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hekate1308 · 7 months

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I’m not saying I didn’t like it.

Prompt: I’m not saying I didn’t like it

Fandom: Supernatural

Pairing: Drowley

Normally, Crowley’s affairs, for lack of a better word, didn’t last long – if they ever got past the first night. After one or two weeks, it was usually over.

Which was why it was so bloody confusing that he had been seeing Dean, the local librarian, Lawrence’s helpful darling and everyone’s best friend, for six months now, especially because, as everyone who knew about him had let him know, they had absolutely nothing in common.

As if Crowley didn’t know that.

But he didn’t have the time to focus on Dean and whatever they were to one another at the moment, because… well…

He had other things to deal with.

Simmons should really have known better than to let herself get taken so easily, but then, he had all the experience in the world. And now that he thought about it her real mistake had been to try and oust him in the first place.

At least she seemed to have worked alone. That was something – it meant the other members of his organization had at least the good sense to try and not die by his hand.

Which, of course, Simmons did even as she begged for her life. Pathetic, he thought as he let the gun sink. She had to have known that her actions would have consequences, and exactly the one she had just experienced.

Alright. Now to dealing with the body –

“Clean shot.”

He turned around to find Dean studying the scene in front of him.

He didn’t know what to say or do. Normally, he would have shot immediately… but… well…

This was Dean. And he happened to… happened to…

And then, for the first time in his life, his world was turned upside down.

“Oh relax, Peaches. I’m not saying I didn’t like it.“

He turned his head to stare at him. Had Dean – the kindest, gentlest soul he had ever met, the librarian who regularly arranged readings to children, the man who at least half a dozen people would call first if they needed help just said –

“It lacked a certain… finesse, I’ll give you that” he then continued simply. “Normally you’re more subtle.”

A pause. He hated to ask – he always hated to ask, no matter the topic or the person – but he had to know. “So you were aware…”

“Oh, what you do? Of course. Recognized you immediately when you came into the library. It was a lucky coincidence – I’d been wondering how to meet you properly for some time now.”

“Had you?” The thought that Dean might be an undercover police officer entered his mind, but he dismissed it immediately. No – that glitter in his eyes, the excitement in his voice – he knew those very well.

That was why Dean had never bored him.

He had found a kindred spirit without being aware of it.

He was walking towards him now – no, rather stalking, the glitter in his eyes becoming more prominent. “You see, ever since I was a kid I’ve had these… urges. To do… certain things. Only they don’t align with my values, and anyway, there was Sammy… could hardly do something that would risk leaving him alone with Dad. At least until I was old enough to solve that problem.”

So the car accident he had told him about right at the beginning of their… affair had not been an accident after all.

“He was the first, but needless to say, not the last. Always make sure they deserve it, though. And I’m not talking about the poor or the homeless or something like that –“

“So Ketch – that was you?”

He nodded. “Was fun.” He grinned. “I realized soon enough that it just wouldn’t be fair to drag someone – how should I say – normal into all of this. So since my early twenties, I’ve been looking for someone who could be… quite literally… my partner in crime. And when I figured out what you are…” he trailed off.

Crowley should perhaps have been shocked, or angry, but in fact he was impressed by the thought he had put into all of this. “And you think I could be?”

“I think you might be… intrigued by everything you just heard. And I already know you’re good in bed, and it’s not like you would go to the police to rat me out.”

His hands found Dean’s hips to draw him closer. “Intrigued is not exactly the word I would use… captivated, I would rather say.”

“Well, then… what do you propose we do, then?” Dean grinned again that boyish grin of his that would have convinced everyone of his innocence immediately, even if suspicion had ever fallen on him, which it most likely would not.

“Well, darling” he drawled. “You wouldn’t be interested in learning about the inner workings of my firm, for a start, wouldn’t you?”

#fictober23 #my writings #spn #drowley #crowley #dean winchester

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crossbowking · 2 years

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More Than Anything (Bonus Scene)

(Click HERE to read More Than Anything Part 1)

(Click HERE to read More Than Anything Part 2)

Summary: (Set mid-season 6) The reader’s feelings towards the archer evolve, but a supply run that goes south threatens to destroy it all.

Request: “I’d love to see something w protective Daryl and some angst, maybe set at the start of their time in Alexandria w an established relationship?” - @pulplorrd

A/N: Welp, here we are. One last hoo-rah! For those of you that haven't read parts 1 and 2, I highly suggest you do so before reading this! For those of you who are caught up, this is a *certain scene involving a near-drowning*, but from Daryl's POV!

I'm SO sorry it took so long for me to get this out to y'all! (Literally 10 months lol) But I'm happy with how this turned out and am now ready to put this story to rest.

I hope you enjoy it and hope it was worth the wait!

Happy reading :)

xx Jess

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Daryl had learned at a young age not to trust the things that came easy to him.

There had to be a catch — there was always a catch. Nothing good ever came without consequence in his experience.

Well, except you.

You were different — you were everything.

He’d been buried elbow-deep in the hood of an abandoned car, tinkering around with the rusted metal, hoping to find a way to get it up and running once more. Finding the motel had been like winning the fucking lottery — somehow, throughout all the bullshit that’d happened since the dead started walking, it’d essentially been left untouched. He’d figured a place like that would’ve been picked clean through this far into the end of the world.

Yet here it was.

The archer had caught a glimpse of you in the parking lot a few minutes earlier, packing up the trunk of the car with Tara. He’d watched you walk back towards the motel, only pausing to glance over your shoulder, your eyes meeting his. The tension in his body melted away, in its place a warmth he couldn’t quite decipher — but the corner of his mouth quirked as you’d sent him a wink and then you were gone, disappearing down the main stretch of the motel.

His face felt fuzzy as he’d focused back on the car, his thoughts filled with the sweetness of you.

But nothing good ever came without consequence.

“Look out!”

Daryl’s head snapped up at the sound of your sudden and panicked cry, sending his stomach plummeting, his blood turning to ice.

And he took off.

His heart slammed against his ribcage, mimicking the sound of his boots pounding the pavement as he lessened the distance between him, you, and every horrible thing he imagined to be happening at that very moment.

But then he heard a different noise.

A splash.

The sound seemed so misplaced, foreign almost, that Daryl nearly assumed he’d imagined it. Except when he finally rounded the corner — skidding to a halt, spotting the murky swimming pool just ahead, noticing the rippling of waves coming from the center — he realized just how horribly wrong he was.

“Daryl!” Tara suddenly yelled, drawing him back. She stood just a few yards ahead, facing off against a small herd of walkers that’d formed. “She’s — she’s in!” she shouted in a panic, yanking her knife from the skull of the dead at her feet and pointing wildly at the pool. “She fell in!”

The archer didn’t think twice — he drew the pistol he’d shoved into the waistband of his jeans and fired at one of the dead nearing Tara, landing an easy headshot. Daryl ran towards her then, half-tossing, half-handing his gun off to her, unable to focus on anything other than the fact that, at that very moment, you were fucking drowning.

The sound of gunfire began as the archer turned towards the pool, inhaled a deep breath, and dove in.

The water hit him like a ton of bricks — dark, grimy, swamp water. His body slid across the bottom of the pool, his hands fumbling blindly in front of him, feeling for any inkling of you. He ignored the burning in his chest, refusing to resurface until he had you in his grasp — or until his lungs gave out altogether.

He pushed away the plastic tarp he felt drift towards him, coiling around his body and drawing nearer like a siren’s song, sinking him deeper into the depths of darkness. When his hand brushed against another, his heart leapt into his throat, thinking he’d found you at last — but it only took a moment for him to realize something was off, something was wrong.

He knew the feeling of your hand in his — and it wasn’t yours he’d grasped.

He gnashed his teeth together, features twisting as water threatened to force its way past his lips. But he held steady, maneuvering around the body he’d discovered and continuing his search, growing more and more frantic as precious seconds ticked on.

Daryl didn’t think — he didn’t think about your body, floating lifeless just beyond reach; he didn’t think about what would happen once he found you, once he dragged your still body from the water and realized that the big, beautiful heart inside your chest had stopped beating; he didn’t think about having to drive his knife through your temple to stop your reanimation, because there was no way — no way in hell — he’d be able to leave you like that.

If you were dead, if he was too late, if this…if this was it?

Nothing good ever came without consequence.

Daryl nearly folded — nearly gave in to the fire burning inside his lungs, the reddish-white pulsing around the edges of his darkened vision — but just before the emptiness came, he felt something.

Cold, unmoving, familiar.

His hand wrapped around another.

And he knew in an instant it was you.

The archer pulled you near, your body drifting motionlessly towards him until your back connected against his chest. He could feel the material of the tarp wrapped around your center, having anchored you to the bottom of the pool. He fumbled for just a moment, but managed to unwind the material from around you before gritting his teeth together and pushing off the bottom of the pool with all the force he could muster, his arm wrapped tightly around your waist.

Daryl broke through the surface with a gasp, sputtering for mouthful after mouthful of air, the pressure in his chest finally relenting. He flicked away the hair that’d stuck against his face, swimming as fast as he could to the edge of the pool, dragging you along with him. He managed to grab onto the side, the blistering concrete burning the tips of his fingers.

Your head lolled listlessly against his shoulder, strands of your hair splayed out across your face — you were still…unresponsive…blue.

He tried to hoist you from the pool, but you were dead weight in his arms. “Tara!” he hollered, attempting once more to lift you out — but every time he tried, he’d sink and lose his grasp. “Tara!” he roared, his voice breaking as he swallowed the panic that rose.

Tara ran over a moment later, out of breath and wide-eyed. “Shit — oh shit,” she swore, dropping to her knees and fumbling for you.

“Help — help me get her out!” he snapped, hating the desperation laced around his words as he heaved your body upward.

Tara quickly wound her arms beneath your armpits, holding your head above water as Daryl pulled himself out of the pool in one swift motion. He grabbed hold around your center and, with Tara’s help, finally managed to drag your lifeless body out of the water.

He dropped to his knees beside you, frantically brushing the hair away from your face, careful not to touch the bloody gash across your forehead before leaning down and pressing his ear against the center of your chest, holding his breath.

He heard nothing.

“Fuck,” he growled, intertwining his fingers, ignoring the way they shook.

Tara crouched down on your other side, her hand pressed against her stomach like she was fighting back the urge to be sick. “Daryl, is — is she —”

“Get the car,” he rasped, laying his clasped hands against your middle, right below your sternum. Tara jumped to her feet and took off without another word. “Alright, alright,” he murmured as he began chest compressions.

He wasn’t sure how fast he was supposed to do it, wasn’t sure the strength needed to restart someone’s fucking heart, and wished he’d paid more attention in health class — but he’d flunked, he’d barely even shown up to begin with, and now he’d have to tack that on to his ever-growing list of regrets.

Once Daryl counted to ten, he tilted your head back and pressed his lips against yours, pinching your nose and breathing a long stream of air into your lungs.

Nothing.

He repeated the action.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

And over and over and over until his arms ached and his lungs burned and he’d cursed every god damn thing he could think of.

“C’mon, Y/N,” he pleaded, refusing to give up despite the little voice in the back of his head that told him he was too late. “Come back ta’ me.”

Daryl learned down once more, his lips nearly grazing yours when all of the sudden your eyes shot open.

He fell back on his haunches, watching as water began to expel itself from your lungs, spurting from your mouth like a faucet that’d been turned on. “Shit — oh shit!” he swore, grabbing onto your arm and rolling you onto your side, allowing the water to flow easier.

After your coughs finally died down, Daryl grabbed onto either of your arms and pulled you upright — you swayed limply in his grasp, your inhales sounding more like gasps than anything else. “Hey, hey, you’re alright,” he rasped, unsure if he was trying to reassure you or himself.

But when you continued to merely stare straight ahead, eyes wide and vacant, not so much looking at the archer but through him, Daryl felt his heart skip a beat. “Hey, can ya hear me?” he asked, waiting for a response that never came. “C’mon, Y/N, say somethin’,” he pressed, more desperately, giving your body a quick shake like he was hoping to jostle something loose. “Y/N!” he tried again, this time the word coming out in a strangled shout.

His hands fell away from your arms, instead slipping around either side of your neck, cradling your head in his grasp. He quickly brushed away the strands of hair that’d fallen across your face, your skin cold to the touch, your lips still tinged blue.

Daryl’s fingertips trembled as he leaned forward a fraction, his ragged breathing syncing up with yours. He was frantically studying your features, his distraught gaze bouncing back and forth between your absent one when your mouth opened as though you were about to speak.

But no sound came out.

The archer felt the breath he’d been holding rush past his lips — what if something was seriously wrong? What if you’d been down there too long? What if he had been too late?

Except before his thoughts could derail completely, you suddenly lifted your hands, wrapping your fingers weakly around either of his wrists.

Daryl glanced down at your hands, a small huff of relief escaping him, the weight that’d sat on his chest dissipating. He felt his throat clog with an unexpected flood of emotion, his vision going blurry as his eyes met yours — yours, no longer vacant, warm and familiar, a little bit of life filling them with each moment that passed.

You’d come back to him.

The archer’s hands slipped behind your head before he closed the space between you, pressing his forehead carefully against yours and squeezing his eyes shut.

When he pulled back, he noticed your muddled gaze flicker upward, your brow knitting together. You cleared your throat then, cringing like it physically pained you to do so. “You’re —” you paused, your voice raw. “You’re bleeding, D,” you finally managed to croak out.

Daryl’s expression darkened as he glanced up at the cut right below your hairline, his jaw clenching as he unsheathed his hunting knife. “It ain’t mine,” he rasped simply, slicing a long strip of fabric from the bottom of his dampened shirt and balling it in his fist, ringing out some of the water.

He reached forward, pressing the material gingerly against your forehead to stop the blood flow, forcing himself to ignore the way you winced at the contact. He wrapped the makeshift gauze around your head, tying the strip into a knot to keep it in place.

But before he could do anything else, he heard the sound of a car door slamming, followed by Tara’s sudden and panicked shouts.

“They’re coming!” she yelled from across the way, pointing urgently at something behind him.

Daryl didn’t need to look — he already knew.

Without another word, he jumped to his feet, looping his arms beneath your armpits and scooping you off the ground along with him. You teetered once standing, feebly grabbing onto the front of his shirt as you fought for stability.

“I got ya,” the archer rumbled, slinging one of your arms across his shoulders, his grip snaking around your waist as the moans and groans from the dead amplified.

Tara appeared at your opposite side a moment later, wide-eyed and out of breath. “Welcome back, chicka,” he heard her say, shooting you a slightly strained smile before winding your other arm across her shoulders, keeping you upright between them.

Daryl could feel the tension in your body, like you were trying to get your legs working to take some of the pressure off them, but to no avail. They merely half-dragged, half-carried you across the stretch of concrete, leading towards the parking lot where Tara had left the car running, away from the hellish nightmare that’d just taken place.

The archer kept his gaze forward, determination to get you to safety being the sole thought coursing through him.

Once at the car, Tara slipped away, jumping into the driver’s seat as Daryl flung open the back door, maneuvering you inside as carefully and quickly as possible. Following suit, he slid inside and yanked the door shut just before the dead could grab at him. He held onto the back of the driver’s seat as Tara peeled out of the parking lot, tires squealing against the asphalt.

And then it was quiet.

Eerie, almost.

The motel rapidly disappeared from sight as Tara drove out onto the main road, the only sound coming from the gentle roar of the engine and your wheezing breaths beside him.

Daryl’s grip tightened around the seat at the sound.

He could feel your eyes on him then, the sensation prickling the side of his face. He glanced over, the sight of your body curled up against the door causing some of the tension in his frame to melt away. Without a word, he shuffled closer, gently grabbing your arm and re-situating you more comfortably in the backseat.

Your body slumped against him, the little remaining energy you had depleting entirely as the archer reached behind your shoulders, grabbed the seatbelt, and wound it around you, locking it in place.

He fell back against the seat beside you with a huff, staring straight through the windshield as his churning thoughts began to take over, the fear that’d lodged itself like a knot in his stomach tightening.

Nothing good ever came without consequence.

Daryl felt you shift a moment later, closing the small gap he’d purposefully placed between you before leaning your head against his shoulder — he stiffened, though made no move to pull away. He heard your breathing even out, your body resting heavier against him. He chanced a glance down at you, feeling the knot in his gut loosen at the sight of your closed eyes, the warmth seeping back into your features, your steady breaths washing over him, giving him goosebumps.

His throat constricted and he focused ahead once more.

He didn’t look at you again — he couldn’t. He couldn’t face what almost happened, couldn’t think about your cold, lifeless body floating in the abyss, couldn’t process just what in the fuck he would’ve done had he lost you.

Because he loved you.

He’d always loved you.

But he’d been too chicken-shit to tell you, terrified that once those words were out there in the open they would somehow shatter the goodness around him, like the rug would be pulled out from under him and he’d realize that none of it had been real to begin with.

And he couldn’t risk that.

He couldn’t risk losing you.

Daryl exhaled a soft breath, squeezing his eyes shut and gently resting his cheek against the top of your head once he knew you wouldn’t wake. He felt you nestle closer, like you missed him even in your sleep, and he felt something inside him break.

He’d learned at a young age not to trust the things that came easy to him.

But you were different.

You were everything.

Fin.

A/N: AHHHHH we did it! We made it to the end of this story! I'm so glad I was able to get this little bonus scene done for y'all, I hope you enjoyed it, and once again, I'm sorry for the near-year long wait lol if you want to see the full resolution of this story, check out Part 2 linked above :)

P.S. Feedback is incredibly important. I write for my own happiness, but I also write for YOU. So don’t be afraid to shoot me an ask or leave a comment with your thoughts! It truly motivates me and helps move along the writing process. Also, please consider donating to my Tip Jar. Every little bit helps!

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five-rivers · 3 years

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Green Sky Highway

Phic Phight Phic for @deuynndoodles

The Fenton Ecto Cell Bettery (aka the Better Battery) was designed to draw power from not only an internal, pre-charged store of ectoplasm, but also from ambient, atmospheric ectoplasm. This meant that it would never run out of juice so long as it was in the Ghost Zone. The Specter Speeder was designed to travel in the Ghost Zone. Thus, the Betteries were the perfect power source for it. In theory.

In practice… Well, that just wasn’t working out, and Maddie didn’t know why. She gripped the underside of the dash and tried to push herself deeper beneath it to get a better view of the machinery.

“Maddie? You see anything?” asked Jack, who couldn’t fit under the dash. He’d been inspecting as much of the engine as he could from the inside, which wasn’t much. The Speeder wasn’t designed to be serviced while free-floating in the Ghost Zone.

Which, now that she thought of it, was a serious oversight.

“Everything looks fine,” said Maddie. “Except that it doesn’t have any power. Nothing’s lighting up, but all the connections look good. You?”

“I can’t get anything to work. Anything. It’s like… we’re in some kind of technological dead zone. But that doesn’t make sense.”

Maddie pulled herself out to see Jack vigorously scratching his head and shedding dandruff everywhere. “Ghosts do tend to disrupt technology.”

“But we fixed that. We designed all our weapons to work with that.”

“We know there are things we don’t know,” said Maddie, “and it’s always good to find new things! Though not pleasant to find them out like this…” They should really test their inventions more, honestly.

But it had been over a year of testing since they opened the portal. They had to jump in at some point, didn’t they? That was the whole point of the portal.

She sighed. “Well, we didn’t have a lot of forward momentum when the portal cut out.” She looked out the window. “We could see if we can get out and engage our jetpacks.”

“Uh, about that,” said Jack. He swung open the door to the jetpack cabinet. The empty jetpack cabinet. “I may have forgotten to put them back after refueling them.”

“Jack…”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Maddie massaged the bridge of her nose with her mostly-clean knuckles. This was a repeat of the handle inside the weapons vault. At least he wasn’t pushing the blame for it back onto Danny or Jazz. That would definitely have started a fight.

On the other hand, there really wasn’t any guarantee the jetpacks would even still be functional, so maybe it was for the best. For certain values of best.

She groaned.

There was a knocking sound. “Is that coming from the engine?” Maddie asked.

“No…” said Jack, slowly. “I think it came from the door…”

They both turned to stare. Something moved outside it. They shifted to get a better view out the window.

Phantom was out there, tapping on the door with a ten-foot pole.

“That little unnatural abomination,” cursed Jack under his breath. “He’s going to scratch the paint!”

Phantom apparently saw them and waved. “Hey!” he shouted, just loud enough to be heard through the walls of the Speeder. “Do you guys need a lift?”

Jack and Maddie turned to each other.

“How did he know we were here?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Do you think he followed us?”

“It wouldn’t be difficult, but I’m surprised he didn’t show up on our detectors.”

“He does seem to have the ability to drop off of them.”

“True,” said Maddie. “So, how do we handle this? Fenton bat?”

“I don’t know, Mads. He might be, uh, sincere? That time with the ectofiltrator he did help me.”

“That’s one, single, datapoint. He’s a been a menace every other time we’ve encountered him.”

“I don’t know that we have much other choice,” said Jack, nodding towards the dead engines and the empty jetpack cabinet.

Maddie huffed out a sigh, then looked back at Phantom, who waved again.

“Fine. We still have to decide how to deal with him while we’re cooperating with him. Or if he decides to show his true colors.”

“Good idea.”

Danny knew this had been a terrible, terrible idea the moment his parents opened the door to the Speeder armed to the teeth. Why did they always feel the need to do that? None of the weapons, with the possible exceptions of the Fenton Bat and the Fenton Crowbar could even work here.

How his parents had, on their first jaunt into the Ghost Zone, managed to run smack into the Time Locked Lands was beyond him. They had to go to the one place in the Ghost Zone that the Speeder wouldn’t work and after coating the Speeder with some kind of anti-ghost spray that Danny absolutely refused to touch again. Ever. Especially in ghost form. Except with a ten-foot pole.

(If they’d left the spray off, he could have just pushed the Speeder back out of the Time Locked Lands. But, no, they had to make everything as difficult and painful as possible.)

“I am not carrying all that,” said Danny, flatly.

(Especially because it would all turn back on once they left the Time Lost Lands, and if there wasn’t a Specter Deflector under all that, he’d eat his own belt.)

“Then we aren’t going anywhere with you!” proclaimed Maddie.

“You’re stranded in the middle of the Ghost Zone. I don’t think you have a choice.”

“We do!”

“I could literally just fly over there and snatch you right now. Plus, again, stranded. Do you even have any food in there?”

“Of course we do!” said Maddie. “We aren’t incompetent.”

Jack looked guilty. Danny decided not to bring it up.

“Okay, but still, you’re going to run out eventually, and then you’ll still be floating in the Ghost Zone with no way to get out. You aren’t going to get another friendly ghost coming by.”

“I’ve never seen a friendly ghost to begin with!”

“Maddie…”

“I can just leave, you know,” said Danny, planting his hands on his hips and bluffing for all he was worth. He was not leaving his parents here to be used as hostages or who knew what else.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t call the bluff. They shouldn’t. No sane, reasonable person would. He was their only way out of this mess. On the other hand, his parents had never been completely sane, reasonable people.

Danny thought his odds were about fifty-fifty. Which meant he could hope.

Jack and Maddie had an intense, whispered conversation. This, thankfully, lead to them divesting themselves of most of their visible weaponry. Which meant that they still had more guns on them than most professional soldiers during a firefight.

Well, it was better than he’d expected. But it was still too many.

“Take the Specter Deflectors off,” he said. “What do you think will happen if I try to carry you and you have those on.”

There was muttering.

“Come on, come on,” said Danny, snapping his fingers. Which really shouldn’t work through his gloves but did anyway.

Sometimes ghost nonsense was good for making lasers fly from your hands, and sometimes it was good for tiny aesthetic breaks in physics. It was a grab bag, really.

“Alright,” said Danny. “I’m going to fly over and pick you up. Don’t hit me.”

Oh, jeez, he was not looking forward to carrying them all the way over to the portal. Sure, he could bench press a school bus, but there was a difference between holding up a school bus for a minute and carrying two people who hated his guts a mile through enemy territory while flying slowly enough not to give them windburn.

Sure, it’d probably only take a few minutes, even then, but those would be the longest few minutes in his entire life. Not counting his actual death.

Being carried by Phantom had to be the single worst experience in Jack’s entire life.

It wasn’t the speed or the lack of control – he loved carnival rides – or the height – Jack couldn’t tell you how many buildings he’d jumped off in pursuit of ghosts – or even the fact that Phantom was a sinister specter, and ectoplasmic emanation, a putrid piece of protoplasm – he’d been carried by ghosts before, usually ones who were a lot more upfront about wanting to kill him.

Actually, Jack didn’t know why he didn’t like it. He just didn’t.

Maybe it was just how uncomfortable it was? But Jack did way more uncomfortable things. Like interacting with his sister-in-law. Brr.

Maybe it was the lurking feeling behind every interaction he ever had with Phantom that there was something he just wasn’t seeing, some hidden truth that would make everything about Phantom, every contradiction, every confusion, make sense.

Nah, that couldn’t be it. Maddie would have figured it out by now. That’s why they made such a great team. He noticed the things she didn’t, and she noticed the things he didn’t.

“You’re going the wrong way,” snapped Maddie.

Just like that!

Wait. That was a really bad thing.

“I’m not going the wrong way,” snapped Phantom. “I’m avoiding Walker’s prison. I don’t know how he didn’t catch you on your way out, but I’m not eager to be thrown in jail for a thousand years.”

“Ghosts have jail?” asked Jack surprised.

“Depends where you are,” said Phantom. “Walker isn’t really a sheriff, though. There’s no government behind him and he just makes up rules randomly so he can lock up anybody he doesn’t like.”

“Like you,” observed Jack.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re even wanted by whatever passes for the law here?”

“First, rude. Secondly, there are realms in here that are just as organized and civilized as any country on Earth. Just because you opened your portal into the equivalent of post-apocalyptic Detroit doesn’t mean it’s all like this.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Maddie.

“I could arrange that, you know,” said Phantom, stilling.

Jack laughed nervously. “Maybe another time?” The ghost would do what it would do, but they didn’t need to encourage him to bring them even deeper into the Ghost Zone. They were currently banking on Phantom’s obsession with heroics to get them home, but if they changed the equation… Yeah, Jack didn’t want to deal with the consequences of that.

Ghosts were like computers that ran only one program. One homicidal, destructive program.

It was like that thought experiment about an AI whose job was to maximize the number of paperclips. It’d just keep on making more and more paperclips until nothing was left. Which was why they had to be stopped.

Easier said than done, as Jack and Maddie had learned.

“You don’t have to be so freaked out,” muttered Phantom. “It isn’t like I’m going to kidnap you or anything.” He pretended to sigh.

What was the point of that? He had to know that Jack and Maddie wouldn’t fall for his tricks. Actually, come to think of it, he was miming breathing, too, and had been the whole time.

Maybe that’s why Jack was so uncomfortable. The constant undercurrent of deception.

Hmmm… something to think on.

“What’s that?” asked Maddie, pointing.

“Uh,” said Phantom, who did a double take.

Ooh, that wasn’t reassuring.

Danny clenched his teeth, his parents’ reactions to him weren’t reassuring, and even less reassuring was the way Pariah’s Keep had moved from its usual creepy location and to this new creepy location. Not that there were any non-creepy locations in the Ghost Zone. It was part of the place’s charm.

No, really. Some part of Danny craved the creepiness. He was half-ghost, after all.

(Even if his idea of creepiness was, according to his friends, sort of lame.)

But back to the main point. The keep really, really shouldn’t be here. And it was creeping him out.

It should be okay to just… fly past it, though, right? Just being in its airspace in the past hadn’t done anything bad. So, flying by with his parents in tow shouldn’t do anything either. Right?

Danny put on more speed, just in case. This coincided with a bunch of large ghost ravens (or were they crows?) dive bombing them and forcing him to land to defend himself and parents. The only land around being the rim of the island that supported the keep.

He knew something like this would happen. Maybe not exactly this, but he just knew he’d be attacked and everything would devolve into nonsense, and—

Huh. The birds weren’t attacking him, just his parents. Oh, these were racist (mortalist?) birds. Gross. Trust Pariah Dark to have bigoted birds. He called up a shield to protect his parents. Whereupon they shot him in the back, shouting about how he betrayed them to the birds, because why not?

Why was his life like this?

He pushed himself up off the ground. Starbursts twinkled behind his eyes. Neither his parents nor the crows were in sight. The crows could have gone anywhere. His parents on the other hand…

There was only one place they could have gone.

Well. At least none of the nonsentient traps would work on them, seeing as they were humans. What were the odds that they’d run into one of the sentient defenders?

Well… considering the ravens?

Yeah. That’d be about one hundred percent.

“Maddie, I don’t know about this…” said Jack, examining the tall, vaulted ceiling.

“We had to get away from Phantom. This was the only way to go.”

“But he came here for a reason, Mads,” whispered Jack, tip-toing.

“Yeah, this is definitely a trap. But what can we do?”

“Jack? Maddie? This is not a place you want to wander around in! Oh, holy—” There was a loud thump.

Maddie grabbed Jack’s hand and pulled him forward. “We have to get away from him.”

“Come on! This is a floating island! I’m your only way off! Why are you like this?”

“He has a point,” said Jack.

Maddie stopped. “I guess he does.”

“This is literally the worst place you could have picked to run away!” A sound like a very large door opening and closing reached their ears. “This is Pariah Dark’s place! Where did you even go?”

“Mads?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s Pariah Dark?”

“I think that was the name of the ghost that sucked the town into the Ghost Zone a few months ago.”

“Please, guys! I’m trying to help you here! This place is ultra-dangerous! You could accidentally – yikes! – wake up Pariah Dark.”

“Maybe we should…”

“Yeah,” said Maddie, “maybe we should.”

“Phantom!” called Jack. “Phantom! We’re over—” The floor opened up underneath them and they fell into the dark.

Maddie woke to a dark room, tied to a chair. She noticed the faintly glowing ghost in front of her and jolted backwards.

The ghost wore a set of painted and engraved plate armor, a pair of lavender-white eyes glowing from behind the slats of its visor. A knight, of sorts, Maddie supposed.

“You…” droned the ghost in a painfully stereotypical ghostly moan. “Enemies of the king… why have you come here?”

“Huh?”

That was Jack’s voice. He was tied behind her, apparently.

“We don’t have anything to say to you,” snapped Maddie.

“Uh,” said Jack. Something twisted behind Maddie. “Are you a friend of Phantom?”

“A friend? A friend?”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” muttered Maddie.

The door of the room flew off its hinges. “Fright Knight!” shouted Phantom, pointing a glowing finger. “Wait, you aren’t Fright Knight. Who are you, and what do you want with my- With, uh, the Fenton ghost hunters? Who I don’t know very well at all. Promise.”

“What,” said the ghost.

“What,” said Maddie.

“What,” said Jack.

“Okay, forget everything I just said.” He gestured at the ghost. “Who are you?”

“My name is Paladin, my liege.”

“Okay, okay, cool, cool. I- Wait, what? What did you call me?”

“My liege?”

Phantom looked like he was having an existential crisis.

“Maddie was right!” exclaimed Jack, who couldn’t see Phantom’s face. “You did lead us into a trap!”

“What? No? I’ve never even met this guy before! You are a guy, right?”

“Yes, my liege.”

“Right. I’m going to put that on the backburner and freak out about it later. How are you- Why are you—” Phantom shook his head. “Why are you here in Pariah’s Keep?”

“It’s your keep.”

“Since when?”

“Say what now?” asked Jack and Maddie at once.

“Look, this is news to me, too. But, back to the question. You. The keep. Why? I mean, you weren’t here before.”

“That is because Pariah sealed me, my liege. When you defeated him, I was released and immediately swore fealty to the true king. You.”

“I am so freaking out right now, but we’ll revisit that. Later. Right now, I have to get these guys home.”

“But they have hostile intentions towards your person, my liege!”

“Everyone has hostile intentions towards me. I’m honestly surprised you haven’t attacked me yet.”

“Ah. My liege, perhaps you should seek the services of a priest, if all your experiences with new people are such.”

“Is that the medieval equivalent of a therapist?”

“I fear I do not know what that is. Why do you ask?”

“Because the last time I talked to one of those, they purposefully picked at every one of my insecurities and then tried to murder my, uh. Someone close to me.”

“An evil counselor, then,” said the knight, gravely.

“I want to agree with you, but somehow I feel like you’re talking about something completely different than the image in my head.”

“That may be true, my liege. Doubtless, you are very wise.”

Maddie was… lost.

Very lost.

Even so, her prerogative was escaping. She started twisting, trying to get to the knots around her wrists.

“Did you, uh, pilot the castle out here?”

“Yes. I sensed that mortal enemies of the king, that’s you—”

“I will debate that as soon as my brain stops screaming at me.”

“—had entered the Realm.”

“Right. Yeah. Thank you. But I can handle these guys. And I need to get them home. Please. I made a deal with them.”

“With these?”

“Hey!” said Jack, offended.

“I mean, I use the term deal pretty loosely.”

“Hey!”

“But yes. Please. Just. Dang. How did you tie them up that quickly?”

“It’s a hobby.”

“Do you mind if I take the chairs?”

“They are your chairs, my liege.”

“I’m still not used to that.”

“Are you quite certain you want to take them? And just… Let them loose? The dungeon here is very functional. We even have an oubliette.”

“Raincheck. But thank you. Really, I mean it.” Phantom flew behind Maddie, and she protested as the chair she was in was yanked upward. “Uh… I might have gotten turned around a time or two, so if you could…”

“Of course! The keep does seem to have sustained some damage, so we will have to take some detours.”

“Phantom! Phantom! Put us down and untie us.”

“Nah, I think I like this better. Your kids can untie you once I bring you back!”

“You’re going to drag us all the way through the Ghost Zone?”

“That’s the plan.”

The rest of the flight was surprisingly pleasant. No one attacked, and his parents were much easier to carry in the chairs. Sure, they struggled, but the struggling was much more manageable than the wriggling from before.

They were mad at him. But they were always mad at him. So.

No loss, really.

With the utmost carefulness, Danny set them down in the middle of the lab, still tied up, and then began zapping then tossing their most troublesome inventions into the gaping maw of the portal while they screamed at him.

Normally, he wouldn’t do this, especially after successfully rescuing his parents and hopefully raising their opinion of him, but some of those inventions were painful. Like. A lot painful. And dangerous. Also, he was doing his level best to avoid thinking about the whole ‘king’ thing.

Which he couldn’t do forever.

Especially since Jazz walked down the stairs, probably drawn by the screaming, to see Danny shoving half of the Ghost Catcher through the portal sans-strings.

“Uh,” said Danny.

“Get that ghost, Jazzy-pants!”

Danny vanished and fled upstairs.

Jazz had seen many strange things in her life, but that scene was one of the weirder ones.

It took some time to untie her parents, longer to extract herself from the ensuing rant and their attempt to salvage their equipment from Danny’s all-too-explicable rampage. Honestly, she was surprised Danny hadn’t snapped earlier.

She opened the door to his room. It was empty. She squinted. He was not just leaving her hanging like that, with no context to what happened other than their parents’ ranting. She opened her door.

Danny was lying on his side on the middle of her rag rug, hugging Bearbert Einstein.

“A ghost told me I was king and that I needed a priest.”

Oh boy.

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2021

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homosexuhauls · 3 years

Text

Moira Donegan

In spite of the increasing crisis of gun violence in intimate partner abuse situations, gun control is still not generally thought of as a gender justice issue

Thu 13 May 2021 11.16 BST

Seven people died in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Sunday at a birthday party, after the boyfriend of one of the party guests showed up with a gun. The boyfriend came to the mobile home park where the party was being held and shot six adults, including his girlfriend. Five of them died at the scene, and another died later, at the hospital. Then he killed himself. He didn’t fire on the children who were there.

The Colorado Springs shooting comes on the heels of another shooting in Austin, Texas, last month, when Stephen Broderick, a former police officer, killed his ex-wife, Amanda, her teenage daughter, Alyssa, and Alyssa’s boyfriend, Willie, in their home. At the time of the murders, Broderick was out on bail after being indicted for sexually abusing Alyssa. In her court petition asking for a restraining order against her stepfather, filed in June 2020, 10 months before he murdered her, Alyssa wrote that she feared the worst. “I’m afraid that to him, a protective order will just be a piece of paper … I’m afraid he might hurt me or my mom for coming forward.”

Guns don't kill people, domestic abusers do. Take their guns away - Jill Filipovic

There is a grim ritual to America’s mass shootings: the condemnations and calls for gun control from the left, the callous and often-parodied bromides of “thoughts and prayers” from the right. But the mass shootings that so often capture media attention and dominate the American conversation about gun violence are the ones that happen in public – those incidents where a person with severe mental illness, or a fanatical rightwing agenda, opens fire in a crowded public space, like a church, a school or a grocery store.

But much of American gun violence, including multiple-fatality events, does not happen in those public places, and many of the perpetrators of mass shootings are not strangers to the people they kill. Instead, a disproportionate amount of America’s mass shootings are domestic violence incidents, in which a man (and overwhelmingly the perpetrators are men) who has already been abusive towards his family, murders the wife, girlfriend, mother, in-laws or children who he was already hurting. Often the victims, like Alyssa Broderick, were people who had already disclosed that they were being abused, people who had already asked for protection.

According to Beverly Kingston, the executive director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, 61% of mass shootings in the United States occur entirely within the home. Even when gun violence spills out into the public arena, domestic abuse is still closely related. The gun control advocacy group Everytown estimates that in 57% of the mass shootings that occurred between January 2009 and June 2014, the perpetrator killed an intimate partner or family member. A Boston University study establishes that the connection between public mass murder and domestic violence is even more longstanding: their findings indicated that of all the perpetrators of mass shootings in America between 1966 and 2020, nearly half had a documented history of violence against women before the massacres.

A 2003 study found that a woman in an abusive relationship is five times more likely to be killed by her partner if there is a gun in the house

Meanwhile, guns have become an increasingly large part of America’s domestic violence epidemic. An average 57 American women every month are murdered with a gun by a current or former partner. And while domestic violence murders in the US have thankfully decreased – at least before the pandemic – the number of gun-related domestic violence incidents has gone up. Between 2008 and 2017, gun murders in which women were killed by romantic partners rose by 15%. Even when the shootings aren’t fatal, they leave lasting scars: Everytown estimates that nearly one million American women have survived being shot or shot at by an intimate partner. And of course, an abuser does not have to use the gun at all for his access to firearms to become a crucial element of this threat and control.

Gun control opponents and groups like the National Rifle Association often preach that those who fear being victims of gun violence should get a gun themselves, and learn to use it. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the old adage goes. But in domestic violence situations, this proves untrue: a 2003 study found that a woman in an abusive relationship is five times more likely to be killed by her partner if there is a gun in the house. It doesn’t matter if the gun belongs to her or to him: the presence of any weapon in a home afflicted with domestic violence means that the abuser is more likely to use it to kill her.

Yet in spite of the well-established connection between private domestic violence and public mass death, and in spite of the increasing crisis of gun violence in intimate partner abuse situations, gun control is still not generally thought of as a gender justice issue. Maybe this is because of the old divide between the private and public spheres, where what happens in public places is considered to be a legitimate concern for policymakers and what happens in the home is not. Or maybe its because the prevalence of domestic violence in America more broadly is something many of us still can’t quite bring ourselves to acknowledge: it is estimated that one in three American women will experience intimate partner violence in her lifetime, a figure that represents so much pain it is difficult to wrap your head around.

But ignoring the link between domestic violence and gun violence has had, literally, fatal consequences. The failure to understand domestic abuse as a precursor to public violence has led us to miss the warning signs about men who later committed public mass shootings. The failure to act on the knowledge that domestic violence that does not use weapons is a precursor to shootings has left many women dead.

After Broderick murdered three people in a home in Austin, the city’s police department tweeted out a message advising to those nearby to stay calm. “There is no risk to the general public,” the account, @Austin_Police, said.

Isn’t there?

In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org

#Radical feminism #male violence #gun violence #radfem safe #domestic violence #intimate partner violence #all added emphasis is mine

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thinking1bee · 3 years

Text

Cheated Part 2

Requested By Anonymous

Pairings: Lena Luthor X Reader

Tags: ANGST, Violence, Blood, Humor, Some smut, Flashbacks, Fluff, Explicit Language

Taglist: @owloftheshadows

*** Lena Luthor: 3 years later***

The last 3 years with Lena had been amazing. There were definitely ups and downs, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. You knew Lena could love, but you didn’t know that she could love hard. The depths of her, the pieces that everyone else didn’t get to see, she usually kept buried. Even with you, it took several months for Lena to let her walls down around you. You knew her family history. You knew that she struggled to trust, so now that you had it, you would do everything in your power to protect it. Beneath the cold exterior that surrounded Lena like a second skin, was a hurt woman who wanted to love and be loved. She wanted to experience as much acceptance as anybody else in a family, and as the black sheep of the Luthor clan, that never happened. You wanted to give Lena all of that love, you wanted her to be happy, you wanted what she wanted.

Now, you were cuddled with her on the couch, watching the live action Grinch movie, while you were both in comfortable sweats, and a bowl of popcorn nestled between your legs for easy access. Lena didn’t understand this movie, and she understood your fascination with it even less, but she never passed a chance to make you happy.

You were quiet, and with your eyes glued to the tv when Lena gently kissed you. Her soft lips ghosted the skin below your ear that met your neck, and you shivered in her hold.

“What are you doing back there?” you asked while turning your head to look at her. Lena was the picture of perfect innocence. And mischievousness. Want darkened her emerald eyes and you could feel her pull you closer to her chest.

“Oh, nothing,” she whispered. That, in fact, meant that she wanted something. And from the way her hands were trailing closer and closer to the cotton of your sweatpants, you could take a guess at what it was she was after.

Smooth and lithe fingers slipped beneath your underwear to part the folds of your center. You already knew how wet you were. Lena had a sex drive unmatched to anyone else you’d ever been with, and she was so experienced. The first time you had sex with her, she had you coming in 30 seconds and you felt like a complete virgin. Lena had to reassure you frantically that it was normal for that to happen as you were seconds away from smothering yourself with the pillow in sheer embarrassment.

A single digit dipped into your core to gather your arousal and Lena began to rub your juices lightly on your clit, effectively snapping you out of the fond memory.

“You’re so wet for me baby girl,” she husked, her lips ghosting the shell of your ear before dipping down to place wet kisses on your neck.

You couldn’t even get a response out. With the first swipe of her finger, you were already a shuddering mess. The pleasure that coursed through your veins had your toes curling.

“What about the movie?” you barely whispered before a soft moan left your lips.

Lena chuckled before she gently nibbled your neck, her finger not once pausing in their movements against you.

“Trust me, darling. There will be plenty of more opportunities in the future.”

And she was right of course. As long as Lena would be a part of your future, there would be plenty of opportunities to make as many memories as you could.

***Presently***

You went to prison with little to nothing in your possession. All you had was a photo of you, Lena, and Alexa when she was just a couple of months old. What little you had was either seized by the DEO or given to Lena. Lena. Just the thought of her and Alexa, your daughter made your heart throb. You wanted to see them more than you needed your next breath, and it was the thought of them that kept you strong enough to survive this. You wanted to hold them both in your arms, you wanted to hug Alexa close enough for you to feel her heat, you wanted to tell Lena to be strong…but there was no way. Lena was too mad at you, and for something you know that you didn’t do. It was only a week inside and you felt stir crazy. The other women kept staring at you and it made you more on edge than you wanted to be. Your arm was feeling much better, but it was still in a sling, so if a fight were to occur, you would definitely get an ass whooping.

Your picture, too precious to be lying around, would stay on you at all times if it could be helped. You were lying in bed, your cell mate doing enough pushups on the floor to put a DEO operative to shame, when a guard approached the door to your cell.

“Luthor, you have a visitor.”

Immediately, your cell mate stopped to look at you.

“Luthor?” she asked in an almost hostile voice. You hate the way the hairs raised on your arms, but you weren’t goin to show your fear. You weren’t even going to answer her. Instead, you jumped from the top bunk of the bed and follow the guard to the visitor’s area.

Once there, you immediately see blonde hair and blue eyes that sent a wave of relief so strong through you that you thought you were going to pass out. You immediately take the seat across from Kara, and you didn’t realize that you were crying until she wiped the tears away using her thumbs.

“Sorry,” you mumbled while you immediately tried to get a grip.

“Don’t be sorry Y/n. How are you?” she asked with a soft, sympathetic smile.

“I’m in literal hell. I shouldn’t be here Kara and you know that.”

She nodded and was silent for a minute.

“I recruited James and Winn to help me,” she offered. “Winn may have found possible evidence that’s linked to you being set up, but it’s not enough to prove your innocence.”

She said the last sentence in a rush before your hopes could get too high. It was silent again and you almost dreaded asking your next question, but at the same time, you needed to know.

“And Lena…?”

Kara shook her head, and you closed your eyes as you tried to swallow your anger and disappointment.

“I’m sorry Y/n, but she won’t come.”

Against your willpower, the tears began to well behind closed eyelids and you almost bit your lip off in an effort to keep them back.

“She really thinks I did it, huh?” you said in a voice that sounded too broken even to your own ears, and in a millisecond, Kara was enveloping you in a warm gentle hug.

“No touching!” one of the guards barked and you flipped him off.

“I’ll try again,” Kara promised. “But you know how Lena is.”

And that made you laugh because you did know how she was.

“Stubborn as hell.”

“You know it,” Kara said with a smile.

“If Alexa gets that trait from her, I’m going to be so totally screwed.”

Kara laughed and you two sat back down and kept talking.

***Lena Luthor: Hurt***

You and Alex were assigned a major mission together and it required you to fly halfway across the world to the access point and jump out the plane from thousands of feet in the air to reach it. J’onn entrusted you two with the mission, with Kara as support in case anything major happened. The objective was clear, to find and eliminate a hostile alien. All attempts of reasoning and subduing them had been futile, with the alien breaking free and causing more damage to both people and property in consequence. Kara wanted to take care of the alien herself, but they had immediately surrounded themselves with enough Kryptonite to kill her if she got too close. A big team of agents would alert the alien to our presence and that was something we had to avoid. If it had to be done, it would need to be done right, and as you and Alex crept down the halls of an underground, concrete facility, you mentally rehearsed the plan in your mind. You were to flank the alien and whoever had a clear shot first, was to take it. Luckily, this particular alone had no notable active powers. According to their dossier, they had heightened intelligence when it came to strategizing and demolitions, making them still dangerous.

“Are you guys okay in there?” Kara asked you over the comms.

“Yeah, we’re alright,” Alex answered. “We’re headed into the main room. Do you have eyes on us?”

There was long pause, and you could practically feel Alex cock an eyebrow.

“Kara?”

“Uh, yeah...the room you’re headed into is lined with lead. I can’t see inside. Please be careful.”

“Perfect,” you groaned. “At least this one is prepared.”

Alex chuckled lightly, your sarcasm not going unnoticed. You approach the door and look at her.

“You ready?”

Alex nodded and you kicked open the door, which was surprisingly easy. One of the hinges flew off of the door from the force of your kick and you eyed it warily. Standing back to back, you and Alex had pistols draw as you searched for the target. The room was bathed in a green glow. The abundant kryptonite cast an eerie light throughout the room, and though the room was illuminated, the radioactive crystals that embellished the room cast more shadows than the light could chase them away.

“Do you see anything?” Alex asked you quietly and you shook your head.

“Eyes open. Spread out.”

You were about 10 feet away from Alex when you saw the shiny glint of something small being pointed towards her, and it was too dark for you to get an accurate shot. You reacted, sprinting towards Alex faster than ever, and you reached her, your arms encircling her body and turning her around, when you heard several pops from behind you.

It happened too fast, and you could feel several points on impact on your back, along with Alex raising her gun to fire at your attacker. You landed on top of her harshly and rolled away from her before you could hurt her further. As you settled on your stomach, that’s when you felt it, fiery agony spreading through you, along with a warm wetness that was soaking through your suit. Alex ran to you, her hands steady as she gently lifted your head.

“I heard shots, is everyone okay?” came Kara’s voice through the comms.

“Y/n has been shot, and it’s bad Kara. One bullet barely missed her spine.”

“Okay I’m coming in,” Kara said.

“What about the kryptonite?”

“Alex, what about her? She’s worth it and we don’t have time to waste.”

You heard the full conversation, and you went to say something when a bone wrenching cough exploded from your mouth. Along with it came a mouthful of blood and it was like you couldn’t stop it. Mouthfuls of it kept coming up and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

“Shit! One of the bullets pierced her lung. She’s drowning in her blood.”

Kara crashed through the ceiling some feet away and immediately gasped in pain. You lost the ability to keep you head up but through blurry vision, you could see her veins highlight green beneath her skin. They throbbed in time with her heartbeat and she took ragged breaths in an attempt to breathe through the agony. Kara barely had the energy to look you over properly like she wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” was all she said before she scooped you into her arms. Your scream of pain was muted by gurgles of blood and you felt bad when you coughed it all over her and her suit. Kara went back to the hole she made and stood under it.

“Will you be okay?” she asked Alex and then grimaced as the pain increased.

Alex nodded, knowing for sure that she shot the alien in the head.

“Yeah, just get out of here,” she said, rushing Kara out before she got incapacitated along with you.

The fly home was a blur, and the time spent in the medical bay was as equally faded into oblivion. All you remember is your back and how it ached and burned in the worst ways imaginable. You were tired, so when a nurse slipped a mask over your face and told you to sleep, you happily obliged.

You woke up to Lena, who was beside you with your hand in her grasp. She was tired, the exhaustion and frustration etched clearly into her face. You tried to blink and shake the grogginess from your brain, but it only served to agitate your wounds. You winced and hissed as tears came to your eyes.

“Don’t move,” Lena said softly, but the look on her face betrayed the sentiment in her voice.

“Are you mad?”

She was silent and green eyes studied you. As the seconds ticked on, they got softer and softer until she smiled at you.

“No, I’m not mad. I was worried. Alex told me that you got four gunshots to the back and one of them pierced your lung. The nurses had to stabilize you long enough for Kara to go back and get her. Alex was the only one you could do the surgery.”

You sighed and kissed the back of her hand sweetly, loving the fact that you’ve woken up to see her again.

“You couldn’t do it?” you asked her.

She shook her head. “You would have drowned in your own blood before I would get here.”

Everything was quiet for a minute as you held Lena’s hand tightly. You were about to say something when the shiny glint of something on your hand distracted you. You squinted as you brought your joined hands closer to your face. Maybe it was the medication or the fact that you’ve been out for some time, but it looked like a ring.

Lena laughed as realization dawned on you.

“Lena is this what I think it is?” you asked incredulously.

“At this rate, you’re going to get yourself killed. I at least want you to be my wife before that happens.”

She paused as she got on one knee beside the bed and looked into your eyes.

“Y/n L/n, will you do me the honor of marrying me?” she asked you.

Cue the record scratch that had you frozen in surprise on the bed. You weren’t too sure if this was real, and you went to pinch yourself, but your movement caused your back to flare painfully.

“Are you okay?” Lena asked, more confused than anything.

“This is real? Like, this is happening, yes?” you asked.

Lena laughed and kissed you gently on the lips. That caused your heart rate to skyrocket and the heart monitor connected to you went crazy. It was only a few seconds when you heard the sounds of feet running towards your room and Alex rounded the corner, skidding to a stop in front of the bed. She looked at you, and then Lena, before she scoffed and crossed her arms.

“Guys, seriously?” she said, unimpressed.

You smiled and showed her your hand. Her eyes drifted to the ring that adorned your finger before her eyes got big and she squealed in excitement.

“Well???? What did you say?” she demanded excitedly.

“I’m saying yes of course.”

Part 3

#part 2 #enjoy guys #supergirl fanfic #lena luthor #lena x reader #angst #humor #flashback #fluff #violence

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retrocontinuity · 3 years

Text

rev, rev, fight the power: thoughts on the first half of chainsaw man

Spoilers through the end of the Bomb Girl Arc.

Devil Hunting in the Age of Fascism

As one of the cohosts of a podcast on Gundam Wing in 2020/2021, I've been thinking a lot about how authoritarian regimes and the concept of societal control is treated in anime. Which is to say: usually in a very limited sense, and based on the actions of a few bad actors, as demonstrated with its effects on a few unfortunate protagonists. It's not that creators don't care about the issue, but rather a sign that the genre (and yes, I do consider manga/anime to be a genre more than just a medium, but that's for another time) and its conventions are not particularly well-suited to showing you those effects.

So, Chainsaw Man. On an individual character level, Fujimoto has some stuff to say about the choice between death and life, and I do want to talk about that and what it says about the characters and what life means in CSM. But it's hard to tell whether or not he meant to create a world with some really fucked up institutions too.

For instance, the civilian, non-public sector Devil Hunters. These appear to be explicitly authorized by the Japanese government, to the point where it is a crime for the Public Safety division's hunters to kill a devil that a civilian is in the process of capturing. They don't have guns (this is Japan!) and I imagine they are only allowed to kill Devils, but just, like, think about this. What if you kill someone else in the process of trying to kill a Devil? What if you suspect someone is a Fiend but actually they're just acting weird? What if you kill someone, then claim later it's because you thought they were a Devil?

This is likely the American in me talking, but I can’t help thinking about how badly this would be abused and how horrible an idea that would be. And I can’t help but think about how the Devils allow the world of CSM to separate fears from human nature. By which I mean, in the world of CSM, evil is otherized in a very specific way; they’re represented by very individual, very distinct, and very monstrous representations. Here is the fear of scissors, the fear of sharks, the fear of the future, and so on. But in the real world, we know it isn’t just fear itself that is the problem; it’s people, well-meaning or otherwise, animated by those fears that create the most evil, or people harnessing those fears to gain power. This may be unfair—I don’t know what Fujimoto has planned for Makima, whose mythos and power seems very much wrapped up in the idea of using Devils to her own advantage. But there’s an assumption here that all actions taken towards eradication of the Devils, or maybe just one Gun Devil, is a de facto good. And in 2021, that’s a very unnerving position to take.

Death in Chainsaw Man is a sacrifice. In these early arcs of the series, death is a "contract," an expending of activation energy to achieve something else. So Pochita gives Denji life (which is really a contract repaid, for when Denji gave him life), so the Devil Hunters "trade" something in a contract with a Devil for power (like Aki giving away literal years of his life to his curse sword), so Denji dying to the Eternity Devil would have freed the rest of the team. But there are plenty of deaths in the series where nothing is traded, nothing is given. These tend to be nameless victims or, in one harrowing scene, convicted felons who die at the hands of Makima as she chases down Katana Devil.

What did they gain? What was the contract formed by the deaths of these 雑魚?

Makima says at some point when she's attacking the gangs that are affiliated with the Katana Devil that "the truly necessary evils are always kept collared and controlled by the state." Which I think is at its face about the fiends and Devils kept “collared” by the Public Safety Bureau. But maybe it’s also about the idea of sacrifice, about giving yourself over to the state, in order to control a world thrown into chaos. The contracts formed by the deaths of those ordinary citizens is meant to bring about an eradication of fear. It gives birth to the Public Safety Devil Hunters, to Devil Hunters in general, to the use of whatever means necessary to achieve an end. But whatever those consequences are, we only see them in the fates of Denji, Chainsaw Man, and the impossible characters around him.

A state under threat, a state that feels like it must collar evil in order to survive, will have ruinous consequences. I just hope we get to see what those are.

Just A Teenage Dirtbag, (Bomb) Baby

I read some reviews about Denji being the anti-shounen shounen manga hero which I can presume were written by people whose only frame of reference is Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece. Sure, the Big Three were, in their most simplistic forms, feel-good series, and CSM's first half is basically a feel-bad series, but that hardly makes it unusual. It's really not dissimilar from other manga like Homunculus, Freesia, and Oyasumi Punpun. Of course, only old fogies like me, who still remember getting scanlations of these series off of IRC, and query, of course, whether or not those series are shounen at all, or more like seinen. If it were up to me to name the genre, and of course it is not, I would call it “simply another line of stories about fucked up things happen to fucked up people.”

Many fucked up things have happened to Denji. I’d call it traumatic, but I don’t think “trauma” covers what this poor man has been through. The effect, though, has been to make Denji less than human, even in his human form.

Denji and Power's nonchalance towards the fate of their human coworkers who die to Katana Devil and Sawatari is framed by the manga through Denji as a potential sign of callousness. Kishibe notes it as a sign that they are "insane," in other words, "not like other humans," and thus capable of bringing down something like the Gun Devil, which would otherwise drive "normal humans" insane.

But like, huh? Denji and Power's reactions are, on the contrary, extremely human, because there’s no reason for them to extend feeling towards other humans. Simply put, they’ve never been human to the humans around them. They seem to be bonded most closely to each other, and in fact almost all the Fiends are, because the wider Public Safety employees treat them so poorly. Remember how the Infinity Devil Arc starts? Basically, they're told to be the advance guard, and threatened to be killed if they ever act out. Denji is kept on a short leash, and is so proud (in front of Reze) that he's allowed to go places on his own now.

Which, I'm not saying that that's wrong. Denji is incredibly dumb, holds monstrous power that could easily be tricked into using for horrible purposes, and appears to be the target of a number of Gun Devil's allies. Power is... well. I wouldn't let her out of sight either. But what Makima does that makes Denji feel so loyal, so utterly tied to her, is simply treating him as a human. She convinces him he has a heart, just like any other human. She tells him about all the love experiences he'll have in the future, because he's just a human teenager. And just like Makima, Reze is able to bond with Denji by treating him like an ordinary 16-year-old horny boy. Is it because as a Devil she knows what he wants the most? What he is craving, and never had? It doesn't matter that Denji had been just an ordinary human before fusing with Pochita or before he began his life as a Devil Hunter; as an orphan growing up on the street, unwanted and unloved, he was no more human than a Devil.

The ending of the Bomb Girl Arc—with Denji asking Reze to run away with him, only to be stood up—reminded me so very much of Aku no Hana. There's the classroom scenes between Reze and Denji, of course, but mostly I think about how Denji—betrayed, injured, manipulated Denji—still asks Reze to run away with him. I'd written about Aku no Hana before, how one of the saddest things about Nakamura is that she cannot imagine a world beyond her current circumstance (and, in fact, the manga ends up dooming her to stagnation). Denji and Reze are Nakamura and Kasuga's perverse mirror. It is because Denji doesn't have the capacity to imagine a larger world beyond his immediate now, three meals a day and a job and this woman who taught him how to swim, that he asks her to do this impossible thing, to run away with him knowing that to do would mean both of them betraying their masters. It is because Reze knows that it is impossible that she does not meet Denji at the cafe. Reze is more human than Denji, because she is capable of dreams, and because she is capable of dreaming, she knows she cannot afford their luxury. She knows too much about the world and its cruelty. And, so, she walks straight into its open maw, and straight into her death.

I don't think we can take Reze at her word that she wanted to be a town mouse, or rather we should say instead that Reze proves that the division between the town mouse and the country mouse is immaterial. The issue is that both, in the end, are only mice, dreaming of a safety they can never achieve. Safety, in the world of CSM, is neither town mouse nor country mouse. It is to not be mice at all. It is to be the dog that digs them out from the cold winter dirt.

It is, in fact, to be Makima, the person who orders the dogs to kill the mice.

Denji, aim for the top! Transcend the town mouse/country mouse divide! Or else you will constantly be hunted and used!

(Side note: CSM goes at a break-neck pace, and I think the speed through which Fujimoto rushes through these early storylines has made it very difficult for me to actually connect with the characters. Reze and Denji’s relationship is one of the victims to this pacing. Do I believe that Denji could fall for a girl and be willing to risk it all for her after about 3 chapters worth of interaction? Sure, he’s that kind of guy. But does it work for me? Not particularly. We’ve hardly had time to linger with Reze before she swears she’ll protect Denji forever, as long as he’ll run away with her. Though the reader at that point knows there’s something off about Reze, it’s still just not believable. Reze’s actions seem like someone trying to bulldoze her way into Denji’s affections, and though she herself is a bittersweet character, I just really feel like CSM could have spent less time with Bomb Devil vs Chainsaw Man and more time with Reze and Denji.)

No Ethical Women Under Capitalism

The Eternity Devil arc, for all its mini-boss game feel (it wouldn’t be out of place as one of the floors in Tower of God), struck a nerve with me, if only because it felt, however unintentionally, to be a story about working under modern capitalism. A floor you can never leave, that loops endless, where the only way to escape is to destroy it, literally, from the inside, by making it so painful, an eternal feedback loop of destroying ourselves and destroying it, before it opens its heart to us. The Capitalism Devil threatens us, tries to tear us apart. Asks us to sacrifice the strongest, the weakest, anybody among us, as if by climbing over the bodies of our friends and coworkers, we can come out ahead. It makes us suspicious of each other, ready to tear into any weakness for an advantage.

No wonder this is the chapter where Kobeni lays bare her reasons for joining the Public Safety bureau. She needed to work, to make money. Her options were to be a sex worker or a Devil Hunter. Either way, she was selling her body to the system. Kobeni is a victim of capitalism, which forces her to do what she hates, for goal that are not hers, and then gaslights us into thinking that she’s wrong for being crazy, she’s wrong for losing her shit, for not being able to handle it.

But... that's an asspull for me, even if it's my ass and I'm the one pulling. I'm truly not sure how to feel about Kobeni. Like, what is her deal?! I’m not sure what to make of her appearance in Chapter 20 in her sister’s hand-me-down. Are we supposed to pity her? See ourselves in her? Even in what I think was intended to be a mic-drop-ish line (at least for her), telling Aki that she didn’t quit because she was waiting on her bonus, landed flat for me, too deadpan to be pathetic and not sharp enough to be actually funny. Part of it may be because she is a character very much shaped by her circumstances as opposed to her personality or any interaction/action she does onscreen, but we don’t actually see her family situation in these chapters. We’re left with a painfully shy and cowardly woman who can’t seem to form any human connections with any of the other characters, who in multiple scenes is shown caving to the slightest pressure or threat.

Do the rest of the women fare any better? I’m not sure. Kobeni is unique in that she does not use her gender/sex appeal to manipulate the men around her and/or Denji (even Power lets Denji cop a feel to get her cat back!). Himeno, Makima, and Reze all hide their intentions for Denji behind the veil of his attraction to them (weak or strong) and are either unable or unwilling to be forthright in their desires and ambitions (Himeno to care for Aki; Reze, to accomplish whatever mission Gun Devil had her set out to do; and Makima, for fuck do I know at this point, but she’s up to something!!). Meanwhile, the men are straightforward to a fault. Did Fujimoto intend this? Is this just a subconscious reveal of his own conceptions of gender and Bitches Be Weird?

I’m not a person who needs to have a strong female narrative in a story, but when you start a story with a protagonist whose life ambition for many chapters was just to feel a boob, you better be careful, you know? CSM doesn’t lack for women; Makima and Power are both formidable characters in their own rights, self-assured and unbeholden to anyone but themselves. But so far almost every arc has featured a woman offering herself to Denji sexually in order to get him to do what they want. It’s getting real old real fast.

#chainsaw man #reading too deeply into the text

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kuiperblog · 3 years

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Feel-good “bad ends”

Movie protagonists are often breaking the rules. This is true even when our protagonists are on the right side of the law: after all, nobody’s perfect. (And if they were, we probably wouldn’t like them as much: after all, it’s hard for a character to have a “growth arc” if they start from a place of perfection. And making occasional mistakes reminds us that, just like us, they’re only human: they’re more relatable.)

But when our protagonists break the rules, it often leads toward one of two different endings: either they get caught and punished for their transgressions (which can make for a feelbad ending), or they get away with it scot-free. Most movies opt for the latter, but it can often feel unsatisfying, because there’s a real sense in which we want to see our protagonists reap the consequences of their actions.

Usually, it’s not a problem for them to suffer the consequences if their transgression is minor. For example, if the main character says something mean to his love interest, he can get a slap in the face -- and having paid for his transgressions, he can then immediately be rewarded with whatever feel-good conclusion the audience is in the mood for.

However, sometimes the protagonist’s transgressions are more dire, and demand more dire consequences. Recently, I’ve found two movies that manage to end with something that is, in an objective sense, a very bad outcome for the main characters, and exactly in proportion to what they deserve for their significant transgressions during the film, yet still allows for a “feel-good” ending. Naming those examples would by itself probably be a spoiler, so...spoilers for an Edgar Wright movie and a Pixar movie (and a Rocky movie) below the fold.

Heist movies are the classic example of a movie formula where the protagonists break a ton of rules and, in the case of a feelgood ending, basically can’t suffer any consequences. Either they get caught and it’s a moral aesop about how crime doesn’t pay, or they get away with it and we’re happy that our characters, who are really quite morally virtuous apart from their tendency to commit acts of robbery, are able to enjoy the spoils they’ve absconded with.

Baby Driver is a movie that I think strikes the perfect balance. In the end, our main character Baby doesn’t get away with his crimes. He’s committed a lot of crimes, and been involved in a lot of robberies. And not the non-violent kind, either!

At the same time, Baby was always “one of the good ones.” He was never the guy who held the gun; he was always the one behind the wheel. In fact, for basically his entire criminal career, he was blackmailed into it. Of course, the lazy method would be for the judge to have pity on him -- he was forced to commit crimes! But that would be ignoring the fact that the entire reason he got blackmailed in the first place is that he happened to steal a car from a criminal kingpin -- Baby was boosting cars well before a villain put a gun to his head and forced him to do it.

But as we see Baby marched to his prison cell, it’s intercut with testimony during his trial. Everything that we could have said in Baby’s defense is articulated by witnesses speaking in his defense:

“He got himself into a bad spot. I was just trying to get him out. I believe the defendant is of good character. He didn't deserve what happened to him.”

“It was the strangest thing. Before he drove off, he threw my purse right at me. Then he actually said ‘I'm sorry.’” (A delightful callback to a comedic moment earlier in the movie: Baby might resort to carjacking when he’s in a pinch, but he is the most polite carjacker you will ever meet. He doesn’t need your valuables; he just needs a getaway vehicle.)

“He made a mistake when he was younger, and it's haunted him ever since. When he tried to get out, he was pressured even harder. It was never his fault. He's got a good heart. Always has. Always will.”

Maybe it’s the fact that Sky Ferreira’s cover of Lionel Richie’s “Easy Like Sunday Morning” is the musical bed for this scene, but there’s something about the scene that feels incredibly cathartic. Baby Driver might be our protagonist, but he’s not innocent in all of this. His actions have consequences, and he gets sentenced to prison time for them.

At the same time, we’re left with the distinct impression that he has a life waiting for him on the outside. At the very least, Deborah is there waiting for him.

We can rest assured that Baby has no desire to return to a life of crime -- he and Deborah will be content with a modest life together. Indeed, a “modest life” is never something that either of them would need to settle for. Having a quiet simple life has been their aspiration for as long as they’ve known each other. Baby ends the movie knowing that he has years of prison time ahead of him, but also knowing that he’s on the start of a path to redemption. It’s enough to put a skip in his step as he walks across the prison yard. (Well, maybe not a literal skip in his step, but at the very least, it’s written on his face: he feels good about the path he’s on.)

Baby Driver came out in 2017, but I’ve already lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. I think the ending is a big part of what keeps me coming back to it. I love this ending -- there’s really nothing like the catharsis of seeing Baby held to account for his actions, while also having his virtues acknowledged. Those virtues might not be enough for him to avoid punishment, but in a way, his virtue its its own reward. It’s a heist movie that ends with the main character getting caught and spending years behind bars, and yet it’s an incredibly feelgood ending that just leaves you satisfied for all the right reasons. (After all, we’ve seen the fate of Baby’s confederates: we know that he could have encountered fates much worse than prison.) There’s really nothing like it.

Well, almost nothing. Last night I finally got around to watching Monsters University.

It’s a fun movie -- the central plot is the classic “underdog sports story.” Mike Wazowski has no talent for scaring -- according to the bigshot jock voiced by Nathan Fillion, the only way someone like Mike could end up working at a place like Monsters Inc is in the mailroom. Of course, because this is a prequel, we know that Mike’s story ends with him and Sulley being best buds together working at the Monsters Inc scream factory, so the odds can’t be that stacked against them, right? After all, the stakes are too high for them to fail: besides the fact that they need to be ready for the events of Monsters Inc, Mike is able to parley for a chance to get into the university’s scare program only because he makes an agreement with the Dean that if he fails, he’ll leave the school. With stakes that high, it seems only inevitable that Mike and Sulley will fulfill the classic underdog trope and lead a team of lovable losers to victory through sheer force of will (and the power of friendship).

Except, as we find out, force of will and the power of friendship aren’t enough to win you the big game when the thing you’re being tested on is talent and athleticism. Mike gets to experience the triumph of victory...but quickly learns that it only happened because Sulley cheated.

Mike and Sulley both bit off more than they could chew, and made a number of poor choices along the way. Sulley, unable to accept loss, cheated to achieve victory. Mike, unable to cope with experiencing loss, breaks into the university’s door department to mope around in the human world -- which is strictly verboten and extremely dangerous.

But...in the course of solving the problem that they’ve created themselves (combining their efforts to escape the human world by using scare techniques the likes of which have never been seen before), we learn that Mike and Sulley do have what it takes. The Dean recognizes it, too. It almost feels like she’s about to offer them leniency. After all, this is a prequel movie: we know that all of this has to end with Mike and Sulley working at Monsters Inc in the scare department, right? That means the Dean has to let them back into the university’s scare program! Surely their acts of daring and bravery show they have what it takes to make it in the Monsters University scare program!

And so it comes as no surprise when, at the end of the third act, the Dean comes out just as they’re about to depart. We see what looks like a smile on her face for the first time in the movie.

Except, of course, it would be crazy if they got off scot-free. Mike broke into the human world, which is about the worst possible thing a monster can do. And if the cheating scandal weren’t enough to sink Sulley, there’s also the fact that he followed Mike into the human world (his intentions were noble as he wanted to save his friend, but still extremely dangerous and just as verboten).

The Dean has nothing but kind things to say to them. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to rescue them from the consequences of their actions.

The two get no leniency. We feel an odd mixture of elation and defeat. On one hand, they got the validation that they craved: the Dean, who thought it was impossible for Mike Wazowski to ever be a scarer, now admits that she may have misjudged him. On the other hand, their lives are ruined. They must now reap what they have sown. What will become of their dreams now? And maybe more importantly, how the heck are we supposed to get from here to the events of the original movie that takes place several years later in the Monsters Inc chronology?

And then, Mike remembers something.

“You know, there is still one way we can work at a scare company. They’re always hiring in the mail room.”

Mike and Sulley start at the absolute bottom rung of the corporate ladder. But there are worse fates than doing blue collar work. After all, the entire theme of the underdog sports story that got us to this point was to show that Mike (and, with Mike’s encouragement, also Sulley) are the kind of monsters who will do whatever it takes to achieve their dreams, simply willing it to happen through sheer enthusiasm and force of will and, of course, the power of friendship. After all, anything can be fun when you’re doing it with your friends. As Sulley says, “This is better than I ever imagined!” They approach the job with an enthusiasm that tells us that they’re on their way up within this company.

The rest of their journey is shown to us in montage:

They’ve got that ambition, baby. This week they’re mopping floors, next week it’s the fries:

Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the company holds “try-outs” for the scare team, and from there, the rest is history. Plus, if the original movie is fresh enough in your mind, you’ll appreciate the easter egg references to the girlfriend that Mike met during this time (and the constant beratement he constantly got over needing to file his paperwork):

Over the course of the movie, they made some good decisions -- mostly the ones relating to the power of friendship and hard work. They also made some bad decisions -- mostly relating to playing fast-and-loose with the rules of their institution. Their college careers come to an unceremonious end.

And yet, even though the movie ends with them getting kicked out of college and spending “the best years of their lives” working blue collar jobs, it feels like an undeniably happy ending for the two of them. They reap exactly what they sow -- for worse, and for better. They don’t get to hide from the consequences of their actions...but that doesn’t mean things have to end on a dour note.

There’s something I really dig about that. It feels exactly like the first Rocky movie: Rocky is an athlete who trained and tried and fought as hard as he could -- and still lost. And yet, though he lost the big boxing match, there’s dignity in his loss. And in the end, he succeeded at the thing that really mattered.

In all three of these movies, it feels as though we as the audience are being set up for a specific happy ending. Of course Baby Driver has to end with the getaway driver getting away. Of course Monsters University has to end with Mike and Sulley graduating from the scare program. Of course Rocky has to end with our main character winning the big climactic boxing match. But in the end, we don’t get these “obvious” endings, because getting them wouldn’t really be a reflection of everything that led up to that point. And yet, we don’t walk away disappointed, because we somehow get something better. These characters may not get the “obvious” reward, the thing that they thought they wanted (and the thing that we, as the audience, thought that we wanted). But they get the things that really matter.

#movies #edgar wright #pixar

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lettersofwrittencollective · 4 years

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The Pull (86/?)

Summary: The Ragnulf’s are one of the oldest lines of werewolves known. A gift from ancient times was gifted to them. Though not all of the line will experience it. There are some who will experience a Pull. This Pull leads them to their true mate, a soulmate. The problem is, just because the wolf finds their true mate does not mean that they are the same for that person.

Author: @lettersofwrittencollective

Pairing: Stiles x Hale!Cousin OC (Reader)

Word count: 2538

Warnings: angst, some fluff, Norse storyline development, threatening

<<Prev || The Pull Masterlist || Next>>

The old god watched his daughter curled into her mate.

Taking deep breaths he tried to breathe through his anger.

The Norns would not be swayed… this he knew. But hadn’t the fox been enough?

They’d faced the fox and she’d brought back her mate…

She had faced losing herself in the process.

He had almost been destroyed.

Natasha Rafnulf and Stiles Stilinski would be a force to be reckoned with when they fully came into themselves and their powers… if they stay with Scott McCall they’ll be damn near impossible to stop…

But the Ragnulfs tend to return to their pack… the protection of their family always stronger than any other pack as they knew the bonds and they were aware of the implications.

Stiles Stilinski, however, was intensely loyal… to Scott McCall. The question wasn’t if Stiles would accept Natasha, the way he held her currently

Sighing, Odin recalled Hugin and Munin to his side.

As his ravens returned, he thought back to what he had learned a moon cycle ago.

Munin had accidentally stumbled across the remains of a group of assassins. They had not been trained very well from Munin cold tell.

He’d come upon the scene as a woman taunted a man. She’d not been on her own.

What had caught Munin’s attention was the creature with the woman. The one that seemed to be doing her bidding.

It looked like a man with an animal skull on his head.

Munin hadn’t seen one of those in centuries… The magic to create them having become almost non-existent.. but there was something off about this one.

Berserkers were not meant to be puppets. Like their counterparts, Ulfhednar and Svinfylking’s they were meant to be the most ruthless men and women in battle. They were originally meant to be the bodyguards of noble families but had become elite warriors in their own right as time had passed

Berserkers entered their trances when they would need to go to war and while a man in a true rite may not be able to tell the difference between friend or foe, they rarely did someone else’s bidding.

This one was following the huntress, Kate Argent.

Munin had stayed to watch as the woman asked about who the “Benefactor” was. Whatever this name was, it had been enough to cause her to go after his men. From what Munin heard, he figured that this “Benefactor” was paying for assassins.

Before Munin could figure out who the assassins were supposed to go after, he’d been distracted by the sound of the huntress groaning in pain. Munin had turned his attention to focus on the girl solely when he’d heard the clatter of a gun against the asphalt.

Munin had watched as the blonde in front of him had doubled over in pain before her skin had transformed and he’d watched as a nagual formed in front of him, this one a were-jaguar. One of Xolotl’s then…

Curious as to why Munin had followed the woman as she’d gotten the Berserkers to listen to her. It hadn’t taken them very long to disappear and the woman had then made her way north.

It was when Munin had told him the story of what he had seen, that Odin had thought to ignore the Norns, to step in and have the consequences be damned but the problem was the consequences wouldn’t be his to face. They’d be hers.

So, he’d done the one thing he could do- he opened up the link her mate had with instincts just a little wider.

He’d managed it just in time…

Natasha had been foolish in taking off on her own but Stiles had made it in time and though it took his mind a little longer to catch up to his instincts, his instincts had immediately called for the blood of the one that would harm what was his.

You hadn’t let go of Stiles since you’d launched yourself into his arms.

You’d had to remind yourself that he was okay… that he was here and that the stupid bitch Violet wasn’t going to be able to get to him.

Stiles had let you hold onto him. Had wrapped his fingers in yours and you’d leaned your head on his shoulder. Taking in deep breaths, you let yourself be grounded to the moment in front of you, to the man in front of you when the sound of a gasping, wheezing breath pulls your attention.

Looking around, you’re struck by the memory of earlier, Violet had been taunting Brett… Wolfsbane.

Running over to the boy, you’re met with the sight of him literally foaming at the mouth as he wheezes.

“I need a lighter!” you call out but, unsurprisingly, no one has one.

Trying to think of other ways you can get rid of wolfsbane poisoning, you realize that each one has its own specific set of rules.

Thankfully Stiles has already pulled out his phone. As he dials out, Brett lets out a gasping breath before he starts choking and the foam at his mouth turns yellow.

Calling out for Stiles, he’s at your side a moment later as he hangs up the phone and tells Scott to help him out. The three of you quickly make your way towards Stiles’ jeep and you get Brett situated in the backseat.

You’re just about to jump in the passenger seat when a hand grips your wrist. Turning, you see Scott giving you an apologetic look, “I told them you were the one attacked.”

“What?! Why?” you demand, knowing this means that you’re going to have to separate and not liking the idea at all.

Scott grimaces but points out that you had been attacked and that he’d told the Sheriff as much before they had figured out Brett.

You want to tell him to figure out something else, tell the Sheriff that he’d been attacked or something… You’re about to tell him as much when Stiles speaks up, sounding less than pleased, “Tasha… you need to give your statement.”

You want to argue but Brett’s pained grunt distracts you.

Sighing, you step back from the car and make your way towards the school. As you walk oer, you can hear Scott promising to Stiles that he’ll keep you safe.

Just as you make it inside the doors, Liam calls your name and a moment later he’s got you wrapped up in a hug, “Thank God you’re okay…”

He ushers you towards Coaches offices, through the locker room where you Violet’s been tied up, and as you do, you can hear the sound of sirens approaching the school.

It isn’t long before the school is bustling with the sounds of people. Officers, students, parents… they’re all there and everyone is trying to demand answers.

Parrish comes in and takes your statement, it’s just a rehashing of what you remembered. Though, you told him you’d come back to the locker rooms because you needed some girl stuff from your bag that you’d forgotten to take with you earlier and that you had no idea how you had gotten the necklace off of you. Which was partially true.

“Adrenaline rush?” he’d supplied for you and you’d merely shrugged your shoulders. It made more sense than whatever you could tell him at least.

Nodding his head Parrish took his notes and made his way out towards the locker room, no doubt to get Violet.

“Guys, back off. You can get your gear tomorrow. If anybody sees Garrett, you notify the police immediately,” you hear Coach informing the rest of the team before grumbling, “Then tell him he's off the damn team.”

You’re not 100% sure how Coach knows Garretts involved but you can’t help but chuckle softly, somehow you doubt Garret’s going to care about getting kicked off the team.

Making your way towards the girl’s locker room. You figure now’s a good a time as any to try and change— only to discover that they’ve locked down both locker rooms.

You’re making your way through the people when you catch sight of Kira who’s sprinting down the halls and out of the school. Curious as to what that’s about, you’re about to go after her when you hear the pup calling your name.

He catches up to you and immediately puts a jacket in your hand, looking down you see the large white numbers, an inversion of your own number 42 and can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the pup in front of you.

Liam offers no remorse, he simply shrugs his shoulders and advises, “He texted me, said to make sure you had a jacket since you’re apparently always freezing and then he told me where it was.”

Smiling to yourself, you shrug on the hoodie. As you’re putting it on, you hear the Suit’s voice. You had known that Scott’s dad was around but you hadn’t seen him at the game - though to be fair you hadn’t been looking for him. He’s asked Parrish to hold up and is walking over while Scott makes his way up to you and Liam.

Scott questions the absence of Kira.

“Not sure,” you tell him, “I saw her running through the halls earlier though.”

“She took off,” Liam elaborates. When you and Scott both turn to look at the pup he informs you that, “As soon as you guys took off, she called Lydia about that list and well-“

“Her moms on it…” Scott picked up, putting the pieces together.

“Everyone’s on it.”

“Wait a second,” you cut him off before dropping your voice and asking, “Are you on the list?”

“Not yet,” he mutters, “but there’s still another third, right?”

Before you can respond, Scott’s dad’s voice catches your attention, mostly be aide it’s accompanied by the scent of anger bursting as he says, “... that’s right. You don’t have any parents. That’s why they call you The Orphans.”

You can hear the rattling of Chains and can only assume that Suit got the reaction he was looking for.

A moment later he’s telling someone, “We need to find the boyfriend, Garrett.”

“Coach —I’m gonna need both their locker numbers,” you hear Sheriff point out before he comes into the hallway, “And someone find me a set of bolt cutters.”

Pulling into the parking lot at Deaton’s, Stiles finds both Deaton and Derek waiting for him.

“Scott called,” he offered when Stiles raised an eyebrow, “where’s Little Wolf?”

“Stayed behind,” Stiles growls out, not particularly excited at the prospect,

Working together, Derek helps him get the apparent werewolf out of Roscoe and into the clinic where Deaton’s grabbing some stuff.

With Derek’s help, he manages to get the boy laid out on the metal table. As they’re getting him situated, Brett starts to seize again, this time thrashing about and choking on foam at his mouth.

“What the hell is happening to this kid?!” Stiles asks as he tries to hold the boy down on the table.

“He’s been poisoned by a rare wolfsbane,” Deaton answers as he comes to the boy’s other side. “I need to make an incision and you need to hold him as still as possible,” he says as he the boy thrashes forward.

Stiles can feel his irritation at the older man but decides against it, pushing down on the boy again. Finding that they’re having a hard time holding the boy down, he snaps at the other werewolf, “Hey Derek, how about a little werewolf strength?”

“Yeah, I'm not the only one with werewolf strength,” Derek snips out.

“If you can’t hold him still, the incision might kill him,” Deaton points out and in his frustration, Stiles tugs the boy towards him.

A terrible idea really, because Brett seems to slide over to him quite easily.

Stiles tries to push him back but Bretts covered in sweat and the yellow foam and as he thrashes about he can feel the boy slipping.

Calling out to Derek, he tells the man that Bretts slipping and he doesn’t think he can hold Brett down.

A moment later, Brett is taking a deep gasping breath as his eyes open. Stiles looks over to see the boys terrified eyes just as the smell of something sour hits his nose.

Brett growls menacingly and Stiles can feel himself getting thrown back into the cupboards. Grunting in pain, he looks up to see that Brett had managed to launch himself up and off the table he was just on.

Growling, he starts to stalk towards Stiles when he seems to think better of it and turns to take off. He’s cut off, however, when a fist collides with his face and Stiles turns to see a blue-eyed Peter pulling his hand back, “I guess I still have a little werewolf strength myself.”

“Yeah,” Derek scoffs before looking from Brett back to Peter, “Maybe more than a little.”

Stiles turns back to Brett who’s currently unconscious on the floor and he crouches down beside the boy’s body. He’s no longer choking on the rare wolfsbane but he doesn’t seem to be breathing either.

“Hey Doc,” Stiles calls over his shoulder as he checks Brett’s pulse to make sure the boy’s not dead at least, “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

From his peripheral, Stiles watches as Deaton drops down next to Brett, scalpel in hand. He takes one look at the boy before he’s taking the scalpel and dragging it down Brett’s chest, slicing open along his sternum, releasing a puff of putrid-smelling yellow smoke.

Brett gives a gasping breath before his breathing seems to even out. Breathing out through his nose, Stiles tries to clear the putrid stench from his nostrils he asks Deaton, “Is he okay?”

“I think he’ll be fine. But he’ll probably be out for a while,” Deatom answers with a nod of his head as he moves to check the boy.

Brett seems to be breathing easier overall but his lips are moving and Stiles can hear the boy murmuring softly.

“Guys, can you hear that?” he asks the others, “I think he’s saying something.”

Looking up he sees Deaton giving him a confused look and Derek’s face contorted like he’s trying to focus.

Deaton’s already leaning over Brett so Stiles follows suit and as can make out the words the other boy is whispering, “The sun… the moon… the truth…the sun… the moon… the truth… “

He knows the words from somewhere… he knows he does… he just can’t remember where. Looking over to Deaton, he watches the older man lean back as understanding dawns on him and he says, “Three things cannot long be hidden — the sun, the moon, the truth.”

“It’s a Buddhist proverb,” Stiles realizes before his face furrows, “Why is he saying a Buddhist proverb?”

Deaton’s face doesn’t seem to indicate that he has any idea why so Stiles turns to Derek who’s staring at Peter.

“Satomi,” Peter practically growls out. The two werewolves having a silent conversation with each other and Stiles figures that either Derek or Peter will be hunting down Satomi real soon.

After a moment, Peter turns towards Stiles and asks, “Where is Little Wolf?”

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Posted 13 March 2020

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addictedtostorytelling · 4 years

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Part 1- Hi! (Feel free to ignore I don’t want to bother you) your lost answer to anon got me thinking about an old headcanon I could never get str8 (Jate’s my lost otp & I love suliet to pieces). In “LaFleur”, sawyer says Kate’s face is gone from his memory, 3y’s enough to get over someone. But as soon as she’s back, he keeps glancing @ her as to figure out if he believes his own words. Except from the obvious writers’ ambiguous trick to keep the “square” alive for a bit longer,

Part 2- I thought it was some sort of leftover tenderness they shared toward each other (that Jack/Juliet didn’t get) cause despite their incompatibility, I believe they genuinely loved each other. So my question really is: do you think, post “the end” S & K find à way to accept that they care about each other, help each other get over their losses, learn to belong even if it’s just in each other’s lives (as friends or more) ? Sorry for this novel and thanks.

hey @clarissemcc!

so my headcanon for how things turn out with kate and sawyer post-island is definitely on the angsty side.

i’ll tuck it after the “keep reading,” just to be safe.

___________

as the final on-screen events of the original timeline in the series finale take place, jack has made the decision to remain behind on the island (where he soon dies), and juliet is already dead, meaning that both kate and sawyer return to civilization faced with the prospect of going through the rest of their lives bereft of their respective soulmates.

both of them undoubtedly mourn.

both of them undoubtedly suffer.

but, ultimately, kate is better equipped to cope with her loss than sawyer is his.

that’s not to say that things are easy for kate, of course.

when she is finally reunited with jack in the flash-sideways universe, the sheer yearning in her “i’ve missed you so much” admission implies that she has likely spent years on years---a full lifetime---in the ot grieving him.

losing jack after just having reconciled with him for the first time since their falling out in the wake of their broken engagement and after everything that they had been through together both on and off of the island most certainly leaves her heartbroken and reeling.

she probably never really gets over mourning him and wondering “what if---?”

i honestly don’t see her ever getting in another long-term relationship or marrying after him; if she was going to “settle down” in that way, he was the one person she was going to do so with.

that said, i do think that, overall, she is able to face that grief (however long she has to) because she has a sense of purpose in leaving the island.

she’s going to help claire raise aaron.

and i tend to believe that having someplace to go and something important to do helps her endure a life without jack.

that’s where she encounters whatever healing is available to her and “learns to belong,” like you talk about.

before crashing on the island, she is a fugitive runaway with nothing good or lasting in her life, but afterward she has two people who are looking to her to provide stability for them; she has a family, a home, and, most significantly, a reason to stick around.

not so with sawyer.

before the island, he is placeless---a traveling con man, in and out of prison, lacking a solid identity, much less a sense of purpose.

on the island, and particularly during the 70s in dharmaville, he finally gains grounding, becoming a super competent leader under the guise of jim lafleur and finding a partner---in every sense of the word---in juliet.

and had he been able to leave the island with juliet and marry her, as per his plan, i think he would have continued in the upward trajectory we see from him in s5 and s6. he would have listened to his better angels.

but in the wake of losing juliet, i’m not sure he can---and not just because she’s gone but because he blames himself for her death.

for as gut-wrenching as leaving jack behind on the island is for kate---and particularly knowing that he is badly wounded and possibly close to death---she can at least take solace in the fact that jack makes a choice for himself, and she can honor his willing sacrifice by taking care of his sister and nephew.

sawyer knows no such comfort.

he blames himself for juliet’s death on multiple levels: because he asked juliet to stay with him on the island for “two weeks” which turned into three years (see episode 05x08 “lafleur”); because his behavior around kate after she returned to the island eventually prompted juliet to sign on for jack’s plan to blow up the jughead (see episode 05x16 “the incident” pt. i); and because he literally couldn’t hold onto juliet and dropped her down the shaft (see episode 05x17 “the incident” pt. ii).

though one could try to argue with him that juliet exercised personal agency both in remaining on the island with him AND detonating the bomb, his guilt and self-loathing would never accept such appeals.

in his mind, he killed the only person he ever truly loved.

and without her, not only does he have nowhere to go and nothing to do post-island, but he also carries with him the sense that he doesn’t deserve to get to go anywhere or do anything.

he doesn’t want to carry on in her absence.

he wants to suffer for his sins.

he wants to experience every moment of agony rightly owed him for his actions.

filled with guilt, pain, and the impulse to self-castigate, i just can’t imagine him faring well.

though kate might try to convince him to not give up, i don’t think he’d listen to her or accept any attempts by her to take care of him---and particularly not because he knows that part of what persuaded juliet to blow up the warhead was her assumption, however erroneous, that he would eventually choose kate over her (“i changed my mind when i saw you look at her”).

even just being around kate as a friend would trigger his guilt in the extreme.

and while he wouldn’t blame kate---as he says he doesn’t, per the scene on the pier---he would still blame himself.

he would always blame himself.

hate himself, even.

and a self-hating sawyer is a dangerous one.

i mean, self-hatred is what underlies his jerky, bullying, posturing behavior during the early seasons of the show, right? and, by comparison, that self-hatred is of a more “garden variety,” rooted in his sense that he has become someone despicable, rather than an extremely personal sense of loss (and fault).

so much more extreme will be his bent over juliet---and so much the worse his self-sabotaging behavior as a consequence.

the pre-show sawyer is an outlaw who lives dangerously, but he ultimately possesses a self-preservative instinct; he is a consummate survivor.

that’s part of what makes him and kate so similar.

and him and juliet, for that matter.

but this sawyer---the one who feels responsible for getting the woman he loves killed---won’t care what happens to him anymore.

so he won’t do himself in all at once---not when he has a very strong sense that he deserves to suffer for what he has done for as long as possible---but he will drink and smoke himself sick and pick barfights with guys twice his size and run cons where he’s almost sure to get caught and then pull his gun on the cops who show up to arrest him; he’ll be a fucking mess, the likes of which would make even bearded, pill-popping, oceanic-six, los angeles jack go, “oh shit.”

and without any sense of grander purpose, i don’t know that sawyer would be able to pull himself out of the spiral.

kate might try to argue that he has an obligation to take care of himself if not for his own sake than for clementine’s, but he’d probably say that his daughter’s only interaction with him being by way of the trust fund he left for her is for the best.

honestly, i don’t think his story in the ot has any kind of happy ending.

and i don’t think he lasts as long as kate does.

just based on the way i understand his character, i doubt that sawyer allows himself to find any sort of refuge with kate post-island in the ot, either friendly or romantic, even if she tries to offer it to him. he also probably eschews company of any kind from anyone, including their other friends from the island.

for my money, there is just too much hurt and guilt in him, for which he cannot permit himself any sort of peace, so he strikes out on his own (“some of us are meant to be alone”) to disastrous effect.

while kate undoubtedly worries about him, i think that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, she makes the conscious decision to focus her energies on claire and aaron, resigning herself to the fact that sawyer doesn’t want to be saved, and particularly not by her.

ultimately, i think their paths diverge.

she learns to live again after the island, and he doesn’t.

all of this postulation given, i’m certainly not harshing on your headcanon! it’s way happier than mine and, frankly, a whole lot nicer to think about.

lest i end on a super negative note here, i’ll finish up by saying that i find it highly significant that in the flash-sideways, kate once again finds purpose in helping claire with aaron, while sawyer is searching---not only as a detective for his parents’ killer but literally walking around with a big, yellow sunflower (his bloom of choice for juliet), trying to find where (or rather to whom) he belongs, hopeful for the life he has always wanted to lead with her.

though he doesn’t get any kind of happy ending in the ot, at least by my estimation, he does eventually find what he’s looking for in the flash-sideways, and that reunion with juliet is so healing for him.

anyway, i’m rambling here.

thanks for the question! feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #clarissemcc #asks: lost #**#my meta #meta: lost #lost #kate austen #james ford #let's talk shop

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reactionsfromapenofastay · 5 years

Text

Stray Kids reaction to finding out that their S/O is American and a ‘02 liner

Chan:

You two were on a café date, sipping warm drinks, sharing loving kisses, and just chatting in general when you drop the facts

Without any content It just slipped out, right out of the blue

Not like you wanted to keep it a secret or anything

It just somehow happened to be that you guys had never been talking about your age, or the country you'd been born

So now that you told him, you felt a little silly

Because oh God, you guys literally knew which floor wax the other one used, or how much the other one usually sneezed in one row

But you'd never told him how old you exactly were, and which country you were from

So needless to say, you were quite embarrassed

Speaking of Chan, he was surprised, yes but it was far from the main feelings he felt

He wasn't really shaken up by the fact that you were literally five years younger than him

I mean we all know how serious Chis can be, and that he needs times when he can be mature and all

But at the same time, he's a big dork, playing and goofing around 80% of the day

And because of this he'd never really thought about your age

Of course, he'd known that you'd been younger than him since the beginning

But the age difference had never been conspicuous for him

Because when you acted like a child, and were playful, he played with you with just as much joy, and enjoyment

And when you were mature, and serious he did just the same

Age didn't really matter him, when it came to love, when it came to you

And he didn't hesitate to assure you of it, right than, and there, in that little cafeteria

The country you'd been born in...it was a whole other case

Because damn! This boy was so freaking hyped about it

Especially if you'd spoken to him in Korean before

Than he would've been astonished like

"Whaaaaaaaat?! You've been fluent in english this whole time, and you've never told me!?"

He would've maybe laughed a little in relief and said something like

"Thank God. This means I won't forget it."

If you'd spoken to him in your mother language before, he wouldn't have been that surprised but he would've been still excited and asked a bunch of questions like

"What are you eating for breaki?"

"Are guns really legal and Kinder Surprise banned?"

"Have you ever met Brad Pitt?"

"So how is this Thanksgiving thing going there?"

Because he loves visiting new places, and learning about new cultures

So be prepared for a LOT of questions

Woojin:

Okay, so let's just pretend we are in 2020-21 or so

Because honestly, I don't think he'd want more than friendship from an under-aged person, even if he liked them or something

Your age were something he knew from the start

For the example, because you two had been close friends before you actually got together

Or because he asked you on the first date, or when you guys first met

It's just something he really needed to know

And when you told him he was relieved

"Oh thank God, you're not ten years younger than me. I don't know what I would do, if you were."

But also tensed up a little bit

Because your five years minus meant that he was responsible for your health, your well being, your studies, your money, your pets and your whole being altogether

At least this is how he saw the things

Because you were still a baby in his eyes

Not like a child, he didn't treat you like one

But like a baby, who can break in two, or get hurt easily

And if something had happened to you, he would've never forgive himself, believe me

( So please take a good care of yourself, for his sake at least)

Sometimes you needed to remind him that you were not his little sister

And he would've learnt, and let you look after yourself time to time

However, he would've still felt extremely guilty and upset if something had happened to you

In times, like this, he needed your comfort more than anything

He needed to know that you didn't blame him at all

He would make the bestest mental support team, fight me

You'd always known that you could lean on him

Also, being American meant that you had a lot of knowledge of another country, which made him curious

He understands English better than how he speaks it

So I think besides that it would be a good chance to improve his skills

He would listen to you, and then answer in Korean, or gesticulate it to you, if you didn't understand the language well

Which usually caused you two burst into laughter

Minho:

You were walking out of the bathroom, feeling clean and fresh, your hair tied up in a bun and the sleeves of your pajamas slightly wet

“Just a typical, Tuesday night”; you thought, making your way into your bedroom that you that you shared with a boy, and three cats

But as soon as you entered the place, you immediately realized that this evening was not about to be a typical one

Because Minho, your entierly perfect boyfriend, looked more familiar with a ghost, than a human right now

He sat on the edge of the bed, with one leg hanging in the air, the other one crossed underneath it

He leaned forward, his back making a bow, and he stared at the thing in his hands, which happened to be your phone

He didn’t blink

He didn’t move at all

And this was the thing that scared you the most

“Minho sweety...? Are you okay...?” you asked hesitatingly, still standing in the door-frame, not sure whether you should take a step forward, or not

The boy in front of you lift his head up SLOWLY, still not blinking though, and it seemed like his mind was not really there with you

“Why is your cousin wishing you a happy 17th birthday?” - he asked, his voice blunt

“Maybe, because he forgot that it’s going to be next week...?”

“No. Why is he wishing you a happy SEVENTEENTH birthday?” - you became more confused with every second that passed

“Because this is going to be my 17th birthday?” - you asked carefully. - “Are you sure you’re fine?”

“17th...17th...17th...” - was all he was able to say, and it took him at least an hour to process the new informations

But when he did, he became all soft in a second

Like I can feel him, protecting you, and treating you the way he’s protecting, and treating his cats

With all of his strength and love

He hadn’t had any problem, or difficulty with the age difference between you before

And he wasn’t going to have one now

He was a 4D boy, but he could get serious when it was needed, so it really didn’t take any effort for him, to get on you well

And when you informed him that you were American, he almost fainted in excitement (because he forgot to breath lol)

He was all around you, telling you about his thoughts and experiences of America

And asking you questions

He also phoned your parents, asking them if it was okay for you to visit

Let’s just say, you had to start packing in an instant

Changbin:

Another one who’d known your age from the start

And oh boy, did he take advantage of it

He loved to be the one in the role

And he loved playing around, and teasing you about your age

Sometimes running up to you, and taking something, for the example a hair tie from you, saying

“Oh noooo baby, that’s too heavy for you! Let me carry it.”

Or changing channels during a kiss scene explaining his act with the line:

“My baby can’t watch mature content.” - and he looked at you with puppy eyes, as he said it in a high pitched voice

Oh how much could it drive you crazy...

But you couldn’t hate him for it, because he teased you in such an adorable, loving way

To tell the truth he wanted to show you how much he cared, he wanted to spoil you with all of his love and affection

But his pride was too big sometimes, so he kept hiding his feelings behind teasing you

Don’t worry though, he’d never babied you for real

He let you make decisions, because he knew that you could take the responsibilities, and deal with the consequences whether they were good or bad

But any time you did something maturely, or tried to lead things on your own, he went like

“Omo! Am I not supposed to be the older one?” - and poked your side jokingly

But as much as he loved to be in control, you being the dominant one was a HUGE turn on for him

(Not in a nasty way, I’m a soft stan khmmm... )

It was more like...him being filled with pride towards you, and feeling the urge to boast about you to everyone in near

Like you did something, for the example won a competition, or spoke up for someone, and he immediately went like

“Hey, hey! Can you see her? Her, right there with the beautiful eyes! Yes! Did you see what she did? Amazing right? And she’s mine! My girl!”

The fact that you were American could amaze him within a second

Like, you could get him off his feet with it

Melting his heart with your English speaking

I can see him being all soft, and drift away in the way you speak, at the point where he couldn’t even tell what you’d been talking about before

“Binnie? Did you even hear a word I said?”

“Sorry baby, what?”

And you just rolled your eyes, but couldn’t manage to hide your smile

Because he was like a little child, he literally drank up your words

Hyunjin:

You guys were in a water park, and you were beyond excited

Because one, it was your first date out of the city with Hyunjin

Because two, he promised you that he was going to teach you how to swim which you’d been eager to learn for a while now

And of course you got the chance to see Hwang Hyunjin without his shirt on…I

meeeaaaaaann…you get me, right?

So there you were, standing in the queue with a familiar tightness in your stomach as the sign of excitement and a little bit of nervousness

And that’s when Hyunjin saw it

You needed to show your ID card for paying, which got your birth date on it

Hyunjin didn’t say anything, he just let his angelic smile spread across his face, ear to ear

He’d always treated you like a princess, a princess of his, but this fact made you even cuter, and more adorable in his eyes

He hadn’t been able to tell that you’d been younger he had to admit that

He’d always got on with you so well, there had never been akwardness or any kind of uncomfortable feeling in your relationship with each other

You didn’t realize that he noticed at first though

But the tiniest things…that was what you noticed, slowly, day by day

Hyunjin’d always been a boyfriend material, taking care of you, comforting you, protecting you when you needed it

But also gave you space to deal with things on your own

But after getting this knowledge he somehow became even more thoughtful towards you, and even sweeter

Which you didn’t really know how was possible

But he somehow managed to do it

His affection manifested sometimes in the tiniest ways but it made you feel so loved and warm

You started to get little notes with sweet messages and cute drawings whenever you had an exam, or had something in your life which made you extremely stressed

This boy made sure you didn’t overwork yourself and that you had an at least 8 hour sleeping session every day

And he packed an extra bottle of water and some junk food for you every day

And if you hadn’t finish them by the end of the day, he would’ve made the saddest, and the most upset face possible

Which would’ve instantly caused you eating, or drinking up the leftovers

When he learned that you were American, he got sooooooo excited

He’d lived in Las Vegas for a while, so he had some experiences, and a bunch of topics to talk about

Like food, society, culture, transport

Places he’d used to go

His English had never been bad, but it got to improve a lot by you

And he was so thankful for it

Because not only could he communicate with you better

But he also got the chance to talk with international fans easier

But as much as he loved to speak with you in English

He also helped you with Korean, being happier than ever to be able to do something for you

Jisung:

When you told Jisung that you were a ‘02 liner, you didn’t really think that much of it

Like it was just a number, a fact about you

Oh but Jisung did

First of all because he’d somehow thought that you were older than him

Not with ages, but definitely older

You’d always been so mature

Not that you couldn’t have fun, because you definitely could

With Jisung it was a common thing

But you had so “complicated” thoughts about serious things

You used your words so wisely

Let’s just say, you were intelligent and well educated

Jisung just couldn’t think about you as someone younger

He even called you Noona sometimes

“What do you mean you’re younger than me, Noona?” - he asked wide eyed when you told him

You couldn’t help, but laugh

You didn’t changed in his eyes though

He loved you, and appriciated you just as much as before

The only thing that changed, that he got worried more, and easier about you

And he started to look after you more careful

Not in an annoying way

He didn’t coo whenever you breathed, and he didn’t follow you everywhere

But he made sure that you were okay, that you had everything you wanted

It didn’t matter what it was

If you wanted a hug, you got it

If you wanted kisses, you got it

If you wanted him to rap you to sleep...well...you got it

He talked with you about America A LOT

And he also liked to challenge himself in English

This caused a lot of funny situations

Especially when he was struggling with words, and didn’t know how to express himself

But he got better as days went by

And when he first helped a tourist to find the square they were looking for, you couldn’t be prouder of him

It didn’t take more than five minutes and the whole Entertainment knew about what he just did

Felix:

You were in the kitchen, pacing from one counter to the other, your hands full with cooking stuffs, your phone stucked between your ear and your shoulder

You’d wanted to cook something for days now, and since you were both pretty sweet toothed with your boyfriend, you’d thought that you’d could make something together

And this was totally fine, but knowing you two, the chances of a fire, a food fight, and a disaster were equally high, so you tried to get the most important things in the kitchen escaped with all your strength

And you were doing fine so far, but holding your phone with your shoulder started to get kind of uncomfortable, so you got into action

“Sorry y/f/n, can I put you on the speaker? My hands are kind of full right now.” - you said in your mother language, since your friend who you were talking to, was also from America

“Of course.” - she said laughing as well, and you let out a relieved sigh, as you somehow managed to push the right button, and put your mobile on the desktop, as you kept searching for the things you needed.

“What are you doing, though?”

“I’m trying to find the sugar. We’re gonna make something really sweet and unhealthy with my boyfriend.” - you explained and you opened the fridge, and also closing it, remembering that the sugar was usually not there.

“Or something really burned.” - your friend’s laugh filled the room, and you giggled along with her.

“You’re probably right.” - you agreed.

“Back to your boyfriend.” - you rolled your eyes, smiling. Your friends kept asking you about him, but you couldn’t say too much, since the relationship of you two, had been not known by the public yet.

“You’re always so secretive. I don’t even know his name.” - you turned around, looking for a bowl now. And that was when you saw him, standing in the kitchen door, like he’d been glued there.

“Or how he looks like.”

“How he looks like?” - you grinned widely, looking straight into Felix’s wide eyes.

“He has big, beautiful, deep brown eyes.” - you got raptures over your boyfriend’s visuals.

“Long, blonde hair. Not extremely long though.”- you explained.

“Rather the ‘I can run my fingers through it’ kind of long.” - you heard as your friend inhaled sharply on the other side of the line.

“His skin is flawless, he has freckles, his nose is literally the cutest, he has full lips, and the sweetest smile in the entire universe.”

“Okay, stop!” - your friend laughed.

“Stop, or else I have to go there, and steal him.”

“I’m sorry but I think I’m gonna keep him” - you giggled softly.

“Actually he’s standing right here, and it looks like I managed to shook him, soo...”

“Okay, I’ll call you back later.” - your friend got your hint in a second, and after a sweet bye, she hung up the phone.

And that was when you looked at Felix more carefully, and what you saw had stolen your breath away for a second.

The boy was slightly but sternly trembling from head to toe, tears welled up in his eyes - probably thanks to your little rambling about him- his mouth hung open, and he got this lost puppy face which instantly caused you to go in awe. You really had shooked him.

“You...you...” - he tried to say, but his own throat failed him, when his voice cracked. And that was more than enough for you to run up to him, close him in your arms tightly, and cover his face in kisses.

“Oh baby, I’m sorry!” - you said feeling a little guilty, but not really knowing why.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry.” - you whispered in his neck, and you pressed a light kiss, on the soft skin. He shivered. You were still speaking in English but you didn’t even notice at this point

“No...I...” - his low voice gave you goosebumps. “YOU CAN SPEAK ENGLISH!?” - he yelled as the realization hit him. His voice was not angry at all, rather extremely surprised. But the sudden outburst still caused you to flinch back a little. And when he saw this, his tone of voice immediately softened.

“Oh my Gosh, sorry.” - he said, also in English, and you melted back into his arms.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just...” - he frowned, still struggling with words. “How can you speak English do well...?” - you chukled a little, smiling up at him.

“I’m American.”

“YOU’RE A WHAT?!” - you flinched again. “Oh...sorry...I don’t...I’m...I just...I...” - he mumbled out, trying to make an understandable sentence, but failing continuously.You’d watched him for a few seconds before started laughing. He joined you too, not finding any other way to express his feelings. You laughed along with each other, as you grabbed his hand and dragged towards the couch. You were about to get into a really interesting conversation.

Oh my God, he loved it soooo much that you were younger than him

Not just because he found it extremely cute, but a significant other, who was close to him in age could make him so so soooo happy

You were his best friend, his cuddle buddy, the love of his life, the one he sent memes to at 3am

Every second you spent with him was filled with laughter and joy

You guys were always playing around, teasing each other, sometimes pranking the older ones

And now that he figured out that you coukd speak English too, the storehouse of pranks and jokes opened up to him, to both of you.

Seungmin:

He is a mature one, more than most of them in his age

And if you were the same, he would have no problems with your age at all

He wasn’t really surprised when you told him, since the difference wasn’t that big between you two

And you didn’t really look older, nor younger than your age

So it was kind of expected

The bestest in mental support #2

Probably thanks to his mature self

But he would’ve always listened to you carefully, and always understood you

And if not, he would’ve tried everything in his power, to understand what you’d been going through

You could lean on him whenever you wanted, or needed to

His humor was sometimes interesting, you had to admit that

But it was utterly cute, and it always made you laugh

Actually it was one of his main goals in life

To make you laugh

He gave you wonderful, and useful advices

Sometimes when you didn’t want to get one

But at the end of the day you were always happy that he’d told you what’d been in his mind

Because it’d made you prevent bunch of difficulties, stress, and hard times

When you told you which your home country was he got really excited, but a little bit nervous too

He was really good in English so he was excited to speak with you in your mother language

But he a was a little bit afraid at the same time, of what you was going to think about his English

But you were amazed

And assured him, that his English was totally fine

Jeongin:

You were in the middle of a tickle fight when it slipped out

You were lying on the couch, your back making contact with the soft material

You laughed so hard, you could barely breath, your neck arched, your hair was a literal mess, and you automatically brought your knees up to your chest, trying to defend as much of your body as possible

But it was useless

Jeongin, who was on his knees, leaning above you, held both of your hands tightly with one of his, while the other one found a way to your sides, poking and tickling it continuously

“Noooo...nohoohhoo...” - you laughed-screamed out desperately, but the only answer you got was a cheeky grin spreading across his face.

Your head fell back as you tried to think of a way to make him stop your torture, and this was the moment when the thought came into your mind.

“Stop hurting the younger one!” - you shouted between your giggles, and he immediately stopped.

Like...immediately.

He sat back on his heels, arms moving away, his eyes widening, his face fell.

You breathed out as you sat up too, gasping for air

“You’re younger than me...?” - he asked, not wanting to believe his ears.

You nodded.

“With...?”

“With a year.”

Poor boy was shocked. He was so used to being younger than almost everyone, he froze in place for a few seconds, not being sure what to do

But when it clicked, and the realization finally hit him, he leaned forward and carefully pulled you close to his chest, a firm blush forming on his cheeks

It was a strange feeling, but a good one, as an unfamiliar warmth, protectiveness, and pride washed over him

You hugged him back, even though you weren’t quite sure what’d just happened

“I’m older than you.” - he whispered in your ears, and you frowned.

“I’m older than you!” - he pushed you back a little, so he could look into your eyes, as he said it again, a little bit louder this time.

And he got up.

And he ran away.

And then he came back with random stuffs.

“I bought you food.”

“But we just had lunch...”

“I bought you medicine.”

“But I’m not even sick...”

“I bought you a puppy! Here!” - and you looked at the tiny, fluffy pup, who was squirming in your lap now.

“But I...”

“Shut up, I’m older than you.”

He showered you with love and affection

In his shy way of course

But he did

He felt responsible of you, even when you told him that he didn’t have to

He wanted to take care of you, protect you and make you happy

(Please love him with all of your heart, he deserves it so damn much)

If you’d could speak Korean he would’ve been relieved

But to him English was also a challenge

And he would definitely ask you to bring him to your hometown, and show him around

This took me a little while but I hope you like it! :3 Have a wonderful day with a lot of smiles! :D

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theorynexus · 4 years

Text

59: The Continuing Adventures of Dave and Roxy, as well as the concerns assailing them.

Yay, the Charleston! (Boo the fact that if Jake’s targeted by a sniper, Dave can’t so easily react by slowing down time and tackling him out of the way, or whatever!)

***sagenods, despite never having had anything like his own experience, myself***

It’s good to see that in quantifiable terms, there. Also good to see Dave’s awkward insecurity on the matter never faded away during those recognition stages. It makes it at least 1000% funnier. Ask Colonel Sassacre.

HA! Also: I love to see that paranoia in action, ramping up the comedy value even more and legitimizing my previous statement that this was funny, which some people would consider incredibly rude, probably! It is also interesting to think of the fact that the 30-70% enumeration suggests he goes back and forth as far as which of the two sexes he is apparently considering legitimate “targets” of his interest (troll biology/sexuality didn’t cease to be probably quite different from human reproductive systems, or anything, and Calliope/cherubs in general may very well be hermaphroditic either in a simultaneous or sequential manner, so I obviously have to recognize them here). Obviously, there’s also the possibility he’s just not thinking of such other sexes due to is human upbringing on earth, were intersex members of society are relatively rare, and thus the idea that there are only two sexes tends to widely be embraced by (most, but increasingly not all) members of the Western society/civilization he dwelt in. I don’t blame him for his upbringing: everyone brings their own baggage into their later life.

Yeah... the Stralondes bring some interesting genetic factors to the table. I am not sure how much that actually directly influences things. Part of the issue is probably Bro’s impact on his life, which exposed Dave to a great deal of sexual material and almost undeniably stunted his growth in weird ways. (Note: I do not suggest that his apparent self-labeled bisexuality is a result of his growth being stunted, regardless of the fact that one’s early life does indeed have an impact on one’s later identity; rather, I am merely suggesting that Bro’s influences, while dramatically increasing his capacity for survival in SBURB, and thus technically being instrumental to everything that followed, gave him psychological issues which everyone must admit made him struggle quite a bit over the years. It may be likely that he would have developed the same sexual dispositions regardless of the scars Bro inflicted on him [both emotional and physical], but we can never truly know, for Time is weird: issues are entangled.)

Dirk, you named yourself after a Platonic work! How can you not understand how great and important relationships which reach to the point of bonds between souls and transcend the physicality of sexual relations can be?!?!?!

GAH, I just... sometimes, you really can’t expect reasonable thoughts from this guy, can you?

On the other hand, let’s just all take a moment to celebrate the irony of “... even my harshest critics would never accuse me of such cruelty” from Dirk Strider. Best. Fricking. bundle of words that ever emerged from his mouth, probably.

I would argue that even without the opposition, displays of gender are by no means culturally vestigial in the same way that fashion generally is not. It’s a direct reflection of the soul, projected outward. (Like a person’s hat, or shirt. [Dirk having a hat on his shirt was not just a reflection of the fact that he was “kid bro,” or whatever, but was actually an early suggestion of his Heart aspect.]) Obviously, this is limited by the resources, imagination, and environment/occupation of the individual involved, and there are in fact numerous things which are more important for a person in reality, but that doesn’t mean that it’s something to be dismissed like that altogether.

***cough projected future dramatic irony, cough*** Also ironic insofar as I am not 100% sure he actually cares about Roxy’s identity/gender issues so much as he might find them annoying and boring to be dragged through. Somewhat ironic+hilarious for a fellow Heart player to find this kind of thing unbearable, if so. Maybe it’s just the Prince in him.

It is good of you to be concerned for her well-being, I suppose. Considering it is your own identity that is at issue, here, I would suggest you hold a little more weight, but regardless, this is good. As for the matter of your transformation and dissatisfaction with your hair as it is now: I suppose Dave’s step by step relation of his own journey as made quite an impression on you. Hopefully, you do not feel jealous, but rather, patiently continue to contemplate your own path and, as Alt!Calliope suggests you might think, head toward a more potent and firm+real understanding of your own identity+self. It is okay to be uncertain and questioning, for now. I’m sure the shakiness of first steps will give way to confidence naturally in due time. These things are not easy, obviously, but reaching out to someone who’s had similar struggles is a good choice: it will likely make things easier, especially since he’s someone you can dependably put your trust in, despite his flippant, awkward attitude in general. (Also: on a more abstract note, it is interesting to see Roxy ascribing meaninglessness to her hair choice, and expressing lack of understanding on her identity issues. Very tight writing, on Hussie’s part, making the kids reflect their aspects and struggle so keenly with things relating to them.)

Given the fact that Cherubs naturally have very violent sex and spend eons before their first (and only?) sexual encounter, that’s not really much of an insult, if “virgin” should ever be considered one to begin with. Pompous is definitely more accurate and applicable, though. Also: Hooray, actually saying things, and getting the size of his text back again! (I am not actually really cheering for Dirk so much as I am finding it interesting for the sake of the ongoing conflict acting as an undercurrent to the storytelling, right now. It’s truly fascinating to see two narrators fighting amongst themselves like this! )

Everything about this (especially Alt!Calliope’s confidence and her “’human tanties’” line) is incredibly amusing. I love it.

Lil Cal might beg to differ. But that is a complicated tangent which does not deal with this version of Dirk directly. (Preemptive Edit: Also funny because of the fact that Doc Scratch is literally a walking, talking puppet with a Dirk inside.)

Yes, justifying toying with your friends because you know them and have investment in their lives therefore is indeed very logical, reasonable, and highly rational of you to do. Thank you for this brilliant insight into the human condition.

Oh, so this is now a reference to the Charles Whitman shootings at the University of Texas? That is a very interesting and curious choice to portray Dirk’s derangement with, especially considering the earlier statement about Dirk knowing solitude in a similar manner to Alt!Calliope’s own knowledge of it. (Almost appropriate, considering she basically destroyed the fabric of Paradox Space to kill her brother in cold blood [the way revenge and Eternity are best served], but I guess this is a digression~)

I wonder if he really intends this, or if it is in fact a ruse in order to time things perfectly such that he can in fact shoot Alt!Calliope in Jade’s body without her initially expecting it. Particularly since, if I am thinking of the correct gun, it actually shoots portals that allow for ridiculously long range shots that would normally be impossible.

Wow, that is cold, Alt!Calliope, throwing Rose under the bus like that. Also: I suddenly have “ Do the impossible, see the invisible. Row! Row! Fight the power! Touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable. Row! Row! Fight the power!” playing in my head, as if this were a flash animation. That thought process really puts things in perspective, if this is supposed to be (at least to him) a tale of Dirk fighting against causality and the will of Paradox Space to make things become irrelevant and to fade out of perception.

Guaranteed to blow [somebody’s] mind.

She warned you about---

History repeating itself.

Such anime. Such wonders. Man, this is really fricking interesting, seeing Dirk and Calliope actually going at it on a twinned physical and metaphysical battlefield! It’s like we’re finally being shown a cherub predomination contest in action! (I wonder if Alt!Calliope will eventually fall into caliginous attraction for him. This would be quite amusing.)

Wow, that was probably a bad move taken at an inopportune time. The question is: Is she forced to make that by laws of narrative relevance, or is it a purposeful decision on her part to spitefully turn away from him, despite the likely imminent consequences. On the other hand: This could be a very powerful and shrewd tactic on her part to recruit Dave to serve her purposes. Given his presence at the event, he could either intercept Dirk (I almost called him Bro-- gah!) or save Jake, if led properly. If she is particularly spiteful, she could use him as a sacrificial piece and have him take the bullet instead of Jake, which could be very, very painful to Dirk.

Huh. Despite Terezi’s comment about onions not making people cry, Trolls are inherently averse to them in the same way that dogs are to chocolate, huh? Also, people are Ogres, and Homestuck is Shrek. This is definitely the unadulterated truth. Additionally: Pffft. It seems that the idea that the Green Sun Black Hole’s presence making Roxy’s own void less effective for everyone might be true! Or, alternatively, Dave just knows enough to make the guess. Or both, possibly.

Pffft. She’s oblivious to her own inscrutability! Perfect. XD That said: YES! HECK YES! HECK FRICKING YES, ROXY SHADES!!! :’D (Oh, and shades are a symbol of the Void [not just because they keep out light, but because they block the eyes, which are symbolic of Light and Heart, but more importantly for this, Light], the same way that alcohol and oceans are. Somewhat surprising that she didn’t have a pair of them already, at this point, if we’re being totally honest.)

Yeah, if it was not obvious that the method of Alt!Calliope informing Dave of this threat would be subtle like that rather than a direct statement/command, then I don’t know what is obvious to you guys.

This, psychologically+sociologically, makes a great deal of sense, considering humans seem to have a natural propensity for feeling distasteful towards some sort of “other,” regardless of what it is. Thus, there’s a double-edged sword involved, quite logically, and somewhat saddeningly, to the otherwise open and accepting mentality that humans seem to have socially adopted in their new environment. At the same time, the way that this is delivered is horribly hilarious (tragi-comically so), and I’m barely sorry that I find that to be the case.

Yes. Yes, it was cute, indeed. Sad to see it go, somewhat. But his question is incredibly silly and very awkward, just as is natural for Dave. Thus, I find it acceptable and in-character, not insulting or narrow-minded, as some might.

***laughs alongside them, for indeed, this has all become quite funny, despite the fact that it is a “distaction [sic.]” from the seriousness at hand***

FRICKING... DANGIT, ALT!CALLIOPE, IF THIS TURNS OUT THE WAY YOUR WORDING IMPLIES IT WILL, I SWEAR...!!!

Okay, so you seem to have just used it as a convenient threat, and worded things such that he had time that he didn’t necessarily clearly have in order to basically take two actions instead of one. (His jump to save Karkat could have cost Jake his life, or Dave his.)

As I was going to say, but was prevented from doing due to a belief that it would be better to include these lines too: His statement about her being right about many things clearly, while initially making it seem that he was indeed going to take the shot, heroic death chance or no, almost certainly ensures that this is actually a subterfuge on his part (similar to but a reversal of Caliborn replacing the hats on the king and queen: in this case, he is switching his OPPONENT’s chess pieces’ appearances, making her think he’s targeting one, but is actually going for the other, more crucial target [as should be obvious, given the thematic similarities between Dirk and Caliborn, and the tendency of events in Paradox Space to rhyme with one another]).

Check.

Indeed, indeed. Alt!Calliope senses a similar pattern, quite sensibly, which is fitting with her role as Muse, and her understanding of it. Unfortunately, while she picked up correctly one one such similarity/resonance, it seems she’s missed some others. I do appreciate this comment on immortality, though. I had not actually thought about that, and this makes his potential actions somewhat more benign. (Not that it would render his later actions as such.)

I really fricking appreciate the “no guts no glory” comment coming right before this extremely gutsy reveal on his part. By saying as such, he could easily be ruining his plan, but he just goes ahead and says it anyway. XD BEAUTIFUL writing, right there.

It was less intelligent of him to narrate his own action so long-windedly, but completely in-character. It gave her the time required to interject like that. That said: I bet he’s going to fire via voice command or something like that.

And THAT, my friends, is why you don’t underestimate your opponents, and you should not announce your belief in the futility of their actions to their faces like a stereotypical villain would! Also: WILLPOWER!!!

... Yet this does not end the page, and despite the fact that it would be a magnificent point to end the post, I will not do so. I will first say that I was almost certain Dirk was actually in fact successfully hiding something from her when he was messing with his equipment/tech there [and great foresight on his part, to think this far ahead, by the way], and secondly, shall end the post with the actual page’s ending:

I appreciate his continued devotion to realism in sound effects and whatnot.

To be fair, he could be using that term technically and literally, here, but I also very much do believe that he was not, which is unfortunate. v.v Thus, Alt!Calliope’s question is quite valid. Though my guess is that Dirk’s response will be something along the lines of, “She chose death and you over life with me.” This might make her a “bitch” in the same way that men in prison who are raped are reported to be one, rather than the typical insulting-particularly-to-women version of the phrase. Regardless, this is uncalled for. ~~~ It is nice to see the fact that Alt!Calliope’s text is getting smaller, now, by the way.

I don’t appreciate this mockery/show boating. It’s quite abrasive and distasteful. I do see it as being rather in-line with what I’d imagine his character would do, given the frustrating situation he was previously put in, though. Also: This very much resembles what happened when he was first suppressed. There is much hilarity to be found in that, all things considered. Alt!Calliope was definitely a bit more benign in some ways and objective (most of the time), but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some major similarities between narrators. Additionally: I do quite love this example of narrative vs. physical action. I only remember Caliborn/LE and Hussie ever engaging in that sort of contest before. Well... you could say that there were a few examples of it with the Exiles and Kids/Trolls (like what Bec did to PM’s station, or Sollux’s defense against CD), but they don’t really feel like they were quiiitee substantive enough to count. Regardless!: Very refreshing and interesting, this style of conflict is! Thanks, AH! ... Buuuut there is just a liiitttle tiny bit left over on the page to comment on, so I’ll get to that. (Oh, also, I totally imagine Jade falling asleep in the classic manner she used to before entering the session, just slumping over with her hands splayed out under her~)

Okaaayyy... if you say so. The fact that tranquilizers can be lethal in doses that are too high does not jive well with your uncertainty, though. Oh, and also: WHAAAAT?! You’re going to leave?! This is a completely unexpected--- Okay, I can’t and won’t keep up that charade when admittedly the couple of pages I read of Homestuck^2 before freaking out and stopping showed a weird-shaped ship that looked vaguely like a flying fish. I had tried to forget about that, but the memory suddenly rushed back to me as I read that bit of narration.

Ehh? Is this suggesting that the Candy epilogue is chiefly narrated by Alt!Calliope? I mean... it would sortof work out logically, given her very pro-Free Will stance, and the association of Calliope with preferring Candy as food... .

Hmm. This further supports that notion. Iiiif that is the case, Dirk stands as the proxy for LE/Caliborn even moreso than otherwise was clearly the case. In retrospect, this makes it pretty gosh darned funny that his head got chopped off along with Jack English and Jack Noir (who, holding English’s “lordly sceptre,” and holding reign over the Felt, was OBVIOUSLY an English stand-in, as well [I still giggle at his sudden use of it like a horse {hitcher} in the middle of the fight]). Very, veeeeerrry interesting. ~~~ I wonder if Dirk was testing the idea of interjecting himself back into the narrative when he said, “Jake’s ass is mine,” twice, earlier. Oh, and credit to Forgotten Homestuck Facts for the pic compilation, earlier.

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theonewiththefanfics · 5 years

Text

I’ll Keep You Safe (Part 1)

Synopsys: Bodyguard! Bucky; Endgame AU

When Tony Stark asked Bucky to become a bodyguard for the Reader he didn’t think his life would change that much. But it did. And not everything was for the better.

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Genre: angst, lil bit of floof

Warnings: mentions of blood, gunshot wounds, general sadness

Word count: 2160

Bucky’s heart had broken almost two weeks ago, and he couldn't really blame anyone but himself. Yet at that moment, when their eyes locked, it shattered. “James,” Y/N whispered his name, Y/E/C eyes filled with confusion and fear as she looked down at her body where a stream of scarlet coloured her white tank top before crumbling to the ground. His name was a mantra she kept repeating, it was the only thing that existed in her mind. James, James, James, James, James it repeated, but there was no question or statement for him to answer. She just kept thinking of her James with his cerulean orbs, his soft lips and gentle touch. It was the last thing she saw and felt before darkness consumed everything. Things were not supposed to go the way they had. For fuck’s sake, the reason Bucky even knew her, had her in his life was because he’d been hired as her bodyguard. He was meant to keep her safe and out of harm’s way, yet here he was, looking down at Y/N, cradling her face between his palms and begging for her to open her eyes, to keep breathing. To not give up on him.

Red stained the floor all around them and soaked his pants and her clothes to the bone. He could feel the warmth of the blood as he removed one hand from her cheek and pressed down on the bullet hole. Bucky never wanted to hurt her, in any way possible, but this time he prayed to every god known for a painful yelp to escape Y/N’s mouth. That would tell him she was conscious and aware. But her head just lolled to the side, body lax like a ragdoll. “Come on, sweetheart,” he grunted, putting his metal hand over his flesh one to add more pressure. “Come on!” There had been only a few times in Bucky’s life when he had cried. At Steve’s mother’s funeral, when he had been drafted into the army, the first time Hydra started to experiment on him and he called for the help of his best friend, when he had broken out from the years of torture and rediscovered who he was and now, and now watching the woman who he had irrevocably fallen in love with bleeding out onto the floor. And he couldn’t do anything about it. “I’m so sorry, doll, I’m so, so sorry,” he choked on the sob that ripped his chest apart while applying more pressure to the wound. But the blood still spilled out. “I know I messed up, I screwed up a lot of things, and I don’t care if you hate me, I don’t care if this is my punishment, just don’t die. Please don’t die. Do whatever you have to - to get rid of me from your life but think about Tony. He’ll miss you, fuck, doll, he loves you so much. Think about Pep and Morgan. About Peter. Don’t give up on them… come on, doll. They need you…” and as much as Bucky was trying to be selfless, he was a selfish person. “I need you, doll. I need you, sunflower.” All the shitty things that had happened between the two came crashing down like wildfire during a drought. Every mistake, every harsh word, ate at him from the inside out until there was nothing left. Because no matter how many wonderful moments they’d spent together, no matter the amount of happiness they’d given to one another, when the one who he had thought he’d spend his life with, if he was able to right all the wrongs, was dying in his arms, the good bits were worth nothing. “Mister Barnes, Tony and the medics are here,” FRIDAY’s sudden announcement tore Bucky out of his thoughts. “Move, Barnes,” Tony’s voice was stern and taut with suppressed anger. Bucky just shook his head. He couldn’t. If he let go of Y/N, she’d die. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t be the cause of more grief than he already was. “I said move, so the doctors can help!” But when Bucky, didn’t so much as shift, an arm made of metal grabbed at him and pulled him away. That shocked him because Tony was in his full-on Iron Man, meaning he'd flown back from the mission just to deal with this, as the medics gathered around Y/N. He tried to rip out of Tony’s hold, but it was like his body didn’t want to. He was so drained, so weak that he just remained like that – with Iron Man’s arms tightly holding onto his biceps, as the paramedics kneeled down next to Y/N, one of them putting a mask over her nose and mouth to pump air into her lungs, another one doing chest compressions, while someone else went to look at the dead man a few feet away. He wouldn't need resuscitating, that Bucky made sure of. The bullet in his head was enough of a sign. It had been probably the most satisfying thing he’d done in the past week, but Y/N’s unmoving body was a consequence to it all. To his mistakes, his distracted nature and most of all – his past with Hydra. All of that had accumulated with her being picked up, a system attached to her veins, as she was rushed to the closest hospital. “Let me go with them,” Bucky pleaded, watching as the medics wheeled the gurney out of the Tower. “Please, let me be with her.” “The last thing they need is a hysteric super soldier, that can’t get it together. That won’t help them, and neither will it help Y/N.” Bucky could hear the held-back tears in Tony’s voice, and his heart broke even more. “It’s my fault,” he was finally released from where Tony held him, and he whipped to look at the genius. “Please, just let me do this one thing right, let me help her.” “You can meet up at the infirmary. Let the doctors do their job.” And with that said, Tony closed the helmet and set off into the air, tracking the ambulance that way. Bucky was left alone at the Tower with two pools of blood behind him slowly merging together, a shattered coffee table, bloodstained walls and two discarded guns by his feet. Yet even through that whole mess that he should be probably cleaning up, as it was, after all, his fault, all he could think about was how Y/N had gasped his name, her face slowly leeching from color, her usually glowing skin, dulling down before her Y/E/C eyes closed and would not open no matter how hard he pleaded. Dazed he turned around and walked into the hallway and to Y/N’s room where all of the shit that had happened, had started. Her bed was still messy and unmade, as she hadn’t had time to do so, a pillow at the foot of the matters because the girl could toss and turn so much, she ended up completely upside down. There was her half-drunk coffee cup still steaming on the bedside table, and her book with the dogeared page she hadn't gotten the chance to finish. He trailed a finger over the spine of it without realizing that it left a burgundy line across the paper. And then he broke. His breathing turned completely ragged, and the more air he pulled in, the dizzier he got. It wasn’t long before he was on his knees, head gripped between his hands and pulling at his hair as if he was trying to pull out the memories of Y/N’s lifeless body from his mind. Through a haze, Bucky heard FRIDAY say something, and he decided to focus on that sound like he used to with Y/N when she coaxed him out of a nightmare – a soft voice soothing him. “Mister Barnes, are you alright?” Bucky wanted to laugh at how an A.I. was asking how he was feeling. “Your heart rate spiked and breathing patterns turned irregular signifying a panic attack. Should I contact Mister Rogers?” “No,” he choked out, wiping away tears from his cheeks. “No, there’s no need for that. Let him stay focused on the mission. I’m – I’m going anyway. Can you please tell me which hospital Y/N was taken to?” He was surprised at how composed he was while in the cab. Sure, his hands trembled as if an earthquake was going on, desperately clutching onto the book he’d taken from Y/N's room. It was the last thing she'd touched, and it grounded him in a horrible kind of a way. She’ll want to finish it once she’s awake, he reasoned. Once she’s awake not if she survives. There was no room for argument. And all throughout the ride, all Bucky could think about was, if he’d done things differently, would Y/N be smiling while sitting in his lap, instead of fighting for her life?

Four months prior

“Tony, I don’t need a fucking bodyguard!” “Uh, yes. You do.” “No, I don’t!” That was the conversation Bucky heard as the walked towards the common room. “My house, my rules!” “This is the Avengers Tower! Literally, it has a ginormous fucking 'A' on the outside of it!” "Well, it used to say 'Stark'." "Well, it doesn't anymore!" “I still paid for it!” “If anything,” the woman continued on with her argument, “this is Pepper’s house. After all, she is the CEO of Stark Industries.” “And if she was here, she’d say the same thing – you need a bodyguard! Ah, Barnes, there you are!” Tony exclaimed seeing the super soldier walk inside the room. “This pain in my ass is Y/N Y/L/N, she’ll be staying with us for a while.” Out of politeness, Bucky extended his hand for her to shake, but she didn’t reciprocate, just kept staring a hole into Tony’s skull, hoping it would combust. To be fair, he was used to other people ignoring him, being afraid of him and just shutting him out, but somehow, when Y/N did it, he wasn’t hurt. Actually, it was kind of funny how unwavering her gaze was, and how with every passing second her eyes narrowed more and more at Tony’s skull. He cleared his throat, pocketing his hand and gave Stark an amused look. He just rolled his eyes. “I was wondering if you could act as her bodyguard for the five months she’ll be here.” “Again,” Y/N gritted, “I. Don’t. Need. A. Bodyguard. I’m literally in the safest building on Earth.” “Also, the most dangerous one.” “Yeah, well, not my fault is it?” “Can you stop with the sarcasm for one fucking second?” “I dunno. Can you stop being annoying and listen to what others are telling you.” “I’ve listened to you,” Tony replied putting a hand on his hips, “and I’ve elected to ignore the stupid bullshit coming from your mouth. You need a bodyguard.” “And in a few more minutes, you’ll need a casket.” A tense silence settled between the genius and the stranger, but Bucky could feel it was more frustration than anything with ill intent. “I uh,” suddenly his voice was thick, and he couldn’t properly speak, so he cleared his throat. “I uh, yeah, I’d have no problems helping out… just tell Fury that I won’t be able to make it to missions.” “Done,” Tony said, still having his stare off with Y/N. “No, not done. I don’t need a bodyguard.” Tony released a deep sigh before he placed both palms on her shoulders and brought her in a hug, her own arms still crossed across her chest. “Just until this whole thing blows over, please, Y/N,” Tony was pleading now, and it shocked Bucky to see the usually closed off man be so vulnerable. “Please, just to put my mind at ease… just so I know you’re always safe.” “Fine,” Y/N grumbled, returning the hug, and tucking her face in the crook of Tony’s neck. “But I’ll be complaining the whole time.” “That’s Barnes’s problem now.” “Oh, no,” she laughed pulling back, “you’ve roped the poor guy into this. Don’t think I’m not above walking to your lab to annoy you every day and make videos so FRIDAY can play them for you at the ungodliest hour of the night.” “Fine, I’ll just disable your access to the lab floor and code FRIDAY so she doesn't respond to your commands.” “Tones, if you think me annoying you entails just talking your ear off, you have no idea who you’re related to.” Stark just skipped away with a middle finger stuck in the air. When he was out of sight, she huffed and smiled, turning to Bucky and extended her hand. “Hey, I’m Y/N.” And that’s when his life changed forever. With one smile, Bucky was a goner. “Hey,” he softly replied, extending his hand once again, only this time being greeted by her soft skin. “I’m Bucky.”

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A/N: so, we doin this? we doin this.

P.S. my tags are always open/ requests are closed for now.

P.S.S. feedback is always appreciated :)

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wilhelmjfink · 5 years

Text

The Great Divide - Ch. 15

A/N: hey!!! to the like 3 of you that follow this story sorry I’ve been MIA lately! I’m sure you saw my last post about being busy as fuck with the track season opening up and springtime means show season and birthday parties at the farm and blah blah blah..... anyways here’s chapter 15 :-) thank you xoxoxo

Previously: Daryl’s blood was boiling. He was furious — he was fucking livid. Even more so because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it at that moment. The one fucking piece that he had that could lead him to Riley and the one fucking thing that he had that gave him a glimmer of hope that he could reach her again; the one frayed thread that connected him to his girl again that he was grasping onto for dear life... was laying dead at his fucking feet.

“Ya gotta be quick to find people’s weakness. Everybody’s got one — ya just need to know what you’re looking for.”

Riley stood still in front of Daryl as he taught her the only way he knew how -- hands on. And so they stood toe to toe in the patchy clearing of the woods, just the two of them and the shadows of the trees the lowering sun casted onto the ground out their feet.

It had taken that conversation and situation for Riley to realize that she’d never told Daryl, or anyone in her group for that matter, about her history of MMA fighting, the years of her own hands-on practice she’d had under her belt. It wasn’t intention or malicious that she’d kept it secret, but rather her defense mechanism, for when she’d first met them she didn’t want them to know all of her weaknesses because Daryl was right — everybody had one.

But after a small run in with some strangers out scavenging for anything to bring back to the Greene farm, he’d decided that she had to learn to defend herself. If not for her sake, for his; for he couldn’t understand why his heart pounded in his chest at the sight of her getting picked up by the dark skinned man twice her size like she was weightless, or why he cursed himself for not being on his game well enough to stop it from happening or just simply protect her. It was an innate desire deep inside of him he hadn’t been able to quell since his group had showed up on the farm some odd weeks ago; and so because he didn’t understand it, it just made him angry.

He stood closely behind her, gently guiding Riley’s body into a fighting stance as she allowed him to move her like an artist crafting his masterpieces in front of him. His touch always sent chills down her spine, and she didn’t understand why. The unspoken bond that had drawn the two immediately together — she didn’t understand that either, but basked in the decision to embrace it instead of question it.

“Now, say I sneak up behind ya, what are ya gonna do?”

Riley shifted slightly, waiting for him to adjust and position himself as if he really was a stranger running up on her and grabbing her from behind. And when his strong arms locked easily around her small frame, all of her memories and experience came rushing back, and she easily offset his balance with a slick bend of her elbow before jabbing it into his stomach -- perhaps harsher than she’d intended. He let go of her with a grunt, clearly blindsided by her response, and was even more shocked when she naturally spun on her heel and brought her right leg up in a well-rehearsed kick, her boot whispering over his by head mere inches, luckily just as she’d intended as opposed to kicking him across the jaw.

Dropping her arms, she smiled to herself proudly regardless of being slightly winded from being out of practice for so long. But Daryl stood up straight, his expression initially radiating anger... but Riley could easily tell there was some sort of admiration and relief underneath it somewhere.

“The hell, woman?” He was still catching his own breath after the impact to his stomach. “Ya said ya ain’t never fought before! Did ya really just hustle me?”

Riley looked away with a nonchalant shrug. “I guess I may have forgot to mention I did MMA for three and a half years. My dad made me do it.”

Daryl was really trying his best to remain stern but his features were betraying him and Riley noticed, feeling her cheeks flush at his expression of his secret praise for her.

“I thought ya said ya played piano, 'n... took some sorta drama or actin’ classes or somethin’ like that.”

His steely blue eyes were watching her closely and she found it incredibly hard to meet them, looking down at the ground with a laugh.

“Well, shit Daryl, where do you think I learned to hustle so well?”

Riley sat cross legged on the concrete floor of the makeshift bedroom, intentionally ignoring the dirty cot behind her to make some sort of stand, while the empty walls provided a perfect element to allow her to zone out and get lost in her thoughts as she racked her mind for any trace of knowledge that she could use to her benefit for that night.

Fuck, she was still sore as all hell from the previous day, her muscles straining just to sit still, only alleviating the slightest bit when she forced herself to stretch them out. It was a welcomed pain -- a sensation that reminded her she was alive which was bittersweet in that she had fought that long, but meant that there was surely more to come.

Her feet were still bandaged loosely and she was so angry that she considered kicking them off just in spite of Lidia, who’d done them in the first place. Her name felt sour inside of her mind, bitter, like an old best friend who’d betrayed her... which, she guessed, essentially what it was, but with more dire consequences.

How could she have been so fucking stupid? How could she still, after everything she’d put herself through, be so blind to people? This world was not meant for friendships and camaraderies anymore — no, it was meant for enemies and it was survival of the fittest. She’d really thought the way things were before had held her in a dog-eat-dog world? She snorted in derision to herself: if only she could go back in time and show her younger self what it truly meant to survive in a world that was quite literally every-man-for-themselves.

She’d been lucky before — too lucky — when she’d come across her friends way back when. That was still when things were trickling downhill in the beginning of it all, and nobody really wanted to believe that the world and life as they knew it were crumbling beneath their feet. She found some good people then because they were still around. Nowadays, the trustworthy ones were all dead and gone. Because they were too good for this evil world. Daryl, as per usual, had been right all along, and she’d known it from the very start.

If anyone was meant to survive in this hell, it was him. He would be the last man standing.

There was a familiar pang of loss in her heart at the thought of him. Though there was some underlying guilt she couldn’t deny, feeling as though the last day or two she hadn’t really thought about him much — shit, she didn’t have any time to. She’d been on the go since she got there and when she finally did have a moment to sit and breathe, she took advantage of it and slept every second she could. She was exhausted still and she sang quietly to herself.

Carry me all through the night

I am the last light fading

If he was there with her, what would he tell her to do? To stick it out, because that’s just what you do. Every single time she’d ever asked him ‘are you okay?’ she’d gotten the same answer from him: ‘gotta be’.

She wondered what he was doing at that very moment. Was he still trying to look for her? Hell, did he even notice she was gone?

No -- she shook the self-pitying thoughts from her head. No more feeling sorry for herself. No more wallowing in what if’s and should or shouldn’t haves; if dog-eat-dog was what it had come down to, then Riley vowed to be the toughest damn dog that the world has ever seen.

The one good thing that came of her endless waiting in the closet-sized room in silent anticipation was that she god a decent meal for the first time in what felt like ages: a hearty serving of canned vegetables, two freshly baked dinner rolls, and a slab of venison; it was a little bit rare for her liking, but she sure as hell didn’t complain. It was even seasoned.

It also reassured her that somewhere in that filthy, dilapidated city there was sustenance and actual food to consume that wasn’t stale or moldy. There was actual livelihood there. And the more she thought about it, under Slavemasters menacing armor was usually just some tattoos or paint, but not dirt and grime. They were clean, too. There was something to be said for the way they carried themselves: cocky and confident and satisfied, thriving in the new world.

So she’d only seen half of The Divide. The name quickly became ironic as the thought crossed her mind; what a concept it was to enslave hundreds of men, women and even children and forced them into agonizing, exhausting manual labor and pack them into old motel rooms like sardines, feeding them old garbage when there was fresh food being made two, maybe three buildings over. It was the same slavery that tore the country apart hundreds of years ago. But it was so much different.

And at the same time, she couldn’t help but justify it... The Divide was by far the biggest and most successful community around and it was flourishing, only growing bigger by the day. And it wasn’t like the work the slaves were doing was in vain — she’d learned that a majority of the work went towards reinforcing the wall that surrounded the city or crafting weapons and other materials for survival like guns and armor. And that was an absolute necessity nowadays.

The Slavemasters all seemed pretty content. None of them were boney and starving and emaciated. In fact, they seemed to be doing pretty fucking well. And Riley was sure she could get used to that lifestyle. Comfy. Not worrying about safety or sustenance.

She’d already hold herself that she was done feeling sorry for herself. She was going to charge head first into this fight with every intention to win, and she was going to try her damndest. She didn’t care if it killed her, so long as she went down fighting.

“Some day, yer gonna run into the wrong group of people, and I just wanna know that yer prepared.”

Daryl shifted uncomfortably after his admission and Riley turned to look at him with a smile, his words filling her with warmth and butterflies, knowing that it was his way of saying he cared... at least a little bit.

“Well, aren’t you gonna be around to save me when that time comes?”

Her retort was meant to be sarcastic, but neither one of them could deny the hint of seriousness in her voice and especially in his reply:

“I ain’t always gonna be around, Ri.”

The words stung. They even tasted bad coming from his mouth, already feeling as though he’d let her down. It was true, though, and he would never be able to live with himself if something had happened to her that he could’ve prevented. “But... ya know I’m gonna do whatever I can to keep ya safe. Always.”

With a sigh she leaned back into him, feeling his body tense for a moment before he forced himself to relax into her, both of them staring up at the endless starry sky and enjoying their alone time in the guard tower, thankful for the night away from the claustrophobic prison.

“I know, D.”

“...But ya know were still gonna train again in the mornin’.”

She sighed. “I know, D.”

Riley had always humored him, allowing him to drag her out into the wheat fields of the Greene farm and the courtyard of the prison to spar, giving her tips and techniques that had served him well. Most of the physical aspects she’d been solid on — stance, pressure points, form and technique she’d all learned in her few years of professional training as a young girl. But she’d never really stopped consider the mental aspects of it: the clarity and focus that was necessary for defeating her opponent had never been an issue. She’d only ever practiced with her instructor and other classmates and abruptly quit when she’d discovered whatever hindered sobriety as she grew older. And granted Ryan was a grown man with over a decade of training under his belt, he was a skinny guy, and Riley had taken him down in sparring more than once. She had never really stopped and thought of him as an actual threat to her. There were big, mean people out there that she had yet to face.

“Ya gotta learn them real quick — exploit their weaknesses,” Daryl had told her. Take a half of a second to observe your opponent. Which hand was their dominant hand? Did they have any injuries, any limp as they walked? Were they confident, staring you down the whole time, or were they sketchy and afraid of you?

“Most of the big dudes are gonna look real tough, n’ they probably will be, but remember: that’ll make ‘em slow.”

Her head snapped up. “Holy shit,” she whispered to herself at the realization. That was her key to winning that night: sure, Raul was big and burly, but that would make him sluggish in his movements, and it gave him a long way to fall when he went down. That was it. She had a chance — she had a fucking chance. It was small, but shit -- it was there. “Thank you, D.” She closed her eyes, picturing his proud eyes and slight smile when he’d noticed she wasn’t completely helpless when it came to combat. “I won’t let you down, I promise.”

#the walking dead #daryl dixon #twd #twd daryl #twd daryl dixon #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon fanfic #the walking dead fanfiction #the walking dead fanfic #norman reedus #norman reedus fanfiction #daryl dixon x reader #reader insert #daryl x reader #norman reedus fanfic #fallout #daryl dixon imagine #the walking dead drabbles

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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 5 years

Note

8, 11, 17, 22

Hoo boy this got LONG so I put it below a cut, haha.

8. Have you received anon hate? What about?

Ahaha, yes, yes I have. Occasionally I’ve gotten very random, strange anonymous asks that are angry but not I don’t think directed at me? But anyway one time I did straight up get anon hate and it was because I shot down a previous anon’s ask about Flynn being Jewish.

How it went down is basically a friend of mine (not tagging her because if for some reason a bored person wants to give me hate for this I’m not going to let them go after her as well) came up with the idea that Lucy could be Jewish. This is because of the ways that we see Lucy handle the concept of fate, faith, and God in season one, some fun etymology we discovered about the name Rittenhouse, and because Lucy never specifies what religion she grew up in. Now, my friend made a post in which she went into a lot of detail about the name thing, rather than the bits about Lucy’s handling of faith/God.

I reblogged the post, and then I (instead of my friend for some reason) got an anon saying that based on the research they’d done on Flynn’s names, Flynn could be Jewish.

I responded as politely as I could and explained that Flynn couldn’t be seen as Jewish, and that if you wanted to write him as Jewish for an AU that’s fine, but Flynn is Catholic. Unlike Lucy, who never states her religion or gives us any real clue which religion she believes in--we just know she is spiritual--Flynn is seen in a Catholic church, talking to a priest. Flynn is also from Croatia, which is overwhelmingly Catholic as a religion. The anon also pointed out that Asher could be a Jewish name, I pointed out in response that Judaism is passed down through the mother and that given how important his mother was to him and how Flynn literally never mentions his father, it was more likely he’d go with his mother’s religion growing up.

My point was basically what my point always is: writers leave gaps in the writing, and we can use those gaps to decide whatever “headcanons” we want. But if you want to see a character as something that directly goes against canon, that’s not a headcanon, that’s an AU. So if you wanted to write Flynn as Jewish, you could, but it would be an AU, you could not say given the evidence that it was canon. With Lucy, you can.

Now, I do think maybe my friend’s emphasis on name meaning and origin and such made the anon think that was all you needed, when that was actually only part of why my friend and I decided Lucy could be Jewish. But in any case, I immediately got anon hate from someone telling me I was anti-Semitic and a bitch and so on.

I responded to the first anonymous message, trying to be firm and a little sassy but also polite. I tried to pretend that the anon was my much-younger sister, and thought about how I’d treat her if she acted this way towards me: with firmness and some sarcasm but also with love.

I explained my reasoning over again, had some fun gifs, and ended with telling the anon that I was sorry they were having a bad day and to please take care of themselves, and that I knew they were a better person than this.

The anon sent another nasty message, which I just deleted. I also privately messaged the original anon, who had reached out to me to continue our talk privately, and I asked her if she was the nasty anon and if so, she was welcome to express any opinion she wanted to my face, and I was happy to talk with her honestly if she had more frustrations than she was letting me know about. She told me that the anon was a friend of hers and that she had been bullied in another fandom, and that her friend, seeing this, had jumped the gun with me in protectiveness towards her friend.

I was not surprised to find out that both these people were young teenagers.

I told her I understood overprotective friends, since I am one, and told her that if she or her friend was struggling with anything that I was always happy to listen and provide what support I could. That was, as far as I can recall, the last of our interactions.

What the first person, with whom I was privately messaging, didn’t tell me (and I chose not to call her out on it) was that she has publicly on her blog talked about how I’d shot down her “Flynn as Jewish” idea, implying I was anti-Semitic. She was, in our PMs, clearly horrified that her friend had said such awful things to me and told me she’d immediately started telling her friend to back down the moment she saw what was happening, so I think that she didn’t, being so young, realize the cause and effect of her post. I chose not to call her out, since I didn’t see what good it could do, and since I felt she was genuinely contrite.

And, well, she was (and is) just a kid.

So there you have it, the time I got anon hate. If I’ve gotten anon hate before or since then I don’t remember it. I like to think of it as a cautionary tale, for other young people out there. Be careful what you post on your blog. What you post is public, everyone can see it, and people will take action or form opinions accordingly. So if you say something, you have to be prepared for the consequences, whatever those are, and to take responsibility for them if so. You might think you’re venting and “oh I didn’t really mean that!” but once it’s out there... nobody can tell that you didn’t really mean it or that you were just letting off steam. They’re going to take you seriously.

I think it’s also a classic tumblr example of looking for something problematic and jumping down someone’s throat. I said that the main heroine of a TV show could be seen as Jewish, and was excited over that fact, and then when another person suggested that a Catholic character could be Jewish instead, and I pointed out that would be against established canon, got called anti-Semitic. When... um... I had just been celebrating... the idea... of the main character... being able to be written in fanfic as Jewish... uh...

Let’s hope it’s the only time I get that experience, shall we?

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

Um... I mean, Wyatt is popular or unpopular depending on which part of the fandom you ask. I liked him in season one as a foil to Flynn (they have an insane amount of parallels) and I thought there was a lot of potential to make him very much like Eliot in Leverage. I thought he could be a lovely Soft Boi. Season two severely disappointed me, but I decided that as a writer the possibility of writing a redemption arc for Wyatt intrigued me and would be a fun challenge (this is a habit of mine as a fanfiction writer--I take bad shit that happened in canon and fix it, or show how I would’ve done it differently, as in my Age of Ultron Redux).

So I like Wyatt, but I don’t excuse his behavior, and I understand why a lot of people don’t like him and why he’s unpopular with a large portion of the fandom now. I see opportunities with him but he was a toxic pile of shit so I don’t blame anyone for just nope’ing out.

What I don’t understand is when people take it to huge extremes like saying they want to set him on fire, or doing a huge meme on twitter about all the violent ways his own kids can murder him, but I see that sort of thing in every fandom about various characters and I’ve never understood it so that’s nothing new.

Actually I also don’t think a lot of people care about Jess? I don’t know, I just don’t see her a lot. I think people just don’t quite know what to do with her? If you’re a Garcy shipper you can have her be with Wyatt but that’s all you really need, and if you’re a Lyatt shipper you turn her into a one-dimensional bitch, so... I love Jess, I love her so fucking much, she deserved so much better and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

Instead of Lucy and Wyatt turning into “you’re in love with Lucy” so quickly in season two, I would have just had it still be a crush like at the end of season one where they said “I’m open to possibilities” and then have had Jess come back. Honestly, shoehorning Lucy and Wyatt together so quickly was the one thing that was wrong with season two. Unfortunate that it was such a big thing.

Wyatt spent all of season one showing us time and again how he was still deeply in love with Jess. He wanted her back not just out of guilt but because he still loved her. It’s understandable that, after he screwed up in 1x13 and all that went down in 1x16, he’d start to realize he needed to move on, and Lucy is his close friend and a beautiful woman and one of the few people in the world who knows about time travel and so he wouldn’t have to hide a large part of his life from her.

But to go from “I’m open to possibilities” and considering moving on to “deeply in love” in just six weeks? Um. No. Especially when in those six weeks, he and Lucy are separated. He didn’t interact with her. That sounds not like love of Lucy herself but fixation on an idealized version of Lucy in his mind.

Lucy certainly wasn’t focusing only on Wyatt all those six weeks. I think that Lucy’s arc in season two is mostly unchanged if you take away her romance with Wyatt. She was kidnapped by her own mother, who then tried to brainwash her, and she was about to commit suicide when Wyatt and Rufus found her. That’s plenty of reason for Lucy to be drinking vodka and spiraling. Let Lucy deal with those things while Wyatt deals with the return of Jess.

Would I have had Jess still be Rittenhouse? Y’know, I’m not sure. I do think Rittenhouse had a hand in her death and my theory is that in the original timeline Jess was a reporter, because Wyatt states that Kate Drummond, a reporter “even looks like [Jess]” after he sees her and Lucy has just told him who Kate was. This implies that Kate was similar to Jess, i.e. had the same job as Jess. My bet is that Jess was murdered by Rittenhouse because she, like Flynn, found out about their existence. So bringing her back... yeah I think that would mean either she never found out about Rittenhouse so there was no reason for her murder, or she was a Rittenhouse agent.

Either way, I sure as fuck wouldn’t fridge her. I don’t think I’d have her and Wyatt end up together as endgame, because I’ve been in and seen others in abusive relationships (platonic, familial, and romantic) and I’m a firm believer in the idea that just because an abusive or toxic person changes their unhealthy behavior doesn’t mean the person they dumped that behavior on owes it to them to stay with them or go back to them. Jess was Wyatt’s high school girlfriend. They’re in their thirties. That means she put up with his shit for half of her life.

I would have Jess and Wyatt ultimately realize, after Wyatt has done his appropriate redemption arc, that they aren’t meant for each other anymore and part ways amicably and she ends up with Amy who is of course brought back from nonexistence. Then I would have Flynn and Lucy be together romantically for the endgame, with implied Wyatt/Lucy/Flynn a la Leverage.

So yeah. No forced ridiculous bullshit “we’re in love uwu” Lyatt in season two. Focus on Jess/Wyatt instead. Lucy’s got enough on her plate already.

22. Popular character you hate?

I actually don’t think I hate any character that’s popular. The characters I hate are characters we all love to hate. I mean, I hate Wyatt’s behavior in season two and think he’s got a lot of shit to work through and I write him as realizing that and redeeming himself, which doesn’t sit well with the Wyatt-worshipping side of the fandom I’m sure, but I don’t interact with them and they don’t interact with me so? *shrug*

#mads answers things #sorry that anon story got long #there was a whole explanation attached to it #rather than a random 'fuck you' or whatever #it cracked me up the lack of logic that those kids were showing #but then they were kids and on tumblr so #the automatic response is attack for bigotry first #ask questions later #ah well I hope they're both doing okay #and growing and being better people #koortega

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