#note that this is still a WIP—it's not in a super polished state yet! the rotating anim fucked up the animation blending

[kaasiand]

BEHOLD... MY MOST INSANE CREATION YET

SPRINKLINGS

#note that this is still a WIP—it's not in a super polished state yet! the rotating anim fucked up the animation blending #and i intend to wait until sdodr drops so i can replace its new species (🤞) instead. i want sprinklings to coexist with inklings and octos #splatoon #splatoon 3 #my art #my mods #splatoon mods

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

2020 SU Fic Sampler - WIP Showcase

So in my continued attempts at distraction, I trawled through my SU fanfic folders, looked at the ol’ endless WIP pile. Figured I’d do a little roundup of some that are in something resembling a decent state. Maybe even see where interest lies and all that, get some attention and validation, you know, all that good stuff one craves. Of course, there’s loads more than this, and I might one day post some things I wrote but never quite managed to finish up, or that got super jossed in ways I couldn’t get myself to work around.

Now, in no particular order, here’s 8 draft snippets totaling almost 6000 words - not very polished, obviously, some quite rough around the edges, some long, some short, some that work better without context than others. But here they are anyway, with an utterly predictable array of focal characters. Any missing segments or my asides/notes in the text are [written like this], because I usually write very non-linearly. Hope you all like mood whiplash! 

P.S. I live for comments.

Like Talking To A Wall, aka Bismuth making friends with the wall, statue, and floor Gems. Early precursors to radicalisation and “I would have liberated everyone”, perhaps. Started as one of my first reactions to the Diamond Days episodes.

“Hey, thanks for listening.”

“Anytime. You’re lucky I’m so supportive,” Mica piped up from up on her arch.

Bismuth laughed. Bittersweet. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”

Then, with a surprisingly gentle hand pressed to the carvings she’d been so careful about, she added a soft: “I’ll miss you.”

“Chin up! It’s gonna be a lovely off-planet adventure for you,” Granite rumbled from just above her head. “A brand new colony! Think of the sights!”

“You can tell us all about it when we see you again.”

Bismuth leaned back, pressing her whole back against the wall, reluctant to leave, even if a snooty shift supervisor was bound to come around and chase her off soon. “Yeah, I’ll make sure to do that.”

They all knew very well that, as always, when the building was done, it was goodbye. The chances of there being a need for repairs or remodelling - and the exact same bismuths being brought in to do them - were incredibly slim.

But pretending was nice, sometimes.

-

Hey, Steven, think I could get a moment before we leave? I won’t be long.

-

They were right where she’d left them, and the years had done very little to change them. A bit of a patina there, some dust, the tiniest bit of wear on sharper corners.

“Bismuth?” Several familiar voices cried out to her in shocked recognition.

She knew she must look a sight - battle-ready and battle-worn, but armour still gleaming, and with a bearing of one who had been through much and was always ready for more. She felt her back had never been so proud and straight, her shoulders so resolutely set.

“I think,” Bismuth grinned, “you’re gonna start seeing changes around these parts.”

---

One for that favourite Pearletariat/Pearl Solidarity fic sub-genre of mine: Clever Pearls Cleverly Getting Around Badly Worded Orders. A bit of an origin for an as-of-yet unnamed pearl OC, because I sure don’t have enough of those!

In the untold thousands of years of Homeworld and Gemkind, and the hundreds of thousands of commands given to hundreds of thousands of pearls, nobody ever thought to Order a pearl not to think. That would imply a they mattered at all, and who would ever put stock in a pearl’s thoughts? Most Gems weren’t sure pearls could think, anyway. I mean, if they could, all that standing around would be intolerable, wouldn’t it? And imagine not being able to say no to anything, even crushing your own gem - shards, at least I’m not a pearl!

They were, occasionally, when dealing with an owner’s important, private, confidential business, Ordered to forget, or, a bit less esoterically, Ordered never to tell.

And [OWNER] has always been all too eager with the Orders. As if she went to bizarre lengths in her thinking that pearl couldn’t - or wouldn’t? - do anything upon merely being told, let alone by herself. Every little thing, from sweeping up the shards of a broken decorative plate to taking down the minutes of an important meeting [OWNER] was presiding over - (im)pressed upon pearl with the crushing weight of an Order.

But she could still think.

Even when Ordered to wait by the door, freezing her limbs and anchoring her legs to the ground with all the force of a starship mooring mechanism. Even when Ordered into silence for days and planetary rotations on end because [OWNER] had wanted to read an important document without being disturbed and it simply didn’t occur to her to lift it when she was done.

In the wake of the Rebellion and the Renegade Pearl, it only gets worse, and soon enough pearl can barely remember the last time a single movement she made was voluntary.

---

SU Future-era Bismuth and Steven convo I scribbled down in between some of these recent eps - after Growing Pains in particular I think - because Bismuth is the absolute pep talk queen.

“You already said you were sorry for trying to kill me in the Forge, and really, it’s okay, it was all a misunderstanding. Besides, it’s more than a lot of people have done!”

Bismuth blinked at the pinkish sheen around Steven’s cheeks, around the downturned brows - strange trick of the light, that. “Steven, come on. Just listen to me for a minute.”

“Okay,” Steven sighed, and leaned against the railing Bismuth had fixed just that morning.

“Point is, for me, the war had never ended. It wasn’t only yesterday, it was today. It was over for everyone, it seemed, except for me. And getting over that, getting used to that, really seeing that as the truth, not living every day buzzed up with that anticipation of the next battle, just waiting for Homeworld to come down hard on us with whatever new horror they’d come up with… that took a while. And it took help.”

[sudden apparent non-sequitur but It’s An Allegory, Steven.]

“When you make a sword, you can’t make it rigid and unyielding. You can’t just temper it into toughness and hardness and make it unbreakable. It needs to have some give in order to be durable, it needs to be able to bend so as not to shatter on impact. And sure, maybe the first parry or strike wouldn’t be the one to do it, but the tenth, the hundreth, the thousandth? Any time you might just find yourself holding on to a hilt with the jagged remnants of everything, and shards scattered on the ground. And if you’re very lucky, that’ll happen during friendly sparring, not in the heat of battle.”

Steven shrugged without response, and seemed to be shrugging off all the words as well. Back to the direct approach it was, then.

“Now you, Steven,” that at least got a bit more attention, “Sure, you can brawl with the best of ‘em, and you put that gem to damn good use. You’ve got great technique drilled in, too - I’d expect nothing less from one of Pearl’s students. But that’s not how you won, in the end, is it? You never won because you were tough, or strong. You have a diamond in you but you’re not hard at all. Well, except on yourself.”

“In the end all of this was possible because you were soft. Just malleable and pliable enough when it was needed. And that takes guts.”

“Hey, I’m just saying,” Bismuth put a hand on his shoulder, and even with all the very human growing he’d done, he still seemed to almost disappear in it. “You put yourself out there for others… maybe it’s about time you let them help you.”

---

The next chapter of the His Dark Materials/Daemons AU which I am sooooo painfully late with it’s not even funny anymore. Already posted some excerpts [here] and [here].

“She’s been... away on business, but we’ve sent a zeppelin for her and she’s well on her way back. Hopefully.”

“You have a zeppelin?” Rose was rapidly failing in all her efforts to keep her voice down. 

“Of a sort. We, er, we... stole it.”

“Stole-!”

“Yes, well, stole might be a strong word,” Pearl tapped a finger against her chin. “You see, there was a small decommissioned postal craft left below the southern mail station aërodock that nobody would ever miss, all I had to do was fix it up a bit and-”

Rose blinked. “You fixed a decommissioned zeppelin.”

Pearl waved a hand almost casually. “I had some help, but yes. Svalbard, understandably, is hard to reach with other means of transport, and Bismuth needed to be able to go back and forth.”

“You,” Rose began, awed, “are utterly wasted on bringing me my slippers, I’ll tell you that.”

“Well then, maybe,” Pearl blushed, but there was nothing hesitant about her smirk and the strikingly proud tilt of her head, “maybe you could take them off with a bit more care than kicking them halfway across the room and sending them off under the cabinets and- and then I wouldn’t need to do that at all. And I could fix all the zeppelins in the world.”

-

[more from the super secret backroom rebellion meeting]

“They’re with the Consistorial Court of Discipline, no doubt. Always on the lookout for,” Bismuth grimaced, “heretics. A lot falls under that. A lot of good excuses to snatch someone off the street and do who knows what to them. And they’ve been funneling people there, people vanished by the CCD. Not lacking in test subjects lately.”

“How did you get this? Where?” It was Sapphire, this time. Ruby seemed overwhelmed, and sat clutching her hand desperately as the tiny frog and hare both whispered something to her.

“We traced the funding for all this. It was difficult and deliberately obfuscated, but we managed. A facility like this, an entire operation, cost a pretty amount, you’d assume - and you’d be right. It had to come from somewhere. And whoever was paying for it was likely to want to know what was being done with their investment.”

“So we followed the trail. And it turned out I was… ideally positioned to… to, erm, procure what evidence there was to be found. Because, well...” Pearl trailed off, and lifted one of the stolen report sheets for all to see.

It was as clear as day, the family crest right above the astronomical amount being granted. Four diamonds, neatly arranged.

Neshu’s ears were flat against his mane, and Rose found herself wishing the ground would simply open up and swallow both her and him and the chair that she sat on and he’d tried to duck under.

Bismuth spoke up, grim, every drop of earlier exuberance gone from her. “When the Diamonds look out from the windows of their mansion, they don’t see people. They see tools, toys, and weapons. Nothing else.” She sounded more tired than angry. “It’s just what they’ve always been doing, but writ large.”

---

And then, of course, the Longass PearlRose Fixit because I hate the gag order but at the same time want it gone… slowly and organically. Alternating Rose and Pearl POVs spanning throughout the rebellion era, all sorts of flashbacks and Imagining Things included. At one point they end up attempting to essentially jailbreak Pearl, because Pearl is, as we all know, absolutely the most hardcore. Also thank you SU Movie for confirming all the awful Alexa-flavour fanon/headcanons and giving me an excuse to dive into a bunch of Gems-as-AI tropey stuff, on top of everything. [another previously posted fragment here]

“I don’t want to. I never want to do that to you again.” She stops, takes a breath, reconsiders. “And I know it’s a lot to ask of you, the trust I just… trampled over. So I want to make sure that it’s not just that, you trusting me not to make the same mistake again, with no reassurance anywhere. I—I want to not be able to. Nobody should be able to do that to you.”

“Nobody should be able to do that to anyone,” Pearl corrects readily.

“You’re right,” Rose smiles, only a bit wry, “as always. My brilliant, brilliant Pearl. What would I do without you?”

“Never get back to the point you were trying to make, I imagine,” Pearl quips with something resembling sauciness, and Rose feels at least some of the weight starting to lift off her.

“Right,” Rose agrees, chastised, and tries to focus. “I just… I’m not sure how, or what I need to do at all. It’s not like there’s much precedent – ownerless pearls are unheard of. Even when their owners get shattered, it’s only ever temporary, and, with such high demand, very brief.”

Pearl nods in agreement, and hums. “Luckily, we’ve seen plenty of unheard of and unspeakable things here.”

[echoes of Scabbard convo]

“I want to know, I want to be certain, that you’re here because you want to be.” 

“So do I.” Pearl responds quietly, letting their fingers entwine.

  [Giving an order not to follow orders doesn’t work, failsafes exist. Then they try a sort of ownership transfer thing, and try to make the new owner Pearl. It doesn’t register, “invalid transfer target”, even when Pearl tries to hack it - some odd gem tool that scans and pokes at her gem - she gets all bummed out because she can’t even reprogram a very basic and modifiable handheld tool/device to recognise a pearl as an actual gem and person. What chance does she have against hearts and minds and an entire ingrained culture of an entire sprawling empire?

“You changed my mind,” says Rose all softly and earnestly.

Have I really? Pearl asks herself but doesn’t let it escape out loud. Still. Step by small step, she admits to herself. Incremental, slow, but persistent work. She can do that. Even as down on herself as she is, she can do that.]

“The… the override.” Pearl breathes out suddenly.

“What?”

“The administrative override - you, or, well... Pink Diamond should be able to trigger it, even without a Rejuvenator. We shouldn’t…” Pearl looks strangely scared now, swallowing small gulps before pushing onwards, hands trembling and fingers knotting together, “w-we shouldn’t need a full reset, really, but. But we can try modifying the owner identification...”

Having to… turn into Pink again (turn back into yourself, you mean, a small voice whispers, who are you trying to fool) doesn’t sit well with her, of course, but. Get a hold of yourself, Pearl certainly has it so much worse in this scenario.

[more here about how they both need to kind of “revert” a bit to try this and it sucks, because no! unpleasant poking of holes in the elaborate fantasy! For the greater good, but still.]

And oh, Pearl looks just about ready to either cry with some strange terror Rose has never seen her display, or dissipate her form on the spot - the small dam of coldly throwing around terms like administrative override activation and owner identification variable providing just enough distance for her to carry on.

“It shouldn’t be too risky if we’re… if you’re careful.”

[Pearl trusts her with everything, her literal entire self - with this thing that is such a blatant violation of her being and her person, that she now wants to turn against itself, using one of the most humiliatingly clearly objectifying aspects of her status as an instrument of her liberation. It is all A Lot.]

Rose remembers, also, with a sting, the way she grumbled and sulked over the gaping pit of guilt in her stomach and refused to even look at the glowing, floating shell Blue was so insistently pushing her towards. She wanted her Pearl back, not whatever White and the others had decided to foist upon her now. Not a pale replacement, nothing they deemed suitable.

-

“Please state preferred customisation options.”

“Come on, Pink,” Blue urges, softly but mercilessly as ever, large hands enveloping Pink almost whole from where they’re planted on her shoulders, “White had her specially made, just for you! And we helped as well - only the best for our Pink. Now it’s up to you to put your finishing touches, as is proper-”

“What for? You’ll just take her away when you feel like it anyway,” she grumbles into her arms, curling up on the floor and resolutely refusing to look even as the glow spreads from the corner of her eye, insistent.

Just as insistent as the awfully familiar little voice. “Please state preferred customisation options.”

“I. Don’t. Care!” But now with a newly noticeable, if strained restraint - not, like her usual, punctuated with a slam of her fist on the floor tiles, perfectly shiny and pink. No, she couldn’t- do something like that again-

“Default setting selected. Please stand by.”

Yellow scoffs and moves to leave. “Come on, Blue. No point to us wasting our time being here if she’s just going to throw one of her tantrums.”

But Blue refuses to leave it at that, and makes sure to cut with parting words, before slinking through the large pink doorway. “I am very disappointed in you, Pink. To act like that, and with White personally making sure you got such a lovely gift even after everything...”

“Waste of good nacre, if you ask me,” Yellow muses from somewhere up above. “At least try not to break this one.” 

The glow intensifies with a hum, and Pink screws her eyes shut and pretends not to see or hear anything. 

By the time she opens them again, the others are gone.

But then there is another presence at her side, hovering just behind, as is proper court protocol. The shuffling of tiny, soft slippers on the polished stone - weren’t pearls supposed to be endlessly, effortlessly quiet?

“Leave me alone,” she preempts quietly. The shuffling moves away.

-

“Please identify yourself.”

Calmly, now, calmly but firmly, just like we planned it. Don’t mess this up now. She’s counting on you. She trusts you. “Pearl.”

“Please state preferred customisation options.”

They’ve discussed this too, of course - extensive (over)preparation and planning down to minutiae is Pearl’s go-to at the best of times, and something she clutches at for comfort at the worst of times. And she’s always, to a sometimes comical extent, despised that ridiculous dress. To a wonderful extent, too, all things considered.

“Revert to last implemented appearance.”

“Settings selected. Please stand by.”

[Of course this doesn’t work because all it does is change the $username$ variable, not the actual identity of the person imprinted: it’s still Rose/Pink, she’s just nicknamed “Pearl” now, but she can still give orders and everything.]

[evolves into Pearl literally hacking herself… the most hardcore of modders]

---

Pearl Playing the Field aka “why not hyper-analyze that one brief shot of the notes and phone numbers in Pearl’s gem and write 9 meet-cutes”. Pearl goes out to “find herself”. Whatever that is supposed to mean. Supposed to be set pre-ASPR, but also extends past it. Ended up with some Bispearl in it too because I am predictable and can absolutely not help myself.

“Your hair is wonderful!” She feels like she almost has to shout to be heard over the din of the bar’s ill-chosen soundtrack, and she doesn’t appreciate it. Definitely not one of her favourite places she’s decided to visit recently. And the ventilation is atrocious.

But still, she’s come all this way, so she may as well make the best of it. And while the preoccupation with hairstyles during first meetings seems like a bit of an odd running theme (can it really be termed a running theme, though, if it’s happened all of two times?), it’s certainly worked in the past (recent, very recent, and hardly bursting with relevant instances, Pearl!). Oh, and this particular one is just too fascinating. Approaching a work of art, Pearl would dare say. Especially, well. Especially when paired with the lovely eyes and striking jawline and strong neck it seems to deliberately be drawing attention to.

Pearl leans on the bar, in the bit of space the woman happily makes for her, and tries to look confident and well-informed, but not smug, no, never smug. “I know... about the, uh, goop, of course. I know how one accomplishes this.”

The woman gives a bemused smile. “Thanks! Not too shabby yourself.” She leans in closer. “I'm actually in school for it.”

“School?” Pearl casts desperately back to what she's heard from Steven and Greg's often hasty instruction. That was for educating human children, wasn't it? She'd put one together for Steven that one time, with desks and a blackboard… and Connie attended one regularly...

“Yeah, kind of a late game career change.” Pearl nods along as she realises - or, rather, remembers - she is absolutely terrible at gauging human ages. “But I thought... after almost 30 years in accounting and not going anywhere I wanted to be going... it’s not like we have all the time in the world, right? So I figured, why not? Go for something I'm actually invested in and that I've always wanted to do, y'know?”

“Oh. Oh yes, yes I do.” And for once, she really does. Well, not the time-related bit, perhaps, but the very particular delight of getting to pursue one’s genuine interests after a long while of being denied? Absolutely. “I’ve done something of the sort myself, actually. Go for it! As they, uh, say.”

The dramatic gesture of almost punching the air with a closed triumphant/defiant fist might have been a tad over the top, but it wins her a smile that doesn’t seem unkind. The woman winks and tips her glass at Pearl, then finishes her drink - something sweet-smelling and almost as colourful as her hair.

“I had a classmate do this one for me, and I did hers after.” Pearl is nodding along again, leaning in to hear better as the woman’s voice dips lower. “I kind of like to experiment, push the limits, go wild with it. Hey. You interested? Promise I won’t go too wild on you.”

Pearl's mind goes blank there for a moment. The woman is… very close, and there are unignorable implications unrelated to hair styling so obvious here even she is picking up on them without issue, and the music hasn’t gotten any quieter. Interested in what, exactly, she wants to ask, but she came here for wild new experiences and exciting novelty, didn’t she, so instead comes out with a rather strangled-sounding: “Eughhhhh...uhhh.... Ye...s?”

The woman’s expression goes serious. “Hey, come on, we don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

---

Forge Showdown AU - aka in a twist of fate Bismuth poofs Rose during their confrontation and revelations happen that change the course of… well, pretty much everything - one of a bunch of AUs where the PD reveal happens earlier and under different circumstances (I had an idea of doing a 5+1 of those at one point).

The glow of the lava coloured the quickly dissipating smoke more orange-red than pale pink, and Bismuth stared numbly at where their revered leader, Rose Quartz herself, had been standing mere moments ago. She’d lashed out, true, but she hadn’t really been expecting the clumsy blow - more of a warning, or underlining a point in their continued argument-turned-fight - to land. In all their many sparring sessions, Rose had never succumbed to something like that, would have never so much as let it brush against her. But she’d been- frozen, distracted… by what? 

There, scraping softly against the ground as it rolled with leftover momentum...

That was not a rose quartz gem.

Bismuth raked her mind feverishly, thought back through the last few, oddly blurred seconds.

“We’re not using this, Bismuth! It’d make us just as bad as them!”

“No! You’re the one who’s as bad as them- look at you, lording over all of us, thinking it’s your right to command me, order me around, like you’re, what, my diamond?”

It… it had to be some kind of imposter, or spy. Right? Some kind of… awful Homeworld plan, trying to tear the Rebellion apart from the inside. Where was Rose, then? The real one? Captured? Being interrogated somewhere, her whereabouts kept strictly secret to minimise the chance of rescue? Shattered? Impossible, they’d never hear the end of the victorious crowing.

When could it have happened? The last few battles and meetings had been nothing out of the ordinary, and Bismuth couldn’t think of anything odd or off about Rose recently at all. Not a single hint or sign that anything was amiss. Not a single misstep. Homeworld would have trained and conditioned its agents well, but Rose- Rose was singular, and utterly one-of-a-kind, and how could they possibly capture all of it so perfectly-

Bismuth startled out of her thoughts as the beginnings of light seemed to gather in the core of the gem, and all but threw herself onto it, encasing it in a bubble.

Rose was rather special, wasn’t she? And not just in what she said or what she did or how she behaved or what she led and encouraged them to do, but… 

Her endless array of wondrous powers. Her sheer strength, overpowering ruby fusions and quartz battalions alike almost single-handedly. The healing which Bismuth herself had been on the receiving, lifesaving end of countless times. The way she called upon the organic creatures of the planet to fight for her, fighting in their name. And then, her regular absences. The way she seemed to know exactly what the Homeworld troops were up to - that wasn’t just some kind of tactical brilliance.

She dared to look at the gem again. Its hue was changed some by the bubble, but that was still in no way a rose quartz gem. No, it was an altogether different shape, but a terrifyingly familiar one.

But it made no sense!

Bismuth ran a slightly trembling hand down her face.

Pearl. Of course, Pearl would have to know, if anyone. About… whatever this was.

But if this, if she was… her, then Pearl-

Bismuth’s insides twisted in horrible ways as the implications began to flitter through her mind, each one worse than the one before it. There was the old call-and-response ringing in her ears, making her feel disoriented and sick with what had to be the beginnings of anger, could grow into a great fury, leaving her unnecessary breaths ragged: Who do you belong to? Nobody!

But-

Not Pearl, then. At least, not at first. Garnet. Garnet would know, and Garnet could See. They’d get to the bottom of this.

---

A metric ton of rebellion era ficlets, vignettes from my eeeEEeeEEeeEEE Bismuth collection mostly, which I’ve been accumulating since 2016 and have only posted some - Pearl, Rose, Garnet, Bismuth centric, occasionally with my takes on namedropped characters, some of which would now need an update to match actual canon.

Snowflake was there, held in Garnet’s arms. The familiar pattern of white speckles on black skin, the tight silver coils of hair sticking out every which way.

“We got her back. She wanted to see you.”

“Me? And you just listened to her? Are you out of your mind? How can I help? Have you taken her to Rose? If her gem- if she-”

“I’m right here!” Snowflake struggled out of Garnet’s hold, and stood up - wobbly, barely upright, but determined, on those legs that ran circles around Homeworld, and ran interference and messages faster than any Wailing Stone, in a pinch. “And I’m fine!”

“You don’t look fine, Snowy- listen, please just-”

Snowflake walked up to her, not stumbling a single time, and, gritting her teeth, looked right at her. The hairline fractures in her gem were visible from here, and Bismuth couldn’t help a wince. “Snowflake, come on-”

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

Bismuth wanted to clutch her to her chest and scream a thousand things at her, but You don’t have to prove anything to me and I’m proud of you and I’m going to make them pay for ever laying a finger on you all waged a war in her throat.

In the end she just settled on holding her close, very gently, until Garnet left, unheard, and came back with Rose, tears already in abundance.

[Later:] “I never properly thanked you, Garnet. For bringing Snowflake back.”

Garnet shrugged. “It was a group effort.”

-

A familiar voice sounded at the entrance to the Forge. “Now come along, it’s just here. Bismuth? Do you have a moment?”

“You know I always have time for you, Pearl,” she called back, putting her current project away. “What did you nee- oh.”

Bismuth blinked.

“Uh... wow,” was the only thing she could manage as pearl after pearl filed into her Forge, soon taking up most of the space around the anvil in impressively neat rows. “New recruits? A whole bunch of you, too.”

“Yes, well,” Pearl made her way to the front of the group, carefully avoiding brushing against the others on her way. She was fidgeting again, long fingers tangling and untangling rapidly, and that was one sure sign of mounting distress. “Garnet and I had planned out an attack on one of Blue Diamond’s supply lines. There was supposed to be a shipment of weapons coming in today, but it turns out it was… pearls.” 

There was something rather off about Pearl’s tone, too. Bismuth made a note to ask later, and do her best to catch her alone.

“Well, all the better for us. Nice to have you all on board.” Her jovial tone was only slightly forced - the pearls all looked like they clearly needed something resembling friendliness, but their skittishness was palpable. She turned towards a pale green pearl right at the front of the group. “Now, what do I call you?”

There was nothing but mild confusion, vague fear, and general quiet shuffling. “No ideas yet? Don’t worry about it! There’s plenty of time to decide and find something that fits.”

[she does indeed manage to talk to Pearl alone, later]

“What’s the real problem, Pearl? You can’t fool me. I can tell something’s wrong.” 

The rather flimsy front finally crumbled at that.

“I just… we- we took out the citrines they’d sent with the shuttle, and Garnet boosted me up so I could force the hatch open and I did, but then...” Pearl let out a distressed little half-sigh half-sob, one hand gesturing weakly. “They were all looking at me so wide-eyed and...”

She took a moment to at least attempt to collect herself.

“I don’t mind having them here, it’s not that at all. It’s just that… we were standing there, with all these newly-made pearls and… obviously I couldn’t just leave them there, in the middle of nowhere! And after what we did, whoever found them, they’d just have them shattered. Because of me. They were compromised. You’ve heard what they do now, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard. They’re the monsters, Pearl, and it’s not on you. It’s not you doing that to pearls, it’s them.”

“But it is on me! It quite literally is because of me, because of what I did, and continue to do. I made myself visible and played at being important and look what it got us,” Pearl was near tears, a frustrated blue colouring her face, “a handful of runaways and the rest being treated worse than ever.” 

The tears were out in full force after that, and Bismuth put an arm around Pearl’s shaking shoulders. “Hey, hey, none of that.”

“We ended up taking them with us, but it feels like… it feels like I forced them to come here. Is it really any better than what Homeworld does? All I did was say you’re going to be rebels instead of you’re going to serve and they never got a say in anything.”

“Have you asked them?”

“They don’t know what-”

“Hey. Just ask them, okay? Ask them what they want. We can help them either way. Of course I’d love them to stay. But it’s not up to me, and if they want to go to wherever it was they were supposed to go- we can do that, too.”

-

[Rose discovers her healing tears in a dramatic fashion - they come up with the idea to make the fountain - and thanks to Save the Light we have a pretty good idea of who lovingly made all those statues]

She gently wiped away some of the chiselling dust with the flat of her thumb, just like a tear. A magnificent, healing, life-giving tear.

This was familiar work. But with none of the endless chafing, none of the hated reminders of her former station - Bismuth couldn’t find anything in herself but reverence. And… inspiration. She was a Gem, stars knew she didn’t need rest, breaks, anything of the sort, but still - this pace wasn’t something she’d felt driven to in a long, long while. All day under the burning summer sun, and every night under the light of her own gem. All alone, as the sanctuary took form under her hands.

To get the curls just right, tiny detail by tiny detail, somehow communicate the softness of those cheeks in stone… it took drawing upon the very depths of her well of skill, because how else could she ever hope to capture the likeness of someone as extraordinary as Rose Quartz?

With small, careful movements, she formed the roundness of the lips that could spit fiery words of rebellion, inspire like no other, scowl fiercely in the heat of battle, smile contagiously, bellow out an outrageous fireside guffaw, murmur comforts so softly, kiss…

And then she did it again, and again, and again.

[in the end, Rose is presented with a veritable shrine to herself]

“Rose? Is something wrong? You… don’t like it?”

“No, no, Bismuth, it’s… it’s incredible.” The smile Rose turned on her was as beautiful as anything, but it wasn’t hard to notice it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

#steven universe #oathkeeper writes things #INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: #pearl #bismuth #rose quartz #bispearl #pearlrose #daemon au #the pearletariat #pearl playing the field #those stars of brightest magnitude #let's get down to bismuth #steven universe future #i love pearls just... bury me in a big pile of pearls honestly #endless wip pile #fanfiction #my fic

[grisdidthis]

CHAPTER ONE: FIRST SIGHT

AKA, blessed fucknuggets, why do these fools feel the need to put themselves through high school, my sources tell me that the US school system isn’t all that to begin with, what gives?

PREVIOUS ENTRIES

(Warning: this got long. Looooong. Hence, cut, so that I don’t murder your dash like Edward doesn’t murder Bella in this chapter.)

Welcome to the first entry of a live-read that no one asked for, in which I’ll go through the first chapter of Midnight Sun, i.e. a retelling of the first Twilight book from Edward Cullen’s POV. Not to be confused with Grey, a retelling of the first volume of a Twilight fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, or the Life and Death edition, a retelling of the first Twilight book in which Bella Swan is genderbent into a dude called Beau, who utters the immortal line “I knew I must look like a gorilla on a greyhound.” Which still tickles my humerus to this day.

I’ve waited for this novel to drop so long that at some point I’d stopped waiting. If by some freaky turn of chance you stumbled on this without knowing about the hoopla surrounding the publication, here’s a Wikipedia link. The gist is that the first few chapters of the WIP got leaked, the author got upset, the book got shelved until ??? and no further information about it was forthcoming until a while ago, when out of the blue arrive the news that it’s getting released in August.

My first thought was “Oh, yay, something actually NICE is happening this year!”

My second thought was “Please let it be good, so that I can laugh outrageously at [name redacted] for mocking my enjoyment of this series!” And. Look. I know what’s said about Twilight with regards to its literary merit and Stephenie Meyer’s abilities as a writer. A lot of it is admittedly accurate. However, the metrics by which I measure the value of a book are a) did it entertain me? and b) did I gain anything by having read it? And yeah, those are personal and subjective items, but objectivity is a lie, Jesus enjoys using toasters to take selfies, and if ten years ago I hadn’t been looking for a place to post my 50k+ epic Renesmee-centric fanfic, I wouldn’t have met the people who are currently my best friends.

Which is to say: I’m too attached to this series to give a fig what color the prose is. Deal.

And yet. Me hoping that Midnight Sun would be good, in a way that people who don’t have my level of emotional investment might acknowledge, wasn’t… that farfetched?  Because the last book Meyer released before this one, The Chemist? Is an improvement on all her previous work. A huge improvement! It’s competently written! The characters read like they were intended to be flawed, messy people.

The main romance isn’t the kind of fucked up that Bella and Edward’s is, where you can pen treatises on why they’re omg so unhealthy. It’s the kind of fucked up where five seconds after meeting her love interest, the protagonist drugs him unconscious, kidnaps him, sticks a urinary catheter up his ding dong, straps him to a table and tortures him for information until the guy’s ex-CIA identical twin drops a plane on the barn they’re in and crashes through the ceiling all “HANDS OFF MY BABY BROTHER YOU DISCOUNT MATA HARI!”

Then they all make friends and go on a road trip together because a shady government organization is after them.

That’s not a fucked-up relationship that you write an essay analyzing the fucked-up-ness of. It’s something you stare at, stunned and, if you’re me, torn between thinking “Holy shit, this is so my brand of heroine!!!” and “How much crack was Auntie Steph on when she wrote this?” And it’s beautiful. I want ten more like it. So my hopes for Midnight Sun are tempered by the knowledge that, being a retelling of an established narrative, it can’t go all-out with the batshit. But I’m still optimistic that some part of it will give me that warm “Awww, you’ve come a long way from where we first met, author! Good on you!” feeling.

Now let’s (finally!) get started on the chapter proper.

…oh wait there’s an author’s note.

…uhm. Yeah. My dreams. About those. *fixed stare at faraway bonfire* Actually, let’s not talk about those and just move on to Edward Not Liking High School, thank you. Yeah. That’s good.

Edward Cullen doesn’t like high school. Edward doesn’t like that people think. Edward doesn’t like that the human student body is beside itself with the arrival of some new chick. Edward thinks his adopted siblings are super basic. (Rosalie = shallow, Emmett = simple, Jasper = psycho two seconds away from jumping off his chair and going on a rampage.) We don’t get to hear his utterly unbiased assessment of Alice, because she butts in and starts a one-sided telepathic convo about how Jasper is two seconds away from jumping off his chair and going on a rampage. You know. Normal sibling stuff.

WHY DO YOU PUT YOURSELF THROUGH THIS HASSLE, WHY!

(Let me take this opportunity to share my pet crack theory that Carlisle Cullen is secretly the most twisted, evil vampire in all of vampiredom, and that the sending the young ones to high school bit is something he does solely because he gets his evil fix by feasting on the emotional toil it inflicts on them. Also why he’s a doctor; he can ignore the call of blood, because being surrounded by the pain of patients and their loved ones already keeps him fed. I mean. He was chilling with the Volturi way back when, and Aro gives off a handsy vibe. No way he didn’t get his mind read in every which way, and if that happened - if he were reaaaalllyyyyy that nice, why would he still ping them as a threat of any kind?)

(This has holes in it, I know. And clashes with my other pet crack theory, which posits that the whole immortal child/Let’s Catch Them All: Cullen Edition was in fact the fallout of a Very Bad Italian Breakup, with Aro being the pissy ex who wants sole custody of the kids.)

Whatever. It still makes more sense than them going through “the inert state between active periods” when. My dudes! College is right there. Some places you can even sit out 90% of lectures and still get your diploma if you don’t feel like faking one, so Jasper would be all set! And you can pick different subjects! Diversify! Why must it always be med school rehashes, there are other worthy professions! And whole fields that are useless for getting-a-job purposes, but still interesting and enriching for those who have the luxury to pursue them. Let Emmett do Viking Studies, for fuck’s sake!

This amuses me much more than it rightfully should. I’m a child.

The Cullen clan tries to pep talk Jasper into not getting his murder on. Jasper is like OMG WILL YOU GUYS LAY OFF, while Edward is busy doing his judgy Edward thing and thinking to himself that Jasper should accept his limitations, that it’s a bad idea to have him at school at all, blah blah bleh, and you know what, I’m with you there, Ed.

Although we all know that this is just setup for the irony that will ensue as soon as Bella the Delicious klutzes her way into his line of smell.

Oh yah! Enter Bella. Edward can’t hear her thoughts. Jessica Stanley is a b-word. Edward wonders whether not being able to butt into the new girl’s head may be a red flag for vampire Alzheimer. Biology class next! The teacher is a man “of no more than average intellect” and, lord. It’s lucky that Edward is the mind reader in the family, because imagine if it were one of the others and they had to put up with listening to him bitch about the world at large, nonstop, at all hours of the day. And night, since these guys don’t sleep. Angela Webber is the only soul in the whole school whose thoughts have the Edward Cullen seal of approval. I feel sorry for her. I also feel this weird sense of hey, this all seems familiar in senses other than being a retelling, have I been here before?

Wait.

WAAAIIIIIITEEEEE.

*googles for the old version*

*runs first chapters through copyleaks*

*kubrick stare* MEYER, YOU LAZY SO AND SO, HOW COULD YOU!

*slams head on desk*

Well. At least I know what I’m in for. HONESTLY! It’s been. It’s been THIS MANY YEARS since the leaked version appeared, and that was a first draft, how in the… she’s way better than this, now! Was this novel produced in a terminal state of $#%CARING#NOT?&FOUND?! Is half of it just going to be the same old thing with a thin veneer of polish? I’m.

*sigh* You know what, I’m okay. We’re just going to call this first part a re-read. It’s been ten years, so I remember not a whole lot of the specifics, so at least I won’t be bored. BUT COME CHAPTER 13 I EXPECT TO BE SWEPT OFF MY FEET, DO YOU HEAR ME?!

Biology. Bella walks in right past a fan and gives Edward a throbbing throat boner. How awkward. Then she goes and sits right next to him and saucily tosses her hair around like he’s not actively plotting her murder and that of the rest of the class. The cheek of the thing!

Fortunately, Bella’s tasty ass is momentarily saved by a stiff breeze.

…I think we may have found the solution to Jasper’s control issues. The Cullens just need to start carrying air freshener around and spray the murder out of him every time he starts looking peckish. It would look weird if anyone else did it, but since they’re all pretty and rich, it’s more likely that the trend will catch on and cause Febreze sales to skyrocket.

Anyway. We’re not done victim-blaming Bella for…

…at least another couple of pages, but at least Edward gets his head out of his ass long enough to recall that hey, vampire! Oxygen is optional! But he still spends another lot of words grumbling about what a hassle it is to be forced to hold his breath in order to dampen his murderous urges. This is why you are a virgin, Edward. No, I don’t mean the planning the assassination a classmate’s assassination, plenty of serial killers still manage to get laid heaps, consensually, even! It’s the fact that you’re this much of a buzzkill that’s the issue.

Live, laugh, love, you dumbass disco ball!

Yep, he’s still on about how he’s going to kill her, totes kill her, he feral dangerous vampire, rawr. The miracle of adequate indoor airflow only got him to railroad a quartet of brain cells into thinking up smarter ways of snuffing Bella out. Now he wants to lure her to the forest. No, he’s going to kill her at home! He hates her! No, he hates himself and is projecting!

So he flees to his car, plays some calming music, breathes in and out and thinks about his family and how disappointed they’d be in him if he were to help himself to a Swan shake. Well, I’m nobody to shit talk anyone’s self-soothing routine. I’d probably throw in a truck of food + a bath, but he’s had 100+ years to figure out what coping mechanisms work for him, so let’s just let him do his-

Edward.

EDWARD.

…do you actually think this is an appropriate time to start a ginger-off with some random desk lady? Yes, we know you’re the One True Redhead To Rule Them All. (Though Kvothe from Name of the Wind may beg to differ, and I don’t know who would win that fight.) I mean, really? You pull this crap when you just barely talked yourself out of a murder? And then you call her eyes flat! What!

One of my favorite comic book series, Y the Last Man, features a scene where two characters discuss what it is that truly binds people together. One of them presents the argument that stronger bonds are formed not by shared love, but by shared hates. By which they mean not a kiss-kiss-slap-slap, enemies-to-lovers relationship dynamic, but like… you, being someone who really hates coleslaw, having a partner who likewise hates coleslaw, with whom you can indulge in tireless verbal roastings of coleslaw and who will never get tired of your complaining, because the fire of their loathing burns every bit as hot as yours.

I’ve always felt that this concept resonated with me deeply. And if you apply it to Bella and Edward, by its standards, they have the real deal. Go through the namesake chapter in Twilight-the-book, and you find Bella thinking similarly judgy thoughts, being irked by the same shit that no one normal would bat an eye to, going “Ugh!” and “Gah!” at everything that makes Edward wince internally. So their love will be eternal for sure. Perhaps not in an epic way. They’ll live boringly ever after, until they’re ancient and onion-skinned and lurking at passerby humans through the geraniums on their windowsill, exchanging “Holy crow, I can’t believe she bought a hydrogen engine car just to show off!” / “Awful! She should know that thinning the deer population so that they produce less flatulence is the most sound way of controlling toxic emissions!” And then probably gazing at one another like idiots for an ice age or two.

Edward wants to be moved out of Biology class. Goes back and forth with the desk lady, who obviously wants to tap that, because of course she does. Every hot-blooded woman within spitting distance must crave his alluring icicle, even as he mentally eviscerates every minuscule detail of their appearance.

Except Bella, because she’s soft, translucent, deep-eyed and edible. And, I mean. You can complain all you want about “you’re different from anyone else I’ve ever met, you’re SPECIAL, better, more beautiful, more everything!” being a dead horse of a trope so old and beaten that by all rights it should have turned to smelly glue, but. That pony is still kicking. And by kicking, I mean selling. And it sells because being made to feel special, even if it’s happening by proxy while you’re immersed into the thoughts of a fictional character, is nice. Readers enjoying that experience and seeking out fiction that provides it shouldn’t be considered so… mock-worthy as I’ve seen it be, in discussion of works that feature the trope prominently.

Which doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be nicer if Edward’s narration were focused solely on elevating Bella, instead of also viciously kicking down everyone in the vicinity. Man, we get the message, okay? You don’t need to act like you’ve swallowed a Simon Cowell before coming in for school.

I swear, it’s almost a relief when Bella interrupts, heralding the triumphant return of the throat boner. Edward’s thoughts about the people around him are actually LESS gratuitously bitchy when he’s contemplating how to best murder them.

At least this time he is able to extract himself from the situation and flee speedily. (Which… in Biology, what exactly was preventing him from asking for a bathroom break? Or just saying he was feeling poorly and getting the fuck out of there?)

He meets the sibs. Only Alice has any clue of what is going on because visions, and she doesn’t explain anything to the others, who just stand there baffled while Edward decides to get his shiny ass in his shiny Volvo and run off to Alaska. Probably because it would ruin the serious mood of the scene if she told them and Jasper started doing happy cartwheels at the prospect of no longer being the only fuckup in the family.

END CHAPTER. Same time tomorrow, hopefully, and I’ll TRY to be less longwinded. Try. 

#TWILIGHT #MIDNIGHT SUN #EDWARD CULLEN #GRISREADSMS #MIDNIGHT SUN SPOILERS