactly what the Universe had meant when she said that he would have to sacrifice. Because the siblings that were in front of him were not the ones he left. Not even close.

They were the faces that haunted him, the ones he had found in the rubble. His siblings were thirteen and painfully young and old all at the same time, aged by the horrors that they faced together. These siblings were all wrong and right all at the same time. They weren’t right. He didn’t know them. 

And he tried to stop the apocalypse, he ran around trying to keep his siblings close and push them as far away as possible at the same time. He wanted them next to him right up until they reminded him of how much he missed.

(Klaus spoke about a man and osso bucco, and Five couldn’t bear to stick around. Couldn’t bear to look at a brother he didn’t even know anymore.)

“I need help.” Five howled to the Universe, “Give me a clue, a hint! Anything!”

Make a deal. The Universe told her son, Face the Handler. Accept the job. You need to get into position.

And so he did. He took Luther with him and set up a deal and watched as Klaus and Diego rode in on an ice cream truck blasting music and couldn’t help but feel insanely fond of his idiot siblings. When the Handler showed up and offered him a deal, he didn’t hesitate in taking it.

He had to save them, he had to save them all.

This child went to the Commission with a calm certainty, because his mission was not just to figure out who caused the apocalypse. Because he could part the veil of time itself - his mission was to make sure that those with the same power who wanted to ensure the world died took its place. 

This is a Five who didn’t go snooping into the messaging room with its many tubes, instead he kindly appropriated weapons and set them in strategic places around the Headquarters that he finally, finally had access to.

(The Commission were arrogant - they existed in a place outside the timestream where only those with briefcases and invites could go. Temporal assassins weren’t high enough on the food chain. They had only the one base, because if only they could get there then however could they ever be destroyed?

The Handler should have been more careful when deciding to play a game of cat and mouse with a creature that was neither.)

So he smiles at the Handler who holds a gun trained on him, he holds the grenade that will set off a chain reaction and winks. He doesn’t need the suitcase to get back to his own time, not when he is a child of the Universe. He sets it off and pushed through and feels the Universe ripple with approval around him as the Commission is eradicated off the face of the planet.

Oh, there’s still more to do technically. There are suitcases in the hands of temporal assassins who will never again receive an order. There are ground agents left to take care of. But Five cut off the head of the snake, and the body would be soon to follow.

Five jumps back. 

Klaus mentions seeing their father and mentions dying and Five leans forward eagerly to ask if he met God. Klaus blinks in surprise but nods, mentioning that the little girl hated him.

Five frowns at the thought, but the Universe sends amusement his way. It is not Klaus’s fault he got to be your brother. The Universe tells him fondly, It is simply a matter that he got to be so before she did. She has never been very good at coming in second, your sister.

The mansion is destroyed while Five is gone, and he finds a newspaper and freezes.

“I thought the apocalypse was off?” Five asks loudly, making his siblings look at him oddly. But Five has been in the habit of talking to ‘himself’ for years now.

You killed the guards. You can stop the apocalypse where before it was an impossible task. But you must stop this one first. The Universe tells him gently.

So they go to a bowling alley, and Five is not distracted by a cryptic message inside of a fortune cookie. They go to Vanya’s concert and aren’t interrupted by goons with guns. Allison stands proudly at the front with a smile, and Five is right there alongside her. Together they are a force to be reckoned with, and they bully Luther into standing down. At least for now.

It’s after the concert, when Vanya snaps out of it and they crowd around one another and they think about the ruins of the academy as Vanya cries fury and pain over years of terror and neglect.

They’ve lost so much in this week. Diego lost Eudora Patch. Allison lost her voice. Vanya became a murderer. Klaus lost the love of his life.

So Five holds his hands out to them, “I can take us back.” He tells them all, “I can take us back to the beginning of the week. We can undo the deaths. We can be prepared and handle it better. We can fix it.”

Because the Commission were fools. They existed outside of the timestream, which meant that no matter where Five jumped they simply no longer existed. Time was a funny little thing, and it was already healing from the scars that had been left.

So they take him up on it. They hold hands and Five hauls them through the timestream and they show up the day of their father’s funeral. Five sitting on the ground where he fell out of a portal and the rest spilled out into the courtyard to see the phenomenon.

And they heal from there, but that’s not all Five has to do.

Five watches his siblings find purpose and happiness and figures he has one favor he can call on - even if it’s from family he’s never met.

He slips between the fabric of the world, and ends up in front of a little girl on a bike.

“Brother.” She greets him, tilting her head up at him.

“Sister.” He responds easily, jamming his hands into his pockets.

“I suppose you want something.” She observes with no real judgement, “I’ve heard little brothers were supposed to be demanding little brats.”

“And I heard big sisters were supposed to be protective.” Five teases gently back, shrugging to indicate all the pain and hardship he had gone through at her request for her little pet world to remain intact. Not that Five can fault her for it, he loves the world just as much as she does. Or maybe not, he just loves a select and small group of people who live upon it.

She rolls her eyes, “Yeah, I guess I owe you one. Name your price.”

“There’s a man that you have.” Five says, voice measured and careful like he’s rehearsed this in his head a dozen times. “His name is Dave Katz and he died during the Vietnam war. I was wondering if we could have him back.”

“I’d need your help.” The little girl who isn’t really a little girl at all tells him very seriously. “I can put him back in a body and heal it, I have a few miracles in me. But I need a body to do so. Retrieve it from the way, after your brother has left, and I will do this for you.”

“And - Ben?” Five hesitates. He should have asked for it first, but he’d wanted to make sure it was possible. Which, given the nature of Ben’s death and God’s explanation for Dave’s return very well might not be. 

She sighs deeply. “It could take some time. His body was somewhat scattered among dimensions. In return for the legwork, however, I expect frequent visits.”

After all, Five did deserve some reward for doing exactly what she had wished for him to do.

“Family dinners with God,” Five grins back, already calculating exactly where and when he has to be to succeed at his given tasks, “I think I can just about manage that.”

It’s not exactly all sunshine and roses after that. Apparently producing your brother’s dead time-traveled lover alongside your usually very dead brother and explaining clearly that you ‘made a deal with God’ didn’t exactly cut it as far as excuses went. They all needed therapy. Vanya still had trouble self-regulating her emotions.

And then of course, a few years in, Five had to figure out how to explain the fact that he wasn’t aging.

(He was lucky he managed to convince his mother to let him keep his thirteen-year-old form for now - which considering God looked younger when she’d been alive for billions of years was very generous thank you. But he couldn’t artificially age on his own, and the Universe refused to put him through it a second time so - yeah he was a little bit stuck.)

Five was born with a mission, and it’s one he still had. He had Monday dinners with God, who bestowed upon him the location and time period where he would find yet another surviving briefcase from an agent to track down and destroy. 

But his biggest mission is to make sure his family is happy and healthy and cared for until the end of their days. It’s a mission he takes very seriously.

(And hey, it’s not like he won’t be able to see them again on the other side. Sometimes it pays to have God as a big sister, after all.)

Once upon a time forty-four children were born on a seemingly normal October day. One of them wasn’t supposed to be there.

But aren’t we all glad he was.

#the umbrella academy #tua #tua au #late addition au #universe's son au #five hargreeves #number five #this was exceptionally self indulgent #and yes i did not include the part of the dream where it was revealed the mysterious O.W. boss of the commission was Owen Wilson #that part remains a dream #but god being lowkey jealous that klaus got to be five's sibling before she did gets to stay #five is a very baby immortal and is not happy with this fact #five: i'm 58 i'm older than you #klaus: okay but like in universe years how old is that #five: what the fuck do you mean #klaus: i mean like a 4 year old dog is 28 when you translate so like what's ur translated age #five: ...still older than you shut the fuck up #klaus: well I think that since - you know - GOD was a little girl and presumably she's been around forever #five: shut your face klaus #klaus: that makes you a BABY #five: i WILL kill you and it WILL look like an accident #now i'm just picturing god and klaus teaming up to tease five #but also the hilarity of five threatening to tell god's mother (who is also his mother) when she's being mean to him is also hilarious #god (whispering): snitch #far tua long #almost forgot that tag smh #universe child five au #universe child au

[neko-shinigxmi]

Tell us about your PC, Aki!! They sound really cool, and I love D&D!

   [sLAMS MY HANDS ON THE TABLE] WELCOME TO a now split party, but a rad af tiefling and her even COOLER little brother.

   Meet Quinzy (and Carnon, to the left side!)!! (Art by the lovely @tiny-pastel-unicorn.)

   Quinzy is a tiefling barbarian who- much like her weapons- dances between a fine line of badass and princess. She loves her bow and flower crown, but her gladiator set, too. She’ll flirt as much as she’ll crave the fight, indulging in the bloodlust that had been encouraged by her demonic father. (A tall, blue demon my DM and bf ended up naming Avnas... Accidentally based him off of Castlevania’s Dracula, Naruto’s Madara Uchiha, and DMC’s Vergil tho, LMAO.)

   Her brother, Carnon... He’s more the sweetie of the troupe. Quinzy’s protective of him as all hell, but he’s STRONG. (Fighter class...and DM allowing him to be Stronk for the fun of it, bless him.) He can’t really read, doesn’t much like to, but he IS a little artist, drawing the group’s adventures as the days pass! Very much wants to make himself known to be his sister’s equal, too, since he doesn’t want to burden her with being weak and defenseless. (Despite the fact he has proficiency in Great weapons.....LMAO.)

   Full family story (plus art of the parents by the same artist!!) beneath the cut~!

   Meet Melita Valentina (the woman) and Avnas, the kid’s parents!! Avnas met Melita after a harsh fight with a blood hunter during a blizzard in her town. Thankfully, she had spotted him in the spotty darkness, forcing him to accept her help, healing him (with the aid of a friend’s potions), and eventually...the two falling in love.

   ...As it wasn’t quite a secret that Melita had a preference, and it certainly wasn’t in humans...!

   Quinzy was the first born... Born with wings, like her father. However, as she grew up and the teasing and harassment from the village kids got to her, she eventually ripped off her wings in an attempt to be more like them. Avnas took this as a sign of her strength, and began training her in various weaponry.

   Before too long, Carnon was born, though Avnas hadn’t been traveling for some time. He decided to leave them for a short while to fight more. Amass more power, and so he left.

   Unknown to him, however, is that Carnon’s horns had grown too soon. Deeply hurting Melita, though the pain wouldn’t become an issue until a month or two later. Her old friend’s potions kept her going for a time, but none had the power the old ones had; the one, for example, that had helped Avnas’ wound. She attempted to send Quinzy and Carnon for it, having staved off some of the ill effects of her injuries and infections... (Knowing the little boy til he was about 3.) However, when they came back?

   Melita had passed. Cold when they came back for her.

   They stuck around for a few months longer, avoiding the room her body lay in and eating up the food the best Quinzy could make of it. Only being forced to leave home when the villagers realized Melita hadn’t been seen or heard from in months and Avnas had been nowhere in sight, either. No sounds of training...

   The villagers burned their home down, Quinzy and Carnon taking their last, precious objects from home (a necklace Melita owned for Quinzy, and Carnon taking a toy his mother had altered for him; so it looked like a tiefling) before running away.

   Quinzy would make a few spare friends (in a brothel, of all places) steal food and money if it meant taking care of Carnon...and eventually, start fighting for money.

  ��This led her to the beginning of the campaign she started in, where the group would meet Carnon at the door to the underworld of Highwater (he wasn’t allowed down there), and meet Quinzy, the star fighter and the champion of a goblin-run fighting ring. Of course, the curiosity of new fights catches her ear...but considering a hasty shot by a guard caused Carnon harm?

   That goblin didn’t live much longer.

.:.:.

   Over my time playing as her, I got to learn a few things!!! First off... I’ll start with Her Song. The song that makes me think of her every time! Sweet but Psycho by Ava Max (and Youth by Glass Animals for Carnon).

   The energy... The “you’ll love her, but she’ll drive you crazy while you do”.... That’s Quinzy Energy. (And Youth? That’s pure “from Avnas/Quinzy to Carnon” right upfront. Right down to “feel your mother at your side / don’t you know you have my eyes?”) I have a whole WIP playlist for this family, but I’ll be real with ya.....most of it is Avnas pining music (he loved his wife; thus the comparison to Castlevania’s Dracula) and Quinzy’s erratic music tastes. Mostly because-

   Quinzy has HUGE self esteem issues. Being tiefling has always been something that’s bothered her, not that she acknowledges it any. LOTS of false bravado and ego boosting that’s just....empty, if you know her well enough. She’s hypersexual (though polite; if you’re uncomfortable by it, she won’t persist her flirting or sexual comments), but also lowkey repulsed by it....largely due to being exposed young (the brothel), her esteem issues, and events from the campaign. (Where her flirtations and attempts at getting the upper hand via seduction not only got her in trouble, but got her CHARMED by the Bad of the segment- nat 1 (her only nat 1 ever)- and got taken again.....but more forcefully and without her full control of the situation, shaking her up since the encounter.)

   All she wants to do is protect her brother, but during the events of that campaign, she ALSO found out about her dad’s cult. Which wasn’t a big idea until she saw him frail and missing his right eye. Wings gone. From what? Who knows.

   But what she does know is Carnon wouldn’t fight alongside him. Quinzy wouldn’t side with her father if it meant harming Carnon...and led to the first time she ever told him “no.” The daddy’s girl telling him no and the both of them realizing how far apart the other is for the first time in all of this mess.

   Quinzy, hoping her father would fix things.....and he’s essentially gone mad. The patient, honor-driven fighter is gone. Her father is gone and she’s lost. (A breakdown commenced for the first....I’d say 3 or 4 turns until she finally listened to Carnon and engaged, getting in two harsh hits before her attack rolls started slipping.)

   She’s still reeling from that. Last the campaign did, she was suddenly gaining feelings for the resident drow blood hunter, Jivan... The very blood hunter who’d given that wound to Avnas all those years ago. (The wound that was weakening him and driving him mad....but also the fact his wife was dead.)      (And yes, Quinzy likes them- typically- bigger than her, just as tough...older than her, and also has a preference for drow. Dunno where that came from, but she sure as hell does. Ah, on that note...... She’s pansexual.)

   Jivan was upsetting her for, well....existing. Pure, unfiltered emotion isn’t something Quinzy can quite handle. Despite the fact it’s what she used to sorely wish for. To be a badass, warrior princess and to fall in love with someone and be in love as much as Melita and Avnas were.

   A handsome drow shows up with his shit together, nose in a book a majority of the time (a nod to V from DMC5 by my bf, the DM), smooth lines, and a damn good fighter....and now she’s sick to her stomach. Warring with herself quietly. Something only Carnon sees.

   What’s left of a family, falling apart at the seams. And Quinzy, who can’t keep pulling it together by herself.

.:.:.

   WHEW, THAT WAS LONG, but um?? I hope you enjoyed reading this???? I know it’s super long, but I REALLY wanted to talk about all the stuff I keep thinking about regarding her and aaaaaaaa.........

   As a final note! I show you their dolls! They came in...a few days to a week ago from Apocalypse_Too and I adore them!! (Communication was horrible, tho.... Done quickly, but it was a NIGHTMARE to get in touch with them.) And combined with a LOVELY candle from @lemonyflicker (seriously, check them out; their stuff is SO GOOD I cannot praise this custom order I got enough), it makes for a wonderful set~!

   (Also note the lil Quinzy icon in her dice set; we were using those as our “figures” to map out placement. According to a weird, fourth wall breaking canon, Carnon drew them! That’s his art style!)

   ....Okay, ACTUAL last thing: Carnon doing art!!! This was the first page Carnon ever did for the campaign! We stan a little artist!!!!!!!

#thekingaboo #Aki speaks #dnd #tiefling #dungeons and dragons #[waves this around] LOOK AT MY PC I LOVE HER #SHE'S SUCH a MESS BUT SHE'S MY KID!!!!! #they're both my kids tbh #and yes Melita got my monster loving tastes.....what of it?? #skdfjghfjdk but seriously #I'm proud...even tho it's tiring to get into her headspace #the more she's grown the more I understand all her struggles #the more it hurts me to work with her #it's....hard bc I love her too but #idk.....I don't know what I could do abt it #Aki Does Art

[ill-skillsgard]

Picture of Youth - Roman Godfrey

Title: Picture of Youth

Description: A couple chance encounters with the notorious Roman Godfrey can cause a lot of pain or pleasure, depending on how you look at him.

Warnings: 18+ smut/swearing/violence/mentions of blood/emotional abuse

All throughout school, Roman Godfrey had been a pinnacle of attention, desire, and mockery. I grew up in the same town as him- a town his family practically owned. We attended the same elementary school and later on, the same high school so I got to see all of the bouts of drama, the way he always got himself out of doing detention and most of the fights. Other kids weren't sure how to act around him because he had nicer clothes and more expensive things than the majority of our classmates. I remember a day in Autumn when a group of boys started pushing him around outside on the playground. I was nearby with my friends, hanging out in our usual spot underneath the oak trees. The heckling started to grow more audible and by the time we had made our curious ways over, a punch had been thrown. I didn't see much of what happened before a crowd gathered but I did see the aftermath of it all, one kid came away with a swollen, busted lip and Roman with a deep cut on his cheek that was trickling blood all the way down to his neck. Nobody really bothered to see if Roman was alright because he wasn't crying and didn't appear to be all that bothered that he was bleeding. He simply wiped the blood off onto his designer coat and carried on as though nothing happened, that was until the lunch period ended and everyone had gone back to their afternoon classes. That was when he got called down to the Principal's office and everyone in class hooted as he stood up from his desk and stalked off to the front of the building. But once we all started to grow up, not many people messed with Roman. They were too afraid of what he might be able to do with his family's money. He got away with smoking cigarettes on school property because he was able to charm all of the female teachers and the male teachers respected his father too much to send him away with anything but a light warning. He started dating, or rather, fucking girls and I got to hear all about it in the gymnasium locker room. "Did you know that Rosalie got caught giving Roman Godfrey a blowjob in the janitor's closet?" "I heard that he hooked up with Taylor and started choking her until she turned blue. She told me in homeroom that he went absolutely psycho and wouldn't let her leave." "What the fuck is up with that guy, anyway?" To me, Roman seemed like a regular person who just so happened to be born in the right place at the right time. He mostly kept to himself and once the senior year came I saw less and less of him, not that I was paying him any mind anyway since I had been dating my high school boyfriend Zack for nearly a year and spent most of my time with him or my best friends. It wasn't until another clear, crisp Autumn day that Roman swaggered into my life to cause chaos in that artistically subtle way that was all his own. I had an advanced photography class and we were already beginning to put together our portfolios for the final projects. We were able to take cameras from class outside and photograph things around the school premises. I had gone off on my own to try to find the best subjects to shoot before anyone else caught wind of them. My journeying brought me to the school's race track and that was when I saw Roman sitting high on the bleachers wrapped in a gray wool coat, puffing away on a cigarette. I had no intentions of saying anything to him but as I walked by he whistled. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I looked up at where he was perched at the top of the bleachers. He stood up and used his long slender legs to descend the rows two-by-two. "Hey." He said once he jumped down onto the gravel walkway. "Hey, Roman. What's up?" "Nothing." He said, looking off into the distance as though there was something else catching his attention. "Okay," I chuckled. "Cool." "You're in my photography class right?" He asked with a nod towards the SLR camera I had in my hands. With another laugh, I replied, "Well, yeah. I'm in the class but you're never there." He took one more drag on his cigarette and flicked it away using his thumb and middle finger. "Yeah, I guess not." "So, why do you hang around school if you don't go to class?" I pried. He shrugged his broad shoulders, eyes flickering from me to the camera and back to me again. "Don't know. Something to do." "It's your last year, why not take your classes?" "Seems a little pointless... For me, anyway. I have a job lined up already that's going to pay better than anything a diploma can get me." I quirked a small smile at him and sighed. It had been the longest we had ever spoken to one another and I was quickly running out of things to say to him. I found it odd that he had even struck up a conversation with me, to begin with. I hadn't really spoken to him at all since elementary school and when I thought about that it seemed like a hundred years ago. "So, what are you shooting?" "Oh, um," I looked down at the little display screen on the back of my camera. "I'm just shooting for my portfolio. We need a landscape, a macro shot, a portrait, and a still life. I only have the landscape and portrait left to do." "Let's see," he nodded towards the camera. Although I still thought it strange he was interested in talking to me, I decided to entertain him anyway by showing him everything I had done up until that point. He towered over me and watched the screen as I scrolled through the photos, nodding and hardly cracking a smile. "You're pretty good. Are you going to pursue anything in photography after high school?" He asked. "I'm leaning more towards the graphic design realm. I guess that can tie in heavily with photography." He nodded again if not to display interest than to acknowledge he was listening. "Maybe if you get really good I'll hire you at my company." "Yeah, right," I said with a laugh. "What, you don't think you're good enough?" "It's not that... I just... I don't know. We haven't even spoken to each other since elementary school." "So what?" "Well, if I do get good, I'll send you a resume." Roman shoved his hands into the pockets of his wool coat. I took a moment to just look at him. I really hadn't seen much of him at all for most of the first semester of school and he looked a lot different than I had remembered. He was the same really, but different. His hair was all slicked back stylishly, complimenting the way he dressed in that well-put-together way. He still had those mad green eyes that you could see staring at you from yards away. I also noticed the scar he had on his cheek from that day in elementary school when he had gotten into that fight with some other boys. Roman cocked his head at me after it became obvious I was staring. "What?" he asked me, smiling for the first time during our conversation. "This might be a weird question but... Can I take your picture? I still have to do a portrait shot and I would rather not make it a self-portrait." "Is that what everyone else is doing?" I shrugged. "I'm not sure." Roman pondered for a moment and then nodded his head. "Yeah, you can take my picture. I'm overdue for some new headshots." "Awesome!" "Where would you like me?" He inquired. "Hm. Perhaps just sit down on the bleachers. I'm going to take some close up so just try to act natural." "Oh, I can act natural," Roman assured me. He sat down a couple rows up on the bleachers and I followed, keeping a distance of one bench so I wasn't right up in his face. After I adjusted the camera settings I began to snap pictures of him. He looked forward into the distance towards the school with an intensity in his eyes that made him look like a real model. The way his brow bone angled and his lips fell open ever so slightly made him look portending and more intimidating than usual. "Look at the camera," I directed him. Roman turn his body towards where I was standing and glowered into the camera lens. The lineaments of his face were actually quite striking and it wasn't until I turned the lens and zoomed in on his face that I realized that Roman was actually quite handsome in a totally unique way. He had such full lips and a charming nose that turned up just the right amount. Not to mention he had godly carved cheekbones and the way his eyes settled on the camera in a way that just wasn't quite right was all the more endearing. His bow-shaped ears only lent to his profile. All in all, Roman was an easy subject to photograph. "How's it look?" He asked after I had taken about two dozen pictures of him without stopping. "Looks great." "Well, thank you." "Thanks, Roman." "You're welcome." "I should probably start heading back. We only get half an hour out here and I don't want to get in shit." "Alright. See you another time." He said, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. I waved goodbye to him and slowly made my way back to class, satisfied with what I had done. I hoped that my teacher wouldn't make mention that my subject was a student well known for absenteeism but I didn't give it much more thought than that for a while.

~*~

"Babe..." I was working away on my desktop computer, finishing my write-ups for my photography portfolio and arranging them into the digital format for submission. All of our photos had to be a precise size and come with a two hundred word write up for each piece. I was nearly finished and just wanted to get my homework over with so I didn't have to worry about it for the rest of the week. My last submission was the photo I had taken of Roman Godfrey that I thought would make a great addition and fit the requirement perfectly. However, I was struggling with the write up seeing as I couldn't find anything impressively deep to say about the premise behind the picture. I was outside. I saw Roman Godfrey. I took his picture. He's really tall and smells like cigarettes. Shaking my head, I backspaced it all. "Babe!" I whipped around and saw my boyfriend laying on his stomach on my bed. He must have been trying to get my attention because his eyes were wide with expectancy. "Yes?" I asked. "Why the fuck have you been staring at a picture of Godfrey for like an hour?" He questioned. Scoffing, I answered. "I'm not staring at it. I'm doing a write-up. It's part of my portfolio project for photography." "Yeah but... Why Roman Godfrey? How do you even know that douche?" I rolled my eyes. "I don't know, he was just there. I had to take a stupid picture of somebody and he was just there." "Fucking hate that guy." I shrugged my shoulders as I looked back to my computer monitor. "He's not that bad." "Pfft," he spat. "Fuck that guy. Such a faggot." "You know... You really shouldn't just throw that word around. It's really insulting." "It's insulting that you haven't spent any time with me so far because you've been too busy looking at that shit." "My project isn't shit. Why the fuck are you being so rude?" He pushed himself up and sat up cross-legged on the bed. "I'm fucking bored. Let's bang or something fun." "No. My parents are both home." "So? We've done stuff here before when they were home." "Yeah but, I don't want to keep risking it. My mom likes to just walk in all the time." "Fine." He groaned. A few more minutes of silence passed by before he piped up again. "Will you just give me a blowjob? I'll be super quick." "No. Let me just finish up my project." "Wow. You're being a huge bitch," he said as he stood up from my bed and headed towards my bedroom door. "You would rather look at pictures you took of some random guy than do stuff with your own boyfriend?" "You're not exactly making it tempting by calling my project shit and saying stupid things." "Whatever. I'll just bounce then." "Fine."

~*~

It was lunch period and I was outside with a bunch of my friends in the smoker's pit behind the school. I didn't smoke much myself but I did like to hang out with my friends who did and there was only one legal spot for people to smoke at school and it was behind a mangled fence that separated school property from everything else. As long as students smoked behind the chain-link fence they wouldn't get in trouble from the teachers or vice principals. I was standing in a circle of my friends and Zack was beside me. We were all talking among ourselves when he looked over and saw Roman leaving the back doors of the school heading towards the smoker's pit. Once he was behind the fence he lit the cigarette that had been dangling from between his lips. I saw my boyfriend bristle at the sight of him and it wasn't long before he cut through our circle and approached Roman. "Hey, Godfrey. Got a smoke?" I heard him ask. Roman looked to each side of him and then back at him with a similar stare on his face as the one I had photographed. That insolent glare that made for a great photograph was being used against my boyfriend and I started to get worried. For some unknown reason, he had been starting to act really obnoxious and boorish, picking fights all the time with me and treating people like they were beneath him and now he was picking a fight with Roman. "Does it look like I have an extra cigarette?" Roman asked rhetorically. "Aren't you rich?" "Yeah. So what? You think just 'cause I have money I'm going to give my shit away to little fuckbags like you?" Zack slapped the cigarette out of Roman's hand before it reached his lips, causing sparks to fly. He used both of his hands to shove Roman backward but he caught his footing. As soon as everyone around noticed an altercation was about to take place, all eyes were on them. Roman ground his teeth together and took the step forward to get back in Zack's face, eyes blazing with anger. "Come on, bitch. Hit me. Throw a punch!" Zack egged him on. "Hey!" I yelled as I pushed through the people who were already starting to flock towards the two guys. "Zack, what the fuck? Just stop." "Yeah, listen to your girlfriend, Zack. You do not want to fucking go there." Roman's voice was deep and dark and I could tell Zack was already losing his momentum. "Fuck you, Godfrey. Why the fuck do you even hang around here anyway? Nobody likes you." Roman said absolutely nothing as he grabbed for his pack of cigarettes and made a show of pulling another one out of the row, eyes unflinching with no signs of backing down. I grabbed Zack's arm but he jerked away from me. "Zack. Come on." "Hit him!" Somebody yelled from the crowd. "Zack! Let's. Go." I pulled on him again. He knew that Roman was not going to back off and as much as he talked a big game, Zack was no fighter. I knew he was still angry about the photographs and that was the only reason why he had instigated the encounter. After I tugged on him once more he conceded and stepped away from Roman. "You better think about who the fuck you're talking to when you run your bitch mouth," Roman spoke up as I hauled Zack away. Things only got much worse from there. After that day, Zack had taken a liking in fighting with people for no reason. Mostly it was me and when I started to have enough of his new shitty attitude he took to arguing with me over text messages when I refused to hang out with him. Things started going South for us really quickly and it even got to the point where I told him we should take some time apart. I hated mindless bullying and that's all that he was doing to me and nearly every other person he came into contact with. Zack refused to leave me be and decided to try to make it up to me by asking me out on a date for my birthday. He apologized profusely and promised that he would stop lashing out at everyone, especially me, that he was just stressed about getting into University and all the pressure was building up inside of him. With promises of a really nice time, I accepted his peace offering and went out with him on the evening of my birthday to have dinner and go to a movie. Everything had gone quite well and I was feeling hopeful that Zack was back to normal and we could pick up from where we left off. He had been gentlemanly and gave me a handmade card that he had written his own poetry in. I was happy again and we held hands for most of the movie. It wasn't until the drive home that I got to see the side of him that I was growing to detest again. Zack's dad's car started sputtering and lurching as we drove down the road towards home. He hit the steering wheel as though the nudge would get the car to kick back in but the cab started rumbling violently. I held onto my seat as we shook and started to panic. "Shit! My dad's going to fucking KILL me if this car fucks off on me!" I didn't have anything productive to offer him because I knew nothing about cars. and the longer we drove the harder the car began to rock and screech. "Maybe we should pull over?" I suggested. "I need to get this piece of shit back home." Steam started rising from underneath the car's hood and Zack's knuckles turned white as he gripped the wheel and urged the vehicle to stop being a pain in the ass. "Zack, come on. Just pull over. I'll call my dad and he can come out to get us." "I'm not leaving my fucking car on the side of the road, damn it!" He yelled. I flinched from his outburst. He had never been so aggressive before and when I looked over at him I felt a bubble of distaste start to rise in my throat. "Just pull over!" I yelled back. Zack yanked the wheel to the side and we swerved onto the gravel shoulder so fast I thought we would go crashing into the guardrail. Once he slammed on the brakes and turned the engine off I got out of the car and circled around to the steaming hood. "Fucking piece of shit car," Zack muttered under his breath. He lifted the hood and a cloud of smoke rose up and stung him in the eyes. I stepped up beside him to take a look in the car once the smoke dissipated but he pushed me aside with his hip. "Move. You don't know shit about cars so just stay out of the way." "You know, you've been a real asshole lately. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of it," I told him. "And you have been a pain in the fucking ass the whole night." I shook my head simply because I couldn't think of what else to say to him. The night air was starting to chill me and as Zack began tinkering around under the hood I made a split second decision that I knew I would probably regret. I just couldn't take being around him anymore. "Fuck you, Zack. I'm done." I stated. "Don't even bother trying to text or call me." Once I started walking down the shoulder, pebbles crunching beneath my platform wedges, Zack called out to me. "Whatever, bitch! You're a six on your best day!" It took a lot out of me not to turn around and go at Zack with my fists flying but the urge to put as much space between myself and him won the battle. I continued down the road and ignored his hollering. The walk home was going to be at least half an hour and in the shoes I chose to wear on our date, I figured it could take even longer. It was dark and getting cooler and the road was only flanked by massive thickets of trees. I got over a hill and the darkness became uninterrupted. There weren't any streetlights on the back roads but there were plenty of crickets chirping and sounds of rodents rushing through the bushes as I walked by, struggling not to stagger in my shoes. If anyone had asked me I would have told them I wasn't scared but the further I walked the more my feet started to ache and the more I regretted leaving the comfort of Zack's dad's piece of shit sedan that he treated just as well as he treated me. The more I thought about Zack the more certain I became that he wasn't right for me. When we had first gotten together he was sweet and kind to me. It was easy for him to charm me with his boyish good looks and his dirty blonde hair. Despite the fact that he had rude friends, he didn't quite fit the same mold as they did. He was quieter and reserved but the more I got to know him and the more he hung out around his basketball buddies, the more he began to adopt their shit personality traits. I started to feel tears welling up behind my eyes when I remembered he had called me a six on my best day. I knew he was trying to say whatever he could to hurt my feelings and that it wasn't something to worry over too much but when I thought about all of the time I had wasted with him, it did start to ache in my chest. I whimpered the farther I walked and felt my calves start to shake and tense as I ascended another steep hill. I couldn't take my shoes off unless I wanted to tiptoe over rocks and broken glass. Once I reached the crest of the hill I stopped to catch my breath. Rummaging through my purse, I found my cell phone and held it in the palm of my hand. I knew I could call my parents to come to get me but it was late and the thought of phoning and waking them up didn't sit right in my stomach, then I would have to explain the whole situation with Zack and that was something I wasn't ready to do. Before I pressed the button to start calling my dad's phone I noticed a car coming in the distance. I didn't want to draw any unwanted attention to myself so I held my phone behind my back and continued walking, taking extra care as I descended the other side of the hill. The closer the vehicle came the more detail I could make out and once it coasted down the road with its lights illuminating everything around it I noticed it was a dainty red Jaguar and there was only one person I knew that drove that car. At first, I thought he was going to drive right by me but he slowed down once he saw me, braked and came to a stop on the road. I saw Roman's concerned look when he rolled his window down. "What are you doing?" Roman asked me. "Uh. I'm walking home." "In those shoes?" He pointed the lit end of his cigarette at my feet. "I don't know, I guess so." "Where's your boyfriend?" "A little down the road." Roman nodded his head in contemplation then took a drag of his cigarette. A light gust of wind swept around me and set the hem of my dress to floating up around my thighs. My skin prickled with the chill and Roman sighed. "Get in." "It's okay. I don't live too far." "Get. In." "Okay." I circled around his car and got in the passenger side. Once I was enveloped in the warmth, a shiver trickled down my spine. Roman stared me down, eyes staring at mine and then trailing down the bodice of my dress down to the skirt and further down my legs. "You look really nice," he said, raising his eyebrows with sincerity. "Thanks. It's my birthday." "It's your fucking birthday?" I sighed and nodded my head. "Yeah." "What a way to celebrate your birthday," he said as he shifted gears and took off. "Um..." I got his attention. "My place is the other way." Roman turned his head and flashed me a dastardly smile. "I know." "Oh." "You don't want to end your night on a shitty note, do you?" "I guess not." "Well... Do you want to go home or do you want to come have some fun with me?" His question didn't beg answer but I nodded my head anyway and he nodded his back. I saw Zack with his head still stuck under the hood of his smoking car as we zipped by while Roman laid on the horn. I felt a small tickle of guilt but I couldn't help but laugh when Roman did. We were going too fast for me to see any of Zack's reaction but I knew that if he had noticed the red Jaguar he would know exactly who was honking at him. It wasn't long before we came up to Roman's enormous house and parked in the driveway. The estate was even bigger than people said it was. I had never seen it before except for when some kids in my history class searched it on Google Maps a couple of years ago but even that didn't do it justice. There were no other cars in the driveway and the house seemed devoid of people. I didn't manage to get a good look at the interior as I followed Roman up the spiraling steps to his room but I could see that the house was immaculate and beautifully decorated. I would have liked to look around more but he seemed eager for me to follow him. He shut the door of his bedroom after we entered and I only had a moment to take it in before he approached me. "You want something? A drink? It is your birthday after all. We should celebrate." "That's okay. I'm not a big drinker." Roman drew closer to me and his stare intensified. I felt a blush creep across my cheeks because I knew that he had brought me there for one reason. When I smiled I think he took it as a green light because he leaned over and kissed me hard. It was hard not to sigh into his mouth. Roman's lips felt so good and I knew I wanted the attention of the mysterious rich boy that everyone seemed to have an opinion about. The thing about Roman was that even though we were the same age, he seemed so much older and more experienced than anyone I knew. I supposed that came with all of the money and life experiences he must have had but there were other things about him that made it feel like he just had more in his repertoire than any guy I had ever been with, which had only been two up until then. First of all, he definitely knew how to kiss. It was downright poetic how he dragged his lips over mine, gradually working my mouth open so he could touch my tongue with his. He didn't breathe too hard into my mouth nor did he shove his tongue passed my teeth immediately. It was gentle and delicious, teeming with passion and a fierce lust that no guy had ever displayed for me before. When he pulled back I looked at him and couldn't help but soften. I remembered going through all of the pictures I had taken of him and how I had secretly remarked that the more I stared at each shot, the more strikingly handsome he seemed to me and with him standing right there, lips moist from kissing me, I felt my crush on him begin to deepen. "You want to fuck me, right?" He asked. "Um... Sure." "Sure is not an answer. It's either yes or no. Yes means I'm going to spend the night between those nice legs of yours and no means we can have a drink and a smoke, then I'll take you back home." "Yes." "Good. I was hoping you would say that." Roman said as he knelt down in front of me, letting his hands run up my calves to the backs of my knees and further up my skirt to my underwear. He spent some time rubbing my legs, getting up close so he could kiss my inner thighs. He disappeared beneath my dress and even though I could feel him, I still wanted to see him too. I lifted the edge of my dress and watched as he laid those gorgeously full lips over my skin with tenderness and desire. Each kiss sent its own tingle through my nerves and I think that's what Roman wanted to happen. "Mm, look at you. You look so cute in your adorable birthday dress. Too bad your pussy boyfriend isn't man enough to enjoy this. But that's okay... I'm going to make you forget all about him." Roman's voice was almost as stimulating as his hands and mouth were. He rose up higher and sighed when he ran his hands over the scant band of my underwear, just purring like an engine, eyes glued to my face so he could see my reactions. "Fuck... Look at these sexy little panties," his voice strummed. "These aren't the kind of panties that good girls wear... No. These are the kind you wear when you want to get fucked dirty, isn't that right? Did you put these on for your boyfriend hoping he would see?" I nodded my head, completely caught off guard by the words leaving Roman's mouth. I had never heard anybody talk that way and it excited me so much I could feel my arousal making itself apparent between my legs. "Well, I'm glad you decided to come home with me instead. Now I'm the lucky one who gets to take these off of you." Roman placed a few more kisses on my hips and ran his large hands all over my skin before he hooked one finger underneath the material of my underwear and gave them a tug. Before he proceeded any further though he took off his jacket and threw it to the side. Beneath it, he was wearing a black V-neck shirt that clung to his body in perfect shape. I had always liked Roman's sense of style. It set him apart from the rest of the guys at school, among many of his other traits. The closer his face got to my crotch the more sounds he began to make. Anything from soft sighs to quiet clicks of his tongue as he remarked how sad it was that some asshole had let me walk away from him on the side of the road. He said if it had have been him, there would be no way he would let a girl like me just walk away. His compliments acted like lube, so smooth and inviting that by the time he pulled my panties down my legs to my ankles I was already so very wet. It was another thing that made him groan with satisfaction. "Jesus fucking Christ. Look at this... Nice little wet pussy... Just glistening for me." I tried not to make too much noise as he shoved his face between my legs and ran his warm tongue up my slit, tasting the juices while simultaneously making my knees weak and gripping my thighs. "Mm... Fuck. You taste so fucking sweet. Did you know that? Did you know that your cunt tastes absolutely divine?" My mouth fell open as I watched Roman Godfrey lapping at me while I stood above him with my legs as far apart as the panties around my ankles would allow me to stand. The warmth of his mouth sent ripples of pleasure through my entire body and when he stuck his tongue out to explicitly flicker over my clit I let out my first real moan which I attempted to stifle in my cupped hand. "You like that, don't you, princess? Feels good to have your pussy eaten, doesn't it? Don't tell me he doesn't do this for you?" I shook my head no and Roman gasped softly and then rose to his feet, staring me down in disbelief. "You mean to tell me that you put all of this time and effort into looking like an absolute fucking dish and that asshole doesn't even have the balls to eat you out?" "No," I said quietly. Roman lifted me up and carried me towards his bed and in the process I managed to kick my panties off, losing them on the floor somewhere before he set me down on the covered mattress. He lifted my dress up and I aided him by raising my arms so he could pull it off of me. I was left with only my bra and shoes on but that didn't last long either because Roman went to unhook it, relishing the sight when my breasts were exposed to him. "That is a fucking crime. Look at you. You always look so innocent but I bet... You're just aching to get fucked like a naughty little slut, aren't you?" I didn't have to say much to him because he already knew that I was more than eager to receive whatever he had to give me. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone. For a moment I got worried but I didn't want to stop there. I wanted him badly. "Show me those nice tits. Yes. Squeeze them together baby. Fuck... Yeah, that's good." I bit my lip shyly as I did what he asked me to. The way he purred as I touched myself made me want him even harder but the camera in my face did put me off. I tried to overcome my nervousness but he noticed. "Roman..." I said worriedly. "You got to take pictures of me... Now it's my turn. Don't worry, sweetheart. These are for my eyes only." He snapped a few pictures of me and then set his phone on the bedside table before tearing his shirt off and crawling up on the bed, coming up behind me so he could run his fingers over my nipples and nibble on my neck. Once he had gotten more than a handful of my breasts he hugged me to his chest and pulled me back toward the headboard of the bed. I sat between his legs, back to his chest as he continued to fondle me all over and whisper in my ear. "You feel that?" He asked me as he pushed his groin into my back. "Feel how hard my cock is for you? Yeah? Do you feel how badly I want to fuck your pussy?" "Yes." His hands ran over the curve of my hips and down my legs so he could pull my knees up, giving himself better access to my opening. With one long finger, he grazed my clit ever so slightly, causing me to sigh and lean back into his embrace. "It's a shame you're not with someone who knows how to get you off. Don't worry. I'm going to make you come, then I'm going to make you come some more. Is that okay?" His voice was hot against my neck and I didn't have much left for words besides yes. "Tell me. Tell me you want me to make you come. Say it." "I want you to make me come." "Louder. Say 'Roman, I need you to play with my pussy'. Say it." "I need you to play with my pussy, Roman. I need it." "Yes," he drawled. "Yes, princess. Don't worry. I'll make you come hard. You fucking deserve it." After that, he pushed his middle finger into my mouth so I could suck on it. He kissed my shoulder, purring and delighting in the sensation before he pulled it back out and ran the pad of his finger over my clit in small firm circles. The feeling he stirred up in me was intense and I spread my legs further apart, much to his satisfaction. "Yes, open those legs for me so I can finger that tight little cunt." When he pressed his digit into me I groaned and laid my head back on his shoulder. He hissed softly as he began to work it in and out slowly. His mouth was close to my ear and he hooked his other arm around my neck but didn't pull, it was just enough to make sure I stayed close enough for him to whisper dirty things in my ear. "How's that feel baby?" "Good... So good. Mmm." I whined. "Yeah? You ready for another finger?" He asked. I whimpered but he shushed me gently. When I felt the tips of two of his fingers pressing against my opening I gasped. "I know you can handle it. After all... How are you going to take my cock if you can't even have two of my fingers inside of you?" He worked his fingers in nicely and once they were inside he began pulsing them in and out, rubbing against a spot in me that felt too good to be true. He laughed as my mouth fell open, picking up the pace as I lifted my knees up a little bit more so I could watch his hand pleasuring me. "Yeah, that looks real good, doesn't it?" He asked. "Yes, oh my god... Roman." "Yes baby, you like that, don't you? Naughty little whore. So wet and needy." Roman pulled his fingers out of me with a slick sound that only added to the ambiance of pleasure he was creating. He hooked his arm around me tighter and delivered a few swift claps to my clit, growling lowly in his throat as I tensed up from the sensation. "Oh fuck. I bet that feels really good, huh? You like it when I slap that clit? Mhm." He did it some more, five quick slaps and then a break to let me feel the dull stinging before giving me five or six more. My legs involuntarily closed around his hand but he spread them apart again and gave one of my thighs a light slap too. "No, no, baby. Don't close those legs yet. I'm not done." He rubbed my pussy slowly with enthusiasm and it felt so drastically different from the slaps that I melted back into him. The arm he had wound around my neck dropped so he could squeeze my breasts and lightly pinch my nipples. The edge of his teeth sank down on my shoulder but not too hard. It was just enough to leave light imprints on my skin. "You ready to sit on this cock?" He bucked his hips into me so I could feel how hard he was. "Mhm, yes Roman." He backed up until he was pressed right up against the headboard. Unbuckling his belt, he worked his pants and boxers down until they were low enough for him to kick them off. I bristled at the sight of his cock, thick with arousal and pulsing with blood. He was big. Much bigger than Zack and I was afraid that it might hurt to have it all inside at once. I think he could see the trepidation in my eyes but ignored it, choosing instead to beckon me with two fingers. "Come here, you. Come sit that gorgeous little pussy on me." Roman urged me. I crawled over his legs and straddled his lap and my look of unease only grew as he angled to push into me, teasing the head of his cock against my opening. "What's the matter?" "It's so... Big." "I know, baby. It's okay. I know you can handle it." He encouraged. "I promise I'll go slow." I inhaled sharply when he pushed into me deliberately, only going as far as to envelope the tip inside of me before he pulled out. "Fuck," he groaned. "I need to feel that again." He pushed up inside of me again, going further and I couldn't help but moan as the feeling ricocheted through my body. I had never felt such an intense fullness but he had been right. I was turned on enough that I could handle it. In fact, the further I sank down on him the better it felt until I was seated on his lap and the deepness hit part of me that I had never felt before. It was sharp and I lifted up again, but he was already so in Heaven that his moaning sent his head back. "Fuck! Oh, that's so good. Your pussy is so tight." He reveled. It took a while for me to adjust but once I did the sensation was beyond anything I had ever imagined. Roman began to rock me and I could feel my juices running down to coat the inside of my thighs. He looked at me like he had never seen anything like me before with his lips hanging open and brows screwed together in ecstasy, it was all so much so quickly. "Holy shit, I don't know how long I can last." He expressed. I whimpered as he pushed in and pulled out with a pace so slow I could feel every vein and ridge of his cock throbbing. Once we developed a steady and deliberate rhythm, Roman reached down and started doing that thing where he massaged my clit in circles. That was a new sensation that sent my eyes reeling back with pleasure; having something inside of me while also being played with. I couldn't believe how good it felt and he could tell how it was affecting me which caused him to smile devilishly. "How's that feel, princess? You like riding that nice big dick while I play with your clit?" "Yes, oh my god." "Yeah," he hissed again. "I bet your boyfriend is too much of a little bitch to fuck you the way I can." I agonized in every single pang of bliss and each word that fell from his mouth. It was easy to get close to the edge with Roman spouting such profanity, working himself inside of me like I had never felt before. Once he picked up the pace I really started to enjoy myself. He never took himself away from me and made sure he was bringing me to the edge with him. "Oh, fuck... I'm close. Are you going to come with me?" He asked. I nodded my head as I bounced on his lap. He used his other hand to slap my ass and I let out a whine when he began thrusting into me harder. "Yes, that's right. Come with me. Yes, yes, yes. Come all over my cock baby." The circles he drew grew ragged but he never lost the rhythm and didn't press into me too hard. He knew how to tease and the more he did so the closer I got to feeling that burst of euphoria that I knew would find me. "Come for me. Come for me right now. Right now, baby girl, yes." His words were fast and made it that much easier for me to get close. "I'm going to come. Are you going to come with me?" "Yes, Roman, fuck yes." "Do it. Come right now. Do it for me." I felt Roman's body tense, watched his abdomen flex and saw how eager he was to make me orgasm with him. It definitely did the trick and it wasn't long before I felt my climax hit me just as his hit him. His hand slowed on me but didn't let up and coaxed an orgasm out of me that was so powerful, I felt myself clenching around his length which sent him into his own orgasmic fit. He curled his long arms around me and squeezed as he growled into my chest like a panting beast, pumping out everything he was capable of until he couldn't anymore and the motions ceased. It was the first time anybody had ever come inside of me and I couldn't lie and say I didn't enjoy it. I climbed off of Roman and immediately felt his warm cum leaking out of me. He began to chuckle in that evil way that put most people off. "What?" I questioned him. He rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. "Sorry... It's just... I don't think I've come that fast since I was like twelve." "I'm sorry." Roman laughed at me and I looked away slightly embarrassed. "Sorry? No, I'm sorry. If you give me a bit we can go again." "Again?" Roman scoffed and threw his head back. "Don't fucking tell me... He doesn't eat you out AND he can't fuck you more than once in one night? Why are you with him?" "Well, obviously I'm not with him anymore." "Did he break up with you on your birthday and make you walk back home?" "No... I chose to start walking." "Shit. Well good timing for me, huh?" Roman laughed. I giggled too as he ran his hand up my leg. We sat on his bed naked together for a little longer before he scooted closer to me. I suddenly remembered the pictures he had taken of me and felt a wave of anxiety run over me. "So... Those pictures you took of me..." I struggled to say what I needed to say "What pictures?" He asked. I cocked my head. "The pictures... You took with your cell phone." Roman got up on his knees and leaned over me, framing my face with his hands. He kissed me and then pulled back. "Princess, I didn't take any pictures of you. We just started fucking when we got here and you're not going to tell anybody about it, ever." Then... His nose started bleeding and I understood what he had told me. Mindlessly, I nodded and he looked at me with that evil Roman smirk, red trickling down to his top lip.

#bill skarsgård fanfiction #bill skarsgard fanfiction #bill skarsgård smut #roman godfrey fanfiction #roman godfrey #fanfiction

[neshabeingchildish]

Slightly different format, because I just needed y’all who didn’t know this song to hear it, okay? Okay, so I’m about as old as the characters parents could be, maybe slightly younger, because they probably had them a little later in adulthood than I’m far off from them, but I figured, close enough to use MY childhood/youth music for Charlotte’s mom’s taste. At least the general timeline. I named songs and artists, if y’all wanna ever listen to any of it. I haven’t/don’t know if I’m making a Determined Soundtrack/Playlist.

Pretty Brown Eyes

Alright. It was one thing to lean into his kiss, reciprocate his embrace and shift herself into his lap. But, she didn't have to go off the way she did for their first kiss. Because, not only did Charlotte do these things, but she also rocked against him a little, which in turn, he took as an invitation to explore her with his big, strong hands. 

She wasn't quite sure how awkward it must've been for Henry and Amelie to see them there when they left through the front door trying not to make any noise for the pair making out on the floor of the main hallway. But, she had to guess it was as bad as her realizing that they had to have seen them whenever they left, because the front door was right down that, very, hallway.

Eventually, she was the one who caught herself and ended the fun. Her head was spinning, nerves tingling and legs wobbling, but she found her senses and pulled herself together. Jasper was a pile of mush, except for the one thing, what, with her doing all that rocking against him. Ugh. Girl, a first kiss is supposed to be soft and sweet. You're not supposed to half grind the dude into the floor of your parents' house. She shivered thinking about his hands on her body, but it was time for that kiss to be put behind them.

"We can't be doing stuff like this," Charlotte said and helped him up. "I had a point before you did that and I don't even remember my middle name right now."

"The magic of love has rendered you temporarily futile…"

"No. The coursing of hormones has thrown off my equilibrium and it does not feel good."

He panicked. "But, it did though? The not good feeling is an afterthought, right?"

"You have to go and I need to lie down." He nodded and tried to give her a hug, but she placed her hands up to halt him and took a step back. “I’m serious.” He nodded and left her, scratching his head and hoping that his stunt hadn’t done the very thing that she was afraid of - ruined things between them.

.

Morning meetups were awkward. Jasper brought her breakfast, she brought his and Henry’s, but they didn’t really say much to each other. Instead, she spoke to Henry about everything but Jasper and whenever Jasper did speak, she was weird about her reponses. 

Work was atypical. While they generally spent most shifts around each other, she now felt like the store needed to be watched at all times, but if he came up, she took that time to go make scans in the Man Cave to be sure they hadn’t missed any calls for help.

In addition to avoiding him big time, she told him that she looked into Amelie pretty deeply and couldn’t find any reason that he couldn’t “get back on track” with her.

“You’d find that reason in the mirror,” Jasper said and she just rolled her eyes and walked away from him. Whenever he told her that things were weird at home and asked if he could crash, she politely asked Henry if it was okay if Jasper crashed at his, instead. Jasper was exasperated, or as Henry said, in an attempt to be funny, exJasperated. Jasper commented that would be the name of his next podcast, and she left them to that conversation to return to the store.

“So… She’s really just moving on like it didn’t happen?” Henry wondered. He’d waited outside for Jasper that night, because he figured that Charlotte would catch herself and kick him to the curb. But, he thought that by now, she would have talked to Jasper about it, fixed their friendship and outlined how it could never happen again.

“No. It’s worst. She’s moving on like it did happen and it was horrifying for her. She refuses to be alone with me and she hardly talks to me, now. I feel like I did something bad to her, but I thought she liked it. I thought she liked me.”

“She liked it and she likes you. You know what this is really about? Self control. She doesn’t trust herself to be alone with you, because she might wind up on your lap, in your arms again and she thinks she shouldn’t be there. You gotta show her that she should be there.”

“How would I do that without being the very creepo that both you and her have told me numerous times to not be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe her family knows something that we don’t? Something that could help us get her for you.”

“Her parents never say much beyond salutations and asking about my day. But… Uncle Rox might help. He loves me and we’re friends on social media. He lived with them for a while. He had to notice something useful.”

Henry nodded, “There you go!”

.

Jasper made an appointment with Uncle Roscoe at his new house, aka his wife’s house, to set some wheels in motion for wooing Charlotte. The man was all too happy to help. “I LOVE love, Lil’ Nephew,” he told Jasper. “My niece sure can use some wooing. Does she still have an attitude about everything?”

“A huge tude… but I still love her. I find it endearing. She’s polite with people she doesn’t care about, so it’s like… a compliment of sorts when you get that sass from her.”

Uncle Roscoe nodded his head as he made some freshly squeezed juice. “Well, I had a secret weapon to soften her up when she was younger and I found out when I lived at their house that it still kinda worked, depending on the material.”

“I must know!” Jasper said, making prayer hands. Roscoe slid a glass across the island to him and he luckily caught it in his palm. Uncle Rox is super kewl. 

“You subscribe to her Spotify?” Roscoe asked.

“No. I don’t believe that we share music tastes.”

“Well, you better get used to it, because that’s gon’ be your bread and butter, Lil’ Nephew. You see, Charlotte has a love for classic R&B, particularly the late 80's/early 90's. She loves all the boy groups that were popular when me and her moms grew up, because that’s the type of stuff that her moms listened to when she was young. Now, most people stop experiencing new music as they get older. They have some nostalgia about their parents’ music, which they pretend like they don’t, like Charlotte be pretending. They have the stuff that was popular when they were growing up, that was their childhood music. And, mostly, by a certain point, they allow very little new music into their worlds. That’s how my sister was. So, a lot of her music was stuff from the 80s and 90s, and Charlotte loves a lot of it, despite her pretenses.”

“You… Think that me listening to 80’s and 90’s R&B boy groups will win over Charlotte?” Jasper asked confused, finally drinking his juice. “This juice is AMAZING!”

“That’s that Roscoe’s Tropical Trash right there. But, no. The listening is just the first step. You gotta know that music, Boi. You gotta learn it. You gotta know what to play and when. You can control Charlotte’s little ass with the right song selection.”

“That has to be made up,” Jasper said, defeated.

Roscoe told him, “Try it out. If she gets mad, pull up “You Don’t Have to Cry by Rene and Angela,” and see if by the end of that song, she won’t be a different woman. Matter of fact, before anything even happens in your day, just put on Rhythm of the Night by DeBarge and see if she don’t have the cheeriest, happiest day.”

Jasper cupped his cup in his fingers and stared at him. “I seriously can’t tell if you’re making up these songs and artists.”

“Boi, here…” He opened his phone and said, “I’m gonna send you a link to Charlotte’s Spotify. Check out them lists. She’s got some of the music by the year and some by the decade, but it’s all kinda R&B on it. She does like a few older than that, but her most frequent ones, I assure you are those 80s-90s ones, with the groups like Troop, New Edition, Boys II Men…”

“I know them!” Jasper cheered.

“Just… The songs I told you about. Use them, then get back to me when you ready to learn musical conditioning for Charlotte.”

Uncle Roscoe used to be a vocal coach for a production studio that went ass end up in the 90s. He was also a musician, DJ, and club promoter. He was a bouncer at a jazz club, at a strip club, and at a popular night club. He still tried to make music sometimes. He played many instruments and he loved to sing. None of his efforts ever worked out fully. But, he still loved the music industry and he always had a good time with his  niece, whenever a good song put her in a good mood. He knew what he was talking about, but Jasper might have to see for himself.

.

Charlotte was about to go upstairs when she heard the opening notes of Rhythm of the Night and bounced towards it curiously. Jasper and Henry were sitting around, and Jasper’s device was connected to the computer. “How do you know this song?” She wondered.

“Uncle Rox shared a DOPE playlist with me whenever I went over for juice. I can’t stop listening to it.”

“It’s a good song. A good feel good song!” She cheered, excited. “I never would have thought you’d like this, though.”

“I love a good feel good song,” he said. She just nodded, smiling and chilled for a little longer, singing along with the song and dancing by herself. It was a little weird for Henry and Jasper to see, but Jasper immediately realized that Uncle Roscoe was right! The music made Charlotte different! 

Now, she was heading to the store, but she was pulling up her own playlist, because she felt like dancing around as she cleaned up the store. Henry smiled at her on the camera and said, “This is an adorable version of Char,”

“She’s always adorable,” Jasper said, watching her, enthralled. 

Charlotte was glad for the dance party of one. She had been so stressed about letting Jasper down, trying to be his friend, trying to avoid him, trying to forget his lips and hands - she had forgotten to just enjoy herself. How lucky was it that Uncle Roscoe put Jasper onto such great music? And Jasper LIKED it? That just made him more likeable! Ugh. She was gonna groan about it, but Never Knew Love Like This Before by Stephanie Mills came on and she was right back in the feel good zone.

.

Charlotte had taken to starting her days with some feel good music, because everyday around Jasper was a struggle. She found that even when he said something frustratingly stupid, she still thought he was cute. Somehow, his ignorance was tolerable to her and even somewhat charming? She looked at him do something ridiculous and think - look at this cinnamon roll. Ugh! She hoped that whatever was going on was reversible. Until then, music therapy should do the daily trick. Today, she began her day with Square Biz by Teena Marie, which brought her mother in to jam with her for a little while and volunteer to do her hair while they hung out, singing and stuff. They didn’t often, so that was a super plus of the day. She came out of the house in the highest spirits that she had been in, in weeks.

She had two braids with puffs at the end, with some charms braided in. She had worn some makeup. Her outfit was clutch. Honestly, she was slaying, and she felt amazing heading to the bakery. The guy at the bakery saw her and almost burned himself on the oven. She pretended not to see as she fought a smile. He quickly caught himself and got her order prepared. She said, “I’m in a really good mood, so I’ll also take an assorted box of kolaches and donuts for my work. Surprise me with the flavors…” 

They were both distracted by this music outside. Everybody in the bakery looked to see where it was coming from. “Is that Pretty Brown Eyes by Mint Condition?” Charlotte asked herself out loud, right before the doors opened and Jasper came in, singing the song. 

“Pretty brown eyes, You know I see you. It's a disguise the way you treat me. You keep holding on to your thoughts of rejection. If you're with me you're secured…”

“What?” She asked herself, frozen in place at… whatever…  this was. She loved that song. There was a whole ass band outside. “Uncle Roscoe…” She said, when she saw him and his friends playing Jasper’s music. Henry was there, recording with his phone. She smiled at the clerk and pretended that they weren’t there for her. She grabbed her order, forced a smile at her friends and tried to pass by. Henry took her order and Jasper continued to sing to her. 

“You keep telling me that your time is always taken, But I keep seeing you out alone. Listen to love; Your heart is pounding with desire waiting to be unleashed…”

As he did, she tried not to blush and laugh. She walked out, and it was louder out there, with the band playing music, but Jasper’s determined self was following her and singing, much like some kind of 90’s music video. She couldn’t help but be impressed and he was a pretty good singer too.

They’d really missed out, not letting him finish his songs during the musical curse. He danced around her, singing the lyrics and she couldn’t help but bop to the music. 

“Quit breakin' my heart 

Breakin' my heart, yeah (pretty brown eyes, Uncle Roscoe was singing backup and playing his instrument)

Breakin' my heart, yeah

Breakin' my heart, sugar, yeah, yeah”

She LOVED this song! Whenever Jasper neared the end of his song, she was pretty much weak and he was so fine, and this took so much work and wasn’t she WORTH this kind of trouble? Jasper sure thought so. Maybe he was worth a little trouble too. Maybe he was worth the risks she worried about. That high pitched, “Quit breaking my heart!” Was her sign. She grabbed him, pulled him to her and started kissing him. Henry cheered him on, and Uncle Roscoe returned a favor of calling out, “Get it, Lil’ Nephew!”

Henry sniffled, “I’m so proud, right now.”

Charlotte pulled back, laughed, shook her head and told Jasper, “You’re crazy. Remember, when it sucks, you insisted on this. Now… You’ve got me.”

He looked towards the band and yelled, “We did it, Uncle Rox! She’s mine!” 

She rolled her eyes, grabbed his hand and pulled him down the street. Henry stopped recording and looked at the band, “Ummm… Well… You gentlemen, and ladies have a good day.” He caught up with his friends, holding the breakfast while they held hands and smiled at each other the whole time. “Feeling left out,” Henry said.

“You’ll pull through,” Charlotte told him. 

Jasper just laughed and gave her a kiss on the temple. “You are so pretty,” he told her. Then, with a big smile, “I can’t believe that I’m this lucky!” 

#A Chasper Fic #chasper #henry danger #hd fanfic #Nesha HD Fics #music #Mint Condition #breakin my heart pretty brown eyes

[taurnachardhin]

frustrating family feelings rant below:

My mom.....she's been "supportive" of me ever since I came out as bi to her a few years ago, but she and my dad are pretty progressive politically so it's not like I grew up in a household where I was raised to believe homosexuality was a sin or anything like that. Both of my parents have close gay friends. But my mom did raise me very heteronormatively where I was taught that it was ok for other people to be queer but never presented it as an option for me personally. (In spite of the fact that I didn't date at all until I was 25, and was a very tomboyish child who went through a whole cargo shorts phase in high school, like mom, did you not see this coming?) But in spite of the signs, I think my mom was kind of in denial about it the same way she definitely should have realized I also had depression and ADHD as a kid but just didn't want to see it because she comes from this very conventional middle class, keeping-up-appearances kind of background where she didn't want there to be anything wrong or weird about me because she doesn't want me to get hurt, but also because I think deep down she's afraid it will reflect poorly on her. For a long while after I came out to her, it felt like she would only voluntarily bring up queer stuff if it was something that was bad news, like that's always what caught her attention, and she'd tell me about a study that worried her that said LGBT youth are more likely to smoke (as if I, who watched 3/4 grandparents die of lung disease, could even be paid to touch a cigarette), or after the Pulse shooting she told me she hoped I wasn't going to any Pride events and that I would be careful, and like I get it, she's doing the mom-catastrophizing thing where all she sees is danger, but it really hurt me because I've been lucky enough to never face any direct discrimination for my orientation and honestly when I finally started owning the truth of my bi-ness five years ago, it was kind of the one good thing happening in my life. But it felt like my mom would never see it as something good for me.

She got better at it eventually and started sharing more positive stuff, and when I actually had a girlfriend for a hot second last year, she was genuinely excited about it. But never fully got over this attitude that it was all something to be fearful about. Like this was a while earlier, but a very typical example of the kinds of things she says: after The Force Awakens came out back in 2015, I was home for Christmas and chatting about it with my parents, and my mom said something about how she wished they hadn't made Finn and Rey a romantic pairing and I (somewhat joking, but also not really) said, "I mean, did they? I honestly thought Finn had a more romantic storyline with Poe." And my mom just immediately said, "Well. THAT'S not something we can discuss when my family's here tomorrow," as if that had any relevance to the conversation. And I was just thinking like, what the hell do you think would happen if we did? My grandmother and stepgrandfather had just been to see Fun Home on Broadway. My aunt's best friend is a gay guy. My uncle is the most religiously conservative of the group and he might be a little more uptight, but again, his wife's best friend is gay so it can't bother him THAT much. Like yes, my mom's side of the family are mostly Republicans, but they're not the kind who are going to disown you for having a bi daughter who thinks two fictional men should kiss. What are you so afraid of? And if you're telling me not to talk about queer stuff in front of your family just because it might ruffle your brother-in-law's feathers, how am I supposed to take that, that you wouldn't be on my side if it happened? It's just little stuff like that that comes through sometimes, in these moments of panic she gets.

Today, (she's a kindergarten teacher) she told me that she wanted my "opinion" on how she'd handled an argument two of her students were having. A boy and a girl came up to her and the girl said, "Girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys, my parents said so." And the boy countered that HIS parents said they couldn't, and they wanted to know who was right. And she was like, "I always worry in situations like this that I might make the parents mad if it gets back to them, so I just told them they were way too young to be thinking about marriage and changed the subject." And I was very calm and gentle about how I answered, but I was like, "Mom. Girls can in fact marry girls now. It's legal. It's ok for you to tell them the girl was right, because it's the truth. They weren't asking you a moral question, they were asking you a factual one. You couldn't possibly have gotten in trouble for answering it accurately." And she was like, "Oh, I guess you're right. That was just what came to me in my panic." And like yeah, clearly. But then I also told her it seemed a bit disingenuous to tell them they weren't supposed to think about marriage, because of course little kids think about marriage! It's a totally normal part of human lives they can see all around them and are naturally curious about. They're also interested in like, jobs, but we never tell kids they aren't supposed to think about what they want to do when they're grown up just because it's not a decision they're actually ready to make. And I didn't even bring this up, though I wish I'd thought to, but when I was in kindergarten, my best friend was a boy, and he and I would talk about how we were going to get married when we grew up. And my mom, of course! thought THAT was adorable and she still tells that story all the time. Damn hypocrite. 

I'm glad I helped her realize she didn't maybe say the right thing, and I guess I appreciate that she does at least ask me about this stuff because it shows she's trying to learn, but every time it throws me into a funk over it, because it's just like a reminder that she still views my orientation not just as a problem, but a problem for HER. She doesn't want anyone to be angry at her for expressing a controversial opinion. She doesn't want to lose her job for publicly expressing support for gay marriage, as if that's a thing that would even happen to a straight, white, married suburban woman in 2019. And I just wanna be like, mom, what the hell do you plan to do if I do, in fact, marry a girl, as is my legal right? Will you lie to your coworkers and students? Will you give me dire warnings that some of my relatives might not want to come to the wedding? That part in Nanette where she talks about what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate....I wish I could make her see that that's what she's doing every time she "changes the subject." But I also understand that like Hannah Gadsby's mom, mine just wanted me to change because she knew the world wouldn't. But that's the thing though, right? Is the world did change. Not enough, not yet, but public opinion on gay issues is very very different now than it was when I was a child. I wish my mom could see that, and I wish she could see how much it hurts me that she doesn't. I'd love to tell her to watch Nanette, but I know it'll just make her feel bad, and then she'll still be making it about her feelings. And then the only part she'll actually remember is all the bad things that happened to Hannah and she'll take away that she's right to be afraid for me and it'll probably just make everything worse.

You know who did watch Nanette? My dad. I told him he should watch it after he went through a whole Netflix comedy specials phase, and he did and he loved it. During the 2018 election, he canvassed for a political candidate for the first time in his life, a Democrat running for the state house, and when he knocked on doors in their neighborhood, he told all his Republican neighbors that he had LGBT people in his family and among his students (he's also a teacher), and that he was afraid for us if Kemp won the governor's race and Republicans kept control of the state house, because Kemp had promised to sign an anti-LGBT "religious freedom" bill. See, my dad is also afraid for me. But he takes his fear and feeds it courage, while my mom just feeds it with more fear.

I know I’m very fortunate that this is the extent of the conflict I have with my parents over my orientation. My ex’s mom evidently was really upset when she came out to her, but later got over it and now they’re those “my mom is actually my best friend!” kind of people (lord, what’s that like??), and when she told me that, it made me feel petty for resenting my mom’s occasional well-meaning microaggressions, when she could overlook her mom reacting so much worse. But like, pain is pain, I guess. I do forgive my mom for her ignorance and fear, largely because I know that her denial about me and my mental health issues is nothing compared to her own denial of her own anxiety, so I appreciate that this is tough for her in ways she can’t entirely control. And I know I really need to actually tell my mom how I feel about all this at some point instead of just ranting into the tumblr void, and I keep trying to compose that speech in a way that will make her actually listen and not just get all mad and resentful the way she sometimes does when I confront her about something. But for now it’s just tumblr rant, so here we are. Thanks for listening, yikes.

#personal junk box #this post will self-destruct most likely